FELL THEREIN

XXII.--THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTY HOURS

XXIII.--THE END OF THE SIXTY HOURS

XXIV.--THE SECOND ATTACK ON CZERNY'S HOUSE

XXV.--IN WHICH THE SUN-TIME COMES AGAIN

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Shall we go or stay?"

Like dancers at a stage play.

A picturesque old figure standing there.

She looked at me with her big, questioning eyes.

We were all sitting at the supper table.

The drawing-room is a cave whose walls are of jewels.

"If there is a sound at the door, fire that gun."

Another man fell with a loud cry.

THE HOUSE UNDER THE SEA

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH JASPER BEGG MAKES KNOWN THE PURPOSE OF HIS VOYAGE TO THE
PACIFIC OCEAN, AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT HE COMMISSIONED THE
STEAM-SHIP SOUTHERN CROSS THROUGH PHILIPS, WESTBURY, AND CO.

Many gentlemen have asked me to write the story of Ken's Island, and in
so far as my ability goes, that I will now do. A plain seaman by
profession, one who has had no more education than a Kentish grammar
school can give him, I, Jasper Begg, find it very hard to bring to
other people's eyes the wonderful things I have seen or to make all
this great matter clear as it should be clear for a right
understanding. But what I know of it, I will here set down; and I do
not doubt that the newspapers and the writers will do the rest.

Now, it was upon the third day of May in the year 1899, at four bells
in the first dog watch, that Harry Doe, our boatswain, first sighted
land upon our port-bow, and so made known to me that our voyage was
done. We were fifty-three days out from Southampton then; and for
fifty-three days not a man among the crew of the Southern Cross had
known our proper destination, or why his skipper, Jasper Begg, had
shipped him to sail for the Pacific Ocean. A pleasure voyage, the
papers said; and some remembered that I had been in and out of private
yachts ever since I ran away from school and booked with Skipper Higg,
who sailed Lord Kanton's schooner from the Solent; but others asked
themselves what pleasure took a yacht's skipper beyond the Suez, and
how it came about that a poor man like Jasper Begg found the money to
commission a 500-ton tramp through Philips, Westbury, and Co., and to
deal liberally with any shipmate who had a fancy for the trip. These
questions I meant to answer in my own time. A hint here and there of a
lady in whose interest the voyage was undertaken kept the crew quiet,
if it did not please its curiosity. Mi