He lay contemplating the strange scene before him: the wild woods and rocks around; the fire throwing fitful gleams on the faces of the sleeping savages; and the Heer Antony, too, who so singularly, yet vaguely, reminded him of the nightly visitant to the haunted house. Now and then he heard the cry of some animal from the forest ; or the hooting of the owl; or the notes of the whippoorwill, which seemed to abound among these solitudes ; or the splash of a sturgeon leaping out of the river and falling back full-length on its placid surface.
It is said to have been an old custom among the river skippers to christen new hands by sousing them in the current when near Pollopel's Island, and this was done ostensibly because it was supposed to make the victim immune against the goblins that were well known to haunt every available spot on the river shore, but especially the tree-shaded, bush-grown rock that guards the northern Highland gate. It may be imagined that besides affording protection to the apprentice, the ducking also gratified the love for horseplay that has always distinguished sailors of every degree, and for that reason did not fall into disuse till the popular belief in goblins was well-nigh obsolete.
The Fisher's Reach 393
Pollopel's has long been considered as a haunted spot, especially infested by the evil s])irits that in time of storm fly with the storm through the Highlands. In this particular it resembles the Duyvel's Dans Kamer. Crtiger's Island, on the contrary, enjoys the distinction of never having been visited by death, even down to the present day. Above the Highlands, on the western shore of the river, the northern slope of vStorm King declines into a bluff that is broken by numerous ravines, each at some time the bed of a watercourse.