LXI.
BURIED TREASURES.
CAPTAIN KIDD.—HIS HISTORY.—HOW HE MADE HIS FORTUNE.—HIS MELANCHOLY FATE.—JOINT STOCK IN THE ADVENTURE GALLEY.—SEARCHING FOR TREASURES.—STORIES OF THE SEA-COAST.—TRADITIONS.—ADVENTURES OF A TREASURE-HUNTER.—BILL SANBORN, AND WHAT HE DID.—JIM FOLLETT’S DOG.—A PRACTICAL JOKER.—A MESSAGE FROM THE SANDS OF THE SEA.—BILL SANBORN’S DREAM.—FINDING THE CHEST.—A SUPERNATURAL VISITOR.
A nautical ballad, with which many persons are familiar, narrates the adventures of the celebrated Captain Kidd. It is composed in the autobiographical form, and its first line runs as follows:—
“My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed.”
THE STORY OF CAPTAIN KIDD.
Evidently the distinguished pirate travelled, like many other robbers, under an alias; and it is interesting to know that his name was Robert Kiddas he sailed, for he certainly was not Robert, but William, Kidd when on shore and away from his marine wanderings. It is to be noted that he draws particular attention to his alias, by repeating the wordsas I sailed; obviously wishing to state his case plainly, and guard against any imputation that he called himselfRobertwhen on shore, or when his ship was at anchor or becalmed. It must have been very inconvenient for the man of tender conscience to change his name from William to Robert whenever his ship was in motion, and from Robert to William again when from any cause she stopped. It made things lively for him if he ever got into one of those peculiar squalls of the Mozambique Channel, where for two or three days you have a puff of wind one minute and a dead calm the next, so that your sails are alternately filling and flapping, and flapping and filling, about as fast as you can count. But, throwing speculation aside, itis sufficient to say that William Kidd was born about the middle of the seventeenth century, and followed the seas from his youth. About 1695 he was known as one of the boldest ship-masters sailing out of New York, and he became so famous that he attracted the favorable attention of the colonial government.
About the close of the century in which our hero was born, the depredations of pirates upon British commerce were so extensive that it was determined to send out privateers to attack the freebooters. The owners of these privateers were reimbursed for their outlay by the sale of the goods and ships captured from the pirates, and they calculated that they could make a great deal of money, provided they had a fair catch. One company, in which several noblemen were shareholders, asked the governor of New York to recommend a suitable person to command a privateer; and in consequence of his recommendation, Kidd received a commission, signed by the king, and addressed to “the trusty and well-beloved Captain Kidd, commander of the ship Adventure Galley.”
The vessel thus put in charge of the enterprising William (not Robert) carried thirty guns, was a fast sailer, and had a plentiful supply of provisions, and a crew of about one hundred men. She sailed from Plymouth, England, in April, 1696, and cruised off the American coast for several months. She occasionally entered New York and Boston, where the crew was recruited until it included more than a hundred and fifty men. With this increased force Kidd finally sailed for the East Indies and the east coast of Africa. While on the voyage, he concluded that it would be much more profitable to turn pirate—at least so the story goes; and finding that his crew were not averse to the project, he became a freebooter of the most enterprising character. He captured many ships, and after filling the Adventure Galley with gold and diamonds, and all that kind of portable property, he returned, in 1698, to New York. According to tradition, he buried a large part of his treasure on various parts of Long Island, Staten Island, and the banks of the Hudson River, and then boldly sailedinto Boston harbor, under the impression that his royal commission would save him from any charge of piracy. But, unluckily for him, the Earl of Bellamont, governor of Massachusetts and New York, was a stockholder in the Adventure Galley, and was disappointed at the failure to declare a dividend. He had heard of Kidd’s indiscretions, and this knowledge, added to the chagrin naturally attending the failure of the enterprise as a financial speculation, caused him to arrest the gallant captain, and send him to London for trial.
HE MURDERED WILLIAM MOORE.
At this day there are many persons who believe Kidd was innocent of the charge of piracy, and they unhesitatingly say that he did nothing more than carry out his orders. On his trial, which was most unfairly conducted, the charge of piracy was abandoned, as it was found impossible to prove it, and he was arraigned for killing one of his crew,—William Moore,—in consequence of the mutinous conduct of the latter. It was shown on the trial that Moore addressed insulting language to his commander, and was knocked down by Kidd. The blow which was delivered with a bucket, proved fatal, and the decision of the court was against the prisoner, on the ground that a bucket was not a proper weapon with which the commander of a ship should enforce discipline. Had he prodded him with a sword, or perforated him with a pistol, he might have been acquitted; but this assault with a bucket was too much. Times have changed since then. At the present day we have the spectacle of the successful defence of murderers, on the ground that the weapons they used were not murderous. I may instance the case of Foster, a conductor on a street railway in New York, who killed Mr. Putnam with a “car-hook.” One of the strongest points made in his favor was, that a car-hook is not a murderous weapon. Had Kidd been tried in New York subsequent to 1870, he would have escaped the notoriety he obtained.
There was an interesting performance at Execution Dock, in London, on the 24th day of May, 1701. William Kidd and the executioner performed a duet, which resulted in the death of the former, after an acrobatic exercise of somefifteen or twenty minutes at the end of a rope. As a warning to the rising generation, and for the amusement of the elders, the ruins of the ex-pirate were left in chains at the end of a gibbet, where they swung in the wind for several years. Pious fathers used to take their sons to look at the pleasing spectacle, and counsel them never to turn pirate, and come to such a rope’s end as befell the once well-beloved Kidd. Evidently the warning was effectual, as none of the London youths of that period were able to secure the command of an Adventure Galley, and sail to the Indian Seas. The suppression of piracy as a joint stock operation became unpopular, as it was not found to be profitable.
AS HE SAILED.
Many of the incidents narrated in the touching poem, “My name was Robert Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed,” are altogether apocryphal. According to history, Kidd left seven hundred and thirty-eight ounces of gold, eight hundred and forty-seven ounces of silver, and several bags of silver ornaments and precious stones. These were secured by the Earl of Bellamont, but whether they were ever handled by the unfortunate shareholders of the enterprise is not known. The probability is, however, that they were all required for the expenses of the arrest and trial of the pirate.
According to popular belief, the quantity above named was only a small fraction of the wealth acquired by Kidd; and down to the present time people have been searching localities on the New England coast and along the Hudson River, in the hope of finding some of Kidd’s abandoned wealth. Tradition has been exhausted, and the chief reliance has been, especially of late years, upon dreams and the revelations of spirits. Almost every year somebody dreams of a locality where Kidd’s treasures have been found, and he frequently gets wrought up to such a degree that he sets about digging for a fortune. Thousands of dollars have been expended in these researches, and they have invariably resulted in nothing. It is safe to say that nobody has yet found a dollar buried by Captain Kidd, and it is equally safe to predict that nobody ever will find one. The writer of this knew, in hisboyhood days, of several enterprises of this sort, and though he never dug for Kidd’s treasures, he was acquainted with several persons who had been in the business. Some had abandoned it in disgust, and some still clung to the hope that they would one day be successful. They were waiting for dreams and revelations that should indicate the precise spot where they could dig for the iron-bound chest, which invariably contained the wealth they sought. An oaken chest, with hoops of iron, was somewhere concealed, that should one day be theirs.
One garrulous old fellow used to be full of mystery about the matter. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 likeme. 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.
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.
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 itup 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.
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 gallopstraight 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.
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’dhaul 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.”
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.
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; andwhile 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. Wedrove 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.
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 theair. 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.
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.