章节正文
fortune of his life.
And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure
box.
II
Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went
fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of
the old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the
usual fishing ground of the settlers, and here old Matt's boat
generally lay drawn up on the sand.
There had been a thunderstorm that afternoon, and Tom had gone
down the beach to bale out the boat in readiness for the
morning's fishing.
It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky
was full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash
to the westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising
another storm to come.
All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore
back of the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails
glimmering pallidly in the moonlight, spread for drying after the
storm. He was walking up the shore homeward when he became aware
that at some distance ahead of him there was a ship's boat drawn
up on the little narrow beach, and a group of men clustered about
it. He hurried forward with a good deal of curiosity to see who
had landed, but it was not until he had come close to them that
he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew that
it must be a party who had come off the pirate sloop. They had
evidently just landed, and two men were lifting out a chest from
the boat. One of them was a negro, naked to the waist, and the
other was a white man in his shirt sleeves, wearing petticoat
breeches, a Monterey cap upon his head, a red bandanna
handkerchief around his neck, and gold earrings in his ears. He
had a long, plaited queue hanging down his back, and a great
sheath knife dangling from his side. Another man, evidently the
captain of the party, stood at a little distance as they lifted
the chest out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a
lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as
bright as day. He wore jack boots and a handsome laced coat, and
he had a long, drooping mustache that curled down below his chin.
He wore a fine, feathered hat, and his long black hair hung down
upon his shoulders.
All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and
twinkled upon the gilt buttons of his coat.
They were so busy lifting the chest from the boat that at first
they did not observe that Tom Chist had come up and was standing
there. It was the white man with the long, plaited queue and the
gold earrings that spoke to him. "Boy, what do you want here,
boy?" he said, in a rough, hoarse voice. "Where d'ye come from?"
And then dropping his end of the chest, and without giving Tom
time to answer, he pointed off down the beach, and said, "You'd
better be going about your own business, if you know what's good
for you; and don't you come back, or you'll find what you don't
want waiting for you."
Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all looking at him, and
then, without saying a word, he turned and walked away. The man
who had spoken to him followed him threateningly for some little
distance, as though to see that he had gone away as he was bidden
to do. But presently he stopped, and Tom hurried on alone, until
the boat and the crew and all were dropped away behind and lost
in the moonlight night. Then he himself stopped also, turned, and
looked back whence he had come.
There had been something very strange in the appearance of the
men he had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions,
and he wondered what it all meant, and what they were going to
do. He stood for a little while thus looking and listening. He
could see nothing, and could hear only the sound of distant
talking. What were they doing on the lonely shore thus at night?
Then, following a sudden impulse, he turned and cut off across
the sand hummocks, skirting around inland, but keeping pretty
close to the shore, his object being to spy upon them, and to
watch what they were about from the back of the low sand hills
that fronted the beach.
He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he
became aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing
closer to him as he came toward the speakers. He stopped and
stood listening, and instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped
also. He crouched there silently in the bright, glimmering
moonlight, surrounded by the silent stretches of sand, and the
stillness seemed to press upon him like a heavy hand. Then
suddenly the sound of a man's voice began again, and as Tom
listened he could hear some one slowly counting. "Ninety-one,"
the voice began, "ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four,
ninety-five, ninety- six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight,
ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one"--the slow,
monotonous count coming nearer and nearer; "one hundred and two,
one hundred and three, one hundred and four," and so on in its
monotonous reckoning.
Suddenly he saw three heads appear above the sand hill, so close
to him that he crouched down quickly with a keen thrill, close
beside the hummock near which he stood. His first fear was that
they might have seen him in the moonlight; but they had not, and
his heart rose again as the counting voice went steadily on. "One
hundred and twenty," it was saying--"and twenty-one, and
twenty-two, and twenty-three, and twenty- four," and then he who
was counting came out from behind the little sandy rise into the
white and open level of shimmering brightness.
It was the man with the cane whom Tom had seen some time before
the captain of the party who had landed. He carried his cane
under his arm now, and was holding his lantern close to something
that he held in his hand, and upon which he looked narrowly as he
walked with a slow and measured tread in a perfectly straight
line across the sand, counting each step as he took it. "And
twenty-five, and twenty-six, and twenty- seven, and twenty-eight,
and twenty-nine, and thirty."
Behind him walked two other figures; one was the half-naked
negro, the other the man with the plaited queue and the earrings,
whom Tom had seen lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they
were carrying the heavy box between them, laboring through the
sand with shuffling tread as they bore it onward. As he who was
counting pronounced the word "thirty," the two men set the chest
down on the sand with a grunt, the white man panting and blowing
and wiping his sleeve across his forehead. And immediately he who
counted took out a slip of paper and marked something down upon
it. They stood there for a long time, during which Tom lay
behind the sand hummock watching them, and for a while the
silence was uninterrupted. In the perfect stillness Tom could
hear the washing of the little waves beating upon the distant
beach, and once the far-away sound of a laugh from one of those
who stood by the ship's boat.
