I filled my pipe, as Peter had clone, and, breathing free for the first time for some hours, I tried to speak up for the others.

"A sailor's head tells me that there is a road from here to the reef; is that true?" asked I at last; "is it true, doctor?"

He put on his glasses and looked at me with those queer, clever eyes of his. I believe to this day that our dilemma almost pleased him.

"A sailor's head guesses right first time," was his answer. "There is a road under the sea from here to Czerny's doorstep. I'm waiting to know if it's on or back. You know the risks and are not children. Say that you turn it up and we'll all go back together, or stay here as wisdom dictates. But it's for you to speak——"

We answered him all together, though Peter Bligh was the first he heard.

"The lodgings here being free and no charge for extras," said Peter, sagely.

And Dolly Venn, he said:

"We are five, at any rate. I don't suppose they would murder us. After all, Edmond Czerny is a gentleman."

"Who shoots the poor sailormen that's wrecked on his shore;" put in Seth Barker, doggedly.

"He'd be of the upper classes, no doubt;" added Peter Bligh; "he'll see that we don't sleep in damp sheets! Aye, 'tis the devil of a man, surely!"

Doctor Gray heard them patiently—more patiently than I did—and then went on again:

"If you stop here, you starve; if you go on—well, you take your luck. Should the fog lift up yonder, you'll be having Czerny back again. It's a rule-of-three sum, gentlemen. For my part, I say 'go on and take your luck,' but I won't speak for you unless you are willing."

"None more willing," cried I, coming to a resolution on the spot. "Forward let it be, and luck go with us. We'd be fools to die like rats in a trap when there's light and food not a mile away. And cowards, too, boys—cowards!" I added.

The others said: "Aye, aye, we're no cowards!" And all being of one mind we set out together through that home of wonders. Edmond Czerny's house we sought, and thither this iron road would carry us. A path more beautiful no man has trodden. From this time the great, church-like grottos gave place to lower roofs and often black-dark openings. By here and there we dived into tunnels wondrously cut by some forgotten river of fire in the ages long ago, and, emerging again, we entered a wilderness of ravines wherefrom even the sky was to be seen and the cliffs towering majestically above us. Then, at last, we left the daylight altogether, and going downward as to the heart of the earth I knew that the land lay behind us and that the sea flowed above our heads.

Reader of a plain seaman's story, can you come with me on such a journey as I and four stout hearts made on that unforgotten day? Can you picture, as I picture now, that dark and lonesome cavern, with the sea beating upon its roof and the air coming salt and humid to the tongue, and the echo of distant breakers in your ears, and always the night and the doubt of it? Can you follow me from grotto to grotto and labyrinth to labyrinth, stumbling often by the way, catching at the lantern's dancing rays, calling one to the other, "All's well—lead on"? Aye, I doubt that you can. These things must be seen with a man's own eyes, heard with his own ears, to be understood and made real to him. To me that scene lives as though yesterday had brought it. I see the doctor with his impatient step. I see Peter Bligh stumbling after him. I hear little Dolly Venn's manly voice; I help Seth Barker over the rocks. And these four stand side by side with me on the white pool's edge. The danger comes again. The fear, the loathing, are unforgotten.

I speak of fear and loathing and of dread white pool, and you will ask me why and how we came thereto. And so I say that the water lay, may-be, a third of a mile from the land, in a clear, transparent basin of some quartz or mica, or other shining mineral, so that it gave out crystal lights even to the darkness, and the arched grotto which held it was all aglow, as though with hidden fires. A silent pool it was, we said, and our path seemed to end upon its brink; but even as we stood asking for a road, all the still water began to heave and foam, and, a great creature rising up from the depths, the lantern showed us a monster devil-fish, and we fell back one upon the other with affrighted cries. Nor let any man charge us with that. A situation more perilous I have never been in, and never shall. The fish's terrible suckers searching all the rocks, the frightful eye of the brute, the rushing water, the half-light worse than darkness, might well have driven back a stronger man than I. And upon the top of that was the thought that by such lay the road to safety. We must pass the grotto, or perish of starvation.

