University of Virginia Library

IV. PART IV.

THE MONEY DIGGERS.

HELL-GATE.

About six miles from the renowned
city of the Manhattoes, in that sound or
arm of the sea which passes between the
main land and Nassau, or Long Island,

there is a narrow strait, where the current
is violently compressed between
shouldering promontories, and horribly
perplexed by rocks and shoals. Being,
at the best of times, a very violent,
impetuous current, it takes these impediments
in mighty dudgeon; boiling in
whirlpools; brawling and fretting in ripples;
raging and roaring in rapids and
breakers; and, in short, indulging in all
kinds of wrong-headed paroxysms. At
such times, wo to any unlucky vessel
that ventures within its clutches!

This termagant humour, however, prevails
only at certain times of tide. At
low water, for instance, it is as pacific a
stream as you would wish to see; but as
the tide rises, it begins to fret; at half-tide
it roars with might and main, like a
bully bellowing for more drink; but
when the tide is full, it relapses into
quiet, and, for a time, sleeps as soundly
as an alderman after dinner. In fact, it
may be compared to a quarrelsome toper,
who is a peaceable fellow enough when
he has no liquor at all, or when he has a
skin full, but who, when half-seas-over,
plays the very devil.

This mighty, blustering, bullying, hard-drinking
little strait, was a place of great
danger and perplexity to the Dutch navigators
of ancient days; hectoring their
tub-built barks in the most unruly style;
whirling them about in a manner to make
any but a Dutchman giddy, and not unfrequently
stranding them upon rocks and
reefs, as it did the famous squadron of
Oloffe the Dreamer, when seeking a place
to found the city of the Manhattoes.
Whereupon, out of sheer spleen they
denominated it Helle-gat, and solemnly
gave it over to the devil. This appellation
has since been aptly rendered into
English by the name of Hell-gate, and
into nonsense by the name of Hurl-gate,
according to certain foreign intruders,
who neither understood Dutch nor English—may
St. Nicholas confound them!

This strait of Hell-gate was a place of
great awe and perilous enterprise to me
in my boyhood; having been much of a
navigator on those small seas, and having
more than once run the risk of shipwreck
and drowning in the course of certain
holiday-voyages, to which, in common
with other Dutch urchins, I was rather
prone. Indeed, partly from the name,
and partly from various strange circumstances
connected with it, this place had
far more terrors in the eyes of my truant
companions and myself, than had Scylla
and Charybdis for the navigators of
yore.

In the midst of this strait, and hard by
a group of rocks called the Hen and
Chickens, there lay the wreck of a vessel
which had been entangled in the whirlpools,
and stranded during a storm.
There was a wild story told to us of
this being the wreck of a pirate, and
some tale of bloody murder which I
cannot now recollect, but which made us
regard it with great awe, and keep far
from it in our cruisings. Indeed, the
desolate look of the forlorn hulk, and
the fearful place where it lay rotting,
were enough to awaken strange notions.
A row of timber-heads, blackened by
time, just peered above the surface at
high water; but at low tide a considerable
part of the hull was bare, and its
great ribs, or timbers, partly stripped of
their planks, and dripping with seaweeds,
looked like the huge skeleton of
some sea-monster. There was also the
stump of a mast, with a few ropes and
blocks swinging about, and whistling in
the wind, while the sea-gull wheeled and
screamed around the melancholy carcass.
I have a faint recollection of some hobgoblin
tale of sailors' ghosts being seen
about this wreck at night, with bare
sculls, and blue lights in their sockets
instead of eyes, but I have forgotten all
the particulars.

In fact, the whole of this neighbourhood
was, like the Straits of Pelorus of
yore, a region of fable and romance to
me. From the strait to the Manhattoes
the borders of the Sound are greatly
diversified, being broken and indented
by rocky nooks overhung with trees,
which give them a wild and romantic
look. In the time of my boyhood,
they abounded with traditions
about pirates, ghosts, smugglers, and
buried money; which had a wonderful
effect upon the young minds of my companions
and myself.

As I grew to more mature years, I
made diligent research after the truth of
these strange traditions; for I have

always been a curious investigator of
the valuable but obscure branches of the
history of my native province. I found
infinite difficulty, however, in arriving at
any precise information. In seeking to
dig up one fact, it is incredible the number
of fables that I unearthed. I will
say nothing of the Devil's Steppingstones,
by which the arch-fiend made
his retreat from Connecticut to Long
Island, across the Sound; seeing the
subject is likely to be learnedly treated
by a worthy friend and contemporary
historian, whom I have furnished with
particulars thereof.[4] Neither will I say
any thing of the black man in a three-cornered
hat, seated in the stern of a
jolly-boat, who used to be seen about
Hell-gate in stormy weather, and who
went by the name of the pirate's spuke,
(i. e. pirate's ghost), and whom, it is
said, old Governor Stuyvesant once shot
with a silver bullet; because I never
could meet with any person of staunch
credibility who professed to have seen
this spectrum, unless it were the widow
of Manus Conklen, the blacksmith, of
Frogsneck; but then, poor woman, she
was a little purblind, and might have
been mistaken; though they say she
saw farther than other folks in the dark.

All this, however, was but little satisfactory
in regard to the tales of pirates
and their buried money, about which I
was most curious: and the following is
all that I could for a long time collect
that had any thing like an air of authenticity.

KIDD THE PIRATE.

In old times, just after the territory of
the New Netherlands had been wrested
from the hands of their High Mightinesses,
the Lords States-General of Holland,
by King Charles the Second, and
while it was as yet in an unquiet state,
the province was a great resort of random
adventurers, loose livers, and all
that class of hap-hazard fellows who live
by their wits, and dislike the old-fashioned
restraint of law and Gospel. Among
these, the foremost were the bucaniers.
These were rovers of the deep, who, perhaps,
in time of war, had been educated
in those schools of piracy, the privateers;
but having once tasted the sweets of plunder,
had ever retained a hankering after
it. There is but a slight step from the
privatcersman to the pirate: both fight
for the love of plunder; only that the
latter is the bravest, as he dares both the
enemy and the gallows.

But in whatever school they had been
taught, the bucaniers who kept about
the English colonies were daring fellows,
and made sad work in times of peace
among the Spanish settlements and
Spanish merchantmen. The easy access
to the harbour of the Manhattoes, the
number of hiding-places about its waters,
and the laxity of its scarcely organized
government, made it a great rendezvous
of the pirates: where they might dispose
of their booty, and concert new depredations.
As they brought home with them
wealthy lading of all kinds, the luxuries
of the tropics, and the sumptuous spoils
of the Spanish provinces, and disposed
of them with the proverbial carelessness
of freebooters, they were welcome visiters
to the thrifty traders of the Manhattoes.
Crews of these desperadoes,
therefore, the runagates of every country
and every clime, might be seen
swaggering in open day about the streets
of the little burgh, elbowing its quiet
mynheers, trafficking away their rich
outlandish plunder at half or quarter
price to the wary merchant; and then
squandering their prize-money in taverns,
drinking, gambling, singing, swearing,
shouting, and astounding the neighbourhood
with midnight brawl and ruffian
revelry.

At length these excesses rose to such
a height as to become a scandal to the
provinces, and to call loudly for the
interposition of government. Measures
were accordingly taken to put a stop to
the widely-extended evil, and to ferret
this vermin brood out of the colonies.

Among the agents employed to execute
this purpose was the notorious
Captain Kidd. He had long been an

equivocal character; one of those nondescript
animals of the ocean that are
neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. He was
somewhat of a trader, something more
of a smuggler, with a considerable dash
of the piccaroon. He had traded for
many years among the pirates, in a little
rakish, musquitto-built vessel, that could
run into all kinds of waters. He knew
all their haunts and lurking-places; was
always hooking about on mysterious
voyages, and as busy as a Mother
Carey's chicken in a storm.

This nondescript personage was pitched
upon by government as the very man to
hunt the pirates by sea, upon the good
old maxim of "setting a rogue to catch
a rogue;" or as otters are sometimes
used to catch their cousins-german, the
fish.

Kidd accordingly sailed for New York,
in 1695, in a gallant vessel called the
Adventure Galley, well armed and duly
commissioned. On arriving at his old
haunts, however, he shipped his crew on
new terms; enlisted a number of his
old comrades; lads of the knife and the
pistol; and then set sail for the East.
Instead of cruising against pirates, he
turned pirate himself; steered to the
Madeiras, to Bonavista, and Madagascar,
and cruised about the entrance of the
Red Sea. Here, among other maritime
robberies, he captured a rich Quedah
merchantman, manned by Moors, though
commanded by an Englishman. Kidd
would fain have passed this off for a
worthy exploit, as being a kind of crusade
against the infidels; but government
had long since lost all relish for such
Christian triumphs.

After roaming the seas, trafficking his
prizes, and changing from ship to ship,
Kidd had the hardihood to return to Boston,
laden with booty, with a crew of
swaggering companions at his heels.

Times, however, were changed. The
bucaniers could no longer show a whisker
in the colonies with impunity. The
new governor, Lord Bellamont, had signalized
himself by his zeal in extirpating
these offenders; and was doubly exasperated
against Kidd, having been instrumental
in appointing him to the trust
which he had betrayed. No sooner,
therefore, did he show himself in Boston,
than the alarm was given of his re-appearance,
and measures were taken to
arrest this cut-purse of the ocean. The
daring character which Kidd had acquired,
however, and the desperate fellows
who followed like bulldogs at his
heels, caused a little delay in his arrest.
He took advantage of this, it is said, to
bury the greater part of his treasures,
and then carried a high head about the
streets of Boston. He even attempted
to defend himself when arrested, but was
secured and thrown into prison, with his
followers. Such was the formidable
character of this pirate and his crew,
that it was thought advisable to despatch
a frigate to bring them to England.
Great exertions were made to screen
him from justice, but in vain; he and
his comrades were tried, condemned,
and hanged at Execution Dock in London.
Kidd died hard, for the rope with
which he was first tied up broke with
his weight, and he tumbled to the ground.
He was tied up a second time, and more
effectually; from hence came, doubtless,
the story of Kidd's having a charmed
life, and that he had to be twice hanged.

Such is the main outline of Kidd's history;
but it has given birth to an innumerable
progeny of traditions. The report
of his having buried great treasures of
gold and jewels before his arrest, set
the brains of all the good people along
the coast in a ferment. There were
rumours on rumours of great sums of
money found here and there, sometimes
in one part of the country, sometimes
in another; of coins with Moorish inscriptions,
doubtless the spoils of his
eastern prizes, but which the common
people looked upon with superstitious
awe, regarding the Moorish letters as
diabolical or magical characters.

Some reported the treasure to have
been buried in solitary, unsettled places
about Plymouth and Cape Cod; but by degrees
various other parts, not only on the
eastern coast, but along the shores of the
Sound, and even of Manhatta and Long
Island, were gilded by these rumours.
In fact, the rigorous measures of Lord
Bellamont had spread sudden consternation
among the bucaniers in every part
of the provinces: they had secreted their
money and jewels in lonely out-of-the-way

places, about the wild shores of the rivers
and sea-coast, and dispersed themselves
over the face of the country. The hand
of justice prevented many of them from
ever returning to regain their buried
treasures, which remained, and remain
probably to this day, objects of enterprise
for the money-digger.

This is the cause of those frequent
reports of trees and rocks bearing mysterious
marks, supposed to indicate the
spots where treasures lay hidden; and
many have been the ransackings after
the pirates' booty. In all the stories
which once abounded of these enterprises,
the devil played a conspicuous
part. Either he was conciliated by
ceremonies and invocations, or some
solemn compact was made with him.
Still, he was ever prone to play the
money-diggers some slippery trick.
Some would dig so far as to come to an
iron chest, when some baffling circumstance
was sure to take place. Either
the earth would fall in and fill up the
pit, or some direful noise or apparition
would frighten the party from the place:
sometimes the devil himself would appear,
and bear off the prize when within their
very grasp; and if they revisited the
place the next day, not a trace would
be found of their labours of the preceding
night.

All these rumours, however, were extremely
vague, and for a long time tantalized
without gratifying my curiosity.
There is nothing in this world so hard to
get at as truth, and there is nothing in
this world but truth that I care for. I
sought among all my favourite sources of
authentic information, the oldest inhabitants,
and particularly the old Dutch
wives of the province; but though I flatter
myself that I am better versed than most
men in the curious history of my native
province, yet for a long time my inquiries
were unattended with any substantial result.

At length it happened that, one calm
day in the latter part of summer, I was
relaxing myself from the toils of severe
study, by a day's amusement in fishing
in those waters which had been the favourite
resort of my boyhood. I was in
company with several worthy burghers
of my native city, among whom were
more than one illustrious member of the
corporation, whose names, did I dare to
mention them, would do honour to my
humble page. Our sport was indifferent.
The fish did not bite freely, and we frequently
changed our fishing-ground
without bettering our lack. We were at
length anchored close under a ledge of
rocky coast, on the eastern side of the
island of Manhattan. It was a still warm
day. The stream whirled and dimpled
by us without a wave or even a ripple;
and every thing was so calm and quiet,
that it was almost startling when the
kingfisher would pitch himself from the
branch of some dry tree, and after suspending
himself for a moment in the air
to take his aim, would souse into the
smooth water after his prey. While we
were lolling in our boat, half drowsy
with the warm stillness of the day, and
the dulness of our sport, one of our
party, a worthy alderman, was overtaken
by a slumber, and, as he dozzed, suffered
the sinker of his dropline to lie upon the
bottom of the river. On waking, he
found he had caught something of importance
from the weight. On drawing
it to the surface, we were much surprised
to find it a long pistol of very curious and
outlandish fashion, which, from its rusted
condition, and its stock being worm-eaten
and covered with barnacles, appeared to
have lain a long time under water. The
unexpected appearance of this document
of warfare, occasioned much speculation
among my pacific companions. One
supposed it to have fallen there during
the revolutionary war; another, from the
peculiarity of its fashion, attributed it to
the voyagers in the earliest days of the
settlement; perchance to the renowned
Adrian Block, who explored the Sound,
and discovered Block Island, since so
noted for its cheese. But a third, after
regarding it for some time, pronounced
it to be of veritable Spanish workmanship.

"I'll warrant," said he, "if this pistol
could talk, it would tell strange stories of
hard fights among the Spanish Dons.
I've no doubt but it is a relic of the
bucaniers of old times—who knows but it
belonged to Kidd himself?"

"Ah! that Kidd was a resolute fellow,"
cried an old iron-faced Cape Cod whaler.

"There's a fine old song about him, all
to the tune of—

And then it tells all about how he gained
the devil's good graces by burying the
Bible:

Odsfish, if I thought this pistol had belonged
to Kidd, I should set great store
by it, for curiosity's sake. By the way,
I recollect a story about a fellow who
once dug up Kidd's buried money, which
was written by a neighbour of mine, and
which I learnt by heart. As the fish
don't bite just now, I'll tell it to you by
way of passing away the time." And so
saying, he gave us the following narration.

THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER.

A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts,
there is a deep inlet, winding
several miles into the interior of the
country from Charles Bay, and terminating
in a thickly-wooded swamp or
morass. On one side of this inlet is a
beautiful dark grove; on the opposite
side the land rises abruptly from the
water's edge into a high ridge, on which
grow a few scattered oaks of great age
and immense size. Under one of these
gigantic trees, according to old stories,
there was a great amount of treasure
buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet
allowed a facility to bring the money in a
boat secretly and at night to the very foot
of the hill; the elevation of the place permitted
a good look-out to be kept that no
one was at hand; while the remarkable
trees formed good landmarks by which
the place might easily be found again.
The old stories add, moreover, that the
devil presided at the hiding of the money,
and look it under his guardianship; but
this it is well known he always does with
buried treasure, particularly when it has
been ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd
never returned to recover his wealth;
being shortly after seized at Boston, sent
out to England, and there hanged for a
pirate.

About the year 1727, just at the time
that earthquakes were prevalent in New
England, and shook many tall sinners
down upon their knees, there lived near
this place a meagre miserly fellow, of
the name of Tom Walker. He had a
wife as miserly as himself: they were so
miserly that they even conspired to cheat
each other. Whatever the woman could
lay hands on, she hid away; a hen could
not cackle but she was on the alert to
secure the new-laid egg. Her husband
was continually prying about to detect her
secret hoards, and many and fierce were
the conflicts that took place about what
ought to have been common property.
They lived in a forlorn-looking house
that stood alone, and had an air of starvation.
A few straggling savin-trees,
emblems of sterility, grew near it; no
smoke ever curled from its chimney;
no traveller stopped at its door. A
miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate
as the bars of a gridiron, stalked
about a field, where a thin carpet of moss,
scarcely covering the ragged beds of
pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his
hunger; and sometimes he would lean
his head over the fence, look piteously at
the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance
from this land of famine.

