Legends of Fire Island Beach and the South Side

by Edward R. Shaw

His weariness soon passed, and as he descended to resume his walk, the sand, flowing down the steep hillside as fast as he trod, set his thoughts back again upon the old theme. “The sand on this Beach is all the time a changin’. What are hollows now ’ill be hills in a few years. Sea and rain and wind are all the time at work. The wind, though, puts in the most time. How soon it ’ill sweep out a hole and carry the sand up the side of a hill anybody knows who has been on this Beach in a blow. It handles sand in about the same way it drifts snow.

“No, I’ll never dig for treasure, and I’ve no belief in mineral rods. Too many fools have used ’em. Watch Hill has all been dug around ag’in and ag’in, and never anyone found a shillin’ for all their potterin’. If there’s anythin’ valu’ble buried on this Beach, sometime or other it ’ill be laid bare—that Money Ship wa’n’t off and on here so many times fur nothin’—there’s got to be treasure here, and who’s more likely to find it than me? No man watches this Beach closer, and nobody knows I’m watchin’ it, either. It’ll come, too, one of these days! If a man’s determined enough and only holds on long enough, what he’s desirin’ and hopin’ for is sure to come round, else he wouldn’t feel so sure about it all the time all through him. It’ll come, it’s sure to come, and then I’ll build my vessel.”

This had been the Captain’s theory. He had held on. Never in the least had he slackened hope.

During the storm the tide had run high, surging up and washing away the foot of the sand hills. As far as his eye could reach, he saw the precipitous side of hill after hill. This very condition led him on a mile or more farther than he generally walked. And then, as no footprints but his own were to be seen anywhere on the crisp sand, he determined to go on still farther. He had walked perhaps half a mile, having lapsed into that state of reverie apt to come upon one who has urged himself beyond the accustomed limit of toil, when suddenly, through the drowsiness of his mind, a perception, unheeded at the time by the other senses, flitted back, awakening and concentrating all the faculties upon itself. In a moment he turned about, saying, “I believe I’ll go back and see what that actually was that looked like a piece o’ black glass midway up the bank.” Reaching the spot, he stepped up the slope and began to dig away the sand. He saw at once that it was a small glass or earthenware pot of a blackish color, which settled quickly as he dug.

“Ah,” exclaimed he, “the day’s here! The day’s got here at last!”

Clasping it in his hands, he weighed it, so to speak, lifting it up and down till his surprised senses needed nothing more to convince them. He examined it, but found no mark upon it, not even upon the resin with which it was sealed. Suddenly a strange alarm rose up within him, and he feared someone would come upon him. He obeyed his first thought and looked quickly eastward and then westward along the surf shore, but saw no living form. Someone, though, might be crossing the Beach and might at any moment appear on the crest of the hill just above him. Before the thought which suggested this had really passed, he began digging a place in the sand, and in it he set the heavy pot. The hole, however, was not deep enough, and he lifted the pot out. But thinking it would take too long to dig the hole deeper, he put the pot back again, took off his coat, threw it over the spot, and laid his gun atop of these. With steps as agile as any youth of twenty, he climbed up the slipping sand to the crest of the hill and looked keenly over the Bay. He found himself as secure from interruption as when an hour or more ago he lay down to rest and enjoy the scene. In a second he had returned to the hole and was lifting out the pot, determined to open it at once.

Doubts, however, thrust themselves upon him. “Why had he taken so much for granted? What was really the need of all his alarm? After all the jar might only be filled with bullets or shot.”

But another thought crowded closely along with these doubtful ones. “No, it couldn’t be. He hadn’t at last espied this jar—the only thing that met his hope for the countless times that he had walked along this shore—to find in it only lead. It had treasure in it of some kind. He was sure of it. His feelings told him so.”

Opening his jack-knife he began to cut away the resin from the mouth of the jar, making slow progress with the hard covering. At length he reached the stopper, and tried to pry out the thick cork, but with such haste that his knife-blade broke, and he was forced to cut down on one side of the stopper. Deeming he had been a long time opening the jar, his old alarm returned, again suggesting that someone might be approaching. A second time he scanned the shore in both directions, covered the jar with his coat, ran up the steep and looked over the Beach and over the Bay. No sign of approach or molestation was anywhere discernible. Condemning the alarm that had so wrought upon him in stronger terms than is necessary to use here, he returned to the spot, and this time, instead of kneeling, sat down and took the jar in his lap. Not a great while elapsed before he had cut away enough of the cork to thrust in the blunt edge of his knife. A pry, a deeper thrust, another pry, and out came the thick stopper. But now he was startled, fearing that he had opened some magical jar, and was, at last, to be entangled in that witchery he so strongly discredited; for, strange to relate, upon looking in, he saw something that resembled either lint or cotton, and which no sooner had the air touched, than it slowly lost its substance and vanished. His affright went, however, as quickly as the mysterious exhalation, for there lay the coins of gold, as bright as on the day when Tom Knight, the buccaneer, afraid the town magistrate would search the Beach and find them evidence against him, had sealed the coins up in the jar, and hid it among the hills.