Now, the first fright of this encounter was done with in a minute or two, and when it was plain to us that the devil-fish was stuck in the pool which some tide of the sea fed, perhaps, and that his suckers could not reach the higher part of the rock, we began to speak of it rationally, and to plan a way of going over. I was for emptying our revolvers into the fish straight away; but the doctor would have none of it, fearing the report, and, remembering what he had read in the Dutchman's book, he came out with another notion.

"Hoyt went over the rocks," said he, calmly, while we still drew back from the pool affrighted, our hearts in our boots I make sure, and not one of us that did not begin to think of the fog again when he saw the devil-fish struggling to be free. "It's not a sweet road, but better than none at all. Keep behind me, boys, and mind you don't slip or you'll find something worse than sharks. Now for it, and luck go with us."

With this he began to clamber round the edge of the pool, but so high up that it did not seem possible for the fish to touch him. There was good foothold on the jagged hunks of rock, and a man might have gone across safely enough but for the thought of that which was below him. For my part, I say that my eyes followed him as you may follow a walker on a tight-wire. One false step would send him flying down to a death I would not name, and that false step he appeared to make. My God! I see it all so clearly now. The slip, the frantic clutch at the rocks, the great tentacle which shot out and gripped his leg, and then the flash of my own revolver fired five times at the terrible eyes below me.

There were loud cries in the cave, the wild shouts of terrified men, the smoke of pistols, the foaming and splashing of water, all the signs of panic which may follow a fellow-creature about to die. That the devil-fish had caught the doctor with one of his tentacles you could not doubt; that he would drag him down into that horrid stomach, I myself surely believed. Never was a fight for life a more awful thing to see. On the one hand a brave man gripping the rocks with hands and foot until the crags cut his very flesh; on the other that ghoul-like horror seeking to wind other claws about its prey and to drag it towards its gaping mouth. What miracle could save him, God alone knew; and yet he was saved. A swift act of his own, brave and wonderful, struck the sucker from the limb and set him free. Aye, what a mind to think of it! What other man, I ask, would have let go his hold of the rocks when hold meant so much to him and that fish swam below? Nevertheless, the doctor did so. I see it now—the quick turn—the knife drawn from its sheath—the severed tentacle cut clean as a cork, the devil-fish itself drawing back to the depths of the crimson pool. And then once more I am asking the doctor if he is hurt; and he is answering me, cheerily, "Not much, captain, not much," and we four are following after him as white as women, I do believe, our nerves unstrung, our hearts quaking as we crossed the dreadful pit.

Well, we went over well enough, shirk it as we might. The bullets which sent the devil-fish to the bottom sent him there to die, for all I knew. The pool itself was red with blood by this time, and the waters settling down again. I could see nothing of the fish as I crossed over; and Seth Barker, who came last and, like a true seaman, had forgotten his fear already, swung the lantern down to the water's edge, but discovered nothing. The doctor himself, excited as you might expect, and limping with his hurt, simply said, "Well over, lads, well over"; and then, taking the lantern from Seth Barker's hands, he would not wait to answer our curiosity, but pushed on through the tunnel.

"It's not every man who has a back-door with a watch-dog like that," said he, as he went; "Edmond Czerny, may-be, does not know his luck; I'll tell him of it when we're through. It won't be a long while now, boys, and I'm glad of it. My foot informs me it's there, and I shall have to leave a card on it just now."

"Then the sooner you let us look at it the better, doctor," said I. "Aye, but you were nearly gone. My heart was in my throat all the time you stood there."

"Which is no place for a man's heart to be," said he, brightly; "especially at the door of Edmond Czerny's house."

He stood a moment and bade me listen. We were in an open place of the tunnel then, and a ray of light striking down from some lamp above us revealed an iron ladder and a wooden trap above it. The sea I could hear beating loudly upon the reef; but with the sea's voice came others, and they were human.

"Yes," said the doctor, quietly, "we are in the house all right, and God knows when we shall get out of it again!"

And then, with a cry of pain, he fell fainting at my feet.

CHAPTER XV

AN INTERLUDE, DURING WHICH WE READ IN RUTH BELLENDEN'S DIARY AGAIN *

* The editor has thought it well to give at this point the above extract from Ruth Bellenden's diary, as permitting some insight Into the events which transpired on Ken's Island after Jasper Begg's discovery and Edmond Czerny's return.

