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THE GHOSTLY WATCHMAN.

drove a stake into the sand, though, and concluded to come back and work at night when the tide was out, so as to prevent anybody seeing us. We went and slept as much as we could, and when the night tide was going out, we come back with shovels and picks and pitched in.

"You never seen fellows dig as we did. We made the dirt fly, and we only stopped once in a while to take a drink. We kept our wits about us, and didn't speak a word, as the old folks say if you speak when you are digging for money you won't never find it.

We dug away chest with my

"A little before midnight we were down about six feet, and had a hole large enough to bury one of those dog-house trunks the women take to Nahant. I struck the pick down, and it hit something that sounded hollow. Jim almost got his mouth open to say something, but I motioned him to keep still, and put the pick down again. There was the same hollow sound, and then we went at it for dear life. and tossed out the dirt, and bimeby I hit the shovel. When I did that I felt somebody push me first one way and then the other, but I couldn't see nobody but Jim, and he wasn't doing it. I slid around lively, digging all the time, and Jim, too; but it was enough to make your hair turn white to be struck as we were by ghosts, and to hear the air full of noises, but couldn't see anybody making them. They cursed us and screamed at us, but we had expected something of the sort, and besides we was after a fortune. We got some of the dirt off the chest, as it seemed to be, and with it we got some bones of a man.

"How did they get there, do you suppose? I don't know any more than you do; but I've heard tell that when those pirates buried money they left somebody to watch it. They couldn't leave him there alive where nobody lived, and boarding-houses wasn't to be found, and so they used to draw lots, and the feller that got the unlucky lot was just knocked in the head and laid on top of the chest before they filled up the hole. That skeleton belonged to the watchman, and it was him that knocked us around and made such noises in the

LOSING THE FORTUNE.

881

air. If he ever wants anybody to say he did his duty, let him call on me and Jim - that's all.

"We'd got out several pieces of the skeleton, and in five minutes more would have been in the chest.

All at once Jim was took by the throat by one of them air ghosts, and at the same time a voice called out, 'Leave or die.'

"Jim dropped his pick and yelled 'murder' as loud as he could.

"In less time than you could hold a red-hot nail in your eye without winking the chest sunk down out of sight and reach, the dirt rolled in on us; and if we hadn't got out as quick as we could jump, it would have buried us. And the odd thing about it was, that the bones went in before the dirt did, and settled down jest as they were before we disturbed them. We had nothing more to do. Our fortune was gone, and it was all because Jim hadn't put a big plaster over his mouth so as he couldn't holler."

Here Mr. Sanborn took another drain at the bottle, and suddenly relapsed into silence.

OPERATIONS AT HELLGATE.

HELLGATE AND SANDY HOOK. - ENTRANCES

TO NEW YORK HARBOR. - THE HELLEGAT AND ITS MEANING. STORIES OF THE OLD VOYAGERS. — EDITORIAL JOKES. - MAILLEFERT'S OPERATIONS. - DEEPENING THE CHANNEL-GENERAL NEWTON. THE AUTHOR ON AN EXCURSION. — BLOWING UP

COENTIES' REEF. HOW IT IS DONE. AN ACCIDENT WITH NITRO-GLYCERINE. THE AUTHOR'S NARROW ESCAPE. DIVER'S EXPERIENCE. — ASTONISHING THE FISHES.- RECEPTION AT HALLETT'S POINT. - GOING UNDER THE REEF. — THE MEN AT WORK. — AN INUNDATION. — HOW THE REEF IS TO BE REMOVED. SURVEYING IN THE WATER. — A GRAND EXPLOSION.

FROM the Atlantic Ocean there are two entrances into the harbor of New York; one by way of Sandy Hook, and the other through Long Island Sound and the East River. For a steamer coming from Liverpool, the nearest entrance is through Long Island Sound. The Sandy Hook entrance is obstructed by sand bars; the channel is tortuous, and accidents are not uncommon. The entrance to Long Island Sound is broad and easy, but between the Sound and the East River there is a very dangerous passage, which extends. however, less than a mile. This dangerous passage is popu larly known as Hellgate; the early Dutch navigators gave the place its name. Tradition says that a Dutch skipper, named Adrian Blok, called it the Hellegat Riviere, after a small stream in Flanders, the place of his nativity. There is nothing su phurous in the name, Hellegat, which is said, by one writer, to mean "Beautiful Pass;" somehow, the transposition of the word into Hellgate, has given it an infernal aspect.

The early historians of Manhattan and its vicinity de scribed the Hellegat as a very dangerous place; one of the earliest writers speaks of it as follows: "which being a narrow passage, there runneth a violent stream both upon flood