Part 65

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.

From the Atlantic Ocean there are two entrances into the harbor of New York; one by way of Sandy Hook, and the other through Long Island Sound and the East River. For a steamer coming from Liverpool, the nearest entrance is through Long Island Sound. The Sandy Hook entrance is obstructed by sand bars; the channel is tortuous, and accidents are not uncommon. The entrance to Long Island Sound is broad and easy, but between the Sound and the East River there is a very dangerous passage, which extends, however, less than a mile. This dangerous passage is popularly known as Hellgate ; the early Dutch navigators gave the place its name. Tradition says that a Dutch skipper, named Adrian Blok, called it the _Hellegat Rivière_, after a small stream in Flanders, the place of his nativity. There is nothing sulphurous in the name, Hellegat, which is said, by one writer, to mean “Beautiful Pass;” somehow, the transposition of the word into Hellgate, has given it an infernal aspect.

The early historians of Manhattan and its vicinity described the Hellgate as a very dangerous place; one of the earliest writers speaks of it as follows: “which being a narrow passage, there runneth a violent stream both upon flood and ebb, and in the middle lyeth some islands of rocks, which the current sets so violently upon, that it threatens present shipwreck; and upon the flood is a large whirlpool, which continually sends forth a hideous roaring, enough to affright any stranger from passing that way, and to wait for some Charon to conduct him through, yet to those who are well acquainted, little or no danger; yet a place of great defence against any enemy coming in that way, which a small fortification would absolutely prevent.”

Washington Irving humorously says of it, “At low water it is as pacific a stream as you would wish to see. But as the tide rises it begins to fret; at half tide it roars with might and main, like a bull bellowing for more drink; but when the tide is full it relapses into quiet, and for a time sleeps as soundly as an alderman after dinner. In fact, it may be compared to a quarrelsome toper, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skinful, but who, when half-seas over, plays the very devil.”

[Sidenote: JOKES ABOUT HELLGATE.]

Occasionally, certain witty editors of New York and Boston engage in little wordy contests in regard to the improvement of Hellgate: a Boston editor will say the widening and deepening of Hellgate will improve the entrance to New York! An editor of Manhattan Island will respond that the widening and deepening of Hellgate improves the road to Boston. Neither seems inclined to admit the existence of as much immorality in his own city as in the abiding-place of the other.

The removal of the rocks that lie in this passage between East River and Long Island Sound has been a subject of great anxiety with merchants of New York, and it seems a little strange that from the time of the settlement of New York until less than thirty years ago, very little had been done towards this work.

[Sidenote: MAILLEFERT’S OPERATIONS.]

As late as 1845, the channel had not even been surveyed; and it was not until the Office of the Coast Survey was reorganized, in 1847, that a careful examination of this perilous channel was undertaken. The first survey was made under the supervision of Lieutenant (now Rear Admiral) Charles H. Davis, towards the close of 1847. He made his report in February of the following year, giving a careful description of the rocks and currents of Hellgate, and suggesting a plan for the removal of the most serious obstructions. Nothing was done until the following year, when a new survey was made. A map was published, and in March, 1851, steps were taken to remove certain small but dangerous rocks by the process of blasting. The engineer in charge of this work was a Frenchman named Maillefert; he proposed to remove the rocks by exploding charges of powder against them.

The plan dispensed altogether with the slow and difficult process of drilling; he exploded his powder directly upon the rock, on the theory that the pressure of the water above the gas formed by the burning powder, would offer sufficient resistance to throw considerable force against the rock. His first blast was made on Pot Rock, and removed about four feet from its highest point. The plan was successful as long as the rocks were in a state of projection; but after these projections had been removed, and the explosions were made against a solid flat surface, they failed almost completely.

After this French engineer ended his operations, new surveys were made, and it was found that the channel, though greatly improved, was far from complete or satisfactory. Other surveys followed, and various plans were proposed; but the breaking out of the war for a time put a stop to the labors. In 1866 Brevet Major General Newton was sent by the War Department to examine the obstructions of Hellgate, and to arrange for their removal. In the following year he made his report, giving estimates of the time and money required to make a safe and easy passage-way for ships of all sizes: he proposed to remove, by blasting, the obstructions known as Pot Rock, Frying Pan, Way’s Reef, Shell Drake, Heeltap Rock, Negro Point, Scaly Rock, Hallett’s Point, and certain other rocks of smaller size.