unfortunate wight possessed with devils; until Vanderscamp and his
brother merchants would sail on another trading voyage, when the Wild
Goose would be shut up, and every thing relapse into quiet, only to be
disturbed by his next visitation.
The mystery of all these proceedings gradually dawned upon the tardy
intellects of Communipaw. These were the times of the notorious
Captain Kidd, when the American harbors were the resorts of piratical
adventurers of all kinds, who, under pretext of mercantile voyages,
scoured the West Indies, made plundering descents upon the Spanish Main,
visited even the remote Indian Seas, and then came to dispose of their
booty, have their revels, and fit out new expeditions, in the English
colonies.
Vanderscamp had served in this hopeful school, and having risen to
importance among the bucaniers, had pitched upon his native village and
early home, as a quiet, out-of-the-way, unsuspected place, where he and
his comrades, while anchored at New York, might have their feasts, and
concert their plans, without molestation.
At length the attention of the British government was called to these
piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous.
Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of
the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of
Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the
Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of
their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto
again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he
had fallen in some foreign brawl, or been swung on some foreign gallows.
For a time, therefore, the tranquillity of the village was restored;
the worthy Dutchmen once more smoked their pipes in peace, eying, with
peculiar complacency, their old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling
and drying in the sun, on Gibbet-Island.
This perfect calm was doomed at length to be ruffled. The fiery
persecution of the pirates gradually subsided. Justice was satisfied
with the examples that had been made, and there was no more talk of
Kidd, and the other heroes of like kidney. On a calm summer evening, a
boat, somewhat heavily laden, was seen pulling into Communipaw. What
was the surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost
Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars!
Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home
with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of
him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the
regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling
down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in his native place.
The Wild Goose mansion was again opened, but with diminished splendor,
and no riot. It is true, Vanderscamp had frequent nautical visitors, and
the sound of revelry was occasionally overheard in his house; but every
thing seemed to be done under the rose; and old Pluto was the only
servant that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were
by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet,
mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs,
with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships
came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal,
Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man
Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at
night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise
were landed in the dark, and spirited away, nobody knew whither. One of
the more curious of the inhabitants kept watch, and caught a glimpse of
the features of some of these night visitors, by the casual glance of
a lantern, and declared that he recognized more than one of the
freebooting frequenters of the Wild Goose, in former times; from whence
he concluded that Vanderscamp was at his old game, and that this
mysterious merchandise was nothing more nor less than piratical plunder.
The more charitable opinion, however, was, that Vanderscamp and his
comrades, having been driven from their old line of business, by the
"oppressions of government," had resorted to smuggling to make both ends
meet.
Be that as it may: I come now to the extraordinary fact, which is the
butt-end of this story. It happened late one night, that Yan Yost
Vanderscamp was returning across the broad bay, in his light skiff,
rowed by his man Pluto. He had been carousing on board of a vessel,
newly arrived, and was somewhat obfuscated in intellect, by the liquor
he had imbibed. It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid
clouds was rising in the west, with the low muttering of distant
thunder. Vanderscamp called on Pluto to pull lustily, that they might
get home before the gathering storm. The old negro made no reply, but
shaped his course so as to skirt the rocky shores of Gibbet-Island. A
faint creaking overhead caused Vanderscamp to cast up his eyes, when,
to his horror, he beheld the bodies of his three pot companions and
brothers in iniquity dangling in the moonlight, their rags fluttering,
and their chains creaking, as they were slowly swung backward and
forward by the rising breeze.
"What do you mean, you blockhead!" cried Vanderscamp, "by pulling so
close to the island?"
"I thought you'd be glad to see your old friends once more," growled the
negro; "you were never afraid of a living man, what do you fear from the
dead?"
"Who's afraid?" hiccupped Vanderscamp, partly heated by liquor, partly
nettled by the jeer of the negro; "who's afraid! Hang me, but I would be
glad to see them once more, alive or dead, at the Wild Goose. Come, my
lads in the wind!" continued he, taking a draught, and flourishing the
bottle above his head, "here's fair weather to you in the other world;
and if you should be walking the rounds to-night, odds fish! but I'll be
happy if you will drop in to supper."
A dismal creaking was the only reply. The wind blew loud and shrill, and
as it whistled round the gallows, and among the bones, sounded as if
there were laughing and gibbering in the air. Old Pluto chuckled to
himself, and now pulled for home. The storm burst over the voyagers,
while they were yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, the
thunder crashed and pealed, and the lightning kept up an incessant
blaze. It was stark midnight, before they landed at Communipaw.
