vase
or urn copied from the antique. The furniture consisted of half a
dozen chairs, a settee, and an octagon table, all carved out of wood
in pseudo-classical patterns, and painted with a grey wash to
resemble stone.

"It's a fine room," said Mr. Jope, walking up to a statue of Diana:
"but a man couldn' hardly invite a mixed company to dinner here."

"Symonds's f'r instance," suggested Mr. Adams. Symonds's being a
somewhat notorious boarding-house in a street of Plymouth which shall
be nameless.

"You ought to be ashamed o' yourself, Bill," said Mr. Jope sternly.

"They're anticks, that's what they are."

Mr. Adams drew a long breath.

"I shouldn' wonder," he said.

"Turnin' 'em wi' their faces to the wall 'd look too marked," mused
Mr. Jope. "But a few tex o' Scripture along the walls might ease
things down a bit."

"Wot about the hold?" Mr. Adams suggested.

"The cellar, you mean. Let's have a look."

They passed through the hall; thence down a stone stairway into an
ample vaulted kitchen, and thence along a slate-flagged corridor
flanked by sculleries, larders and other kitchen offices. The two
seamen searched the floors of all in hope of finding a cellar trap or
hatchway, and Mr. Adams was still searching when Mr. Jope called to
him from the end of the corridor:

"Here we are!"

He had found a flight of steps worthy of a cathedral crypt, leading
down to a stone archway. The archway was closed by an iron-studded
door.

"It's like goin' to church," commented Mr. Jope, bating his voice.
"Where's the candles, Bill?"

"In the barrer 'long wi' the bread an' bacon."

"Then step back and fetch 'em."

But from the foot of the stairs Mr. Jope presently called up that
this was unnecessary, for the door had opened to his hand--smoothly,
too, and without noise; but he failed to note this as strange, being
taken aback for the moment by a strong draught of air that met him,
blowing full in his face.

"There's daylight here, too, of a sort," he reported: and so there
was. It pierced the darkness in a long shaft, slanting across from a
doorway of which the upper panel stood open to the sky.

"Funny way o' leavin' a house," he muttered, as he stepped across the
bare cellar floor and peered forth. "Why, hallo, here's water!"

The cellar, in fact, stood close by the river's edge, with a broad
postern-sill actually overhanging the tide, and a flight of steps,
scarcely less broad, curving up and aroun