ne, and then down on
the Sound side. Captain Ichabod scrambled to the pinnacle of a near-by
hill of sand. From this vantage point, he beheld a good-sized two-masted
sharpie lying near the shore. The sight made him immediately aware that
the beach-combers from up the coast were already on the job, and that
the boat on the Sound side of the Banks belonged to them. He knew, too,
that the pair working so desperately to get the barrel away from the
wreckage were thus toiling in haste to get their loot aboard the
sharpie.

For certain reasons, Captain Ichabod Jones had taken a strong dislike to
the professional beach-combers. He believed that a man who would rush to
the wreckage of a ship thrown on a barren shore away from civilization,
and would appropriate without investigation the valuable articles thus
cast up by the sea, was in very sooth not a good citizen--just a plain
thief. More than once, indeed, he had seen fit to report men of this
stripe, and had caused them no little trouble in the courts over this
matter of their pilfering. It is just possible that, had Captain Ichabod
not been robbed of the woman he loved years before by one of this class,
he might have looked on their depredations with a more lenient eye. Be
that as it may, it remains certain that he maintained a very genuine and
very bitter spite against all beach-combers.

Captain Ichabod often asserted that it was right for the natives to
remove to a place of safety above high tide any articles of value from a
wreck on their shores, and then to wait during a reasonable time for the
lawful owners to make their claim. But he had no tolerance for the
fellow who would hurriedly and secretly remove to his own premises goods
of a salvable sort. He declared this to be no better than theft.

The Captain quickly realized now that here was his opportunity. He
motioned to his friends from the station to go on toward the two men
busy with the barrel. He, himself, hastened down the slope of sand, in
order that he might slip close unseen, and station himself between the
beach-combers and their boat. By this method of approach both he and the
men from the station would make sure of recognizing the offenders. As
the old man drew near the sharpie, which lay with her sails flapping
idly in the scant breeze, his eyes took in the name roughly painted on
the stern rail of the boat, and he stared at it in shocked amazement. He
stopped short and spelled the words aloud:

"_R