May 5TH.—My message to the sea has been heard. Jasper Begg is on Ken's Island. All that this means to me, all that it may mean, I dare not think. A great burden seems lifted from my shoulders. I have found a friend and he is near me.

May 6th.—I have seen Jasper to-night, and he has gone away again. He is not changed, I think. It is the same honest, English face, the same cheery English voice. I have always said that Jasper is one of the handsomest Englishmen I have ever seen. And just as on my own yacht, so here on Ken's Island, the true English gentleman speaks to me. For Jasper is that above all things, one of Nature's gentlemen, whom the rough world will never disguise nor the sea life change. He would be thirty-five years of age now, I remember, but he has not lost his boyish face, and there is the same shy reticence which he never could conquer. He has come here according to his promise. A ship lies in the offing, and he would have me go to it. How little he knows of my true condition in this dreadful place. How may a woman go when a hundred watch her every hour?

May 7th.—Clair-de-Lune, the Frenchman, came to the bungalow very early this morning to tell me of certain things which happened on the island last night. It seems that Jasper is still here, and that the storm has driven away his ship. I do not know whether to be sorry or glad. He cannot help me—he cannot!—and yet a friend is here. I take new courage at that. If a woman can aid a brave man to win her liberty, I am that woman and Jasper is the man. Yesterday I was alone; but to-day I am alone no longer, and a friend is at my side, and he has heard me. His ship will come back, I say. It is an ecstasy to dream like this!

May 10th.—I have spent four anxious days—more anxious, I think, than any in my life. The ship has not returned, and Jasper Begg is still a fugitive in the hills. There are three of his companions with him, and we send them food every day. What will be the end of it all? I am more closely watched than ever since this was known. I fear the worst for my friends, and yet I am powerless to help them.

May 10th (later).—My husband, who has now returned from San Francisco, knows that Jasper is here and speaks of it. I fear these moods of confidence and kindness. "Your friend has come," Edmond says; "but why am I not to know of it? Why is he frightened of me? Why does he skulk like a thief? Let him show himself at this house and state his business; I shall not eat him!" Edmond, I believe, has moments when he tries to persuade himself that he is a good man. They are dangerous moments, if all a man's better instincts are dead and forgotten.

May 11th.—Clair-de-Lune, Edmond tells me, has been sent to the lower reef. I do not ask him why. It was he who helped my friends in the hills. Is it all real or did I dream it? Jasper Begg, the one man who befriended me, left to die as so many have been left on this unpitying shore! It cannot be—it cannot be! All that I had hoped and planned must be forgotten now. And yet there were those who remembered Ruth Bellenden and came here for love of her, as she will remember them, for love's sake.



May 13th.—The alarm bell rang on the island last night and we left in great haste for the shelter. The dreadful mists were already rising fast when I went down through the woods to the beach. The people fled wildly to the lower reef. It is not three months since the sleep-time, and its renewal was unlooked for. To-night I do not think of my own safety, but of those we are leaving on the heights. What is to become of Jasper, my friend—who will help him? I think of Jasper before any other now. Does he, I wonder, so think of me?

