and when the rude
shelter was complete he searched the rocky shores for some large shell,
or anything that would hold a small portion of the liquor. He found a
cocoanut that the sea had kindly cast up among the rocks, and cutting
one end off with his pocket-knife, and digging out the interior, he once
more returned where he had left the mysterious keg.

Twilight was near and the dark cave entrance and frowning walls about
the little harbor seemed more ominous than ever. He made haste to fill
his rude cup with rum and return to his shelter. Then he gathered fuel,
for fire at least would be a little company, and a strange dread of
spending the coming night alone there on that haunted island was
creeping over him. He did not believe in ghosts, but when he thought of
the peculiar sequence of events, mingled with a slowly growing belief
that some mysterious power was leading him--he knew not whither--a
feeling that he was soon to face some ghastly experience, came like an
icy hand grasping his in the dark. He could not shake that feeling off,
and as he gathered driftwood, bits of dead spruce--anything that would
burn, and piled the fuel near his shelter--his dread increased. What
strange spell was it that had kept him four hours beside that
wall-enclosed harbor unconscious of the lapse of time? Why had he not
seen the fog coming until too late? And that keg and cave!--what did all
these mysteries mean? Then, searching further along the shore for
driftwood, he came suddenly upon a tangle of wreckage piled high among
the rocks. It would serve as fuel, and he began to drag large pieces to
his shelter. Three trips he made, and was just lifting the end of a
broken spar, when right at his feet, and half-buried in the sand, he saw
a white object. The night was fast approaching and he was in a hurry,
but some impulse made him stoop, and there in the gathering gloom he
saw--a grinning human skull!

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SMUGGLER'S CAVE.

Manson had faced death on the battlefield when comrades were falling
beside him; he had paced for hours on the picket-line in the darkness of
night, feeling that at any moment an enemy might fire at him from some
thicket or from behind some tree or rock; but amid all these dangers he
had not felt the nameless horror that came to him as he saw that hideous
skull grinning at him there in the tangle of wreckage just at dusk on
Pocket Island. It was like a hand reaching out from a grave, or a vo