University of Virginia Library

FIRE ISLAND ANA;[1]
OR,
A WEEK AT THE FIRE ISLANDS.

1. CHAPTER I.

It was during an Indian-summer week of hearty, brown
October, that Oliver Paul, Ned Locus, and I, once made a
shooting party, and drove Ned's sorrel mares to Jim Smith's,
at Scio, and thence bent canvass for the Fire Islands, to try
the brant.

Before going on with my story, it may, perhaps, be dutiful
in me, and desirable on behalf of people who have never studied
geography, to specify the condition of the said Islands.
We will accomplish this cheerful office, straightway. In brief,
then, they made their first appearance in the country, after a
hard earthquake, some five or six hundred years ago, on the

southern coast of Matowacs, latitude forty degrees and forty
minutes north; longitude, seventy-three degrees and one
minute west; near the occidental end of Raccoon beach.
They are two in number, and contain in the whole, at low
water, about fifty acres of marsh and mud, disposed with irregular
and careless grace, and scalloped into jutting points
and circling bays. The principal inhabitants are gulls, and
meadow-hens. The climate is saline and salubrious. The
chief products of the soil are, sedge-grass, birds' eggs, and
calms. Yet, not unknown to “human face divine,” nor ignorant
of the lofty enterprise, and gentle mercies, of trade, do
those points and bays lie profitless. For, there John Alibi salutes
the fading morning star, and the coming sun, with the heavy
vollies of his yet cherished flint lock muskets; and the tumbling
wild fowl, splashing into the midst of his stool, bleed out
their murdered lives, while he, reloading, counts the profits of
his eager shot, and sees, with his mind's eye, the gasping victims
already picked, and stalled in Fulton market. Hence,
live and flourish, all the little Alibis; and hence, the princess
widow, gentle mistress of the soil, rejoices in a welcome revenue.

Brother sportsmen, let me introduce to your judicious affection,
my friend and comrade, Oliver Paul.—Oliver. the
people. He is a plain unpretending tiller, and a lord, moreover,
of the land; a Quaker, you see—regular Hicksite—and
like all friends that I ever yet knew, he is sometimes wet and
sometimes dry. Still, he is semper idem—always the same—
and has been such for fifty years—in hot, and in cold—in total
abstinence, and in generous imbibition. As Oliver is
warm-hearted, I love him; as he is a good shot, I honor him;
and as he can pull a discreet oar, foretell, to a certainty,
where the wind is going to be on the morrow, and mark down

a crippled bird more truly than any man in the republic, I always
get him to go with me upon my shooting expeditions.
Oliver has but few eccentric qualities. His religion is as the
religion of Hicksites “in general:” his philosophy is comprised
in the sententious apothegm, which is applied upon all
occasions and occurrences, “some pork will boil that way:”
his morals—; he is a bachelor, and though of a most unmatrimonial
composition, he is incessantly talking of taking a wife,
or, as he terms it, “flying in” with a woman. Though from
principle, and the rules of his creed, opposed to both national
and individual wars, yet, strike him, and he will not turn to
you his other cheek, for a repetition of the temptation. He
may not strike back, but—as they do at yearly meeting, when
friends cannot agree upon the choice of a clerk—he will most
certainly shove you, as he would say, “like rotten.” His most
characteristic trait is his superintendence of the morals and
manners of his neighbors. So bountiful is his benevolence,
that to protect the reputation of a friend, he scruples not to
unlace and scarify his own. Walk out with him, and meet a
ruddy-cheeked Rosina, with a coquettish eye, that puts the
very devil into you, “don't look, don't look, boys,” he'll cry,
and dig his elbows into your side to enforce obedience to the
precept, while he himself is staring into her face, until the
morning-tint vermilion of her virgin-blushes is lost in the scarlet—and—and—confusion—and—somebody
finish that;—and
then, he'll drain the last drop of liquor from the jug, for the
sole, charitable purpose of preserving his brother sportsman's
nerves steady. You know him now, and I have nothing more
to say, except to warn you, as a friend, if you should ever be
out with him in the bay, on a cold November day, on short
allowance, watch your fluids.

Ned Locus.—Ned is a young gentleman, who spends his

money, and shoots, and fishes, and tells tough yarns for a living.
His uncle manages his estate, for although Ned is now
of age, yet he don't want to deprive the old man of the commissions;
and, besides, ever since Ned got his bachelor's diploma,
he has forgotten his Greek and Trigonometry, without
which, no man can be an executor. Ned, although not strictly
pious, delights not in things of this world. Mere terrestrial
axioms know no lodgement in his confidence. His meditations
and labors are in another sphere, an universe of his own
creation. And yet, he believes himself to be a plain, practical,
matter-of-fact man; one who has no fancy, who never
tells his dreams for truths, nor adds a single bird or fish in the
story of the sum total of his successes. There is no design,
upon his part, in the choice of his place of existence, or the
description of his sensations and actions. The fault, if any,
lies in his original composition; his father and mother are to
be blamed for it, not he. His eyes and ears are not as the
eyes and ears of other men, and, truly, so is not his tongue.
There is an investiture of unearthliness about every thing he
sees and hears. By day, and by night, he is contemplating a
constant mirage. He never admired a woman on account of
her having flesh, blood, bosom, lips, and such things; but,
while he gazed, he worshipped some fairy incarnation, that
enveloped and adorned her with unearthly grace, and hypercelestial
sweetnesses. Even in his reading he is an original.
He never gives to a fine passage in Shakespeare its ordinary
interpretation; but the brilliant light of the poet's thought, is
crooked, and thrown off, and sometimes made a caricature
rainbow of, by the refraction of his cloudy imagination. His
aunt sent him, one new-year's day, when he was at college,
an old copy of the Septuagint, which she had picked up at the
auction sale of the effects of a demised ecclesiastic. On receiving
the present, he wrote upon the fly-leaf, what he considered
to be the apposite sentiments of Mark Antony—

That was Ned, all over. With such a constitution, it is quite
possible that he may seem, to those men who always want the
actual proof of a thing, chapter and verse, to be rather given
to romance. Ned hates such people. So do I. They are
without faith, earth-bound, and live by sense alone, grossly.

I am—I don't know what I am, exactly. I'm a distant relative
of Ned,—a blossom off one of the poor branches of the
family. I “expect” I'm a kind of a loafer. I'm Ned's friend,
and he's mine. I'm his moralist, and minister, and tiger, and
kind of tutor, and he lends me money. I certainly intend to
repay him; though I don't owe him much now, by the by, for
I have won all the bets we have made lately, as might naturally
be presumed—Ned always bets so wildly. We keep
along pretty square. Ned's a good fellow. If I only say,
“Ned, I'm rather short, to-day, how are you?” he'll give me
a draft on his uncle, for a cool hundred. We play picquet,
too, now and then, and cassino, and all-fours, a little. I can
beat him at those games. I keep my account at the Tea-water
Pump. I have thought of getting into some kind of business,
—I think I am calculated for it; but my affection for Ned will
not permit me to leave him. We were both “licked” by Joe
Nelson, the blind schoolmaster, and hectored by his twinheaded
understrapper; and we were classmates in old Columbia,
and put into practice the doctrines of forces, and action
and reaction at Robinson's, during intermission hours, and
were always together. So we ride about and take our comfort.

There was one eminent qualification, which was possessed
by each of the trio above outlined, in monopoly without statute.
We could each cut down a leather-head, flying by a point of
marsh before a strong north-wester, sixty yards off, nineteen
times out of twenty. That is a fact; and there are not many
men beside us and John Verity, and Raynor Rock, who are
up to that performance. Uncle Ben Raynor could do it once,
and Dan thinks he can do it now; but, as Peter Probasco says,
“I have my doubts.” Multitudinous sportsmen may shoot
well, but none but a man of true genius can shoot splendidly.
Shooting, in its refinement and glory, is not an acquired art.
A man must be a born shot as much as he must be a born
poet. You may learn to wing-break a starved pigeon, sprung
out of a trap, fifteen or twenty yards off, but to stop a cock in
a thick brake, where you can see him only with the eye of
faith; or to kill a vigorous coot, cutting the keen air, at day-dreak,
at the rate of three miles a minute, requires an eye, and
a hand, and a heart, which science cannot manufacture. The
doctrine of Pliny, the naturalist, contained in his chapter on
black ducks, is correct beyond a question. “Legere et scribere,
est pœdagogi, sed optime collineare, est Dei.” Reading
and writing are inflicted by schoolmasters, but a crack shot is
the work of God. “Them's my sentiments,” as Peter again
says.

The same doctrine has been truly declared of angling. No
genuine piscator ever tabernacled at Fireplace, or Stump-pond,
who could not exhibit proofs of great natural delicacy, and
strength of apprehension—I mean of “things in general,” including
fish. But the “vis vivida animi,” the “os magna sonans,”
the “manus mentis,” the divine rapture of the seduction
of a trout, how few have known the apotheosis! The
creative power of genius can make a feather-fly live, and move,

and have being; and a wisely-stricken fish gives up the ghost
in transports. That puts me in mind of a story of Ned Locus.
Ned swears that he once threw a fly so far, and delicately,
and suspendedly, that just as it was dropping upon the water,
after lying a moment in the scarcely-moving air, as though it
knew no law of gravity, it actually took life and wings, and
would have flown away, but that an old four-pounder, seeing
it start, sprang and jumped at it, full a foot out of his element,
and changed the course of the insect's travel, from the upper
air to the bottom of his throat. That is one of Ned's, and I
do not guarantee it; but such a thing might be. Insects are
called into being in a variety of mysterious ways, as all the
world knows; for instance, the animalculæ that appear in the
neighborhood of departed horses; and, as Ned says, if death
can create life, what is the reason a smart man can't? Good
fishermen are generally great lawyers; ecce signa, Patrick
Henry, and Daniel Webster. I have known this rule, however,
to have exceptions. But the true sportsman is always,
at least, a man of genius, and an honest man. I have either
read or heard some one say, and I am sure it is the fact, that
there never was an instance of a sincere lover of a dog, gun,
and rod, being sent to bridewell or penitentiary. Jails they
did whilom affect, before John Doe and Richard Roe were
banished from the state, and when an unhappy devil might be
held to bail to answer for his misfortunes; but although they
have experienced much affliction under the issue of “non assumpsit,”
never was there one who suffered judgment upon
the finding of a jury on the plea of “not guilty.” If I were
governor, and knew a case, I would exert the pardoning power
without making any inquiry. I should determine, without
waiting to hear a single fact, that the man was convicted by
means of perjury. There is a plain reason for all this. A
genuine sportsman must possess a combination of virtues,
which will fill him so full that no room can be left for sin to
squeeze in. He must be an early riser—to be which is the
beginning of all virtue—ambitious, temperate, prudent, patient
of toil, fatigue, and disappointment, courageous, watchful, intent
upon his business, always ready, confident, cool, kind to
his dog, civil to the girls, and courteous to his brother sportsmen.
Hold up.

This discourse hath brought us in front of the fishing-hut of
Raynor Rock, near the lighthouse on the beach. Rest thee,
now, most weary reader,—for we have had a long sail, with a
head wind and a wet sheet,—while I rehearse the causes that
have brought Sir Raynor, and his crew of twenty picked boys,
—picked up along shore,—down to this desolate spot.
Streaked bass and wild fowl are the motives of their sojournment.
The former are sparkling in the surf, and making love
to, and eating up each other; the latter cluster in the inlets,
and stream above the breakers. The net carries into captivity
them of the sea; powder and shot superinduce widowhood
and orphanage upon the tenants of the air. Fulton Market,
and the cooks of the board of aldermen know the rest. Hence
arise wise ordinances and stomachs sleek; and Raynor and
the boys are glad in the silver music that rings in their pressed-down
pockets. “Proba merx facile emptorem invenit.”

We arrived at Raynor's just about dark, and the boys had
all turned in, to get a good nap, before the tide served for drawing
the seine,—all but Raynor, who was half sitting, half lying
on the plentiful straw by the fire in the centre of the hut,
smoking his quiet pipe. We entered, and grasped the welcoming
hand of as clever a fellow—both Yankee and English
clever—as ever sat foot on Matowacs.

“Hullow! hullow! hullow! wake up, boys! wake up!

Here's Mr. Cypress, and Ned Locus, and Oliver Paul!—By
gad, I'm glad to see ye.—How are ye! how are ye!”

How d'ye do! how d'ye do, fellows! Give us your fist,
Raynor. Peter, what the d—l brought you down here! Dan,
alive? how are ye, how are ye all?

At Raynor's call, the boys sprang up from their straw and
pea-jackets, upon which they had been snoring in their sleeping
places around the floor of the mansion, and rushed upon
us with unaffected gratulation. The story of the reception
can be briefly told. There were three of us, and twenty of
them, and we all and each jointly and severally said, “how
have you been? Pretty well, thank ye;” and shook hands.
Make the calculation yourself. While you are cyphering it
out, I'll stop and rest.

2. CHAPTER II.

—Izaak Walton.

Plautus—Rudens, Act I., Sce. I.

It is meet, and commendable in a veracious traveller, upon
his arrival in an undiscovered country, to note, and register
the appointments of his hostelry. Record we, therefore, circumspectly,
an inventory of our new tenement and comfortable
head-quarters. Oh, for a pen worthy of the grave, and
dangerous obligation! Hope, not, proud dweller in houses
with chimneys, for a vision of gorgeous brick and mortar, nor
the architectural glories of granite magnificence, nor the adornments
of pompous garniture. Ask not for needless chairs,
nor seek superfluous tables; no, nor the vanities of boarded
floorings. Simplicity and republican thrift constructed and
apparelled the edifice. Babylon nursed the young saplings,
which, lopped from their sprouty trunks, and into the sand-hills
driven deep, incline their leafless tops bending to meet

each other at the culmen, where, through the ragged crater,
the beaten smoke struggles against the impetuous gales,
mounting from the central fire built beneath, upon the primeval
hearth of circling anchor-stones. Captain Dodd threshed the
oats out of the straw, which, now intertwined and closely
thatched between the unpeeled rafters, repels the whistling
storm with its thick envelopment. No unshut doors creak on
their unoiled hinges, letting in the cold air; nor windows
tempt the passing juvenal to throw stones. The spumal piscators
have ingress by a hole cut through the straw near the
ground, bending down upon their knees. The mansion glories
in two avenues of entrance. Eurus breathes upon the
one; sleepy Phœbus, going to bed, paints with doubtful purple
the other;—inlets beloved by baymen, safe avenues of
escape from the rough assaults of the puffy servants of æolus,
who are always cruising about the beach. Hail! hospitable
holes! A piece of stranded ship-timber furnishes a safe
street-door, secured by a laid up stone; the wind is shut out,
and the tired family sleep. “Exegi monumentum”[2] —I have
built the hut.

Contemplate, now, the household ornature. Enter, welcome
friend. Stoop, stoop—“Bend, stubborn knees.”[3] And
now recline upon this couch of wholesome straw, which carpets
the whole area of the domicil. The dying coals shed
but uncertain light upon the congregated groups of sleepers,
and dimly give to sight the motley equipage of the crew.
There they lie, “each in his narrow cell,”[4] or rather, each in
his little stramineous dormitory, which, once appropriated, is
sacred to the bones of its peculiar tenant. There sleeps, and
snores the worn-out bayman; “—structis cantat avenis.”[5]

There, the safe proprietor deposits his pea-coat, private liquor,
and unusual blanket; confident in the honor of his comrades,
unless the weather should happen to be savage, when, doubtless,
he will watch diligently. No idle space remains, save
the brief circle around the fire place, which serves, in turn,
for parlor, dining-room, and kitchen. The tapestry hangings
are various, and picturesque. The subject of the illustration
is the blessed beauty of utility. Up against the sapling
uprights are fastened shelves, unconscious of the plane;
and rust-browned hooks, and nails, disclose their alternate
heads and points, where lie, or are suspended, or are thrust
into the straw, the luxuries and superfluities of the squad:—
“`Αρχιτ υοιδας”—
to wit; a jug of molasses; item, a black-edged, broken, pack
of playing cards; item, a love-feast hymn-book; item, six
inches by two of looking-glass—quicksilver half off; item, a
bunch of mackerel; item, an extra pair of party-colored pantaloons,
nineteen times mended in the seat; item, something
to take, by way of medicine, for thirsty members of the Temperance
society; item, the first two leaves of “the Swearer's
Prayer”—tract—rest used up; item, the American Songster;
item,—but the inventory will “stretch out to the crack of
doom;”—most imaginative reader, complete the catalogue
with guns, eel-spears, clam-rakes, powder-horns, and bread-baskets,
with their appurtenances, according to thy most fastidious
desires. There are all of these, and more, for thee to
choose from. Having resolved the difficulties of the selection,
wend back with me, a short way, to our landing place, and
know a new friend with whom we ought to have tarried on
our way, and held a brief discourse.

