II
Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went
fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the
old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual
fishing-ground of the settlers, and here Old Matt's boat generally lay
drawn up on the sand.
There had been a thunder-storm that afternoon, and Tom had gone down
the beach to bale out the boat in readiness for the morning's fishing.
It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky was
full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash to the
westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising another
storm to come.
All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore back of
the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering pallidly in
the moonlight, spread for drying after the storm. He was walking up the
shore homeward when he became aware that at some distance ahead of him
there was a ship's boat drawn up on the little narrow beach, and a
group of men clustered about it. He hurried forward with a good deal of
curiosity to see who had landed, but it was not until he had come close
to them that he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew
that it must be a party who had come off the pirate sloop. They had
evidently just landed, and two men were lifting out a chest from the
boat. One of them was a negro, naked to the waist, and the other was a
white man in his shirt-sleeves, wearing petticoat breeches, a Monterey
cap upon his head, a red bandanna handkerchief around his neck, and
gold ear-rings in his ears. He had a long, plaited queue hanging down
his back, and a great sheath-knife dangling from his side. Another man,
evidently the captain of the party, stood at a little distance as they
lifted the chest out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a
lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as bright
as day. He wore jack-boots and a handsome laced coat, and he had a
long, drooping mustache that curled down below his chin. He wore a
fine, feathered hat, and his long black hair hung down upon his
shoulders.
All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and twinkled
upon the gilt buttons of his coat.
They were so busy lifting the chest from the boat that at first they
did not observe that Tom Chist had come up and was standing there. It
was the white man with the long, plaited queue and the gold ear-rings
that spoke to him. "Boy, what do you want here, boy?" he said, in a
rough, hoarse voice. "Where d'ye come from?" And then dropping his end
of the chest, and without giving Tom time to answer, he pointed off
down the beach, and said, "You'd better be going about your own
business, if you know what's good for you; and don't you come back, or
you'll find what you don't want waiting for you."
Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all looking at him, and then,
without saying a word, he turned and walked away. The man who had
spoken to him followed him threateningly for some little distance, as
though to see that he had gone away as he was bidden to do. But
presently he stopped, and Tom hurried on alone, until the boat and the
crew and all were dropped away behind and lost in the moonlight night.
Then he himself stopped also, turned, and looked back whence he had
come.
There had been something very strange in the appearance of the men he
had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions, and he
wondered what it all meant, and what they were going to do. He stood
for a little while thus looking and listening. He could see nothing,
and could hear only the sound of distant talking. What were they doing
on the lonely shore thus at night? Then, following a sudden impulse, he
turned and cut off across the sand-hummocks, skirting around inland,
but keeping pretty close to the shore, his object being to spy upon
them, and to watch what they were about from the back of the low
sand-hills that fronted the beach.
He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he became
aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing closer to him as
he came towards the speakers. He stopped and stood listening, and
instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped also. He crouched there
silently in the bright, glimmering moonlight, surrounded by the silent
stretches of sand, and the stillness seemed to press upon him like a
heavy hand. Then suddenly the sound of a man's voice began again, and
as Tom listened he could hear some one slowly counting. "Ninety-one,"
the voice began, "ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five,
ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one
hundred and one"--the slow, monotonous count coming nearer and nearer
to him--"one hundred and two, one hundred and three, one hundred and
four," and so on in its monotonous reckoning.
Suddenly he saw three heads appear above the sand-hill, so close to him
that he crouched down quickly with a keen thrill, close beside the
hummock near which he stood. His first fear was that they might have
seen him in the moonlight; but they had not, and his heart rose again
as the counting voice went steadily on. "One hundred and twenty," it
was saying--"and twenty-one, and twenty-two, and twenty-three, and
twenty-four," and then he who was counting came out from behind the
little sandy rise into the white and open level of shimmering
brightness.
[Illustration: "'... AND TWENTY-ONE AND TWENTY-TWO'"]
It was the man with the cane whom Tom had seen some time before--the
captain of the party who had landed. He carried his cane under his arm
now, and was holding his lantern close to something that he held in his
hand, and upon which he looked narrowly as he walked with a slow and
measured tread in a perfectly straight line across the sand, counting
each step as he took it. "And twenty-five, and twenty-six, and
twenty-seven, and twenty-eight, and twenty-nine, and thirty."
Behind him walked two other figures; one was the half-naked negro, the
other the man with the plaited queue and the ear-rings, whom Tom had
seen lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they were carrying the
heavy box between them, laboring through the sand with shuffling tread
as they bore it onward.
As he who was counting pronounced the word "thirty," the two men set
the chest down on the sand with a grunt, the white man panting and
blowing and wiping his sleeve across his forehead. And immediately he
who counted took out a slip of paper and marked something down upon it.
