When the first streaks of daylight showed themselves in the east, Captain Ben put his followers in file close up under the surf hills. So soon as daylight grew strong enough to define faintly the reaches of the coast, he crept to the top of the row of hills, and reconnoitred the Beach. He could just make out dimly, a mile westward, the masts and hull of the stranded schooner. He backed down from the sand-hill and reported what he had seen.
“About a mile to west’ard, an’ nobody stirrin’ as I can make out. See that your guns are all well primed an’ dry. Keep in close to the hills till we get abreast the spot. And now, forward!”
There were two or three places in the hills in that mile, where the ocean had broken through and poured its waters over low spots of beach into the Bay. Cautiously the men skulked by these openings.
“I b’lieve in bein’ wary,” said a Blue Point bay-man. “There’s no calc’latin’ what we may run upon any minute—mebbe the hull poss on ’em in some o’ these ere hill hollers.”
The daylight was now fast flooding ocean and Beach and Bay. What they were to do must be done quickly.
Captain Ben gathered his followers close in under the bank, while he climbed to the top of the sand ridge and peered over. He saw distinctly the masts of the schooner, but not the hull, as the second ridge of hills cut off his view. He slipped back a few yards, and directed the men to range themselves abreast and crawl over the hill into the next valley or, rather, depression between the surf hills and the middle beach range.
When all were over and down, he gave word to crawl on hands and knees up the ridge before them, and to halt within twenty yards of the top, while he again peered over.
The day was now fully open. The creeping line of men came towards the top of the ridge, and Captain Ben waved his hand backwards for them to stop. The line halted, and every man drew himself up on his knees to watch the Captain.
He had crept not three lengths after waving his hand for the line to halt, when, as suddenly and unexpectedly as if some dead sailor had risen from his grave among those Beach hills, a man stepped over the crest of the hill.
In an instant and with one impulse, the Captain, and those in the line behind him, levelled their muskets at the outlaw.