Excerpt from The Foray of the "Hendrik Hudson" A Tale of '54 At his feet lay a cup - a tall, richly chased, double-handed beaker, gleaming yellow with the sheen of gold unalloyed. Ringed round it on the sand lay a necklet of amber beads, each pellet large as a cherry and locked to its neighbor by thick strands of virgin metal. The lean fingers toyed and twisted the circle of beads into a hundred shapes and coronals, and as the human beast lifted up its voice now and again, a mirthless laugh cleft the unending beat of the surges. The harsh rasp of it cut the echoes horribly, and circling in their poised squadrons overhead the terns wailed an answering plaint. From far inland out of the gathering dusk came a long-drawn throaty call - the howl of the wolf leading the famished pack afield. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.