'Mr. Wanzer,' said the other, 'do you mean to break our bargain?'
'Where's the money?' demanded Nick in reply. 'If you mean that I should take it while those two pleasant gentlemen are mounting guard over it, you are much mistaken. I will see you to the ---- yourself first. And if you mean that I am to get it as I can, and be pestered by them while I live, and by you afterward, I won't do it. Do you think I did not recognize old Teunis Van Gelder: I've seen his picture too often. If he's too much for you, I'd like to know how I would come off in a scuffle with him; and if he and Kidd hunt in couples why damme I'll have nothing to do with it.'
Nick struck his feet resolutely on the side of his boat.
'You're resolved?' said the other sternly.
He raised his club, but at that moment the same loud unearthly yell which had startled him before broke through the air, and two figures sprang toward them: the one in a cocked hat gray and grim, the other armed to the teeth. Before the club could descend, the stranger bounded from the rock, and disappeared in the direction of Dosoris, the two following in full cry at his heels.
Nick hurried off, and made the best of his way to his cabin, where he was found in the morning in a sleep so sound that some thought it might have been the result of deep potations, but which Nick himself attributed entirely to the excitement of the scene which he had gone through at Sand's Point and Matinecock.
IN a note in the margin of the above manuscript my respected relative remarked, that Mr. Volkert Van Gelder, after full and mature investigation of the matter, had come to the conclusion that the adventure of Nick Wanzer was not a mere fabrication, but an actual occurrence.
He was forced to this conclusion by strong circumstantial evidence; for it was established beyond a doubt that Wanzer was at a husking-frolic on the very night alluded to, that he set out for home late, and somewhat involved in liquor; and also that he did own a boat which usually lay in a creek at Peacock's Point.
Nick Wanzer himself pointed out the rock on which the stranger sat when he first made overtures to him; and the situation of Kidd's Rock at Sand's Point is a matter of public notoriety. Under these circumstances, Mr. Van Gelder felt that to express farther doubt would be to cast an unjust imputation upon the character of a worthy and well-meaning citizen.