"Jasper Begg," cried he, in a voice that I'd have known for a Frenchman's anywhere, "follow Clair-de-Lune—follow—follow!"

He turned to the bushes behind him, and, seeming to dive between them, we found him, when we followed, flat on his stomach, the lantern out, and he running like a dog up a winding path before him. He was leading us to the heights, I said; and when I remembered the great bare peaks and steeple-like rocks, upstanding black and gloomy under the starry sky, I began to believe that this wild man was right and that in the hills our safety lay.

But of that we had yet to learn, and for all we knew to the contrary it might have been a trap.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BIRD'S NEST IN THE HILLS

There had been a great sound of "halloaing" and firing in the woods when we raced through them for our lives; but it was all still and cold on the mountain-side, and you could hear even a stone falling or the drip of water as it oozed from the black rocks to the silent pools below. What light there was came down through the craggy gorge; and it was not until we had climbed up and up for a good half-hour or more that we began to hear the sea-breeze whistling among the higher peaks like wild music which the spirits might have made. As for the path itself, it was oftentimes but a ledge against the wall of some sheer height; and none, I think, but seamen could have followed it, surely. Even I remembered where I was, and feared to look down sometimes; but danger bridges many a perilous road, and what with the silence and the fresh breezes and the thought that we might live through the night, after all, I believe I could have hugged the wild old man who led us upward so unflinchingly.

I say that he went on unflinchingly, and surely no goat could have climbed quicker than he did. Now standing over an abyss which made you silly to look down into; now pulling himself up by bush or branch; at other times scrambling over loose shale as though he had neither hands nor knees to cut, he might well have scared the coolest who had met him without warning on such a road. As for the four men he had saved from the devils in the thickets below, I don't believe there was one of them who didn't trust him from the first. The sea is a sure school for knowing men and their humours. If this old Frenchman chose to put a petticoat about his legs, and to wear a lion's mane down his back, we liked him all the better for that. What we had seen of the young girls' behaviour towards him made up for that which we did not know about him. He must have had a tender place somewhere in his heart, or three young women wouldn't fondle him like a dog. Like a ship out of the night had he crossed our path; and his port must be our port, since we knew no other. That's why, I say, we followed him over the dangerous road like children follow a master. He was leading us to some good haven—I had no doubt of it. The thing that remained to tell was, had we the strength and the breath to reach it?

You may imagine that it was no light thing to run such a race as we had run, and to be asked to climb a mountain on the top of it. For my part, I was so dead tired that every step up the hillside was like a knife in my side; and as for Peter Bligh, I wonder he didn't go rolling down to the rocks, so hard did he breathe and so heavy he was. But men will do wonders to save their necks, and that is how it is that we went up and still up, through the black ravine, to the blue peaks above. Aye, a fearsome place we had come to now, with terrible gorges, and wild shapes of rocks, like dead men's faces leering out of the darkness. The wind howled with a human voice, the desolation of all the earth seemed here. And yet the old man must push on—up, up, as though he would touch the very sky.

"The Lord be good to me," cried Peter Bligh, at last; "I can go no farther if it's a million a mile! Oh, Mister Begg, for the love of God, clap a rope about the wild man's legs."

I pushed him on over a sloping peak of shale, and told him to hold his tongue.

"Will you lie in the pool, then? Where's your courage, man? Another hundred yards and you shall stop to breathe. There's the old lion himself waiting for us, and a big bill of thanks he has against us, to be sure."

I said no more, but climbed the steep to the Frenchman's side, and found him waiting on the bank of that which seemed to be a great cup-like hole, black and bottomless and the last place you'd have picked for a camp on all the hillside. Dolly Venn was already there, and Seth Barker, lying on the stones and panting like a great dog. Old Clair-de-Lune alone was fresh and ready, and able in his broken English to tell us what he wished.

"Messieurs," he said, "speak not long but go down. I myself am shipmate too. Ah, messieurs, you do wise to follow me. Down there no dog bark. I show you the ladder, and all be well. To-morrow you speak your ship—go home. For me, never again—I die here with the children, messieurs; none shall come for old Clair-de-Lune, none, never at no time—but you, you I save for the shipmates' sake——"

It was odd talk, but no time to argue about it. I saw a ladder thrust up out of the pit, and when the old man went down I followed without hesitation. A lantern lighted in the darkness showed me a hollow nest 20 feet deep, perhaps, and carpeted over with big brown leaves and rugs spread out; and in one corner that which was not unlike a bed. Moreover, there was a little stove in the place and upon one side an awning stretched against the rain; while cooking pots and pans and other little things made it plain at a glance that this was the man's own refuge in the mountains, and that here, at least, some part of his life was spent. No further witness to his honesty could be asked for. He had brought us to his own home. It was time to speak of thanks.

"What you've done for us neither me nor mine will ever forget," said I, warmly. "Here's a seaman's hand and a seaman's thanks. Should the day come when we can do a like turn to you, be sure I'll be glad to hear of it; and if it came that you had the mind to go aboard with us—aye, and the young ladies, too—why, you'll find no one more willing than Jasper Begg."

We shook hands, and he set the lantern down upon the floor. Peter Bligh was lying on his back now, crying to a calendar of saints to help him; Seth Barker breathed like a winded horse; little Dolly Venn stood against the wall of the pit with his head upon his arm, like a runner after a race; the old Frenchman drew the ladder down and made all snug as a ship is made for the night.

"No one come here," he said, "no one find the way. You sleep, and to-morrow you signal ship to go down where I show. For me and mine, not so. This is my home; I am stranger in my own country. No one remember Clair-de-Lune. Twelve years I live here—five times I sleep the dreadful sleep which the island make—five times I live where others die. Why go home, messieurs, if you not have any? I not go; but you, you hasten because of the sleep."

We all pricked up our ears at this curious saying, and Dolly Venn, he whipped out a question before I could—indeed, he spoke the French tongue very prettily; and for about five minutes the two of them went at it hammer and tongs like two old women at charring.

"What does he mean by sleep-time, lad?" I asked in between their argument. "Why shouldn't a man sleep on Ken's Island? What nonsense will he talk next?"

I'd forgotten that the old man spoke English too, but he turned upon me quickly to remind me of the fact.

"No nonsense, monsieur, as many a one has found—no nonsense at all, but very dreadful thing. Three, four time by the year it come; three, four time it go. All men sleep if they not go away—you sleep if you not go away. Ah, the good God send you to the ship before that day."

He did his best to put it clearly, but he might as well have talked Chinese. Dolly, who understood his lingo, made a brave attempt, but did not get much farther.

"He says that this island is called by the Japanese the Island of Sleep. Two or three times every year there comes up from the marshes a poisonous fog which sends you into a trance from which you don't recover, sometimes for months. It can't be true, sir, and yet that's what he says."

"True or untrue, Dolly," said I, in a low voice, "we'll not give it the chance. It's a fairy tale, of course, though it doesn't sound very pretty when you hear it."

"Nor is that music any more to my liking," exclaimed Peter Bligh, at this point, meaning that we should listen to a couple of gunshots fired, not in the woods far down below us, but somewhere, as it seemed, on the sea-beach we had failed to make.

"That would be Harry Doe warning us," cried I.

"And meaning that it was dangerous for us to go down."

"He'll have put off and saved the longboat, anyway. We'll hail him at dawn, and see where the ship is."

They heard me in silence. The tempest roaring in the peaks above that weird, wild place; our knowledge of the men on the island below; the old Frenchman's strange talk—no wonder that our eyes were wide open and sleep far from them.

Dawn, indeed, we waited for as those who are passing through the terrible night. I think sometimes that, if we had known what was in store for us, we should have prayed to God that we might not see the day.

CHAPTER IX

WE LOOK OUT FOR THE SOUTHERN CROSS

The wind blew a hurricane all that night, and was still a full gale when dawn broke. To say that no man among us slept is to put down a very obvious thing. The roaring of the breakers on the reefs below us, the showers of stones which the heights rained down, the dreadful noises like wild human voices in the hills, drove sleep far from any man's eyes. And more than that, there was the ship to think of. What had become of the ship? Where did she lie? When should we see her again? Aye, how often we asked each other that question when the blast thundered and the lightning seemed to open the very heavens, and the spindrift was blown clean over the heights to fall like a salt spray upon our faces. Was it well with the ship or ill? Mister Jacob we knew to be a good seaman, none better. With him the decision lay to run for the open water or to risk everything for our sakes. If he made up his mind that the safety of the Southern Cross demanded sea-room he would take it, and let to-morrow look after itself. But I was anxious, none the less; for, if the ship were gone, "God help us on Ken's Island," I said.

Now, the old Frenchman was the first to be moving when the day came, and no sooner did all the higher peaks show us a glimmer of the dawn-light—very beautiful and awesome to look upon—than he set up the ladder and began to show us the way to the mountain-top.

"You make signal; you fetch ship. Sailormen go down where landman afraid. Little boat come in; shipmate go out. Old Clair-de-Lune he know. Ah, messieurs, the wind is very dreadful to-day—what you call harriken. Other day, all quite easy plan—but this day not so, great water, all white—no go, no man."

It was queer talk, and we might have laughed at him if we'd have forgotten that he saved our lives last night and was waiting to save them again this morning. But you don't laugh at a friend, talk as he may, and for that matter we were all too excited to think of any such thing, and we made haste to scramble up out of the pit and to follow him to the heights where the truth should be known—the best of it or the worst. For the path or its dangerous places we cared nothing now. The rocks, upstanding all about us, shut in the view as some great basin cut in the mountain's heart. You could see the black sky above and the bottomless chasms below—but of the water nothing. Imagine, then, how we raced for the summit: now up on our feet, now on all-fours like dogs; now calling, man to man, to hasten; now saying that haste wouldn't help us. And no wonder—no wonder our hearts beat high and our hands were unsteady, for beyond the basin we should find the sea, and the view might show us life or death.

