don't seem inclined to give it up to
the last. They don't know what they are coming to, or they would be
throwing up their arms in despair. Well, it's some people's fate to be
hung, and some to be drowned, so they must have made up their minds to
go out of the world in the last way."

He walked on for some distance further, by which time the little mistico
was close in with the rocks.

"I don't know though," he continued. "She has got past Point Ausa, and
I'm not quite so certain that she won't run right up into Ziyra Bay.
So, by the saints, she has; and if she had tried to get there, she could
not have done it better. Now, on my sons, or the sea will be too quick
for us, and will have carried those strangers away before we get there."

A few minutes more brought him and his party to the edge of a lofty
cliff, from whence they looked down into a small sandy bay, where,
already almost high and dry, lay the mistico they had seen approaching
the shore. The entrance to the bay was through a very narrow passage
between two rocks, which could only just have allowed her to scrape
through; but once inside, the force of the sea was so much broken by
them that she had received little or no damage. The waves were,
however, sufficiently high to break over her, and almost to fill her, so
that the crew were compelled to land as fast as they could. This they
accomplished by dropping down from the little stump of a bowsprit as the
water receded, and running up on to the dry sand before it returned.

"You are lucky fellows to get on shore so easily," muttered old Vlacco.
"But now you are there, you are very like mice in a trap, you cannot get
out without my assistance."

From the appearance of the bay, there seemed to be much truth in his
observation, for so perpendicular were the cliffs, that no one could by
any possibility, have scaled them.

He counted the people as they landed, and saw that there were four men
and a boy; and he was now watching to learn what they would do. There
was, as he was well aware, a narrow pathway cut up the side of the
cliff; but the lower part was concealed, by leading into a small cavern,
so that no strangers were likely to find it. It had been formed,
probably, in the days when the island was a regular fortress, and had
been thus arranged, that no enemy should land there, and take them
unawares.

The crew of the mistico immediately set to work to try and find their
way to the summit of