ich, if either, was the right one, they took the
one on the left, as the previous opening had been on the left of the
corridor, and followed it for a considerable distance. But they were
doomed to disappointment; the corridor led nowhere. It simply came to
what seemed to be a dead end, like the others. Frobisher felt the drops
of sweat forming on his forehead, for it was beginning to look
remarkably as though there was but one entrance to the vault--that
through which they had come--and that all these other passages were
either natural, or had been cut simply with the idea of mystifying and
misleading possible intruders.

"Never say die" was, however, Frobisher's motto, and Drake's too, for
that matter, so they tried back and entered the right-hand branch. But
no better success attended them here, this ending in a blank wall also.
There was now only one corridor untried, and with sinking hearts they
proceeded to explore it.

No exit of any sort rewarded them here either, and hardly daring to look
each other in the face, from fear of what they might see there, they
returned to the main chamber, into which Drake had fallen headlong in
the first instance. Here they could still hear the distant shouts and
trampling of the pirates, who were evidently moving about in the chamber
directly overhead, continuing the search for their prey; but even the
thought that they were safe from those barbarous savages was now hardly
sufficient to cheer them. It would have been almost better to have met
death in the open, fighting, than to be compelled to watch his slow
approach in this dismal place, far below the level of the ground.

Unable to remain still, Frobisher again most carefully examined the
inside of the secret door in search of a hidden spring, but no sign of
it could he discover. It seemed evident that, unless the door were
actually propped open by the person entering the vault, there was no
getting back by that way; and Frobisher could not help thinking that
surely some other exit must have been provided. The people accustomed
to using the vault could not be expected always to remember to prop the
door open when they entered; and it did not seem reasonable to suppose
that the place had been so constructed that a mere lapse of memory would
be tantamount to a person signing his own death-warrant. An emergency
exit must have been made for use in case the main door became closed
accidentally or otherwise; but the questi