They stood there for a long time, during which Tom lay behind the
sand-hummock watching them, and for a while the silence was uninterrupted.
In the perfect stillness Tom could hear the washing of the little waves
beating upon the distant beach, and once the far-away sound of a laugh
from one of those who stood by the ship's boat.
One, two, three minutes passed, and then the men picked up the chest
and started on again; and then again the other man began his counting.
"Thirty and one, and thirty and two, and thirty and three, and thirty
and four"--he walked straight across the level open, still looking
intently at that which he held in his hand--"and thirty and five, and
thirty and six, and thirty and seven," and so on, until the three
figures disappeared in the little hollow between the two sand-hills on
the opposite side of the open, and still Tom could hear the sound of
the counting voice in the distance.
Just as they disappeared behind the hill there was a sudden faint flash
of light; and by-and-by, as Tom lay still listening to the counting, he
heard, after a long interval, a far-away muffled rumble of distant
thunder. He waited for a while, and then arose and stepped to the top
of the sand-hummock behind which he had been lying. He looked all about
him, but there was no one else to be seen. Then he stepped down from
the hummock and followed in the direction which the pirate captain and
the two men carrying the chest had gone. He crept along cautiously,
stopping now and then to make sure that he still heard the counting
voice, and when it ceased he lay down upon the sand and waited until it
began again.
Presently, so following the pirates, he saw the three figures again in
the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of sand covered with
coarse sedge-grass, he came to where he overlooked a little open level
space gleaming white in the moonlight.
The three had been crossing the level of sand, and were now not more
than twenty-five paces from him. They had again set down the chest,
upon which the white man with the long queue and the gold ear-rings had
seated to rest himself, the negro standing close beside him. The moon
shone as bright as day and full upon his face. It was looking directly
at Tom Chist, every line as keen cut with white lights and black
shadows as though it had been carved in ivory and jet. He sat perfectly
motionless, and Tom drew back with a start, almost thinking he had been
discovered. He lay silent, his heart beating heavily in his throat; but
there was no alarm, and presently he heard the counting begin again,
and when he looked once more he saw they were going away straight
across the little open. A soft, sliding hillock of sand lay directly in
front of them. They did not turn aside, but went straight over it, the
leader helping himself up the sandy slope with his cane, still counting
and still keeping his eyes fixed upon that which he held in his hand.
Then they disappeared again behind the white crest on the other side.
So Tom followed them cautiously until they had gone almost half a mile
inland. When next he saw them clearly it was from a little sandy rise
which looked down like the crest of a bowl upon the floor of sand
below. Upon this smooth, white floor the moon beat with almost dazzling
brightness.
The white man who had helped to carry the chest was now kneeling,
busied at some work, though what it was Tom at first could not see. He
was whittling the point of a stick into a long wooden peg, and when,
by-and-by, he had finished what he was about, he arose and stepped to
where he who seemed to be the captain had stuck his cane upright into
the ground as though to mark some particular spot. He drew the cane out
of the sand, thrusting the stick down in its stead. Then he drove the
long peg down with a wooden mallet which the negro handed to him. The
sharp rapping of the mallet upon the top of the peg sounded loud in the
perfect stillness, and Tom lay watching and wondering what it all
meant.
The man, with quick-repeated blows, drove the peg farther and farther
down into the sand until it showed only two or three inches above the
surface. As he finished his work there was another faint flash of
light, and by-and-by another smothered rumble of thunder, and Tom as he
looked out towards the westward, saw the silver rim of the round and
sharply outlined thundercloud rising slowly up into the sky and pushing
the other and broken drifting clouds before it.
The two white men were now stooping over the peg, the negro man
watching them. Then presently the man with the cane started straight
away from the peg, carrying the end of a measuring-line with him, the
other end of which the man with the plaited queue held against the top
of the peg. When the pirate captain had reached the end of the
measuring-line he marked a cross upon the sand, and then again they
measured out another stretch of space.
So they measured a distance five times over, and then, from where Tom
lay, he could see the man with the queue drive another peg just at the
foot of a sloping rise of sand that swept up beyond into a tall white
dune marked sharp and clear against the night sky behind. As soon as
the man with the plaited queue had driven the second peg into the
ground they began measuring again, and so, still measuring, disappeared
in another direction which took them in behind the sand-dune, where Tom
no longer could see what they were doing.
The negro still sat by the chest where the two had left him, and so
bright was the moonlight that from where he lay Tom could see the glint
of it twinkling in the whites of his eyeballs.
Presently from behind the hill there came, for the third time, the
sharp rapping sound of the mallet driving still another peg, and then
after a while the two pirates emerged from behind the sloping whiteness
into the space of moonlight again.
They came direct to where the chest lay, and the white man and the
black man lifting it once more, they walked away across the level of
open sand, and so on behind the edge of the hill and out of Tom's
sight.
