was his consolatory reflection. He examined his pocket-pistols,
however, before removing the weeds and entering the cavern, which he did
upon hands and knees. The passage, which at first was low and narrow,
just admitting entrance to a man in a creeping posture, expanded after a
few yards into a high arched vault of considerable width. The bottom,
ascending gradually, was covered with the purest sand. Ere Glossin had
got upon his feet, the hoarse yet suppressed voice of Hatteraick growled
through the recesses of the cave:--

'Hagel and donner! be'st du?'

'Are you in the dark?'

'Dark? der deyvil! ay,' said Dirk Hatteraick; 'where should I have a
glim?'

'I have brought light'; and Glossin accordingly produced a tinder-box and
lighted a small lantern.

'You must kindle some fire too, for hold mich der deyvil, Ich bin ganz
gefrorne!'

'It is a cold place, to be sure,' said Glossin, gathering together some
decayed staves of barrels and pieces of wood, which had perhaps lain in
the cavern since Hatteraick was there last.

'Cold? Snow-wasser and hagel! it's perdition; I could only keep myself
alive by rambling up and down this d--d vault, and thinking about the
merry rouses we have had in it.'

The flame then began to blaze brightly, and Hatteraick hung his bronzed
visage and expanded his hard and sinewy hands over it, with an avidity
resembling that of a famished wretch to whom food is exposed. The light
showed his savage and stern features, and the smoke, which in his agony
of cold he seemed to endure almost to suffocation, after circling round
his head, rose to the dim and rugged roof of the cave, through which it
escaped by some secret rents or clefts in the rock; the same doubtless
that afforded air to the cavern when the tide was in, at which time the
aperture to the sea was filled with water.

'And now I have brought you some breakfast,' said Glossin, producing some
cold meat and a flask of spirits. The latter Hatteraick eagerly seized
upon and applied to his mouth; and, after a hearty draught, he exclaimed
with great rapture, 'Das schmeckt! That is good, that warms the liver!'
Then broke into the fragment of a High-Dutch song,--

Saufen Bier und Brantewein,
Schmeissen alle die Fenstern ein;
Ich bin liederlich,
Du bist liederlich;
Sind wir nicht liederlich Leute a?

'Well said, my hearty Captain!' cried Glossin, endeavouring to catch the
tone of revelry,--

'Gin by pailf