At the head of the beach, beyond the line of shell and weed, the sand lay piled in heaps. With these friendly hillocks between me and the sea, I crept on as silently as I might, until I reached a point just above the boat. Here I first heard voices. I went a little further, then knelt, and, parting the long coarse grass that filled the hollow between two hillocks, looked out upon two men who were digging a grave. They dug in a furious hurry, throwing the sand to left and right, and cursing as they dug. They were powerful men, of a most villainous cast of countenance, and dressed very oddly. One with a shirt of coarsest dowlas, and a filthy rag tying up a broken head, yet wore velvet breeches, and wiped the sweat from his face with a wrought handkerchief; the other topped a suit of shreds and patches with a fine bushy ruff, and swung from one ragged shoulder a cloak of grogram lined with taffeta. On the ground, to one side of them, lay something long and wrapped in white. As they dug and cursed, the light strengthened. The east changed from gray to pale rose, from rose to a splendid crimson shot with gold. The mist lifted and the sea burned red. Two boats were lowered from the ship, and came swiftly toward the point. “Here they are at last,” growled the gravedigger with the broken head and velvet breeches. “They've taken their time,” snarled his companion, “and us two here on this d-d island with a dead man the whole ghost's hour. Boarding a ship's nothing, but to dig a grave on the land before cockcrow, with the man you're to put in it looking at you! Why could n't he be buried at sea, decent and respectable, like other folk?” “It was his will,--that's all I know,” said the first; “just as it was his will, when he found he was a dying man, to come booming away from the gold seas up here to a land where there is n't no gold, and never will be. Belike he thought he'd find waiting for him at the bottom of the sea, all along from the Lucayas to Cartagena, the many he sent there afore he died. And Captain Paradise, he says, says he: 'It's ill crossing a dead man. We'll obey him this once more'”-- “Captain Paradise!” cried he of the ruff. “Who made him captain?--curse him!” His fellow straightened himself with a jerk. “Who made him captain? The ship will make him captain. Who else should be captain?” “Red Gil!” “Red Gil!” exclaimed the other. “I'd rather have the Spaniard!” “The Spaniard would do well enough, if the rest of us were n't English. If hating every other Spaniard would do it, he'd be English fast enough.” The scoundrel with the broken head burst into a loud laugh. “D' ye remember the bark we took off Porto Bello, with the priests aboard? Oho! Oho!” The rogue with the ruff grinned. “I reckon the padres remember it, and find hell easy lying. This hole's deep enough, I'm thinking.”