The house and its inmates had altogether
a bad name. Tom's wife was a
tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of
tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice
was often heard in wordy warfare with
her husband; and his face sometimes
showed signs that their conflicts were
not confined to words. No one ventured,
however, to interfere between
them. The lonely wayfarer shrunk
within himself at the horrid clamour
and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of
discord askance; and hurried on his
way rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.

One day that Tom Walker had been
to a distant part of the neighbourhood,
he took what he considered a short cut
homewards, through the swamp. Like
most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen
route. The swamp was thickly grown

with great gloomy pines and hemlocks,
some of them ninety feet high, which
made it dark at noonday, and a retreat
for all the owls of the neighbourhood.
It was full of pits and quagmires, partly
covered with weeds and mosses, where
the green surface often betrayed the
traveller into a gulf of black, smothering
mud; there were also dark and stagnant
pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the
bullfrog, and the water-snake; where the
trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half-drowned,
half rotting, looking like alligators
sleeping in the mire.

Tom had long been picking his way
cautiously through this treacherous forest;
stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and
roots, which afforded precarious footholds
among deep sloughs; or pacing
carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate
trunks of trees; startled now and then
by the sudden screaming of the bittern,
or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on
the wing from some solitary pool. At
length he arrived at a piece of firm
ground, which ran out like a peninsula
into the deep bosom of the swamp. It
had been one of the strongholds of the
Indians during their wars with the first
colonists. Here they had thrown up a
kind of fort, which they had looked upon
as almost impregnable, and had used as
a place of refuge for their squaws and
children. Nothing remained of the old
Indian fort but a few embankments,
gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding
earth, and already overgrown
in part by oaks and other forest trees,
the foliage of which formed a contrast
to the dark pines and hemlocks of the
swamp.

It was late in the dusk of evening
when Tom Walker reached the old fort,
and he paused therefore a while to rest
himself. Any one but he would have
felt unwilling to linger in this lonely,
melancholy place, for the common people
had a bad opinion of it, from the
stories handed down from the time of
the Indian wars; when it was asserted
that the savages held incantations here,
and made sacrifices to the evil spirit.

Tom Walker, however, was not a man
to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the
trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to
the boding cry of the tree-toad, and
delving with his walking-staff into a
mound of black mould at his feet. As
he turned up the soil unconsciously, his
staff struck against something hard. He
raked it out of the vegetable mould, and
lo! a cloven scull, with an Indian tomahawk
buried deep in it, lay before him.
The rust on the weapon showed the time
that had elapsed since this deathblow
had been given. It was a dreary memento
of the fierce struggle that had
taken place in this last foothold of the
Indian warriors.

"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he
gave it a kick to shake the dirt from it.

"Let that scull alone!" said a gruff
voice. Tom lifted up his eyes, and
beheld a great black man seated directly
opposite him, on the stump of a
tree. He was exceedingly surprised,
having neither heard nor seen any one
approach; and he was still more perplexed
on observing, as well as the
gathering gloom would permit, that the
stranger was neither negro nor Indian.
It is true he was dressed in a rude half
Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash
swathed round his body; but his face
was neither black nor copper-colour, but
swarthy and dingy, and begrimed with
soot, as if he had been accustomed to
toil among fires and forges. He had a
shock of coarse black hair, that stood
out from his head in all directions, and
bore an axe on his shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom
with a pair of great red eyes.

"What are you doing on my grounds?"
said the black man, with a hoarse growling
voice.

"Your grounds!" said Tom with a
sneer. "No more your grounds than
mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."

"Deacon Peabody be d—d," said
the stranger, "as I flatter myself he will
be, if he does not look more to his own
sins and less to those of his neighbours.
Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody
is faring."

Tom looked in the direction that the
stranger pointed, and beheld one of the
great trees, fair and flourishing without,
but rotten at the core, and saw that it
had been nearly hewn through, so that
the first high wind was likely to blow it

down. On the bark of the tree was
scored the name of Deacon Peabody,—
an eminent man, who had waxed wealthy
by driving shrewd bargains with the
Indians. He now looked round, and
found most of the tall trees marked
with the name of some great man in the
colony, and all more or less scored by
the axe. The one on which he had
been seated, and which had evidently
just been hewn down, bore the name
of Crowninshield; and he recollected a
mighty rich man of that name, who
made a vulgar display of wealth, which
it was whispered he had acquired by
bucaniering.

"He's just ready for burning!" said
the black man, with a growl of triumph.
"You see I am likely to have a good
stock of firewood for winter."

"But what right have you," said
Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's
timber?"

"The right of a prior claim," said the
other. "This woodland belonged to me
long before one of your white-faced race
put foot upon the soil."

"And pray who are you, if I may be
so bold?" said Tom.

"Oh, I go by various names. I am
the wild huntsman in some countries:
the black miner in others. In this
neighbourhood I am known by the name
of the black woodman. I am he to
whom the red men consecrated this spot,
and in honour of whom they now and
then roasted a white man, by way of
sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red
men have been exterminated by you
white savages, I amuse myself by presiding
at the persecutions of quakers
and anabaptists. I am the great patron
and prompter of slave-dealers and the
grand master of the Salem witches."

"The upshot of all which is, that, if
I mistake not," said Tom, sturdily, "you
are he commonly called Old Scratch."

"The same, at your service!" replied
the black man, with a half-civil nod.

Such was the opening of this interview,
according to the old story; though
it has almost too familiar an air to be
credited. One would think that to meet
with such a singular personage, in this
wild, lonely place, would have shaken
any man's nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded
fellow, not easily daunted, and
he had lived so long with a termagant
wife, that he did not even fear the devil.

It is said that after this commencement
they had a long and earnest conversation
together, as Tom returned homeward.
The black man told him of great
sums of money which had been buried
by Kidd the pirate, under the oak trees
on the high ridge, not far from the
morass. All these were under his command,
and protected by his power, so
that none could find them but such as
propitiated his favour. These he offered
to place within Tom Walker's reach,
having conceived an especial kindness
for him; but they were to be had only
on certain conditions. What these conditions
were may easily be surmised,
though Tom never disclosed them publicly.
They must have been very hard,
for he required time to think of them,
and he was not a man to stick at trifles
where money was in view. When they
had reached the edge of the swamp, the
stranger paused—"What proof have I
that all you have been telling me is
true?" said Tom. "There is my signature,"
said the black man, pressing
his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying,
he turned off among the thickets of
the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said,
to go down, down, down, into the earth,
until nothing but his head and shoulders
could be seen, and so on, until he totally
disappeared.

When Tom reached home, he found
the black print of a finger, burnt, as it
were, into his forehead, which nothing
could obliterate.

The first news his wife had to tell him
was the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield,
the rich bucanier. It was announced
in the papers with the usual
flourish, that "A great man had fallen
in Israel."

Tom recollected the tree which his
black friend had just hewn down, and
which was ready for burning. "Let
the freebooter roast," said Tom, "who
cares!" He now felt convinced that all
he had heard and seen was no illusion.

He was not prone to let his wife into
his confidence, but as this was an uneasy
secret, he willingly shared it with her.
All her avarice was awakened at the

mention of hidden gold, and she urged
her husband to comply with the black
man's terms, and secure what would
make them wealthy for life. However
Tom might have felt disposed to sell
himself to the devil, he was determined
not to do so to oblige his wife; so he
flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of
contradiction. Many and bitter were
the quarrels they had on the subject, but
the more she talked, the more resolute
was Tom not to be damned to please her.

At length she determined to drive the
bargain on her own account, and if she
succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper
as her husband, she set off for the old
Indian fort towards the close of a summer's
day. She was many hours absent.
When she came back, she was reserved
and sullen in her replies. She spoke
something of a black man, whom she
had met about twilight, hewing at the
root of a tall tree. He was sulky,
however, and would not come to terms:
she was to go again with a propitiatory
offering, but what it was she forbore to
say.

The next evening she set off again for
the swamp, with her apron heavily laden.
Tom waited and waited for her, but in
vain; midnight came, but she did not
make her appearance: morning, noon,
night returned, but she did not come.
Tom now grew uneasy for her safety,
especially as he found she had carried
off in her apron the silver teapot and
spoons, and every portable article of
value. Another night elapsed, another
morning came; but no wife. In a word,
she was never heard of more.

What was her real fate nobody knows,
in consequence of so many pretending to
know. It is one of those facts which
have become confounded with a variety
of historians. Some asserted that she
lost her way among the tangled mazes
of the swamp, and sunk into some pit
or slough; others, more uncharitable,
hinted that she had eloped with the
household booty, and made off to some
other province; while others surmised
that the tempter had decoyed her into a
dismal quagmire, on the top of which
her hat was found lying. In confirmation
of this, it was said a great black
man, with an axe on his shoulder, was
seen late that very evening coming out
of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in
a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.

The most current and probable story,
however, observes that Tom Walker
grew so anxious about the fate of his
wife and his property, that he set out at
length to seek them both at the Indian
fort. During a long summer's afternoon
he searched about the gloomy place, but
no wife was to be seen. He called her
name repeatedly, but she was nowhere
to be heard. The bittern alone responded
to his voice, as he flew screaming
by; or the bullfrog croaked dolefully
from a neighbouring pool. At length, it
is said, just in the brown hour of twilight,
when the owls began to hoot, and
the bats to flit about, his attention was
attracted by the clamour of carrion-crows
that were hovering about a cypress
tree. He looked up and beheld a bundle
tied in a check apron, and hanging in
the branches of the tree, with a great
vulture perched hard by, as if keeping
watch upon it. He leaped with joy;
for he recognised his wife's apron, and
supposed it to contain the household
valuables.

"Let us get hold of the property,"
said he consolingly to himself, "and we
will endeavour to do without the woman."

As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture
spread its wide wings, and sailed
off screaming into the deep shadows of
the forest. Tom seized the check apron,
but woful sight! found nothing but a
heart and liver tied up in it!

Such, according to the most authentic
old story, was all that was to be found
of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted
to deal with the black man
as she had been accustomed to deal
with her husband; but though a female
scold is generally considered a match
for the devil, yet in this instance she
appears to have had the worst of it.
She must have died game, however; for
it is said that Tom noticed many prints
of cloven feet deeply stamped about the
tree, and found handfuls of hair, that
looked as if they had been plucked from
the coarse black shock of the woodman.
Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience.

He shrugged his shoulders, as
he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing.
"Egad," said he to himself,
"Old Scratch must have had a tough
time of it!"

Tom consoled himself for the loss of
his property with the loss of his wife,
for he was a man of fortitude. He even
felt something like gratitude towards the
black woodman, who, he considered, had
done him a kindness. He sought, therefore,
to cultivate a further acquaintance
with him, but for some time without
success; the old black-legs played shy,
for whatever people may think, he is
not always to be had for calling for:
he knows how to play his cards when
pretty sure of his game.

At length it is said, when delay had
whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick,
and prepared him to agree to any thing
rather than not gain the promised treasure,
he met the black man one evening
in his usual woodman's dress, with his
axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the
edge of the swamp, and humming a tune.
He affected to receive Tom's advances
with great indifference, made brief replies,
and went on humming his tune.

By degrees, however, Tom brought
him to business, and they began to haggle
about the terms on which the former
was to have the pirate's treasure. There
was one condition which need not be
mentioned, being generally understood in
all cases where the devil grants favours;
but there were others about which,
though of less importance, he was inflexibly
obstinate. He insisted that the money
found through his means should be employed
in his service. He proposed,
therefore, that Tom should employ it in
the black traffic; that is to say, that he
should fit out a slave-ship. This, however,
Tom resolutely refused: he was
bad enough in all conscience; but the
devil himself could not tempt him to turn
slave-dealer.

Finding Tom so squeamish on this
point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed
instead, that he should turn usurer;
the devil being extremely anxious for the
increase of usurers, looking upon them
as his peculiar people.

To this no objections were made, for
it was just to Tom's taste.

"You shall open a broker's shop in
Boston next month," said the black man.

"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish,"
said Tom Walker.

"You shall lend money at two per
cent. a month."

"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom
Walker.

"You shall extort bonds, foreclose
mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy—"

"I'll drive him to the d—l," cried
Tom Walker.

"You are the usurer for my money!"
said the black-legs with delight. "When
will you want the rhino?"

"This very night."

"Done!" said the devil.

"Done!" said Tom Walker. So they
shook hands, and struck a bargain.

A few days' time saw Tom Walker
seated behind his desk in a counting-house
in Boston. His reputation for a
ready-moneyed man, who would lend
money out for a good consideration, soon
spread abroad. Every body remembers
the time of Governor Belcher, when
money was particularly scarce. It was
a time of paper credit. The country had
been deluged with government bills; the
famous Land Bank had been established;
there had been a rage for speculating;
the people had run mad with schemes
for new settlements; for building cities in
the wilderness; land-jobbers went about
with maps and grants, and townships,
and El Dorados, lying nobody knew
where, but which every body was ready
to purchase. In a word, the great speculating
fever which breaks out every now
and then in the country had raged to an
alarming degree, and every body was
dreaming of making sudden fortunes from
nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided;
the dream had gone off, and the
imaginary fortunes with it; the patients
were left in doleful plight, and the whole
country resounded with the consequent
cry of "hard times."

At this propitious time of public distress
did Tom Walker set up as a usurer
in Boston. His door was soon thronged
by customers. The needy and the
adventurous; the gambling speculator;
the dreaming land-jobber; the thriftless
tradesman; the merchant with cracked

credit; in short, every one driven to raise
money by desperate means and desperate
sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of
the needy; and he acted like a "friend
in need;" that is to say, he always exacted
good pay and good security. In
proportion to the distress of the applicant
was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated
bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer;
and sent them at length dry as a sponge
from his door.

In this way he made money hand over
hand; became a rich and mighty man,
and exalted his cocked hat upon 'Change.
He built himself, as usual, a vast house
out of ostentation, but left the greater part
of it unfinished and unfurnished out of
parsimony. He even set up a carriage
in the fulness of his vainglory, though he
nearly starved the horses which drew it;
and as the ungreased wheels groaned and
screeched on the axletrees, you would
have thought you heard the souls of the
poor debtors he was squeezing.

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew
thoughtful. Having secured the good
things of this world, he began to feel
anxious about those of the next. He
thought with regret upon the bargain he
had made with his black friend, and set
his wits to work to cheat him out of the
conditions. He became, therefore, all of
a sudden a violent church-goer. He
prayed loudly and strenuously, as if
heaven were to be taken by force of
lungs. Indeed, one might always tell
when he had sinned most during the week
by the clamour of his Sunday devotion.
The quiet Christians who had been most
modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward,
were struck with self-reproach at
seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped
in their career by this new-made convert.
Tom was as rigid in religious as in money
matters; he was a stern supervisor and
censurer of his neighbours, and seemed
to think every sin entered up to their account
became a credit on his own side of
the page. He even talked of the expediency
of reviving the persecution of Quakers
and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom's
zeal became as notorious as his riches.

Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention
to forms, Tom had a lurking dread
that the devil, after all, would have his
due. That he might not be taken unawares,
therefore, it is said he always
carried a small Bible in his coat-pocket.
He had also a great folio Bible on his
counting-house desk, and would frequently
be found reading it when people
called on business. On such occasions
he would lay his green spectacles in the
book to mark the place, while he turned
round to drive some usurious bargain.

Some say that Tom grew a little
crack-brained in his old days, and that,
fancying his end approaching, he had his
horse new-shod, saddled, and bridled, and
buried with his feet uppermost; because
he supposed that, at the last day, the
world would be turned upside down, in
which case he would find his horse
standing ready for mounting, and he was
determined, at the worst, to give his old
friend a run for it. This, however, is
probably a mere old wives' fable.

If he really did take such a precaution,
it was totally superfluous; at least so says
the authentic old legend, which closes his
story in the following manner.

On one hot afternoon in the dog-days
just as a terrible black thunder-gust was
coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house,
in his white linen cap, and India
silk morning-gown. He was on the
point of foreclosing a mortgage, by
which he would complete the ruin of an
unlucky land speculator, for whom he
had professed the greatest friendship.

The poor land-jobber begged him to
grant a few months' indulgence. Tom
had grown testy and irritated, and refused
another day.

"My family will be ruined, and
brought upon the parish," said the land-jobber.

"Charity begins at home," replied
Tom. "I must take care of myself in
these hard times."

"You have made so much money out
of me," said the speculator.

