calling to the
pirate captain that it was all over.

He saw the dim form of the captain crossing the level sand, and then,
as the moon sailed out from behind the cloud, he saw the white man
standing over a black figure that lay motionless upon the sand.

[Illustration]

Then Tom Chist scrambled up and ran away, plunging down into the
hollow of sand that lay in the shadows below. Over the next rise he
ran, and down again into the next black hollow, and so on over the
sliding, shifting 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.

[Illustration]

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