Old Clair-de-Lune was the first to be up, but I was close upon his heels, and Dolly Venn not far behind me. Who spoke the first word I don't rightly recollect; but I hadn't been on the heights more than ten seconds when I knew why it was spoken, and what the true meaning of it might be.

The ship was gone!

All the eyes in the wide world could not have found her on that angry sea below us, or anywhere on the black and looming horizon beyond. The night had taken her. The ship was gone. Hope as we might, speak up as we might, tell each other this story or tell each other that—the one sure fact remained that the Southern Cross had steamed away from Ken's Island and left us to our fates.

"He'll be running for sea-room, and come in when the gale falls," said Peter Bligh, when we had stood all together a little while, as crestfallen a lot as the Pacific Ocean could show that day; "trust Mister Jacob to be cautious—he's a Scotchman, and would think first of the ship. A precious lot of good his wages would do him if the ship were down in sixty fathoms and he inside her!"

"That's true," cried Dolly Venn, "though your poor old father didn't say it, Mister Bligh. The ship's gone, but she'll come back again." And then to me he said, very earnestly, "Oh, she must come back, captain."

"Aye, lad," said I, "let her ride out the gale, and she'll put back right enough. Mister Jacob isn't the one to desert friends. He'll have learned from Harry Doe how it stands with us, and he'll just say, ''Bout ship'; that's what Mr. Jacob will say. I've no fear of it at all. I'm only wondering what sort of shore-play is to keep us amused until we sight the ship again."

Well, they looked doleful enough; but not a man among them complained. 'Tis that way with seamen all the world over. Put them face to face with death and some will laugh, and some will curse, and some talk nonsense; but never a man wears his heart upon his sleeve or tells you that he's afraid. And so it was that morning. They understood, I do believe, as well as I did, what the consequences of the gale might be. They were no fools, to imagine that a man could get from Ken's Island to San Francisco in any cockleshell the beach might show him. But none of them talked about it; none charged me with it; they just put their hands in their pockets like brave fellows who had made up their minds already to a very bad job; and be sure I was not the one to give a different turn to it. The ship had gone; the Lord only knew when she would come back again. It was not for me to be crying like a child for that which neither I nor any man could make good.

"Well," said I, "the ship's gone, sure enough, and hard words won't bring her back again. What Mister Jacob can do for his friends, that, I know, will be done. We must leave it to him and look after ourselves far as this place is concerned. You won't forget that the crew downstairs will be ready enough to ask after our health and spirits if we give them a look in, and my word is for lying-to here until night comes or the ship is sighted. It must be a matter of hours, anyway. The gale's abating; a landsman would know as much as that."

They said, "Aye, aye," to it, and Peter Bligh put in a word of his humour.

"The ship's gone, sure enough," said he; "but that's more than you can say for my appetite! Bear or dog, I'm not particular, captain; but a good steak of something would come handy, and the sooner the better. 'Twere enough to bring tears to a man's eyes to think of all the good grub that's gone aboard with Harry Doe. Aye, 'tis a wonderful thing is hunger, and the gift of the Lord along with good roast beef and pork sausages. May-be you find yourself a bit peckish, captain?"

I answered "Yes," though that was far from the truth, for what with watching through the night and thinking about the ship and little Ruth Bellenden's loneliness in this place of mystery, and far worse than mystery, I'd forgotten all about meal-times, and never once had asked myself where breakfast was to come from. But now the long faces of my shipmates brought me to a remembrance of it, and when little Dolly Venn cried, "Oh, captain, I am so hungry!" I began to realize what a parlous plight we were in and what a roundabout road we must tread to get out of it. Lucky for us, the old Frenchman, who had stood all this time like a statue gazing out over the desolate sea, now bobbed up again, good Samaritan that he was, and catching Master Dolly's complaint, he spoke of breakfast on his own account.

"Ah! you hungry, you thirst, messieurs; sailor-man always like that. Your ship gone? Never mind, he shall come back again, to-day, to-morrow, one, two, three day—pray God it be not longer, shipmate, pray God!"



I thought him a fine, picturesque old figure, standing there on the headland with his long hair streaming in the wind like a woman's, and his brawny arms outstretched as though he would call the ship back to us from the lonely ocean. Truth to tell, the place was one to fill any man with awe. Far as the eye could see, the great waste was white with the foam of its breaking seas; the headland itself stood up a thousand feet like some mighty fortress commanding all the deep. Far below us were the green valleys of the island, the woods we had raced through last night; pastures with little white houses dotted about on them; the bungalow itself wherein Ruth Bellenden lived. No picture from the gallery of a high tower could have been more beautiful than that strange land with the wild reefs lying about it and the rollers cascading over them, and the black glens above which we stood, and the great circle of the water like some measureless basin which the whole earth bounded. I did not wonder that old Clair-de-Lune was silent when he looked down upon a scene so grand. It seemed a crime to speak of food and drink in such a place; and yet it was of these that Peter Bligh must go on talking.

"We'll do the prayin', shipmate, if you'll do the cookin'," cried he, hopefully; "as for that—you speak like a wise man. 'Tis wonderful easy to pray on a full stomach! There isn't a hunger or a thirst this side of 'Frisco which I would not pray out of this same island if you'll be pleased to bring 'em along. Weigh anchor, my man," says he, "and we'll pipe down to dinner."

Well, the old man laughed at his manner of putting it, and, without further ado, we all went down to the bird's nest in the hollow, and there we lighted a fire in the shelter of the pit, and old Clair-de-Lune going away in search of rations, he returned presently with victuals enough to feed a missionary, and more than that, as pretty a trio to serve them as any seaman could hope for. For what should happen but that the three young girls we'd seen yesterday in the woods came romping up the hill together; and one bringing a great can for the coffee, and another a basket of luscious fruit, and a third some new-made bread and biscuit—they ran down the ladder to us and began to talk in their pretty language, and now and then in English which did not need much understanding.

"I am Rosamunda," says one.

And the second, she says:

"I am Sylvia—Sylvia—Sylvia."

And the third, she chimes in with:

"I am Celestine, and I have brought you bread."

And they all stood together, shy and natural, looking now at one, now at another of us; but most often, I thought, at little Dolly Venn, who had a way of making them understand which an older man might have envied.

"And wonderful pretty names, too, young ladies, though a seaman doesn't often hear the likes of 'em," cries Peter Bligh, gallant enough, as all Irishmen are. "They're all Pollies in our parts, and it do come easier to the tongue and more convenient if you know many of 'em. Whereby did you hitch up names like those?" asks he; "which, askin' your pardon, seem to me to be took out of a picture-book."

They giggled at this; but old Clair-de-Lune, who was mighty proud of them, and justly, answered Peter Bligh as though the question were serious.

"Monsieur, in my own country I am artiste; I play the drama, the comedy, the tragedy. Clair-de-Lune they call me at the theatre. To the daughters of my master I give the artiste's name—why not? Better the good name than the bad name! It was long year ago, shipmate; the Belle Ile was wrecked on these reef; the maitre is drowned, but I and the young ladies are save. We come, we go, none interfere. The Governor is angry, we hide in the hill; the Governor laugh, we go down to the valley. When the sleep-time comes, we go to the house under the sea: you shall find him a dangerous time, but we hide far down. None frighten Clair-de-Lune; they frighten of him. He become the father according to his best."

It was touching, I must say, to hear this old man's broken story; and prettier still to see the affectionate eyes with which these little girls watched every movement of one to whom, I am sure, they were beholden for all that they got out of Ken's Island. For the rest, the tale was plain enough. The father had been wrecked and drowned on the sword-fish reef; the servant had saved the children and himself from the ship, and his own natural cleverness had done the rest. No one interfered with him, he said; and this was true. I verily believe that the devils in the valley below believed that he and the children with him were nothing more or less than spirits.

I say his story was plain, and yet there was something in it which was Greek to me. He had named a house under the sea, and what that meant, or how any man could build such a house, lay beyond my understanding. I should have asked a question about it there and then, and have sought light on the matter if it hadn't been that the food was already cooked, and, the others being mighty anxious, we sat down to steaming coffee and broiled kid's flesh and good bread and sweet fruit, and I was very willing to keep my curiosity. Once, it is true, the young girl who called herself "Rosamunda" came and sat by my side and wished to talk to me; but, prettily as she spoke our tongue, her measure of it was limited, and we did not get very far, in spite of good intentions.

"Do you like the island, do you like living here?" I asked her.

She answered me with a doubting shake of her pretty head.

"In the sun-months, yes, I like it; but not in the sleep-time. You will go away before the sleep-time, monsieur?"

"Really, young lady," said I, "it seems to me that it depends upon Mister Jacob and the ship. But, supposing I cannot go away—what then? How does the sleep-time concern me?"

"You must not stay," she said, quickly; "for us it is different; we—we live in the house under the sea, but no stranger may live there—the Governor would not permit it. On the island all things sleep. If you do not go to the house under the sea—ah, monsieur, but you will sail away, you will sail in your ship."

She put it very childishly, the same cock-and-bull story that the old Frenchman had been at last night. What to make of it, I knew no more than the dead. Here we seemed to be on as fair an island as the whole Pacific might show you; and yet these odd folk could talk of sun-months and sleep-time, and other stuff which might have been written in a fairy-book. Do you wonder that I laughed at them and treated it as any sane man, not given to fables, would have done?