Tom lost his patience and his piety.

"The d—l take me," said he, "if I
have made a farthing."

Just then there were three loud knocks
at the street-door. He stepped out to see
who was there. A black man was holding
a black horse, which neighed and
stamped with impatience.

"Tom, you're come for!" said the
black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank back,
but too late. He had left his little Bible
at the bottom of his coat-pocket, and his
big Bible on the desk, buried under the
mortgage he was about to foreclose;
never was sinner taken more unawares;
the black man whisked him like a child
into the saddle, gave the horse a lash,
and away he galloped, with Tom on his
back, in the midst of the thunder-storm.
The clerks stuck their pens behind their
ears, and stared after him from the windows.
Away went Tom Walker, dashing
down the streets, his white cap bobbing
up and down, his morning-gown fluttering
in the wind, and his steed striking
fire out of the pavement at every bound.
When the clerks turned to look for the
black man, he had disappeared.

Tom Walker never returned to foreclose
the mortgage. A countryman, who
lived on the border of the swamp, reported,
that in the height of the thundergust
he had heard a great clattering of
hoofs, and a howling along the road, and
that when he ran to the window, he just
caught sight of a figure such as I have
described, on a horse that galloped like
mad across the fields, over the hills, and
down into the black hemlock swamp,
towards the old Indian fort; and that
shortly after, a thunderbolt fell in that
direction, which seemed to set the whole
forest in a blaze.

The good people of Boston shook their
heads and shrugged their shoulders; but
had been so much accustomed to witches
and goblins, and tricks of the devil in all
kinds of shapes from the first settlement
of the colony, that they were not so much
horror struck as might have been expected.
Trustees were appointed to take
charge of Tom's effects. There was
nothing, however, to administer upon.
On searching his coffers, all his bonds
and mortgages were found reduced to
cinders. In place of gold and silver, his
iron chest was filled with chips and
shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable
instead of his half-starved horses; and
the very next day his great house took
fire, and was burnt to the ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and
his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping
money-brokers lay this story to heart.
The truth of it is not to be doubted. The
very hole under the oak-trees, from
whence he dug Kidd's money, is to be
seen to this day; and the neighbouring
swamp and old Indian fort are often
haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
horseback, in morning-gown and white
cap, which is, doubtless, the troubled
spirit of the usurer. In fact the story
had resolved itself into a proverb, and is
the origin of that popular saying, so
prevalent throughout New England, of
"The Devil and Tom Walker."

Such, as nearly as I can recollect,
was the purport of the tale told by the
Cape Cod whaler. There were divers
trivial particulars which I have omitted,
and which whiled away the morning
very pleasantly, until, the time of tide
favourable to fishing being passed, it was
proposed that we should go to land and
refresh ourselves under the trees, till the
noontide heat should have abated.

We accordingly landed on a delectable
part of the Island of Manhattan, in that
shady and embowered tract formerly
under the dominion of the ancient family
of the Hardenbrooks. It was a spot
well known to me in the course of the
aquatic expeditions of my boyhood. Not
far from where we landed there was an
old Dutch family vault, constructed on
the side of a bank, which had been an
object of great awe and fable among my
schoolboy associates. We had peeped
into it during one of our coasting voyages,
and had been startled by the sight of
mouldering coffins, and musty bones
within; but what had given it the most
fearful interest in our eyes, was its being
in some way connected with the pirate
wreck which lay rotting among the
rocks of Hell-gate. There were stories,
also, of smuggling connected with it;
particularly relating to a time when this
retired spot was owned by a noted
burgher, called Ready-money Provost, a
man of whom it was whispered, that he
had many and mysterious dealings with
parts beyond seas. All these things,
however, had been jumbled together in
our minds, in that vague way in which
such themes are mingled up in the tales
of boyhood.

While I was pondering upon these

matters, my companions had spread a
repast from the contents of our well-stored
pannier, under a broad chestnut
on the green-sward, which swept down
to the water's edge. Here we solaced
ourselves on the cool grassy carpet
during the warm sunny hours of midday.
While lolling on the grass, indulging
in that kind of musing revery of
which I am fond, I summoned up the
dusky recollections of my boyhood respecting
this place, and repeated them,
like the imperfectly-remembered traces
of a dream, for the amusement of my
companions. When I had finished, a
worthy old burgher, John Josse Vandermoere,
the same who once related to
me adventures of Dolph Heyliger, broke
silence, and observed, that he recollected
a story of money-digging, which
occurred in this very neighbourhood,
and might account for some of the traditions
which I had heard in my boyhood.
As we knew him to be one of the most
authentic narrators in the province, we
begged him to let us have the particulars,
and accordingly, while we solaced
ourselves with a clean long pipe of Blase
Moore's best tobacco, the authentic John
Josse Vandermoere related the following
tale.

WOLFERT WEBBER;
OR,
GOLDEN DREAMS.

In the year of grace, one thousand
seven hundred and—blank—for I do not
remember the precise date; however, it
was somewhere in the early part of the
last century, there lived in the ancient
city of the Manhattoes a worthy burgher,
Wolfert Webber by name. He was descended
from old Cobus Webber of the
Brille in Holland, one of the original settlers,
famous for introducing the cultivation
of cabbages, and who came over to
the province during the protectorship of
Oloffe Van Kortlandt, otherwise called
the Dreamer.

The field in which Cobus Webber first
planted himself and his cabbages had remained
ever since in the family, who
continued in the same line of husbandry,
with that praiseworthy perseverance for
which our Dutch burghers are noted.
The whole family genius, during several
generations, was devoted to the study
and development of this once noble
vegetable, and to this concentration of
intellect may, doubtless, be ascribed the
prodigious size and renown to which the
Webber cabbages attained.

The Webber dynasty continued in
uninterrupted succession; and never did
a line give more unquestionable proofs
of legitimacy. The eldest son succeeded
to the looks as well as the territory of
his sire; and had the portraits of this
line of tranquil potentates been taken,
they would have presented a row of
heads marvellously resembling, in shape
and magnitude, the vegetables over which
they reigned.

The seat of government continued unchanged
in the family mansion, a Dutchbuilt
house, with a front, or rather gableend,
of yellow brick, tapering to a point,
with the customary iron weathercock at
the top. Every thing about the building
bore the air of long-settled ease and
security. Flights of martins peopled the
little coops nailed against its walls, and
swallows built their nests under the
eaves: and every one knows that these
house-loving birds bring good luck to the
dwelling where they take up their abode.
In a bright sunny morning, in early
summer, it was delectable to hear their
cheerful notes as they sported about in
the pure sweet air, chirping forth, as it
were, the greatness and prosperity of the
Webbers.

Thus quietly and comfortably did this
excellent family vegetate under the shade
of a mighty buttonwood tree, which, by
little and little, grew so great, as entirely
to overshadow their palace. The city
gradually spread its suburbs round their
domain. Houses sprang up to interrupt
their prospects; the rural lanes in the
vicinity began to grow into the bustle
and populousness of streets; in short,
with all the habits of rustic life, they
began to find themselves the inhabitants
of a city. Still, however, they maintained
their hereditary character and
hereditary possessions, with all the tenacity
of petty German princes in the midst

of the empire. Wolfert was the last of
the line, and succeeded to the patriarchal
bench at the door, under the family-tree,
and swayed the sceptre of his fathers, a
kind of rural potentate in the midst of a
metropolis.

To share the cares and sweets of sovereignity,
he had taken unto himself a
helpmate, one of that excellent kind
called stirring women; that is to say,
she was one of those notable little housewives
who are always busy when there
is nothing to do. Her activity, however,
took one particular direction; her whole
life scemed devoted to intense knitting:
whether at home or abroad, walking or
sitting, her needles were continually in
motion; and it is even affirmed that, by
her unwearied industry, she very nearly
supplied her household with stockings
throughout the year. This worthy couple
were blessed with one daughter, who
was brought up with great tenderness
and care; uncommon pains had been
taken with her education, so that she
could stitch in every variety of way,
make all kinds of pickles and preserves,
and mark her own name on a sampler.
The influence of her taste was seen, also,
in the family-garden, where the ornamental
began to mingle with the useful;
whole rows of fiery marigolds and splendid
hollyhocks bordered the cabbage-beds,
and gigantic sunflowers lolled
their broad jolly faces over the fences,
seeming to ogle most affectionately the
passers-by.

Thus reigned and vegetated Wolfert
Webber over his paternal acres, peaceful
and contentedly. Not but that, like
all other sovereigns, he had his occasional
cares and vexations. The growth
of his native city sometimes caused him
annoyance. His little territory gradually
became hemmed in by streets and houses,
which intercepted air and sunshine. He
was now and then subjected to the irruptions
of the border population that infest
the skirts of a metropolis; who would
sometimes make midnight forays into his
dominions, and carry off captive whole
platoons of his noblest subjects. Vagrant
swine would make a descent, too, now
and then, when the gate was left open,
and lay all waste before them; and mischievous
urchins would often decapitate
the illustrious sunflowers, the glory of
the garden, as they lolled their heads so
fondly over the walls. Still all these
were petty grievances, which might now
and then ruffle the surface of his mind,
as a summer breeze will ruffle the surface
of a millpond, but they could not
disturb the deep-seated quiet of his soul.
He would but seize a trusty staff that
stood behind the door, issue suddenly
out, and anoint the back of the aggressor,
whether pig or urchin, and then return
within doors, marvellously refreshed and
tranquillized.

The chief cause of anxiety to honest
Wolfert, however, was the growing prosperity
of the city. The expenses of
living doubled and trebled; but he could
not double and treble the magnitude of
his cabbages; and the number of competitors
prevented the increase of price.
Thus, therefore, while every one around
him grew richer, Wolfert grew poorer;
and he could not, for the life of him, perceive
how the evil was to be remedied.

This growing care, which increased
from day to day, had its gradual effect
upon our worthy burgher; insomuch,
that it at length implanted two or three
wrinkles in his brow, things unknown
before in the family of the Webbers;
and it seemed to pinch up the corners
of his cocked hat into an expression of
anxiety totally opposite to the tranquil,
broad-brimmed, low-crowned beavers of
his illustrious progenitors.

Perhaps even this would not have
materially disturbed the serenity of his
mind, had he had only himself and his
wife to care for; but there was his daughter
gradually growing to maturity; and
all the world knows that when daughters
begin to ripen, no fruit nor flower requires
so much looking after. I have
no talent at describing female charms,
else fain would I depict the progress of
this little Dutch beauty. How her blue
eyes grew deeper and deeper, and her
cherry lips redder and redder; and how
she ripened and ripened, and rounded
and rounded, in the opening breath of
sixteen summers; until in her seventeenth
spring she seemed ready to burst
out of her bodice like a half-blown rosebud.

Ah, well-a-day! could I but show her

as she was then tricked out on a Sunday
morning in the hereditary finery of
the old Dutch clothes-press, of which her
mother had confided to her the key. The
wedding-dress of her grandmother modernised
for use, with sundry ornaments,
handed down as heir-looms in the family;
her pale-brown hair, smoothed with buttermilk
in flat waving lines, on each side
of her fair forehead; the chain of yellow
virgin gold that encircled her neck; the
little cross that just rested at the entrance
of a soft valley of happiness, as if it
would sanctify the place; the—but, pooh
—it is not for an old man like me to be
prosing about female beauty. Suffice it
to say, Amy had attained her seventeenth
year. Long since had her sampler
exhibited hearts in couples, desperately
transfixed with arrows, and true-lover'sknots,
worked in deep blue silk; and it
was evident she began to languish for
some more interesting occupation than
the rearing of sunflowers, or pickling of
cucumbers.

At this critical period of female existence,
when the heart within a damsel's
bosom, like its emblem, the miniature
which hangs without, is apt to be engrossed
by a single image, a new visiter
began to make his appearance under the
roof of Wolfert Webber. This was Dirk
Waldron, the only son of a poor widow;
but who could boast of more fathers than
any lad in the province; for his mother
had had four husbands, and this only
child; so that, though born in her last
wedlock, he might fairly claim to be the
tardy fruit of a long course of cultivation.
This son of four fathers united the
merits and the vigour of all his sires.
If he had not had a great family before
him, he seemed likely to have a great
one after him; for you had only to look
at the fresh bucksome youth, to see that
he was formed to be the founder of a
mighty race.

This youngster gradually became an
intimate visiter of the family. He talked
little, but he sat long. He filled the
father's pipe when it was empty; gathered
up the mother's knitting-needle
or ball of worsted, when it fell to the
ground; stroked the sleek coat of the
tortoise-shell cat; and replenished the
teapot for the daughter, from the bright
copper kettle that sang before the fire.
All these quiet little offices may seem of
trifting import; but when true love is
translated into Low Dutch, it is in this
way that it eloquently expresses itself.
They were not lost upon the Webber
family. The winning youngster found
marvellous favour in the eyes of the
mother; the tortoise-shell cat, albeit the
most staid and demure of her kind, gave
indubitable signs of approbation of his
visits; the tea-kettle seemed to sing out
a cheery note of welcome at his approach;
and if the shy glances of the daughter
might be rightly read, as she sat bridling,
and dimpling, and sewing by her mother's
side, she was not a whit behind Dame
Webber, or grimalkin, or the tea-kettle
in good-will.

Wolfert alone saw nothing of what
was going on; profoundly wrapped up
in meditation on the growth of the city,
and his cabbages, he sat looking in the
fire and puffing his pipe in silence. One
night, however, as the gentle Amy, according
to custom, lighted her lover to
the outer door, and he, according to custom,
took his parting salute, the smack
resounded so vigorously through the long,
silent entry, as to startle even the dull
ear of Wolfert. He was slowly roused
to a new source of anxiety. It had
never entered into his head, that this
mere child, who, as it seemed, but the
other day, had been climbing about his
knees, and playing with dolls and baby-houses,
could, all at once, be thinking of
lovers and matrimony. He rubbed his
eyes; examined into the fact; and really
found, that while he had been dreaming
of other matters, she had actually grown
to be a woman, and what was worse, had
fallen in love. Here arose new cares for
poor Wolfert. He was a kind father;
but he was a prudent man. The young
man was a lively, stirring lad; but then
he had neither money nor land. Wolfert's
ideas all ran in one channel; and
he saw no alternative, in case of a marriage,
but to portion off the young couple
with a corner of his cabbage-garden, the
whole of which was barely sufficient for
the support of his family.

Like a prudent father, therefore, he
determined to nip this passion in the bud,
and forbade the youngster the house;

though sorely did it go against his fatherly
heart, and many a silent tear did
it cause in the bright eye of his daughter.
She showed herself, however, a
pattern of filial piety and obedience. She
never pouted and sulked; she never flew
in the face of parental authority; she
never fell into a passion, or fell into
hysterics, as many romantic, novel-read
young ladies would do. Not she, indeed!
She was none such heroical rebellious
trumpery, I'll warrant you. On
the contrary, she acquieseed like an obedient
daughter; shut the street door in
her lover's face; and if ever she did
grant him an interview, it was either out
of the kitchen window, or over the garden
fence.

Wolfert was deeply cogitating these
matters in his mind, and his brow wrinkled
with unusual care, as he wended his
way on Saturday afternoon to a rural
inn, about two miles from the city. It
was a favourite resort of the Dutch part
of the community, from being always
held by a Dutch line of landlords, and
retaining an air and relish of the good
old times. It was a Dutch-built house,
that had probably been a country-seat of
some opulent burgher in the early time
of the settlement. It stood near a point
of land called Corlear's Hook, which
stretches out into the Sound, and against
which the tide, at its flux and reflux, sets
with extraordinary rapidity. The venerable
and somewhat crazy mansion was
distinguished from afar by a grove of
elms and sycamores, that seemed to wave
a hospitable invitation, while a few weeping
willows, with their dank, drooping
foliage, resembling falling waters, gave
an idea of coolness that rendered it an
attractive spot during the heats of summer.
Here therefore, as I said, resorted
many of the inhabitants of the Manhattoes,
where, while some played at shuffleboard,
and quoits, and ninepins, others
smoked a deliberate pipe, and talked over
public affairs.

It was on a blustering autumnal afternoon
that Wolfert made his visit to the
inn. The grove of elms and willows
was stripped of its leaves, which whirled
in rustling eddies about the fields. The
ninepin alley was deserted, for the premature
chillness of the day had driven
the company within doors. As it was
Saturday afternoon, the habitual club
was in session, composed, principally, of
regular Dutch burghers, though mingled
occasionally with persons of various character
and country, as is natural in a
place of such motley population.

