wn the hillside. He shivered
miserably in the night air and felt for his pistol-butt, which gave him
scant comfort.

[Illustration]

The ridge, which has already been described, bore in a southerly
direction from the base of the ledge, and sloped steeply to the head of
the southern inlet. High above the arm of the bay, where the sloop was
now moored, and scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore, the ridge
projected in a rough granite crag like a bent knee. Jeremy had a very
fair plan of all this in his mind, for his trained woodsman's eye had
that afternoon noted every landmark and photographed it. He followed
this mental map as he stumbled through the trees. It seemed a long time,
perhaps twenty or thirty minutes, before he came out, stifling the sound
of his gasping breath, and crouched for a minute on the bare stone to
get his wind. Then he crawled forward along the rough cliff top, feeling
his way with his hands. Soon he heard a distant shout. A faint glow of
light shone over the edge of the crag. As he drew near, he saw, on the
beach below, a great fire of driftwood and some score or more of men
gathered in the circle of light. The distance was too great for him to
tell much about their faces, but Jeremy was sure that no English or
Colonial sloop-of-war would be manned by such a motley company. Their
clothes varied from the sea-boots and sailor's jerkin of the average
mariner to slashed leather breeches of antique cut and red cloth skirts
reaching from the girdle to the knees. Some of the group wore
three-cornered hats, others seamen's caps of rough wool, and here and
there a face grimaced from beneath a twisted rag rakishly askew.
Everywhere about them the fire gleamed on small-arms of one kind or
another. Nearly every man carried a wicked-looking hanger at his side
and most had one or two pistols tucked into waistband or holster.

This desperate gang was in a constant commotion. Even as Jeremy watched,
a half dozen men were rolling a barrel up the beach. Wild howls greeted
its appearance and as it was hustled into the circle of bright light,
those who had been dancing, quarreling and throwing dice on the other
side of the fire fell over each other to join the mob that surrounded
it. The leaping flames threw a weird, uncertain brilliance upon the
scene that made Jeremy blink his eyes to be sure that it was real. With
every moment he had become more certain what manner of men these were.

His lips moved to s