"Sleep-time or sun-time, I'll be away before then, please God, mademoiselle," said I; "do not fear for Jasper Begg, who was always fond of his bed and won't grumble overmuch, be it sleep or waking. For the rest, we'll take our chance, as others must do here, I fancy. Mme. Czerny, for instance—do you know Mme. Czerny, young lady?"

She nodded her head and said that she did.

"Yes, yes, we know Mme. Czerny; she is the Governor's wife. I think she is unhappy, Monsieur Captain. In the sun-months I see her, but in the sleep-time she lives in the house under the sea, and no one knows. You are her friend, perhaps; you would know that she is unhappy?"

I knew it well enough; but I wished to lead this little talker on, and so I said I did not.

"Unhappy, young lady! Why should she be unhappy?"

I asked it naturally, as though I was very surprised; but you could not deceive Mlle. Rosamunda. A more artful little witch never played at fairies in a wood.

"If she is not unhappy, why have you come here, Monsieur Captain? You come to help her—oh, I know! And you say that you do not."

"Perhaps so, young lady; perhaps I do—that I will tell you by-and-bye. But I am curious about the Governor. What sort of a man is he, and where does he happen to be at this particular moment? I'm sure you could say something nice about him if you tried."



She looked at me with her big, questioning eyes, as though the question were but half understood. Presently she said:

"You laugh at me. M. Czerny has gone away to the world. Of course he would go. He has gone in the ship. What shall I tell you about him? That he is kind, cruel; that we love him, hate him? Every one knows that; every one has told you. He is the Governor and we are his people who must obey: When he comes back he will ask you to obey him too, and you must say 'yes.' That will be at the sleep-time: eight, nine, ten days. But why do you ask, Monsieur Captain? Has not Mme. Czerny said it because you are her friend? I know that you tease me. Sailors love to tease little girls, and you are no better than the other ones."

She cast down her eyes at this, and looked for all the world the taking little coquette that she was. Her odd speech told me something, enough at least to put a hundred questions into my head and as many useless answers. The Governor was away. The island alternately hated and feared him. The sleep-time, whatever it was, might be looked for in ten days' time. We must be away and on board the ship by then or something dreadful would happen to us. Ruth Bellenden's unhappiness was known even to these little girls, and they surmised, as the others had surmised, that we were on shore to help her. For the rest, the men on Ken's Island, I imagined, would hunt us night and day until we were taken. Nor was I mistaken in that. We'd scarcely finished our meal when there was the sound of a gunshot far down in the valley, and, old Clair-de-Lune jumping up at the report, we were all on our feet in an instant to speak of the danger.

"Halloa, popguns," cries Peter Bligh, in his Irish way; "what for now would any man be firing popguns at this time of the morning?"

"It's to ask after your health, Peter," said I, when we'd listened awhile, "what else should a man be firing after, unless he takes you for a rabbit? Will you run down and thank him kindly?"

He hitched up his breeches and pulled out his briar-pipe.

"If this is track-running, take down my number. I'm through with it, gentlemen, being not so young as I was."

A gunshot, fired out at sea, cut short his talk. Old Clair-de-Lune, nipping up the ladder, bade us follow him, while to the girls he cried, "Allez-vous en!" All our quiet talk and content were gone in an instant. I never answered little Dolly Venn when he asked me, "Do you think there's danger, sir?" but, running up the hill after the Frenchman, I helped him to carry the ladder we'd dragged out of the pit, for I knew he'd need of it.

"What is it, Clair-de-Lune? Why are they firing?" I asked him, as he ran.

"Governor home," was his answer—"Governor home. Great danger, capitaine."

CHAPTER X

WE ARE SURELY CAGED ON KEN'S ISLAND

We ran up the hill, I say, as men who raced for their lives. The little girls, snatching up their bags and baskets, exchanged a quick word with Clair-de-Lune and then hurried off towards the bungalow. Our own path lay over difficult rocks and steep slopes and chasms fearful to see. Of these our leader made nothing, and we went on, up and up, until at last the road carried us right round the highest peak, on whose very walls we walked like chamois on a mountain crag. It was here, on a narrow ledge high above the sea, that the Frenchman stopped for the first time.

"Shipmates," said he, when he had got his breath, "journey done, all finish, you safe here, you rest. I go down to see Governor; but come back again, come back again, messieurs, with bread and meat."

Well, I don't think one of us had the voice to answer him. The place itself—the ledge above the sea and the little low, cramped cave behind it—occupied all our thoughts. Here, in truth, a man might lie safely enough—yet in what a situation. The very door of the house opened upon an abyss a thousand feet above the rocks below. We had the sea before our eyes, the sea beneath us, the sea for our distant horizon. Day and night the breakers thundered on the sword-fish reef; the wind moaned in the mighty eaves of those tremendous crags. We were like men placed suddenly on a steeple's side and left there to live or fall, as fortune went.

I tell you this, plain and straightforwardly, because five days passed on that awful ledge, and, except for one day, there is nothing but a seaman's talk of question and answer and idle hope to set down on these pages. If every hour of the day found one of us with eyes which yearned for our lost ship, with hearts grown heavy in waiting and disappointment—that was his affair, and of no concern to others. Be sure we didn't confess, one to the other, the thought in our heads or the future we must live through. We had come to Ken's Island to help little Ruth Bellenden, and this fearful plight was the result of it—ship gone, the island full of devils that would have cut our throats for nothing and thought themselves well paid—no knowledge, not the smallest, of any way of escape—food short and likely to be shorter. Friends we had, true friends. Night and morning Clair-de-Lune and the little girls found their way up to us with bread and meat and the news that was passing. It was on the fifth thy that they came no more, and I, at least, knew that they would never come again.

"Lads," I said, "one of two things has happened. Either they've been watched and followed, or the time of which they made mention has come. I trust the old Frenchman as I would trust my own brother. He knows how it will fare with five men left on a lonely rock without food or drink. If he doesn't come up here today, it's because he daren't come or because he's ordered elsewhere."

They turned it over in their minds, and Dolly Venn spoke next.

"Last night in my watch I heard a bell ringing, sir. At first I thought it was fancy—the sea beating on the rocks or the wind moaning in the hills; but I got the ladder and went down the bill, and then I heard it distinctly, and saw lights burning brightly on the reef far out to the north. There were boats passing, I'm sure, and what was so wonderful that I didn't like to speak about it, the whole of the sea about the reef shone yellow as though a great lantern were burning far down below its heart. I could make out the figures of men walking on the rocks, and when the moon shone the figures disappeared as though they went straight down into the solid rock. You may not believe it, captain, but I'm quite sure of what I say, and if Clair-de-Lune does not come to-night, I ask you to go down the hillside with me and to see for yourself."

Now, the lad spoke in a kind of wonder-dream, and knowing how far from his true nature such a thing was, it did not surprise me that the others listened to him with that ready ear which seamen are quick to lend to any fairy tale. Superstitious they were, or sailors they never would have been; and here was the very stuff to set them all ears, like children about a bogey. Nor will I deny that Dolly Venn's tale was marvellous enough to make a fable. Had it been told to me under any other circumstances, my reply would have been: "Dolly, my lad, since when have you taken to sleep-walking?" But I said nothing of the kind, for I had that in my pocket which told me it was true; and what I knew I deemed it right that the others should know also.

"When a man sees something which strikes him as extraordinary," said I, "he must first ask himself if it is Nature or otherwise. There are lots of things in this world beyond our experience, but true for all that. Ken's Island may be rated as one of them. The old Frenchman speaks of a sleep-time and a sun-time. Lads, I do believe he tells the truth. If you ask me why—well, the why is here, in these papers Ruth Bellenden gave me five days ago."

I took the packet from my pocket, and turned the pages of them again as I had turned them—aye, fifty times—in the days which had passed. Thumbed and dirty as they were (for a seaman's pocket isn't lined with silk); thumbed and dirty, I say, and crumpled out of shape, they were the first bit of Ruth Bellenden's writing that ever I called my own, and precious to me beyond any book.

"Yes," I went on, "this is the story of Ken's Island, and Ruth Bellenden wrote it. Ten months almost from this day she landed here. What has passed between Edmond Czerny and her in that time God alone knows! She isn't one to make complaint, be sure of it. She has suffered much, as a good woman always must suffer when she is linked to a bad man. If these papers do not say so plainly, they say it by implication. And, concerning that, I'll ask you a question. What is Edmond Czerny here for? The answer's in a word. He is here for the money he gets out of the wreckage of ships!"

It was no great surprise to them, I venture, though surprise I meant it to be. They had guessed something the night we came ashore, and seamen aren't as stupid as some take them for. Nevertheless, they picked up their ears at my words, and Peter Bligh, filling his pipe, slowly, said, after a bit:

"Yes, it wouldn't be for parlour games, captain!"

The others were too curious to put in their word, and so I went on:

"He's here for wreckage and the money it brings him. I'll leave it to you to say what's done to those that sailed the ships. There are words in this paper which make a man's blood run cold. If they are to be repeated, they shall be spoken where Edmond Czerny can hear them, and those that judge him. What we are concerned about at this moment is Ken's Island and its story. You've heard the old Frenchman, Clair-de-Lune, speak of sleep-time and sun-time. As God is in heaven, he spoke the truth!"

They none of them answered me. Down below us the sea shimmered in the morning light. We sat on a ledge a thousand feet above it, and, save for the lapping waves on the reef, not a sound of life, not even a bird on the wing, came nigh us. You could have heard a pin drop when I went on.