We have crossed the bay, skirting by the Fire Islands, leaving
them a few hundred yards behind us to the north, and
have rested our prow upon the classical sands of Raccoon
Beach.

Upon our arrival here, we put in alongside of the new wharf
of the eximious Mr. Smith, a person of no little importance,
being a man under authority, having a wife over him, a keeper
of their majesties', the people's, lighthouse, adjoining his own
tenement, duly appointed and commissioned, a lawful voter, a
licensed vender of “spurrets and things accorden,” and the
only householder upon the island ridge. Mr. Smith had the
happiness, in early life, of being blest with parents of taste, in
matters of nomenclature, singularly coincident with that of my
own. His christian name was Jeremiah, too; and—perhaps,
because his surname was unusual, and difficult to pronounce—
his friends and visitors always gave him their greeting, by
the gentle and euphonious appellation of “Jerry.”

I always thought it was kind in Jerry to take out that license;
first upon his own account, because it brought him
company that could give him the news from the upland, now
and then, and the correct time of day, and a little odd change
occasionally; and secondly, upon the account of the aforesaid
company, because they could always rely upon getting something
to comfort the inner man, good, when they landed from
their long adventure across the bay. And in good sooth, these
are not few, nor melancholy visitors, who make their pilgrimages
to this romantic region. Pilgrimages? Aye; for here
is a shrine most generous and propitious, to the bayman, the
sportsman, the bather, and the beach-flolicker. How often
have those dark waters been sprinkled, as with rain, with the

spent lead of the skulking shooter, and the clear air rent with
the oft echoed crack of his heated fowlingpiece! How often
has that winding beach drank the glad voice of the merry
maiden of Queens, as she welcomed to her bosom the mounting
swell of the ravenous ocean tide! How have rung the
blithe laugh, the half-stifled scream, the shriek, the prayer, the
confident voice, mingling and confused, with the splashing
plunge, and the breaking billows! Oh, days gone by! gone
by, alas! for ever! Shall I never wind my arm again around
the gentle waist of—Hold, hold, rash hand! Be comforted,
sorrowful heart! It is nothing, most discerning reader,—it is
nothing.—Let us hurry on with our legitimate raptures.

Then, again, old Neptune's sea-steeds never snuffed the
land-breeze from a more delicately pebbled strand; nor did
goddess nature ever paint a sheet of scenery more glorious,
than that which lies beneath, and above, and around you, when
gazing, in the quiet solitude of your eyry, in a summer's twilight,
from the topmost casement of that light-house. There,
from the south, comes the many-voiced ocean, sporting like a
mighty musician, running his wild notes upon the hollow-sounding
shore. Majestically, he lifts upon his billows, his
fleets of gallant ships, hailing the prayed-for land, and heaves
them aloft toward Heaven, as if vaunting the richness and
multitude of the gems that glow upon his restless bosom.
Near by, in the west, he has burst through, in some night of
rage, his ancient barrier, and rolls an impetuous current along
the Fire Island inlet. Beyond, lies the dismembered remainder
of the beach; and beach, and marsh, and breaker, and
blue shore, succeed, in turn, as far as eye can reach. Turn
to the north, and the quiet bay presents to you the contrast of
its transparent mirror. Stilly, and gently, it kisses the margin
of its beautiful islets, that glisten with green meadows, and

wave with bending rushes, and are vocal with the music of
the dowitcher and plover. The wood-crowned hills of Matowacs
bound your vision. Matowacs! Garden of Columbia!
Paradise of sportsmen! Mother and nourisher of a noble race
of hardy freemen!

We have not time for any more glorification at present.
As the happy laureat of Blackhawk would say, “sufficient for
the day is the gammon thereof.” The reader understands
now, sufficiently, all the necessary topography. It may be
well, however, to add that Raynor Rock's fishing-hut was
about two hundred yards from our landing place, and an equal
distance from Jerry's domicil and the light-house. After securing
our boat, we unloaded her, and carried our oars, and
guns, and traps, to Jerry's, and took lodgings. This was for
form sake merely, knowing, as we did, that the most of our
time would be spent in the bay, or in Raynor's hut. Jerry
was not in a very amiable mood when we arrived, and we had
none of us, any especial commendation to tarry long, except,
perhaps, Oliver, who came rather reluctantly out of the kitchen,
where we found him, as usual, helping the help. However,
we soon got away, and started for Raynor's, bearing the always
easy burden of a jug of special stuff, which we knew
would not come amiss of a rainy night. A hop, a skip, and a
jump, a few times repeated, brought us to the welcome which
has already been recorded.

“Lay on more wood. Zoph, get a pail of water. What's
the news in York? When did you come down? Left your
things at Jerry's? Had supper? A'nt ye hungry? What'll
ye drink? Boys, get that ere bass—stir, stir. Sit down,
Oliver; sit down on this pea-jacket.”

We were soon comfortable around a blazing fire, and rattling
off the usual small-talk of old acquaintances. As a matter

of course, supper was provided after the manner of fishermen.
As there was some simplicity and labor-saving about
this preparation, I will, in all benevolence, impart to the superintendents
of pot-hooks and trammels, and epicures in general,
the details thereof.

First, the fire being recalled to life upon the hearth of circling
stones, a temporary crane was formed by uniting above
the curling flame, the heads of three opposite crooked sticks,
whose sharpened ends were secured in the ground. Upon
this machine was hung the iron pot; it was the only one, and
so far as dimensions were concerned, it was perfectly qualified
for all its various vocations. This being filled from Jerry's
well, a noble bass, a captive of the last tide, was introduced
into the element. The lid was put on, the flame went
up, and in a little time a low bubbling grumbling noise was
heard, that Oliver said made him feel as though several families
had lately moved out of his ventricular tenements. The
bustling Zoph blew the kindling coals, with his lungs for a
bellows, bending down until his lips came in contact with the
very ashes.

“Studet maxime, ut olla ferveat, ut accuretur prandium,” said
I to Ned, quoting some old schoolboy slang,—I don't know
where I got it,—in an under tone, pointing to Zoph.

“No, I thank you,” replied Zoph, turning half round to me,
having caught the sound of the last word, and interpreting it
into an invitation—“I daresn't drink brandy on account o'
sprainen my foot.”

I accepted the offered credit without the slightest compunction
of conscience. Ned taught me that virtue. “Accipio”
is a fond, familiar word. It is a favorite maxim with Ned,
that a man so seldom gets an honest acknowledgment for what
he does do, that it is only a fair recompense to pick up a little

reputation, when he can, for what he does not do.—But the
fish.—Well, fire and water did their duty, and the bass was
stretched upon a pewter platter, ready for the knife, and set
down in the midst of the company.

“Cooked, glorified and made beautiful, by the irresistible
genius of hickory wood,” cried Ned, making a theatrical
flourish, and clapping a quarter of a pound of his subject-matter
into his mouth, in the place of the last word that went out.

A general distribution of platters having taken place, and
two or three hunks of rye-bread being tumbled upon the straw,
with butter, and pepper, and salt according, our jack-knives
were soon in requisition, every man cutting and eating “on
his own hook,” and, in a very short time, a very audible sound
of mastication went around the fireplace, and up even into the
secret places of the roof. The fish was good, glorious; it was
so lately out the water. “Piscis nequam, nisi recens.”[7] That
old saw is as true now, as it was in the time of the oyster-loving
poet who created it. By-the-by, I take credit here for
being the first icthyologist that has ever used that sentiment
in its literal sense. Its author, and all his quoters, pedagogues
and all, have, I believe, invariably applied it in its metaphorical
capacity. It is set down in some one of my juvenile study
books, as being the Latin for “a new broom sweeps clean.”
There is not the slightest doubt on my mind, that the memory
of the quaint thought was most diligently flogged into me at
school, and that, for its present apt illustration of my sentiments
concerning fish, my sympathetic reader is indebted to
the vigor and good will of the right hand of some one, or more,
of those worthy people, whose delightful task it was, in former
times, to teach my young ideas how to shoot, and to thresh

me. A good deal of Latin was instilled into me in that way,
but as it has leaked out principally, I generally try to make
myself intelligible in English. Ned and I are both fond of it,
though, and we talk our secrets in it a good deal; but what
we manufacture, does not always rise above the dignity of
hog-latin. Uncle Ben likes to hear us “jaw” in it, as he
terms it; he says he thinks “it's got such a sanction to it.”
Touching fish, Searson has a doublet, which that much-neglected,
and truly American poet, no doubt, thought good:—

The idea is simple, and the versification innocent; but I
question the morality of the sentiment. It is most distinctly
Epicurean.—But, supper.

“You needn't wash that ere pot,” said one of the crew,
whom I did not recognise, to Zoph, as he emptied the fish-water
out doors. “You know what was into it last.”

“It's as good as new,” replied Zoph, returning. “Hand
us that ere jug.”

The vessel referred to being replenished, now, jack-of-all-trades-like,
commenced the performance of the functions of a
tea-kettle, or rather of a chocolate cauldron. After pouring in
about a quart of molasses, the officiating cook opened his jack-knife,
and, bending over the pot, began to cut and scrape upon
a dusky-colored oblong cake, and he stuck to his task, until
the whole block had fallen in dust into the water. Then, the
mixture being stirred with the end of a broken eel-spear, the
process of blowing was repeated. As to what was to come

out of this composition, I felt seriously uncertain. However,
the fire crackled, and we cracked our jokes, and the pot boiled
over, and then they took it off, and set it down again by the
hearth. They called it chocolate. As good democrats, they
had a perfect right to do so, and I impeach not the propriety
of the baptism. We drew ourselves around it upon our
haunches, and fixed our eyes upon the smoking liquid. While
I was deliberating how we should ever get the stuff to our
lips, one of the boys handed us each a pine stick, about a
yard long, to one end of which was fastened a shell of that capacious
clam, commonly known and described as the skimmaug.

For the satisfaction of the curious in the philosophy of language
I will here remark, that of the orthography and etymology
of this testaceous name, I must confess myself to be
most lamentably unadvised. I am inclined to believe, however,
that the word is aboriginal, and that skimmaugs were the
shell-fish which the Marsapeag Indians used to send, in olden
times,—before they were civilized out of their wigwams and
hunting-grounds, and before wine and whist had usurped the
dominion of water and grouse in the region of Lif Snedecor
and Ronconcommer Pond,—by way of tribute to their more
powerful red brethren of the continent. I am confirmed in
this opinion, by one of the papers of that highly valuable and
extensively accessible institution, the New-York Historical
Society, in which is communicated the interesting fact, that
the Delaware tribe, or Lenni Lenapes, who claimed Matowacs
as a colony, were an uncommonly piscivorous nation. I spoke
to Uncle Ben upon the subject once, and asked his opinion.
He told me that he “couldn't say for sarten, whether it was
Ingen or Dutch, but he reckoned he'd heerd his grandfather
say that the savages was high for fish,” and the old man added,

without intending to pun, “Yes, yes, them Delawares was
amazen clamorous people.”[9]

Upon the introduction of these wands, I was at a loss to
imagine to what desperate purpose they were to be applied,
and apprehended a musical festival, or an Indian war-dance.
But the active hands, and thirsty throats of my companions,
soon enlightened my urban ignorance. These were spoons,
veritable tea-spoons—spoons wherewith to sip our chocolate.
And rapidly were they thrust into that steaming pot, ladling
up and bringing back the dripping nectar of its contents. This
was an interesting spectacle to contemplate. In sooth, it was
expressly ante-diluvian. Forcibly was I reminded of that ancient
and sententious maxim, “fingers was made before forks;”
and of that other pleasant household phrase, “make a long
arm and help yourself.”

“Can't you make chocolate without having it so devilish
hot, boys?”

“The fire was made of split wood, sir; that's the reason.”

The explanation was perfectly satisfactory. I soon became
expert in the handling of my instrument, and the constantly
going and returning vehicles soon exhausted the receiver.
Supper was done. So is this instructive chapter.

3. CHAPTER III.
A SHARK STORY.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Locus, in reply to a unanimous
call for a story—the relics of supper having been removed, all
to the big stone medicine jug,—“I'll go ahead, if you say so.
Here's the story. It is true, upon my honor, from beginning to
end—every word of it. I once crossed over to Faulkner's island,
to fish for tautaugs, as the north side people call black fish,
on the reefs hard by, in the Long Island Sound. Tim Titus,
—who died of the dropsy, down at Shinnecock point, last
spring,—lived there then. Tim was a right good fellow, only
he drank rather too much.

“It was during the latter part of July; the sharks and the
dog-fish had just begun to spoil sport. When Tim told me
about the sharks, I resolved to go prepared to entertain these
aquatic savages with all becoming attention and regard, if there
should chance to be any interloping about our fishing ground.
So we rigged out a set of extra large hooks, and shipped some
rope-yarn and steel chain, an axe, a couple of clubs, and an
old harpoon, in addition to our ordinary equipments, and off
we started. We threw out our anchor at half ebb tide, and
took some thumping large fish;—two of them weighed thirteen
pounds—so you may judge. The reef where we lay, was
about half a mile from the island, and, perhaps, a mile from
the Connecticut shore. We floated there, very quietly, throwing
out and hauling in, until the breaking of my line, with a
sudden and severe jerk, informed us that the sea attorneys
were in waiting, down stairs; and we accordingly prepared

to give them a retainer. A salt pork cloak upon one of our
magnum hooks, forthwith engaged one of the gentlemen in
our service. We got him along side, and by dint of piercing,
and thrusting, and banging, we accomplished a most exciting
and merry murder. We had business enough of the kind to
keep us employed until near low water. By this time, the
sharks had all cleared out, and the black fish were biting
again; the rock began to make its appearance above the water,
and in a little while its hard bald head was entirely dry.
Tim now proposed to set me out upon the rock, while he
rowed ashore to get the jug, which, strange to say, we had
left at the house. I assented to this proposition; first, because
I began to feel the effects of the sun upon my tongue,
and needed something to take, by way of medicine; and secondly,
because the rock was a favorite spot for a rod and
reel, and famous for luck; so I took my traps, and a box of
bait, and jumped upon my new station. Tim made for the
island.

Not many men would willingly have been left upon a little
barren reef, that was covered by every flow of the tide, in the
midst of a waste of waters, at such a distance from the shore,
even with an assurance from a companion more to be depended
upon, than mine, to return immediately, and lie by to take him
off. But some how or other, the excitement of my sport was
so high, and the romance of the situation was so delightful,
that I thought of nothing else but the prosecution of my fun,
and the contemplation of the novelty and beauty of the scene.
It was a mild pleasant afternoon in harvest time. The sky
was clear and pure. The deep blue sound, heaving all around
me, was studded with craft of all descriptions and dimensions,
from the dipping sail boat, to the rolling merchantman,
sinking and rising like sea-birds sporting with their white

wings in the surge. The grain and grass, on the neighboring
farms, were gold and green, and gracefully they bent obeisance
to a gentle breathing southwester. Farther off, the high
upland, and the distant coast gave a dim relief to the prominent
features of the landscape, and seemed the rich but dusky
frame of a brilliant fairy picture. Then, how still it was! not
a sound could be heard, except the occasional rustling of my
own motion, and the water beating against the sides, or gurgling
in the fissures of the rock, or except now and then the
cry of a solitary saucy gull, who would come out of his way
in the firmamemt, to see what I was doing without a boat, all
alone, in the middle of the sound; and who would hover, and
cry, and chatter, and make two or three circling swoops and
dashes at me, and then, after having satisfied his curiosity,
glide away in search of some other fool to scream at.

