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From: Bobbie Hall <>
Subject: [MABARNST] Cape Cod Pilot, Ch. 9, part 3
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 22:59:06 -0600
References: <200112191104.fBJB48Q10270@lists2.rootsweb.com>


======================================================================
Cape Cod Pilot, by Jeremiah Diggs, American Guide Series, published by
Modern Pilgrim Press, Provincetown, MA, 1937. This was a work
underwritten by the Federal Writers Project, Works Project
Administration (WPA) for the State of Massachusetts.
======================================================================

Chapter IX - WELLFLEET [part 3]

Among the poor souls that were "betaken" was pretty little Goody
HALLETT of Eastham. Goody was only fifteen, and no more knowful of the
black arts than a babe in swaddlecloth. One spring night in 1715,
Goody was seduced; and the following winter she was apprehended, lying
in a barn, with a dead baby in her arms. She was at once whisked into
the village, seized up to

Deacon DOANE's fine new whipping-post and given a lashing as a sort of
preliminary to the real punishment that awaited the outcome of her
trial for murder. Pending that, she was clapped into Eastham Gaol. The
poor girl asked only that she be allowed to die, and while the town
fathers were inclined to oblige her in this, a little writhing first,
they thought, might serve as a valuable warning to others of the
godless younger generation of their day. The gaoler was cautioned
against bringing Goody any victuals that wanted cutting with a knife.

One afternoon, while the girl was beating wildly against the bars of
her cell window, a stranger sauntered up to the wall and stood looking
in at her. He was dressed in fine French bombasset, and he carried a
gold-tipped cane. Something about his gaze quieted Goody and kept her
spellmoored. One of the iron cell bars stood between their faces. He
reached out, took it lightly between his thumb and finger, and flicked
it away - clean out of the window-frame - as if it were no more than a
stray bit of ryestraw. Then he smiled and slowly shook his head.

"Ah, these stiff-necked hymn-bellerin' Yankees! I tell ye, sometimes
they make me feel like the rawest greeny ever went on the account!"
The words meant nothing to little Goody HALLETT, but in the man's
voice there was something smooth and wisterly, something that tautened
the spell.
"Now, my girl," he went on, flicking another bar out of the window,
"I'm going to play ye fair and square, cross my - er, by yer leave.
Ye're young, but ye've showed old enough, sartin, for the employment I
can get ye. Ye can forget all this, child, " and with a gesture, he
tossed away still another bar from the window. "Yer life's still
before ye. 'Tis all in the future - yes, hmm!"
Soothingly, softly, he went on talking to her, but once he had led up
to it properly, he made no bones about who he was. And as he spoke,
from time to time he punctuated his remarks by taking out the bars
from the window, until all were gone, and Goody HALLETT's way to
freedom lay clear. Also, the while he spoke, the girl felt bitter
against those who had not let her die; and beguiled into vengeful
thoughts, she listened and nodded.
At last he took a paper from his waistcoat. "Can ye write, Goody?
Well, no matter. A mark's as good. Just put it there, where the line's
broken into small grains." He touched a gold quill to his tongue, and
as Goody took the quill, she observed that the tip glistened scarlet.
She was about to make the mark when he caught her arm. "What! Tricks,
is it? So soon?" His eyes were suddenly like fiery drills, and his
fingers bruised her. But after a moment, he smiled again. "Young, aye!
I forget ye're but a child, Goody Hallett. Go on and make yer mark;
but if it's to be two lines, ye'll oblige me to make 'em
slantindicular, like an X - not any other way."

Goody understood. And that night she disappeared from Eastham Gaol,
and before her case could come up in General Court, the town of
Eastham found that locks and bars could not hold Goody Hallett. No one
seems to have thought of using silver "darbies" on her wrists - which
would have done the trick - or else no one in Eastham was willing 'to
give Deacon Doane's gaoler the loan of the silver. At any rate, Goody
was finally "warned out" of Eastham town; and so she crossed into
Billingsgate, where she lived in a lorn hut on the poverty-grass
meadow, and where etarnal- strange capers were cut each night before
cock-crow.

It is said that she, like Ichabod PADDOCK's lady-friend, took up
quarters in a whale, and that she went cruising about, with a ship's
light hung to the creature's tail, luring unwary mariners on the
shoals. She dealt also in tempests, dabbled a bit in hurricanes, and
now and then singled-out some skipper who caught her fancy, to take
him out at night, whisk him from the deck of his ship, bridle him and
ride him up and down Cape Cod, and then send him back before morning,
worn and creak-j'inted from the cruel exertions. Now and then she
selected a strong, good-looking young fo'mast hand for other kinds of
"divarsion." For Goody, in her later years, had become a deep-dyed
sinner, whom you would never have taken for the blossoming maid, once
the pride of the hymn-singing HALLETTs of Eastham town.

Now, it has been said that the man who ruined Goody on that moonlit
occasion under an old apple tree in 1715 was Black BELLAMY himself.
But I suspect that the tale grew of the fact that the pirate happened
to be in Eastham in that year, and was wrecked two years later in the
waters hard by. I have no doubt that Goody had a hand in brewing the
April hurricane that brought on disaster to Bellamy's ship, the
"Whidah". But if she did, she was merely cooperating with her employer
as she had done in a long string of other shipwrecks in the territory.

As the record shows, Sam BELLAMY was a simple, blustering windbag of a
fellow, and a furriner at that; and I doubt if he was capable of the
uncommon finesse it wanted, to trick the prettiest girl in a Cape Cod
town. It wants a mite of doing to win one of these creatures, and in
the version which I have heard of Goody's first fall, it seems to me
the native touch was present.

The last official appearance of the Sea Witch of Billingsgate was as
an Indian, living in the north end of town. On the record she is set
down as Delilah ROACH, and Delilah is described by the historians as
the "sole survivor of the tribe of Nausets."

Well Delilah herself insisted on having it that way. When the
suspicion got around town that she was the Sea Witch, she marched
right into the town clerk's office, to straighten the thing out - the
way she wanted it straightened. And the town clerk, though he knew
very well that Delilah's late husband, Simon ROACH, had been the last
real Indian, was not the man to cross Delilah. Her black eyes burned
with the Unholy Powers as she stood over his table and commanded him
to write, and as she commanded, so it was written. Delilah ROACH was
set down as the "last Indian." And as she flounced out of the office,
the town clerk stole a glance at her. Beneath the hem of her skirt,
which just missed sweeping the floor, his eye caught a brief spot of
scarlet, now on the left side, now on the right.

Other townsfolk, even to the selectmenselves, knew the importance of
avoiding a "black conjury;" and in 1802, it was voted in town meeting
"to repair the Indian's house and make her comfortable."

You will pass the spot where Delilah lies buried - or so we all hope -
and I shall call it out to you, but by your leave, I shall describe it
as the grave of the last Indian of Wellfleet.


[more to come]
transcribed by and all errors attributed to
Bobbie Hall






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