It was Bradish and others of
the buccaneers who had buried money, some said in Turtle Bay, others on
Long-Island, others in the neighborhood of Hell Gate. Indeed, added he,
I recollect an adventure of Mud Sam, the negro fisherman, many years
ago, which some think had something to do with the buccaneers. As we
are all friends here, and as it will go no farther, I'll tell it to
you.
"Upon a dark night many years ago, as Sam was returning from fishing in
Hell Gate - "
Here the story was nipped in the bud by a sudden movement from the
unknown, who, laying his iron fist on the table, knuckles downward,
with a quiet force that indented the very boards, and looking grimly
over his shoulder, with the grin of an angry bear. "Heark'ee,
neighbor," said he, with significant nodding of the head, "you'd better
let the buccaneers and their money alone - they're not for old men and
old women to meddle with. They fought hard for their money, they gave
body and soul for it, and wherever it lies buried, depend upon it he
must have a tug with the devil who gets it."
This sudden explosion was succeeded by a blank silence throughout the
room. Peechy Prauw shrunk within himself, and even the 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.
