agined Indians were creeping up whenever the leaves
rustled.

This fear of roaming savages troubled him next day as he wearily trudged
through this primeval wilderness unknown to white settlers. It spurred
him on despite his foot-sore fatigue and he was making the journey more
rapidly than old Trimble Rogers, for all his cunning woodcraft, had been
able to accomplish it. Almost at the end of his endurance, the plucky
lad discerned the sheen of a broad water in the twilight and so came to
the Cape Fear River.

He had worried greatly lest he might have veered too far inland but
there was the wooded bay and the fore-land crowned with dead pines which
had been swept by forest fire. And out beyond it was the island, of the
size and shape described by Trimble Rogers, making a harbor from the sea
which rolled to the horizon rim.

But no tall brig, nor any other vessel rode at anchor in this silent and
lonely haven. Jack had been told precisely where to look for it. He had
made no mistake. Some emergency had caused Captain Stede Bonnet to make
sail and away.

A king's ship or some other hostile force might have compelled him to
slip his cable in haste, reflected Jack as he descended to the shore of
the bay. It was most unlike the chivalrous Stede Bonnet to abandon two
of his faithful seamen without an effort to succor them. Endeavoring to
comfort himself with this surmise, the sorely disappointed boy paced the
sand far into the night and gazed in vain for the glimmer of a fire or
the spark of a signal lantern in a ship's rigging. He could not bear to
think of the dark prospect should no help betide him.

Some time before day he was between waking and sleeping when a queer
delusion distracted him. Humming in his ears was the refrain of a song
which was both familiar and hauntingly pleasant. It seemed to charm away
his poignant anxieties, to lull him with a feeling of safety. He
wondered if his troublesome adventures had made him light-headed. He
moved not a muscle but listened to this phantom music and noted that it
sounded louder and clearer instead of fading away. And still he refused
to believe that it was anything more than a drowsy mockery.

At length a vagrant breeze brought him a snatch of this enjoyable
chorus in deeper, stronger volume and he leaped to his feet with a
shout. It was no hallucination. Lusty seamen were singing in time to the
beat of their oars, and Jack Cockrell knew it for the favorite song of
Ste