_An Old-time Story of the Days of Captain Kidd._
To tell about Tom Chist, and how he got his name, and how he came to be
living at the little settlement of Henlopen, just inside the mouth of
the Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a
great storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. During the
heaviest part of the hurricane a bark went ashore on the
Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, just below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the
Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist was the only soul of all those on board the
ill-fated vessel who escaped alive.
This story must first be told, because it was on account of the strange
and miraculous escape that happened to him at that time that he gained
the name that was given to him.
Even as late as that time of the American colonies, the little
scattered settlement at Henlopen, made up of English, with a few Dutch
and Swedish people, was still only a spot upon the face of the great
American wilderness that spread away, with swamp and forest, no man
knew how far to the westward. That wilderness was not only full of wild
beasts, but of Indian savages, who every fall would come in wandering
tribes to spend the winter along the shores of the fresh-water lakes
below Henlopen. There for four or five months they would live upon fish
and clams and wild ducks and geese, chipping their arrow-heads, and
making their earthenware pots and pans under the lee of the sand-hills
and pine woods below the Capes.
Sometimes on Sundays, when the Rev. Hillary Jones would be preaching in
the little log church back in the woods, these half-clad red savages
would come in from the cold, and sit squatting in the back part of the
church, listening stolidly to the words that had no meaning for them.
But about the wreck of the bark in 1686. Such a wreck as that which
then went ashore on the Hen-and-Chicken Shoals was a godsend to the
poor and needy settlers in the wilderness where so few good things ever
came. For the vessel went to pieces during the night, and the next
morning the beach was strewn with wreckage--boxes and barrels, chests
and spars, timbers and planks, a plentiful and bountiful harvest to be
gathered up by the settlers as they chose, with no one to forbid or
prevent them.
The name of the bark, as found painted on some of the water-barrels and
sea-chests, was the _Bristol Merchant_, and she no doubt hailed from
England.
As was said, the only soul who escaped alive off the wreck was Tom
Chist.
A settler, a fisherman named Matt Abrahamson, and his daughter Molly,
found Tom. He was washed up on the beach among the wreckage, in a great
wooden box which had been securely tied around with a rope and lashed
between two spars--apparently for better protection in beating through
the surf. Matt Abrahamson thought he had found something of more than
usual value when he came upon this chest; but when he cut the cords and
broke open the box with his broadaxe, he could not have been more
astonished had he beheld a salamander instead of a baby of nine or ten
months old lying half smothered in the blankets that covered the bottom
of the chest.
Matt Abrahamson's daughter Molly had had a baby who had died a month or
so before. So when she saw the little one lying there in the bottom of
the chest, she cried out in a great loud voice that the Good Man had
sent her another baby in place of her own.
The rain was driving before the hurricane-storm in dim, slanting
sheets, and so she wrapped up the baby in the man's coat she wore and
ran off home without waiting to gather up any more of the wreckage.
It was Parson Jones who gave the foundling his name. When the news came
to his ears of what Matt Abrahamson had found, he went over to the
fisherman's cabin to see the child. He examined the clothes in which
the baby was dressed. They were of fine linen and handsomely stitched,
and the reverend gentleman opined that the foundling's parents must
have been of quality. A kerchief had been wrapped around the baby's
neck and under its arms and tied behind, and in the corner, marked with
very fine needlework, were the initials T.C.
"What d'ye call him, Molly?" said Parson Jones. He was standing, as he
spoke, with his back to the fire, warming his palms before the blaze.
The pocket of the great-coat he wore bulged out with a big case-bottle
of spirits which he had gathered up out of the wreck that afternoon.
"What d'ye call him, Molly?"
"I'll call him Tom, after my own baby."
"That goes very well with the initial on the kerchief," said Parson
Jones. "But what other name d'ye give him? Let it be something to go
with the C."
"I don't know," said Molly.
"Why not call him 'Chist,' since he was born in a chist out of the sea?
'Tom Chist'--the name goes off like a flash in the pan." And so "Tom
Chist" he was called and "Tom Chist" he was christened.
So much for the beginning of the history of Tom Chist. The story of
Captain Kidd's treasure-box does not begin until the late spring of
1699.
That was the year that the famous pirate captain, coming up from the
West Indies, sailed his sloop into the Delaware Bay, where he lay for
over a month waiting for news from his friends in New York.
For he had sent word to that town asking if the coast was clear for him
to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas
and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay
waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's
life topsy-turvy with something that he brought ashore.
By that time Tom Chist had grown into a strong-limbed, thick-jointed
boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age. It was a miserable dog's life
he lived with old Matt Abrahamson, for the old fisherman was in his
cups more than half the time, and when he was so there was hardly a day
passed that he did not give Tom a curse or a buffet or, as like as not,
an actual beating. One would have thought that such treatment would
have broken the spirit of the poor little foundling, but it had just
the opposite effect upon Tom Chist, who was one of your stubborn,
sturdy, stiff-willed fellows who only grow harder and more tough the
more they are ill-treated. It had been a long time now since he had
made any outcry or complaint at the hard usage he suffered from old
Matt. At such times he would shut his teeth and bear whatever came to
him, until sometimes the half-drunken old man would be driven almost
mad by his stubborn silence. Maybe he would stop in the midst of the
beating he was administering, and, grinding his teeth, would cry out:
"Won't ye say naught? Won't ye say naught? Well, then, I'll see if I
can't make ye say naught." When things had reached such a pass as this
Molly would generally interfere to protect her foster-son, and then she
and Tom would together fight the old man until they had wrenched the
stick or the strap out of his hand. Then old Matt would chase them
out-of-doors and around and around the house for maybe half an hour until
his anger was cool, when he would go back again, and for a time the
storm would be over.
Besides his foster-mother, Tom Chist had a very good friend in Parson
Jones, who used to come over every now and then to Abrahamson's hut
upon the chance of getting a half-dozen fish for breakfast. He always
had a kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go
over to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and
write and cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the
words out of the Bible and the almanac, and knew enough to change
tuppence into four ha'pennies.
This is the sort of boy Tom Chist was, and this is the sort of life he
led.
In the late spring or early summer of 1699 Captain Kidd's sloop sailed
into the mouth of the Delaware Bay and changed the whole fortune of his
life.
And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure-box.