The old sailor pulled himself round to face the speaker.
"What story is this?" he muttered.
"There is a ship which haunts that river and comes a-sailing by night or day, running 'gainst both wind and tide, her deck crowded with Dutchmen who neither move nor speak. She comes before a storm, and goes while men gaze, like a flash of light."
Pieter von Donck grinned.
"Will call me a phantom, brave boys? Here you shall find enough sound flesh to make two men as good as any," he said, slapping his mighty thighs. "That ship is surely none other than the Half Moon herself. Know you not that Hudson and his crew haunt the Kaatskills? O' nights the good ship, which lies sunken at the end of the world, rises, and the ghosts of my master and my mates pass from the phantom deck to their revels within the mountains, and back ere morning to their graves. Peace be to them, brave fellows all!
"Twenty-nine years past," Von Donck went on, in his strident voice, which brought Van Vuren near to listen, "we cast away from our new city on the island, and sailed westward to discover the overland passage to China. In a day we had left the land of the Manhattoes far astern, and with a favouring breeze had run under the palisadoes, a wall of rock, young friend, which makes yonder height seem to my eye no greater than an ant-mound. The solitude unmanned all, save Hudson, who walked the deck, swearing that he would reach the sea if he had to explore till Judgment Day. Awful was that silence when our ship entered the shadow of the Highlands, where the falling of a rope upon deck broke into echoes among the hills, and over the river came a noise as of demons laughing. The terror of the New World was upon us, and when we sang our chanties, heaving the lead or drawing in sail, we would fain have stopped our ears, so terrible were the voices which answered us from the shore."
"Was there no talk of turning back?"
"There was no turning back with Hendrick Hudson. He strode the deck day and night, and at his every order the black rocks pealed and the precipices shrieked, though the weather would be calm and the wind not more than a whisper. We held on our course until a storm seized and flung us upon the shore; and there we made landing, in a place where snakes darted their heads at us, and having built us a fire under the basswoods, cooked food and dried our clothes.
"'This mountain country is the place for me,' cried Hudson. 'Here might we spend a free life, my sailors, hunting by day, and at sport by night. Bring out our pipes and liquor from the ship, and in this hollow let us rest until the storm clouds pass.'
"So we remained there three days, chasing bears by light, spending the dark hours around the fire, smoking our long pipes, and playing at bowls, the favourite game of our master; and the mountains thundered, and the goblin voices shrieked with every gust of wind. A fearsome place, that dripping rock-forest at the end of the world. Upon the third night came Indians to our camp, two sachems old and cunning, who demanded by what right we had brought ourselves into their land. I can see the face of Hudson now, with its straight black beard and hard black eyes, and the angry twitch of his mouth, a trick of his when crossed, as he answered them. 'We are Dutch,' quoth he. 'And if there be any new passage across this world Dutchmen shall find it.' Then the sachems came down from the rocks, and cursed him and his crew, swearing to call up spirits of river and wind which should fight against our ship. Hudson threatened them with the sword—there was methinks too much hot English blood in our captain—and the next day we remanned the Half Moon, and sailed away against the stream.