Pocket Island: A Story of Country Life in New EnglandMunn, Charles Clark
General
Pocket Island: A Story of Country Life in New England
Munn, Charles Clark
New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Nature also played another prank here, and as if to furnish a lair for
some sea monster she hollowed a cavern in the island, with an entrance
below tidewater and at the head of this harbor. Inside and above
tide-level it broadened into a small room. As if to still further
isolate the island all about it were countless rocks and ledges bare
only at low tide and, like a serried cordon of black fangs, ready to
bite and destroy any vessel that approached. It is probable that the
Indians who formerly inhabited the Maine coast had explored this island
and discovered the cave. An Indian is always looking for such things. It
is his nature. It may be this wandering and half-civilized remnant of a
nearly extinct tribe whom the Jew had compacted with, knew of this sea
cavern and piloted his sloop into the safe shelter of "the pocket." And
it was a secure shelter. No one came here; no one was likely to. Its
uncanny reputation, added to the almost impassable barricade of rocks
and ledges all about, made it what Captain Wolf needed--a veritable
burrow for a sea fox. Here he brought his cargo of contraband spirits
and stored them in the cave. Here he repacked kegs of rum inside of
empty mackerel kits, storing them aboard the sloop with genuine ones. By
this ruse he almost obliterated the chance of detection. Like a sly fox,
he was always on guard. Even when the sloop was safe at anchor, he
worked only in the cave. When all was ready, he and his swarthy partner
would wait till low tide, then load the dozen or more rum-charged kits
and set sail for the coast. In these ventures Wolf realized what his
race have always wanted--the Jew's one per cent.
In this island cave nature had placed a curiosity, known as a rocking
stone. In was a boulder of many tons' weight near the wall of the room,
and so poised that a push of the hand at one particular point would move
it easily. When so moved a little niche in the rock-wall back of it was
exposed. Wolf had discovered this one day while alone in the cave and
utilized it as a hiding place for his money.
Here he would come alone and, taking out the increasing bags of coin,
empty them on a flat stone and, by the light of a lamp, count their
contents again and again. Those shining coins were his god and all his
religion; and in this damp and dark sea cavern and by the dim light of a
lamp he came to worship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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