The voice from the water
was again heard in a tone of impatience; the bystanders stared with
redoubled awe at this man of storms, which seemed to have come up out
of the deep and to be called back to it again. As, with the assistance
of the negro, he slowly bore his ponderous sea-chest towards the shore,
they eyed it with a superstitious feeling; half doubting whether he
were not really about to embark upon it, and launch forth upon the wild
waves. They followed him at a distance with a lanthorn.
"Douse the light!" roared the hoarse voice from the water. "No one
wants light here!"
"Thunder and lightning!" exclaimed the veteran; "back to the house with
you!"
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.
