The word was given from the fort that a ship was standing up the bay. . . .  She was a stout, round, Dutch-built vessel, with high bow and poop, and bearing Dutch colors.  The evening sun gilded her bellying canvas as she came riding over the long waving billows.  The sentinel who had given notice of her approach declared that he first got sight of her when she was in the center of the bay; and that she broke suddenly on his sight, just as if she had come out of the bosom of the black thunder-clouds. . . .  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. . . .  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. . . .

Messengers were dispatched to various places on the river, but they returned without any tidings—­the ship had made no port.  Day after day, 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 Palisades, 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 that may have arisen from the uncertain situations in which they saw her.  Sometimes it was by the flashes of the thunder-storm lighting up a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her careering across Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay.  At one moment she would appear close upon them, as if likely to run them down, and would throw them into great bustle and alarm, but the next flash would show her far off, always sailing against the wind.  Sometimes, in quiet moonlight nights, she would be seen under some high bluff of the Highlands; all in deep shadow, excepting her top-sails glittering in the moonbeams; by the time, however, that the voyagers reached the place no ship was to be seen; and when they had passed on for some distance and looked back, behold! there she was again with her top-sails in the moonshine!  Her appearance was always just after or just in the midst of unruly weather; and she was known among the skippers and voyagers of the Hudson by the name of “The Storm Ship.”