at lay motionless upon the sand.

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.

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 sandhill and to gaze out towards
the offing where the pirate ship had been the day before.

It was no longer there.

Soon afterwards Matt Abrahamson came out of the cabin and he called to
Tom to go get a bite to eat, for it was time for them to be away
fishing.

All that morning the recollection of the night before hung over Tom
Chist like a great cloud of boding trouble. It filled the confined area
of the little boat and spread over the entire wide spaces