erything was precisely as they had left it;
and as soon as they had come to this conclusion, they found themselves
opposite the fissure which led into the other cavern.

Mike glanced at the rope and grapnel, and then back inquiringly at his
companion.

"No!" said Vince, answering the unspoken question that he could plainly
read in Mike's eyes; "we can have a good afternoon without going there."

"How? What are we going to do?"

"Fish," said Vince shortly.

"But I should like to go and see if everything is there just the same as
it was."

"If it has been there for a hundred years, as you say, it's there all
right still. Come on."

"But I should just like to have a peep in one or two of the packages,
Cinder."

"Yes, I know you would; but you promised not to want to meddle, or I
wouldn't have come. Now didn't you?"

"All right," said Mike sulkily; "but I did think you were a fellow who
had more stuff in you. There, you won't do anything adventurous."

"Yes, I will," cried Vince quickly: "I'll get the lanthorn and go and
explore the seal's hole, if you'll come."

"And get bitten to death by the brutes. No, thankye."

"Bitten to death! Just as if we couldn't settle any number of seals
with sticks or conger clubs!"

"Ah, well, you go and settle 'em, and call me when you've done."

"No need to. You wouldn't let me go alone. Now then, we'll get some
fish, and have a good fry."

Vince ran to the wall, where their lines hung upon a peg; and now they
noticed, for the first time, that there had been a high tide during the
late storm, for the sand had been driven up in a ridge at one side of
the cave mouth, but had only come in some twenty or thirty feet.

Their baits, in a box pierced with holes to let the water in and out,
were quite well and lively; and putting some of these in a tray, they
went cautiously out from rock to rock in the wide archway till there was
deep water just beyond for quite another twenty feet; then rocks again,
and beyond them the gurgling rush and hurry of the swift currents, while
the pool before them, though in motion, looked smooth and still, save
that a close inspection showed that the surface was marked with the
lines of a gentle current, which apparently rose from below the rocks on
the right.

It was an ideal place for sea-fishing, for the great deep pool was free
from rocks save those which surrounded it, and not a thread of weed or
wrack to be seen ready to entangle th