I soon became half indolent, and quite indifferent about fishing;
so I stretched myself out, at full length, upon the rock,
and gave myself up to the luxury of looking, and thinking.
The divine exercise soon put me fast asleep. I dreamed
away a couple of hours, and longer might have dreamed, but
for a tired fish-hawk, who chose to make my head his resting
place, and who waked and started me to my feet.

“Where is Tim Titus?” I muttered to myself, as I strained
my eyes over the now darkened water. But none was near
me, to answer that interesting question, and nothing was to be
seen of either Tim or his boat. “He should have been here
long ere this,” thought I, “and he promised faithfully not to
stay long—could he have forgotten? or has he paid too much
devotion to the jug?”

I began to feel uneasy, for the tide was rising fast, and soon
would cover the top of the rock, and high water mark was at
least a foot above my head. I buttoned up my coat, for either

the coming coolness of the evening, or else my growing apprehensions,
had set me trembling and chattering most painfully.
I braced my nerves, and set my teeth, and tried to
hum “begone dull care,” keeping time with my fists upon my
thighs. But what music! what melancholy merriment! I
started and shuddered at the doleful sound of my own voice.
I am not naturally a coward, but I should like to know the
man who would not, in such a situation, be alarmed. It is a
a cruel death to die, to be merely drowned, and to go through
the ordinary common places of suffocation, but to see your
death gradually rising to your eyes, to feel the water mounting,
inch by inch, upon your shivering sides, and to anticipate
the certainly coming, choking struggle for your last breath,
when, with the gurgling sound of an overflowing brook taking
a new direction, the cold brine pours into mouth, ears, and
nostrils, usurping the seat and avenues of health and life, and,
with gradual flow, stifling—smothering—suffocating!—It were
better to die a thousand common deaths.

This is one of the instances, in which, it must be admitted,
salt water is not a pleasant subject of contemplation. However,
the rock was not yet covered, and hope, blessed hope,
stuck faithfully by me. To beguile, if possible, the weary
time, I put on a bait, and threw out for a fish. I was sooner
successful than I could have wished to be, for hardly had my
line struck the water, before the hook was swallowed, and
my rod was bent with the dead hard pull of a twelve foot
shark. I let it run about fifty yards, and then reeled up.
He appeared not at all alarmed, and I could scarcely feel him
bear upon my fine hair line. He followed the pull gently,
and unresisting, came up to the rock, laid his nose upon its
side, and looked up into my face, not as if utterly unconcerned,
but with a sort of quizzical impudence, as though he

perfectly understood the precarious nature of my situation
The conduct of my captive renewed and increased my alarm.
And well it might; for the tide was now running over a corner
of the rock behind me, and a small stream rushed through
a cleft, or fissure, by my side, and formed a puddle at my
very feet. I broke my hook out of the monster's mouth, and
leaned upon my rod for support.

“Where is Tim Titus?”—I cried aloud—“Curse on the
drunken vagabond! will he never come?”

My ejaculations did no good. No Timothy appeared. It
became evident, that I must prepare for drowning, or for action.
The reef was completely covered, and the water was above the
soles of my feet. I was not much of a swimmer, and as to ever
reaching the Island, I could not even hope for that. However,
there was no alternative, and I tried to encourage myself,
by reflecting that necessity was the mother of invention
and that desperation will sometimes ensure success. Besides,
too, I considered and took comfort, from the thought that I
could wait for Tim, so long as I had a foothold, and then
commit myself to the uncertain strength of my arms, and legs,
for salvation. So I turned my bait box upside down, and
mounting upon that, endeavored to comfort my spirits, and to
be courageous, but submissive to my fate. I thought of death,
and what it might bring with it, and I tried to repent of the
multiplied iniquities of my almost wasted life; but I found
that that was no place for a sinner to settle his accounts.
Wretched soul! pray, I could not.

The water had now got above my ankles, when, to my
inexpressible joy, I saw a sloop bending down towards me,
with the evident intention of picking me up. No man can
imagine what were the sensations of gratitude which filled my
bosom at that moment.

When she got within a hundred yards of the reef, I sung
out to the man at the helm to luff up, and lie by, and lower
the boat; but to my amazement, I could get no reply, nor
notice of my request. I entreated them, for the love of heaven
to take me off, and I promised, I know not what rewards,
that were entirely beyond my power of bestowal. But the
brutal wretch of a Captain, muttering something to the effect
of “that he had'nt time to stop,” and giving me the kind and
sensible advice to pull of my coat, and swim ashore, put
the helm hard down, and away bore the sloop on the other
tack.

“Heartless villain!”—I shrieked out, in the torture of my
disappointment; “may God reward your inhumanity.” The
crew answered my prayer with a coarse, loud laugh, and the
cook asked me through a speaking trumpet, “If I was'nt
afraid of catching cold,”—The black rascal!

It was now time to strip; for my knees felt the cold tide,
and the wind, dying away, left a heavy swell, that swayed
and shook the box upon which I was mounted, so that I had
occasionally to stoop, and paddle with my hands, against the
water, in order to preserve my perpendicular. The setting
sun sent his almost horizontal streams of fire across the dark
waters, making them gloomy, and terrific, by the contrast of
his amber and purple glories.

Something glided by me in the water, and then made a
sudden halt. I looked upon the black mass, and, as my eye
ran along its dark outline, I saw, with horror, that it was a
shark; the identical monster, out of whose mouth I had just
broken my hook. He was fishing, now, for me, and was,
evidently, only waiting for the tide to rise high enough above
the rock, to glut at once his hunger and revenge. As the
water continued to mount above my knees, he seemed to

grow more hungry, and familiar. At last, he made a desperate
dash, and approaching within an inch of my legs,
turned upon his back, and opened his huge jaws for an attack.
With desperate strength, I thrust the end of my rod
violently at his mouth; and the brass head, ringing against
his teeth, threw him back into the deep current, and I lost
sight of him entirely. This, however, was but a momentary
repulse; for in the next minute, he was close behind my
back, and pulling at the skirts of my fustian coat, which hung
dipping into the water. I leaned forward hastily, and endeavored
to extricate myself from the dangerous grasp, but
the monster's teeth were too firmly set, and his immense
strength nearly drew me over. So, down flew my rod, and
off went my jacket, devoted peace-offerings to my voracious
visiter.

In an instant, the waves all around me were lashed into
froth and foam. No sooner was my poor old sporting friend
drawn under the surface, than it was fought for by at least
a dozen enormous combatants! The battle raged upon every
side. High, black fins rushed now here, now there, and long,
strong tails scattered sleet and froth, and the brine was thrown
up in jets, and eddied, and curled, and fell, and swelled, like
a whirlpool, in Hell-gate.

Of no long duration, however, was this fishy tourney. It
seemed soon to be discovered that the prize contended for,
contained nothing edible but cheese and crackers, and no flesh,
and as its mutilated fragments rose to the surface, the waves
subsided into their former smooth condition. Not till then
did I experience the real terrors of my situation. As I looked
around me, to see what had become of the robbers, I counted
one, two, three, yes, up to twelve, successively of the largest
sharks I ever saw, floating in a circle around me, like divergent

rays, all mathematically equi-distant from the rock, and
from each other; each perfectly motionless, and with his
gloating, fiery eye fixed full and fierce upon me. Basilisks
and rattle-snakes! how the fire of their steady eyes entered into
my heart! I was the centre of a circle, whose radii were
sharks! I was the unsprung, or rather unchewed game,
at which a pack of hunting sea-dogs was making a dead
point!

There was one old fellow, that kept within the circumference
of the circle. He seemed to be a sort of captain, or
leader of the band; or, rather, he acted as the coroner for
the other twelve of the inquisition, that were summoned to sit
on, and eat up my body. He glided around and about, and
every now and then would stop, and touch his nose against
some one of his comrades, and seem to consult, or to give instructions
as to the time and mode of operation. Occasionally,
he would skull himself up towards me, and examine the condition
of my flesh, and then again glide back, and rejoin the
troupe, and flap his tail, and have another confabulation. The
old rascal had, no doubt, been out into the highways and bye-ways,
and collected this company of his friends and kin-fish,
and invited them to supper. I must confess, that horribly as
I felt, I could not help but think of a tea party of demure old
maids, sitting in a solemn circle, with their skinny hands in
their laps, licking their expecting lips, while their hostess bustles
about in the important functions of her preparations. With
what an eye, have I seen such appurtenances of humanity
survey the location and adjustment of some especial condiment,
which is about to be submitted to criticism, and consumption.

My sensations began to be, now, most exquisite, indeed;
but I will not attempt to describe them. I was neither hot nor

cold, frightened nor composed; but I had a combination of all
kinds of feelings, and emotions. The present, past, future,
heaven, earth, my father and mother, a little girl I knew once,
and the sharks, were all confusedly mixed up together, and
swelled my crazy brain almost to bursting. I cried, and
laughed, and shouted, and screamed for Tim Titns. In a fit
of most wise madness, I opened my broad-bladed fishing
knife, and waved it around my head, with an air of defiance.
As the tide continued to rise, my extravagance of madness
mounted. At one time, I became persuaded that my tide-waiters
were reasonable beings, who might be talked into
mercy, and humanity, if a body could only hit upon the right
text. So, I bowed, and gesticulated, and threw out my hands,
and talked to them, as friends, and brothers, members of my
family, cousins, uncles, aunts, people waiting to have their
bills paid;—I scolded them as my servants; I abused them
as duns; I implored them as jurymen sitting on the question
of my life; I congratulated, and flattered them as my comrades
upon some glorious enterprize; I sung and ranted to them,
now as an actor in a play-house, and now as an elder at a
camp-meeting; in one moment, roaring
and in the next, giving out to my attentive hearers for singing,
the hymn of Dr. Watts so admirably appropriated to the
occasion,

In the mean time, the water had got well up towards my
shoulders, and while I was shaking and vibrating upon my
uncertain foothold, I felt the cold nose of the captain of the

band, snubbing against my side. Desperately, and without
a definite object, I struck my knife at one of his eyes, and by
some singular fortune, cut it out clean from the socket.
The shark darted back, and halted. In an instant hope and
and reason came to my relief; and it occurred to me, that
if I could only blind the monster, I might yet escape. Accordingly,
I stood ready for the next attack. The loss of an
eye did not seem to affect him much, for, after shaking
his head, once or twice, he came up to me again, and when
he was about half an inch off, turned upon his back. This
was the critical moment. With a most unaccountable presence
of mind, I laid hold of his nose with my left hand,
and with my right, I scooped out his remaining organ of vision.
He opened his big mouth, and champed his long teeth at me,
in despair. But it was all over with him. I raised my right
foot and gave him a hard shove, and he glided off into deep
water, and went to the bottom.

Well, gentlemen, I suppose you'll think it a hard story, but
it is none the less a fact, that I served every remaining one
of those nineteen sharks in the same fashion. They all came
up to me, one by one, regularly, and in order; and I scooped
their eyes out, and gave them a shove, and they went off into
deep water, just like so many lambs. By the time I had
scooped out and blinded a couple of dozen of them, they began
to seem so scarce, that I thought I would swim for the
island, and fight the rest for fun, on the way; but just then,
Tim Titus hove in sight, and it had got to be almost dark, and
I concluded to get aboard, and rest myself.”

4. CHAPTER IV.

“What an infernal lie!” growled Daniel.

“'Have my doubts;” suggested the somnolent Peter Probasco,
with all the solemnity of a man who knows his situation;
at the same time shaking his head and spilling his
liquor.

“Ha! ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha!” roared all the rest of the
boys together.

“Is he done?” asked Raynor Rock.

“How many shirks was there?” cried Long John, putting
in his unusual lingual oar.

“That story puts me in mind,” said Venus Raynor, “about
what I've heerd tell on Ebenezer Smith, at the time he went
down to the north pole on a walen' voyage.”

“Now look out for a screamer,” laughed out Raynor Rock,
refilling his pipe. “Stand by, Mr. Cypress, to let the sheet
go.”

“Is there any thing uncommon about that yarn, Venus?”

“Oncommon! well, I expect it's putty smart and uncommon
for a man to go to sea with a bear, all alone, on a bare
cake of ice. Captain Smith's woman used to say she couldn't
bear to think on't.”

“Tell us the whole of that, Venus,” said Ned;—“that is, if
it is true. Mine was—the whole of it,—although Peter has
his doubts.”

“I can't tell it as well as Zoph can, but I've no 'jections to
tell it my way, no how. So, here goes—that's great brandy,
Mr. Cypress.” There was a gurgling sound of “something-to-take,”
running.

“Well, they was down into Baffin's Bay, or some other o'
them cold Norwegen bays at the North, where the rain
freezes as it comes down, and stands up in the air, on winter
mornens, like great mountens o' ice, all in streaks. Well, the
schooner was layen at anchor, and all the hands was out into
the small boats, looken for wales;—all except the capting,
who said he wan't very well that day. Well, he was walken
up and down, on deck, smoken and thinken, I expect, mostly,
when all on a sudden he reckoned he see one o' them big
white bears—polar bears, you know—big as thunder—with
long teeth. He reckoned he see one on 'em sclumpen along
on a great cake o' ice, they lay on the leeward side of the bay,
up again the bank. The old cap. wanted to kill one o' them
varmints most wonderful, but he never lucked to get a chance.
Now tho', he thought, the time had come for him to walk into
one on 'em at least, and fix his mutton for him right. So
he run forrad and lay hold onto a small skiff, that was layen
near the forc'stal, and run her out, and launched her. Then
he tuk a drink, and—here's luck—and put in a stiff load of
powder, a couple of balls, and jumped in, and pulled away for
the ice.

“It wa'n't long fore he got 'cross the bay, for it was a
narrer piece o' water—not more than haaf a mile wide—and
then he got out on to the ice. It was a smart and large
cake, and the bear was 'way down to the tother end on't, by
the edge o' the water. So, he walked first strut along, and
then when he got putty cloast he walked 'round catecorned-like—like's
if he was driven for a plain plover—so that the
bear wouldn't think he was comin arter him, and he dragged
himself along on his hands and knees low down, mostly.
Well, the bear did'nt seem to mind him none, and he got up
within 'bout fifty yards on him, and then he looked so savage

and big,—the bear did,—that the captin stopped, and rested
on his knees, and put up his gun, and he was a goin to shoot.
But just then the bear turned round and snuffed up the captin,—just
as one of Lif's hounds snuffs up an old buck, Mr.
Cypress,—and begun to walk towards him, slowly like. He
come along, the captin said, clump, clump, very slow, and
made the ice bend and crack agin under him, so that the
water come up and putty much kivered it all over. Well,
there the captin was all the time squat on his knees, with
his gun pinted, waiten for the varment to come up, and his
knees and legs was most mighty cold by means of the water,
that the bear riz on the ice as I was mentionen. At last the
bear seemed to make up his mind to see how the captin
would taste, and so he left off walken slow, and started off on
a smart and swift trot, right towards the old man, with his
mouth wide open, roaren, and his tail sticken out stiff. The
captin kept still, looken out all the time putty sharp, I should
say, till the beast got within about ten yards on him, and then
he let him have it. He aimed right at the fleshy part of his
heart, but the bear dodged at the flash, and rared up, and the
balls went into his two hind legs, jist by the jynt, one into
each, and broke the thigh bones smack off, so that he went
right down aft, on the ice, thump, on his hind quarters,
with nothen standen but his fore legs and his head ris up, a
growlen at the captin. When the old man see him down,
and tryen to slide along the ice to get his revenge, likely,
thinks he to himself, thinks he, I might as well get up and
go and cut that ere creter's throat. So he tuk out his knife
and opened it. But when he started to get up, he found to
his extonishment, that he was fruz fast to the ice. Don't
laugh; it's a fact; there an't no doubt. The water, you
see, had been round him, a smart and long while, whilst he
was waiten for the bear, and it's wonderful cold in them regions,
as I was sayen, and you'll freeze in a minit if you don't
keep moven about smartly. So the captin he strained first
one leg, and then he strained tother, but he couldn't move
'em none. They was both fruz fast into the ice, about an inch
and a half deep, from knee to toe, tight as a Jarsey eyster
perryauger on a mud flat at low water. So he laid down his
gun, and looked at the bear, and doubled up his fists. `Come
on, you bloody varmint,' says the old man, as the bear swalloped
along on his hinder eend, comen at him. He kept getten
weaker, tho', and comen slower and slower all the time, so
that, at last, be didn't seem to move none; and directly, when
he'd got so near that the captin could jest give him a dig in
the nose by reachen forrard putty smart and far, the captin
see that the beast was fruz fast too, nor he couldn't move a
step further forrard no ways. Then the captin burst out a
laughen, and clapped his hands down on to his thighs, and
roared. The bear seemed to be most onmighty mad at the
old man's fun, and set up such a growlen that what should
come to pass, but the ice cracks, and breaks all around the
captin and the bear, down to the water's edge, and the wind
jist then a shiften, and comen off shore, away they floated on
a cake of ice about ten by six, off to sea, without the darned
a biscuit, or a quart o' liquor to stand 'em on the cruise!
There they sot, the bear and the captin, jest so near that
when they both reached forrads, they could jest about touch
noses, and nother one not able to move any part on him, only
excepten his upper part and fore paws.”

