His adversary pursued his
advantage; pressed on him, and as his strength relaxed, dashed him
headlong from the precipice. He looked after him and saw him lying
motionless among the rocks below.
The Englishman now sought the fair Venetian. He found her senseless on
the ground. With his servant's assistance he bore her down to the road,
where her husband was raving like one distracted.
The occasional discharge of fire-arms along the height showed that a
Retreating fight was still kept up by the robbers. The carriage was
righted; the baggage was hastily replaced; the Venetian, transported
with joy and gratitude, took his lovely and senseless burthen in his
arms, and the party resumed their route towards Fondi, escorted by the
dragoons, leaving the foot soldiers to ferret out the banditti. While
on the way John dressed his master's wounds, which were found not to be
serious.
Before arriving at Fondi the fair Venetian had recovered from her
swoon, and was made conscious of her safety and of the mode of her
deliverance. Her transports were unbounded; and mingled with them were
enthusiastic ejaculations of gratitude to her deliverer. A thousand
times did she reproach herself for having accused him of coldness and
insensibility. The moment she saw him she rushed into his arms, and
clasped him round the neck with all the vivacity of her nation.
Never was man more embarrassed by the embraces of a fine woman.
"My deliverer! my angel!" exclaimed she.
"Tut! tut!" said the Englishman.
"You are wounded!" shrieked the fair Venetian, as she saw the blood
upon his clothes.
"Pooh - nothing at all!"
"O Dio!" exclaimed she, clasping him again round the neck and sobbing
on his bosom.
"Pooh!" exclaimed the Englishman, looking somewhat foolish; "this is
all nonsense."
PART FOURTH.
THE MONEY DIGGERS.
FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER
Now I remember those old women's words
Who in my youth would tell me winter's tales;
And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night
About the place where treasure had been hid.
- MARLOW'S JEW OF MALTA.
HELL GATE.
About six miles from the renowned city of the Manhattoes, and in that
Sound, or arm of the sea, which passes between the main land and Nassau
or Long Island, there is a narrow strait, where the current is
violently compressed between shouldering promontories, and horribly
irritated and perplexed by rocks and shoals. Being at the best of times
a very violent, hasty current, its takes these impediments in mighty
dudgeon; boiling in whirlpools; brawling and fretting in ripples and
breakers; and, in short, indulging in all kinds of wrong-headed
paroxysms. At such times, woe to any unlucky vessel that ventures
within its clutches.
This termagant humor is said to prevail only at half tides. At low
water it is as pacific as any other stream. As the tide rises, it
begins to fret; at half tide it rages and roars as if bellowing for
more water; but when the tide is full it relapses again into quiet, and
for a time seems almost to sleep as soundly as an alderman after
dinner. It may be compared to an inveterate hard drinker, who is a
peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a
skin full, but when half seas over plays the very devil.
This mighty, blustering, bullying little strait was a place of great
Difficulty and danger to the Dutch navigators of ancient days;
hectoring their tub-built barks in a most unruly style; whirling them
about, in a manner to make any but a Dutchman giddy, and not
unfrequently stranding them upon rocks and reefs. Whereupon out of
sheer spleen they denominated it Hellegat (literally Hell Gut) and
solemnly gave it over to the devil. This appellation has since been
aptly rendered into English by the name of Hell Gate; and into nonsense
by the name of Hurl Gate, according to certain foreign intruders who
neither understood Dutch nor English. May St. Nicholas confound them!
From this strait to the city of the Manhattoes the borders of the Sound
are greatly diversified; in one part, on the eastern shore of the
island of Manhata and opposite Blackwell's Island, being very much
broken and indented by rocky nooks, overhung with trees which give them
a wild and romantic look.
The flux and reflux of the tide through this part of the Sound is
extremely rapid, and the navigation troublesome, by reason of the
whirling eddies and counter currents. I speak this from experience,
having been much of a navigator of these small seas in my boyhood, and
having more than once run the risk of shipwreck and drowning in the
course of divers holiday voyages, to which in common with the Dutch
urchins I was rather prone.
In the midst of this perilous strait, and hard by a group of rocks
called "the Hen and Chickens," there lay in my boyish days the wreck of
a vessel which had been entangled in the whirlpools and stranded during
a storm. There was some wild story about this being the wreck of a
pirate, and of some bloody murder, connected with it, which I cannot
now recollect. Indeed, the desolate look of this forlorn hulk, and the
fearful place where it lay rotting, were sufficient to awaken strange
notions concerning it. A row of timber heads, blackened by time, peered
above the surface at high water; but at low tide a considerable part of
the hull was bare, and its great ribs or timbers, partly stripped of
their planks, looked like the skeleton of some sea monster. There was
also the stump of a mast, with a few ropes and blocks swinging about
and whistling in the wind, while the sea gull wheeled and screamed
around this melancholy carcass.
