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neighbourhood provided. I was spell-bound by the tangible mysteries that lurked on this small forgotten island with its oh-so-intriguing name. The island sits just beyond the mouth of Halifax Harbour about two kilometres south-east of McNabs Island. Several years after my visit, Devil’s Island was sold to a private buyer. There isn’t a single living soul upon it these days. The automated lighthouse is the only sign that life ever existed there.
    But there are many souls —and many stories — that linger there still.
    Devil’s Island is not named as such on many old maps. In 1758 it is mentioned as being within the boundaries of the newly formed Halifax Township. The town’s limits were decreed to extend from the western head of Bedford Basin and across the northerly head of St. Margaret’s Bay, including Cornwallis Island, Webb’s Island, and Rous Island. Rous, now known as Devil’s Island, was named after its first owner, Captain John Rous. Prior to that it was sometimes called Wood Island, for the stand of trees upon it.
    There are as many ghost tales of Devil’s Island as there are names for this tiny little speck of rock. Sadly, like many a Nova Scotian name, the true etymology of Devil’s Island has been lost in the misty regions between myth and barely-recorded history. An early article in the July 6, 1901 edition of the Dartmouth Patriot tells us that the name “Devil’s Island” came from the previous owner, a Monsieur Duvall. For a time folks apparently referred to the island as Duvall’s Island, but as the depredations of the Maritimer’s notoriously relaxed tongue and innate sense of cheekiness took over, the island came to be known as Devil’s Island.
    The island is a barren patch, with nary a branch nor twig upon it. But there was once a small forest and a town consisting of eighteen dwellings and a school of sorts that passed through the nurturing guidance of four separate schoolmasters. It is said that an untimely forest fire ravaged the island during World War I, when most of the young men had left; they never returned. The wee island settled into the fog of mystery and the depredation of eventual neglect.
    Folks often tell of how back in the early 1900s Dave Henneberry and Ned Edwards saw what looked to be a large white barrel floating in the surf. “It’s the devil’s treasure,” swore Henneberry. “Every seven years it surfaces for a wee bit of sunshine, strictly to tease the angels, and then it sinks straight to the bottom.”
    â€œShould we take a shot at it?” asked Ned, raising his rifle. “Maybe if we put a hole in it we’ll slow it down some.”
    â€œAnd risk riling the devil himself? I should say not.”
    But then Dave, demonstrating a strange Island-born perversity, bent and picked up a beach stone and winged it fair and square directly at the large white barrel. The stone made a strange thunking sound, and the white barrel slid back into the ocean as if it had never been there.
    Why did he do it? For luck? For spite? Nobody knows, but the very next morning Henneberry was found in his rowboat, drifting far too close to the position where he and Ned had first spotted the pale white casket. Henneberry was drowned with his head and shoulders hanging over the side of the boat, as if he’d simply fallen asleep while staring at something deep beneath the water. Was he a victim of foul play, or did he die because he tampered with the devil’s treasure box? Only time and the tide truly know and neither is in the habit of telling many tales, however Henneberry’s wife swore that on the night Henneberry died, she heard the clomping of his big rubber boots and later found his wet tracks on the floorboards of the hallway.
    In later years another generation of Henneberrys moved in to the old family house. No sooner had they moved in, but their baby died in its crib. Such an untimely death