The ship was now repeatedly hailed, but made no reply, and, passing by the fort, stood on up the Hudson.  A gun was brought to bear on her, and, with some difficulty, loaded and fired by Hans Van Pelt, the garrison not being expert in artillery.  The shot seemed absolutely to pass through the ship, and to skip along the water on the other side, but no notice was taken of it!  What was strange, she had all her sails set, and sailed right against wind and tide, which were both down the river.  Upon this Hans Van Pelt, who was likewise harbour-master, ordered his boat, and set off to board her; but after rowing two or three hours, he returned without success.  Sometimes he would get within one or two hundred yards of her, and then, in a twinkling, she would be half a mile off.  Some said it was because his oarsmen, who were rather pursy and short-winded, stopped every now and then to take breath, and spit on their hands; but this, it is probable, was a mere scandal.  He got near enough, however, to see the crew; who were all dressed in the Dutch style, the officers in doublets and high hats and feathers:  not a word was spoken by any one on board; they stood as motionless as so many statues, and the ship seemed as if left to her own government.  Thus she kept on away up the river, lessening and lessening in the evening sunshine, until she faded from sight, like a little white cloud melting away in the summer sky.

The appearance of this ship threw the governor into one of the deepest doubts that ever beset him in the whole course of his administration.  Fears were entertained for the security of the infant settlements on the river, lest this might be an enemy’s ship in disguise, sent to take possession.  The governor called together his council repeatedly to assist him with their conjectures.  He sat in his chair of state, built of timber from the sacred forest of the Hague, and smoking his long jasmine pipe, and listened to all that his counsellors had to say on a subject about which they knew nothing; but, in spite of all the conjecturing of the sagest and oldest heads, the governor still continued to doubt.

Messengers were despatched to different places on the river; but they returned without any tidings—­the ship had made no port.  Day after day, and week after week, elapsed; but she never returned down the Hudson.  As, however, the council seemed solicitous for intelligence, they had it in abundance.  The captains of the sloops seldom arrived without bringing some report of having seen the strange ship at different parts of the river; sometimes near the Palisadoes; sometimes off Croton Point, and sometimes in the highlands; but she never was reported as having been seen above the highlands.  The crews of the sloops, it is true, generally differed among themselves in their accounts of these apparitions; but they may have arisen from the uncertain situations in which they saw her.  Sometimes it was by the flashes of the thunder-storm