May 13th (later).—The House Under the Sea is built inside the reef which ties about a mile away on the northern side of the island. There can be nothing like it in the world. Hundreds of years ago, perhaps, this lonely rock, rising out of the water, was the mouth of some great volcano. To-day it is the door of our house, and when you enter it you find that the rocks below have been hollowed out by Nature in a manner so wonderful that a great house lies there with stone-cold rooms and immense corridors and pits seeming to go to the heart of the world. None but a man with my husband's romantic craving would have discovered such a place, or built himself therein a house so wonderful. For imagine a suite of rooms above which the tides surge—rooms lighted by tunnels in the solid rock and covered over with strongest glasses which the sea cannot break. Imagine countless electric lamps lighting this labyrinth until it seems sometimes like a fairy palace. Say that your drawing-room is a cave, whose walls are of jewels and whose floor is of jasper. Night and day yon hear the sea, the moaning winds, the breaking billows. It is another world here, like to nothing that any man has seen or ever will see. The people of a city could live in this place and yet leave room for others. My own rooms are the first you come to; lofty as a church, dim as one, yet furnished with all that a woman could desire. Yes, indeed, all I can desire. In my dressing-room are gowns from Douse's and hats from Alphonsine's, jewels from the Rue de la Paix, furs from Canada—all there to call back my life of two short years ago, that laughing life of Paris and the cities when I was free, and all the world my own, and only my girlhood to regret! Now I remember it all as one bright day in years of gathering night. Everything that I want, my husband says, shall be mine. I ask for liberty, but that is denied to me. It is too late to speak of promises or to believe. If I would condone it all; if I would but say to Edmond, "Yes, your life shall be my life, your secrets shall be mine; go, get riches, I will never ask you how." If I would say to him, "I will shut out from my memory all that I have seen on this island; I will forget the agony of those who have died here; I will never hear again the cries of drowning people, will never see hands outstretched above the waves, or the dead that come in on the dreadful tides; I will forget all this, and say, 'I love you, I believe in you'"—ah, how soon would liberty be won! But I am dumb; I cannot answer. I shall die on Ken's Island, saying, "God help those who perish here!"

May 14th.—Three days have passed in the shelter, and Clair-de-Lune, who comes to me every day, brings no good news of Jasper. "He is on the heights," he says; "if food were there he might live through the sleep-time." My husband knows that he is there, but does not speak of it. Yesterday, about sunset, I went up to the gallery on the reef, where the island is visible, and I saw the fog lying about it like a pall. It is an agony to know that those dear to you are suffering, perhaps dying, there! I cannot hide my eyes from others; they read my story truly. "Your friends will be clever if they come to Ken's Island again," my husband says. I do not answer him. I shall never answer him again.

May 15th.—There was a terrible storm on the island last night, and we all went up to the gallery to see the lightning play about the heights and run in rivulets of fire through the dark clouds above the woods. A weird spectacle, but one I shall never forget. The very sky seemed to burn at times. We could distinguish the heart of the thicket clearly, and poor people running madly to and fro there as though vainly seeking a shelter from the fire. They tell me to-day that the bungalow is burnt; I do not know whether to be sorry or glad. I am thinking of my friends. I am thinking of Jasper, thinking of him always.

May 16th.—I learn that there was a stranger left behind in the bungalow, a Doctor Gray, of San Francisco. He landed with Edmond last week, and is here for scientific reasons. My husband says that he does not like him; but allowed him, nevertheless, to come. He was in the bungalow making experiments when the lightning struck the house and destroyed it. It is feared that he must have perished in the fire. My husband tells me this to-night and is pleased to say it. But what of Jasper, my friend; what of him?

May 16th.—I was passing through the great hall of the house to-night, going to my bed-room, when something happened which made my very heart stand still. I thought that I heard a sound in the shadows, and imagining it to be one of the servants, I asked, "Who is there?" No one answered me; and, becoming frightened, I was about to run on, when a hand touched my own, and, turning round quickly, I found myself face to face with Jasper himself, and knew that he had come to save me!

CHAPTER XVI

ROSAMUNDA AND THE IRON DOORS

We had no notion that the doctor had come by any serious hurt, and when he fell in a dead faint we stood as men struck by an unseen hand. Light we still had, for the rolling lantern continued to burn; but the wits of us, save the wits of one, were completely gone, and three sillier fellows never gaped about an ailing man. Dolly Venn alone—trained ashore to aid the wounded—kept his head through the trouble and made use of his learning. The half of a minute was not to be counted before he had bared an ugly wound and showed us, not only a sucker still adhering to the crimson flesh, but a great, gaping cut which the doctor's own knife had made when he severed the fish's tentacle.

"You, Seth Barker, hold up that lantern," says he to the carpenter, as bold as brass and as ready as a crack physician at a guinea a peep; "give me some linen, one of you—and please be quick about it. I'll trouble you for a knife, Mister Peter, and a slice of your shirt, if you don't mind!"

Now, he had only to say this and I do believe that all four of us began to tear up our linen and to make ourselves as naked as Adam when they discharged him from Eden; but Peter Bligh, he was first with it, and he had out his clasp-knife and cut a length of his Belfast shift before you could say "Jack Robinson."