“By jolly! that was rather a critical predicament, Venus,”
cried Ned, buttoning his coat. “I should have thought that
the captain's nose and ears and hands would have been frozen
too.”

“That's quite naytr'l to suppose, sir, but you see the bear
kept him warm in the upper parts, by bein so cloast to him,
and breathen hard and hot on the old man whenever he
growled at him. Them polar bears is wonderful hardy animals,
and has a monstrous deal o' heat in 'em, by means of
their bein able to stand such cold climates, I expect. And
so the captin knowed this, and whenever he felt chilly, he
jest tuk his ramrod, and stirred up the old rascal, and made
him roar and squeal, and then the hot breath would come
pouren out all over the captin, and made the air quite moderut
and pleasant.”

“Well, go on, Venus. Take another horn first.”

“Well, there a'nt much more on't. Off they went to sea,
and sometimes the wind druv 'em nothe, and then agin it druv
'em southe, but they went southe mostly; and so it went on,
until they were out about three weeks. So at last one afternoon.”—

“But, Venus, stop; tell us in the name of wonder, how did
the captain contrive to support life all this time?”

“Why, sir, to be sure, it was a hard kind o' life to support,
but a hardy man will get used to almost”—

“No, no; what did he eat? what did he feed on?”

“O—O—I'd liked to've skipped that ere.—Why sir, I've
heerd different accounts as to that. Uncle Obe Verity told
me he reckoned the captin cut off one of the bear's paws,
when he lay stretched out asleep, one day, with his jack-knife,
and sucked that for fodder, and they say there's a smart
deal 'o nourishment in a white bear's foot. But if I may be
allowed to spend my 'pinion, I should say my old man's account
is the rightest, and that's—what's as follows. You see
after they'd been out three days abouts, they begun to grow
kind o'hungry, and then they got friendly, for misery loves company,

you know; and the captin said the bear looked at him
several times, very sorrowful, as much as to say, `captin
what the devil shall we do?' Well one day they was sitten,
looken at each other, with the tears ready to burst out o' their
eyes, when all of a hurry, something come floppen up out o' the
water onto the ice. The captin looked and see it was a seal.
The bear's eyes kindled up as he looked at it, and then,
the captin said he giv him a wink to keep still. So there
they sot, still as starch, till the seal not thinken nothen o' them
no more nor if they were dead, walked right up between 'em.
Then slump! went down old whitey's nails, into the fishes flesh,
and the captin run his jack-knife into the tender loin. The
seal soon got his bitters, and the captin cut a big hunk off the
tail eend, and put it behind him, out o' the bear's reach, and
then he felt smart and comfortable, for he had stores enough
for a long cruise, though the bear couldn't say so much for
himself.

Well, the bear, by course, soon ran out o' provisions, and
had to put himself onto short allowance; and then he begun
to show his naytural temper. He first stretched himself out as
far as he could go, and tried to hook the captin's piece o' seal,
but when he found he could'nt reach that, he begun to blow
and yell. Then he'd rare up and roar, and try to get himself
clear from the ice. But mostly he rared up and roared,
and pounded his big paws and head upon the ice, till bye and
bye, (jest as the captin said he expected,) the ice cracked in
two agin, and split right through between the bear and the
captin, and there they was on two different pieces o' ice, the
captin and the bear! The old man said he raaly felt sorry
at parten company, and when the cake split and separate, he
cut off about a haaf o' pound o' seal and chucked it to the
bear. But either because it wa'nt enough for him, or else on

account o' his feelen bad at the captin's goen, the beast
would'nt touch it to eat it, and he laid it down, and growled
and moaned over it quite pitiful. Well, off they went, one
one way, and tother 'nother way, both feel'n pretty bad, I expect.
After a while the captin got smart and cold, and felt
mighty lonesome, and he said he raaly thought he'd a gi'n in
and died, if they had'nt pick'd him up that arternoon.”

“Who picked him up, Venus?”

“Who? a codfish craft off o' Newfoundland, I expect.
They did'nt know what to make o' him when they first see
him slingen up his hat for 'em. But they got out all their
boats, and took a small swivel and a couple o' muskets a board
and started off—expeoten it was the sea-sarpent, or an old
maremaid. They would'nt believe it was a man, until he'd
told 'em all about it, and then they did'nt hardly believe it
nuther, and they cut him out o' the ice and tuk him aboard
their vessel, and rubbed his legs with ile o' vitrol; but it was
a long time afore they come to.”

“Did'nt they hurt him badly in cutting him out, Venus?”

“No sir, I believe not; not so bad as one might s'pose;
for you see he'd been stuck in so long, that the circulaten on
his blood had kind o' rotted the ice that was right next to him,
and when they begun to cut, it crack'd off pretty smart and
easy, and he come out whole like a hard biled egg.”

“What became of the bear?”

“Ca'nt say as to that, what became o' him. He went off
to sea somewheres, I expect. I should like to know, myself,
how the varment got along, right well, for it was kind in him
to let the captin have the biggest haaf o' the seal, any how.
That's all boys. How many's asleep?”

5. CHAPTER V.

“Asleep!” cried Ned. “It would be difficult for any sensible
person to fall asleep during a recital of such original and
thrilling interest. The Argonautic expedition, the perilous
navigation of Æneas, the bold adventure of the New England
pilgrims”—

“Have my doubts,” snorted Peter, interrupting Ned's laudation,
in a voice not so articulate, but that the utterance
might have been acknowledged for the profound expression
of the sentiments of a gentleman in the land of dreams. Peter's
drowsiness had finally prevailed not only over his sense
of hearing but also over his sense of imbibition. I picked up
his cannikin, and solemnly shook my own head in place of his,
as he pronounced the oracular judgment. “Have my doubts,
mostly, mister, I say,” he grumbled again, and then the veteran
gray battallion that stood marshalled upon his chin, erect,
and John of Gaunt-like, or rather like the ragged columns of
the Giant's Causeway, bristled up to meet the descent of his
overhanging, ultra-Wellington nose. There was a noise as
of a muttered voice of trumpets. And then it gradually died
away, and there was a deep, deep peace. To use Peter's
own classical language, he was “shut up.”

“Asleep? Not a man, Venus,” said Oliver Paul. “If
thee tells us such yarns as that, we won't go to sleep all night.
But thee must not ask us to believe them.”

“Well, every man must believe for himself,” replied Venus,
“I expect. I admit it's likely the captin must have stretched
a leetle about the length o' time he was out, I should say.
But it's easy to make a mistake about the number of days in

them latitudes, you know; 'cause I've heerd say the sun
shines there several days together on a stretch, sometimes,
without goen down none; and then agin it's as dark as pitch
for a hull month, and no moon nother. Some people reckons
the sun can't rise there, no how, winter mornens, on account
it's bein so darn'd cold. How is it about that Mr. Cypress?
You're college larnt, I expect.”

“It's a long answer to that question, Venus. Since Captain
Symmes returned from his penetration into the north
pole, there has been a vast addition to our stores of knowledge
of the character and habits of the sun. Professor Saltonstall
contends, and proves, to my satisfaction, at the least,
that the god of day is a living animal, the Behemoth of the
Scriptures. But I'll tell you all about that some other, better
opportunity;—the next time we're stooling snipe together, in
Pine Creek. Let's have another story, now. Zoph, can't
you get up something? What was that Venus said about
mermaids? Were there ever any mermaids about here?”

“Can't say—Can't say,” answered Zoph, with a hesitating,
inquiring sort of deliberation; “can't say, for my part; but
I've heerd folks tell there used to be lots on 'em.”

“Sarten, sarten, no doubt;” continued Daniel, with better
confidence. “I know, that in th' time o' my gr't gr'ndf'th'r
they used to be pr'tty considerabl' plenty. Th' old man had
a smart tussel with a he merm'd—a merman, I sh'd say—one
day.”

“Let's have that, Dannel;” cried two or three voices at
once.

“Let's have a drink, first;” interposed Dan's copartner in
the eel trade,—who probably knew the necessity of soaking
the story—at the same time uncorking the jug. “Here,
Dannel, hand the tumbler over to Mr. Paul.”

“Don't drink—don't drink, boys,” advised the virtuous
Oliver, as usual. “Well, if you will,”—resting the jug upon
his knee with his right hand, and bringing its avenue of discharge
into no merely suspicious juxtaposition to the tumbler
in his left—“if you will, you will. Some pork will boil that
way.”

“It's goen to be a dry story, I expect, Mr. Paul. My throat
feels 'mazen dusty a'ready.”

A general drought prevailed, and the watering-pot performed
its interesting and refreshing functions.

At last, the ground being put in order, Dan prepared to sow
the crop. So he hummed and hawed, and threw out his cud,
and drew his sleeve across his chin, and began his work after
this wise.—Dan, it will be perceived, is a special economist
of vowels, and uses no more words than are precisely necessary
to “express his sentiments.”

“Why, y' see, th' old man was one o' th' first settlers that
come down from M'sschus'tts, and he tuk a small farm on
shears down to Fort-neck, and he'd every thing fixed accorden.
The most of his time, hows'm'ver, he spent in the bay, clammen
and sich like. He was putty tol'r'bl' smart with a gun, too,
and he was the first man that made wooden stools for
ducks. So he was out bright and arely one morn'n—he'd
laid out all night, likely—and he'd his stool sot out on th'
n'r-east side o' a hassck off Wanza's Flat;—(the place tuk its
name from gr't gr'ndfth'r;)—th' wind bein from th' so'-west
princip'ly; and he lay in his skiff in the hassck, putty well
hid, for't was in th' fall o' th' year, and the sedge was smart
and high. Well, jest arter day 'd fairly broke, and the faawl
begun to stir, he reckoned he heer'd a kind o' splashen in the
water, like geese pick'n and wash'n themselves. So he

peeked through the grass, softly, to see where the flock was;
but, 'stead o' geese, he see a queer looken old feller waden
'long on the edge o' th' flat, jest by th' channel, benden low
down, with a bow and arr in his hands, all fixed, ready to
shoot, and his eye upon gr't gr'ndf'th'r's stool. `That feller
thinks my stool's faawl,' says the old man to himself, softly,
'cause he 'xpected the fell'r was an Ingen, and there wa'n't
no tellen whether he was friendly or not, in them times. So
he sot still and watched. The bow and arr kept goen, on, and
to rights it stopped. Then the feller what had it, ris up, and
pulled string, and let slip. Slap went the arr, strut into one
o' gr't gr'ndf'th'r's broadbills, and stuck fast, shaken. The old
man sniggled as he see th' other feller pull, and then jump and
splash thro' th' water to pick up his game, but he said nothen.
Well, the merm'n,—as it turned out to be,—got to th' stool,
and he seemed most won'rf'll s'prized th' birds didn't get up
and fly, and then he tuk up the b'rdb'll, and pulled out his arr,
and turned the stool ov'r and ov'r, and smelt it, and grinned,
and seemed quite uneasy to make out what 'twas. Then he
tuk up nother one, and he turned 'em putty much all ov'r, and
tore their anchors loose.

“Gr't gr'ndf'th'r wa'n't a bit skeered, and he did'n't like
this much, but he didn't want to git into a passion with an
Ingen, for they're full o' fight, and he loved peace; and besides
he didn't want to take no dis'dvantage on 'im, and he'd
two guns loaded in th' skiff, and th' other feller hadn't only a
bow and arr, and the old man hoped he'd clear out soon. It
wa'n't to be, hows'mver, that the old man shouldn't get int' a
scrape; for what's the feller with the bow and arr do, arter
consideren and smellen a smart and long spell, but pick up
the whole stool,—every one on 'em,—and sling 'em ov'r's
shoulder, and begin to make tracks! Gr't gr'ndf'th'r couldn't

stand that ere. So he sung out to him, putty loud and sharp,
to lay down them stools, and he shoved the skiff out the hassck,
and then he see plain enough it was a merm'n. Then the
old man was a little started, I expect. Hows'mver, he shoved
right up to him, and got his old muskets ready. Well, the
merm'n turned round, and sich another looken mortal man gr't
gr'ndf'th'r said he never did see. He'd big bushy hair all ov'r
'im, and big whiskers, and his eyes was green and small's a
mushrat's, and where the flesh was, he was ruther scaly-like.

He hadn't stitch clothes ont' 'm, but the water was up to's
waist, and kivered 'im up so that gr't gr'ndf'th'r couldn't see
the biggist part on 'im. Soon's the old man got done jawen,
the merm'n he begun to talk out the darndest talk you ever
heerd. I disremember 'xactly, but I b'lieve 'twas somethin
like `norgus porgus carry-Yorkus,' and all sich stuff. Ephr'm
Salem, the schoolmaster, used to reckon 'twas Lating, and
meant somethin 'bout takin load o' porgees down to York;
other some said 'twas Dutch; but I can't say. Well, the old
man let him talk his talk out, and then he tuk his turn. Says
the old man says he, `it ant respect'ble, 'tant honest, mister
merm'n, to hook other people's property. Them's my stool,'
says he. `Ye lie,' says the merm'n,—speakin so gr't gr'ndf'th'r
could hear 'im plain enough when he cum to the pint;—
`ye lie,' says he, `I jest now shot 'em.'

“`Shot 'em, you b.....,' says the old man, gittin mad;
`shot 'em? them's wooden stools what I made myself and anchored
'em here last night.'

“`That's 'nother,' says the merm'n; `ye blackguard, they're
only dead ducks spetrerfried and turned into white oak. I'm
seen 'em here, and knowed they was cotched fast into the eel
grass, a smart and long while; good mornen, my old cock, I
must be goen.'

“`Lay them stool down,' says gr't gr'ndf'th'r, `lay them
stool down, or, by golly, I'll put a charge o' shot into ye.'

“`Shoot away, my man,' says the merm'n sneerin-like, and
he turns off to clear out. So, the old man, sein his stool
walked off in that ere way, cotched up one o' his guns, and,
by jings, he let split right into the merm'n's back, and marked
him from his shoulders down, thick as mustard-seed, with
about three ounces of No. 3,—what the old man put in for
brant the night afore. The old thief was putty well riddled, I
expect. He jumped up out th' water 'bout a yard high, and
squealed out 's if he was killed. But he wa'n't tho', for arter
rubbin his back a little while, he turned round, and says he
`now I s'pose you've done it, don't you?' quite sharp and
saucy; `I wanted a little lead into me for ballast; what's the
costs, squire?'

