gave
a value to every period, and Wolfert would have given any thing for the
rummaging of the ponderous sea-chest, which his imagination crammed
full of golden chalices and crucifixes and jolly round bags of
doubloons.

The dead stillness that had fallen upon the company was at length
interrupted by the stranger, who pulled out a prodigious watch of
curious and ancient workmanship, and which in Wolferts' eyes had a
decidedly Spanish look. On touching a spring it struck ten o'clock;
upon which the sailor called for his reckoning, and having paid it out
of a handful of outlandish coin, he drank off the remainder of his
beverage, and without taking leave of any one, rolled out of the room,
muttering to himself as he stamped up-stairs to his chamber.

It was some time before the company could recover from the silence into
which they had been thrown. The very footsteps of the stranger, which
were heard now and then as he traversed his chamber, inspired awe.

Still the conversation in which they had been engaged was too
interesting not to be resumed. A heavy thunder-gust had gathered up
unnoticed while they were lost in talk, and the torrents of rain that
fell forbade all thoughts of setting off for home until the storm
should subside. They drew nearer together, therefore, and entreated the
worthy Peechy Prauw to continue the tale which had been so
discourteously interrupted. He readily complied, whispering, however,
in a tone scarcely above his breath, and drowned occasionally by the
rolling of the thunder, and he would pause every now and then, and
listen with evident awe, as he heard the heavy footsteps of the
stranger pacing overhead.

The following is the purport of his story.

THE ADVENTURE OF SAM, THE BLACK FISHERMAN.

COMMONLY DENOMINATED MUD SAM.

Every body knows Mud Sam, the old negro fisherman who has fished about
the Sound for the last twenty or thirty years. Well, it is now many
years since that Sam, who was then a young fellow, and worked on the
farm of Killian Suydam on Long Island, having finished his work early,
was fishing, one still summer evening, just about the neighborhood of
Hell Gate. He was in a light skiff, and being well acquainted with the
currents and eddies, he had been able to shift his station with the
shifting of the tide, from the Hen and Chickens to the Hog's back, and
from the Hog's back to the Pot, and from the Pot to the Frying-pan; but
in the eagerness of his sport Sam