"Sleep-time and sun-time, is it fable or truth? Ruth Bellenden says its truth. I'll read you her words——"

Peter Bligh said, "Ah," and struck a match. Seth Barker, the carpenter, sat for all the world like a child, with his great mouth wide open and his eyes full of wonder. Dolly Venn was curled up at my feet like a dog. I opened the papers and began to read to them:

"On the 14th of August, three weeks after the ship brought us to Ken's Island, I was awakened at four o'clock in the morning by an alarm-bell ringing somewhere in the island. The old servant, she whom they called 'Mother Meg,' came into my room in great haste to tell me to get up. When I was dressed my husband entered and laughingly said that we must go on board the yacht at once. I was perplexed and a little cross about it; but when we were rowed out to the ship, I found that all the white people were leaving the island in boats and being rowed to those rocks which lie upon the northward side. Edmond tells me that there are dangerous seasons in this beautiful place, when the whole island is unfit for human habitation and all must leave it, sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month."

I put the paper down and turned another page of it.

"That, you see," said I, "is written on the 14th of August, before she knew the true story or what the dangerous time might mean. Passing on, I find another entry on September 21st, and that makes it clearer:

"There is here a wonderful place they call 'The House Under the Sea.' It is built for those who cannot escape the sleep-time otherwise. I am to go there when my husband sails for Europe. I have asked to accompany him and am refused. There are less delicate ways of reminding a woman that she has lost her liberty.

"November 13th.—I have again asked Edmond to permit me to accompany him to London. He answers that he has his reasons. There is a way of speaking to a woman she can never forget. My husband spoke in that way this morning.

"December 12th.—I know Edmond's secret, and he knows that I know it! Shall I tell it to the winds and the waves? Who else will listen? Let me ask of myself courage. I can neither think nor act to-night.

"December 25th.—Christmas Day! I am alone. A year ago—but what shall it profit to remember a year ago? I am in a prison-house beneath the sea, and the waves beat against my windows with their moaning cry, 'Never, never again—never again!' At night, when the tide has fallen, I open my window and send a message to the sea. Will any hear it? I dare not hope.

"January 1st.—My husband has returned from his cruise. He is to go to Europe to see after my affairs. Will he tell them, I wonder, that Ruth Bellenden is dead?

"January 8th.—The sleep-time has now lasted for nine weeks. They tell me that vapours rise up from the land and lie above it like a cloud. Some think they come from the great poppies which grow in the marshy fields of the lowlands; others say from the dark pools in the gorges of the hills. However it may be, those that remain on the island fall into a trance while the vapour is there. A strange thing! Some never wake from it; some lose their senses; the negroes alone seem able to live through it. The vapours arise quite suddenly; we ring the alarm-bell to send the people to the ships.

"January 15th.—We returned to the island to-day. How blind and selfish some people are! I do believe that Aunt Rachel is content to live on this dreadful place. She is infatuated with Edmond. 'I am anchored securely in a home: she says. 'The house under the sea is a young man's romantic fancy.' The rest is meaningless to her—a man's whim. 'I cannot dissipate my fortune on Ken's Island.' Aunt Rachel was always a miser.

"February 2d.—This morning Edmond came to me for that which he calls 'an understanding.' His affection distresses me. Oh, it might all be so different if I would but say 'yes.' And what prevents me—the voices I have heard on the reef; or is it because I know—I know?

"February 9th.—I am on the island again and the sun is shining. What I have suffered none shall ever know. I prefer Edmond Czerny's anger to his love. We understand each other now.

"February 21st.—My message to the sea remains unanswered. Will it be forever?

"March 3d.—If Jasper Begg should come to me, how would they receive him? How could he help me? I do not know—and yet my woman's heart says 'Come!'

"April 4th.—There has been a short recurrence of the sleep-time. A ship struck upon the reef, and the crew rowed ashore to the island. I saw them last night in the moonlight, from my windows. They fell one by one at the border of the wood and slept. You could count their bodies in the clear white light. I tried to shut the sight from my eyes, but it followed me to my bed-room!

"May 3d.—I whispered my message to the sea again, but am alone—God knows how much alone!"

I folded up the paper and looked at the others. Peter Bligh's pipe had gone out and lay idle in his hand. Dolly Venn was still curled at my feet. Seth Barker I do not believe had budged an inch the whole time I was reading. The story gripped them like a vice—and who shall wonder at that? For, mark you, it might yet be our story.

"Peter," said I, "you have heard what Mme. Czerny says, and you know now as much as I do. I am waiting for your notion."

He picked up his pipe and began to fill it again.

"Captain," says he, "what notions can I have which wouldn't be in any sane head? This island's a death-trap, and the sooner we're off it the better for our healths. What's happened to the ship, the Lord only knows! At a guess I would say that an accident's overtook her. Why should a man leave his shipmates if it isn't by an accident? Mister Jacob is not the one to go psalm-singing when he knows we're short of victuals and cooped up here like rats in a trap! Not he, as I'm a living man! Then an accident's overtook him; he doesn't come, because he can't come, which, as my old father used to say, was the best of reasons. Putting two and two together, I should speak for sailing away without him, which is plain reason anyway."

"We walking on the sea, the likes of which the parson talks about?" chimed in Seth Barker.

"If you haven't got a boat," says Dolly Venn, "I don't see how you are to make one out of seaweed! Perhaps Mister Jacob will come back tomorrow."

"And perhaps we sha'n't be hungry before that same time!" added Peter Bligh; "aye, that's it, captain, where's the dinner to come from?"

I thought upon it a minute, and then I said to them:

"If Dolly Venn heard a bell ringing last night that's the danger-bell of which Miss Ruth speaks. We cannot go down to the island, for doesn't she say it's death to be caught there? We cannot stop up here or we shall die of hunger. If there's a man among you that can point to a middle course, I shall be glad to hear him. We have got to do something, lads, that's sure!"

They stared at me wonderingly; none of them could answer it. We were between the devil and the deep sea, and in our hearts I think we began to say that if the ship did not come before many hours had passed, four of her crew, at least, would cease to care whether she came or stopped.

CHAPTER XI

LIGHTS UNDER THE SEA

The day fell powerfully hot, with scarce a breath of wind and a Pacific sun beating fiercely on the barren rocks. What shelter was to be had we got in the low cave behind the platform; but our eyes were rarely turned away from the sea, and many a time we asked each other what kept Clair-de-Lune or why the ship was missing. That the old man had some good reason I made certain from the beginning; but the ship was a greater matter. Either she was powerless to help us or Mister Jacob had mistaken his orders. I knew not what to think. It was enough to be trapped there on that bit of a rock and to tell each other that, sleep-time or sun-time, we should be dead men if no help came to us.

"Belike the Frenchman's took with the fog and is doing a bit of a doze on his own account," said Peter Bligh, gloomily, towards three bells in the afternoon watch—and little enough that wasn't gloomy he'd spoken that day. "Well, sleep won't fill my canteen anyway! I could manage a rump-steak, thank you, captain, and not particular about the onions!"

They laughed at his notion of it, and Seth Barker sympathetically pegged his belt up one. I was more sorry for little Dolly Venn than any of them, though his pluck was wonderful to see.

"Are you hungry, Dolly, lad?" I asked him, by-and-bye. Foolish question that it was, he answered me with a boy's bright laugh and something which could make light of it:

"It's good for the constitution to fast, sir," he said, bravely; "our curate used to tell us so when I went to church. We shall all be saints—and Mr. Peter will have a halo if this goes on long enough!"

Now, Peter Bligh didn't take to that notion at all, and he called out, savagely:

"To blazes with your halos! Is it Christianity to rob an honest man of his victuals? Give me a round of top-side and leave me out of the stained-glass window! I'm not taking any, lad—my features isn't regular, as my poor——"

"Peter, Peter," said I, bringing him to, "so it's top-side to-day? It was duck and green peas yesterday, Peter; but it won't be that to-night, not by a long way!"

"If we sit on this rock long enough," chimed in Seth Barker, who was over-patient for his size, "some on us will be done like a rasher. I wouldn't make any complaint, captain; but I take leave to say it isn't wisdom."

I had meant to say as much myself, but Peter Bligh was in before me, and so I let him speak.

"Fog or no fog," cries he, "I'm for the shore presently, and that's sure and certain. It ain't no handsome vulture that I'm going to feed anyway! I don't doubt that you'll come with me, captain. Why, you could play 'God save the King' on me and hear every note! I'm a toonful drum, that's what I am——"

"Be what you like, but don't ask us to dance to your music," said I, perhaps a little nettled; "as for going down, of course we shall, Peter. Do you suppose I'm the one to die up here like a rat in a trap? Not so, I do assure you. Give me twilight and a clear road, and I'll show you the way quick enough!"

I could see that they were pleased, and Dolly Venn spoke up for them.

"You won't go alone, sir?" asked he.

"Indeed, and I shall, Dolly, and come back the same way. Don't you fear for me, my lad," said I; "I've been in a fog before in my life, and out of it, too, though I never loved them overmuch. If there's danger down below, one man has eyes enough to see it. It would be a mortal waste and pity that four should pay what one can give. But I won't forget that you are hungry, and if there's roast duck about, Peter Bligh shall have a wing, I promise him."

Well, they all sat up at this; and Peter Bligh, very solemnly crossing his fingers after the Italian fashion, swore, as seamen will, that we'd all go together, good luck or bad, the devil or the deep sea. Seth Barker was no less determined upon it; and as for Dolly Venn, I believe he'd have cried like a child if he'd been left behind. In the end I gave way to them, and it was agreed that we should all set out together, for better or worse, when the right time came.