“`Lay down them ere stool,' says the old man, `lay down
them ere stool.' I wont,' says the merm'n. `If ye don't,'
says gr't gr'ndf'th'r, `I'll give ye t'other gun, and that's loaded
with double B; may be ye wont like that quite so well,
prehaps.'

“`Fire away and be d—d,' says the merm'n, and the
old man giv it to him, sure enough. This time he planted it
right int' his face and eyes, and the blood run out all white
like milk. The merm'n hollored, and yawked, and swore,
and rubbed, and he let the stool drop, and he seemed to be
putty much blinded and done up, and gr't gr'ndf 'th'r thought
he was spoke for. Hows'm'ver he thought it was best to
load up and be ready in case o' the merm'n's gittin well, and
comin at 'im 'gen. But just as he tuk up his horn to prime,
the merm'n div and vanished. `What's the how, now?' says
gr't gr'ndf'th'r, and he got up onto the gunnels o' the boat, to
watch for squalls; and he stood there teteren on a larboard

and starboard straddle, looken out putty sharp, for he reckoned
there was somethin comin. There wa'n't no mistake
'bout that, for t'rights the old man felt the skiff shaken under
'im, and he see right off that the merm'n was down below,
tryen t'upset 'im, and git 'im int' the water. That ruther
started the old man, for he knowed if he once got int' th' water,
he'd stand no kind o' chance with a merm'n, which is jest the
same as an otter, 'xcept the sense, you know. So he jumped
down to his oars, to pull for the hassck. That wouldn't answer
much, tho,' for th' oars hadn't touched water, 'fore the
merm'n broke 'em smack off, and the old man had to pull the
sprit out the sail, and take to shoven. The moment he struck
bottom, he heerd a kind o' grunten laugh under th' skiff, and
somebody drew the sprit down, deep int' th' mud, so that th'
old man couldn't pull it out; at the same time th' merm'n tilted
th' skiff over smart and far, so that her keel was most out o'
water, and th' old man was taken strut off both 's feet, and
highsted up int' th' air, high and dry, holden onto the eend o'
th' sprit; and the skiff shot away, and left 'im, twenty yards
off, or twenty-five I sh'd say, mostly. The sprit was putty
stiff, I expect, tho' it bent smartly; but gr't gr'ndf'th'r hung
on't, like death to a dead nigger, his feet bein bout three foot
from the water's edge when he held up his knees.”

“Dan,” said I, (taking advantage of a moment's pause,
during which he experienced imbibition,) was the old gentleman
on your father's or your mother's side?”

“Have my doubts he don't know nuther,”—again muttered
the sleeping skeptic, whose tympanum readily acknowledged
the interruption of a voice foreign to the story,—“but his
father was a smart man, and I knowed him.”

“Gravius anhelata! Good night, Peter.”

“Mr. Cypress,” said Dan, with a face full of sincere
anxiety, “would I tell you any thing I did not believe?”

“No, Dan, never; no, no; go on, go on. I only asked
for information.”

“Well, where was I?—Yes—yes—Well, there th' old
man hung, ont' th' top th' sprit, not taken much comfort, I
sh'd say. Then, up, by course, pops the merm'n, and begins
to make all kinds o' fun th' old man, and gives 'im all sorts o'
saace, whilst he stood in the water clost by th' sprit, washen
off the blood and pick'n the shots out his face. Gr't gr'ndf'th'r
wouldn't answ'r 'im back tho', 'cause he knowed it wa'n't
no use, but he kept wishen some boat would come along, and
give 'im a hand, and he 'xpected there must be somebody or
'nother out that day. Meantime, tho', he tho't 'twas best to
let th' merm'n see he wa'n't 'fraid on 'im none, so he tuk out
his tinder-box and pipe, and struck a light, and set up
smoken, quite at ease. Well, there he hung and smoked, putty
much all of three hours, till he got consid'r'ble tired, I sh'd
say, and the merm'n looked 's good 's new, only 'xcepten the
holes in 's face, which was all thick together like th' holes in
the black banks, where the fiddlers come out on. `Wont you
walk down, sir?' says the merm'n, arter a while, to gr't gr'ndf'th'r,
quite p'lite; `I sh'd be quite happy to shake hands wi'
ye, and make it up.'

“Gr't gr'ndf'th'r wouldn't say a word.

“`Wont ye answer, d—n ye?' says the cunnen devil,
gritt'n's teeth; and he walks up to the sprit, and lays hold, and
shakes it hard, jist as ye'd shake a young pear-tree. `Drop
off, drop off,' says he, shaken 'er all his might.

“Then th' old man made up his mind he'd got to come;
so he watches 'is chance, and gives a spring, and jumps, so
as to strike th' merm'n's shoulder, and from that he jumps

agin, a long stretch, towards the hassck, where the water
was shallerer.

“The merm'n was arter 'im strut, and cotched 'im up in
no time, and then they clinched. That ere fight I sh'ld like
to seen, may be I don't think. It was hip and thigh, and toss
up for the best, for putty much an hour 'bouts; sometimes the
merm'n bein' ahead, and sometimes gr't gr'ndf'th'r, dependen
mostly on th' depth th' water; for when th' old man could
keep's ground in shaller water, he could lick the merm'n to
thunder; but the merm'n was leetle the activest in deep
water. Well, it couldn't be 'xpected but what they sh'ld both
get pr'tty smart and tired, and I reckon they was both willen
to 'cknowledge beat. Th' old man was jist goen to, when
the merm'n sings out, `Mister, let's stop and rest.'

“ `Done,' says gr't gr'ndf'th'r, glad enough; and they stopped
short, and went to th' hassck, and sot down on the sedge
grass, both breathen like a porpus.

“Arter they'd sot there a little while, and got breath, th'
old man sung out he was ready, but the merm'n said he wa'n't,
and he reck'n'd he felt putty smart and bad. So th' old man
thought 'twould be a good time to go arter's skiff. `You
ought n't t've shoved my boat away, any how,' says he;
`how shall I get back t' hum t'-night?'

“ `That's true,' said the merm'n, quite reason'bl'; `if y'll
promise to come right back, and finish this ere fight, I'll let
ye go and swim arter it.'

“ `I will,' says th' old man, `honor bright;' and off he
swum. When he got off 'bout two rod, he looked back at
th' merm'n, and he thought he seemed to be 'mazen pale and
sick. `Make haste back,' sings out the merm'n. `Ay, ay,'
says th' old man, and he struck away.

The tide had drifted th' skiff a smart ways off, and she lay

putty much down t' th' beach, on a bar; and 'twas quite a
spell 'fore the old man could get to the hassck. But when
he arriv, there wa'nt a hair of a merm'n to b' seen, only in
the place where he'd sot there was a big heap o' white
jelly, like a stingen quarll. Gr't gr'ndf'th'r kicked it over
w' his foot, and it made a thin squeak, like a swaller high
up over-head, and he reckoned it giv' 'im a kind o' lect'ral
shock. So he sot to work and picked up his tools, which
was scattered putty much all over the bay, and he cleared out
t' hum. That's the last he seen o' that merm'n.”

“Surely, surely. Walloped him into nothen, I expect,”
said Venus. “I give in arter that, Dannel.”

“Have my doubts, agen!” sung out Peter, waking up from
the straw, where his universally incredulous judgment had
been for some time past taking unquiet and sonorous repose.
“Have my doubts, mister, I say.”

“You're drunk, old vulture-nose;” cried Ned, authoritatively.
“Shut up; I'm satisfied that the story is true. What object
could the old man have had in telling a lie? Besides, every
body knows that mermaids were plenty here once. Wasn't
Jerry Smith's wife a mermaid? Didn't I see one myself,
once, in Brick-house brook, when I was trouting?”

“Likely, likely;” quoth Oliver. “Tell us about that
Eddy. When was it? I never heard thee mention it before.”

“Yes, you have, Oliver, fifty times! but, as it is a short
story, and I should like to resolve Peter's doubts, for once,
I'll tell again.—Don't interrupt me, now.—It was one April
morning, in that year when you and I had the great flight of
geese, Raynor. I went up through the woods, and struck
into the brook about two miles above the turnpike, and started
to wade it down to the road. You know how wild the country

is there, and how wantonly the brook runs, bending, and
winding, and coquetting with the wintergreen and cranberry
vines, that fringe its banks; how it is constantly changing its
depth and strength, and color, sometimes dashing on, in a
narrow current not more than three or four feet in width, and
curling darkly and swiftly around the old stumps, that are rotting
by its edges, and then, at a little distance off, spreading
free, and flowing smooth, to the breadth of twenty yards;
while all the way it is overarched, and in some places nearly
hidden by the intertwined hazel, and alders, and scrub oaks.
It is just the stream that I should think would captivate a
water nymph's fancy; it is so solitary, and quiet, and romantic.
You hear no noise while you are fishing, save of your
own splashing footsteps, or the brushed-by, crackling bushes,
—scarcely even the rushing of the wind,—so deep and thick
is the envelopement of the woods; and in wading half a mile,
and basketing thirty fish, you might think you were alone in
the world, if you did not now and then startle a thirsty fawn,
or a brooding wood-duck. Well, I was coming down through
a broad, shallow, beautifully gravelled bottom, where the
water was not more than half-way up to my knees, and was
just beginning to take more stealthy steps, so as to make the
least possible noise, (for I was approaching a favorite hole,)
when suddenly I heard what seemed to be the voice of a
young girl of fifteen or sixteen burst out a singing ahead of
me, just around the next bend of the brook.

“I was half frightened to death, for I thought it must be
some poor mad creature that had escaped from her confinement;
and in fact I had heard that Ellen—what's her name?
I forget—had been rather flighty ever since young Jones left
off paying attentions to her. However, there was no backing
out for me, now; vestigia nulla retrorsum, in the case of a

woman, Cypress. I was in the scrape; revocare gradum
was out of the question. So I went ahead softly, and when
I got to the bend, I put my left eye around the bushes, and
looked. By all the little fishes, it was a lovely sight! She
was sitting upon a hemlock log that had fallen across the
brook, with her naked feet and legs hanging in the water.
There she sat, paddling, and splashing, and combing her long,
beautiful, floating hair, and singing. I was entranced, petrified.
She would sing a little ballad, and then she'd stop and
wring her hands, and cry. Then she'd laugh, and flirt about
her long hair. Then again she would look sorrowful, and
sigh as though her heart would break, and sing her song
over again. Presently she bent down to the stream, and began
to talk earnestly to somebody. I leaned forward to take
a look at the stranger, and to whom do you think she was
talking? It was a trout, a brook trout, an old fellow that
I have no doubt would have weighed full three pounds. He
was floating on the top of the water, and dimpling, and
springing up about her, as though he, too, felt and acknowledged
the heavenly influence of her beauty. She bent her
long fingers, and tickled him upon his back, and under his
side, and he absolutely jumped through her hands, backwards
and forwards, as if in a delirium of frolic.—It was
by her hands that I knew she was a mermaid. They were
bluey and webbed, though not much more than a black-breasted
plover's feet. There was nothing positively icthyal in
their formation.—After a while she commenced singing,
again. This was a new tune, and most exquisitely sweet.
I took out my pencil and wrote down the words of the song,
on a blank leaf for memoranda, in my fishing book. Shall
I repeat them?” “Do it,” we all cried out with earnestness.

“I'll try,” said Ned, sighing. “I wish I could sing them.
They ran somewhat in this way:—

“The words are not much. But O! how exquisite was
that music; Cypress, it was like the mellow tone of a soft
harp!”

“Jewsharp,—ha-a?” accorded long John; that's a nice

kind o' music. I'm told they have 'em large down to York,
and use 'em in meeten. How'st?”

“Yes, 'tis so, John, they do. But let me get through with
my story. After the syren had finished her tune, she began
playing with her companion again. Thinks I to myself, `old
speckled skin, I should like to have you in my basket; such
a reverend old monarch of the brook is not to be caught every
day in the year, What say you for a fresh worm this morning?'
So I shortened my rod, and run it behind me, and let
the dobber fall upon the water, and float down with the hook
to the log where the old fellow and the mermaid was disporting.
His love for the lady did not spoil his appetite. He
bagged my worm, and then sprung at my float, and cut. I
jerked back, and pulled in, and then he broke water and
flunced. The mermaid saw that he was in trouble, and
dashed at my line, broke it short off, and then took up the
trout, and began to disengage the hook from his gills. I had
no idea of losing my hook and my trout, besides one of Lentner's
best leaders,—that cost me half a dollar,—for any woman,
fishy or fleshy, however good a voice she might have. So I
broke cover, and came out. The moment she caught a
glimpse of me, she screamed and dropped the trout, and ran.
Did you every see a deer flash through a thicket? She was
gone in an instant—

Compelled by an irresistible impulse, I pursued. Down the
brook, and through the brake, we went, leaping, and stooping,
and turning, and swimming, and splashing, and I, at least a
half a dozen times, stumbling and falling. It was but at intervals,
as the brook made its longest bends, that I could catch
a glimpse of the fugitive nymph, and the last time I put my
eager eye upon her, she had stopped and was looking back,
with both her hands crossed upon her bosom, panting and apparently
exhausted. But as I again broke upon her sight, she
started and fled. With fresh ardor I pressed on, calling to
her, and beseeching her to stop. I pleaded, promised, threatened,
and called the gods to witness that my intentions were
honorable, and that I would go and ask her mother first, if she
did not live too far off. In the desperation of my entreaties I
talked a little Latin to her, that came into my head, apropos,
and which was once used by another gentleman,[10] in a similar
case of Parthian courtship;—Parthian!—Yes, that is a correct
word, for O! what arrows did the beauty of the flying nymph
shoot into my soul! Telling her that she might depend upon
my honor, and all that, I continued—
that is to say, boys, according to Bishop Heber's translation,
But, alas! the assurance and the prayer added fresh pinions
to her wings. She flew, and despairingly I followed, tearing
my hands and face with the merciless brambles that beset my
way, until, at last, a sudden turn brought me plump up against
the bridge upon the turnpike, in the open fields, and the mermaid
was nowhere to be seen. I got up on the railing of the
bridge, and sat there weary, wet, and sad. I had lost my fish,
left my rod a mile off, and been played the fool with by a mongrel
woman. Hook, fish, leader, heart, and mermaid, were
all lost to me forever. `Give me some drink, Titinius,' or
Daniel, which I take to be the correct English translation. I
feel melancholy and mad to think of it even now.”

6. CHAPTER VI.

Ovid's Tristia, 3d El.

“Did Captain Symmes tell you that himself, sir?” inquired
Raynor.

“He did,” replied Ned, “and I have not the slightest doubt
of the accuracy of his statement. I think I shall publish the
account for the benefit of science. Those discoveries concerning
the causes and sources of magnetism, and electricity,
and galvanism, are really astonishing.”

“It is strange,” said I, like a good, solemn, tiger.

“Yes,” responded Ned, with graver gravity, “truth is
strange, stranger than fiction.”

“Can't ye give us some more th' tic'lars, Mr. Locus?”
asked Dan. “Tell us what's the reason 'bout them spots in
the sun, and the bony fish all failen last summer. That's what
I want to know.”

“No, Dan; I'd rather give you what I know of my own
knowledge. Boys, did I ever tell you about my journey to
the Lanjan Empire?”

“I never heard you”—“Lan what?”—“Go it!”—“Now
for a yarn,” and several other interjectional questions and answers

broke, simultaneously, from the lips of the attentive audience.

“That's a very interesting country,” simpered the tiger.
“Won't you take a drink before you start, Mr. Locus?”