Beside the fireplace, in a huge leather-bottomed
armchair, sat the dictator of this
little world, the venerable Remm, or, as
it was pronounced, Ramm Rapelye. He
was a man of Walloon race, and illustrious
for the antiquity of his line, his great
grandmother having been the first white
child born in the province. But he was
still more illustrious for his wealth and
dignity: he had long filled the noble
office of alderman, and was a man to
whom the governor himself took off his
hat. He had maintained possession of
the leather-bottomed chair from time immemorial;
and had gradually waxed in
bulk as he sat in this seat of government;
until, in the course of years, he filled its
whole magnitude. His word was decisive
with his subjects; for he was so
rich a man that he was never expected
to support any opinion by argument.
The landlord waited on him with peculiar
officiousness; not that he paid better than
his neighbours, but then the coin of a
rich man seems always to be so much
more acceptable. The landlord had ever
a pleasant word and a joke to insinuate
in the ear of the august Ramm. It is
true, Ramm never laughed; and, indeed,
ever maintained a mastiff-like gravity,
and even surliness of aspect; yet he now
and then rewarded mine host with a
token of approbation; which, though
nothing more nor less than a kind of
grunt, still delighted the landlord more
than a broad laugh from a poorer man.

"This will be a rough night for the
money-diggers," said mine host, as a
gust of wind howled round the house
and rattled at the windows.

"What! are they at their work again?"
said an English half-pay captain with one
eye, who was a very frequent attendant
at the inn.

"Ay, are they," said the landlord,
"and well may they be. They've had
luck of late. They say a great pot of
money has been dug up in the field
just behind Stuyvesant's orchard. Folks

think it must have been buried there in
old times, by Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch
governor."

"Fudge!" said the one-eyed man of
war, as he added a small portion of water
to a bottom of brandy.

"Well, you may believe or not, as
you please," said mine host, somewhat
nettled; "but every body knows that
the old governor buried a great deal of
his money at the time of the Dutch troubles,
when the English red-coats seized
on the province. They say too, the old
gentleman walks; ay, and in the very
same dress that he wears in the picture
that hangs up in the family-house."

"Fudge!" said the half-pay officer.

"Fudge, if you please! But didn't
Corny Van Zandt see him at midnight,
stalking about in the meadow with his
wooden leg, and a drawn sword in his
hand, that flashed like fire? And what
can he be walking for, but because people
have been troubling the place where
he buried his money in old times?"

Here the landlord was interrupted by
several guttural sounds from Ramm
Rapelye, betokening that he was labouring
with the unusual production of an
idea. As he was too great a man to be
slighted by a prudent publican, mine host
respectfully paused until he should deliver
himself. The corpulent frame of
this mighty burgher now gave all the
symptoms of a volcanic mountain on the
point of an cruption. First there was a
certain heaving of the abdomen, not unlike
an earthquake; then was emitted a
cloud of tobacco-smoke from that crater,
his mouth; then there was a kind of
rattle in the throat, as if the idea were
working its way up through a region of
phlegm; then there were several disjointed
members of a sentence thrown
out, ending in a cough: at length his
voice forced its way in the slow but
absolute tone of a man who feels the
weight of his purse, if not of his ideas;
every portion of his speech being marked
by a testy puff of tobacco-smoke.

"Who talks of old Peter Stuyvesant's
walking?"—Puff—"Have people no respect
for persons?"—Puff—puff—"Peter
Stuyvesant knew better what to do with
his money than to bury it"—Puff—"I
know the Stuyvesant family"—Puff—
"Every one of them"—Puff—"Not a
more respectable family in the province"
—Puff—"Old standers"—Puff—"Warm
householders"—Puff—"None of your
upstarts"—Puff—puff—puff—"Don't
talk to me of Peter Stuyvesant walking."
—Puff—puff—puff—puff.

Here the redoubtable Ramm contracted
his brow, clasped up his mouth till it
wrinkled at each corner, and redoubled
his smoking with such vehemence, that
the cloudy volumes soon wreathed round
his head as the smoke envelopes the awful
summit of Mount Etna.

A general silence followed the sudden
rebuke of this very rich man. The subject,
however, was too interesting to be
readily abandoned. The conversation
soon broke forth again from the lips of
Peechy Prauw Van Hook, the chronicler
of the club, one of those prosy, narrative
old men who seem to be troubled with an
incontinence of words as they grow old.

Peechy could at any time tell as many
stories in an evening as his hearers could
digest in a month. He now resumed the
conversation by affirming, that to his
knowledge money had at different times
been dug up in various parts of the
island. The lucky persons who had discovered
them had always dreamt of them
three times beforehand; and, what was
worthy of remark, those treasures had
never been found but by some descendant
of the good old Dutch families, which
clearly proved that they had been buried
by Dutchmen in the olden time.

"Fiddlestick with your Dutchmen!"
cried the half-pay officer. "The Dutch
had nothing to do with them. They were
all buried by Kidd the pirate, and his
crew."

Here a key-note was touched which
roused the whole company. The name
of Captain Kidd was like a talisman in
those times, and was associated with a
thousand marvellous stories. The half-pay
officer took the lead, and in his
narrations fathered upon Kidd all the
plunderings and exploits of Morgan,
Blackbeard, and the whole list of bloody
bucaniers.

The officer was a man of great weight
among the peaceable members of the
club, by reason of his warlike character
and gunpowder tales. All his golden

stories of Kidd, however, and of the
booty he had buried, were obstinately
rivalled by the tales of Peechy Prauw;
who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors
to be eclipsed by a foreign freebooter,
enriched every field and shore in
the neighbourhood with the hidden wealth
of Peter Stuyvesant and his contemporaries.

Not a word of this conversation was
lost upon Wolfert Webber. He returned
pensively home, full of magnificent ideas.
The soil of his native island seemed to
be turned into gold-dust, and every field
to teem with treasure. His head almost
reeled at the thought, how often he must
have heedlessly rambled over places
where countless sums lay scarcely covered
by the turf beneath his feet. His
mind was in an uproar with this whirl of
new ideas. As he came in sight of the
venerable mansion of his forefathers, and
the little realm where the Webbers had
so long and so contentedly flourished,
his gorge rose at the narrowness of his
destiny.

"Unlucky Wolfert!" exclaimed he"Others
can go to bed and dream themselves
into whole mines of wealth; they
have but to seize a spade in the morning,
and turn up doubloons like potatoes; but
thou must dream of hardship and rise to
poverty—must dig thy fields from year's
end to year's end, and yet raise nothing
but cabbages!"

Wolfert Webber went to bed with a
heavy heart, and it was long before the
golden visions that disturbed his brain
permitted him to sink into repose. The
same visions, however, extended into his
sleeping thoughts, and assumed a more
definite form. He dreamt that he had
discovered an immense treasure in the
centre of his garden. At every stroke
of the spade he laid bare a golden ingot;
diamond crosses sparkled out of the dust;
bags of money turned up their bellies,
corpulent with pieces-of-eight, or venerable
doubloons; and chests, wedged close
with moidores, ducats, and pistareens,
yawned before his ravished eyes, and
vomited forth their glittering contents.

Wolfert awoke a poorer man than ever.
He had no heart to go about his daily
concerns, which appeared so paltry and
profitless, but sat all day long in the
chimney-corner, picturing to himself
ingots and heaps of gold in the fire.

The next night his dream was repeated.
He was again in his garden, digging,
and laying open stores of hidden
wealth. There was something very
singular in this repetition. He passed
another day of revery; and though it
was cleaning-day, and the house, as
usual in Dutch households, completely
topsy-turvy, yet he sat unmoved amidst
the general uproar.

The third night he went to bed with a
palpitating heart. He put on his red
nightcap wrong side outwards, for good
luck. It was deep midnight before his
anxious mind could settle into sleep.
Again the golden dream was repeated,
and again he saw his garden teeming
with ingots and money-bags.

Wolfert rose the next morning in complete
bewilderment. A dream, three
times repeated, was never known to lie,
and if so, his fortune was made. In his
agitation, he put on his waistcoat with
the hind part before, and this was a corroboration
of good luck. He no longer
doubted that a huge store of money lay
buried somewhere in his cabbage-field,
coyly waiting to be sought for; and he
repined at having so long been scratching
about the surface of the soil instead of
digging to the centre. He took his seat
at the breakfast-table, full of these speculations;
asked his daughter to put a lump
of gold into his tea; and on handing his
wife a plate of slapjacks, begged her to
help herself to a doubloon.

His grand care now was, how to secure
this immense treasure without its being
known. Instead of working regularly
in his grounds in the daytime, he now
stole from his bed at night, and with
spade and pickaxe, went to work to rip
up and dig about his paternal acres from
one end to the other. In a little time,
the whole garden, which had presented
such a goodly and regular appearance,
with its phalanx of cabbagez, like a
vegetable army in battle array, was
reduced to a scene of devastation;
while the relentless Wolfert, with nightcap
on head, and lantern and spade in
hand, stalked through the slaughtered
ranks, the destroying angel of his own
vegetable world.

Every morning bore testimony to the
ravages of the preceding night, in cabbages
of all ages and conditions, from
the tender sprout to the full-grown head,
piteously rooted from their quiet beds,
like worthless weeds, and left to wither
in the sunshine. It was in vain Wolfert's
wife remonstrated; it was in vain his
darling daughter wept over the destruction
of some favourite marigold. "Thou
shalt have gold of another guess sort,"
he would cry, chucking her under the
chin. "Thou shalt have a string of
crooked ducats for thy wedding necklace,
my child!"

His family began really to fear that
the poor man's wits were diseased. He
muttered in his sleep at night about mines
of wealth; about pearls, and diamonds,
and bars of gold. In the daytime he
was moody and abstracted, and walked
about as if in a trance. Dame Webber
held frequent councils with all the old
women of the neighbourhood. Scarce
an hour in the day but a knot of them
might be seen, wagging their white caps
together round her door, while the poor
woman made some piteous recital. The
daughter, too, was fain to seek for more
frequent consolation from the stolen
interviews of her favoured swain, Dirk
Waldron. The delectable little Dutch
songs with which she used to dulcify the
house grew less and less frequent; and
she would forget her sewing, and look
wistfully in her father's face, as he sat
pondering by the fireside. Wolfert
caught her eye one day fixed on him
thus anxiously, and for a moment was
roused from his golden reveries. "Cheer
up, my girl," said he, exultingly; "why
dost thou droop? Thou shalt hold up
thy head one day with the Brinckerhoffs
and the Schermerhorns, the Van Hornes,
and the Van Dams—by St. Nicholas, but
the patroon himself shall be glad to get
thee for his son!"

Amy shook her head at this vainglorious
boast, and was more than ever
in doubt of the soundness of the good
man's intellect.

In the mean time, Wolfert went on
digging and digging; but the field was
extensive, and as his dream had indicated
no precise spot, he had to dig at
random. The winter set in before one-tenth
of the scene of promise had been
explored. The ground became frozen
hard, and the nights too cold for the
labours of the spade. No sooner, however,
did the returning warmth of spring
loosen the soil, and the small frogs begin
to pipe in the meadows, but Wolfert resumed
his labours with renovated zeal.
Still, however, the hours of industry
were reversed. Instead of working
cheerily all day, planting and setting
out his vegetables, he remained thoughtfully
idle, until the shades of night summoned
him to his secret labours. In
this way he continued to dig, from night
to night, and week to week, and month
to month, but not a stiver did he find.
On the contrary, the more he digged,
the poorer he grew. The rich soil of
his garden was digged away, and the
sand and gravel from beneath were
thrown to the surface, until the whole
field presented an aspect of sandy barrenness.

In the mean time the seasons gradually
rolled on. The little frogs which had
piped in the meadows in early spring,
croaked as bullfrogs during the summer
heats, and then sunk into silence. The
peach-tree budded, blossomed, and bore
its fruit. The swallows and martens
came, twittered about the roof, built
their nest, reared their young, held their
congress along the eaves, and then
winged their flight in search of another
spring. The caterpillar spun its winding-sheet,
dangled in it from the great
buttonwood tree before the house, turned
into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine
of summer, and disappeared; and,
finally, the leaves of the buttonwood tree
turned yellow, then brown, then rustled
one by one to the ground, and, whirling
about in little eddies of wind and dust,
whispered that winter was at hand.

Wolfert gradually woke from his dream
of wealth as the year declined. He had
reared no crop for the supply of his
household during the sterility of winter.
The season was long and severe, and,
for the first time, the family was really
straitened in its comforts. By degrees a
revulsion of thought took place in Wolfert's
mind, common to those whose
golden dreams have been disturbed by
pinching realities. The idea gradually

stole upon him that he should come to
want. He already considered himself
one of the most unfortunate men in the
province, having lost such an incalculable
amount of undiscovered treasure;
and now, when thousands of pounds had
eluded his search, to be perplexed for
shillings and pence was cruel in the
extreme.

Haggard care gathered about his
brow; he went about with a money-seeking
air; his eyes bent downwards
into the dust, and carrying his hands in
his pockets, as men are apt to do when
they have nothing else to put into them.
He could not even pass the city almshouse
without giving it a rueful glance,
as if destined to be his future abode.
The strangeness of his conduct and of
his looks occasioned much speculation
and remark. For a long time he was
suspected of being crazy, and then
every body pitied him; at length it
began to be suspected that he was poor,
and then every body avoided him.

The rich old burghers of his acquaintance
met him outside of the door when
he called; entertained him hospitably on
the threshold; pressed him warmly by
the hand at parting; shook their heads
as he walked away, with the kind-hearted
expression of "Poor Wolfert!"
and turned a corner nimbly, if by chance
they saw him approaching as they walked
the streets. Even the barber and
cobbler of the neighbourhood, and a tattered
tailor in an alley hard by, three of
the poorest and merriest rogues in the
world, eyed him with that abundant
sympathy which usually attends a lack
of means; and there is not a doubt but
their pockets would have been at his
command, only that they happened to
be empty.

Thus every body deserted the Webber
mansion, as if poverty were contagious,
like the plague; every body but honest
Dirk Waldron, who still kept up his
stolen visits to the daughter, and, indeed,
seemed to wax more affectionate as the
fortunes of his mistress were in the
wane.

Many months had elapsed since Wolfert
had frequented his old resort, the
rural inn. He was taking a long lonely
walk one Saturday afternoon, musing
over his wants and disappointments,
when his feet took, instinctively, their
wonted direction, and on awaking out of
a revery, he found himself before the
door of the inn. For some moments he
hesitated whether to enter, but his heart
yearned for companionship; and where
can a ruined man find better companionship
than at a tavern, where there is
neither sober example nor sober advice
to put him out of countenance?

Wolfert found several of the old frequenters
of the inn at their usual post,
and seated in their usual places; but one
was missing, the great Ramm Rapelye,
who for many years had filled the
leather-bottomed chair of state. His
place was supplied by a stranger, who
seemed, however, completely at home in
the chair and the tavern. He was rather
under size, but deep-chested, square, and
muscular. His broad shoulders, double
joints, and bow-knees, gave tokens of
prodigious strength. His face was dark
and weatherbeaten; a deep scar, as if
from the slash of a cutlass, had almost
divided his nose, and made a gash in his
upper lip, through which his teeth shone
like a bulldog's. A mop of iron-gray
hair gave a grizzly finish to his hard-favoured
visage. His dress was of an
amphibious character. He wore an old
hat edged with tarnished lace, and cocked
in martial style on one side of his head;
a rusty blue military coat with brass
buttons, and a wide pair of short petticoat
trousers, or rather breeches, for they
were gathered up at the knees. He
ordered every body about him with an
authoritative air; talked in a brattling
voice, that sounded like the crackling of
thorns under a pot; d—d the landlord
and servants with perfect impunity; and
was waited upon with greater obsequiousness
than had ever been shown to the
mighty Ramm himself.

