I was invigorated with new life—I ran from alley to alley—delicious fruits tempted my taste—the perfumes of Arabia floated in the earthly paradise,—music floated around,—trains of beautiful girls moved in graceful ballets before me,—their slender forms were clad in snow-white robes,—their girdles gemmed with diamonds—their alabaster necks twined with wreaths of roses.—A joyous laugh burst from them, as they danced—now in circles—now advancing—now retreating. The circle opened,—a veiled figure was in the midst,—I approached—the fairies disappeared,—the veil was slowly lifted,—one moment—my Cora!—we were alone,—we wandered from bower to bower—her small white hand with electric touch, was within my delighted grasp,—her golden ringlets mingled with my raven locks—her dark eyes melted into mine. I fell upon my knee—a cold and grizzly skeleton met my embrace—the groups of houris were changed into bands of shrivelled hags;—in place of wreaths of roses, their shrivelled necks were covered with the deadly nightshade and dark mandragora—forked adders and serpents twined upon their long and bony arms,—I shuddered,—I was chained in horror to the spot,—they seized me—they dragged me downward to the dank and noisome vault.—’Twas light as day—but ’twas a strange light—a greenish haze—sickly and poisonous as if the deadly miasma of the fens had turned to flame. The dead men with burning lamps were sitting on their coffins,—their chins resting upon their drawn up knees, and as I passed along the extended rows, their eyes all turned and followed me, as the eyes of portraits from the canvass. Ha! what cadaverous unearthly stare met me at every turn;—I looked on all sides to avoid them, but still, where’er I turned, the ghastly muffled faces with their blanched lips, and deep sunken eyes livid in their sockets, surveyed me with frightful interest,—and that fierce old hag—how she preceded me—step by step—her finger pointing forward, while her Medusa head was turned triumphantly over her shoulder, with its infernal leer upon my cowering form.—Worlds would I have given to have been out from among the ghastly crew—but a spell was on me—and I hurriedly made the circuit of the vault, like a wild beast in his cage. But the old knight, sitting grim and ghastly as if by constraint, in the lone corner, his long grizzly beard flowing o’er his winding-sheet,—O! how his cold grey eye glanced at his long two handed sword before him, as I passed, as if to clutch it,—I plucked the old greybeard for very ire—ha! what a malignant and discordant yell did then salute my horror-struck senses,—I gave one bound of terror—and burst the prison door—and—and—
My noble white charger leaped clear of the earth, as he felt my weight in the saddle,—I was at the head of an immense army—my bold cuirassiers formed a moving mass of iron around me. The bugle sounded the signal for engagement;—peal after peal of musketry flashed from the dark masses,—the rattling reverberating roar rolled from right to left,—the gaping throats of the cannon, announced in broad flashes, the departure of their messengers upon the journey of death. On we rushed—battalion on battalion,—we stormed the redoubt,—“Charge,” I shouted,—“Charge the villains—men of the fifth legion—follow your leader—hurrah—they bear back.”—I seized the standard from a fallen soldier,—I planted it upon the blood-stained parapet—horrible confusion!—the trenches were choked with dead—Hah! brave comrade beware!—his bayonet is at thy shoulder—’tis buried in thy heart.—I will revenge thee!—I dashed upon him,—we fought like tigers,—we rolled upon the ground,—I seized my dagger—the bright steel glittered—thousands of deep hoarse voices wildly roared—“The mine—the mine—beware—beware!” Flash—roar—bodies—earth—rocks—horses—tumbrils,—all descending, covered me—and—and
I awoke—the fender and fire-irons upset with horrid din and clatter—the table, its lights and tea-set hurled around—and myself with might and main striving with mighty effort to get from beneath the prostrate wreck which in my terror I had dragged above me.—Old Neptune, aghast, howling in consternation, from the corner, while a group of fellow-boarders, half dead with laughter and amazement, were staring through the open door in wonder at such unusual uproar from the lodger in quiet “No. VI.”
LONG ISLAND SOUND.