“Thank you, thank you, Cypress.—Well, boys—hem!”—
and Ned got under way as follows:—

“I had always from my earliest boyhood, a vehement desire
to travel and see the world; and whatever other of my
studies may have been slighted, I certainly was not neglectful
of my geography and hydrography. Books of travel, of
any sort of respectability and authenticity, I devoured; from
Sinbad the Sailor, down to the modernest, pert, self-sufficient
affectations of our own expressly deputed readers of guide-books,
and retailers of family gossip. Still, however, I was
unsatisfied. I longed to be an actor, not a mere looker on; a
doer, not a reader of exploits. In this particular taste, my
revered father chose to differ from me, by the distance of
several continents. While I sighed for locomotion, and the
transmutation of the precious metals into foreign novelties, the
dearest care of that respected person was,

“If, in the glow of my imagination, I spoke of Columbia,
river, Central Africa, Chinese Tartary, Ultima Thule, or any
other, reasonable, and desirable region for exploration, the old
man would shake his head, and tell me that he was responsible
for my future standing in society; and that he could not
permit me to go abroad until my habits were formed. `Besides,
my son,' he would add, `travelling costs money, and your
education is not yet complete, and exchange is up, and stocks
are down, and you're rather irregular, and—and you had better

wait.' Wait, therefore, I had to, until I had finished my
collegiate experiences, and pocketed my alma mater's certificate,
that my habits were formed, and that I was a youth distinguished
for my learning, brains, and good behavior, and all
that; or, as Cypress would say, until the `hoc tibi trado' of
jubilee commencement-day was poured into my ear, and with
all becoming and appropriate solemnity, I was consecrated an
A. B. My passion for cosmopolitism burned, now, fiercer
than ever. I petitioned, and sulked, and flattered, and fretted,
and moved earth and heaven, or tried to,
For it pleased heaven to put it into the heads of the navy department,
to appoint my uncle, Captain Marinus Locus, Commodore
of a relief-squadron that was to go out to the Mediterranean;
and about a year after my graduation, the flag-ship
Winnipissiago dropped her anchor at the place of rendezvous
off the Battery, having on board my excellent, excellent
uncle:—
He was a jolly old cock, liberal, free-hearted, hated trade, and
grace before meals, and thought he was a strict disciplinarian
aboard ship, he liked an adventure on shore as well as any
body, provided only he was sure of not being found out. He
was a great admirer of the morality of Lycurgus, inculcated
in his precepts for the education of boys, and his darling
maxim was, that there was no such thing as abstract sin, and
that the iniquity of iniquity consisted in the bad example.

“During the time of his waiting for the rest of the squadron,
he was often at my father's house, and I had frequent opportunities
for the enjoyment of his conversation. It is not to

be wondered that my heart grew to him, and that I became
unhappy with desire of a situation aboard his frigate. As propitious
fortune would have it, he took an equal fancy for me,
and noting the violence of my marine propensity, he interceded
with my father, and offered to give me a birth, and a share at
mess, during his cruise, and offered me all possible facilities
for seeing the country, without putting me or mine to any expense,
except for the necessary outfit. As this course of
travel would not require much disbursement, and as my habits
were by this time quite confirmed, the kind old gentleman was
persuaded to let me go.

“`Well, Ned,' said he, one morning, after breakfast, and a
tear stood in his eye, `I've traded you off. You may go with
your uncle. He has been begging, and hammering me, for a
fortnight, and last night he offered me a quarter cask of Juno,
and said he would take good care of you, and watch over your
behavior aud so forth, and so I told him he might have you.
There, the secret is broken.'

“`So is my heart,' said my mother, sobbing.

“`So is his coffee-cup,' chuckled the old gentleman, pointing
to the fragments, which my surprise and delight had
strewn upon the floor.

“`Remember now, my son,' continued the old gentleman,
and then he read me a lecture containing the essence of all
that Solomon ever said to Rehoboam, with the addition of a
digest of the more modern maxims of parental wisdom, down
to the date of the discourse. It was a precious mixture. I
took it with all becoming meekness, and in the agitation and
affliction produced by the notification that I `soon should be
on the boundless ocean, far, far from the tender watchfulness
of parental kindness,' I stuck my fingers into my mouth, and
then applied their watery ends to my eyes;—not anticipating

the dialogue, I was unprovided with an onion. The old gentleman
at last got through, finishing with an injunction that
really made me cry, because I did not dare to laugh.

“`Not least of all,' said he, `be thankful for being born in
a country, where you, though only a private citizen, and one
possessed of no peculiar merit, may accomplish your travels
as a passenger on board a public ship. It doesn't cost any
thing. Uncle Sam pays the whole shot; and you can go to
Dan, and Beersheba, and all the other cities up the Mediterranean,
and write your travels, and I shall not be out of pocket
a penny. I shan't have to advance you a cent. That's what
I look at.'

“Sponge! thought I, a little startled, but I prudently kept
my peace.

“The rest of the discourse,—the parting,—the sailing,—
the deep, deep sea,—whales,—water-spouts,—Cape St. Vincent,—hurricane,—chicken-coop,
and two men overboard,—
Gibraltar,—duel between two midshipmen,—monks of Palermo,—Mount
ætna,—earthquake of Catania,—Dromio of Syracuse,—Cape
Matapan,—Bozzaris,—Greek pirates,—Colossus
of Rhodes,—Smyrna,—and so forth, I pass over. Suffice
it to say, that we finally arrived in the Levant, and cast our
cable in the neighborhood of Cyprus.”

“Cypress? Cypress?” asked Venus Raynor. “What,
any relation to our Mr. Cypress here?”

“No, no; near the island of Cyprus. Cyprus! beautiful
isle! In what glorious majesty stood thy old Olympus. How
fragrantly from thy hills came down the odor of thy orange-groves
and grape-vines, mingling with the wind-borne scent
of thy hyacinths, and anemonies! Land of generous wine,
and glowing beauty! Birthplace of Venus!”—

“Hullow, Ned! hullow! what's thee up to now?” cried
Oliver.

“It's a lie,” pronounced master Peter. “Venus was born
at Raynor South. I knowed his father. Have my doubts
it's a lie.”

“That's what the family Bible says,” muttered the namesake
of the goddess, getting a little angry.

“Don't bother me, you fool,” said Ned, snappishly, and
putting his hand over Peter's mouth. “I did nt mean this he
Venus; no, but her, the queen of beauty, the mother of love,
Paphia,—Cytherea,—Aphrodite,—emerging from old ocean's
wave—”

“`Emersam ex undis Venerem,' as Stephanus Forcatulus
hath it, Ned,” I took the liberty of suggesting; fearing that
he would tire out the boys with his raptures. “I thought it
was Cythera, where the zephyrs carried the foam-born goddess.
You had better go on with the story. How far is it
to the Lanjan Empire?”

“Pardon, pardon, boys, for rearing up, and caracoling, in
this irregular fashion. No, Cypress, Cyprus. Only Hesiod
says Cythera. And you, certainly, won't put his `theogony'
in competition with the judicious Tully's `de natura Deorum.'
—I will try, now, to be less episodical. But whenever I
think of Cyprus, my bosom swells with the same feelings that
half overwhelmed me when first I breathed the air from its
beautiful shore; and my heart jumps within my body just as
my legs did upon the upper deck of the Winnipissiago, when
young Bob Shelley, a midshipman, for whom I had formed
the fondest friendship, was relieved from his watch, and came
up where I was listlessly lounging.

“`We'll go ashore to-night, Bob,' said I, rubbing my hands
between my knees, `and taste some Cyprian—'

“`No; nor wine nor women,' interrupted Bob, despondingly.
`The old man has given orders that not a soul quit
ship to-night. All shore-boats are to be prohihited from approaching
within thirty yards.'

“`Why, the d—d old tyrant! what's in the wind now?'

“`Can't say;—should'nt be surprised if we were off to
the coast of Africa before morning: you now his way.'

“`Well, well; I'll go ashore;—yes,' said I, at that moment
catching the eye of a Greek fisherman who was sculling
upon the edge of the tabooed distance, and who seemed to
understand our conversation and wishes; `I'll be cursed if I
don't go ashore. Dare you go along? When is your next
watch; Can't you steal two or three hours.'

“`I may. I—may. But we must wait until night; we
would be observed now. It will soon be dark.'

“As Bob spoke, we observed the skiff of the fisherman
glide swiftly towards the ship, and her minute figure was
soon lost under the shade of our giant stem. The tongue is
not the only maker of assignations. My eyes met those of
Palinurus once more, and we had a perfect understanding
upon the subject of our wished-for visit to the shore.

“Night came, and we found our wily Cypriot under the
fore-chains; and we were soon at a miniature little city, built
upon a promontory, that jutted out towards the ship, and
which seemed to welcome our approach by the louder swelling
strains of various music, and happy-hearted laughter.
That night—that night!—I cannot tell the incidents of that
night now.—No—never—never. We got back safely, however,
and, as good fortune would have it, undiscovered, and
unsuspected. Not having been found out, I went to my hammock
with a quiet conscience, as indeed, with such a consolation,
after what had happened, I was bound to do, aboard

the commodore's ship. The next morning, however, changed
the face of affairs; the non-intercourse regulation was repealed,
and free trade and sailors' rights let the crew ashore,
and a dark-browed Frank, the keeper of the cassino, where
we danced the night before, aboard. The old man was in
his cabin. Bob ran up into the main-top, and I turned into
my nest. Bob was on the sick-list at his next watch. I myself
was exceedingly disposed to be under the weather, and
out of the way of recognition, and identification by the sorrowful
host of `the three spears.' But the next morning the ship
stood away for the opposite coast of Africa, and we happily
recovered. I got well just in time to see the devil in the old
man's eyes, as I walked up towards him, in obedience to his
summons.

“`Sick! nephew, ha?' he began, half frowning, half sneering.
I felt sick at heart, indeed. But when he asked me
what had made me sick, and I replied that I attributed it to
eating too many Cyprian oranges, he shut his eyes half up,
and glimmering at me, sidewise, he turned slowly upon his
heel, rapped the rattan in his hand hard upon his leg, and
walked away. I saw it was all over.

“About six bells A. M., the officers, with myself, were all
called aft.

“`Gentlemen,' said the old man, looking black and dignified
as an incipient thunder-squall, `I regret that any individual
under my command should disgrace the national flag, by
riot, and violence in a foreign port; but much more do I regret
that any officer of the Winnipissiago should so far forget
his duty to his country, and his commander, as to break the
order of the day.' Then he ripped out a few appropriate
juramenta-juramentorum—that is, whoppers, boys. After letting
off steam, he went ahead again.

“`My good friend, Kapitanos Antistratikos, the American
consul for Famagusta, and keeper of a highly respectable
cassino there, informs me that two persons from the Winnipissiago——but
no matter; that will be for charges and
specifications. Here; who'—pulling a handkerchief out of
his pocket—`owns this piece of documentary evidence? Mr.
Shelley, will you do me the favor to read the name of the
happy proprietor?'

“With what a savage sneer the old man put the question!
I quailed and trembled. I knew that Bob had lost his
handkerchief in the scuffle, and faint, very faint was the hope
that his ingenuity could excuse us. As to the offence itself,
that was nothing, in reality, in the old man's judgment, compared
with the sin of our leaving our tracks behind us, so that
we were sure of being detected.

“`Guilty sir,' said Bob, touching his hat. He knew
that there was no humbugging the old man. `The document
is my own.'

“`Enough. A court-martial will no doubt give due honor
to your unofficer-like conduct. Consider yourself arrested—
that is all, gentlemen. Pipe down.'

“`Mr. Locus,'—and the old man bowed to me with an ineffably
increased suaviter in modo,—`your tongue need not
confess that you were Mr. Shelley's companion. Your buttermilk
face has saved that member the trouble. You will
quit the ship at the first land we make. That ought in my
opinion, to be the rule in Shelley's case. So much for your
comfort.—I promised your father to take good care of you;
I shall keep my word, for I shall shortly leave you in Grand
Cairo.—D—n you, sir, do you laugh?—that's no pun. I
never made a pun in my life.'

“`Is our friendship, then, sir,' said I, `forever annihilated?'

“`Exactly, nephew. It ends at the mouth of the Nile,
where we shall shortly drop both you and our anchor. I have
only one word of advice to give you; it is, look out for
the crocodiles, and don't eat too many oranges. Good morning.'

“I could have burst into tears, but Bob came running up to
me, and grasping my hand, cried, `Bear it like a man. They'll
cashier me, and I'll get permission to quit the ship with you;
we'll travel together and seek our fortunes.' Generous
fellow!

“Bob was correct in his anticipations; he was found
guilty, and sentenced to be cashiered. His petition to the old
man to be allowed to accompany me was readily granted,
and about dusk, that evening, we were landed on the coast
of Africa, near the western mouth of the Nile, a few miles
from Rosetta, and about eighty miles north-west from Grand
Cairo. We slept that night at the hovel of a Jew, and early
in the morning started upon our journey. We had nothing
to encumber us but the clothes upon our backs, our fowling-pieces,
and Bob's favorite fiddle. The last article we brought
along, as the means of earning our livelihood until we could
get into some regular employment. Our pistols and dirks we
had of course secured, together with a few pieces of gold.
With these appointments we started for the great city of the
Nile.

“Not being much used to walking, we progressed only
thirty miles the first day, and at the setting of the sun, rested
under a sycamore tree, to dispose of our frugal meal of dates.
Our repast was here suddenly interrupted by the appearance
of three marauding Bedouins, who dashed in upon us on their

beautiful Arabs, cutting and slashing at us with their sparkling
cimeters. We very coolly cut two of them down in a
flash, with the first shot from our pistols. The third fellow
turned his horse and dashed his rowels into his bloody flanks.
But we gave him, each, the other barrel, and tumbled him off,
with one bullet in the elbow of his sword arm, and the other
in the small of his back. We then helped ourselves to a few
miscellaneous articles, that could have been of no further service
to them, and buried their bodies in the sand. After this
we had no further interruption until we arrived at Cairo,
which we reached, on the second following night.

“Our appearance here did not excite any very especial
wonder. There were people of all colors, and countries, and
religions, and habits, crowding along the narrow, dirty streets,
seeking their business or their pleasures. The dogs seemed
to be the most numerous and important part of the population,
and we had little trouble from any of the rest of the inhabitants.
So having sought out a caravansary, or boarding-house,
we sallied out and commenced our vocation of street-minstrelsy.
It was the most taking and profitable occupation
that we could have chosen. I led the air, and Bob warbled
bass, accompanying the melody with his cremona. `Cease
rude Boreas,' `Begone dull care,' `Ye sons of freedom,'
`Barbara Allen,' and several others of the most distinguished
Christian pieces of profane music we absolutely coined into
gold. The Cairoites were delighted with the novelty of
the entertainment, and we became most decided favorites.
Turks, Copts, Mamelukes, Jews, and Syrian Christians, voted
us stars, invited us to their entertainments, and vied with
each other in their unbounded hospitality.

“Wake up Peter, Cypress. Dan, take this tumbler.

“Well, boys, to be brief, in the course of three months we

made money enough to buy fifty camels, one hundred Guinea
slaves, a few Mograbian dancing-girls, and a goodly quantity
of cotton, coffee, and other merchandize of the country, and
joining another caravan, off we started across the desert, to
the seaport of Suez, at the north end of the Red Sea. By
the by, what a pity it is that the Egyptians do not cut a canal
from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. It is a dead level
all the way;—not a lock necessary. Bob and I sent in proposals
to the governor, to construct one within two years;
but his higness shook his head, and said that if Allah had
intended that there should be a water-communication from
Suez to the Levant, he would have made it himself. But of
that in another place. I intend to apply to our legislature
for an act of incorporation for a railroad. Keep it quiet, boys.
Say nothing.

