der," he said, "but being
blown up with aither of them isn't a patch to what I've gone through
this night. What with being wracked on a rock in the sea, fighting
smugglers, nagurs, and Polanders--to say nothing of dogs and other
wild animals--beat and battered, torn and scalded, tripped up and lost
in the wilderness, and all in the middle of a cruel blackness, is an
experience that any man might be grateful to be done with. If I have a
whole bone left inside of me skin, or a rag to me back, it's more than
I'm hoping. Now what'll I do next?

"Will I go back to the house? Indade I will not. Will I make another
try for the cave? Not so long as I have me right mind. Will I go back
to Red Jacket?--and meet them as would ax me what had I done with
Mister Peril? Not on your life. Where is Mister Peril at this blessed
minute, anyhow? At sea on board the smuggler, or I miss me guess. How
will I get to him? By taking a boat, of course. Where will I find one?
At Laughing Fish Cove, to be sure. That's the very place, bedad! and
the sooner I'm getting there the better."

The tug _Broncho_ had reached Laughing Fish about an hour before Mike
Connell arrived at this decision. She had come in search of the party
of log-wreckers that she had brought to that place more than a week
earlier, and now those on board were greatly troubled at not finding a
trace of the missing men save their deserted camp. Nor could they
obtain any information concerning them from the fisher folk of the
cove.

On board the tug was Major Arkell, who had been led by curiosity to
take the trip. He was curious to know what had become of the young man
whom he had sent into that region to pick up wrecked logs, and he was
also curious to ascertain what had become of a large number of those
same logs that still remained unaccounted for. At the same time he
would like to investigate certain reports that had reached him of the
reopening of some old mine-workings in that neighborhood. He had hoped
that his researches might not take him beyond Laughing Fish, where he
anticipated finding Richard Peveril prepared to answer all his
questions. Failing to discover the young man, or any trace of him, the
problems that he had set out to solve became more interesting than
before, and he ordered Captain Spillins to start at daybreak on a
cruise still farther up the coast.

Early on the following morning, therefore, everything was in readiness
on board the tug, and its crew wer