His stories were a little incoherent, but I am confident that he
firmly believed them, and thought he was telling the truth. He was
as superstitious as an Arab, and believed in all sorts of ghosts,
hobgoblins, and disembodied spirits in general. One day I happened to
see him when he was bewailing his ill luck a night or two before. He
had a violent cold, and had swallowed a prodigious quantity of rum and
molasses to drive it away. When I asked how he caught it, he became
very solemn, took another “dram,” as he called it, and then proceeded
to a confidential talk.
“Now, boy,” said he, “I will tell you all about it; but you must first
promise not to reveal my secret.”
Of course I made the required promise.
“This was the way of it,” he continued.
[Sidenote: DIGGING FOR KIDD’S MONEY.]
“One night last week, I dreamed that a spirit with a bright light in
its hand came to me, and told me to follow. I followed, and it led me
to a place about a hundred yards from the river, where it set down
the light, and told me to dig. There was nothing to dig with, but as
I looked at the ground, I saw a pick and shovel. I went to work with
them, and when I struck the first blow, the spirit went away. I dug
and dug, but without getting tired. It seemed that after I had been
digging two or three hours, I struck a chest. I could hear the pick
hitting on it; and by and by the point of it went through the oak, and
I could hear the money rattling. Just then I waked, and found it was
daylight.
“Next night I dreamed the same thing again, and then I knew there
was something in it. The second time I dreamed it, I tried hard to
remember where the place was; and the next day I went up and down
the banks of the river, in hopes of seeing it. But I couldn’t find
it, and what to do I didn’t know. It was a revelation, sure, but the
revelation wasn’t clear enough, and I knew that something else was
coming. Night before last it came.”
He spoke the last sentence very solemnly, and as he did so, he moved
his hand towards a box that stood near his arm-chair. I thought he was
about to open it, and show me some of the wealth of the great pirate;
but he only produced a fresh bottle of rum, and took another drink.
Smacking his lips, he continued.
“Night before last it came. I was out by the swamp after dark. I had
been looking for the place, and was just then going home, and thinking
I would try it again next morning. I was walking along, thinking,
and had my head down, when, all at once, I stumbled over something
that made me look up again. And there, not twenty feet away, was the
light—just such as the spirit carried in my dream, only it wasn’t so
bright.”
I was about to say, “Will o’ the wisp;” but I knew that if I did so, I
should put an end to the story, and so I kept silence.
[Sidenote: GUIDED BY A SPIRIT.]
“I couldn’t see any spirit, but of course that didn’t make any
difference, as I knew the light would take me to the spot. I didn’t
say a word, you may believe, but I looked at the light; and it hung
there, looking at me. It didn’t move for a minute, and then it began
dancing along— not dancing, but sort of waving, like—and moving away
from me. I followed it over bushes and logs, and through water up to
my knees, and sometimes nearly to my waist, and never once took my
eyes off of it. I must have gone half a mile or more, when I stepped
into a hole, and fell flat in the water, down among the brambles. The
pain was so sharp that I said something, and when I got to my feet
again, the light was gone. And that is how I got this cold.”
I tried to explain that the light which he saw was nothing
supernatural, but he would not listen to my “boy foolishness,” as he
called it; and after a slight attempt to enlighten him, I gave it up.
He recovered from his cold, but kept his dream of fortune constantly
in mind. I believe he tried again to follow the mysterious light, and
with the same result as before. But his faith was not shaken, and to
his dying day he believed he should yet find the buried wealth of
Captain Kidd.
[Sidenote: THE MYSTERIOUS CHEST.]
According to my recollection, every story told by this man, or any of
his associates and neighbors, about seeking for buried treasures, was
full of supernatural occurrences; and the failure to obtain the hidden
wealth was always attributed to a failure to maintain silence. In this
instance my friend attributed the disappearance of the light to his
exclamation when he fell; had he remained speechless, the light, in
his opinion, would have led him to fortune. Repeatedly I was told of
instances where the coveted chest had been reached, and only a few
more blows were required to open it. The air was full of unearthly
noises, and the diggers were tossed and struck by invisible hands;
but they heeded them not, and worked their best. But a blow heavier
than the rest, or a sight of the chest, caused an exclamation; when,
instantly, the chest disappeared, and the hole which had been dug by
human agency, was filled by a supernatural one.