“Our arrival at Suez created no little excitement. Our
fame had preceded us across the desert, and the swarthy disciples
of the Prophet of the east, grinned upon us, and fed us
and felt us, just as would the very Christian populace of New
York grin at, and feed, and feel King Blackhawk, and the
Prophet of the west. It was soon, however, our fortune to
be monopolized by good society. The sister of the governor,
Julia Kleokatrinka, a widow, got us. She was the lady
B—of the place, and a most magnificent woman she
was. She was decidedly the best dressed lady that I
have seen in all my travels. Beautiful, witty, learned,
accomplished, and, above all, so generous in every respect.
It was on account of her peculiar excellences, that she
had obtained a special license to be different in deportment
and behavior, from all the other ladies of rank in
Suez, and to expose herself to the gaze of men, and give
entertainments, and all that sort of thing. All the other

women of Suez are strictly guarded in their seraglios, as they
should be. I took to her exceedingly. She loved and petted
me so, I could'nt help it. She used to call me her `hi ghi
giaour,' which means, boys, pet infidel poet. Her conversaziones
were delightful. She had around her, constantly, a brilliant
coterie, of poets and romancers. One day, I met at her
palace, at dinner, a cordon composed of Almanzor, the geometrician;
Allittle, the poet; Ali Kroker, the satirist; Ali
Gator, the magnificent son of Julia—the Suez Pelham;
Selim Israel, a writer of books which no body would read;
a Mr. Smith, an Englishman; a Persian mufti; an Iceland
count; a Patagonian priest, and several other persons of distinguished
merit and virtue. The divine Julia never looked
so well. She was dressed in Turkish pantaletts, made of
the ever-changing plumage of the throat feathers of the
African nightingale, woven and embroidered into a thin cloth
of silver. Over these she wore a chemise of pea-green Persian
silk, which hung loosely from the extreme tip of her
alabaster shoulders, and fell just below her knees. The rest of
her simple drapery consisted of a Tibetian shawl, which she
gracefully disposed about her person, so as to answer the
purpose of robe, or stole, or cloak, as her coquettish caprice
might desire. Around her neck sported a young tame
boa constrictor, and in her lap slumbered a Siberian puppy-dog,
which was presented to her by the emperor of Russia.
Her conversation was uncommonly piquant. I was in capital
spirits.

“`Will you be so generously disinterested,' said the charming
Julia, `as to eschew chewing until you can hand me that
salt?'

“`Most unequivocally, bright moon of my soul,' I readily replied;

`Allah forbid, that through my neglect, a lady's meat
should go unsalted.'

“Then we all had a hearty laugh. I turned to Ali Gator,
who was leaning against a pile of scarlet satin ottomans, while
the rays of the setting sun fell full upon his beautifully embroidered
waistcoat,—”

“Stop, Ned, stop,” said I, looking around, and listening to
the chorus of heavy breathings that had, for some time past,
been swelling upon my ear. “Raynor—softly—Dan—louder
—Peter—with vehemence—Smith—Oliver—Zoph:—You
have, by gad; you've put them all to sleep. I'm glad of it.
It serves you right. Of what interest is it to these people to
know what twaddle was talked at Julia Kleokatrinka's dinner-table?
And what right have you to betray the privacies of a
hospitable board, into which you may have been, perhaps unworthily,
adopted. Shame! shame! It is a just judgment
upon you.”

“It only shows their want of taste,” replied Ned, coolly.

“Bring up your camels!” sung out Venus, as he turned
over on his side in an uneasy dream about the last thing he
heard before he went to sleep. “Bring up your camels!”

“So I say,” I continued. “Get out of the city, Ned, some
how or other. If you can't do better, take a balloon. Let's
wake the boys up, and then do you travel on. Bring up your
camels! Bring up your camels!”

I roared this out so loud, as to bring every man upon his feet.

“I was asleep,” said Raynor, looking as though he wanted
to make an apology.

“Some pork will boil that way,” philosophized the Hicksite.

“I was dreaming of the my-grab—somethen—dancen-gals.
What did you do with 'em. Mr. Locus,” asked Venus, rubbing
his eyes. “Were they pretty? I should like to try 'em on

the double-shuffle, heel-and-toe, a small touch. Go it!
Hey!”

“I'm done,” said Ned, sulkily, crossing his arms.

“No, no; not by some thousands of miles,” cried I.
“We've got to get to the Lanjan Empire yet.”—I knew Ned
wanted to spin it out.

“It's my 'pinion he'll never reach there to-night,” yawned
Long John. “The wind don't seem to suit, no haaw. What's
your sentiments, Peter?”

“I have my doubts.”

7. CHAPTER VII.

Roger Ascham.

Even thus, apologised the venerable preceptor of England's
virgin queen, when he gave to “all gentlemen and yeomen of
England, pleasaunte for theyr pastyme to rede, and profitable
for theyr use to folow,” that precious birth of “Toxophilus,
the schole of shootinge conteyned in two bookes.” Glorious
old Roger! my master—my father—my friend—my patron
saint! Thy pupil and worshipper is redeemed from the guilt
of “idlenesse and levitie,” by the gracious authority of thy

precept and example. Roger, be with me! Rogere, ut mihi
faveas, adjutorque sis, rogo, obsecro!

On the evening succeeding the night when Ned's travels
met with the ignominious punctuation which has been set
forth in the foregoing chapter, we were all assembled around the
cheerful fire, relating our sports and various adventures of the
day. Ned was in good humor with himself and every body
else, for his sport had been eminently triumphant. Oliver and
I had killed only some twenty coot, and a beach fox; while
he and one of the boys brought in fifty-four brant, seven geese,
five widgeons, three oldwives, a cormorant, and a white owl.
Ned gave us a full account of his captivity and sufferings
among the Pawnee Picks, and Daniel rehearsed, with much
grace and unction, his yarns about pirates Halstead, Conklin,
and Jones. Fatigue and sleep at last succeeded in making
us yawn, and as I had engaged Bill Luff to go with me to
“the middle ground” next morning, early, to lie in a battery, I
proposed that we should “shut up shop,” and go to bed.

“Won't the tide sarve for Mr. Locus to reach to the Lanjan
Empire to-night?” asked Long John of me, stretching out
his immense isthmus of neck, and putting on a most ludicrously
quizzical character of phiz. “I reckon 'ts high water
naaw, and his ship can scratch over the bars, likely, 'bout this
time.”

“It's my 'pinion he rather smashed her last night,” said
Dan; “I shouldn't be 'sprised if Mr. Cypress was to say he
see small piece o' th' wrack himself.”

“Let him keel her up and get the water out o' her, and set
her afloat agen.”

“It's no use. She's got a smart hole into her, and she's
pretty much water-logged, I sh'd say.”

“Let 'im take out some th' cargo, and she'll go. He'd only

got too much freight into her, that's all; and she was loaded
ruther bad, 'corden to my notion.”

“You're right, John,” said I. “Good. Ned, take out Julia
Kleokatrinka and you'll float.”

“Take out all the women, Neddy, and thee can steer thy
vessel with better success,” advised our model of modesty,
Oliver.

“No, no. Leave in the dancen gals,” cried Venus. “Gals
never spiled a sailen party yet, I know it.”

“Well boys, make up your minds,” said Ned, “whether you
want me to start or not. You don't, to be sure, deserve to
have a single sentence more of that journey, and I declare to
you, I would not go on with the recital of my various and singular
adventures upon the voyage, but that I want to tell you
a short yarn about our minister for Africa, and a certain
American gentleman, that is, one who called himself such, but
who was most unworthy of the name,—a great man, in his
own opinion, with whom I met at Gondar, the capital of
Abyssinia.”

“Julius Cæsar!” pleaded I; “Ned, where the devil are you
travelling?”

“Travelling? Where I actually went; down the Red Sea,
through the Straits of Babelmandel, and so around, by Ceylon
and the Straits of Malacca, to the Lanjan Empire, stopping on
the road, now and then, to have a fight or a frolic.”

“Prepare for grief, boys,” said I, in deep despondence,
tumbling back upon the straw. “You've got into a scrape by
urging your last petition. He'll talk to the end of next week.
Good night.”

“No, my sweet boy, you don't escape in that way,” replied
Ned, pulling me up with a grip which I was fain to obey;
“you have contributed more than any one else to fit out this

expedition, and I swear you shall have your share of the proceeds.”

“Don't trouble yourself about the returns now. I'll settle
with you, as ship's husband and supercargo, when you get
back. Good bye. A pleasant voyage to you.”

“No, no. Come back; come back. A press-gang has
got hold of you. You must go with me.”

“Don't ship me, Ned; I'm not an able seaman. I can
neither reef nor steer.”

“Make him steward's mate, Mr. Locus,” said Dan with a
malicious grin. “He can bile coffee, and mix liquor for you,
when your throat gits hoarse callen to th' crew.”

“I'll do it, Dan. Cypress, you are hereby appointed steward's
mate of the felucca `Shiras Suez.' Look to your duty.
There is your pay in advance, and here—filling my champagne
glass—is money to furnish supplies to Mecca.”

Resistance was in vain. I was duly installed. “Now,
Ned, what do you want?”

“A very light duty, Cypress. Your ears, and occasional
tongue. I know my course, but I forget the name of the
man whom I want to glorify. What is it?”

“How, in the name of all the Mahometan saints, should I
know?”

“Repeat me those lines of Anacreon which we used to
sing and mumble in school, when we were `making believe'
study.”

“How can that help you? Do you mean `' ”

“Yes; yes. That is it—

I wish to sing of Cadmus. I want to tell you, boys, about

Mr. Agamemnon Hermanus Spinosus Cadmus. Did you ever
know him, Cypress?”

“O, perfectly well,” replied I, thinking to bother Ned.
“He was a descendant of Longoboos, one of the sons of
Atreus, whose name, by the by, I perceive, is omitted in
Charles Anthon's last, otherwise unexceptionable, edition of
Lempriere. He was a regularly born boy, novertheless, and
he possessed a decidedly more dignified disposition and deportment
than his brothers Menelaus, and Agamemnon.”

“Many laws? d—n him,” cried Venus. “He was in
favor of plenty of banks, and legislaten, I 'spose.”

“Historians differ upon that point, Venus. He was a
brave fellow, at all events. Lactantius records, in his `de ira
divina,' that Menelaus and Agamemnon, instead of being kings,
were most distinct democrats; men who had rather eat a
plain republican bowl of bread and milk with an honest farmer,
than to be clothed in scarlet and fine linen, and sit within
the blessed sound of the divine action of royal grinders. The
other youth, on the contrary, he says, was against universal
suffrage, and in favor of the doctrine that no man can love
his country, or feel an interest in her welfare, unless he has
got plenty of money.”

“D—n him! then, 'stead o' t'other fellow,” interposed
the republican critic again.

“His practice,” I continued, not taking notice of the interruption,
“followed out his principles. He contrived to get
appointed a Colonel in the militia, and then started to travel
in foreign parts. He drove into Corinth a coach and six,
with outriders, spending his money, all the way, with the
profusion of a prince. Lais was at this time in the full blow
of her glory. Cadmus bought off Alcibiades for a hundred
thousand drachms, and set her up in the most magnificent

style. It was in reference to him that Diogenes, the Cynic,
perpetrated that jealous snarl, `non cuivis homini contingit
adire Corinthum.' ”

“Mr. Locus,” said Dan, “I'm 'feard the steward's mate's
taken command o' th' ship, and he's sarven out his darned
Latin 'stead o' th' regler ship's allowance.”

“Cypress, I've been thinking you might as well tell the
story yourself. You seem to know all about it.”

“No, no. I beg pardon, Ned. Go on, go on. I was only
helping hoist sail, and throw off.”

“Well, boys, now stop this deviltry, and I'll start. Where
did I leave off, last night?”

“You stopped when you got 'sleep in Julia Kle—cre—kle
—cre—”

“Kleokatrinka's lap,” finished I.

“No, that was the Siberian puppy dog,” said Ned.

“What's the odds what country the puppy belonged to?”
inquired Raynor, chuckling, and who knew that a fair hit was
always welcome, come when, and come upon whom, it might.

“It must have been yourself, Ned,” said I. “You like to
take your comfort—

“Raynor,” sung out Ned, getting a little vexed, “I wish
you would fine that young gentlemen. What was the punishment
we determined to inflict upon him the next time he
quoted Heathen languages wrongly, or inappositely?”

“A basket of Champagne. Shall I have to send one of
the boys across to Islip, or Jim Smith's, to-morrow morning?”

“Yes, either for him or me, for I make a complaint against
him. Summon the Court of Dover, strait off. Crier! Peter!
call the Court!”

“It will take too long, Ned,” said I. “I'll leave it to
Venus and Peter. They shall be the court with full powers.
Each man state his case, and we'll be bound by their
judgment.”

“Done,” answered Ned. “We'll waive the installation and
ceremony of opening.—Gentlemen of the Court, we were
talking of dogs; and I say that to make a quotation about
cats, and apply it to the more noble canine tribe, is supremely
inappropriate, not to say highly ridiculous.”

“That stands to reason,—seems to me,” said Venus.

“Now, your Honors, the culprit whom I have charged, has
bored us with a pretended illustration of his weak wit, from
a dissolute pagan named Theocritus—I remember him well,
for I was compelled, once on a season, to be familiar with
him;—and he has substituted the effeminacy of lazy cats, for
the sensibly drowsiness of high-spirited, hard-working pointers.
`' means `cats.' ”

“I should think it meant `gals' ” cried out one of the boys.
“Mr. Cypress, you're safe. You'll have Venus on your
side.”

“Order, order in the Court,” cried the crier Judge.

“May it please your honors, that is the whole of my case,
and I will conclude by expressing the most exalted confidence
in the wisdom, discrimination, learning, and sense of
justice of this most reverend and respectable tribunal.”

Alexander Africanus Maximus, President of “the Universal
Court of Dover of the whole world,”—surnamed Aleck
Niger, from his successful exploration of the sources of that
black-region river, as well as of divers other more mixed fluids,
—could not have made a better speech, even if he had had the
immortal George, George the First in the republic, to prompt
him. But I did not despair. I happened to know that it
was not always rowing straight ahead that wins a race, or
that talking sense and truth always gains a cause. Judges
and Juries, in spite of their affectation of stern, solemn unfluctuating
purpose, are like the tides. They have their currents,
and eddies, and under-currents. There is a moon in law and
morals, as well as a moon in physics. I blame not the tides,
nor do I condemn the courts.—“I tax not you, ye elements,
with injustice.”—They are both, I trust, insensible to,
and innocent of, the influence which makes them swell and
fall. But, as Peter once said, in one of his happy moments,

“the tides owns the moon, and men 's judges, and judges is
men, and they know who can give 'em a lift best.” I had
been told, moreover, that many a cause was determined upon
some incidental or collateral point, that had nothing to do, in
realty, with the merits of the case.

“May it please the Court,” I began; “or may it displease
the Court, just as their omnipotence pleases.” There I was
one point ahead of Ned, in the Court of Dover; for that court
always respects an impudent compliment, “I am accused of
making an irreverend abduction from the discourses of a most
exemplary fisherman.”

“Fisherman!” cried both the judges simultaneously.
“Was he a fisherman?”

“Most distinctly may it please the Court,” I replied.

“That alters the case; brother Venus, don't you think
so?” said Judge Peter, turning to his learned coadjutor.

“It makes a smart deal o' difference, I sh'd say,” responded
the worthy associate. “But 'spose he only fished for flounders
and eels, and sich; would'nt it make no odds?”

“Have my doubts, brother.”

“It is false,” cried Ned, hard to be restrained. “Theocritus
never—”

“Silence—silence,” thundered the Judges. “The court never
doubts when it's indifferent. Mr. Locus, you're fined drinks
all 'round, and a paper o' tobacco, for disrespect to the joined-issued
tribunals o' your country. Proceed, Mr. Cypress.”

“Your honors will perceive that my accuser has other objects
in view than the mere unjust persecution of my humble
self. But I will not refer to them. The whole case may
be thus succinctly and successfully defended. I am charged
with making an in-apposite quotation, contrary to the statutes
of the Beach. I spoke of cats. Now, your Honors, are not

cats four-legged animals? I appeal to the Court's own sense
of justice and physical fitness.—”

“He talks like a book, brother Peter.”

“Then here,”—holding up the fox I had shot, and who
was my junior counsel on the argument,—“has not this fox
four legs?”

“An't one of them fore legs shot off?” asked Judge Peter,
dubitans.

“No, your Honor, it is only a little crippled. Now we all
know, and there needs no argument to prove, that a dog runs
on four feet; and so a cat is like a fox, and a dog is like a
fox, and things that are equal to the same are equal to one
another; and so a cat is a dog, and a dog is a cat; and so,
your Honors, I trust I have established my defence, and that
I have not misused words, and that Mr. Locus must pay for
the champagne.”

