Wolfert Webber had now carried home a fresh stock of stories and
notions to ruminate upon. His mind was all of a whirl with these
freebooting tales; and then these accounts of pots of money and Spanish
treasures, buried here and there and every where about the rocks and
bays of this wild shore, made him almost dizzy.
"Blessed St. Nicholas!" ejaculated he, half aloud, "is it not possible
to come upon one of these golden hoards, and so make one's self rich in
a twinkling. How hard that I must go on, delving and delving, day in
and day out, merely to make a morsel of bread, when one lucky stroke of
a spade might enable me to ride in my carriage for the rest of my
life!"
As he turned over in his thoughts all that he had been told of the
singular adventure of the black fisherman, his imagination gave a
totally different complexion to the tale. He saw in the gang of redcaps
nothing but a crew of pirates burying their spoils, and his cupidity
was once more awakened by the possibility of at length getting on the
traces of some of this lurking wealth. Indeed, his infected fancy
tinged every thing with gold. He felt like the greedy inhabitant of
Bagdad, when his eye had been greased with the magic ointment of the
dervise, that gave him to see all the treasures of the earth. Caskets
of buried jewels, chests of ingots, bags of outlandish coins, seemed to
court him from their concealments, and supplicate him to relieve them
from their untimely graves.
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