- Puff - puff - Peter Stuyvesant knew better what to
do with his money than to bury it - puff - I know the Stuyvesant
family - puff - every one of them - puff - not a more respectable family in
the province - puff - old standers - puff - warm householders - puff - none
of your upstarts - puff - puff - puff. - Don't talk to me of Peter
Stuyvesant's walking - puff - puff - puff - puff."
Here the redoubtable Ramm contracted his brow, clasped up his mouth,
till it wrinkled at each corner, and redoubled his smoking with such
vehemence, that the cloudly volumes soon wreathed round his head, as
the smoke envelopes the awful summit of Mount Etna.
A general silence followed the sudden rebuke of this very rich man. The
subject, however, was too interesting to be readily abandoned. The
conversation soon broke forth again from the lips of Peechy Prauw Van
Hook, the chronicler of the club, one of those narrative old men who
seem to grow incontinent of words, as they grow old, until their talk
flows from them almost involuntarily.
Peechy, who could at any time tell as many stories in an evening as his
hearers could digest in a month, now resumed the conversation, by
affirming that, to his knowledge, money had at different times been dug
up in various parts of the island. The lucky persons who had discovered
them had always dreamt of them three times beforehand, and what was
worthy of remark, these treasures had never been found but by some
descendant of the good old Dutch families, which clearly proved that
they had been buried by Dutchmen in the olden time.
"Fiddle-stick with your Dutchmen!" cried the half-pay officer. "The
Dutch had nothing to do with them. They were all buried by Kidd, the
pirate, and his crew."
Here a key-note was touched that roused the whole company. The name of
Captain Kidd was like a talisman in those times, and was associated
with a thousand marvellous stories.
The half-pay officer was a man of great weight among the peaceable
members of the club, by reason of his military character, and of the
gunpowder scenes which, by his own account, he had witnessed.
The golden stories of Kidd, however, were resolutely rivalled by the
tales of Peechy Prauw, who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors to
be eclipsed by a foreign freebooter, enriched every spot in the
neighborhood with the hidden wealth of Peter Stuyvesant and his
contemporaries.
Not a word of this conversation was lost upon Wolfert Webber. He
returned pensively home, full of magnificent ideas of buried riches.
The soil of his native island seemed to be turned into gold-dust; and
every field teemed with treasure. His head almost reeled at the thought
how often he must have heedlessly rambled over places where countless
sums lay, scarcely covered by the turf beneath his feet. His mind was
in a vertigo with this whirl of new ideas.