“Them's my sentiments, brother Venus. Things what's
like is sartenly like, and them what's the same must be the
same, nor they can't be no otherwise, as I can fix it.”

“I coincide with the last speaker,” pronounced Venus.
“Peter, who is chief Justice?”

“I am. No; you be. Go ahead. Stick it on.”

“Respected fellow-citizens, and criminals in general; the
judgment o' this expiscious court is that the fines agin Mr.
Locus, already expounded, stands good, and he pays the champagne.
As for th' rest o' th' company,—extracten the judges,
who is not liable to human frailty,—they'll pay a small glass
to each o' the judges a piece when they get 'shore, on 'count
not making disturbance, so as to give the Court a chance to
show the magnitude o' its justice and the power thereof; and
the defendant will stand over 'till the next meeten o' th' court.
Zoph, be crier. Crier, 'journ the court.”

8. CHAPTER VIII.
ONE MORE FOR THE LAST.

Metastatio.

The islands came in sight again, and ho! land! and Raynor
Rock!

Glad enough was I to hear our bow grind the sand near
Raynor's hut, on the evening succeeding our court's last
night's entertainments. Ned Locus had come in, and Peter
Probasco was smoking his usual short pipe, and the boys had
some fresh fish and “things accorden.” Zoph and I had had
a hard pull, and we were bay-salted and shivering, but not so
tired as to prevent us from bringing up a good bunch of brant.
—More of them, and a few of the black ducks, and sheldrakes,
and that goose, anon.

“That's a lie, mister, that story you told t'other night. Have
my doubts it's all a lie. I've said it.”—Such was Peter's judgment.—“Mr.
Locus, you dreamt that sometime or other.”

“Stick it out, Ned,” said I, “why the fellow is trying to
get angry!” and Ned actually had worked himself into such a
state of feeling, that between the excitement of the story, and
the soft impeachment of its veracity, and his liquor going down
the wrong way, his face was suffused, and seven or eight

globules of eye-water ran a race for the goal of his pea-jacket
upper button.

“My friend,” he at last rejoined, “you're mighty civil.
Quite complimentary, forsooth. Do you suppose that I could
undertake to coin a story so minute, and particular, and specific—so
coherent and consistent in all its parts, so supported
by internal and circumstantial evidence—”

“So ingeniously stolen from Ovid,” interrupted I.

“ `Et tu brute,' Cypress!”

“I make no doubt it's all true, mostly,” said Daniel. “I've
been by the bridge and seen the place where Mr. Locus sot,
when he come out.”

“Well, gentlemen, what's the unbelievable part of the story?
You don't deny the brook, or doubt its being inhabited by mermaids,
do you? Then why shouldn't I be as likely as any
body to see one?”

“Festina lente,” cried I.

“Not so fast, I pray thee,” said the quiet Oliver. “I admit
the brook, but I deny thy eyesight. Thy water-nymph
lived but in thy brain, she is the offspring of thy dreams only
—none but pagan priests and poets, and dreamy boys, and
quaker sea-captains, have seen the creature of fancy, called a
mermaid.”

“Why, Oliver! you infidel! Do you deny the Oceanides,
the Nereides and Naiades, the Limnades and Potamides—”

“No such families in the island, d—d if there is,” cried
Peter.

“Have you never heard of Galatea and Amphitrite, Melita,
and Leucothoe, and Thetis, Calypso, and glorious Arethusa—?”

Peter.—“Never heerd of such people before.”

Oliver.—“Vile incarnations—the false deities of the old

heathen poets. Too much antiquity hath made thee mad,
Ned, or rather, too much deviltry hath made thee a quiz.”

“He don't quiz me,” said Daniel, with a compression of
his lips that said “I know too much.” “I don't know 'bout
carnations and deities, or old poets, and I reckon I don't believe
iniquity ever made Mr. Ned Locus mad, but what I know I
know. Sam Biles is my wife's cousin's aunt's sister's brother-in-law,
and he's been a sealer. Sam knows. Seals is nothen
but nigger mermaids, as Silas said last night, or night afore.
Sam told me he see 'em often together, and the mermaids
licked 'em and kicked 'em 'bout jist as they was amind to.
They caught one one day, but she played the devil among the
sailors, and the captain chucked her overboard.—Shaa! why
Jim Smith see a mermaid once down to Gilgoa inlet, riden a
sea-horse—don't you b'lieve it—ask Jim.”

“Ah! Daniel, Daniel,” said Ned, “they're a set of unbelievers—don't
try to persuade them.”

“Shut up. Shut up, boys. Change the subject. Here;
will you smoke?” said Raynor, producing some short stub
pipes, and an old segar box stuffed with tobacco.

It has always been our rule that “when we are at Rome,
we must do as the Romans do.” So, it is to be recorded, that
we committed, or rather submitted to, that sin. We smoked.

Puff. “What luck on the whole”—puff—“boys”—puff—
puff—“this fall?”—puff—puff—puff—; and so on. We will
not smoke thee, reader. We got fairly into conversation,
now, and different speakers sustained the dialogue, half a
dozen speaking at once, sometimes, so that I cannot put down
a tithe of what was said.

“Middlen, sir, middlen. We've got some. We come
'cross a good school of drums this afternoon. How is times
down to York?”

“O, so so. There's nothing new or strange. People are
fighting, as usual, about politics, like fools, and calling each
other names, which, if rightly applied, ought to be ropes to hang
them. Is the bass fishing good, this season?”

“Moderate, moderate. How does the old general stand
his hand?”

“Bravely, bravely. They've tried to make him out a tyrant,
usurper, cut-throat, fool, and every thing else that is stupid,
and base; but `it's no use.' Do you kill many coot?”

“Coots is scace. I see a smart bunch, jest at sundown,
up into Poor-man's harbor. Do you think the Jackson men
will get it next 'lection?”

“No doubt; no doubt; not the least doubt. The farmers
of the north, and west, are men of sense and spirit, and there's
no mistake about the farmers of Queens, and Suffolk, as you
yourself well know. But they are doing their d—dest in
New-York. They are trying to buy the Irish, and have made
such golden overtures to our leading paper as will require uncommon
virtue to resist. You must remember to go and vote,
boys, for the old man. Every vote counts. He's the hero of
New-Orleans, you know—protector of beauty and booty—can
you ever forget the time when—”

“You don't catch me voten, I reckon,” interrupted long
John, bending his crane-like neck, so as to bring his head at
right angles with his body. “I never voted but onest, and
that was last fall, and I reckon I did a smart deal o' harm
then. Mr. Locus fetched me up. It rained a little, and he
ris an umberell over my head, as we sot in the wagon, and I
an't got over that, neither. Now I expect that umberell must
have given me a kind o' chill, or somethen, for I an't been
right ever sence.”

“It wa'n't the umberell,” cried out one of the group; “it

was on 'count o' your voten the wrong ticket, to 'blige Mr.
Locus—that's the how—and it made you feel bad—and you
knowed it.”

“What, John! What, John! are you serious?” continued
I. “Do you really intend to sacrifice your inestimable right
of suffrage? The right for which your fathers fought, and
bled, and died? Reflect. Consider. It is the glorious privilage,
as well as the religious duty of every freeman, to go to
the ballot box. Liberty, the liberty of an American citizen—”

“Stop it. Stop it,” roared out Ned Locus. “No politics,
Cypress. What's the use? You'll only set me a-going, and
I can talk as fast you, and we'll like enough get angry.”

“We may as well let it alone,” said the quiet Oliver. “There
are no converts to be made in Suffolk, not even if Daniel
Webster was to come and talk to it. We'll beat thee next
fall even if he should.”

It will readily be perceived that at the date of this dialogue,
I was what is called at Tammany Hall, “a consistent democrat.”
Ned has always thought it a pity. But he does not
on that account, shut me out from his heart, and treat me as
if he thought I wore a caput supinum, as some mad zealots
have, in the rage of their disappointment, sometimes ferociously
advised him to do. Ned and Oliver both belonged to
the party that thought the constitution was in danger, and that
the country was doomed to utter ruin, unless the dynasty of a
certain very respectable financial institution was perpetuated.

“I'll bet you the expenses of the trip, on that,” replied
Ned to Oliver's vaunt.

“I never bet, Neddy. It's against our rules. But it's got
to be done. Don't get mad. It's no use.” And then he
wound up with his everlasting saw about the boiling of pork.

“D—n your easy impudence. We'll have five thousand
majority in the city alone.”

“Order! order!” cried Raynor. “Gentlemen, have the
goodness to come to order, for a song from Venus Raynor,
Esquire,—one of his own composing—that song, Venus, you
made about the people that were drowned down to Oyster
pond point.”

The usual apologies and excuses were soon disposed of,
and then Venus opened his mouth and sang a most pathetic
ditty, to which we all listened with sincere delight, for it was
sung with the pathos, tenderness, and grace of nature. I was
enraptured with it, and, next day, got Venus to go to the lighthouse
and write it out for me. The following is a copy verbatim
et literatim;—

“Bravo!”—“Well sung, Venus;”—“Encore!”—“That's
a damnation nice song;”—and several other critical eulogiums
where wreathed around the head of the beach troubadour.

“Now, Raynor,” said I, “we've had nothing out of you,
yet. Since Venus has given us a wrecking song, suppose
you give us a wrecking story—a true one. Tell us about
your saving the life of Captain Nathan Holdredge.”

“No, no,” protested Raynor; it's late now, and soon as
the moon gets up. we've got to go into the surf;—and you
know all about it.”—

“Tell it. Go ahead; or I'll summon a court of Dover and
have you fined.”

“Don't do that. Here goes then for THE WAY THE OLD
MAN SAVED CAPTAIN HOLDREDGE;” and the intrepid veteran
went on as follows; I took it from his own mouth, and the
whole story is his without embellishment, or addition. If I
could only give his voice—his eye—his hand—his attitude—
I should be happy:—

“It was eighteen years ago. The lighthouse war'nt built.
I was fishing off agin Bellport, twenty miles east of here. I
got up on the 17th day of October, early. The first thing I see,
was a ship on the beach. I went over to her, and it appeared
as if they wanted no assistance; the wind was
blowing at the east, and it was stormy—rain storm—it was
between break of day and sunrise. I was going to return
back again to the hut where we staid, and they beckoned,
and hollowed to us to stay;—then they let down their jolly
boat under the stern;—the captain, second mate, and one sailor
came ashore in her. When they came ashore, I knew the
captain. It was Captain Holdredge.—After being there a
little while, the captain invited me to go on board with him
and take something to drink with him—some brandy;—and
he would send a demijohn on shore for the rest of the crew,
—my crew. I discovered that there was much agin difficulty
in goin to the ship, as there was coming from her. The

wind was off shore, and sea breaking on;—then I told him,
if you will let me and one of my men and him go aboard, I
would go—he wanted to take the two sailors, and they insisted
upon going, and he was a' mind they should too,—but
if them two sailors is a going to go, I sha'nt go. These sailors
seemed to be rather affronted at my opinion, and seemed to
think that they could go as well and long as me or any
other man.

“Then I told him I choosed not to go. Then Hol dredge
said, stay where we was, and he and the men would go and
get a demijohn of brandy, and bring it ashore. They then
started for the ship. She lay in the surf. The surf was pretty
big. The vessel lay about one hundred yards from the dry
land. It was this same Raccoon beach. The wind was east.
The ship's name was the “Savannah.” She was a packet
ship. She had five passengers. She was from Savannah,
loaded with cotton—four hundred bales, as I was told.

“When they got off against the ship, they was about twenty
yards to the west of her. The current carried them there;
—then, heading up east to the ship, brought them right broadside
to the sea;—the second sea capsized them—turned the
two sailors out, and pitched the captain underneath. The
two sailors came immediately ashore by the help of the sea;
—and the jolly boat kept, to all appearance, about the same
distance from the beach, and worked westward. I endeavored
to try to get to her, for I knew the captain was under her.
I endeavored to get to her all I could. The sea broke over
my head and knocked me down two or three times—I still
endeavored to assist him at some rate or other—I got so that
I touched the jolly boat—I just put my hand on her, and
whether it was my touching of her or not, she took a
pretty rank heave of the sea, and she turned down on one

side pretty smartly, and the captain came out on the side
opposite from me. I discovered that he was alive and
apparently made some effort to help himself—but the current
of the sea carried him along faster than I could travel, and
in one moment he appeared to give up all, and roll along the
sea. Then I thought to myself it was no way to get him.
So I then thought to myself there was no way to save him,
but to return to the beach, and run about one hundred yards of the
west of him. All the while I was running, I kept my eye on
him. I kept watch of him—when I came to a sea poose—
I went in to the east of it—went out into the ocean as far as
he was standing and bracing against the sea—breaking over
my head—and just afore he got to me, there come a large
sea and seemed to hide him—buried him all up—and as
he about come abreast of me, I discovered him, and catched
him by the collar of his coat—I then sung out for assistance
to some of the rest of my crew who was on the beach—It
was about forty yards from the dry sand. One man run in. I
gave him left hand—I had hold of Holdredge with my right
hand. More of the crew came in and took hold of hands,
and it made a smart and long trail of it. I should think there
was as much as eight of us—and so we drawed him up on
the beach.—Some of the crew said he was stone dead, when
we got him out. I discovered that he was not dead by his
stirring one of his arms. I turned him round on the beach
where it shelved, and got his head the lowest, and then rolled
him backwards and forwards on his face, till he discharged
considerable water out of his mouth, and some blood out
of his nose. I suppose this blood from his nose, was from
the jams he got under the jolly boat. All the time I discovered
he was coming to. I told the crew, that owing to
the cold storm, he never would come to, unless we got him
by the fire. Myself and three others took him in our arms,
and carried him about a quarter of a mile to our fishing hut—
blowen and rainen all the time from the east—got him to the
hut—built on a good fire—and prepared a little warm chocolate,
and got a little of it down him, and he come to fast.
In about three quarters of an hour he spoke. The first word
he spoke, he asked, “where's the ship?” I told him the ship
was safe on shore.

“Well, I don't know how—he recreuted and began to talk.
He had a mind to go to her. It was'nt worth while to go
to her. The passengers and crew had all come away. They
come away in my fish boat—after I got Holdredge to the
hut, the men all went to the surf. I staid with Holdredge
watching till next morning, when his nat'ral senses seemed
to come again. Next morning he took full charge of the ship,
as much as ever, and would employ no commissioners.—He
employed about twenty hands himself, at two dollars per
day, and took charge of the vessel himself. Unloaded—got
all cargo out—sent it down by lighters—would'nt employ any
wreckmasters—vessel went to pieces—his crew worked upon
the rigging, and took it off.

“Got ashore. He was in sight of the highlands at sundown,
going then S. E. I was by and heard him make his protest
—he turned in about twelve o'clock, and gave up to the mate,
and told him to keep that course till two o'clook, and then tack
ship, and stand in for the land, until they got into thirteen
fathom water—and then call him, if he wa'nt up before. He
waked, and found the ship had a different motion, and jumped
out of his berth, and looked out of the companion-way, and
saw the breakers under her lee—he giv orders to tack ship
immediately, but before she got about, she struck!—she paid

off contrary, and got on to the beach—spread and tacked
every sail to get her off, but to no purpose.

“Menia, was the first mate.

“Walford, second mate—Walford was one of the men who
came ashore, and was upset, and was rolled ashore by the
waves.

“About the second day, word came on from Patchogue.
that his wife was there, and wanted him to come ashore
very much, if he was alive. He then went ashore to see
her. When he come there, she said she was very glad to see
him, looking as he was; for she had understood, at New
York, that he was cast away, and that Raynor Smith had fell
afoul of him, and beat him almost to death, and he told her—
so he telled me himself,—to cast that off, for it was all false,
for Raynor Smith was his protector, and the only one that
saved his life, and said to her, if it hadn't been for him, you
wouldn't never seen me more.”—