Tom took out his spectacles from some recess of his trousers, and applied himself to Charlie Webster’s note, as though it had been the Bible.  He read it as slowly indeed as if it had been Sanscrit, and then folded it and handed it back to me without a word.  But there was quite a young smile in his old eyes.

“‘The wonderful works of God,’” he said presently.  “I guess, sar, we shall soon be able to ask him what he meant by that expression.”

Then, as sunlight had almost gone, and the stars were trying to come out overhead, and the boys were stringing out our lanterns, I surprised our captain by telling him that I had changed my mind, and that I didn’t want to make Nassau that night, but wanted to head back again, but a point or so to the south’ard.  He demurred a little, because, as he said, he was not quite sure of his course.  We ought to have had a pilot, and the shoals—­so much he knew—­were bad that way, all “white water,” particularly in a northeast wind.  This only confirmed what the “King” had said.  So, admitting that I knew all the captain said, I ordered him to do as I told him.

So we ruffled it along, making two or three “legs”—­I sitting abaft the jib boom, with my back against the mainmast, watching out for Samson and his light.

Soon the long dark shore loomed ahead of us.  I had reckoned it out about right.  But the Captain announced that we were in shoal water.

“How many feet?” I asked, and a boy threw out the lead.

“Sixteen and a half,” he said.

“Go ahead,” I called out.

“Do you want to go aground?” asked the Captain.

For answer, I pushed him aside and took the wheel.  I had caught the smallest glimmer, like a night-light, floating on the water.

“Drop the anchor,” I called.

The light in shore was clear and near at hand, about one hundred yards away, and there was the big murmur and commotion of the long breakers over the dancing shoals.  We rolled a good deal, and the Captain moodily took my suggestion of throwing out three anchors and cradling them; though, as he said, with the way the northeast was blowing, we should soon be on dry land.  It was true enough.  The tide was running out very fast, and the white sand coming ever nearer to our eyes in the moonlight; and Samson’s light, there, was keeping white and steady.  With the thought of my treasure and the “King” so near by, it was hard to resist the temptation to plunge in and follow my heart ashore.  But I managed to control the boyish impulse, and presently we were all snug, and some of us snoring, below decks, rocked in the long swells of the shoal water that gleamed milkily like an animated moonstone under the stars—­old Sailor curled up at my feet, just like old times.

CHAPTER X

The Hidden Creek.

I woke just as dawn was waking too, very still and windless; for the threatening nor’easter had changed its mind, and the world was as quiet as though there weren’t a human being in it.  Near by, stretched the long low coast-line, nothing but level brush, with an occasional thatch-palm lifting up a shock-head against the quickening sky.  Out to sea, the level plains of lucent water spread like a vast floor, immensely vacant—­not a sail or even a wing to mar the perfect void.