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Updated: June 11, 2025
Lie there together, befriended in the closing hour by the Jew of Chincoteague, a present to-morrow's Christmas for thy neighbors of this Christian island!" He stirred the fire. Death had no terrors for him, who had seen it by land and sea, in brawls and shipwrecks, by hunger and by scurvy. He laid the bodies side by side, and warmed the infant at the fire.
"I know the form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish. Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the brackish Sound. Ha! ha!
"By the tables of the law!" he said, "living or dead, here will I abide until my son returns." The bravest negro left the island of Chincoteague at last, placing food beside old Issachar, and there he lay upon his pallet, with nothing to pierce the darkness of his lair except that sacred cross he had raised from the depths of the ocean.
The gauntness of death had scarcely diminished those charms which had brought the pride of the world's esteem and the prudence of religion to her feet, and lifted her to virtuous matrimony, only to banish her lover from the hearthstones of his race and make them both outcasts, the poorest of the creatures of God, even on Chincoteague. A slight sense of self-accusation touched the bystanders.
Returning over the course, I once more faced the four, or five mouths rather, and taking a new departure by entering the next mouth to the one I had so unsatisfactorily explored, soon entered Rogue's Bay, across which could be seen the entrance to Cat Creek, where I was to experience the difficulties predicted by my Chincoteague friends.
Chincoteague lies like a tongue between two inlets, and partly protrudes into the sea, but is also sheltered in part by the bar of Assateague, whose light has flamed for years.
J. L. Caulk, ex-collector of the oyster port, and about fifty persons, escorted me to the landing, and sent me away with a hearty "Good luck to ye." It was three miles and three quarters to the southern end of the island, which has an inlet from the ocean upon each side of that end the northern one being Assateague, the southern one Chincoteague Inlet.
It was a surprising thing to the people of Chincoteague, when the news went round that he had been over to court at Drummond-town and given his recognizance to bring up the orphan boy whom he named Abraham Purnell so that the county should not be at the expense of him, and he also brought out from New York, on the Eli's next trip, a Hebrew woman to be the boy's matron.
The next morning the whole family, with tenants both black and white, assisted me to embark. By dusk I had crossed the division line of two states, and had entered Virginia near the head of Chincoteague Island, a locality of peculiar interest to the student of American character.
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