robably taught them that he was a monster with a more deadly
poison than themselves, and whose fangs were sharper, though his tongue
did not hiss a note of warning. Captain Brand put down his burden and
crept forward on hands and knees, the blazing torch lighting up the damp
and dripping rocks, all green and slimy from the tracks of the snake and
lizard. Where the narrow fissure seemed to end by a wall of natural
rock, the pirate rolled aside a large stone at the base, and scratching
away the sand, a large copper lock was displayed, in which, after
pushing aside the hasp, Captain Brand touched a spring, and it opened.
Then, exerting all the force of his powerful frame, a rough slab of
unhewn rock yielded to the effort, and rose like a vertical door slung
by a massive hinge at the top. Placing the large stone at the opening,
so as to prevent the slab falling to its place, the captain stood the
torch within the opening, and went back for his burden; then he
returned, and squeezed himself with it into a small excavated, uneven
chamber, where he sat down.

"Nasty work," communed the pirate with himself, "but a safe place to lay
up a penny for a rainy day! Let me see. These two bags of doubloons, and
the small one my Gibbs brought me, with those three, there, of guineas,
and those sacks of dollars, will make about ten thousand pounds. That
will make me a nest-egg when I retire from the profession and return to
Scotland. They will have forgotten all my boyish follies by that time."

Captain Brand alluded to forging his father's name, and other little
peccadilloes of a similar nature.

"And I may be elected to Parliament--who knows? It is something of a
risk, perhaps, to leave all this pretty coin here, but then it's a
greater risk to carry it in the schooner"--he argued both ways--"and
then, again, damp does not decay pure metal. But," thought Captain
Brand, "suppose somebody should discover this little casket in the
rock. Ah! that's not probable, for no soul besides myself knows of it,
and even the very man who made the door did not know for what it was
intended; besides, he died long ago."

Captain Brand had forgotten, in this connection, that the man who cut
out the stone chamber and door, and fashioned the hinge and lock, took
too much sugar in his coffee the morning the job was finished, and died
in horrible convulsions before night. Oh yes, that incident had entirely
escaped his memory!

Captain Brand, having now t