"'Tis unlikely that I'll match it in these parts, and I've worn it to my mother's memory," says he while he did it; "but 'tis yours, Dolly, lad, and welcome. And what now?" asks he.

"Be quiet, Mister Peter," says Dolly, sharply; "that's what next. Be quiet and nurse the doctor's leg, and do please keep that lantern steady."

Well, big men as we were, we kept quiet for the asking, as ignorance always will when skill is at the helm. Very prettily, I must say, and very neatly did Dolly begin to bind the wound, and to cut the suckers from their hold. The rest of us stood about and looked on and made believe we were very useful. It was an odd thing to tell ourselves that a man, who had been hale and hearty five minutes before, might now be going out on the floor of that hovel. I knew little of Duncan Gray, but what little I did know I liked beyond the ordinary; and every time that Dolly took a twist on his bandage or fingered the wound with the tenderness of a woman, I said, "Well done, lad, well done; we'll save him yet." And this the boy himself believed.

"It's only a cut," said he, "and if there's no poison, he'll be well enough in a week. But he won't be able to stand, that's certain. I'd give ten pounds for an antiseptic, I realty would!"

I knew what he meant all right; but the others didn't, and Peter Bligh, he must come in with his foolishness.

"They're mortal rare in these parts," said he; "I've come across many things in the Pacific, but anyskeptics isn't one of 'em. May-be he'll not need 'em, Dolly. We was twenty-four men down on the Ohio with yellow-jack, and not an ounce of anyskeptics did I swallow! And here I am, hale and hearty, as you'll admit."

"And talking loud," said Seth Barker, "talking very loud, gentlemen!"

It was wisdom, upon my word, for not one of us, I swear (until Seth Barker spoke), had remembered where we were or what was like to come afterwards. Voices we had heard, human voices above us, when first we entered the cellar; and now, when the warning was uttered, we stood dumb for some minutes and heard them again.

"Douse the glim—douse it," cries Peter, in a big whisper; "they're coming down, or I'm a Dutchman!"

He turned the lantern and blew it out as he spoke. The rest of us crouched down and held our breath. For ten seconds, perhaps, we heard the deep, rough voices of men in the rooms above us. Then the trap-door opened suddenly, and a beam of light fell upon the pavement not five yards from where we stood. At the same moment a shaggy head peered through the aperture, and a man cast a quick glance downward to the cellar.

"No," said the man, as though speaking to some one behind him, "it's been took, as I told you."

To which the other voice answered:

"Well more blarmed fool you for not corking good rum when you see it!"

They closed the trap upon the words, and we breathed once more. The lesson they had taught us could not be forgotten. We were sobered men when we lighted the lantern with one of Seth Barker's matches, and turned it again on the doctor's face.

"In whispers, if you please," said I, "as few as you like. We are in a tight place, my lads, and talk won't get us out of it. It's the doctor first and ourselves afterwards, remember."

Dr. Gray, truly, was a little better by this time, and sitting up like a dazed man, he looked first at Dolly Venn and then at his foot, and last of all at the strange place in which he lay.

"Why, yes," he exclaimed at last, "I remember; a cut and a fool who walked on it. It serves me right, and the end is better than the beginning."

"The lad did it," said I; "he was always a wonder with linen and the scissors, was Dolly Venn."

"To say nothing of a square foot of my shirt," put in Peter Bligh, obstinately. "'Tis worth while getting a bit of a cut, doctor, just to see Dolly Venn sew it up again."

The doctor laughed with us, for he knew a seaman's manner and the light talk which follows even the gravest mishap aboard a ship. That our men meant well towards him he could not doubt; and his next duty was to tell us as much.

"You are good fellows," said he, "and I'm much obliged to you, Master Dolly. If you will put your hand inside my coat, you will find a brandy-flask there, and I'll drink your health. Don't worry your heads about me, but think of yourselves. One of you, remember, must go and see Czerny now; I think it had better be you, captain."

I said yes, I would go willingly; and added, "when the right time comes." The time was not yet, I knew—when men walked above our heads and were waking. But when it came I would not hold back for my shipmates' sake.