But hark! Old Scipio is fast asleep and snoring like Falstaff behind the arras. Now that old negro is as assuredly dreaming of witches, or wrecks, or pirates, or ghosts, that have been seen flitting about the burying-grounds and country church-yards at midnight, as he sits there. He is somewhere between eighty and one hundred, he does not exactly know which; but as your negro keeps no family record, it is safe to allow a lee-way of some ten years in the calculation of his nativity. Of his genealogy though, he is quite sure, for he proves beyond a doubt, that he is the son of Job, who was the son of Pomp, who was the son of Caleb, who was the son of Cæsar, who was the son of Cudjoe, who was caught in Africa. His whole life has been passed in and about the shores of Long Island Sound, and he is not only a veritable chronicle of the military adventures that have been enacted upon its borders in the American wars, but his head is a complete storehouse, stuffed to overflowing with all sorts of legendary lore, of wrecks, of pirates, of murders and fights, and deeds unholy—of massacres, bombardments and burnings, all jumbled up in such inexplicable confusion, history and legend, truth and fiction, that it is almost impossible to divide the one from the other. Sometimes in the cold winter nights, when the storm is howling, as it does now, I put him upon the track, and upon my word, the influence of his gossip told in drowsy under tone is such, that I find it a matter of serious question, whether the most monstrous things in the way of the supernatural, are by any means matter of wonderment; and fully concede, that men may have been seen walking about with their heads under their arms, vanishing in smoke upon being addressed—that old fishermen have sculled about the creeks and bays in their coffins, after they were dead and buried—that gibbets are of necessity surrounded by ghosts, and that prophecies and predictions, and witchcraft are, and must be true as holy writ.
Indeed, with all the sad realities of life about me, I find it refreshing to have my soul let loose occasionally, to wander forth, to frolic and gambol, and stare, without any conventional rule, or let, or hindrance to restrain it. In how many adventures has that good old negro, quietly sleeping in the corner, been my guide and pilot. In our shooting, and fishing and sailing excursions, the shores of the Sound became as familiar to us as our own firesides, and the dark black rocks, with their round and kelp covered sides as the faces of old friends and acquaintance.
At a little village upon its western borders I passed my school-boy days, and there it was that the old negro, formerly a slave, but long liberated and in part supported by my family, had his hut. There it was that under his influence I thoroughly contracted the love of adventure which, in the retrospect still throws a sort of world of my own around me. All sport, whether in winter or summer, night or day, rain or shine, was alike to me the same, and sooth to say, if sundry floorings, for truant days had been administered to Old Scip instead of me, the scale of justice had not unduly preponderated; for his boats, and rods, and nets, to say nothing of his musket which had belonged to a Hessian, and the long bell-mouthed French fusee were always sedulously and invitingly placed at my control. The old negro was sure to meet me as I bounded from the school-room with advice of how the tides would serve, and how the game would lie, and his words winding up his information in a low confidential under-tone still ring upon my ear, “P’rhaps young massa like to go wid old nigger.”
His snug little hut down at the Creek side was covered and patched and thatched with all the experiments of years to add to its warmth and comfort. Its gables and chimney surmounted with little weather-cocks and windmills spinning most furiously at every whiff of wind, its sides covered with muskrat and loon skins nailed up to dry, and fishing rods and spears of all sizes and dimensions piled against them, the ducks and geese paddling about the threshold and his great fat hog grunting in loving proximity to the door way, while its interior was garnished with pots and kettles, and other culinary utensils; the trusty old musket hanging on its hooks above the chimney place; the fish nets and bird decoys lying in the corners, and the white-washed walls garnished and covered with pictures, and coloured prints of the most negro taste indigo and scarlet,—naval fights—men hanging on gibbets,—monstrous apparitions which had been seen—lamentable ballads, and old Satan himself in veritable semblance, tail, horns and claws, precisely as he had appeared in the year Anno Domini, 1763; and under the little square mahogany framed fly specked looking-glass, his Satanic Majesty again in full scarlet uniform as British Colonel with a party of ladies and gentlemen playing cards, his tail quietly curled around one of the legs of his arm chair, and the horse hoof ill disguised by the great rose upon his shoe. But Scip’ was safe against all such diabolic influence, for he had the charmed horse shoe firmly nailed over the entrance of his door.
Oh! how often have I silently climbed out of my window and stealthily crept down the ladder which passed it, long and long before the dawn, with my fowling piece upon my shoulder, and by the fitful moonlight wended, half scared, my way through the rustic roads and lanes, leaping the fences, saturated to the middle with the night-dew from the long wet grass, the stars twinkling in the heavens, as the wild scudding clouds passed o’er them, and nothing to break the perfect stillness. How often at such times have I stopped and stared at some suspicious object looming up before me, till, mustering courage, I have cocked my piece and advancing at a trail, discovered in the object of my terror, a dozing horse, or patient ox, or cow quietly ruminating at the road side.