looking
at the stove, "I'll get you too!" He believed it could be lowered
between the stone lips of his cave-mouth, for it was the smallest stove
he had ever seen, surely less than two feet in width. "I'll get you
in," said the plunderer decidedly, "or something will be broke!"

For the present, however, he took objects more appropriate to summer:
the mattress upon which he had passed the afternoon, a bucket in which
he packed boxes of matches, a quantity of candles, soap, and the like.
This bucket he put in the middle of the mattress and flanked it with
towels and pillows, between which were inserted plates, cups and
saucers. "I'll just take 'em all," he muttered, groping for more
dishes, "I might have company!"

The mattress once doubled over its ill-assorted contents, he was
obliged to rope both ends before he could carry it in safety. This
load, heavier than the last, he succeeded in getting to the crevice,
and as he poised it over the brink a few yards from where the tarpaulin
lay, he apostrophized it with--"Break if you want to; pieces is good
enough for your Uncle Brick!"

When he left the wagon with his next burden, he was obliged to bend low
under buckets, tools, cans and larger objects. As he moved slowly to
preserve equilibrium, he began to chuckle. "Reckon if the Injuns saw
me now," he said aloud, "they'd take me for an elephant with the
circus-lady riding my back!" At the crevice, he flung in all that
would pass the narrow opening intact, and smashed up what was too
large, that their fragments might also be hidden.

"Pshaw!" grunted Willock, as he started back toward the wagon, mopping
his brow on his shirt-sleeve, "Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it! Wonder
why he done all that complaining when he had a nice easy sea to wash
him and his plunder ashore?"

He was beginning to feel the weariness of the morning return, and the
load that cleaned out the wagon-bed left him so exhausted that he fell
down on the ground beside the crevice, having thrown in his booty.
Here, with his gull at his side and a pistol in his hand, he fell fast
asleep.

He lay there like a man of stone until some inner consciousness began
beating at the door of his senses, warning him that in no great time
the moon would rise. He started up in a state of dazed bewilderment,
staring at the solemn stars, the vague outlines of giant rocks about
him and the limitless sea of darkness that flowed away from the
mountain-top indicating,