the
buccaneers who had buried money; some said in Turtle Bay, others on
Long Island, others in the neighborhood of Hell-gate."

This Bradish was caught by Governor Bellomont and sent to England where
he was hanged at Execution Dock. He had begun his career of crime
afloat as boatswain of a ship called the _Adventure_ (not Kidd's
vessel). While on a voyage from London to Borneo he helped other
mutineers to take the vessel from her skipper and go a-cruising as
gentlemen of fortune. They split up forty thousand dollars of specie
found on board, snapped up a few merchantmen to fatten their dividends,
and at length came to the American coast and touched at Long Island.

The _Adventure_ ship was abandoned, and there is reason to think that
she was taken possession of by the crew of the purchased sloop, who
worked her around to New York and beached and sunk her after stripping
her of fittings and gear. Bradish and his crew also cruised along the
Sound for some time in their small craft, landing and buying supplies
at several places, until nineteen of them were caught and taken to
Boston. That there should have been some confusion of facts relating
to Kidd and Bradish is not at all improbable.

Among the Dutch of New Amsterdam was to be found that world-wide
superstition of the ghostly guardians of buried treasure, and Irving
interpolates the distressful experience of Cobus Quackenbos "who dug
for a whole night and met with incredible difficulty, for as fast as he
threw one shovelful of earth out of the hole, two were thrown in by
invisible hands. He succeeded so far, however, as to uncover an iron
chest, when there was a terrible roaring, ramping, and raging of
uncouth figures about the hole, and at length a shower of blows, dealt
by invisible cudgels, fairly belabored him off of the forbidden ground.
This Cobus Quackenbos had declared on his death bed, so that there
could not be any doubt of it. He was a man that had devoted many years
of his life to money-digging, and it was thought would have ultimately
succeeded, had he not died recently of a brain fever in the almshouse."

A story built around the Kidd tradition but of a wholly different kind
is that masterpiece of curious deductive analysis, "The Gold Bug," with
its cryptogram and elaborate mystification. In making use of an
historical character to serve the ends of fiction it is customary to
make him move among the episodes of the story with some regard for