Wolfert and his companions shrunk back is dismay. Still their curiosity
would not allow them entirely to withdraw. A long sheet of lightning
now flickered across the waves, and discovered a boat, filled with men,
just under a rocky point, rising and sinking with the heavy surges, and
swashing the water at every heave. It was with difficulty held to the
rocks by a boat hook, for the current rushed furiously round the point.
The veteran hoisted one end of the lumbering sea-chest on the gunwale
of the boat; he seized the handle at the other end to lift it in, when
the motion propelled the boat from the shore; the chest slipped off
from the gunwale, sunk into the waves, and pulled the veteran headlong
after it. A loud shriek was uttered by all on shore, and a volley of
execrations by those on board; but boat and man were hurried away by
the rushing swiftness of the tide. A pitchy darkness succeeded; Wolfert
Webber indeed fancied that He distinguished a cry for help, and that he
beheld the drowning man beckoning for assistance; but when the
lightning again gleamed along the water all was drear and void. Neither
man nor boat was to be seen; nothing but the dashing and weltering of
the waves as they hurried past.
The company returned to the tavern, for they could not leave it before
the storm should subside. They resumed their seats and gazed on each
other with dismay. The whole transaction had not occupied five minutes
and not a dozen words had been spoken. When they looked at the oaken
chair they could scarcely realize the fact that the strange being who
had so lately tenanted it, full of life and Herculean vigor, should
already be a corpse. There was the very glass he had just drunk from;
there lay the ashes from the pipe which he had smoked as it were with
his last breath. As the worthy burghers pondered on these things, they
felt a terrible conviction of the uncertainty of human existence, and
each felt as if the ground on which he stood was rendered less stable
by this awful example.
As, however, the most of the company were possessed of that valuable
philosophy which enables a man to bear up with fortitude against the
misfortunes of his neighbors, they soon managed to console themselves
for the tragic end of the veteran. The landlord was happy that the poor
dear man had paid his reckoning before he went.
"He came in a storm, and he went in a storm; he came in the night, and
he went in the night; he came nobody knows from whence, and he has gone
nobody knows where. For aught I know he has gone to sea once more on
his chest and may land to bother some people on the other side of the
world! Though it's a thousand pities," added the landlord, "if he has
gone to Davy Jones that he had not left his sea-chest behind him."
"The sea-chest! St. Nicholas preserve us!" said Peechy Prauw. "I'd not
have had that sea-chest in the house for any money; I'll warrant he'd
come racketing after it at nights, and making a haunted house of the
inn. And as to his going to sea on his chest, I recollect what happened
to Skipper Onderdonk's ship on his voyage from Amsterdam.
"The boatswain died during a storm, so they wrapped him up in a sheet,
and put him in his own sea-chest, and threw him overboard; but they
neglected in their hurry-skurry to say prayers over him - and the storm
raged and roared louder than ever, and they saw the dead man seated in
his chest, with his shroud for a sail, coming hard after the ship; and
the sea breaking before him in great sprays like fire, and there they
kept scudding day after day and night after night, expecting every
moment to go to wreck; and every night they saw the dead boatswain in
his sea-chest trying to get up with them, and they heard his whistle
above the blasts of wind, and he seemed to send great seas mountain
high after them, that would have swamped the ship if they had not put
up the dead lights. And so it went on till they lost sight of him in
the fogs of Newfoundland, and supposed he had veered ship and stood for
Dead Man's Isle. So much for burying a man at sea without saying
prayers over him."
The thunder-gust which had hitherto detained the company was now at an
end. The cuckoo clock in the hall struck midnight; every one pressed to
depart, for seldom was such a late hour trespassed on by these quiet
burghers. As they sallied forth they found the heavens once more
serene. The storm which had lately obscured them had rolled aways and
lay piled up in fleecy masses on the horizon, lighted up by the bright
crescent of the moon, which looked like a silver lamp hung up in a
palace of clouds.
The dismal occurrence of the night, and the dismal narrations they had
made, had left a superstitious feeling in every mind. They cast a
fearful glance at the spot where the buccaneer had disappeared, almost
expecting to see him sailing on his chest in the cool moonshine. The
trembling rays glittered along the waters, but all was placid; and the
current dimpled over the spot where he had gone down. The party huddled
together in a little crowd as they repaired homewards; particularly
when they passed a lonely field where a man had been murdered; and he
who had farthest to go and had to complete his journey alone, though a
veteran sexton, and accustomed, one would think to ghosts and goblins,
yet went a long way round, rather than pass by his own church-yard.
