its power of acting as a
vast speaking-tube, for if a person stood at one of the escape-pipes and
whispered, his words were distinctly audible to another at the other
pipe some fifty yards off, who could as easily respond.

Well, it was into the mouth of the gowt tunnel that we had now run the
boat, where we were concealed from view certainly; and thrusting against
the piles with his hands, my companion worked the boat farther into the
darkness, until the keel touched the soft sand.

"That's snug," he whispered: "they'll never find us here."

"No," I said, as a strange fear came upon me. "But isn't the tide
rising?"

"Fast," he said.

"Then we shall be stopped from getting out."

"Nonsense!" he said. "It will take an hour to rise above the
tunnel-mouth, and if it did, we could run her head up higher and higher.
Plenty of fresh air through the pipes."

"If we're not drowned," I said.

"There, if you want to lose the cargo, we'll pull out at once, and give
up," he said.

"But I don't," I replied; "I am staunch enough; only I don't want to
risk my life."

"Well, who does?" he said. "Only keep still, and we shall be all
right."

The few minutes we had been conversing had been long enough for the tide
to float the boat once more, and this time I raised my hand to the root
and thrusting against the tunnel-covered, weed-hung, slimy woodwork,
soon had the boat's keel again in the sand, so as to prevent her being
sucked out by the reflux of the tide. At times we could hear shouts,
twice pistol-shots, and then we were startled by the dull, heavy report
of a small cannon.

"That's after the _chasse-maree_," whispered my companion; "but she
sails like a witch. She's safe unless they knock a spar away."

"I wish we were," I said, for I did not feel at all comfortable in our
dark hole, up which we were being forced farther and farther by the
increasing tide; while more than once we had to hold on tightly by the
horrible slimy piles, to keep from being drawn back.

"Just the place to find dead bodies," whispered my companion, evidently
to startle me.

"Just so," I said coldly. "Perhaps they'll find two to-morrow."

"Don't croak," was the polite rejoinder; and then he was silent; but I
could hear a peculiar boring noise being made, and no further attempts
at a joke issued from my friend's lips.

"Suppose we try and get out now?" I whispered, after another quarter of
an hour's listening in the darkness, an