Along the coast of New England, from the end of Long Island to
Portsmouth and Portland, there are numerous traditions and other
stories of Kidd’s treasures. There are those who believe that some of
the pirate’s wealth is hidden near Lynn and Salem; others locate it
near Newburyport; and others, again, near Hampton, Portsmouth, and
Kittery. On three occasions I have made summer cruises near these
places, and whenever I sought one of these traditions, I generally
found it. Places have been shown me where credulous persons have
dug for gold and silver enough to make them the envy of all their
neighbors; and there is one spot, near Lynn, where a man expended
thousands of dollars, trying to make an entrance into a cave, where,
as the spirits told him, treasure of an enormous value was concealed.
His money gave out before the treasure was reached; and if it was
there then, it remains there now, ready for any one who has money and
inclination to prosecute the search.
A party of us, one afternoon, while loitering around Newburyport, fell
in with an ancient inhabitant who was a firm believer in the existence
of the wealth of Captain Kidd. He knew a great deal more than he would
tell—or, at any rate, intimated as much to us when we endeavored to
sound him. I will call him Bill Sanborn, as a cover for his real
name, which I do not feel at liberty to print. He was a genius in his
way, and when we had filled him with rum, and warmed the stiffened
muscles of his time-worn frame, he was as talkative as a magpie. He
wandered from his subject continually, and it was utterly impossible
to tie him down to the main topic of his discourse. He had a son or a
grandson—I forget which—keeping a groggery in Boston. The old man had
recently been on a visit to the modern Athens, and evidently picked up
considerable of the slang of the family bar-room, where he passed his
leisure hours. His abilities in the absorption line were extensive,
and I hardly dare to say how much he drank, and we paid for, before he
was in a proper condition to tell about Captain Kidd. Finally we had
him properly wound up, and after singing a few verses of the ancient
ballad, with a tremendous emphasis on “as I sailed,” he began.
[Sidenote: BILL SANBORN’S STORY.]
“I might tell you a good deal about hunting for money, but I won’t
go and do it, because it might be doing injustice to some folks that
ain’t dead yet; and I don’t believe in that, anyhow. There was Jim
Follett and me. We struck a big thing once, and if Jim could have
kept his hash-trap shut, we might have had money enough to buy all
the rum in America, and keep drunk for ten thousand years. Jim is a
good fellow, and likes to have a good time. He’d like to have it on
his own money; but he don’t have none of his own, and so he has to get
other people’s, which does just as well. Jim and me are pretty much
alike, but I’m more like him than he is like me. Jim’s gone off to
Labrador fishing now, or he would be here with us to-day, and if he’d
been sucking away at that bottle, he would have been blind drunk by
this time, and couldn’t move from his chair no more than if he was an
anchor.
[Sidenote: JIM FOLLETT’S DOG.]
“Jim and me used to sit around the store up there on the corner, when
we hadn’t nothing to do. The storekeeper had a dog, a little ornery
cross between one cur and another cur, that hadn’t no more real,
genuine dog blood into him than a sea-turtle. He was a monstrous proud
dog though, and used to sit up in a chair and look as serious as a
country gal at another gal’s wedding. When he had eat a good dinner
and was a digesting it, he was pretty good natured; but if he was
hungry, or had been kicked, or another dog had licked him, he wouldn’t
allow no familiarity, not even if ’twas the Emperor of China that
spoke to him. He had a funny way, too, that if anybody fetched him
round the tail, or sides, or back, he wouldn’t bite that feller, but
he would bite the man that was nearest to his mouth. For instance, you
and me might be a setting here, and Spot—that was what they called
the dog—Spot might be laying down atween us, with his head towards me
and his tail towards you. Now, if you put your foot down on Spot’s
tail, that confounded dog would let me have it right in the leg, and
the more you put your foot down, the more he’d let his teeth into me,
until they met. Lots of the fellers has been chawed by Spot, and the
fun of it was, that them which was worst chawed was the ones that
hadn’t fetched him.
“They got a new parson here once, and one day, when Jim and me was in
the store, the parson happened along, and come in too.
“‘Fine morning,’ says he to us and the storekeeper, and of course we
said ‘fine morning’ to him. He was a meek sort of chap, with a face
like a plateful of mashed turnips, and he talked as if he thought
divine Providence was easy of hearing, and could understand him if he
didn’t speak much above a whisper.