Wolfert's curiosity was awakened to
know who and what was this stranger,
who had thus usurped absolute sway in
this ancient domain. Peechy Prauw
took him aside into a remote corner of
the hall, and there, in an under voice,
and with great caution, imparted to him
all that he knew on the subject. The
inn had been aroused, several months
before, on a dark stormy night, by

repeated long shouts, that seemed like
the howlings of a wolf. They came
from the water-side; and at length were
distinguished to be hailing the house
in the seafaring manner—House a-hoy!
The landlord turned out with his headwaiter,
tapster, ostler, and errand-boy,
that is to say, with his old negro, Cuff. On
approaching the place from whence the
voice proceeded, they found this amphibious-looking
personage at the water's
edge, quite alone, and seated on a great
oaken sea-chest. How he came there,
whether he had been set on shore from
some boat, or had
floated to land on his
chest, nobody could tell, for he did not
seem disposed to answer questions; and
there was something in his looks and
manners that put a stop to all questioning.
Suffice it to say, he took possession
of a corner room of the inn, to which
his chest was removed with great difficulty.
Here he had remained ever since,
keeping about the inn and its vicinity;
sometimes, it is true, he disappeared for
one, two, or three days at a time, going
and returning without giving any notice
or account of his movements. He
always appeared to have plenty of
money, though often of very strange,
outlandish coinage; and he regularly
paid his bill every evening before turning
in. He had fitted up his room to
his own fancy, having slung a hammock
from the ceiling instead of a bed, and
decorated the walls with rusty pistols
and cutlasses of foreign workmanship.
A great part of his time was passed in
this room, seated by the window, which
commanded a wide view of the Sound, a
short old-fashioned pipe in his mouth, a
glass of rum toddy at his elbow, and a
pocket-telescope in his hand, with which
he reconnoitered every boat that moved
upon the water. Large square-rigged
vessels seemed to excite but little attention;
but the moment he descried any
thing with a shoulder-of-mutton sail, or
that a barge, yawl, or jolly-boat hove in
sight, up went the telescope, and he
examined it with the most scrupulous
attention.

All this might have passed without
much notice, for in those times the province
was so much the resort of adventurers
of all characters and climes, that
any oddity in dress or behaviour attracted
but small attention. In a little while,
however, this strange sea-monster, thus
strangely cast upon dry land, began to
encroach upon the long-established customs
and customers of the place, and to
interfere, in a dictatorial manner, in the
affairs of the ninepin alley and the barroom,
until in the end be usurped an absolute
command over the whole inn. It was
all in vain to attempt to withstand his authority.
He was not exactly quarrelsome,
but boisterous and peremptory, like one
accustomed to tyrannise on a quarterdeck;
and there was a dare-devil air
about every thing he said and did, that
inspired a wariness in all bystanders.
Even the half-pay officer, so long the
hero of the club, was soon silenced by
him; and the quiet burghers stared with
wonder at seeing their inflammable man
of war so readily and quietly extinguished.
And then the tales that he would
tell were enough to make a peaceable
man's hair stand on end. There was
not a sea-fight, or marauding or freebooting
adventure that had happened
within the last twenty years, but he
seemed perfectly versed in it. He delighted
to talk of the exploits of the bucaniers
in the West Indies and on the
Spanish Main. How his eyes would
glisten as he described the waylaying of
treasure-ships, the desperate fights, yardarm
and yard-arm, broadside and broadside;
the boarding and capturing of huge
Spanish galleons! With what chuckling
relish would he describe the descent upon
some rich Spanish colony; the rifling of
a church; the sacking of a convent!
You would have thought you heard some
gormandizer dilating upon the roasting
of a savoury goose at Michaelmas, as he
described the roasting of some Spanish
Don to make him discover his treasure
—a detail given with a minuteness that
made every rich old burgher present turn
uncomfortably in his chair. All this
would be told with infinite glee, as if he
considered it an excellent joke; and then
he would give such a tyrannical leer in
the face of his next neighbour, that the
poor man would be fain to laugh out of
sheer faint-heartedness. If any one, however,
pretended to contradict him in any
of his stories, he was on fire in an instant.

His very cocked hat assumed a
momentary fierceness, and seemed to resent
the contradiction. "How the devil
should you know as well as I?—I tell
you it was as I say;" and he would at
the same time let slip a broadside of thundering
oaths and tremendous sea-phrases,
such as had never been heard before
within these peaceful walls.

Indeed, the worthy burghers began to
surmise that he knew more of these stories
than mere hearsay. Day after day
their conjectures concerning him grew
more and more wild and fearful. The
strangeness of his arrival, the strangeness
of his manners, the mystery that
surrounded him, all made him something
incomprehensible in their eyes. He was
a kind of monster of the deep to them—
he was a merman—he was Behemoth—
he was Leviathan—in short, they knew
not what he was.

The domineering spirit of this boisterous
sea-urchin at length grew quite
intolerable. He was no respecter of
persons; he contradicted the richest
burghers without hesitation; he took
possession of the sacred elbow-chair,
which, time out of mind, had been the
seat of sovereignty of the illustrious
Ramm Rapelye,—nay, he even went so
far, in one of his rough jocular moods, as
to slap that mighty burgher on the back,
drink his toddy, and wink in his face,—
a thing scarcely to be believed. From
this time Ramm Rapelye appeared no
more at the inn; and his example was
followed by several of the most eminent
customers, who were too rich to tolerate
being bullied out of their opinions, or
being obliged to laugh at another man's
jokes. The landlord was almost in despair;
but he knew not how to get rid of
the sea-monster and his sea-chest, who
seemed both to have grown like fixtures
or excrescences on his establishment.

Such was the account whispered cautiously
in Wolfert's ear by the narrator,
Peechy Prauw, as he held him by the
button in a corner of the hall; casting a
wary glance now and then towards the
door of the bar-room, lest he should be
overheard by the terrible hero of his tale.

Wolfert took his seat in a remote part
of the room in silence, impressed with
profound awe of this unknown, so versed
in freebooting history. It was to him a
wonderful instance of the revolutions of
mighty empires, to find the venerable
Ramm Rapelye thus ousted from the
throne, and a rugged tarpawling dictating
from his elbow-chair, hectoring the patriarchs,
and filling this tranquil little
realm with brawl and bravado.

The stranger was, on this evening, in
a more than usually communicative
mood, and was narrating a number of
astounding stories of plunderings and
burnings on the high seas. He dwelt
upon them with peculiar relish; heightening
the frightful particulars in proportion
to their effect on his peaceful
auditors. He gave a long swaggering
detail of the capture of a Spanish merchantman.
She was lying becalmed
during a long summer's day, just off from
an island which was one of the lurking-places
of the pirates. They had reconnoitred
her with their spyglasses from
the shore, and ascertained her character
and force. At night a picked crew of
daring fellows set off for her in a whaleboat.
They approached with muffled
oars, as she lay rocking idly with the
undulations of the sea, and her sails
flapping against the masts. They were
close under her stern before the guard on
deck was aware of their approach. The
alarm was given; the pirates threw hand-grenades
on deck, and sprang up the
mainchains sword in hand. The crew
flew to arms, but in great confusion;
some were shot down, others took refuge
in the tops, others were driven overboard
and drowned, while others fought hand
to hand from the maindeck to the quarterdeck,
disputing gallantly every inch of
ground. There were three Spanish gentlemen
on board with their ladies, who
made the most desperate resistance. They
defended the companionway, cut down
several of their assailants, and fought like
very devils, for they were maddened by
the shrieks of the ladies from the cabin.
One of the Dons was old, and soon despatched.
The other two kept their ground
vigorously, even though the captain of
the pirates was among the assailants.
Just then there was a shout of victory
from the maindeck—"The ship is ours!"
cried the pirates. One of the Dons immediately
dropped his sword and surrendered;

the other, who was a hot-headed
youngster, and just married, gave the
captain a slash in the face that laid all
open.

The captain just made out to articulate
the words "no quarter!"

"And what did they do with the prisoners?"
said Peechy Prauw, eagerly.

"Threw them all overboard!" was the
answer.

A dead pause followed this reply.

Peechy Prauw shrunk quietly back,
like a man who had unwarily stolen upon
the lair of a sleeping lion. The honest
burghers cast fearful glances at the deep
sear slashed across the visage of the
stranger, and moved their chairs a little
farther off. The seaman, however,
smoked on, without moving a muscle, as
though he either did not perceive, or did
not regard, the unfavourable effect he had
produced on his hearers.

The half-pay officer was the first to
break the silence, for he was continually
tempted to make ineffectual head against
this tyrant of the seas, and to regain his
lost consequence in the eyes of his ancient
companions. He now tried to match
the gunpowder tales of the stranger, by
others equally tremendous. Kidd, as
usual, was his hero, concerning whom
he seemed to have picked up many of the
floating traditions of the province. The
seaman had always evinced a settled
pique against the one-eyed warrior. On
this occasion he listened with peculiar impatience.
He sat with one arm a-kimbo,
the other elbow on a table, the hand holding
on to the small pipe he was pettishly
puffing; his legs crossed; drumming
with one foot on the ground, and casting
every now and then the side-glance of a
basilisk at the prosing captain. At length
the latter spoke of Kidd's having ascended
the Hudson with some of his crew, to
land his plunder in secrecy. "Kidd up
the Hudson!" burst forth the seaman with
a tremendous oath—"Kidd never was up
the Hudson!"

"I tell you he was," said the other.
"Ay, and they say he buried a quantity
of treasure on the little flat that runs out
into the river, called the Devil's Dans
Kammer."

"The Devil's Dans Kammer in your
teeth!" cried the seaman. "I tell you
Kidd never was up the Hudson. What a
plague do you know of Kidd and his
haunts?"

"What do I know?" echoed the half-pay
officer. "Why, I was in London at
the time of his trial; ay, and I had the
pleasure of seeing him hanged at Execution
Dock."

"Then, sir, let me tell you that you saw
as pretty a fellow hanged as ever trod
shoe-leather. Ay," putting his face
nearer to that of the officer, "and there
was many a landlubber looked on that
might much better have swung in his
stead."

The half-pay officer was silenced: but
the indignation thus pent up in his bosom
glowed with intense vehemence in his
single eye, which kindled like a coal.

Peechy Prauw, who never could remain
silent, observed that the gentleman certainly
was in the right. Kidd never did
bury money up the Hudson, nor indeed
in any of those parts, though many affirmed
such to be the fact. It was Bradish
and others of the bucaniers who
had buried money; some said in Turtle
Bay; others on Long Island; others in
the neighbourhood of Hell-gate. Indeed,
added he, I recollect an adventure of Sam,
the negro fisherman, many years ago,
which some think had something to do
with the bucaniers. As we are all
friends here, and as it will go no farther,
I'll tell it to you. "Upon a dark night,
many years ago, as Black Sam was returning
from fishing in Hell-gate—"

Here the story was nipped in the bud
by a sudden movement from the unknown,
who, laying his iron fist on the table,
knuckles downward, with a quiet force
that indented the very boards, and looking
grimly over his shoulder, with the
grin of an angry bear—

"Hark'ee, neighbour!" said he, with a
significant nodding of the head, "you'd
better let the bucaniers and their money
alone—they're not for old men and old
women to meddle with. They fought
hard for their money; they gave body
and soul for it; and wherever it lies
buried, depend upon it he must have a
tug with the devil who gets it!"

This sudden explosion was succeeded
by a blank silence throughout the room;
Peechy Prauw shrunk within himself,

and even the one-eyed officer turned pale.
Wolfert, who from a dark corner in the
room had listened with intense eagerness
to all his talk about buried treasure,
looked with mingled awe and reverence
at this bold bucanier, for such he really
suspected him to be. There was a
chinking of gold and a sparkling of
jewels in all his stories about the Spanish
Main that gave a value to every period;
and Wolfert would have given any thing
for the rummaging of the ponderous sea-chest,
which his imagination crammed
full of golden chalices, crucifixes, and
jolly round bags of doubloons.

The dead stillness that had fallen upon
the company was at length interrupted
by the stranger, who pulled out a prodigious
watch, of curious and ancient
workmanship, and which in Wolfert's
eyes, had a decidedly Spanish look.
On touching a spring, it struck ten
o'clock; upon which the sailor called for
his reckoning, and having paid it out of
a handful of outlandish coin, he drank off
the remainder of his beverage, and, without
taking leave of any one, rolled out of
the room, muttering to himself, as he
stumped up stairs to his chamber.

It was some time before the company
could recover from the silence into which
they had been thrown. The very footsteps
of the stranger, which were heard
now and then as he traversed his chamber,
inspired awe. Still the conversation
in which they had been engaged was too
interesting not to be resumed. A heavy
thundergust had gathered up unnoticed
while they were lost in talk, and the
torrents of rain that fell forbade all
thoughts of setting off for home until the
storm should subside. They drew nearer
together, therefore, and entreated the
worthy Peechy Prauw to continue the
tale which had been so discourteously
interrupted. He readily complied, whispering,
however, in a tone scarcely
above his breath, and drowned occasionally
by the rolling of the thunder; and
he would pause every now and then, and
listen with evident awe, as he heard the
heavy footsteps of the stranger pacing
overhead. The following is the purport
of his story.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK FISHERMAN.

Every body knows Black Sam, the
old negro fisherman, or, as he is commonly
called, Mud Sam, who has fished
about the Sound for the last half century.
It is now many years since Sam, who
was then as active a young negro as any
in the province, and worked on the farm
of Killian Suydam, on Long Island,
having finished his day's work at an
early hour, was fishing, one still summer
evening, just about the neighbourhood of
Hell-gate.

He was in a light skiff, and being well
acquainted with the currents and eddies,
he had shifted his station according to the
shifting of the tide, from the Hen and
Chickens to the Hog's Back, from the
Hog's Back to the Pot, and from the Pot
to the Frying-pan; but in the eagerness
of his sport he did not see that the tide
was rapidly ebbing, until the roaring of
the whirlpools and eddies warned him of
his danger; and he had some difficulty in
shooting his skiff from among the rocks
and breakers, and getting to the point of
Blackwell's Island. Here he cast anchor
for some time, waiting the turn of the
tide to enable him to return homewards.
As the night set in, it grew blustering
and gusty. Dark clouds came bundling
up in the west, and now and then a
growl of thunder, or a flash of lightning,
told that a summer storm was at
hand. Sam pulled over, therefore, under
the lee of Manhattan Island, and coasting
along, came to a snug nook, just under a
steep beetling rock, where he fastened
his skiff to the root of a tree that shot out
from a cleft in the rock, and spread its
broad branches, like a canopy, over the
water. The gust came scouring along;
the wind threw up the river in white
surges; the rain rattled among the leaves;
the thunder bellowed worse than that
which is now bellowing; the lightning
seemed to lick up the surges of the
stream; but Sam, snugly sheltered under
rock and tree, lay crouched in his skiff,
rocking upon the billows until he fell
asleep.

When he awoke, all was quiet. The
gust had passed away, and only now and
then a faint gleam of lightning in the
cast showed which way it had gone.
The night was dark and moonless; and
from the state of the tide Sam concluded
it was near midnight. He was on the
point of making loose his skiff to return
homewards, when he saw a light gleaming
along the water from a distance,
which seemed rapidly approaching. As
it drew near, he perceived it came from
a lantern in the bow of a boat, which
was gliding along under shadow of the
land. It pulled up in a small cove, close
to where he was. A man jumped on
shore, and searching about with the lantern,
exclaimed, "This is the place—
here's the iron ring." The boat was
then made fast, and the man returning on
board, assisted his comrades in conveying
something heavy on shore. As the
light gleamed among them, Sam saw that
they were five desperate-looking fellows,
in red woollen caps, with a leader in a
three-cornered hat, and that some of them
were armed with dirks, or long knives,
and pistols. They talked low to one
another, and occasionally in some outlandish
tongue which he could not understand.

On landing they made their way among
the bushes, taking turns to relieve each
other in lugging their burthen up the
rocky bank. Sam's curiosity was now
fully aroused; so, leaving his skiff, he
clambered silently up a ridge that overlooked
their path. They had stopped to
rest for a moment; and the leader was
looking about among the bushes with
his lantern. "Have you brought the
spades?" said one. "They are here,"
replied another, who had them on his
shoulder.

"We must dig deep, where there will
be no risk of discovery," said a third.

A cold chill ran through Sam's veins.
He fancied he saw before him a gang of
murderers about to bury their victim.
His knees smote together. In his agitation
he shook the branch of a tree with
which he was supporting himself, as he
looked over the edge of the cliff.

"What's that?" cried one of the
gang. "Some one stirs among the
bushes!"

The lantern was held up in the direction
of the noise. One of the red-caps
cocked a pistol and pointed it towards the
very place where Sam was standing.
He stood motionless—breathless—expecting
the next moment to be his last.
Fortunately, his dingy complexion was
in his favour, and made no glare among
the leaves.

"'Tis no one," said the man with the
lantern. "What a plague! you would
not fire off your pistol and alarm the
country?"

