ground, panting and gasping. It seemed to him that he could
hear footsteps following, and in the terror that possessed him he almost
expected every instant to feel the cold knife blade slide between his
own ribs in such a thrust from behind as he had seen given to the poor
black man.

So he ran on like one in a nightmare. His feet grew heavy like lead, he
panted and gasped, his breath came hot and dry in his throat. But still
he ran and ran until at last he found himself in front of old Matt
Abrahamson's cabin, gasping, panting, and sobbing for breath, his knees
relaxed and his thighs trembling with weakness.

As he opened the door and dashed into the darkened cabin (for both Matt
and Molly were long ago asleep in bed) there was a flash of light, and
even as he slammed to the door behind him there was an instant peal of
thunder, heavy as though a great weight had been dropped upon the roof
of the sky, so that the doors and windows of the cabin rattled.

IV

Then Tom Chist crept to bed, trembling, shuddering, bathed in sweat, his
heart beating like a trip hammer, and his brain dizzy from that long,
terror-inspired race through the soft sand in which he had striven to
outstrip he knew not what pursuing horror.

For a long, long time he lay awake, trembling and chattering with
nervous chills, and when he did fall asleep it was only to drop into
monstrous dreams in which he once again saw ever enacted, with various
grotesque variations, the tragic drama which his waking eyes had beheld
the night before.

Then came the dawning of the broad, wet daylight, and before the rising
of the sun Tom was up and out of doors to find the young day dripping
with the rain of overnight.

His first act was to climb the nearest sand hill and to gaze out toward
the offing where the pirate ship had been the day before.

It was no longer there.

Soon afterward Matt Abrahamson came out of the cabin and he called
to Tom to go get a bite to eat, for it was time for them to be away
fishing.

All that morning the recollection of the night before hung over Tom
Chist like a great cloud of boding trouble. It filled the confined area
of the little boat and spread over the entire wide spaces of sky and sea
that surrounded them. Not for a moment was it lifted. Even when he was
hauling in his wet and dripping line with a struggling fish at the end
of it a recurrent memory of what he had seen would suddenly come upon
him, and he would groan i