“The parson talked round a while, and finally he happened to see Spot,
who was a setting up in a chair with his tail sticking out between the
rounds, and looking as if he was just going to Sunday school, and was
a saying his lesson over to hisself.
“‘Ah, fine dog that,’ says the parson to the storekeeper. ‘Pears to
look very gentle, and very intelligent too.’
“The storekeeper just then had his back turned, and we didn’t say
nothing. The parson patted Spot on the head, and said, ‘Good doggie,
good doggie.’ Spot was getting ready for a growl, and began to peel
his ivories like the ripping up of an old shoe. The parson didn’t
notice it, and kept on patting him, and said he could always make
friends with any dog that he met.
[Sidenote: HOW THE PARSON WAS BITTEN.]
“Jim was a sitting next to Spot, and reached out on the sly, and
pinched the critter’s tail. Spot made one grab for the parson’s wrist,
and hung on like a locomotive pulling a freight train. The parson
jumped around, howling worse than a coyote, and his mouth was as
narrow as a hole in a cast iron letter box. Bimeby the dog dropped
off, and the parson went out of the door and off for home, as if he’d
just had a call to marry a rich couple that couldn’t wait. Jim and me
laughed, but the storekeeper was mad, because he was afraid he’d lost
the parson’s custom. So he talked rough to us and drove us off, and we
haven’t been there since.
“Jim and me was over to Hampton one time, and loafing around a week or
so among the boys. There was a gal at Hampton, mighty smart gal she
was, and used to sing in meeting Sundays until you’d think she’d lift
the roof of the meeting-house. Some of the young fellers was trying to
shine up to her, but she shook ’em all off, and went sweet on a galoot
that was keeping school over in the next town. He used to come to see
her every week, and he always come on horseback. The Hampton boy’s
sort of hated him, because he was a cutting them out, and so they used
to rig up jokes on him sometimes. They’d tie the door of the house
where him and his gal was, and once they took a big box and put it
up agin the door, so that when he walked out of the house he walked
into the box, just as though it was a front porch. They hid his saddle
once, and made him ride home bare-back; and the folks where he kept
school said he didn’t sit down much for three or four days afterwards.
[Sidenote: A PRACTICAL JOKE.]
“The next night after we got there the feller come a courting, and the
boys asked us to have some fun with them. The hoss was tied under a
shed, and right down the road, about a hundred yards away, there was
a big mud-puddle. It run clear across the road, and we could see that
when the feller started for home he would have to go right through it.
Jim looked the ground over, and told the boys to go and buy a hundred
yards of strong clothes-line, and bring it to him.
“When they brought the clothes-line, Jim said to ’em, ‘Tie one end of
the line to the post of the shed, and tie it strong.’
“When they had done it, Jim says again, ‘Now take the line and measure
it right out to the middle of the mud-puddle.’
“They measured it, and found that the other end just went to the
middle of the puddle. They brought the line back, and Jim coiled it up
close to the post, and then tied the loose end to the crupper of the
saddle. Meanwhile some of the rest of the boys had got an old cannon
out into a field just behind the shed, and loaded it up with a good
charge of powder. When everything was ready it was about a quarter to
twelve, and we sat down to wait.
“The feller always started home at twelve o’clock, cause the gal’s
mother wouldn’t let her sit up no longer. The old lady said he might
stay as long as he liked, but Mary must go to bed. He didn’t see no
fun in courting all alone to hisself, and so he never staid after that
time. Well, just at twelve o’clock we saw the door open, and heard
a smack like bustin a cigar box with a hammer. Then he said, ‘Good
night, dearest,’ and he out to his hoss, unhitched the bridle, and
jumped on without looking to see if things was all right. He hit the
hoss a poke in the ribs, and the critter humped himself at a gallop
straight towards the mud-puddle. The rope was unwinding easy and nice,
and neither him nor the hoss didn’t know nothing about it.
“When they had got almost to the edge of the puddle, Jim touched off
the gun with his cigar. It sounded like a clap of thunder, and the
hoss made one jump, and just as he did so he got to the end of the
rope. The saddle come off, and the feller with it, and the beast went
on as if he was running on a bet of ten thousand dollars, and had put
up all the money hisself.
[Sidenote: OUT OF THE MUD-PUDDLE.]