We had a few biscuits among us, which prudent men had put in their pockets after last night's meal; and, my own flask being full of water, we sat down in the darkness of the cellar and made such a meal as we could. Minute by minute now it became more plain to me that I must do as Duncan Gray said, and go up to find Czerny himself. Food we had none, save the few biscuits in our hands; salt was the water in the crimson pool behind us. Beyond that were the caverns and the fog. It was just all or nothing; the plain challenge to the master of this place, "Give us shelter and food" or the sleep which knows no waking. Do you wonder that I made up my mind to risk all on a journey which, were it for life or death, would carry us, at last, beyond the doubt and uncertainty?

We passed the afternoon sleeping and dozing, as tired men might. Voices we heard from time to time; the moan of the sea was always with us—a strange, wild song, long-drawn and rolling, as though the water played above our very heads in the gentle sport of a Pacific calm. At a dwelling more remarkable than the one we were about to enter no man has knocked or will knock in all the years to come. We were like human animals which burrow in a rocky bank a mile from any land. There were mysteries and wonders above, I made sure; and there was always the doubt, such doubt as comes to men who go to a merciless enemy and say, "Give us bread."

Now, I left my comrades at ten o'clock that night, when all sounds had died away above and the voice of the sea growing angrier told me that my steps would not be heard.

"I shall go to Czerny, lads," said I, at the moment of leaving them, "and he will hear the story. I'll do my best for good shipmates, trust me; and if I do not come back—well, you'll know that I cannot. Good night, old comrades. We've sailed many a sea together and we'll sail many another yet, God willing."

They all cried "Aye, aye, sir!" and pressed my hand with that affection I knew they bore me. Little Dolly Venn, indeed, pleaded hard to accompany me; but it seemed plain that, if life were to be risked, one alone should risk it; and, putting him off kindly, I mounted the ladder and raised the trap.

I was in Edmond Czerny's house, and I was alone.

* * *

Now, I had opened the trap, half believing I might find myself in some room, perhaps in the kitchen of the house. Men would be there, I said, and Czerny's watch-dogs ready with their questions. But this was not a true picture; and while there were arc lamps everywhere, the place was not a room at all, but a circular cavern, with rude apertures in the wall and curtains hung across in lieu of doors. This was not a little perplexing, as you will see; and my path was not made more straight when I heard voices in some room near by, but could not locate them nor tell which of the doors to avoid.

For a long time I stood, uncertain how to act. In the end I put my head round the first curtain at a venture, and drew it back as quickly. There were men in that place, half-naked men, grouped about the door of a furnace whose red light flashed dazzlingly upon walls and ceiling and gave its tenants the aspect of crimson devils. What the furnace meant or why it was built, I was soon to learn; for presently one of the men gave an order, and upon this an engine started, and a whirr of fans and the sucking of a distant pump answered to the signal. "Air," said I to myself; "they are pumping air from above."

The men had not seen me, so quick was I, and so soft with the leather curtain; and going tiptoe across the cave I stumbled at hazard upon a door I had not observed before. It was nothing more than a big and jagged opening in the rock, but it showed me a flight of stairs beyond it, and twinkling lamps beyond that again. This, I said, must surely be the road to the sea, for the stairs led upward, and Czerny, as common sense put it, would occupy the higher rooms. So I did not hesitate any more about it, but treading the stairway with a cat's foot I went straight on, and presently struck so fine a corridor that at any other time I might well have spent an hour in wonder. Lamps were here—scores of them, in wrought-iron chandeliers. Doors you saw with almost every step you took—aye, and more than doors—for there were figures in the light and shadow; men passing to and fro; glimpses of open rooms and tables spread for cards, and bottles by them; and wild men of all countries, some sleeping, some quarrelling, some singing, some busy in kitchen and workshop. By here and there, these men met me in the corridor, and I drew back into the dark places and let them go by. They did not remark my presence, or if they did, made nothing of it. After all, I was a seaman, dressed as other seamen were. Why should they notice me when there were a hundred such in Czerny's house? I began to see that a man might go with less risk because of their numbers than if they had been but a handful.

"I shall find Czerny, after all," said I to myself, "and have it out with him. When he has spoken it will be time enough to ask, What next?"