"Your way, lads, not mine," said I; and pleased, too, at their affection. "As you wish it, so shall it be; and that being agreed upon I'll trouble Peter Bligh for his tobacco, for mine's low. We'll dine this night, fog or no fog. 'Twould want to be something sulphurous, I'm thinking, to put Peter off his grub. Aye, Peter, isn't that so? What would you say now to an Irish stew with a bit of bacon in it, and a glass of whisky to wash it down? Would fogs turn you back?"

"No, nor Saint Patrick himself, with a shillelagh in his hand. I'm mortal empty, captain; and no man's more willing to leave this same bird's nest though he had all the sulphur out of Vesuvius on his diagram! We'll go down at sunset, by your leave, and God send us safely back again!"

The others echoed my "Amen," and for an hour or more we all sat dozing in the heat of the angry day. Once, I think towards seven bells of the watch, Dolly Venn pointed out the funnels of a steamer on the northern horizon; but the loom of the smoke was soon lost, and from that time until six o'clock of the afternoon I do not think twenty words were to be heard on the rock. We were just waiting, waiting, like weary men who have a big work to do and are anxious to do it; and no sooner had the sun gone down and a fresh breeze of night begun to blow, than we jumped to our feet and told each other that the time had come.

"Do you, Peter, take the ladder and let Seth Barker steady the end of it," said I. "The road's tricky enough, and precious little dinner you'll get at the bottom of a thousand-foot chasm! If there's men on the island, we shall know that soon enough. They cannot do more than murder us, and murder has merits when starvation's set against it. Come on, my lads," said I, "and keep a weather-eye open."

This I said, and willingly they heard me; no gladder party ever went down a hillside than we four, whom hunger drove on and thirst made brave. Dangerous places, which we should have crossed with wary feet at any other time, now found us reckless and hasty.

We bridged the chasms with the ladder, and slid down it as though it had been a rope. The bird's nest, where five days ago we'd first found shelter from the islanders, detained us now no longer than would suffice for thirsty men to bathe their faces and their hands in the brook which gushed out from the hillside, and to drink a draught which they remembered to their dying day. Aye, refreshing it was, more than words can tell, and such strength it gave us that, if there had been a hundred men on the mountain path; I do believe our steps would still have been set for the bungalow. For we were about to learn the truth. Curiosity is a good wind, even when you're hungry.

Now, there was a place on the headland, three hundred feet above the valley, perhaps, whereat the hill path turned and, for the first time, the island was plainly to be seen. Here at this place we stopped all together and began to spy out the woods through which we had raced for our lives six days ago. The sun had but just set then, and, short as the twilight is in these parts, there was enough of it for us to make a good observation and to be sure of many things. What I think struck us all at the first was the absence of any fog such as we had heard about both from the Frenchman and Ruth Bellenden's diary. A bluish vapour, it is true, appeared to steam up from the woods and to loom in hazy clouds above the lower marshland. But of fog in the proper sense there was not a trace; and although I began to find the air a little heavy to breathe, and a curious stupidness, for which I could not altogether account, troubled my head, nevertheless I made sure that the story of sleep-time was, in the main, a piece of nonsense and that we should soon prove it to be so. Nor were the others behind me in this.

"It is no fog I see which would slow me down a knot!" said Peter Bligh, when the island came into view; "to think that a man should go without his dinner for yon peat smoke! Surely, captain, they are simple in these parts and easy at the bogeys. 'Twill be roast duck, after all—and, may-be, the sage thrown in!"

This was all well said, but Dolly Venn, quicker with his eyes, remarked a stranger fact.

"There's no one about, sir, that I can see," said he, wisely, "and no lights in the houses either. I wonder where all the people are? It's curious that we shouldn't see some one."

He put it as a kind of question; but before I could answer him Seth Barker chimed in with his deep voice, and pointed towards the distant reef:

"They've lit up the sea, that's what they've done," said he.

"By thunder, they have!" cries Peter Bligh, in his astonishment; "and generous about it, too. Saw any one such a thing as that?"

He indicated the distant reef, which seemed, as I bear witness, ablaze with lights. And not only the reef, mark you, but the sea about it, a cable's length, it may be, to the north and the south, shone like a pool of fire, yellow and golden, and sometimes with a rare and beautiful green light when the darkness deepened. Such a spectacle I shall never see again if I sail a thousand ships! That luscious green of the rolling seas, the spindrift tossed in crystals of light, foam running on the rocks, but foam like the water of jewels, a dazzling radiance—aye, a very carpet of quivering gold. Of this had they made the northern channel. How it was done, what cleverness worked it, it needed greater brains than mine to say. I was for all the world like a man struck dumb with the beauty of something which pleases and awes him in the same breath.

"Lights under the sea, and people living there! It's enough to make a man doubt his senses," said I. "And yet the thing's true, lads: we're sane men and waking; it isn't a story-book. You can prove it for yourselves."

"Aye, and men going in and out like landsmen to their houses," cried Peter, almost breathless; "it's a fearsome sight, captain, a fearsome sight, upon my word."

The rest of us said nothing. We were just a little frightened group that stared open-mouthed upon a seeming miracle. If we regarded the things we saw with a seaman's reverence, let no one make complaint of that. The spectacle was one to awe any man; nor might we forget that those who appeared to live below the sea lived there, as Ruth Bellenden had told us, because the island was a death-trap. We were in the trap and none to show us the road out.

"Peter," said I, suddenly, for I wished to turn their thoughts away from it, "are you forgetting it's dinner-time?"

"I clean forgot, captain, by all that's holy," said he.

"And not feeling very hungry, either," exclaims Dolly Venn, who had begun to cough in the steaming vapour, which we laughed at. I was anxious about the lad already, and it didn't comfort me to hear Seth Barker breathing like an ox and telling me that it should be clearer in the valley.

I said, "Yes, it might be," and all together we began to march again. A sharp walk carried us from the hill path through the tangle of bushes into the woods wherefrom danger first had come to us. The night had set in by this time and a clear moon was showing in the sky. Rare and beautiful, I must say, that moonlight was, shimmering through the hazy blue vapour and coming down almost as a carpet of violet between the broad green leaves. No scene that I have witnessed upon the stage of a theatre was more pleasing to my eyes than that silent forest with its lawns of grass and its patches of wonderful, fantastic light, and its strange silence, and the loneliness of which it seemed to speak. So awesome was it that I do not wonder we went a considerable way in silence. We were afraid, perhaps, to tell each other what we thought. When Peter Bligh cried out at last, we started at the sound of his voice as though a stranger hailed us.

"Yonder," cried he, in a voice grown deep and husky; "yonder, captain, what do you make of that? Is it living men or dead, or do my eyes deceive me?"

I stopped short at his words and the others halted with me. We were in a deep glen by this time; and all the surrounding woodland was shut from our sight. Great trees spread their branches like a canopy above us; the grass was soft and downy to the feet; the bewitching violet light gave unnatural yet wonderful colours to the flowery bushes about us. No fairy glen could have showed a heart more wonderful; and yet, I say, we four stood on the borders of it, with white faces and blinking eyes, and thoughts which none would change even with his own brother.

Why did he do it, you ask? Ah, I'll tell you why.

There were three men sleeping in the glen, and the face of one was plainly to be seen. He lay upon his back, his hands clenched, his limbs stiff, his eyes wide open as though some fearsome apparition had come to him and was not to be passed by. Of the others, one had dropped face downward and lay huddled up at the tree's foot; but the third was in a natural attitude and I do believe that he was dead. For a long time we stood there watching them—for he whose eyes were to be seen uttered every now and then a dismal cry in his sleep, and the second began to talk like a man in a delirium. Spanish he spoke, and that is a tongue I do not understand. But the words told of agony if ever words did, and I turned away from the scene at last as a man who couldn't bear to hear them.

"They're sleeping," said I, "and little good to wake them, if Miss Ruth speaks true. Come on, lads—the shore's our road and short's the time to get there."

Peter Bligh reeled dizzily in his walk and began to talk incoherently—a thing I had never heard him do before in all his life.

"They're sleeping, aye, and what's the waking to be? Is it the madhouse or the ground? She spoke of the madhouse, and who'll deny, with reason? There was air for a man in the heights and no parlour plants. I walked forty miles to Cardiff Fair and didn't dance like this. Take bread when you've no meat, and, by thunder, I'll fill your glasses."

Well, he gabbled on so, and not one of us gave him a hearing. I had my arm linked in Dolly Venn's, for he was weak and hysterical, and I feared he'd go under. Seth Barker, a strong man always, crashed through the underwood like an elephant stampeding. The woods, I said, could show us no more awesome sight than we had happed upon in the hollow; but there I was wrong, for we hadn't tracked a quarter of a mile when we stumbled suddenly upon the gardens of the bungalow, and there, lying all together, were five young girls I judged to be natives, for they had the shape of Pacific Islanders, and, seen in that strange light, were as handsome and taking as European women. Asleep they were, you couldn't doubt it; but, unlike the white men, they lay so still that they might have been dead, while nothing but their smiling faces told of life and breathing. They, at least, did not appear to suffer, and that was something for our consolation.

"Look yonder, Dolly lad, and 'tell me what you see," said I, though, truth to tell, every word spoken was like a knife through my chest; "three young women sleeping as though they were in their own beds. Isn't that a sight to keep a man up? If they can go through with it, why not we—great men that have the sea's good health in them? Bear up, my boy, well find a haven presently."

I didn't believe it, that goes without saying, nor, for that matter, did he. But wild horses wouldn't have dragged the truth from him. He was always a rare plucky one, was little Dolly Venn, and he behaved as such that night.

