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 earrings 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 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