One, two, three minutes passed, and then the men picked up the
chest and started on again; and then again the other man began
his counting. "Thirty and one, and thirty and two, and thirty and
three, and thirty and four"--he walked straight across the level
open, still looking intently at that which he held in his
hand--"and thirty and five, and thirty and six, and thirty and
seven," and so on, until the three figures disappeared in the
little hollow between the two sand hills on the opposite side of
the open, and still Tom could hear the sound of the counting
voice in the distance.
Just as they disappeared behind the hill there was a sudden faint
flash of light; and by and by, as Tom lay still listening to the
counting, he heard, after a long interval, a far-away muffled
rumble of distant thunder. He waited for a while, and then arose
and stepped to the top of the sand hummock behind which he had
been lying. He looked all about him, but there was no one else to
be seen. Then he stepped down from the hummock and followed in
the direction which the pirate captain and the two men carrying
the chest had gone. He crept along cautiously, stopping now and
then to make sure that he still heard the counting voice, and
when it ceased he lay down upon the sand and waited until it
began again.
Presently, so following the pirates, he saw the three figures
again in the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of
sand covered with coarse sedge grass, he came to where he
overlooked a little open level space gleaming white in the
moonlight.
The three had been crossing the level of sand, and were now not
more than twenty-five paces from him. They had again set down
the chest, upon which the white man with the long queue and the
gold earrings had seated to rest himself, the negro standing
close beside him. The moon shone as bright as day and full upon
his face. It was looking directly at Tom Chist, every line as
keen cut with white lights and black shadows as though it had
been carved in ivory and jet. He sat perfectlymotionless, and
Tom drew back with a start, almost thinking he had been
discovered. He lay silent, his heart beating heavily in his
throat; but there was no alarm, and presently he heard the
counting begin again, and when he looked once more he saw they
were going away straight across the little open. A soft, sliding
hillock of sand lay directly in front of them. They did not turn
aside, but went straight over it, the leader helping himself up
the sandy slope with his cane, still counting and still keeping
his eyes fixed upon that which he held in his hand. Then they
disappeared again behind the white crest on the other side.
So Tom followed them cautiously until they had gone almost half a
mile inland. When next he saw them clearly it was from a little
sandy rise which looked down like the crest of a bowl upon the
floor of sand below. Upon this smooth, white floor the moon beat
with almost dazzling brightness.
The white man who had helped to carry the chest was now kneeling,
busied at some work, though what it was Tom at first could not
see. He was whittling the point of a stick into a long wooden
peg, and when, by and by, he had finished what he was about, he
arose and stepped to where he who seemed to be the captain had
stuck his cane upright into the ground as though to mark some
particular spot. He drew the cane out of the sand, thrusting the
stick down in its stead. Then he drove the long peg down with a
wooden mallet which the negro handed to him. The sharp rapping
of the mallet upon the top of the peg sounded loud the perfect
stillness, and Tom lay watching and wondering what it all meant.
The man, with quick-repeated blows, drove the peg farther and
farther down into the sand until it showed only two or three
inches above the surface. As he finished his work there was
another faint flash of light, and by and by another smothered
rumble of thunder, and Tom, as he looked out toward 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
And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure
box.
II
Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went
fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of
the old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the
usual fishing ground of the settlers, and here old Matt's boat
generally lay drawn up on the sand.
There had been a thunderstorm that afternoon, and Tom had gone
down the beach to bale out the boat in readiness for the
morning's fishing.
It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky
was full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash
to the westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising
another storm to come.
All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore
back of the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails
glimmering pallidly in the moonlight, spread for drying after the
storm. He was walking up the shore homeward when he became aware
that at some distance ahead of him there was a ship's boat drawn
up on the little narrow beach, and a group of men clustered about
it. He hurried forward with a good deal of curiosity to see who
had landed, but it was not until he had come close to them that
he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew that
it must be a party who had come off the pirate sloop. They had
evidently just landed, and two men were lifting out a chest from
the boat. One of them was a negro, naked to the waist, and the
other was a white man in his shirt sleeves, wearing petticoat
breeches, a Monterey cap upon his head, a red bandanna
handkerchief around his neck, and gold earrings in his ears. He
had a long, plaited queue hanging down his back, and a great
sheath knife dangling from his side. Another man, evidently the
captain of the party, stood at a little distance as they lifted
the chest out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a
lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as
bright as day. He wore jack boots and a handsome laced coat, and
he had a long, drooping mustache that curled down below his chin.
