xtraordinary discovery with my
unexplained request of him this morning, have arrived already at
some glimmering of the truth? I hoped so, and longed to impart to
him my own sure knowledge that the confident expectations of the
freebooters for the morrow were doomed to disappointment. There
seemed a measure of comfort in this assurance, for our moment of
greatest peril well might be that in which the pirates, with the
gold in their possession and on the point of fleeing from the
island, recalled the respectable because so truthful maxim that
dead men tell no tales. Therefore in the postponement of the
crucial moment lay our best hope of rescue or escape.

On the other hand, I fancied them returning from the cave surly and
disappointed, ready to vent their wrath on us. All, except the
unspeakable Magnus, had shown so far a rough good nature, even
amusement at our plight, but you felt the snarl at the corner of
the grinning lips. You knew they would be undependable as savages
or vicious children, who find pleasure in inflicting pain. And
then there was always my own hideous danger as the favored of the
wolfish captain--

And I wondered, desperately, if I might buy safety for us all at
the price of the secret of the _Island Queen_, if a promise from
the five scoundrels around the table would have more meaning than
their wild boasts and shoutings now?

And now the night that I unutterably dreaded was upon us. But the
pirates still thought of nothing but the gold. They had exhausted
their own portable supplies of liquor, and were loud in their
denunciations of our bone-dry camp, as they termed it. Mr. Tubbs
enlarged upon the annoyance which Mr. Shaw's restrictions in this
matter had been to him, and regretted that he had long ago
exhausted the small amount of spirituous refreshment which he had
been able to smuggle in. Tony, however, was of another mind. "And
a good thing, too," he declared, "that you guys can't booze
yourselves blind before morning, or there wouldn't be much gold
took out of that there cave to-morrow. Once we make port
somewheres with that chest of treasure aboard you can pour down
enough to irrigate the Mojave Desert if you like."

It was Tony, too, who intercepted a tentative movement of Captain
Magnus in my direction, and ordered me into the cabin with my aunt
and Miss Browne. Through the walls of the hut we heard loud and
eager talk of the morrow and its certain golden harvest as the