Back in the days before the Revolution, a negro called Mud Sam, who lived in a cabin at the Battery, New York City, was benighted at about the place where One Hundredth Street now touches East River while waiting there for the tide to take him up the Sound. He beguiled the time by a nap, and, on waking, he started to leave his sleeping place under the trees to regain his boat, when the gleam of a lantern and the sound of voices coming up the bank caused him to shrink back into the shadow. At first he thought that he might be dreaming, for Hell Gate was a place of such repute that one might readily have bad dreams there, and the legends of the spot passed quickly through his mind: the skeletons that lived in the wreck on Hen and Chickens and looked out at passing ships with blue lights in the eye-sockets of their skulls; the brown fellow, known as "the pirate's spuke," that used to cruise up and down the wrathful torrent, and was snuffed out of sight for some hours by old Peter Stuyvesant with a silver bullet; a black-looking scoundrel with a split lip, who used to brattle about the tavern at Corlaer's Hook, and who tumbled into East River while trying to lug an iron chest aboard of a suspicious craft that had stolen in to shore in a fog. This latter bogy was often seen riding up Hell Gate a-straddle of that very chest, snapping his fingers at the stars and roaring Bacchanalian odes, just as skipper Onderdonk's boatswain, who had been buried at sea without prayers, chased the ship for days, sitting on the waves, with his shroud for a sail, and shoving hills of water after the vessel with the plash of his hands. These grewsome memories sent a quake through Mud Sam's heart, but when the bushes cracked under the strangers' tread, he knew that they were of flesh and bone, and, following them for a quarter-mile into the wood, he saw them dig a hole, plant a strong-box there, and cover it. A threatening remark from one of the company forced an exclamation from the negro that drew a pistol-shot upon him, and he took to his heels. Such a fright did he receive that he could not for several years be persuaded to return, but when that persuasion came in the form of a promise of wealth from Wolfert Webber, a cabbage-grower of the town, and promises of protection from Dr. Knipperhausen, who was skilled in incantations, he was not proof against it, and guided the seekers to the spot.