He wore a fine, feathered hat, and his long black hair hung down
upon his shoulders.
All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and
twinkled upon the gilt buttons of his coat.
They were so busy lifting the chest from the boat that at first
they did not observe that Tom Chist had come up and was standing
there. It was the white man with the long, plaited queue and the
gold earrings that spoke to him. "Boy, what do you want here,
boy?" he said, in a rough, hoarse voice. "Where d'ye come from?"
And then dropping his end of the chest, and without giving Tom
time to answer, he pointed off down the beach, and said, "You'd
better be going about your own business, if you know what's good
for you; and don't you come back, or you'll find what you don't
want waiting for you."
Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all looking at him, and
then, without saying a word, he turned and walked away. The man
who had spoken to him followed him threateningly for some little
distance, as though to see that he had gone away as he was bidden
to do. But presently he stopped, and Tom hurried on alone, until
the boat and the crew and all were dropped away behind and lost
in the moonlight night. Then he himself stopped also, turned, and
looked back whence he had come.
There had been something very strange in the appearance of the
men he had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions,
and he wondered what it all meant, and what they were going to
do. He stood for a little while thus looking and listening. He
could see nothing, and could hear only the sound of distant
talking. What were they doing on the lonely shore thus at night?
Then, following a sudden impulse, he turned and cut off across
the sand hummocks, skirting around inland, but keeping pretty
close to the shore, his object being to spy upon them, and to
watch what they were about from the back of the low sand hills
that fronted the beach.
He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he
became aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing
closer to him as he came toward the speakers. He stopped and
stood listening, and instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped
also. He crouched there silently in the bright, glimmering
moonlight, surrounded by the silent stretches of sand, and the
stillness seemed to press upon him like a heavy hand. Then
suddenly the sound of a man's voice began again, and as Tom
listened he could hear some one slowly counting. "Ninety-one,"
the voice began, "ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four,
ninety-five, ninety- six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight,
ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one"--the slow,
monotonous count coming nearer and nearer; "one hundred and two,
one hundred and three, one hundred and four," and so on in its
monotonous reckoning.
Suddenly he saw three heads appear above the sand hill, so close
to him that he crouched down quickly with a keen thrill, close
beside the hummock near which he stood. His first fear was that
they might have seen him in the moonlight; but they had not, and
his heart rose again as the counting voice went steadily on. "One
hundred and twenty," it was saying--"and twenty-one, and
twenty-two, and twenty-three, and twenty- four," and then he who
was counting came out from behind the little sandy rise into the
white and open level of shimmering brightness.
It was the man with the cane whom Tom had seen some time before
the captain of the party who had landed. He carried his cane
under his arm now, and was holding his lantern close to something
that he held in his hand, and upon which he looked narrowly as he
walked with a slow and measured tread in a perfectly straight
line across the sand, counting each step as he took it. "And
twenty-five, and twenty-six, and twenty- seven, and twenty-eight,
and twenty-nine, and thirty."
Behind him walked two other figures; one was the half-naked
negro, the other the man with the plaited queue and the earrings,
whom Tom had seen lifting the chest out of the boat. Now they
were carrying the heavy box between them, laboring through the
sand with shuffling tread as they bore it onward. As he who was
counting pronounced the word "thirty," the two men set the chest
down on the sand with a grunt, the white man panting and blowing
and wiping his sleeve across his forehead. And immediately he who
counted took out a slip of paper and marked something down upon
it. They stood there for a long time, during which Tom lay
behind the sand hummock watching them, and for a while the
silence was uninterrupted. In the perfect stillness Tom could
hear the washing of the little waves beating upon the distant
beach, and once the far-away sound of a laugh from one of those
who stood by the ship's boat.
One, two, three minutes passed, and then the men picked up the
chest and started on again; and then again the other man began
his counting. "Thirty and one, and thirty and two, and thirty and
three, and thirty and four"--he walked straight across the level
open, still looking intently at that which he held in his
hand--"and thirty and five, and thirty and six, and thirty and
seven," and so on, until the three figures disappeared in the
little hollow between the two sand hills on the opposite side of
the open, and still Tom could hear the sound of the counting
voice in the distance.
Just as they disappeared behind the hill there was a sudden faint
flash of light; and by and by, as Tom lay still listening to the
counting, he heard, after a long interval, a far-away muffled
rumble of distant thunder. He waited for a while, and then arose
and stepped to the top of the sand hummock behind which he had
been lying. He looked all about him, but there was no one else to
be seen. Then he stepped down from the hummock and followed in
the direction which the pirate captain and the two men carrying
the chest had gone. He crept along cautiously, stopping now and
then to make sure that he still heard the counting voice, and
when it ceased he lay down upon the sand and waited until it
began again.
