"But let us find the box!" cried out Tom Chist, flaming with his
excitement.

"Aye, aye," said the good man; "only stay a little, my boy, until we
make sure what we're about. I've got my pocket-compass here, but we
must have something to measure off the feet when we have found the peg.
You run across to Tom Brooke's house and fetch that measuring-rod he
used to lay out his new byre. While you're gone I'll pace off the
distance marked on the paper with my pocket-compass here."

VI

Tom Chist was gone for almost an hour, though he ran nearly all the way
and back, upborne as on the wings of the wind. When he returned,
panting, Parson Jones was nowhere to be seen, but Tom saw his footsteps
leading away inland, and he followed the scuffling marks in the smooth
surface across the sand-humps and down into the hollows, and by-and-by
found the good gentleman in a spot he at once knew as soon as he laid
his eyes upon it.

It was the open space where the pirates had driven their first peg, and
where Tom Chist had afterwards seen them kill the poor black man. Tom
Chist gazed around as though expecting to see some sign of the tragedy,
but the space was as smooth and as undisturbed as a floor, excepting
where, midway across it, Parson Jones who was now stooping over
something on the ground, had trampled it all around about.

When Tom Chist saw him, he was still bending over, scraping the sand
away from something he had found.