Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 2 | Page 4

with grinning faces and lights on the ends of their tails. Old
Hollands are heady. Dirck began to chaff the beldam on her
dilapidation, but she stopped his talk by dipping something from a
caldron behind her and flinging it over both of her visitors. Whatever it
was, it burned outrageously, and with a yell of pain they leaped the
wall more briskly than they had jumped it the other way, and were soon
in full flight. They had not gone far when the clock struck twelve.
"Arrah! there's a crowd of them coming after," panted Rooney. "Ave
Mary! I've heard that if you die with witch broth being thrown over you,
you're done for in the next world, as well as this. Let us get to Father
Donagan's. Wow!"
As he made this exclamation the fugitives found their way opposed by
a woman, who looked at them with immodest eyes and said, "Dirck
Van Dara, your sire, in wig and bob, turned us Cyprians out of New
York, after ducking us in the Collect. But we forgive him, and to prove
it we ask you to our festival."
At the stroke of midnight the street before the church had swarmed

with a motley throng, that now came onward, waving torches that
sparkled like stars. They formed a ring about Dirck and began to dance,
and he, nothing loth, seized the nymph who had addressed him and
joined in the revel. Not a soul was out or awake except themselves, and
no words were said as the dance went wilder to strains of weird and
unseen instruments. Now and then one would apply a torch to the
person of Dirck, meanly assailing him in the rear, and the smart of the
burn made him feet it the livelier. At last they turned toward the Battery
as by common consent, and went careering along the street in frolic
fashion. Rooney, whose senses had thus far been pent in a stupor, fled
with a yell of terror, and as he looked back he saw the unholy troop
disappearing in the mist like a moving galaxy. Never from that night
was Dirck Van Data seen or heard of more, and the publicans felt that
they had less reason for living.

THE PARTY FROM GIBBET ISLAND
Ellis Island, in New York harbor, once bore the name of Gibbet Island,
because pirates and mutineers were hanged there in chains. During the
times when it was devoted to this fell purpose there stood in
Communipaw the Wild Goose tavern, where Dutch burghers resorted,
to smoke, drink Hollands, and grow fat, wise, and sleepy in each others'
compaay. The plague of this inn was Yan Yost Vanderscamp, a nephew
of the landlord, who frequently alarmed the patrons of the house by
putting powder into their pipes and attaching briers beneath their
horses' tails, and who naturally turned pirate when he became older,
taking with him to sea his boon companion, an ill-disposed, ill-favored
blackamoor named Pluto, who had been employed about the tavern.
When the landlord died, Vanderscamp possessed himself of this
property, fitted it up with plunder, and at intervals he had his gang
ashore,--such a crew of singing, swearing, drinking, gaming devils as
Communipaw had never seen the like of; yet the residents could not
summon activity enough to stop the goings-on that made the Wild
Goose a disgrace to their village. The British authorities, however,
caught three of the swashbucklers and strung them up on Gibbet Island,
and things that went on badly in Communipaw after that went on with
quiet and secrecy.
The pirate and his henchmen were returning to the tavern one night,

after a visit to a rakish-looking vessel in the offing, when a squall broke
in such force as to give their skiff a leeway to the place of executions.
As they rounded that lonely reef a creaking noise overhead caused
Vanderscamp to look up, and he could not repress a shudder as he saw
the bodies of his three messmates, their rags fluttering and their chains
grinding in the wind.
"Don't you want to see your friends?" sneered Pluto. "You, who are
never afraid of living men, what do you fear from the dead?"
"Nothing," answered the pirate. Then, lugging forth his bottle, he took a
long pull at it, and holding it toward the dead felons, he shouted,
"Here's fair weather to you, my lads in the wind, and if you should be
walking the rounds to-night, come in to supper."
A clatter of bones and a creak of chains sounded like a laugh. It was
midnight when the boat pulled in at Communipaw, and as the storm
continued Vanderscamp, drenched to the skin, made quick time to the
Wild Goose. As he entered, a sound of revelry overhead