Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 05 : Lights and shadows of the SouthSkinner, Charles M. (Charles Montgomery)
General
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 05 : Lights and shadows of the South
Skinner, Charles M. (Charles Montgomery)
Folklore -- United States
Pass Christian was a village then. On a winter night its people saw a
glare in the sky, and hurrying to their doors found a ship burning in the
gulf. Smacks and row-boats put off to the rescue, but hardly were they
under way ere the ship disappeared as suddenly as if the sea had
swallowed it. As the night was thick the boats returned, but next morning
five men were encountered on the shore-all that were left of the crew of
the Nightingale. Captain Dane was so hospitably received by the people of
the district, and seemed to take so great a liking for the place, that he
resolved to live there. He bought a plantation with a roomy old house
upon it and took his fellow-survivors there to live, as he hoped, an easy
life. That was not to be. Yellow fever struck down all the men but Dane,
and one of them, in dying, raved to his negro nurse that Dane had taken
all the treasure from the ship and put it into a boat, after serving grog
enough to intoxicate all save the trusted ones of the crew; that he and
his four associates fired the ship and rowed away, leaving an unhappy
woman to a horrible fate. Senhora Vineiro was pale but composed when she
saw the manner of death she was to die. She brought from her cabin a harp
which had been a solace of her husband and herself and began to play and
sing an air that some of the listeners remembered. It was an "Ave Maria,"
and the sound of it was so plaintive that even Dane stopped rowing; but
he set his teeth when his shoe touched the box of gold at his feet and
ordered the men to row on. There was an explosion and the vessel
disappeared. On reaching shore the treasure was buried at the foot of a
large oak.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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