here was another faint flash of
light, and by-and-by another smothered rumble of thunder, and Tom as he
looked out towards the westward, saw the silver rim of the round and
sharply outlined thundercloud rising slowly up into the sky and pushing
the other and broken drifting clouds before it.

The two white men were now stooping over the peg, the negro man
watching them. Then presently the man with the cane started straight
away from the peg, carrying the end of a measuring-line with him, the
other end of which the man with the plaited queue held against the top
of the peg. When the pirate captain had reached the end of the
measuring-line he marked a cross upon the sand, and then again they
measured out another stretch of space.

So they measured a distance five times over, and then, from where Tom
lay, he could see the man with the queue drive another peg just at the
foot of a sloping rise of sand that swept up beyond into a tall white
dune marked sharp and clear against the night sky behind. As soon as
the man with the plaited queue had driven the second peg into the
ground they began measuring again, and so, still measuring, disappeared
in another direction which took them in behind the sand-dune, where Tom
no longer could see what they were doing.

The negro still sat by the chest where the two had left him, and so
bright was the moonlight that from where he lay Tom could see the glint
of it twinkling in the whites of his eyeballs.

Presently from behind the hill there came, for the third time, the
sharp rapping sound of the mallet driving still another peg, and then
after a while the two pirates emerged from behind the sloping whiteness
into the space of moonlight again.

They came direct to where the chest lay, and the white man and the
black man lifting it once more, they walked away across the level of
open sand, and so on behind the edge of the hill and out of Tom's
sight.

III

Tom Chist could no longer see what the pirates were doing, neither did
he dare to cross over the open space of sand that now lay between them
and him. He lay there speculating as to what they were about, and
meantime the storm cloud was rising higher and higher above the
horizon, with louder and louder mutterings of thunder following each
dull flash from out the cloudy, cavernous depths. In the silence he
could hear an occasional click as of some iron implement, and he opined
that the pirates were burying the chest, though just