Dripping and shivering, Vanderscamp crawled homeward. He was completely
sobered by the storm; the water soaked from without, having diluted and
cooled the liquor within. Arrived at the Wild Goose, he knocked timidly
and dubiously at the door, for he dreaded the reception he was to
experience from his wife. He had reason to do so. She met him at the
threshold, in a precious ill humor.
"Is this a time," said she, "to keep people out of their beds, and to
bring home company, to turn the house upside down?"
"Company?" said Vanderscamp, meekly; "I have brought no company with me,
wife."
"No, indeed! they have got here before you, but by your invitation; and
blessed-looking company they are, truly!"
Vanderscamp's knees smote together. "For the love of heaven, where are
they, wife?"
"Where?--why, in the blue-room, up-stairs, making themselves as much at
home as if the house were their own."
Vanderscamp made a desperate effort, scrambled up to the room, and threw
open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as
blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters
round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were
hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since
translated into English:
"For three merry lads be we,
And three merry lads be we;
I on the land, and thou on the sand,
And Jack on the gallows-tree."
Vanderscamp saw and heard no more. Starting back with horror, he missed
his footing on the landing-place, and fell from the top of the stairs to
the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and, either from the fall or the
fright, was buried in the yard of the little Dutch church at Bergen, on
the following Sunday.
From that day forward, the fate of the Wild Goose was sealed. It was
pronounced a _haunted house_, and avoided accordingly. No one inhabited
it but Vanderscamp's shrew of a widow, and old Pluto, and they were
considered but little better than its hobgoblin visitors. Pluto grew
more and more haggard and morose, and looked more like an imp of
darkness than a human being. He spoke to no one, but went about
muttering to himself; or, as some hinted, talking with the devil, who,
though unseen, was ever at his elbow. Now and then he was seen pulling
about the bay alone, in his skiff, in dark weather, or at the approach
of night-fall; nobody could tell why, unless on an errand to invite more
guests from the gallows. Indeed it was affirmed that the Wild Goose
still continued to be a house of entertainment for such guests, and that
on stormy nights, the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and
sounds of diabolical merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling
of the tempest. Some treated these as idle stories, until on one such
night, it was about the time of the equinox, there was a horrible uproar
in the Wild Goose, that could not be mistaken. It was not so much
the sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing
shrieks, that pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one
thought of hastening to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers
of Communipaw drew their night-caps over their ears, and buried their
heads under the bed-clothes, at the thoughts of Vanderscamp and his
gallows companions.
The next morning, some of the bolder and more curious undertook to
reconnoitre. All was quiet and lifeless at the Wild Goose. The door
yawned wide open, and had evidently been open all night, for the storm
had beaten into the house. Gathering more courage from the silence and
apparent desertion, they gradually ventured over the threshold. The
house had indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing
was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and
corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and
pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp,
extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a
deadly gripe on the wind-pipe.
All now was conjecture and dismay at Communipaw; and the disappearance
of old Pluto, who was no where to be found, gave rise to all kinds of
wild surmises. Some suggested that the negro had betrayed the house to
some of Vanderscamp's bucaniering associates, and that they had decamped
together with the booty; others surmised that the negro was nothing more
nor less than a devil incarnate, who had now accomplished his ends, and
made off with his dues. Events, however, vindicated the negro from this
last imputation. His skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom
upward, as if wrecked in a tempest; and his body was found, shortly
afterward, by some Communipaw fishermen, stranded among the rocks of
Gibbet-Island, near the foot of the pirates' gallows. The fishermen
shook their heads, and observed that old Pluto had ventured once too
often to invite Guests from Gibbet-Island.
* * * * *
THE BERMUDAS.
A SHAKSPERIAN RESEARCH: BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCHBOOK.
"Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these
islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to
dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the
place when he was on the seas? But behold the misprision and conceits of
the world! For true and large experience hath now told us, it is one of
the sweetest paradises that be upon earth."--"A PLAINE DESCRIPT. OF THE
BARMUDAS:" 1613.
In the course of a voyage home from England, our ship had been
struggling, for two or three weeks, with perverse headwinds, and a
stormy sea. It was in the month of May, yet the weather had at times
a wintry sharpness, and it was apprehended that we were in the
neighborhood of floating islands of ice, which at that season of the
year drift out of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and sometimes occasion the
wreck of noble ships.