“As the feller tumbled off, he gave a yell that you might have heard
fourteen thousand miles away. He thought a streak of lightning had
struck the hoss, and that both of ’em was being swallowed up by an
earthquake. The gal was standing in the door, and she gave a scream,
and ran out and met the feller just as he got up out of the mud, and
was making for the house. She got hold of him, and then she fainted,
and went down into the ditch by the road-side, where there was a foot
or so of water. She didn’t stay fainted long; it warn’t more than a
minute before she was up again. Both of ’em thought it was a flash
of lightning, until they got most up to the shed, and we could see
them by the light shining out of the house. They was the sloppiest,
muddiest looking pair that you ever set eyes on. The feller had on a
claw-hammer coat, and the water was a dripping off the tails of it
like the Falls of Niagara, and his white trousers was like an old map
of Africa, covered all over with black ink for unexplored country. His
hat was gone, and his hair was full of mud, and looked like a swab
that hasn’t been wrung out after washing the floor of a bar-room. If
you’ve ever seen a hen that’s been caught in a shower, and got under
a cart to get dry, you’ll know how that gal looked with her clothes
all sticking to her, and she all ready to drop down again as soon as
she found a good place. She said she never knew such awful thunder and
lightning; and just as he said, ‘Yes, dearest,’ they stumbled over the
rope, and then they see what it was. He hauled the rope in, hand over
hand, jest as you’d haul in a halibut; and when he got the saddle,
and found it tied to the rope, they was about the maddest pair that
ever was in Hampton. The gal belonged to the church, and therefore
couldn’t swear, and the feller couldn’t swear cause the gal would hear
him, but he said something that sounded mighty like it. They both went
into the house, where everybody had got up on account of the noise.
The feller staid there that night, but he never come there no more.
He seemed kind of discouraged like, and thought there was too many
difficulties about courting to make it pay.”
[Sidenote: STEALING A BABY.]
The old fellow paused here to take another drink, and then he went on
with more anecdotes about Jim Follett and his practical jokes. It was
rather odd, or at any rate appeared so to his hearers, that he did not
see the least impropriety in giving severe pain and annoyance to those
who had offended nobody, and the thought that there was the slightest
injustice in practical joking seems never to have entered his head.
One of Jim’s performances, greatly relished by old Bill, was of the
most inhuman character. One day Jim was on the train from Boston, and
was to stop at Newburyport. There were but few passengers in the car
where he rode, and near him was a woman with a baby. She was going
through to Portland, and before reaching Newburyport she placed the
slumbering child on the seat before her, and while watching it, fell
asleep herself. On reaching Newburyport, Jim, in a spirit of mischief,
took the child from the train, left it in the station, and quietly
walked away. The agony of the mother on awaking may be imagined.
Luckily another passenger had witnessed Jim’s performance, and by
a vigorous use of the telegraph, the mother and child were brought
together a few hours later, after considerable suffering on the part
of both.
Suddenly Bill recollected himself, and told us about the search for
Captain Kidd’s buried treasures.
[Sidenote: THE MYSTERIOUS BOTTLE.]
“One day Jim was down setting some lobster traps, and he wanted
something for bait. So he went ashore, and tried to dig clams in a
little cove where there was a strip of sand in between the rocks. But
there wasn’t a clam to be found; and while he was a setting down, and
wondering what to do next, he thought he saw something odd in the hole
he had just made. He went for it, and it turned out to be the neck
of a bottle; he pulled it out, and there was one of the curiousest
bottles you ever see. It looked as if it might have been the bottle
that Methuselah used to carry when he was a young bummer and went off
on jambarees over Sunday. ‘Now,’ says Jim, ‘I’ll take this bottle
home and show it to Bill Sanborn;’ and sure enough, he did. We busted
it and found it empty, and I ought to have said that if there had
been anything into it Jim wouldn’t never have brought it home without
opening it.
“No, it wasn’t empty neither. There was a piece of paper in it, a sort
of dried-up, old parchment like, with some writing on it. The writing
looked as if it was done in the dark by a blind man who couldn’t read
and was drunk into the bargain. We fussed over it a long time, but
couldn’t make nothing out of it, and after trying a dozen times, we
laid it away and went to bed.
“I fell asleep, and pretty soon I dreamed that writing all out as
plain as though it had been printed. I don’t remember what it was now,
but it told that there was something a hundred and twenty-three yards
north-north-east, half east, from a certain rock; and I dreamed the
rock out so, that I thought I should know it. Then I waked and lit
a candle, and tried the paper again, and found I could read it all
straight.
