Peechy Prauw Shrunk Within Himself, And Even The Red-Faced
Officer Turned Pale.
Wolfert, who, from a dark corner of the room, had
listened with intense eagerness to all this talk about buried treasure,
looked with mingled awe and reverence on this bold buccaneer, for such
he really suspected him to be.
There was a chinking of gold and a
sparkling of jewels in all his stories about the Spanish Main that gave
a value to every period, and Wolfert would have given any thing for the
rummaging of the ponderous sea-chest, which his imagination crammed
full of golden chalices and crucifixes and jolly round bags of
doubloons.
The dead stillness that had fallen upon the company was at length
interrupted by the stranger, who pulled out a prodigious watch of
curious and ancient workmanship, and which in Wolferts' eyes had a
decidedly Spanish look. On touching a spring it struck ten o'clock;
upon which the sailor called for his reckoning, and having paid it out
of a handful of outlandish coin, he drank off the remainder of his
beverage, and without taking leave of any one, rolled out of the room,
muttering to himself as he stamped up-stairs to his chamber.
It was some time before the company could recover from the silence into
which they had been thrown. The very footsteps of the stranger, which
were heard now and then as he traversed his chamber, inspired awe.
Still the conversation in which they had been engaged was too
interesting not to be resumed. A heavy thunder-gust had gathered up
unnoticed while they were lost in talk, and the torrents of rain that
fell forbade all thoughts of setting off for home until the storm
should subside. They drew nearer together, therefore, and entreated the
worthy Peechy Prauw to continue the tale which had been so
discourteously interrupted. He readily complied, whispering, however,
in a tone scarcely above his breath, and drowned occasionally by the
rolling of the thunder, and he would pause every now and then, and
listen with evident awe, as he heard the heavy footsteps of the
stranger pacing overhead.
The following is the purport of his story.
THE ADVENTURE OF SAM, THE BLACK FISHERMAN.
COMMONLY DENOMINATED MUD SAM.
Every body knows Mud Sam, the old negro fisherman who has fished about
the Sound for the last twenty or thirty years. Well, it is now many
years since that Sam, who was then a young fellow, and worked on the
farm of Killian Suydam on Long Island, having finished his work early,
was fishing, one still summer evening, just about the neighborhood of
Hell Gate. He was in a light skiff, and being well acquainted with the
currents and eddies, he had been able to shift his station with the
shifting of the tide, from the Hen and Chickens to the Hog's back, and
from the Hog's back to the Pot, and from the Pot to the Frying-pan; but
in the eagerness of his sport Sam did not see that the tide was rapidly
ebbing; until the roaring of the whirlpools and rapids warned him of
his danger, and he had some difficulty in shooting his skiff from among
the rocks and breakers, and getting to the point of Blackwell's Island.
Here he cast anchor for some time, waiting the turn of the tide to
enable him to return homewards.
As the night set in it grew blustering and gusty. Dark clouds came
bundling up in the west; and now and then a growl of thunder or a flash
of lightning told that a summer storm was at hand. Sam pulled over,
therefore, under the lee of Manhattan Island, and coasting along came
to a snug nook, just under a steep beetling rock, where he fastened his
skiff to the root of a tree that shot out from a cleft and spread its
broad branches like a canopy over the water. The gust came scouring
along; the wind threw up the river in white surges; the rain rattled
among the leaves, the thunder bellowed worse than that which is now
bellowing, the lightning seemed to lick up the surges of the stream;
but Sam, snugly sheltered under rock and tree, lay crouched in his
skiff, rocking upon the billows, until he fell asleep. When he awoke
all was quiet. The gust had passed away, and only now and then a faint
gleam of lightning in the east showed which way it had gone. The night
was dark and moonless; and from the state of the tide Sam concluded it
was near midnight. He was on the point of making loose his skiff to
return homewards, when he saw a light gleaming along the water from a
distance, which seemed rapidly approaching. As it drew near he
perceived that it came from a lanthorn in the bow of a boat which was
gliding along under shadow of the land. It pulled up in a small cove,
close to where he was. A man jumped on shore, and searching about with
the lanthorn exclaimed, "This is the place - here's the Iron ring." The
boat was then made fast, and the man returning on board, assisted his
comrades in conveying something heavy on shore. As the light gleamed
among them, Sam saw that they were five stout, desperate-looking
fellows, in red woollen caps, with a leader in a three-cornered hat,
and that some of them were armed with dirks, or long knives, and
pistols. They talked low to one another, and occasionally in some
outlandish tongue which he could not understand.
On landing they made their way among the bushes, taking turns to
relieve each other in lugging their burthen up the rocky bank. Sam's
curiosity was now fully aroused, so leaving his skiff he clambered
silently up the ridge that overlooked their path. They had stopped to
rest for a moment, and the leader was looking about among the bushes
with his lanthorn.
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