"Better leave me? sir," he said; "I'm dead weight in the boat. Do you go to the beach, and perhaps the ship will come back. You've been very kind to me, Mister Begg, so kind, and now it's 'good-bye,' just 'good-bye' and a long good-night."

"Aye," said I, "and a sharp appetite for breakfast in the morning. Did you ever hear that I was a bit of a strong man, Dolly? Well, you see, I can pick you up as though you were a feather, and now that I have got you into my arms I'm going to carry you—why, where do you think?—into Ruth Bellenden's house, of course."

He said nothing, but lay in my arms like a child. Peter Bligh had fallen headlong by the gate of the bungalow, and Seth Barker was about raving. I had trouble to make him understand my words; but he took them at last and did as I told him.

"Open that door—with the bludgeon if you can't do it otherwise. But open it, man, open it!"

He drew himself up erect and dealt a blow upon the door which might have brought down a factory chimney. I ran into the house with Dolly Venn in my arms, and as I ran I called to Barker, for God's sake, to help Mister Bligh. There would be no one in the house, I said, and nothing to be got by whispers. We ran a race with death, and for the moment had turned the corner before him.

"Get Mister Bligh to the house and bar up the door after you. The fog will fill it in five minutes, and what then? Do you hear me, Seth Barker—do you hear me?"

I asked the question plainly enough; but it was not Seth Barker who replied to it. You shall judge of my feelings when a bright light flashed suddenly in my face and a pleasant voice, coming out of nowhere, said, quite civilly:

"The door, by all means, if you have any; regard for your lives or mine!"

CHAPTER XII

THE DANCING MADNESS

It was a great surprise to me that here should have been one of Edmond Czerny's men left in the bungalow; and when I heard his voice I stood for a full minute, uncertain whether to go on or to draw back. The light of the lamp was very bright; I had Dolly Venn in my arms, remember, and it was all Seth Barker's work to bring in Mister Bligh, so that no one will wonder at my hesitation, or the questions I put to myself as to how many men were in the house with the stranger, or what business kept him there when the island was a death-trap. These questions, however, the man answered for himself before many minutes had passed; and, moreover, a seaman's instinct seemed to tell me that he was a friend.

"Walk right in here," he cried, opening a door behind him and showing me a room I had not entered when I visited Mme. Czerny. "Walk right in and don't gather daisies on the way. You've been on a pleasure cruise in the fog, I suppose—well, that's a sailor all the time—just all the time."

He opened the door, I say, upon this, and when we had followed him into the room he shut it as quickly. It was not a very large apartment, but I noticed at once that the windows were blocked and curtained, and that half the space was lumbered up with great machines which seemed made up of glass bowls and jars; while a flame of gas was roaring out of an iron tube, and a current of delicious fresh air blowing upon our faces. Whatever we were in for, whether friendship or the other thing, a man could breathe here, and that was something to be thankful for.

"We were caught in the woods and ran for it," said I, thinking in time to make my explanations; "it may have been a fool's errand, but it has brought us to a wise man's door. You know what the lad's trouble is, or you wouldn't be in this house, sir. I'll thank you for any kindness to him."

He turned a pleasant face towards me and bade me lay Dolly on the sofa near the flaming burner. Peter Bligh was sitting on a chair, swearing, I fear, as much as he was coughing. Seth Barker, who had the lungs of a bull, looked as though he had found good grass. The fog wasn't made, I do believe, which would harm him. As for the doctor himself, he seemed like a perplexed man who has time for one smile and no more.

"The lad will be all right in five minutes," said he, seriously; "there is air enough here, we being five men, for," he appeared to pause, and then he added, "for just three days. After that—why, yes, we'll begin to think after that."

I did not know what to say to him, nor, I am sure, did the others. Dolly Venn had already opened his eyes and lay back, white and bloodless, on the sofa. A hissing sound of escaping gas was in the room. I breathed so freely that a sense of excitement, almost of intoxication, came upon me. The doctor moved about quietly and methodically, now looking to his burners, now at the machines. Five minutes came and went before he put another question.

"What kept you from the shelter?" he asked, at last. I knew then that he believed us to be Edmond Czerny's men; and I made up my mind instantly what to do.

"Prudence kept us, doctor," said I (for doctor plainly he was); "prudence, the same sense that turns a fly from a spider's web. It is fair that you should know the story. We haven't come to Ken's Island because we are Edmond Czerny's friends; nor will he call us that. Ask Mme. Czerny the next time you meet her, and she'll tell you what brought us here. You are acting well towards us and confidence is your due, so I say that the day when Edmond Czerny finds us on this shore will be a bad one for him or a bad one for us, as the case may be. Let it begin with that, and afterwards we shall sail in open water."

I said all this just naturally, not wishing him to think that I feared Edmond Czerny nor was willing to hoist false colours. Enemy or friend, I meant to be honest with him. It was some surprise to me, I must say, when he went on quietly with his work, moving from place to place, now at the gas-burner, now at his machine, just for all the world as though this visitation had not disturbed him. When he spoke it was to ask a question about Miss Ruth.

"Mme. Czerny," said he, quietly; "there is a Mme. Czerny, then?"

Now, if he had struck me with his hand I could not have been more surprised at his ignorance. Just think of it—here was a man left behind on Ken's Island when all the riffraff there had fled to some shelter on the sea; a man working quietly, I was sure, to discover what he could of the gases which poisoned us; a man in Mistress Ruth's own house who did not even know her name. Nothing more wonderful had I heard that night. And the way he put the question, raising his eyebrows a little, and looking up over his long, white apron!

"Not heard of Mme. Czerny!" cried I, in astonishment, "not heard of her—why, what shore do you hail from, then? Don't you know that she's his wife, doctor—his wife?"

He turned to his bottles and went on arranging them. He was speaking and acting now at the same time.

"I came ashore with Prince Czerny when he landed here three days ago. He did not speak of his wife. There are others in America who would be interested in the news—young ladies, I think."

He paused for a little while, and then he said quietly:

"You would be friends of the Princess's, no doubt?"

"Princess be jiggered," said I; "that is to say, God forgive me, for I love Miss Ruth better than my own sister. He's no more a prince than you are, though that's a liberty, seeing that I don't know your name, doctor. He's just Edmond Czerny, a Hungarian musician, who caught a young girl's fancy in the South, and is making her suffer for it here in the Pacific. Why, just think of it. A young American girl——"

He stopped me abruptly, swinging round on his heel and showing the first spark of animation he had as yet been guilty of.

"An American girl?" cried he.

"As true as the Gospels, an American girl. She was the daughter of Rupert Bellenden, who made his money on the Western American Railroad. If you remember the Elbe going down, you won't ask what became of him. His son, Kenrick Bellenden, is in America now. I'd give my fortune, doctor, to let him know how it fares with his sister on this cursed shore. That's why my own ship sails for 'Frisco this day—at least, I hope and believe so, for otherwise she's at the bottom of the sea."

I told the story with some heat, for amazement is the enemy of a slow tongue; but my excitement was not shared by him, and for some minutes afterwards he stood like a man in a reverie.

"You came in your own ship!" he exclaimed next. "Why, yes, you would not have walked. Did Mme. Czerny ask you here?"

"It was a promise to her," said I. "She left the money with her lawyers for me to bring a ship to Ken's Island twelve months after her marriage. That promise I kept, doctor, and here I am and here are my shipmates, and God knows what is to be the end of it and the end of us!"

He agreed to that with one of those expressive nods which spared him a deal of talk. By-and-bye, without referring to the matter any more, he turned suddenly to Peter Bligh and exclaimed:

"Halloa, my man, and what's the matter with you?"

Now, Peter Bligh sat up as stiff as a board and answered directly.

"Hunger, doctor, that's the matter with me! If you'll add thirst to it, you've about named my complaint."

"Fog out of your lungs, eh?"

"Be sure and it is. I could dance at a fair and not be particular about the women. Put me alongside a beef-steak and you shall see some love-making. Aye, doctor, I'll never get my bread as a living skeleton, the saints be good to me, my hold's too big for that!"

It was like Mister Bligh, and amused the stranger very much. Just as if to answer Peter, the doctor crossed the room and opened a big cupboard by the window, which I saw to be full of victuals.

"I forget to eat, myself, when the instruments hustle me," said he, thoughtfully; "that's a bad habit, anyway. Suppose you display your energy by setting supper. There are tinned things here and eggs, I believe. You'll find firewood and fresh meat in the kitchen yonder. Here's something to keep the fog out of your lungs while you get it."

[Illustation: We were all sitting at the supper-table.]

He tossed a respirator across the table, and Peter Bligh was away to the kitchen before you could count two. It was a relief to have something to do, and right quickly our fellows did it. We were all (except little Dolly Venn, who wanted his strength yet) sitting at the supper table when half an hour had passed and eating like men who had fasted for a month. To-morrow troubled the seamen but little. It did not trouble Peter Bligh or Seth Barker that night, I witness.

A strange scene, you will admit, and one not readily banished from the memory. For my part, I see that room, I see that picture many a time in the night watches on my ship or in the dreaming moments of a seaman's day. The great machines of glass and brass rise up again about me as they rose that night. I watch the face of the American doctor, sharp and clear-cut and boyish, with the one black curl across the forehead. I see Peter Bligh bent double over the table, little Dolly Venn's eyes looking up bravely at me as he tries to tell us that all is well with him. The same curious sensations of doubt and uncertainty come again to plague me. What escape was there from that place? What escape from the island? Who was to help us in our plight? Who was to befriend little Ruth Bellenden now? Would the ship ever come back? Was she above or below the sea? Would the sleep-time endure long, and should we live through it? Ah! that was the thing to ask them. More especially to ask this clever man, whose work I made sure it was to answer the question.

