tide. A pitchy darkness succeeded; Wolfert
Webber indeed fancied that He distinguished a cry for help, and that he
beheld the drowning man beckoning for assistance; but when the
lightning again gleamed along the water all was drear and void. Neither
man nor boat was to be seen; nothing but the dashing and weltering of
the waves as they hurried past.

The company returned to the tavern, for they could not leave it before
the storm should subside. They resumed their seats and gazed on each
other with dismay. The whole transaction had not occupied five minutes
and not a dozen words had been spoken. When they looked at the oaken
chair they could scarcely realize the fact that the strange being who
had so lately tenanted it, full of life and Herculean vigor, should
already be a corpse. There was the very glass he had just drunk from;
there lay the ashes from the pipe which he had smoked as it were with
his last breath. As the worthy burghers pondered on these things, they
felt a terrible conviction of the uncertainty of human existence, and
each felt as if the ground on which he stood was rendered less stable
by this awful example.

As, however, the most of the company were possessed of that valuable
philosophy which enables a man to bear up with fortitude against the
misfortunes of his neighbors, they soon managed to console themselves
for the tragic end of the veteran. The landlord was happy that the poor
dear man had paid his reckoning before he went.

"He came in a storm, and he went in a storm; he came in the night, and
he went in the night; he came nobody knows from whence, and he has gone
nobody knows where. For aught I know he has gone to sea once more on
his chest and may land to bother some people on the other side of the
world! Though it's a thousand pities," added the landlord, "if he has
gone to Davy Jones that he had not left his sea-chest behind him."

"The sea-chest! St. Nicholas preserve us!" said Peechy Prauw. "I'd not
have had that sea-chest in the house for any money; I'll warrant he'd
come racketing after it at nights, and making a haunted house of the
inn. And as to his going to sea on his chest, I recollect what happened
to Skipper Onderdonk's ship on his voyage from Amsterdam.

"The boatswain died during a storm, so they wrapped him up in a sheet,
and put him in his own sea-chest, and threw him overboard; but they
neglected in their hurry-skurry to say prayers over him--and the storm
raged and ro