ts and stood at the cliff's head. To
say that our hearts were in our mouths would not be strict truth, for I
never feared any man, beast, or devil yet; and I wasn't going to begin
that night--nor were the others more ready, that I will answer for
them. But remembering the things we had seen on the reef, the words
which Ruth Bellenden had spoken to me, and that which happened to the
lad and myself last time we came ashore; remembering this, it's not to
be wondered at that our hearts beat a bit quicker, and that our hands
went now and again to the pistols we carried. For, just think of
it--there we were at nine o'clock of a dark night, in a thick wood,
with the trees making ghosts about us, and the path as narrow as a
ship's plank, and no knowledge who walked the woods with us, nor any
true reckoning of our circumstance. What man wouldn't have held his
tongue at such a time, or argued with himself that it might end badly,
and he never see the sun again? Not Jasper Begg, as I bear witness.

Now, I put myself at the head of our fellows and, the better to find
the track, I went down on my hands and my knees like a four-footed
thing, and signalling to those behind with a bosun's whistle, I led
them well enough through the wood to the wicker-basket bridge; and
would have gone on from there straight down to the house but for
something which happened at the clearing of the thicket, just as I
stood up to bid the men go over. Startling it was, to be sure, and
enough to give any man a turn; nor did I wonder that Peter Bligh should
have cried out as he did when first he clapped eyes upon it.

"Holy Mother of Music," says he, "'tis the angels singing, or I'm a
dirty nigger!"

"Hold your tongue," says I, in a whisper; "are you afraid of two young
women, then?"

"Of three," says he, "which being odd is lucky. When my poor
father----"

"To hell with your father," says I; "hold your tongue and wait."

He lay low at this, and the rest of us gaped, open-mouthed, as though
we were staring at a fairy-book. There, before us, coming down from the
black rocks above, leaping from step to step of the stone, were three
young girls; but, aye, the queerest sort that ever tantalized a man
with their prettiness. You may well ask, the night being inky dark, how
we managed to see them at all; but let me tell you that they carried
good rosin torches in their hands, and the wild light, all gold and
crimson against the rocks, shone as bright as a sh