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.
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