The pistol was uncocked, the burthen
was resumed, and the party slowly toiled
along the bank. Sam watched them as
they went, the light sending back fitful
gleams through the dripping bushes; and
it was not till they were fairly out of
sight that he ventured to draw breath
freely. He now thought of getting back
to his boat, and making his escape out of
the reach of such dangerous neighbours;
but curiosity was all powerful. He hesitated,
and lingered and listened. By
and by he heard the strokes of spades.
"They are digging the grave!" said he
to himself, and the cold sweat started
upon his forehead. Every stroke of a
spade, as it sounded through the silent
groves, went to his heart. It was evident
there was as little noise made as possible;
every thing had an air of terrible mystery
and secrecy. Sam had a great relish
for the horrible—a tale of murder was a
treat for him, and he was a constant
attendant at executions. He could not resist
an impulse, in spite of every danger,
to steal nearer to the scene of mystery,
and overlook the midnight fellows at
their work. He crawled along cautiously,
therefore, inch by inch, stepping with the
utmost care among the dry leaves lest
their rustling should betray him. He
came at length to where a steep rock intervened
between him and the gang; for
he saw the light of the lantern shining up
against the branches of the trees on the
other side. Sam slowly and silently
clambered up the surface of the rock, and
raising his head above its naked edge,
beheld the villains immediately below him,
and so near that though he dreaded discovery
he dared not withdraw, lest the
least movement should be heard. In this
way he remained, with his round black

face peering above the edge of the rock,
like the sun just emerging above the edge
of the horizon, or the round-cheeked
moon on the dial of a clock.

The red-caps had nearly finished their
work; the grave was filled up and they
were carefully replacing the turf. This
done, they scattered dry leaves over the
place; "And now," said the leader, "I
defy the devil himself to find it out!"

"The murderers!" exclaimed Sam,
involuntarily. The whole gang started,
and looking up, beheld the round black
head of Sam just above them; his white
eyes strained half out of their orbits, his
white teeth chattering, and his whole
visage shining with cold perspiration.

"We're discovered!" cried one.

"Down with him," cried another.

Sam heard the cocking of a pistol, but
did not pause for the report. He scrambled
over rock and stone, through bush
and briar; rolled down banks like a
hedgehog; scrambled up others like a
catamount. In every direction he heard
some one or other of the gang hemming
him in. At length he reached the rocky
ridge along the river: one of the red-caps
was hard behind him. A steep rock like
a wall rose directly in his way; it seemed
to cut off all retreat, when, fortunately,
he espied the strong cord-like branch of
a grape-vine reaching half way down it.
He sprang at it with the force of a desperate
man; seized it with both hands;
and, being young and agile, succeeded in
swinging himself to the summit of the
cliff. Here he stood in full relief against
the sky, when the red-cap cocked his
pistol and fired. The ball whistled by
Sam's head. With the lucky thought of
a man in emergency, he uttered a yell,
fell to the ground, and detached at the
same time a fragment of the rock, which
tumbled with a loud splash into the river.

"I've done his business," said the redcap
to one or two of his comrades, as
they arrived panting: "he'll tell no tales,
except to the fishes in the river."

His pursuers now turned off to meet
their companions. Sam, sliding silently
down the surface of the rock, let himself
quietly into his skiff; cast loose the fastening,
and abandoned himself to the
rapid current, which in that place runs
like a mill-stream, and soon swept him
off from the neighbourhood. It was not,
however, until he had drifted a great distance
that he ventured to ply his oars;
when he made his skiff dart like an
arrow through the strait of Hell-gate,
never heeding the danger of Pot, Frying-pan,
or Hog's Back itself; nor did he feel
himself thoroughly secure until safely
nestled in bed in the cockloft of the
ancient farm-house of the Suydams.

Here the worthy Peechy Prauw paused
to take breath, and to take a sip of the
gossip tankard that stood at his elbow.
His auditors remained with open mouths
and outstretched necks, gaping like a nest
of swallows for an additional mouthful.

"And is that all?" exclaimed the half-pay
officer."

"That's all that belongs to the story,"
said Peechy Prauw.

"And did Sam never find out what
was buried by the red-caps?" said Wolfert,
eagerly, whose mind was haunted
by nothing but ingots and doubloons.

"Not that I know of," said Peechy;
"he had no time to spare from his work,
and, to tell the truth, he did not like to
run the risk of another race among the
rocks. Besides, how should he recollect
the spot where the grave had been digged,
every thing would look so different by
daylight? And then, where was the
use of looking for a dead body, when
there was no chance of hanging the
murderers?"

"Ay, but are you sure it was a dead
body they buried?" said Wolfert.

"To be sure," cried Peechy Prauw,
exultingly. "Does it not haunt in the
neighbourhood to this very day?"

"Haunts!" exclaimed several of the
party, opening their eyes still wider, and
edging their chairs still closer.

"Ay, haunts," repeated Peechy: "have
none of you heard of Father Redcap,
who haunts the old burnt farm-house in
the woods, on the border of the Sound,
near Hell-gate?"

"Oh! to be sure, I've heard tell of
something of the kind: but then I took
it for some old wives' fable."

"Old wives' fable or not," said Peechy
Prauw, "that farm-house stands hard by
the very spot. It's been unoccupied time
out of mind, and stands in a lonely part

of the coast; but those who fish in the
neighbourhood have often heard strange
noises there; and lights have been seen
about the wood at night; and an old
fellow in a red cap has been seen at the
windows more than once, which people
take to be the ghost of the body that
was buried there. Once upon a time
three soldiers took shelter in the building
for the night, and rummaged it from top
to bottom, when they found old Father
Redcap astride of a cider-barrel in the
cellar, with a jug in one hand and a
goblet in the other. He offered them a
drink out of his goblet; but just as one
of the soldiers was putting it to his
mouth—whew!—a flash of fire blazed
through the cellar, blinded every mother's
son of them for several minutes,
and when they recovered their eyesight,
jug, goblet, and Redcap, had vanished,
and nothing but the empty cider-barrel
remained!"

Here the half-pay officer, who was
growing very muzzy and sleepy, and
nodding over his liquor, with half-extinguished
eye, suddenly gleamed up
like an expiring rushlight.

"That's all fudge!" said he, as Peechy
finished his last story.

"Well, I don't vouch for the truth of
it myself," said Peechy Prauw, "though
all the world knows that there's something
strange about that house and
grounds; but as to the story of Mud
Sam, I believe it just as well as if it
had happened to myself."

The deep interest taken in this conversation
by the company had made them
unconscious of the uproar that prevailed
abroad among the elements, when
suddenly they were all electrified by a
tremendous clap of thunder; a lumbering
crash followed instantaneously,
shaking the building to its very foundation—all
started from their seats, imagining
it the shock of an earthquake,
or that old Father Redcap was coming
among them in all his terrors. They
listened for a moment, but only heard
the rain pelting against the windows,
and the wind howling among the trees.
The explosion was soon explained by
the apparition of an old negro's bald
head thrust in at the door, his white
goggle eyes contrasting with his jetty
poll, which was wet with rain, and
shone like a bottle. In a jargon but
half intelligible, he announced that the
kitchen chimney had been struck with
lightning.

A sullen pause of the storm, which
now rose and sunk in gusts, produced
a momentary stillness. In this interval,
the report of a musket was heard, and a
long shout, almost like a yell, resounded
from the shore. Every one crowded to
the window. Another musket-shot was
heard, and another long shout, that mingled
wildly with a rising blast of wind.
It seemed as if the cry came up from
the bosom of the waters; for though
incessant flashes of lightning spread a
light about the shore, no one was to be
seen.

Suddenly the window of the room
overhead was opened, and a loud halloo
uttered by the mysterious stranger. Several
hailings passed from one party to
the other, but in a language which none
of the company in the bar-room could
understand; and presently they heard
the window closed, and a great noise
overhead, as if all the furniture were
pulled and hauled about the room. The
negro servant was summoned, and
shortly after was seen assisting the
veteran to lug the ponderous sea-chest
down stairs.

The landlord was in amazement—
"What!—you are not going on the
water in such a storm?"

"Storm!" said the other scornfully;
"do you call such a sputter of weather
a storm?"

"You'll get drenched to the skin—
you'll catch your death!" said Peechy
Prauw, affectionately.

"Thunder and lightning!" exclaimed
the merman; "don't preach about weather
to a man that has cruised in whirlwinds
and tornadoes!"

The obsequious Peechy was again
struck dumb. The voice from the water
was heard once more, in a tone
of impatience. The bystanders stared
with redoubled awe at this man of
storms, who seemed to have come up
out of the deep, and to be summoned
back to it again. As, with the assistance
of the negro, he slowly bore his

ponderous sea-chest towards the shore,
they eyed it with a superstitious feeling,
half doubting whether he were not
really about to embark upon it, and
launch forth upon the wild waves. They
followed him at a distance with a lantern.

"Douse the light!" roared the hoarse
voice from the water—"no one wants
lights here!"

"Thunder and lightning!" exclaimed
the veteran, turning short upon them;
"back to the house with you."

Wolfert and his companions shrunk
back in dismay. Still their curiosity
would not allow them entirely to withdraw.
A long sheet of lightning now
flickered across the waves, and discovered
a boat, filled with men, just under
a rocky point, rising and sinking with
the heaving surges, and swashing the
water at every heave. It was with difficulty
held to the rocks by a boat-hook,
for the current rushed furiously round
the point. The veteran hoisted one end
of the lumbering sea-chest on the gunwale
of the boat; he seized the handle
at the other end to lift it in, when the
motion propelled the boat from the shore;
the chest slipped off from the gunwale,
and sinking into the waves, pulled the
veteran headlong after it. A loud
shriek was uttered by all on shore,
and a volley of execrations, by those
on board—but boat and man were hurried
away by the rushing swiftness of
the tide. A pitchy darkness succeeded;
Wolfert Webber, indeed, fancied that he
distinguished a cry for help, and that he
beheld the drowning man beckoning for
assistance; but when the lightning again
gleamed along the water, all was void;
neither man nor boat were to be seen;
nothing but the dashing and weltering of
the waves as they hurried past.

The company returned to the tavern
to await the subsiding of the storm.
They resumed their seats, and gazed on
each other with dismay. The whole
transaction had not occupied five minutes,
and not a dozen words had been
spoken. When they looked at the oaken
chair, they could scarcely realize the
fact, that the strange being, who had so
lately tenanted it, full of life and Herculean
vigour, should already be a corpse.
There was the very glass he had just
drunk from; there lay the ashes from
the pipe which he had smoked, as it
were, with his last breath. As the
worthy burghers pondered on these
things, they felt a terrible conviction of
the uncertainty of existence, and each
felt as if the ground on which he stood
was rendered less stable by this awful
example.

As, however, the most of the company
were possessed of that valuable philosophy
which enables a man to bear up
with fortitude against the misfortunes of
his neighbours, they soon managed to
console themselves for the tragic end of
the veteran. The landlord was particularly
happy that the poor dear man had
paid his reckoning before he went: and
made a kind of farewell speech on the
occasion. "He came," said he, "in a
storm, and he went in a storm—he
came in the night, and he went in the
night—he came nobody knows from
whence, and he has gone nobody knows
where. For aught I know, he has gone
to sea once more on his chest, and may
land to bother some people on the other
side of the world! Though it's a thousand
pities," added he, "if he has gone
to Davy Jones's locker, that he had not
left his own locker behind him."

"His locker! St. Nicholas preserve
us!" cried Peechy Prauw—"I'd not
have had that sea-chest in the house
for any money; I'll warrant he'd come
racketing after it at nights, and making
a haunted house of the inn; and as to
his going to sea in his chest, I recollect
what happened to Skipper Onderdonk's
ship, on his voyage from Amsterdam.
The boatswain died during a storm, so
they wrapped him up in a sheet, and
put him in his own sea-chest, and threw
him overboard; but they neglected, in
their hurry-scurry, to say prayers over
him; and the storm raged and roared
louder than ever, and they saw the dead
man seated in his chest, with his shroud
for a sail, coming hard after the ship,
and the sea breaking before him in great
sprays, like fire; and there they kept
scudding day after day, and night after
night, expecting every moment to go to
wreck; and every night they saw the
dead boatswain, in his sea-chest, trying
to get up with them, and they heard his

whistle above the blasts of wind, and he
seemed to send great seas, mountain
high, after them, that would have
swamped the ship if they had not put
up the deadlights; and so it went on
till they lost sight of him in the fogs off
Newfoundland, and supposed he had
veered ship, and stood for Dead Man's
Isle. So much for burying a man at
sea, without saying prayers over him."

The thundergust which had hitherto
detained the company was at an end.
The cuckoo-clock in the hall told midnight;
every one pressed to depart, for
seldom was such a late hour of the night
trespassed on by these quiet burghers.
As they sallied forth, they found the
heavens once more serene. The storm
which had lately obscured them had
rolled away, and lay piled up in fleecy
masses on the horizon, lighted up by
the bright crescent of the moon, which
looked like a little silver lamp hung up
in a palace of clouds.

The dismal occurrence of the night,
and the dismal narrations they had
made, had left a superstitious feeling in
every mind. They cast a fearful glance
at the spot where the bucanier had disappeared,
almost expecting to see him
sailing on his chest in the cool moonshine.
The trembling rays glittered
along the waters, but a was placid;
and the current dimpled over the spot
where he had gone down. The party
huddled together in a little crowd as
they repaired homewards, particularly
when they passed a lonely field, where
a man had been murdered; and even the
sexton who had to complete his journey
alone, though accustomed, one would
think, to ghosts and goblins, yet went
a long way round, rather than pass by
his own churchyard.

Wolfert Webber had now carried home
a fresh stock of stories and notions to
ruminate upon. These accounts of pots
of money and Spanish treasures, buried
here and there and every where about
the rocks and bays of these wild shores,
made him almost dizzy. "Blessed St.
Nicholas!" ejaculated he, half aloud, "is
it not possible to come upon one of these
golden hoards, and to make one's self
rich in a twinkling? How hard that I
must go on, delving and delving, day in
and day out, merely to make a morsel
of bread, when one lucky stroke of a
spade might enable me to ride in my
carriage for the rest of my life!"

As he turned over in his thoughts all
that had been told of the singular adventure
of the negro fisherman, his imagination
gave a totally different complexion
to the tale. He saw in the gang of redcaps
nothing but a crew of pirates burying
their spoils, and his cupidity was
once more awakened by the possibility
of at length getting on the traces of some
of this lurking wealth. Indeed, his infected
fancy tinged every thing with
gold. He felt like the greedy inhabitant of
Bagdad, when his eyes had been greased
with the magic ointment of the dervise,
that gave him to see all the treasures of
the earth. Caskets of buried jewels,
chests of ingots, and barrels of outlandish
coins, seemed to court him from
their concealments, and supplicate him
to relieve them from their untimely
graves.

On making private inquiries about the
grounds said to be haunted by Father
Redcap, he was more and more confirmed
in his surmise. He learned that
the place had several times been visited
by experienced money-diggers, who had
heard Black Sam's story, though none of
them had met with success. On the contrary,
they had always been dogged with
ill luck of some kind or other, in consequence,
as Wolfert concluded, of not
going to work at the proper time, and
with the proper ceremonials. The last
attempt had been made by Cobus Quackenbos,
who dug for a whole night, and
met with incredible difficulty; for, as
fast as he threw one shovelful of earth
out of the hole, two were thrown in by
invisible hands. He succeeded so far,
however, as to uncover an iron chest,
when there was a terrible roaring, ramping,
and raging of uncouth figures about
the hole, and at length a shower of blows
dealt by invisible cudgels, that fairly belaboured
him off of the forbidden ground.
This Cobus Quackenbos had declared on
his deathbed, so that there could not be
any doubt of it. He was a man that
had devoted many years of his life to
money-digging, and it was thought would
have ultimately succeeded, had he not

died recently of a brain-fever in the
almshouse.

Wolfert Webber was now in a worry
of trepidation and impatience, fearful lest
some rival adventurer should get a scent
of the buried gold. He determined privately
to seek out the black fisherman,
and get him to serve as guide to the
place where he had witnessed the mysterious
scene of interment. Sam was
easily found, for he was one of those old
habitual beings that live about a neighbourhood
until they wear themselves a
place in the public mind, and become, in
a manner, public characters. There was
not an unlucky urchin about town that
did not know Mud Sam, the fisherman,
and think that he had a right to play his
tricks upon the old negro. Sam had led
an amphibious life, for more than half a
century, about the shores of the bay and
the fishing-grounds of the Sound. He
passed the greater part of his time on
and in the water, particularly about Hell-gate;
and might have been taken, in bad
weather, for one of the hobgoblins that
used to haunt that strait. There would
he be seen at all times, and in all weathers;
sometimes in his skiff anchored
among the eddies, or prowling like a
shark about some wreck, where the fish
are supposed to be most abundant. Sometimes
seated on a rock, from hour to
hour, looking, in the mist and drizzle,
like a solitary heron watching for its
prey. He was well acquainted with
every hole and corner of the Sound, from
the Wallabout to Hell-gate, and from
Hell-gate even unto the Devil's Steppingstones;
and it was even affirmed that he
knew all the fish in the river by their
Christian names.

