as he rose from the
stones. "Oh, how weak and hungry I am! It's as if I was going to be
ill. I wonder whether I could track where they went out."

"Not now," he said,--"not now;" and with some faint hope of finding the
place where he had been lying on the old sail, he began to move slowly
and laboriously along, his mind dragged over, as it were, to the words
of the boy as he taunted him about milk and bread and butter with ham.
It was agonising in his literally starving condition to think of such
things, and he tried to keep his mind upon finding the way out, meaning
to work desperately after he had lain down for a bit to rest.

But it was impossible to control his thoughts, strive how he would.
Hunger is an overmastering desire, and he crept on step by step with
outstretched hands, picturing in the darkness slices of ham, yellow
butter, brown crusted loaves, and pure sweet milk, till, as he dragged
his feet slowly along, half-fainting now with pain, weariness, and
despair, his foot suddenly kicked against something which rolled over
and over away from him.

"The lanthorn!" he exclaimed eagerly, and planning at once how he could
strike a light with a stone and his knife, and perhaps contrive some
tinder, he went down on his hands and knees, feeling about in all
directions till he touched the object which he had kicked, and uttered a
cry of joy and excitement.

It was not the lanthorn, but a round cross-handled basket with lid, and
he trembled as he recalled Ram's words about what his mother had sent.

Was there truth in them, or were they the utterances of a malicious mind
which wished to torture one who was in its power?

Archy Raystoke hardly dared to think, and knelt there for a few minutes,
with his trembling hands resting upon the basket, which he was afraid to
open lest it should not contain that which he looked for.

"Out of my misery at all events," he cried; and he tore off the lid.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

"They only want to keep me a prisoner," said the midshipman half an hour
after, as he sat with his mouth full, steadily eating away as a boy of
seventeen can eat--"a prisoner till they've got all their stuff safe
away. They dare not hurt me. I'm not afraid of that, and it's a very
strange thing if I can't prove myself as clever as that cunning young
scoundrel who trapped me here. At all events, I'll try. They dare not
starve me: not they. Wait a bit, and I'll show them that I'm not so
stu