"We thank you, doctor," I said to him, at one time; "we owe our lives to you this night. We sha'n't forget that, be sure of it."

"I'll never eat a full meal again but I'll remember the name of Doctor—Doctor—which reminds me that I don't know your name, sir," added Peter Bligh, clumsily. The doctor smiled at his humour.

"Dr. Duncan Gray, if it's anything to remember. Ask for Duncan Gray, of Chicago, and one man in a thousand will tell you that he makes it his business to write about poisons, not knowing anything of them. Why, yes, poison brought me here and poison will move me on again; at least I begin to imagine it. Poison, you see, holds the aces."

"It's a fearsome place, truly," said I, "and wonderful that Europe knows so little about it. I've seen Ken's Island on the charts any time these fifteen years, but never a whisper have I heard of sleep-time or sun-time or any other death-talk such as I've heard these last three days. You'll be here, doctor, no doubt, to ascertain the truth of it? If my common sense did not tell me as much, the machinery would. It's a great thing to be a man of your kind, and I'd give much if my education had led me that way. But I was only at a country grammar school, and what I couldn't get in at one end the master never could at the other. Aye, I'd give much to know what you know this night!"

He smiled a little queerly at the compliment, I thought, and turned it off with a word.

"I begin to know how little I know, and that's a good start," said he. "Possibly Ken's Island will make that little less. The master of Ken's Island is generously sending me to Nature's university. I think that I understand why he permitted me to come here. Why, yes, it was smart, and the man who first set curiosity going about Prince Czerny in Chicago is well out of Prince Czerny's way. I must reckon all this up, Captain—Captain——"

"Jasper Begg," said I, "at one time master of Ruth Bellenden's yacht, the Manhattan."

"And Peter Bligh, his mate, who is a Christian man when the victuals are right."

Seth Barker said nothing, but I named him and spoke about Dolly Venn. We five, I think, began to know each other better from that time, and to fall together as comrades in a common misfortune. Parlous as our plight was, we had food and drink and tobacco for our pipes afterwards; and a seaman needs little more than that to make him happy. Indeed, we should have passed the night well enough, forgetting all that had gone before and must come after, but for a weird reminder at the hour of midnight, which compelled us to recollect our strange situation and all that it betided.

Comfortable we were, I say, for Dr. Gray had found fine berths for us all: Dolly on the sofa, his skipper in an arm-chair, Peter Bligh and Seth Barker on rugs by the window, and he himself in a hammock slung across the kitchen door. We had said "good-night" to one another and were settling off to sleep, when there came a weird, wild calf from the grounds without; and so dismal was it and so like the cries of men in agony that we all sprang to our feet and stood, with every faculty waking, to listen to the horrible outcry. For a moment no man moved, so full of terror were those sounds; but the doctor, coming first to his senses, strode towards the window and pulled the heavy curtain back from it. Then, in the dazzling light, that wonderful gold-blue light which hovered in mist-clouds about the gardens of the bungalow, I saw a spectacle which froze my very blood. Twenty men and women, perhaps, some of them Europeans, some natives, some dressed in seamen's dress, some in rags, some quite naked, were dancing a wild, fantastic, maddening dance which no foaming Dervish could have surpassed, aye, or imitated, in his cruellest moments. Whirling round and round, extending their arms to the sky, sometimes casting themselves headlong on the ground, biting the earth with savage lips, tearing their flesh with knives, one or two falling stone-dead before our very eyes, these poor people in their delirium cried like animals, and filled the whole woods with their melancholic wailing. For ten minutes, it may be, the fit endured; then one by one they sank to the earth in the most fearful contortions of limb and face and body, and, a great silence coming upon the house, we saw them there in that cold, clear light, outposts of the death which Ken's Island harboured.

We saw the thing, we knew its dreadful truth, yet many minutes passed before one among us opened his lip. The spell was still on us—a spell of dread and fear I pray that few men may know.

"The laughing fever," exclaimed the doctor, at last, letting the curtain fall back with trembling hand. "Yes, I have heard of that somewhere."

And then he said, pointing to the lamp upon the table:

"Three days, my friends, three days between us and that!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE STORM

You have been informed that Dr. Gray promised us three days' security in the bungalow, and I will now tell you how it came about that we quitted the house next morning, and set out anew upon the strangest errand of them all.

There's an old saying among seamen that the higher the storm the deeper the sleep, and this, may-be, is true, if you speak of a ship and of an English crew upon her. It takes something more than a capful of wind to blow sleep from a sailor's eyes; and though you were to tell him that the Judgment was for to-morrow, I do believe he would take his four hours off all the same. But at Ken's Island things went differently; and two, at least, of our party knew little sleep that night. Again and again I turned on my bed to see Dr. Gray busy before his furnace and to hear Peter Bligh snoring as though he'd crack the window-glass. Nevertheless, sleep came to me slowly, and when I slept I dreamed of the island and all the strange things which had happened there since first we set foot upon it. Many sounds and shapes were present in my dream, and the sweet figure of Ruth Bellenden with them all. I saw her brave and patient in the gardens of the bungalow; the words which she had spoken, "For God's sake come back to me!" troubled my ears like the music of the sea. Sometimes, as dreams will, the picture was but a vague shadow, and would send me hither and thither, now to the high seas and an English port, again to the island and the bay wherein I first landed. I remember, more than all, a dream which carried me to the water's edge, with my hand in hers, and showed me a great storm and inky clouds looming above the reef and the lightning playing vividly, and a tide rising so swiftly that it threatened to engulf us and flood the very land on which we stood. And then I awoke, and the dawn-light was in the room and Dr. Gray himself stood watching by the window.

"Yes," he said, as though answering some remark of mine, "we shall have a storm—and soon."

"You do not say so!" cried I; "why, that's my dream! I must have heard the thunder in my sleep."

He drew the curtain back to show me the angry sky, which gave promise of thunder and of a hurricane to follow; the air of the room seemed heavy as that of a prison-house. In the gardens outside a shimmer of yellow light reminded me of a London fog as once I breathed it by Temple Bar. No longer could you distinguish the trees or the bushes or even the mass of the woods beyond the gate. From time to time the loom of the cloud would lift, and a beam of sunlight strike through it, revealing a golden path and a bewitching vision of grass and roses all drooping in the heat. Then the ray was lost again, and the yellow vapour steamed up anew.

"A storm undoubtedly," said the doctor, at last, "and a bad one, too. We should learn something from this, captain. Why, yes, it looks easy—after the storm the wind."

"And the wind will clear Ken's Island of fog," cried I. "Ah, of course, it will. We shall breathe just now and go about like sane men. I am younger for hearing it, doctor."

He said, "Yes, it was good news," and then put some sticks into the grate and began to make a fire. The others still slept heavily. Little Dolly Venn muttered in his sleep a name I thought I had heard before, and, truth to tell, it was something like "Rosamunda." The doctor himself was as busy as a housemaid.

"Yes," he continued, presently, "we should be pretty well through with the sleep-time, and after that, waking. Does anything occur to you?"

I sat up in the chair and looked at him closely. His own manner of speech was catching.

"Why, yes," said I, "something does occur. For one thing, we may have company."

He lit a match and watched the wood blazing up the chimney. A bit of fire is always a cheerful thing, and it did me good to see it that morning.

"Czerny has more than a hundred men," said he, after some reflection. "We are four and one, which makes five; five exactly."

Now, this was the first time he had confessed to anything which might let a man know where his sympathies lay. Friend or enemy, yesterday taught me nothing about him. I learnt afterwards that he had once known Kenrick Bellenden in Philadelphia. I think he was glad to have four comrades with him on Ken's Island.

"If you mean thereby, doctor, that you'd join us," was my reply, "you couldn't tell me better news. You know why I came here and you know why I stay. It may mean much to Mme. Czerny to have such a friend as you. What can be done by five men on this cursed shore shall be done, I swear; but I am glad that you are with us—very glad."

I really meant it, and spoke from my heart: but he was not a demonstrative man, and he rarely answered one directly as one might have wished. On this occasion, I remember, he went about his work for a little while before he spoke again; and it was not until the coffee was boiling on the hob that he came across to me and, seating himself on the arm of my chair, asked, abruptly:

"Do you know what fool's errand brought me to this place?"

"I have imagined it," said I. "You wanted to know the truth about the sleep-time."

He laughed that queer little laugh which expressed so much when you heard it.

"No," said he, "I do not care a dime either way! I just came along to advertise myself. Ken's Island and its secrets are my newspaper. When I go back to New York people will say, 'That's the specialist, Duncan Gray, who wrote about narcotics and their uses.' They'll come and see me because the newspapers tell them to. We advertise or die, nowadays, captain, and the man who gets a foothold up above must take some risks. I took them when I shipped with Edmond Czerny."

It was an honest story, and I liked the man the better for it. No word of mine intervened before he went on with it.

"Luck put me in the way of the thing," he continued, the mood being on him now and my silence helping him; "I met Czerny's skipper in 'Frisco, and he was a talker. There's nothing more dangerous than a loose tongue. The man said that his master was the second human being to set foot on Ken's Archipelago. I knew that it was not true. A hundred years ago Jacob Hoyt, a Dutchman, was marooned on this place and lived to tell the story of it. The record lies in the library at Washington; I've read it."

He said this with a low chuckle, like a man in possession of a secret which might be of great value to him. I did not see the point of it at the time, but I saw it later, as you shall hear.