Wolfert found him at his cabin, which
was not much larger than a tolerable
dog-house. It was rudely constructed of
fragments of wrecks and drift-wood, and
built on the rocky shore, at the foot of
the old fort, just about what at present
forms the point of the Battery. A
"most ancient and fish-like smell" pervaded
the place. Oars, paddles, and
fishing-rods were leaning against the
wall of the fort; a net was spread on the
sands to dry; a skiff was drawn up
on the beach; and at the door of his
cabin was Mud Sam himself, indulging
in the true negro luxury of sleeping in
the sunshine.

Many years had passed away since
the time of Sam's youthful adventure,
and the snows of many a winter had
grizzled the knotty wool upon his head.
He perfectly recollected the circumstances,
however, for he had often been
called upon to relate them, though, in
his version of the story, he differed in
many points from Peechy Prauw; as is
not unfrequently the case with authentic
historians. As to the subsequent researches
of money-diggers, Sam knew
nothing about them, they were matters
quite out of his line; neither did the
cautious Wolfert care to disturb his
thoughts on that point. His only wish
was to secure the old fisherman as a
pilot to the spot, and this was readily
effected. The long time that had intervened
since his nocturnal adventure, had
effaced all Sam's awe of the place, and
the promise of a trifling reward roused him
at once from his sleep and his sunshine.

The tide was adverse to making the
expedition by water, and Wolfert was too
impatient to get to the land of promise
to wait for its turning; they set off therefore
by land. A walk of four or five
miles brought them to the edge of a
wood, which at that time covered the
greater part of the eastern side of the
island. It was just beyond the pleasant
region of Bloomen-dael. Here they struck
into a long lane, straggling among trees
and bushes, very much overgrown with
weeds and mullein stalks, as if but seldom
used, and so completely overshadowed,
as to enjoy but a kind of twilight.
Wild vines entangled the trees, and
flaunted in their faces; brambles and
briers caught their clothes as they
passed; the garter-snake glided across
their path; the spotted toad hopped and
waddled before them; and the restless
catbird mewed at them from every
thicket. Had Wolfert Webber been
deeply read in romantic legend, he might
have fancied himself entering upon forbidden,
enchanted ground; or that these
were some of the guardians set to keep
a watch upon buried treasure. As it
was, the loneliness of the place, and the
wild stories connected with it, had their
effect upon his mind.

On reaching the lower end of the lane,
they found themselves near the shore of
the Sound, in a kind of amphitheatre surrounded
by forest-trees. The area had
once been a grass-plot, but was now
shagged with briers and rank weeds.
At one end, and just on the river bank,
was a ruined building, little better than
a heap of rubbish, with a stack of chimneys
rising, like a solitary tower, out of
the centre; the current of the Sound
rushed along just below it, with wildly
grown trees drooping their branches into
its waves.

Wolfert had not a doubt that this was
the haunted house of Father Redcap,
and called to mind the story of Peechy
Prauw. The evening was approaching,
and the light, falling dubiously among
these woody places, gave a melancholy
tone to the scene, well calculated to foster
any lurking feeling of awe or superstitution.
The nighthawk, wheeling about
in the highest regions of the air, emitted
his peevish, boding cry. The woodpecker
gave a lonely tap now and then
on some hollow tree, and the fire-bird[5]
streamed by them with his deep-red
plumage. They now came to an enclosure
that had once been a garden. It
extended along the foot of a rocky ridge,
but it was little better than a wilderness
of weeds, with here and there a matted
rosebush, or a peach or plum tree, grown
wild and ragged, and covered with moss.
At the lower end of the garden they
passed a kind of vault in the side of a
bank, facing the water. It had the look
of a root-house. The door, though decayed,
was still strong, and appeared to
have been recently patched up. Wolfert
pushed it open. It gave a harsh grating
upon its hinges, and striking against
something like a box, a rattling sound
ensued, and a scull rolled on the floor.
Wolfert drew back shuddering, but was
reassured, on being informed by the
negro that this was a family-vault belonging
to one of the old Dutch families
that owned this estate; an assertion
which was corroborated by the sight of
coffins of various sizes piled within.
Sam had been familiar with all these
scenes when a boy, and now knew that
he could not be far from the place of
which they were in quest.

They now made their way to the water's
edge, scrambling along ledges of
rocks that overhung the waves, and
obliged often to hold by shrubs and
grape-vines to avoid slipping into the
deep and hurried stream. At length
they came to a small cove, or rather
indent of the shore. It was protected
by steep rocks, and overshadowed by a
thick copse of oaks and chestnuts, so as
to be sheltered and almost concealed.
The beach shelved gradually within the
cove, but the current swept, deep and
black and rapid, along its jutting points.

The negro paused; raised his remnant
of a hat, and scratched his grizzled poll
for a moment, as he regarded this nook:
then suddenly clapping his hands, he
stepped exultingly forward, and pointed
to a large iron ring, stapled firmly in the
rock, just where a broad shelf of stone
furnished a commodious landing-place.
It was the very spot where the red-caps
had landed. Years had changed the more
perishable features of the scene; but
rock and iron yield slowly to the influence
of time. On looking more closely,
Wolfert remarked three crosses cut in
the rock just above the ring; which had
no doubt some mysterious signification.

Old Sam now readily recognised the
overhanging rock under which his skiff
had been sheltered during the thundergust.
To follow up the course which
the midnight gang had taken, however,
was a harder task. His mind had been
so much taken up on that eventful occasion
by the persons of the drama, as to
pay but little attention to the scenes;
and these places look so different by
night and day. After wandering about
for some time, however, they came to an
opening among the trees, which Sam
thought resembled the place. There was
a ledge of rock of moderate height, like
a wall, on one side, which he thought
might be the very ridge from whence he
had overlooked the diggers. Wolfert
examined it narrowly, and at length discovered
three crosses, similar to those
above the iron ring, cut deeply into the
face of the rock, but nearly obliterated
by the moss that had grown over them.
His heart leaped with joy, for he doubted

not they were the private marks of the
bucaniers. All now that remained was
to ascertain the precise spot where the
treasure lay buried, for otherwise he
might dig at random in the neighbourhood
of the crosses, without coming upon
the spoils, and he had already had enough
of such profitless labour. Here, however,
the old negro was perfectly at a
loss, and indeed perplexed by a variety
of opinions; for his recollections were
all confused. Sometimes he declared it
must have been at the foot of a mulberry
tree hard by; then it was just beside a
great white stone; then it must have
been under a small green knoll, a short
distance from the ledge of rock; until at
length Wolfert became as bewildered as
himself.

The shadows of evening were now
spreading themselves over the woods, and
rock and tree began to mingle together.
It was evidently too late to attempt any
thing further at present; and indeed
Wolfert had come unprovided with implements
to prosecute his researches.
Satisfied, therefore, with having ascertained
the place, he took note of all its
landmarks that he might recognise it
again, and set out on his return homewards;
resolved to prosecute this golden
enterprise without delay.

The leading anxiety, which had
hitherto absorbed every feeling, being
now in some measure appeased, fancy
began to wander, and to conjure up a
thousand shapes and chimeras as he
returned through this haunted region.
Pirates hanging in chains seemed to
swing from every tree, and he almost
expected to see some Spanish Don, with
his throat cut from ear to ear, rising
slowly out of the ground, and shaking
the ghost of a money-bag.

Their way back lay through the desolate
garden, and Wolfert's nerves had
arrived at so sensitive a state, that the
flitting of a bird, the rustling of a leaf,
or the falling of a nut, was enough to
startle them. As they entered the confines
of the garden, they caught sight of
a figure at a distance, advancing slowly
up one of the walks, and bending under
the weight of a burthen. They paused,
and regarded him attentively. He wore
what appeared to be a woollen cap, and,
still more alarming, of a most sanguinary
red. The figure moved slowly on, ascended
the bank, and stopped at the very
door of the sepulchral vault. Just before
entering it, he looked around. What
was the affright of Wolfert, when he recognized
the grisly visage of the drowned
bucanier! He uttered an ejaculation of
horror. The figure slowly raised his
iron fist, and shook it with a terrible
menace.

Wolfert did not pause to see any more,
but hurried off as fast as his legs could
carry him, nor was Sam slow in following
at his heels, having all his ancient
terrors revived. Away then did they
scramble, through bush and brake, horribly
frightened at every bramble that
tugged at their skirts; nor did they pause
to breathe, until they had blundered their
way through this perilous wood, and had
fairly reached the high road to the city.

Several days elapsed before Wolfert
could summon courage enough to prosecute
the enterprise, so much had he been
dismayed by the apparition, whether
living or dead, of the grisly bucanier.
In the mean time, what a conflict of mind
did he suffer! He neglected all his concerns;
was moody and restless all day;
lost his appetite; wandered in his thoughts
and words, and committed a thousand
blunders. His rest was broken; and
when he fell asleep, the nightmare, in
shape of a huge money-bag, sat squatted
upon his breast. He babbled about incalculable
sums; fancied himself engaged
in money-digging; threw the bedelothes
right and left, in the idea that he was
shovelling away the dirt; groped under
the bed in quest of the treasure, and lugged
forth, as he supposed, an inestimable
pot of gold.

Dame Webber and her daughter were
in despair at what they conceived a returning
touch of insanity. There are
two family oracles, one or other of which
Dutch housewives consult in all cases of
great doubt and perplexity—the dominie
and the doctor. In the present instance,
they repaired to the doctor. There was
at that time a little, dark, mouldy man of
medicine, famous among the old wives of
the Manhattoes for his skill, not only in
the healing art, but in all matters of
strange and mysterious nature. His

name was Dr. Knipperhausen, but he was
more commonly known by the appellation
of the High German doctor.[6] To
him did the poor woman repair for counsel
and assistance touching the mental
vagaries of Wolfert Webber.

They found the doctor seated in his
little study, clad in his dark camlet robe
of knowledge, with his black velvet cap,
after the manner of Boerhaave, Van Helmont,
and other medical sages; a pair of
green spectacles set in black horn upon
his clubbed nose; and poring over a
German folio that reflected back the
darkness of his physiognomy.

The doctor listened to their statement
of the symptoms of Wolfert's malady
with profound attention; but when they
came to mention his raving about buried
money, the little man pricked up his ears.
Alas, poor women! they little knew the
aid they had called in.

Dr. Knipperhausen had been half his
life engaged in seeking the short cuts to
fortune, in quest of which so many a
long lifetime is wasted. He had passed
some years of his youth among the Harz
mountains of Germany, and had derived
much valuable instruction from the
miners, touching the mode of seeking
treasure buried in the earth. He had
prosecuted his studies also under a travelling
sage, who united the mysteries of
medicine with magic and legerdemain.
His mind, therefore, had become stored
with all kinds of mystic lore; he had
dabbled a little in astrology, alchymy,
divination; knew how to detect stolen
money, and to tell where springs of water
lay hidden; in a word, by the dark nature
of his knowledge, he had acquired
the name of the High German doctor,
which is pretty nearly equivalent to that
of necromancer.

The doctor had often heard the rumours
of treasure being buried in various
parts of the island, and had long been
anxious to get in the traces of it. No
sooner were Wolfert's waking and sleeping
vagaries confided to him, than he
beheld in them the confirmed symptoms
of a case of money-digging, and lost no
time in probing it to the bottom. Wolfert
had long been sorely oppressed in
mind by the golden secret, and as a
family physician is a kind of father confessor,
he was glad of an opportunity of
unburthening himself. So far from
curing, the doctor caught the malady
from his patient. The circumstances unfolded
to him awakened all his cupidity;
he had not a doubt of money being buried
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
mysterious crosses, and offered to join
Wolfert in the search. He informed
him that much secrecy and caution must
be observed in enterprises of the kind;
that money is only to be digged for at
night, with certain forms and ceremonies,
the burning of drugs, the repeating of
mystic words, and above all, that the
seekers must be provided with a divining-rod,
which had the wonderful property of
pointing to the very spot on the surface
of the earth under which treasure lay
hidden. As the doctor had given much
of his mind to these matters, he charged
himself with all the necessary preparations,
and as the quarter of the moon was
propitious, he undertook to have the divining-rod
ready by a certain night.[7]

D. K.

Wolfert's heart leaped with joy at
having met with so learned and able a
coadjutor. Every thing went on secretly
but swimmingly. The doctor had many
consultations with his patient, and the
good woman of the household lauded the
comforting effect of his visits. In the
mean time, the wonderful divining-rod,
that great key to nature's secrets, was
duly prepared. The doctor had thumbed
over all his books of knowledge for the
occasion; and the black fisherman was
engaged to take him in his skiff to the
scene of enterprise; to work with spade
and pickaxe in unearthing the treasure;
and to freight his bark with the weighty
spoils they were certain of finding.

At length the appointed night arrived
for this perilous undertaking. Before
Wolfert left his home, he counselled his
wife and daughter to go to bed, and feel
no alarm if he should not return during
the night. Like reasonable women, on
being told not to feel alarm, they fell immediately
into a panic. They saw at
once by his manner that something unusual
was in agitation; all their fears
about the unsettled state of his mind were
revived with tenfold force; they hung
about him, entreating him not to expose
himself to the night air, but all in vain.
When once Wolfert was mounted on his
hobby, it was no easy matter to get him
out of the saddle. It was a clear starlight
night, when he issued out of the
portal of the Webber palace. He wore
a large flapped hat, tied under the chin
with a handkerchief of his daughter's to
secure him from the night damp; while
Dame Webber threw her long red cloak
about his shoulders, and fustened it round
his neck.

The doctor had been no less carefully
armed and accoutred by his housekeeper,
the vigilant Frau Ilsy, and sallied forth
in his camlet robe by way of surcoat;
his black velvet cap under his cocked
hat; a thick clasped book under his arm;
a basket of drugs and dried herbs in one
hand, and in the other the miraculous
rod of divination.

The great church clock struck ten as
Wolfert and the doctor passed by the
churchyard, and the watchman bawled,
in a hoarse voice, a long and doleful
"All's well!" A deep sleep had already
fallen upon this primitive little burgh.
Nothing disturbed this awful silence, excepting
now and then the bark of some
profligate, night-walking dog, or the
serenade of some romantic cat.

It is true Wolfert fancied more than
once that he heard the sound of a stealthy
footfall at a distance behind them; but
it might have been merely the sound of
their own steps echoing along the quiet
street. He thought also, at one time,
that he saw a tall figure skulking after
them, stopping when they stopped, and
moving on as they proceeded; but the
dim and uncertain lamplight threw such
vague gleams and shadows, that this
might all have been mere fancy.

They found the old fisherman waiting
for them, smoking his pipe in the stern
of his skiff, which was moored just in
front of his little cabin. A pickaxe and
spade were lying in the bottom of the
boat, with a dark lantern, and a stone
bottle of good Dutch courage, in which
honest Sam, no doubt, put even more
faith than Dr. Knipperhausen in his
drugs.

Thus, then, did these three worthies
embark in their cockle-shell of a skiff
upon this nocturnal expedition, with a
wisdom and valour equalled only by the
three wise men of Gotham, who adventured
to sea in a bowl. The tide was
rising, and running rapidly up the Sound.
The current bore them along almost
without the aid of an oar. The profile of
the town lay all in shadow. Here and
there a light feebly glimmered from some
sick chamber, or from the cabin-window
of some vessel at anchor in the stream.
Not a cloud obscured the deep starry
firmament, the lights of which wavered
on the surface of the placid river; and a
shooting meteor, streaking its pale course
in the very direction they were taking,
was interpreted by the doctor into a most
propitious omen.

In a little while they glided by the
point of Corlear's Hook, with the rural

inn, which had been the scene of such
night adventures. The family had retired
to rest, and the house was dark and
still. Wolfert felt a chill pass over him
as they passed the point where the bucanier
had disappeared. He pointed it
out to Dr. Knipperhausen. While regarding
it, they thought they saw a boat
actually lurking at the very place; but
the shore cast such a shadow over the
border of the water, that they could discern
nothing distinctly. They had not
proceeded far, when they heard the low
sound of distant oars, as if cautiously
pulled. Sam plied his oars with redoubled
vigour, and knowing all the eddies
and currents of the stream, soon left their
followers, if such they were, far astern.
In a little while they stretched across
Turtle Bay and Kip's Bay, then shrouded
themselves in the deep shadows of the
Manhattan shore, and glided swiftly
along, secure from observation. At
length the negro shot his skiff into a
little cove, darkly embowered by trees,
and made it fast to the well-known iron
ring.

They now landed, and lighting the
lantern, gathered their various implements,
and proceeded slowly through the
bushes. Every sound startled them, even
that of their own footsteps among the
dry leaves; and the hooting of a screech
owl from the shattered chimney of the
neighbouring ruin made their blood run
cold.

