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