“Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it.”
“It faded on the crowing of the cock.”—Hamlet.
Within the memory of men still living, Texas coast dwellers used to
gather around firesides on northery winter nights, and while the rich
juice of sweet potatoes roasting among the ashes oozed through the
jackets, tell tales of “the Pirate of the Gulf.” Not a few of these
tales centered about an ancient and dilapidated house at Bayshore Park,
La Porte, in Harris County. Under it, so they say, is the blood marked
booty of Lafitte; and though old tales and old times and old houses
pass, anyone hardy enough to spend the night in this deserted building
may yet, according to report, receive a visit from the guilt-harried
spirit that sometimes in distress and sometimes in anger is still
trying to win absolution for his earthly sins.
The legend runs that upon a certain occasion Lafitte and his
buccaneering crew sailed up to what is now Bay Ridge (which is opposite
the haunted house of La Porte). He anchored his schooner offshore, and
rowed to the beach with two trusted lieutenants and the heavy chest
which none dared touch except at his orders. When the skiff grounded,
the watchers on the schooner saw their chief blindfold his helpers;
then they saw the three disappear with the chest behind a screen of
grapevine-laden trees. Two hours later Lafitte returned alone. He was
in a black mood and no one had the temerity to question him. It was
supposed that he had caught one of his helpers trying to mark the
location of his cache, and had killed them both. Some say that he led
them back to the pit they had dug and filled up, made them reopen and
enlarge it, and while they were bent down digging, shot them dead. Soon
afterwards Lafitte and his followers went down together in a West India
hurricane, and his crime-stained treasure still lies buried in its
secret hiding place.
Yet to many, as I have intimated, that place has not been secret. It is
under the old house. As faithfully as I can follow the tale, I shall
relate an experience connected with that old house as it was told me by
a Confederate veteran who has now passed on. For personal reasons I
shall call him Major Walcart, though that was not his real name. The
tale, however, is a genuine legend in that it has long been current in
the vicinity of La Porte.
“It was on a February night back in the eighties,” the Major used to
say. “The early darkness of a murky day had overtaken me, and I was
dead tired. I do not think mud ever lay deeper along the shore of
Galveston Bay, or that an east wind ever blew more bleakly. When I came
to a small stream I rode out into the open water, as the custom then
was, to find shallow passage. A full moon was rising out of the bay.
Heavy clouds stretched just above it, and I remember the unearthly
aspect of the blustering breakers in its cheerless light. The immensity
and unfriendliness of the scene made me feel lonesome, and I think the
horse shared my mood. By common consent we turned across before we had
gone far enough from shore, and fell into the trench cut by the stream
in the bottom of the bay.
“We were wretchedly wet as we scrambled up a clayey slope and gained
the top of the bluff. A thin cry which I had not been sure was real
when I first heard it now became insistent. It was like the wail of a
child in mortal pain, and I confess that it reminded me of tales I had
heard of the werewolf, which lures unwary travelers to their doom by
imitating the cry of a human infant. By the uncertain light of the
moon, which the next moment was cut off entirely, I saw that I had
reached a kind of stable that crowned the bluff, and from this
structure the uncanny summons seemed to come.
“The sounds were growing fainter, and I hesitated but a moment.
Dismounting, I led my horse through the doorless entrance, and now the
mystery was explained. Huddled together for warmth lay a flock of
sleeping goats. A kid had rashly squeezed itself into the middle of the
heap, and the insensate brutes were crushing its life out. I found the
perishing little creature, and its flattened body came back to the full
tide of life in my arms. Its warmth was grateful to my cold fingers,
and I fondled it a moment before setting it down on the dry dirt floor.
“I tied my horse to a post that upheld the roof of the stable, and with
saddle and blanket on my arm started toward the house, which I could
make out in its quadrangle of oaks, not many yards distant. The horse
whinnied protestingly as I left him, and when the moaning of the wind
in the eaves smote my ears I was half in mind to turn back and bunk
with the goats. It was a more forbidding sound than the hostile roar of
the breakers had been in the bay.
“I called, but only the muddy waves incessantly tearing at the bluff
made answer. I had scarcely hoped really to hear the sound of a human
voice. The great double doors leading in from the front porch were
barred, but the first window I tried yielded entrance. Striking a
match, I found myself in a room that gave promise of comfort. Fat pine
kindling lay beside the big fireplace, and dry chunks of solid oak were
waiting to glow for me the whole night through.
“I was vaguely conscious that the brave fire I soon had going did not
drive the chill from the air so promptly as it should, but my head was
too heavy with sleep to be bothered. I spread my horse blanket quite
close to the cheerful blaze, and with saddle for pillow and slicker for
cover I abandoned myself to the luxury of rest.
“I do not know how long I had slept when I became aware of a steady
gaze fixed on my face. The man was looking down on me, and no living
creature ever stood so still. There was imperious command in the
unblinking eyes, and yet I saw a sort of profound entreaty also.
“It was plain that the visitant had business with me. I arose, and
together we left the room, passed its neighbor, and entered a third, a
barren little apartment through whose cracks the wind came mercilessly.
I think it was I who had opened the doors. My companion did not seem to
move. He was merely present all the time.
“‘It is here,’ he said, as I halted in the middle of the bare floor,
‘that more gold lies buried than is good for any man. You have but to
dig, and it is yours. You can use it; I cannot. However, it must be
applied only to purposes of highest beneficence. Not one penny may be
evilly or selfishly spent. On this point you must keep faith and beware
of any failing. Do you accept?’
“I answered, ‘Yes,’ and the visitant was gone, and I was shivering with
cold. I groped my way back to my fire, bumping into obstructions I had
not found in my journey away from it. I piled on wood with a generous
hand, and the flames leaped high. I watched the unaccountable shadows
dance on the whitewashed walls, and marked how firebeams flickered
across the warpings of the boards in the floor. Then I dozed off.
“I do not know how long I had been asleep when I felt the presence of
the visitant again. The still reproach of his fixed eyes was worse than
wrath. ‘I need your help more than you can know,’ he said, ‘and you
would fail me. The treasure is mine to give. I paid for it with the
substance of my soul. I want you to have it. With it you can balance
somewhat the burden of guilt I carry for its sake.’
“Again we made the journey to the spot where the treasure was buried,
and this time he showed it to me. There were yellow coins, jeweled
watches, women’s bracelets, diamond rings, and strings of pearls. It
was just such a trove as I had dreamed of when as a boy I had planned
to dig for Lafitte’s treasure, except that the quantity of it was
greater. With the admonition, ‘Do not force me to come again,’ my
companion was gone, and once more I made my way back to the fire.
“This time I took up my saddle and blanket and went out to the company
of my horse. The wind and the waves were wailing together, but I
thought I saw a promise of light across the chilly bay, and never was
the prospect of dawn more welcome. As I saddled up and rode off, the
doleful boom of the muddy water at the foot of the bluff came to me
like an echoed anguish.”
But Lafitte does not appear to every one who spends a night in the
house, and any person seeking the treasure from purely selfish motives
is likely to rue his pains. A story is told of an acquisitive and
enterprising man who came hundreds of miles with the purpose of helping
himself to the chance of finding pirate gold, but who abruptly changed
his mind after spending a night in the house. As Lafitte steadily
pursues his object of finding a fit recipient for his dangerous gift,
never succeeding, his disappointment is sometimes terrible, so they
say, and some simple folk believe that when there is a particularly
dolorous moan in the wash of the waves, it is the despair of the pirate
finding voice in the wail of the waters.