“I waltzed Jim out of bed in no time, and we determined to start off
at daybreak. I shan’t tell you exactly where we went, and I haven’t
told you the correct distance and bearings, because I want to try
it again some time. Anyhow, we went there, and after a good deal of
hunting we found the rock, and found a cross like a big X cut into
it. Then we measured off the distance, and took the bearings with
a compass we had brought along for the purpose. It turned out that
a hundred and twenty-three yards north-north-east, half east, from
the rock carried us beyond high-water mark; and as the tide was jest
coming in, we couldn’t do nothing. We drove a stake into the sand,
though, and concluded to come back and work at night when the tide was
out, so as to prevent anybody seeing us. We went and slept as much as
we could, and when the night tide was going out, we come back with
shovels and picks and pitched in.
“You never seen fellows dig as we did. We made the dirt fly, and we
only stopped once in a while to take a drink. We kept our wits about
us, and didn’t speak a word, as the old folks say if you speak when
you are digging for money you won’t never find it.
“A little before midnight we were down about six feet, and had a hole
large enough to bury one of those dog-house trunks the women take to
Nahant. I struck the pick down, and it hit something that sounded
hollow. Jim almost got his mouth open to say something, but I motioned
him to keep still, and put the pick down again. There was the same
hollow sound, and then we went at it for dear life. We dug away and
tossed out the dirt, and bimeby I hit the chest with my shovel. When I
did that I felt somebody push me first one way and then the other, but
I couldn’t see nobody but Jim, and he wasn’t doing it. I slid around
lively, digging all the time, and Jim, too; but it was enough to make
your hair turn white to be struck as we were by ghosts, and to hear
the air full of noises, but couldn’t see anybody making them. They
cursed us and screamed at us, but we had expected something of the
sort, and besides we was after a fortune. We got some of the dirt off
the chest, as it seemed to be, and with it we got some bones of a man.
[Sidenote: THE GHOSTLY WATCHMAN.]
“How did they get there, do you suppose? I don’t know any more than
you do; but I’ve heard tell that when those pirates buried money they
left somebody to watch it. They couldn’t leave him there alive where
nobody lived, and boarding-houses wasn’t to be found, and so they
used to draw lots, and the feller that got the unlucky lot was just
knocked in the head and laid on top of the chest before they filled up
the hole. That skeleton belonged to the watchman, and it was him that
knocked us around and made such noises in the air. If he ever wants
anybody to say he did his duty, let him call on me and Jim—that’s all.
“We’d got out several pieces of the skeleton, and in five minutes more
would have been in the chest. All at once Jim was took by the throat
by one of them air ghosts, and at the same time a voice called out,
‘Leave or die.’
“Jim dropped his pick and yelled ‘murder’ as loud as he could.
[Sidenote: LOSING THE FORTUNE.]
“In less time than you could hold a red-hot nail in your eye without
winking the chest sunk down out of sight and reach, the dirt rolled in
on us; and if we hadn’t got out as quick as we could jump, it would
have buried us. And the odd thing about it was, that the bones went
in before the dirt did, and settled down jest as they were before we
disturbed them. We had nothing more to do. Our fortune was gone, and
it was all because Jim hadn’t put a big plaster over his mouth so as
he couldn’t holler.”
Here Mr. Sanborn took another drain at the bottle, and suddenly
relapsed into silence.
LXII.
OPERATIONS AT HELLGATE.
HELLGATE AND SANDY HOOK.—ENTRANCES TO NEW YORK HARBOR.—THE
HELLEGAT AND ITS MEANING.—STORIES OF THE OLD VOYAGERS.—EDITORIAL
JOKES.—MAILLEFERT’S OPERATIONS.—DEEPENING THE CHANNEL.—GENERAL
NEWTON.—THE AUTHOR ON AN EXCURSION.—BLOWING UP COENTIES’ REEF.—HOW
IT IS DONE—AN ACCIDENT WITH NITRO-GLYCERINE.—THE AUTHOR’S NARROW
ESCAPE.—DIVER’S EXPERIENCE.—ASTONISHING THE FISHES.—RECEPTION
AT HALLETT’S POINT.—GOING UNDER THE REEF.—THE MEN AT WORK.—AN
INUNDATION.—HOW THE REEF IS TO BE REMOVED.—SURVEYING IN THE
WATER.—A GRAND EXPLOSION.