neither of them noticed it. Neither did they notice
hunger nor thirst nor fatigue, but sat there as though in a trance, with
the bags of money scattered on the sand around them, a great pile of
money heaped upon the coat, and the open chest beside them. It was an
hour of sundown before Parson Jones had begun fairly to examine the
books and papers in the chest.

Of the three books, two were evidently log books of the pirates who had
been lying off the mouth of the Delaware Bay all this time. The other
book was written in Spanish, and was evidently the log book of some
captured prize.

It was then, sitting there upon the sand, the good old gentleman reading
in his high, cracking voice, that they first learned from the bloody
records in those two books who it was who had been lying inside the Cape
all this time, and that it was the famous Captain Kidd. Every now and
then the reverend gentleman would stop to exclaim, "Oh, the bloody
wretch!" or, "Oh, the desperate, cruel villains!" and then would go on
reading again a scrap here and a scrap there.

And all the while Tom Chist sat and listened, every now and then
reaching out furtively and touching the heap of money still lying upon
the coat.

One might be inclined to wonder why Captain Kidd had kept those bloody
records. He had probably laid them away because they so incriminated
many of the great people of the colony of New York that, with the
books in evidence, it would have been impossible to bring the pirate to
justice without dragging a dozen or more fine gentlemen into the dock
along with him. If he could have kept them in his own possession they
would doubtless have been a great weapon of defense to protect him from
the gallows. Indeed, when Captain Kidd was finally brought to conviction
and hung, he was not accused of his piracies, but of striking a mutinous
seaman upon the head with a bucket and accidentally killing him. The
authorities did not dare try him for piracy. He was really hung because
he was a pirate, and we know that it was the log books that Tom Chist
brought to New York that did the business for him; he was accused and
convicted of manslaughter for killing of his own ship carpenter with a
bucket.

So Parson Jones, sitting there in the slanting light, read through these
terrible records of piracy, and Tom, with the pile of gold and silver
money beside him, sat and listened to him.

What a spectacle, if anyone had come upon them! But they were al