Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
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 earrings
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 toward 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; "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.
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 earrings, 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 earrings 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 toward 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.
III
Tom Chist could no longer see what the pirates were doing, neither did
he dare to cross over the open space of sand that now lay between them
and him. He lay there speculating as to what they were about, and
meantime the storm cloud was rising higher and higher above the
horizon, with louder and louder mutterings of thunder following each
dull flash from out the cloudy, cavernous depths. In the silence he
could hear an occasional click as of some iron implement, and he
opined that the pirates were burying the chest, though just where they
were at work he could neither see nor tell.
Still he lay there watching and listening, and by and by a puff of
warm air blew across the sand, and a thumping tumble of louder thunder
leaped from out the belly of the storm cloud, which every minute was
coming nearer and nearer. Still Tom Chist lay watching.
Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the three figures reappeared from