Presently, so following the pirates, he saw the three figures
again in the distance, and, skirting around back of a hill of
sand covered with coarse sedge grass, he came to where he
overlooked a little open level space gleaming white in the
moonlight.
The three had been crossing the level of sand, and were now not
more than twenty-five paces from him. They had again set down
the chest, upon which the white man with the long queue and the
gold earrings had seated to rest himself, the negro standing
close beside him. The moon shone as bright as day and full upon
his face. It was looking directly at Tom Chist, every line as
keen cut with white lights and black shadows as though it had
been carved in ivory and jet. He sat perfectlymotionless, and
Tom drew back with a start, almost thinking he had been
discovered. He lay silent, his heart beating heavily in his
throat; but there was no alarm, and presently he heard the
counting begin again, and when he looked once more he saw they
were going away straight across the little open. A soft, sliding
hillock of sand lay directly in front of them. They did not turn
aside, but went straight over it, the leader helping himself up
the sandy slope with his cane, still counting and still keeping
his eyes fixed upon that which he held in his hand. Then they
disappeared again behind the white crest on the other side.
So Tom followed them cautiously until they had gone almost half a
mile inland. When next he saw them clearly it was from a little
sandy rise which looked down like the crest of a bowl upon the
floor of sand below. Upon this smooth, white floor the moon beat
with almost dazzling brightness.
The white man who had helped to carry the chest was now kneeling,
busied at some work, though what it was Tom at first could not
see. He was whittling the point of a stick into a long wooden
peg, and when, by and by, he had finished what he was about, he
arose and stepped to where he who seemed to be the captain had
stuck his cane upright into the ground as though to mark some
particular spot. He drew the cane out of the sand, thrusting the
stick down in its stead. Then he drove the long peg down with a
wooden mallet which the negro handed to him. The sharp rapping
of the mallet upon the top of the peg sounded loud the perfect
stillness, and Tom lay watching and wondering what it all meant.
The man, with quick-repeated blows, drove the peg farther and
farther down into the sand until it showed only two or three
inches above the surface. As he finished his work there was
another faint flash of light, and by and by another smothered
rumble of thunder, and Tom, as he looked out toward 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
- neighborhood [´neibəhud]
n.邻居；邻近；附近 (初中英语单词) - moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- distinguish [di´stiŋgwiʃ] v.区分；识别；立功 (初中英语单词)
- evidently [´evidəntli] ad.明显地 (初中英语单词)
- feathered [´feðəd] a.有羽毛的；羽状的 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- mysterious [mi´stiəriəs] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (初中英语单词)
- lonely [´ləunli] a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词)
- impulse [´impʌls] n.推动(力)；冲动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- instantly [´instəntli] ad.立即，立刻 (初中英语单词)
- silently [´sailəntli] ad.寂静地；沉默地 (初中英语单词)
- thrill [θril] v.震惊；激动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- steadily [´stedili] ad.坚定地；不断地 (初中英语单词)
- sleeve [sli:v] n.袖子；袖套 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- interval [´intəvəl] n.间隙；(工间)休息 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- westward [´westwəd] a.向西的 n.西方；西部 (高中英语单词)
- pirate [´paiərət] n.海盗 v.做海盗；掠夺 (高中英语单词)
- homeward [´həumwəd] ad.&a.回家(的) (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- lantern [´læntən] n.灯笼；提灯 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- inland [´inlənd, in´lænd] a.&n.内地的 ad.在内地 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- onward [´ɔnwəd] ad.&a.向前(的) (高中英语单词)
- pronounced [prə´naunst] a.发出音的；显著的 (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- cautiously [´kɔ:ʃəsli] ad.小心地；谨慎地 (高中英语单词)
- motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
- upright [´ʌprait] a.直立的 ad.直立地 (高中英语单词)
- fishing [´fiʃiŋ] n.钓鱼；捕鱼；渔业 (英语四级单词)
- readiness [´redinis] n.准备就绪；愿意 (英语四级单词)
- mustache [mə´stɑ:ʃ] n.髭，小胡子 (英语四级单词)
- hoarse [hɔ:s] a.嘶哑的；嗓门粗哑的 (英语四级单词)
- whence [wens] ad.从何处；从那里 (英语四级单词)
- intently [in´tentli] ad.专心地 (英语四级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- narrowly [´nærəuli] ad.勉强地；严密地 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- mallet [´mælit] n.槌子；木槌 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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