II. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE-BOX

_An Old-time Story of the Days of Captain Kidd._


To tell about Tom Chist, and how he got his name, and how he came to be
living at the little settlement of Henlopen, just inside the mouth of
the Delaware Bay, the story must begin as far back as 1686, when a
great storm swept the Atlantic coast from end to end. During the
heaviest part of the hurricane a bark went ashore on the
Hen-and-Chicken Shoals, just below Cape Henlopen and at the mouth of the
Delaware Bay, and Tom Chist was the only soul of all those on board the
ill-fated vessel who escaped alive.

This story must first be told, because it was on account of the strange
and miraculous escape that happened to him at that time that he gained
the name that was given to him.

Even as late as that time of the American colonies, the little
scattered settlement at Henlopen, made up of English, with a few Dutch
and Swedish people, was still only a spot upon the face of the great
American wilderness that spread away, with swamp and forest, no man
knew how far to the westward. That wilderness was not only full of wild
beasts, but of Indian savages, who every fall would come in wandering
tribes to spend the winter along the shores of the fresh-water lakes
below Henlopen. There for four or five months they would live upon fish
and clams and wild ducks and geese, chipping their arrow-heads, and
making their earthenware pots and pans under the lee of the sand-hills