all alone in the
stillness here and your brain's at work conjuring up all sorts of
horrible things. You've behaved very handsomely to me, old fellow, and
I'm not going to be such a miserable beggar as to go and leave you in
the lurch. If you stay, I stay too, and there's an end of it. Now,
then, snuff the candle and hunt out some prog. I've been so that
everything I put into my mouth tasted like sawdust, but I feel now as if
I could eat like anything. Look sharp."

"Do you mean this?" cried Aleck, turning to his companion, excitedly.

"Of course I do," said the middy, merrily. "Think you're the only
gentleman in the world?"

It was Aleck's turn to feel slightly husky in the throat, but he turned
away to the rough basket and began to hand out its contents, joining his
companion in eating hungrily, both working away in silence for a time.

Then the ex-prisoner opened the conversation, beginning to talk in a
boisterous, careless way.

"I say, Aleck, we shall have plenty of time before lying down to sleep.
Let's light two or three candles and have a jolly good rummage of the
smugglers' stores."

"We will," cried the lad addressed.

"I shouldn't wonder if we find all sorts of things. Treasure, perhaps,
from wrecked vessels. I wouldn't bet that these people hadn't been
pirates in their time. That Eben, as you call him--I say, it ought to
be Ebony--he looks a regular Blackbeard, skull-and-crossbones sort of a
customer. We'll collar anything that seems particularly good. I'm just
in the humour to say I've as good a right to what there is as anybody
else; but we'll share--fair halves. I say!"

"What?"

"Old Blackbeard will stare when he finds that we've opened the irons.
My word, I must go and see Mrs Ebony again. Nice woman she is, and no
mistake."

"Did she fasten the iron ring on your ankle?"

"Well, no; I think it was an ugly old woman of the party; but I couldn't
be sure, for they half killed me--smothered me, you know--and when I
came the half way back to life the job was done."

Aleck entered into the spirit of the rummage, as his companion called
it, and their search proved interesting enough; but after finding a vast
store of spirits, tobacco, and undressed Italian silks, the principal
things in the cavern were ship's stores--the flotsam and jetsam of
wrecks, over which they bent till weariness supervened.

"Tired out," said Aleck, at last.

"So am I," was the reply, as they threw themselv