Ambrose Nast

Less than 100 yards from the ship De Lagoon Norden, the Dutchman's lost crew stood on the surface of the bay.

There were sixteen of them, a loose assembly of the dead, unmoving, merely watchful, present only to guide and protect.

The gentle roll of the current flowed over their feet as they stood like rooted sacrificial stones.

I did not use my spyglass to attempt to see their faces, out of simple fear of what might burn into my memory.

defying the laws of both god and nature the crew waited patiently for their captain to return using the rowboat he'd dragged back into the bay

The Dutchman was ferrying Florence toward the ship, whose warm, blotchy aura remained.

The oars cut into the water.

He leaned back in a long stretch to pull them through, and then he leaned forward again, over and over, dogged but determined.

seemingly not in haste.

Like Florence, who sat facing him, he was little more than a featureless shadow.

The wind, which had been blowing in towards shore an hour before, now blew outwards, aiding their progress.

Morrow and I watched the entire journey, joined soon enough by his coachman,

When the rowboat reached the spot where the crew impossibly stood, they all turned to walk across the water around it as if on dry land.

The sky seemed to grow darker then, and much detail was lost.

but we believed they climbed up the rope ladders methodically and helped both captain and bride up into the ship, which began at long last to move.

The rowboat itself was left to drift towards shore one last time.

It would be hours before it ran aground near Duck Harbor.

Beside me, Colonel Morrow never spoke a word, even when the ship turned slowly towards the Atlantic, and it became nothing more than a tiny bruise on the horizon, no different than a lonely gull.

Morrow lived another four years, far away in New Haven, and when he died, he bequeathed a sum of money to the church and well fleet so great that word of it had spread all through the Cape.

I had anonymously given the Dutch guilders I myself received on the night of the 9th of September, 1870, to a charity for the poor.