In spite of all Wolfert's caution in
taking note of the landmarks, it was
some time before they could find the
open place among the trees, where the
treasure was supposed to be buried. At
length they came to the ledge of rock,
and on examining its surface by the aid
of the lantern, Wolfert recognised the
three mystic crosses. Their hearts beat
quick, for the momentous trial was at
hand that was to determine their hopes.

The lantern was now held by Wolfert
Webber, while the doctor produced the
divining-rod. It was a forked twig, one
end of which was grasped firmly in each
hand; while the centre, forming the
stem, pointed perpendicularly upwards.
The doctor moved this wand about,
within a certain distance of the earth,
from place to place, but for some time
without any effect; while Wolfert kept
the light of the lantern turned full upon
it, and watched it with the most breathless
interest. At length the rod began
slowly to turn. The doctor grasped it
with greater earnestness, his hands trembling
with the agitation of his mind. The
wand continued to turn gradually, until
at length the stem had reversed its position,
and pointed perpendicularly downward,
and remained pointing to one spot
as fixedly as the needle to the pole.

"This is the spot!" said the doctor in
an almost inaudible tone.

Wolfert's heart was in his throat.

"Shall I dig?" said the negro, grasping
the spade.

"Potstausends, no!" replied the little
doctor hastily. He now ordered his
companions to keep close by him, and
to maintain the most inflexible silence;
that certain precautions must be taken,
and ceremonies used, to prevent the evil
spirits which kept about buried treasure
from doing them any harm.

He then drew a circle about the place,
enough to include the whole party. He
next gathered dry twigs and leaves, and
made a fire, upon which he threw certain
drugs and dried herbs, which he had
brought in his basket. A thick smoke
arose, diffusing its potent odour, savouring
marvellously of brimstone and assafœtida,
which, however grateful it might
be to the olfactory nerves of spirits,
nearly strangled poor Wolfert, and produced
a fit of coughing and wheezing
that made the whole grove resound. Dr.
Knipperhausen then unclasped the volume
which he had brought under his arm,
which was printed in red and black
characters in German text. While Wolfert
held the lantern, the doctor, by the
aid of his spectacles, read off several
forms of conjuration in Latin and German.
He then ordered Sam to seize the
pickaxe and proceed to work. The
close-bound soil gave obstinate signs of
not having been disturbed for many a
year. After having picked his way
through the surface, Sam came to a bed
of sand and gravel, which he threw
briskly to right and left with the spade.

"Hark!" said Wolfert, who fancied
he heard a trampling among the dry
leaves, and a rustling through the bushes.

Sam paused for a moment, and they listened—no
footstep was near. The bat
flitted by them in silence; a bird, roused
from its roost by the light which glared
up among the trees, flew circling about
the flame. In the profound stillness of
the woodland they could distinguish the
current rippling along the rocky shore,
and the distant murmuring and roaring
of Hell-gate.

The negro continued his labours, and
had already digged a considerable hole.
The doctor stood on the edge, reading
formulæ, every now and then, from his
black-letter volume, or throwing more
drugs and herbs upon the fire, while
Wolfert bent anxiously over the pit,
watching every stroke of the spade.
Any one witnessing the scene, thus
lighted up by fire, lantern, and the reflection
of Wolfert's red mantle, might
have mistaken the little doctor for some
foul magician, busied in his incantations,
and the grizzly-headed negro for some
swart goblin obedient to his commands.

At length the spade of the old fisherman
struck upon something that sounded
hollow; the sound vibrated to Wolfert's
heart. He struck his spade again—

" 'Tis a chest," said Sam.

"Full of gold, I'll warrant it!" cried
Wolfert, clasping his hands with rapture.

Scarcely had he uttered the words
when a sound from above caught his
ear. He cast up his eyes, and lo! by
the expiring light of the fire, he beheld,
just over the disk of the rock, what appeared
to be the grim visage of the
drowned bucanier, grinning hideously
upon him.

Wolfert gave a loud cry, and let fall
the lantern. His panic communicated
itself to his companions. The negro
leaped out of the hole; the doctor dropped
his book and basket, and began to
pray in German. All was horror and
confusion. The fire was scattered about,
the lantern extinguished. In their hurry-scurry,
they ran against and confounded
one another. They fancied a legion of
hobgoblins let loose upon them, and that
they saw, by the fitful gleams of the
scattered embers, strange figures in red
caps, gibbering and ramping around them.
The doctor ran one way, the negro
another, and Wolfert made for the waterside.
As he plunged, struggling onwards
through bush and brake, he heard the
tread of some one in pursuit. He scrambled
frantickly forward. The footsteps
gained upon him. He felt himself grasped
by his cloak, when suddenly his pursuer
was attacked in turn. A fierce fight and
struggle ensued. A pistol was discharged
that lit up rock and bush for a second,
and showed two figures grappling together—all
was then darker than ever.
The contest continued; the combatants
clenched each other, and panted and
groaned, and rolled among the rocks.
There was snarling and growling as of a
cur, mingled with curses, in which Wolfort
fancied he could recognise the voice
of the bucanier. He would fain have
fled, but he was on the brink of a precipice,
and could go no farther. Again
the parties were on their feet; again
there was a tugging and struggling, as if
strength alone could decide the combat,
until one was precipitated from the brow
of the cliff, and sent headlong into the
deep stream that whirled below. Wolfert
heard the plunge, and a kind of strangling,
bubbling murmur; but the darkness
of the night hid every thing from
him, and the swiftness of the current
swept every thing instantly out of bearing.

One of the combatants was disposed
of, but whether friend or foe Wolfert
could not tell, or whether they might not
both be foes. He heard the survivor
approach, and terror revived. He saw,
where the profile of the rocks rose against
the horizon, a human form advancing.
He could not be mistaken—it must be
the bucanier. Whither should he fly?
a precipice was on one side, a murderer
on the other. The enemy approached—
he was close at hand. Wolfert attempted
to let himself down the face of the cliff.
His cloak caught in a thorn that grew
on the edge: he was jerked from off his
feet, and held dangling in the air, half
choked by the string with which his careful
wife had fastened the garment round
his neck. Wolfert thought his last moment
was arrived; already he had committed
his soul to St. Nicholas, when the
string broke, and he tumbled down the
bank, bumping from rock to rock, and
bush to bush, and leaving the red cloak

fluttering, like a bloody banner, in the
air.

It was a long while before Wolfert
came to himself. When he opened his
eyes, the ruddy streaks of morning were
already shooting up the sky. He found
himself lying in the bottom of a boat,
grievously battered. He attempted to sit
up, but was too sore and stiff to move.
A voice requested him, in friendly accents,
to lie still. He turned his eyes
towards the speaker—it was Dirk Waldron.
He had dogged the party at the
earnest request of Dame Webber and her
daughter, who, with the laudable curiosity
of their sex, had pried into the secret
consultations of Wolfert and the doctor.
Dirk had been completely distanced in
following the light skiff of the fisherman,
and had just come in time to rescue the
poor money-digger from his pursuer.

Thus ended this perilous enterprise.
The doctor and Black Sam severally
found their way back to the Manhattoes,
each having some dreadful tale of peril
to relate. As to poor Wolfert, instead of
returning in triumph, laden with bags of
gold, he was borne home on a shutter,
followed by a rabble rout of curious
urchins.

His wife and daughter saw the dismal
pageant from a distance, and alarmed
the neighbourhood with their cries; they
thought the poor man had suddenly settled
the great debt of nature in one of his
wayward moods. Finding him, however,
still living, they had him speedily to bed,
and a jury of old matrons of the neighbourhood
assembled to determine how he
should be doctored.

The whole town was in a buzz with
the story of the money-diggers. Many
repaired to the scene of the previous
night's adventures; but though they
found the very place of digging, they
discovered nothing that compensated
them for their trouble. Some say they
found the fragments of an oaken chest,
and an iron potlid, which savoured
strongly of hidden money, and that in
the old family vault there were traces of
bales and boxes, but this is all very
dubious.

In fact, the secret of all this story has
never to this day been discovered. Whether
any treasure were ever actually
buried at that place; whether, if so, it
were carried off at night by those who
had buried it; or whether it still remains
there under the guardianship of gnomes
and spirits, until it shall be properly
sought for, is all matter of conjecture.
For my part, I incline to the latter opinion,
and make no doubt that great sums
lie buried, both there and in many other
parts of this island and its neighbourhood,
ever since the times of the bucaniers
and the Dutch colonists; and I
would earnestly recommend the search
after them to such of my fellow-citizens
as are not engaged in any other speculations.
There were many conjectures
formed, also, as to who and what was
the strange man of the seas who had
domineered over the little fraternity at
Corlear's Hook for a time, disappeared
so strangely, and re-appeared so fearfully.

Some supposed him a smuggler, stationed
at that place to assist his comrades
in landing their goods among the
rocky coves of the island. Others, that
he was one of the ancient comrades,
either of Kidd or Bradish, returned to
convey treasures formerly hidden in the
vicinity. The only circumstance that
throws any thing like a vague light on
this mysterious matter, is a report which
prevailed of a strange foreign-built shallop,
with much the look of a picaroon,
having been seen hovering about the
Sound for several days without landing
or reporting herself, though boats were
seen going to and from her at night;
and that she was seen standing out of
the mouth of the harbour, in the gray of
the dawn, after the catastrophe of the
money-diggers.

I must not omit to mention another
report, also, which I confess is rather
apocryphal, of the bucanier, who was
supposed to have been drowned, being
seen before daybreak with a lantern in
his hand, seated astride his great sea-chest,
and sailing through Hell-gate,
which just then began to roar and bellow
with redoubled fury.

While all the gossip world was thus
filled with talk and rumour, poor Wolfert
lay sick and sorrowful in his bed,
bruised in body, and sorely beaten down
in mind. His wife and daughter did all

they could to bind up his wounds, both
corporal and spiritual. The good old
dame never stirred from his bed-side,
where she sat knitting from morning till
night; while his daughter busied herself
about him with the fondest care. Nor
did they lack assistance from abroad.
Whatever may be said of the desertion
of friends in distress, they had no complaint
of the kind to make; not an old
wife of the neighbourhood but abandoned
her work to crowd to the mansion of
Wolfert Webber, inquire after his health,
and the particulars of his story. Not
one came, moreover, without her little
pipkin of pennyroyal, sage-balm, or other
herb-tea, delighted at an opportunity of
signalizing her kindness and her doctorship.
What drenchings did not the poor
Wolfert undergo! and all in vain. It
was a moving sight to behold him wasting
away day by day; growing thinner and
thinner, and ghastlier and ghastlier; and
staring with rueful visage from under an
old patchwork counterpane, upon the jury
of matrons kindly assembled to sigh and
groan, and look unhappy around him.

Dirk Waldron was the only being that
seemed to shed a ray of sunshine into
this house of mourning. He came in
with cheery look and manly spirit, and
tried to reanimate the expiring heart of
the poor money-digger; but it was all in
vain. Wolfert was completely done over.
If any thing was wanting to complete his
despair, it was a notice served upon him,
in the midst of his distress, that the corporation
were about to run a new street
through the very centre of his cabbage-garden.
He now saw nothing before
him but poverty and ruin—his last reliance,
the garden of his forefathers, was
to be laid waste—and what then was to
become of his poor wife and child? His
eyes filled with tears as they followed
the dutiful Amy out of the room one
morning. Dirk Waldron was seated
beside him; Wolfert grasped his hand,
pointed after his daughter, and for the
first time since his illness, broke the
silence he had maintained.

"I am going," said he, shaking his
head feebly; "and when I am gone—
my poor daughter—"

"Leave her to me, father!" said Dirk,
manfully; "I'll take care of her!"

Wolfert looked up in the face of the
cheery, strapping youngster, and saw
there was none better able to take care
of a woman.

"Enough," said he, "she is yours!—
and now fetch me a lawyer—let me
make my will and die."

The lawyer was brought, a dapper,
bustling, round-headed little man—Roorbach
(or Rollebuck, as it was pronounced)
by name. At the sight of him the women
broke into loud lamentations, for
they looked upon the signing of a will
as the signing of a death-warrant.
Wolfert made a feeble motion for them
to be silent. Poor Amy buried her face
and her grief in the bed-curtain; Dame
Webber resumed her knitting to hide her
distress, which betrayed itself, however,
in a pellucid tear which trickled silently
down, and hung at the end of her peaked
nose; while the cat, the only unconcerned
member of the family, played
with the good dame's ball of worsted, as
it rolled about the floor.

Wolfert lay on his back, his nightcap
drawn over his forehead, his eyes closed,
his whole visage the picture of death. He
begged the lawyer to be brief, for he felt
his end approaching, and that he had no
time to lose. The lawyer nibbed his pen,
spread out his paper, and prepared to
write.

"I give and bequeath," said Wolfert,
faintly, "my small farm—"

"What! all?" exclaimed the lawyer.

Wolfert half opened his eyes and
looked upon the lawyer.

"Yes—all," said he.

"What! all that great patch of land
with cabbages and sunflowers, which the
corporation is just going to run a main
street through?"

"The same," said Wolfert, with a
heavy sigh, and sinking back upon his
pillow.

"I wish him joy that inherits it!" said
the little lawyer, chuckling and rubbing
his hands involuntarily.

"What do you mean?" said Wolfert,
again opening his eyes.

"That he'll be one of the richest men
in the place!" cried little Rollebuck.

The expiring Wolfert seemed to step
back from the threshold of existence;
his eyes again lighted up; he raised

himself in his bed, shoved back his
worsted red nightcap, and stared broadly
at the lawyer.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed he.

"Faith, but I do!" rejoined the other.
"Why, when that great field, and that
huge meadow, come to be laid out in
streets, and cut up into snug buildinglots—why,
whoever owns it need not
pull off his hat to the patroon!"

"Say you so?" cried Wolfert, half
thrusting one leg out of bed; "why, then,
I think I'll not make my will yet!"

To the surprise of every body, the
dying man actually recovered. The
vital spark, which had glimmered faintly
in the socket, received fresh fuel from
the oil of gladness which the little lawyer
poured into his soul. It once more
burnt up into a flame. Give physic to
the heart, ye who would revive the body
of a spirit-broken man! In a few days
Wolfert left his room; in a few days
more his table was covered with deeds,
plans of streets, and building-lots. Little
Rollebuck was constantly with him, his
right-hand man and adviser, and instead
of making his will, assisted in the more
agreeable task of making his fortune.

In fact, Wolfert Webber was one of
those many worthy Dutch burghers of
the Manhattoes, whose fortunes have
been made in a manner in spite of themselves;
who have tenaciously held on to
their hereditary acres, raising turnips
and cabbages about the skirts of the city,
hardly able to make both ends meet, until
the corporation has cruelly driven streets
through their abodes, and they have suddenly
awakened out of their lethargy, and
to their astonishment found themselves
rich men!

Before many months had elapsed, a
great bustling street passed through the
very centre of the Webber garden, just
where Wolfert had dreamed of finding a
treasure. His golden dream was accomplished.
He did indeed find an unlooked-for
source of wealth; for when his
paternal lands were distributed into
building-lots, and rented out to safe
tenants, instead of producing a paltry
crop of cabbages, they returned him an
abundant crop of rents; insomuch that
on quarter-day it was a goodly sight to
see his tenants knocking at his door
from morning till night, each with a little
round-bellied bag of money, the golden
produce of the soil.

The ancient mansion of his forefathers
was still kept up; but instead of being a
little yellow-fronted Dutch house in a
garden, it now stood boldly in the midst
of a street, the grand house of the neighbourhood;
for Wolfert enlarged it with
a wing on each side, and a cupola or tearoom
on top, where he might climb up
and smoke his pipe in hot weather; and
in the course of time the whole mansion
was overrun by the chubby-faced progeny
of Amy Webber and Dirk Waldron.

As Wolfert waxed old, and rich, and
corpulent, he also set up a great gingerbread-coloured
carriage, drawn by a pair
of black Flanders mares, with tails that
swept the ground; and to commemorate
the origin of his greatness, he had for
his crest a full-blown cabbage painted
on the panels with the pithy motto
Alles opf, that is to say, ALL HEAD,
meaning thereby, that he had risen by
sheer head-work.

To fill the measure of his greatness,
in the fulness of time the renowned Ramm
Rapelye slept with his fathers, and Wolfert
Webber succeeded to the leather-bottomed
arm-chair, in the inn-parlour
at Corlear's Hook, where he long reigned,
greatly honoured and respected, insomuch
that he was never known to tell a
story without its being believed, nor to
utter a joke without its being laughed at.