Waell, you see, all this here talk made us dry as thunder; so the
chaplin said he guessed the sun was over the fore-yard, and baled us out
another horn o’ licker all round. Then he took a “spell ho!” at the
jawin’ tackle, and allowed there was a river in Jarminy, where all our
Dutch imegrants hails from, and that a naked gall used to locate herself
in a whirlpool, and come up on moonshiney nights and sing a hull bookful
o’ songs, as turned the heads o’ all the young fellers in them parts.
Waell, reports ruz up as she’d a hull cargo o’ gold stowed away at the
bottom o’ the whirlpool, and many a wild young Jarman, seduced by the
gall’s singin’ and hopes o’ gold, lept into the river, and warn’t heerd
on never arter. These matters hurt the young gall’s kariter, and the old
folks, who’d always allowed that she was a kind of goddess, began to
think that she warn’t the clear grit, and the young fellers said her
singin’ was no great shakes, and that her beauty warn’t the thing it was
cracked up to be.
There was a famous general, who wasn’t raised in that section o’ the
country, but had swapped a castle on a mountain in Spain for one o’ them
ar’ water lots near the whirlpool; he began to find himself rayther
short o’ cash to buy his groceries, and concluding that he couldn’t dew
without a leetle whiskey to keep off the aguy, resolved to pay the
whirlpool gall a visit, and jest see if he couldn’t soft soap the young
critter out of a leetle rhino. Next full moon, he tortles to the bluff
what hung over the bilin’ and foamin’ river, and jest at eight bells, up
ruz the gall, stark naked, a sittin’ on the white froth o’ the whirlin’
water, and singin’, “Won’t you come to my bower what I’ve shaded for
you?”
“Waell,” says the gineral, not a bit daunted—says he, “look here, my
gall: I mean to eat a lobster salad with you to-night, if you promise to
behave like a lady, and won’t cut up no shines.”
Waell, the gall give her word o’ honour, and the gineral dove into the
whirlpool, and down they went right slick.
Next mornin’, the gineral was found to hum with a sighter old gold
pieces, bigger round than the top of a backer-box, and a hull pot full
o’ the tallest kind o’ jewels; you see, the sojer had carried a small
flask of Monongahely in his pocket, and the river gall couldn’t git over
the old rye—tew glasses opened her heart, I guess, and she let the
gineral slip his cable in the mornin’ with just abeout as much gold as
he could stow away.
Some o’ his friends kalkilated as he’d better drop his anchor thar’
agin—and there was some talk in the settlement of formin’ a jynt-stock
company for the purpose o’ gettin’ up all the gold—but the gineral
tell’d ’em he guessed he’d got enough for him, and he seed quite enough
down thar’ not to want to go no more; and refusin’ to say what he had
seen, or tell ’em how they was to go to work, it kinder stopped the
jynt-stock company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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