for ingress or egress--guarded by a couple of the
most ruffianly of the pirates, fellows who were completely the creatures
of Ralli, and who had on more than one occasion thrown out strong hints
of their suspicion that Dickinson was on more friendly terms than he
ought to be with the men now in confinement. To their searching
inquiries as to the reasons for Dickinson's untimely and suspicious
visit to them the ex-boatswain's mate was driven to reply with a
complaint as to the extreme heat and closeness of the night, and of his
inability to sleep in consequence, his restlessness being such as to
constrain him to rise and come outside for a smoke and a chat with
somebody; and, there being no one else to chat with, he had just come to
them. To this explanation he added a careless offer to relieve them of
their guard for the rest of the night; but this offer provoked such an
expression of unqualified suspicion from both the guards that he at once
saw he was treading on very dangerous ground, and was accordingly fain
to abandon his well-intentioned effort to communicate with those inside
the prison door.

Driven thus into a corner, he resolved to get a word or two, if
possible, with the inmates of Staunton Cottage; and he accordingly
sauntered off, taking a very roundabout way, as long as he thought it at
all possible for his movements to be seen by the already suspicious
guards.

Dickinson's complaint as to the heat and closeness of the night was
quite sufficiently well founded to have been accepted as perfectly
genuine. It was pitchy dark, the sky being obscured by a thin veil of
cloud which was yet sufficiently dense to completely obscure the light
of the stars; the air was still to the extent of stagnation; and the
temperature was so unusually high that Dickinson found the mere act of
walking, even at the idle sauntering pace which he had adopted, a
laborious exertion. In the great and oppressive stillness which
prevailed, the hoarse thunder of the trampling surf upon the rocky
shores of the island smote so loudly upon the ear as to be almost
startling; and to the lonely wanderer there in the stifling darkness the
sound seemed to bring a vague mysterious premonition of disaster.

Dickinson had almost reached the cottage when he became conscious of
another sound rising above that of the roaring surf, the sound as of a
heavily-laden wagon approaching over a rough and stony road, or of a
heavy train rumbling through