Wearied out by the continued opposition of the elements, our captain at
length bore away to the south, in hopes of catching the expiring breath
of the trade-winds, and making what is called the southern passage. A
few days wrought, as it were, a magical "sea change" in every thing
around us. We seemed to emerge into a different world. The late dark and
angry sea, lashed up into roaring and swashing surges, became calm and
sunny; the rude winds died away; and gradually a light breeze sprang up
directly aft, filling out every sail, and wafting us smoothly along on
an even keel. The air softened into a bland and delightful temperature.
Dolphins began to play about us; the nautilus came floating by, like a
fairy ship, with its mimic sail and rainbow tints; and flying-fish, from
time to time, made their short excursive flights, and occasionally fell
upon the deck. The cloaks and overcoats in which we had hitherto wrapped
ourselves, and moped about the vessel, were thrown aside; for a summer
warmth had succeeded to the late wintry chills. Sails were stretched as
awnings over the quarter-deck, to protect us from the mid-day sun. Under
these we lounged away the day, in luxurious indolence, musing, with
half-shut eyes, upon the quiet ocean. The night was scarcely less
beautiful than the day. The rising moon sent a quivering column of
silver along the undulating surface of the deep, and, gradually climbing
the heaven, lit up our towering top-sails and swelling main-sails, and
spread a pale, mysterious light around. As our ship made her whispering
way through this dreamy world of waters, every boisterous sound on board
was charmed to silence; and the low whistle, or drowsy song of a sailor
from the forecastle, or the tinkling of a guitar, and the soft warbling
of a female voice from the quarter-deck, seemed to derive a witching
melody from the scene and hour. I was reminded of Oberon's exquisite
description of music and moonlight on the ocean:
--"Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song?
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music."
Indeed, I was in the very mood to conjure up all the imaginary beings
with which poetry has peopled old ocean, and almost ready to fancy
I heard the distant song of the mermaid, or the mellow shell of the
triton, and to picture to myself Neptune and Amphitrite with all their
pageant sweeping along the dim horizon.
A day or two of such fanciful voyaging brought us in sight of the
Bermudas, which first looked like mere summer clouds, peering above the
quiet ocean. All day we glided along in sight of them, with just wind
enough to fill our sails; and never did land appear more lovely. They
were clad in emerald verdure, beneath the serenest of skies: not an
angry wave broke upon their quiet shores, and small fishing craft,
riding on the crystal waves, seemed as if hung in air. It was such a
scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon
lot of the fisherman:
Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were
To bide among the simple fisher-swains:
No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here,
Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
Our sports begin with the beginning year;
In calms, to pull the leaping fish to land,
In roughs, to sing and dance along the yellow sand.
In contemplating these beautiful islands, and the peaceful sea
around them, I could hardly realize that these were the "still vexed
Bermoothes" of Shakspeare, once the dread of mariners, and infamous in
the narratives of the early discoverers, for the dangers and disasters
which beset them. Such, however, was the case; and the islands derived
additional interest in my eyes, from fancying that I could trace in
their early history, and in the superstitious notions connected with
them, some of the elements of Shakspeare's wild and beautiful drama of
the Tempest. I shall take the liberty of citing a few historical facts,
in support of this idea, which may claim some additional attention from
the American reader, as being connected with the first settlement of
Virginia.
At the time when Shakspeare was in the fulness of his talent, and
seizing upon everything that could furnish aliment to his imagination,
the colonization of Virginia was a favorite object of enterprise among
people of condition in England, and several of the courtiers of the
court of Queen Elizabeth were personally engaged in it. In the year
1609 a noble armament of nine ships and five hundred men sailed for the
relief of the colony. It was commanded by Sir George Somers, as admiral,
a gallant and generous gentleman, above sixty years of age, and
possessed of an ample fortune, yet still bent upon hardy enterprise, and
ambitious of signalizing himself in the service of his country.
On board of his flag-ship, the Sea-Vulture, sailed also Sir Thomas
Gates, lieutenant-general of the colony. The voyage was long and
boisterous. On the twenty-fifth of July, the admiral's ship was
separated from the rest, in a hurricane. For several days she was driven
about at the mercy of the elements, and so strained and racked, that her
seams yawned open, and her hold was half filled with water. The storm
subsided, but left her a mere foundering wreck. The crew stood in the
hold to their waists in water, vainly endeavoring to bail her with
kettles, buckets, and other vessels. The leaks rapidly gained on them,
while their strength was as rapidly declining. They lost all hope of
keeping the ship afloat, until they should reach the American coast; and
wearied with fruitless toil, determined, in their despair, to give up
all farther attempt, shut down the hatches, and abandon themselves to
Providence. Some, who had spirituous liquors, or "comfortable waters,"
as the old record quaintly terms them, brought them forth, and shared
them with their comrades, and they all drank a sad farewell to one
another, as men who were soon to part company in this world.