"Yes," he rattled on, "Edmond Czerny holds a full hand, but I may yet draw fours. He's a clever man, too, and a deep one. We'll see who's the deeper, and we will begin soon, Captain Begg—very soon. The sleep-time's through, I guess, and this means waking."

Now, this was spoken of the storm without, and a heavy clap of thunder, breaking at that moment, pointed his words as nothing else could have done. I had many questions yet to ask him, such as how it was that he persuaded Czerny to take him aboard (though a man who knew so much would have been a dangerous customer to leave behind), but the rolling sounds awoke the others, and Peter Bligh, jumping up half asleep, asked if any one knocked.

"I thought it was the devil with the hot water—and bedad it is!" cries he. "Is the house struck, or am I dreaming it, doctor? It's a fearsome sound, truly."

Peter meant it as a bit of his humour, I do believe; but little he knew how near the truth his guess was. The storm, which had threatened us since dawn, now burst with a splendour I have never seen surpassed. A very sheet of raging fire opened up the livid sky. The crashing thunder shook the timbers of the house until you might have thought that the very roof was coming in. In the gardens themselves, leaping into your view and passing out of it again as a picture shuttered by light, great trees were split and broken, the woods fired, the gravel driven up in a shower of pelting hail. I have seen storms in my life a-many, but never one so loud and so angry as the storm of that ebbing sleep-time. There were moments when a whirlwind of terrible sounds seemed to envelop us, and the very heavens might have been rolling asunder. We said that the bungalow could not stand, and we were right.

Now, this was a bad prophecy; but the fulfilment came more swiftly and more surely than any of us had looked for. Indeed, Dolly Venn was scarce upon his feet, and the sleep hardly out of Seth Barker's eyes, when the room in which we stood was all filled by a scathing flame of crimson light, and, a whirlwind of fire sweeping about us, it seemed to wither and burn everything in its path and to scorch our very limbs as it passed them by. To this there succeeded an overpowering stench of sulphur, and ripping sounds as of wood bursting in splinters, and beams falling, and the crackling of timber burning. Not a man among us, I make sure, but knew full well the meaning of those signals or what they called him to do. The bungalow was struck; life lay in the fog without, in the death-fog we had twice escaped.

"She's burning—she's burning, by——!" cried Seth Barker, running wildly for the door; and to his voice was added that of Duncan Gray, who roared:

"My lead, my lead—stand back, for your lives!"

He threw a muffler round his neck and ran out from the stricken bungalow. The whole westward wing of the house was now alight. Great clouds of crimson flame wrestled with the looming fog above us; they illumined all the garden about as with the light of ten thousand fiery lamps. Suffocating smoke, burning breezes, floating sparks, leaping tongues of flame drove us on. Cries you heard, one naming the heights for a haven, another clamouring for the beach, one answering with an oath, another, it may be, with a prayer; but no man keeping his wits or shaping a true course. What would have happened but for the holding fog and the sulphurous air we breathed, I make no pretence to say; but Nature stopped us at last, and, panting and exhausted, we came to a halt in the woods, and asked each other in the name of reason what we should do next.

"The sea!" cries Peter Bligh, forgetting his courage (a rare thing for him to do); "show me the sea or I'm a dead man!"

To whom Seth Barker answers:

"If there's breath, it's on the hills; we'll surely die here."

And little Dolly, he said:

"I cannot run another step, sir; I'm beat—dead beat!"

For my part I had no word for them; it remained for Doctor Gray to lead again.

"I will show you the road," cried he, "if you will take it."

"And why not?" I asked him. "Why not, doctor?"

"Because," he answered, very slowly, "it's the road to Edmond Czerny's house."

CHAPTER XIV

A WHITE POOL—AND AFTERWARDS

We must have been a third of a mile from the shore when the doctor spoke, and three hundred yards, perhaps, from the pool in the glens. It is true that the storm seemed to clear the air; but not as we had expected, nor as fair argument led us to hope. Wind there was, hot and burning on the face; but it brought no cool breath in its path, and did but roll up the fog in banks of grey and dirty cloud. While at one minute you would see the wood, green and grassy, as in the evening light, at another you could scarce distinguish your neighbour or mark his steps. To me, it appeared that the island dealt out life and death on either hand; first making a man leap with joy because he could breathe again; then sending him gasping to the earth with all his senses reeling and his brain on fire. Any shelter, I said, would be paradise to men in the bond of that death-grip. Sleep itself, the island's sleep, could have been no worse than the agony we suffered.

"Doctor," I cried, as I ran panting up to him, "Edmond Czerny's house or another—show us the way, here and now! We cannot fare worse; you know that. Lead on and we follow, wherever it is."

The others said, "Aye, aye, lead on and we follow." Desperation was their lot now; the madman's haste, the driven man's hope. There, in that fearful hollow, lives were ebbing away like the sea on a shallow beach. They fought for air, for breath, for light, for life. I can see Peter Thigh to this day as he staggers to his feet and cries, wildly:

"The mouth of blazes would be a Sunday parlour to this! Lead on, doctor, I am dying here!"

So he spoke; and, the others lurching up again, we began to race through the wood to a place where the fog lay lighter and the mists had left. Wonderful sights met our eyes—aye, more wonderful than any words of mine could picture for you. In the air above flocks of birds wheeled dizzily as though the very sky was on fire. Round and round, round and round, they darkened the heaven like some great wheel revolving; while, ever and anon, a beautiful creature would close its wings and swoop to death upon the dewy grass. Other animals, terrified cattle, wild dogs, creatures from the heights and creatures from the valleys, all huddled together in their fear, raised doleful cries which no ear could shut out. The trees themselves were burnt and blackened by the storm, the glens as dark as night, the heaven above one canopy of fiery cloud and stagnant vapour.

Now, I knew no more than the dead what Duncan Gray meant when he said that he would lead us to Czerny's house. A boat I felt sure he did not possess, or he would have spoken of it; nor did he mean that we should swim, for no man could have lived in the surf about the reefs. His steps, moreover, were not carrying him towards the beach, but to that vile pool in the ravine wherein a man had died on the night we came to Ken's Island. This pool I saw again as we ran on towards the headland; and so still and quiet it seemed, such a pretty lake among the hills, that no man would have guessed the terror below its waters or named the secret of it. Nevertheless, it recalled to me our first night's work, and how little we could hope from any man in Czerny's house; and this I had in my mind when, the doctor halted at last before the mouth of an open pit at the very foot of the giant headland. He was blown with running, and the sweat dropped from his forehead like water. The place itself was the most awesome I have ever entered. On either hand, so close to us that the arms outstretched could have touched them, were two mighty walls, which towered up as though to the very sky beyond the vapour. A black pit lay before us; the fog and the burning wind in the woods we had left. Silence was here—the awful silence of night and solitude. No eye could fathom the depths or search the heights. What lay beyond, I might not say. The doctor had led us to this wilderness, and he must speak.

"See here," he cried, mopping the sweat from his face and rolling up his shirt-sleeves, like a man who has good work to do, "the road's down yonder, and we need a light to strike it. Give me your hand, one of you, while I fetch up the lantern. A Dutchman didn't write of Ken's Island for nothing. I guess he knew we were coming his way."

He stretched out a hand to me with the words, and I held it surely while he bent over the pit and groped for the lantern he spoke of.

"Three days ago," said he, "I ran a picnic here all to myself. It is as well to find new lodgings if the old don't suit. I left my lantern behind me, and this it is, I reckon."

He pulled up from the depths a gauze lantern such as miners use, and, lighting it, he showed us the heart of the pit. It was a deep hole, 30 feet down, perhaps, and strewn with rubbish and fragments of the iron rocks. But what was worth more to us, aye, than a barrel of gold, was the sweet, fresh air which came to us through a tunnel's mouth as by a siphon from the open sea herself; and, blowing freshly on our faces, sent us quickly down towards it with glad cries and the spirits of men who have broken a prison gate.

"The sea, the sea, by all that's holy!" cries Peter Bligh. "Oh, doctor, I breathe, I breathe, as I am a Christian man, I breathe!"

We tumbled down into the pit headlong and sat there for many minutes wondering if, indeed, the death were passed or if we must face it again in the minutes to come. There before us, once we had passed the tunnel's mouth, stood a vast, domed hall which, I declare, men might have cut and not Nature in the depths of that strange cavern.

Open to the day through great apertures high up in the face of the cliff, a soft glow like the light which comes through the windows of a church streamed upon the rocky floor and showed us the wonders of that awesome place. Room upon room, we saw, cave upon cave; some round like the mosques a Turk can build, others lofty and grand as any cathedral; some pretty as women's dens, all decked with jewels and ornament of jasper and walls of the blackest jet. These things I saw; these rooms I passed through. A magician might have conjured them up; and yet he was no magician, but only Duncan Gray, the man I knew for the first time yesterday, but already called a comrade.

"Doctor," I said, "it is a house of miracles, truly! But where to now—aye, that's the question; where to?"

He sat upon a stone, and we grouped ourselves about him. Peter Bligh took out a pipe from his pocket and was not forbidden to light it. There was a distant sound in the cave like that of water rushing, and once another sound to which I could give no meaning. The doctor himself was still thinking deeply, as though hazarding a guess as to our position.

"Boys," he said, "I'll tell you the whole story. This place was discovered by Hoyt, a Dutchman. If Czerny had read his book, he would know of it; but he hasn't. I took the trouble to walk in because I thought it might be useful when he turned nasty. It is going to be that, as you can see. Follow through to the end of it, and you are in Czerny's house. Will you go there or hold back? It's for you to say."