In this moment of extremity, the worthy admiral, who kept sleepless
watch from the high stern of the vessel, gave the thrilling cry of
"land!" All rushed on deck, in a frenzy of joy, and nothing now was to
be seen or heard on board, but the transports of men who felt as if
rescued from the grave. It is true the land in sight would not, in
ordinary circumstances, have inspired much self-gratulation. It could be
nothing else but the group of islands called after their discoverer, one
Juan Bermudas, a Spaniard, but stigmatized among the mariners of those
days as "the islands of devils!" "For the islands of the Bermudas," says
the old narrative of this voyage, "as every man knoweth that hath heard
or read of them, were never inhabited by any Christian or heathen
people, but were ever esteemed and reputed a most prodigious and
inchanted place, affording nothing but gusts, stormes, and foul weather,
which made every navigator and mariner to avoide them, as Scylla and
Charybdis, or as they would shun the Divell himself." [Footnote: "A
Plaine Description of the Barmudas."]
Sir George Somers and his tempest-tossed comrades, however, hailed them
with rapture, as if they had been a terrestrial paradise. Every sail was
spread, and every exertion made to urge the foundering ship to land.
Before long, she struck upon a rock. Fortunately, the late stormy winds
had subsided, and there was no surf. A swelling wave lifted her from off
the rock, and bore her to another; and thus she was borne on from rock
to rock, until she remained wedged between two, as firmly as if set upon
the stocks. The boats were immediately lowered, and, though the shore
was above a mile distant, the whole crew were landed in safety.
Every one had now his task assigned him. Some made all haste to unload
the ship, before she should go to pieces; some constructed wigwams of
palmetto leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and
water. To their surprise and joy, they found it far different from the
desolate and frightful place they had been taught, by seamen's stories,
to expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various
kinds, and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that
had swam ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island
abounded with turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be
found among the rocks. The bays and inlets were full of fish; so tame,
that if any one stepped into the water, they would throng around him.
Sir George Somers, in a little while, caught enough with hook and line
to furnish a meal to his whole ship's company. Some of them were so
large, that two were as much as a man could carry. Crawfish, also,
were taken in abundance. The air was soft and salubrious, and the sky
beautifully serene. Waller, in his "Summer Islands," has given us a
faithful picture of the climate:
"For the kind spring, (which but salutes us here,)
Inhabits these, and courts them all the year:
Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same trees live;
At once they promise, and at once they give:
So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,
None sickly lives, or dies before his time.
Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
To shew how all things were created first."
We may imagine the feelings of the shipwrecked marines on finding
themselves cast by stormy seas upon so happy a coast; where abundance
was to be had without labor; where what in other climes constituted the
costly luxuries of the rich, were within every man's reach; and where
life promised to be a mere holiday. Many of the common sailors,
especially, declared they desired no better lot than to pass the rest of
their lives on this favored island.
The commanders, however, were not so ready to console themselves
with mere physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of
cultivated life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing
of the arrival of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands,
they fitted out the long-boat, making a deck of the ship's hatches,
and having manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under
the command of an able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to proceed to
Virginia, and procure shipping to be sent to their relief.
While waiting in anxious idleness for the arrival of the looked-for
aid, dissensions arose between Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates,
originating, very probably, in jealousy of the lead which the nautical
experience and professional station of the admiral gave him in the
present emergency. Each commander, of course, had his adherents:
these dissensions ripened into a complete schism; and this handful
of shipwrecked men, thus thrown together, on an uninhabited island,
separated into two parties, and lived asunder in bitter feud, as men
rendered fickle by prosperity instead of being brought into brotherhood
by a common calamity.
Weeks and months elapsed, without bringing the looked-for aid from
Virginia, though that colony was within but a few days' sail. Fears were
now entertained that the long-boat had been either swallowed up in
the sea, or wrecked on some savage coast; one or other of which most
probably was the case, as nothing was ever heard of Raven and his
comrades.
Each party now set to work to build a vessel for itself out of the cedar
with which the island abounded. The wreck of the Sea-Vulture furnished
rigging, and various other articles; but they had no iron for bolts, and
other fastenings; and for want of pitch and tar, they payed the seams of
their vessels with lime and turtle's oil, which soon dried, and became
as hard as stone.