It was a little consoling to say this, and I went on with more confidence. Passing down the whole length of the corridor, I reached a pair of iron doors at last, and found them fast shut and bolted against me. There was no branch road that I could make out, nor any indication of the way in which I must open the doors. A man cannot walk through sheer iron for the asking, nor blow it open with a wish; and there I stood in the passage like a messenger who has struck upon an empty house, but is not willing to leave it. See Czerny that night I must, even if it came to declaring myself to the rogues who occupied the rooms near by, and whose voices I could still hear. I had no mind to knock at the door; and, truth to tell, such a thing never came into my head, so full it was of other schemes. Indeed, I was just telling myself that it was neck or nothing, when what should happen but that the great iron door swung open, and the little French girl, Rosamunda, herself stepped out. Staggered at the sight of me, as well she might be (for the electric lamp will hide no face), she just piped one pretty little cry and then fell to saying:

"Oh, Captain Begg, Captain Begg, what do you want in this house?"

"My dear," says I, speaking to her with a seaman's liberty, "I want a good many things, as most sailors do in this world. What's behind that door, now, and where may you have come from? Tell me as much, and you'll be doing me a bigger kindness than you think."

She didn't reply to this at once, but asked a question, as little girls will when they are thinking of somebody.

"Where are the others?" cried she; "why do you come alone? Where is the little one, Mister—Mister——"

"Dolly Venn," said I; "ah, that's the boy! Well, he's all right, my dear, and if he'd known that we were meeting, he'd have sent his love. You'll find him down yonder, in the cellar beyond the engine-house. Show me the way to Mister Czerny's door, and we'll soon have him out of there. He's come a long way, and it's all for the pleasure of seeing you—of course it is." The talk pleased her, but giving her no time to think about it, I went on:

"Mister Czerny, now, he would be living by here, I suppose?"

She said, "Yes, yes." His rooms were through the great hall which lay beyond the doors; but she looked so startled at the idea of my going there, and she listened so plainly for the sound of any voices, that I read up her apprehensions at a glance and saw that she did not wish me to go on because she was afraid.

"Where is your old friend, the Frenchman?" I asked her on an impulse; "what part of this queer house does he sling his hammock in?"

She changed colour at this, and plainly showed her trouble.

"Oh, Mister Begg," says she, "Clair-de-Lune has been punished for helping you on Ken's Island. He is not allowed to leave his room now. Mister Czerny is very angry, and will not see him. How can you think of coming here—oh, how can you do it?"

"It's easy enough," said I, lightly, "if you don't miss the turning and go straight on. Never fear for me, young lady; I shall pull through all right; and when I do your friend goes with me, be sure of it. I won't forget old Clair-de-Lune, not I! Now, just show me the road to the governor's door, and then run away and tell Dolly Venn. He'll be precious glad to see you, as true as Scripture."

Well, she stood for a little while, hesitating about it, and then she said, as though she had just remembered it:

"Benno Regnarte is the guard, but he has gone away to have his supper. I borrowed the key and came through. If you go in, he will not question you. The governor may be on his yacht, or he may be in his room. I do not know. How foolish it all is—how foolish, Captain Begg! They may never let you go away again!"

"Being so fond of my company," cried I, gaily. "Well, we'll see about it, my dear. Just you run off to Dolly Venn and leave me to do the rest. Sailors get out where other people stick, you know. We'll have a try, for the luck's sake."

I held her little hand in mine for a minute and gave it a hearty squeeze. She was the picture of prettiness in a print gown and a big Spanish shawl wrapped about her baby face. That she was truly alarmed, and rightly so, I knew well; but what could I do? It was Czerny or the pit. I chose Czerny.

Now, she had opened the iron door for me to pass by, and without another word to her I crossed the threshold and stood in Czerny's very dwelling-house. Thereafter, I was in a vast hall, in a beautiful place for all the world like a temple; with a gallery running round about it, and lamps swinging from the gallery, and an organ built high up in a niche above the far end, and doors of teak giving off all round, and a great oak fire-place such as you see in English houses; and all round the dome of this wonderful room great brass-bound windows, upon which the sea thundered and the foam sprayed. Softly lighted, carpeted with mats of rare straw, furnished as any mansion of the rich, it seemed to me, I do confess, a very wonder of the earth that such a place should lie beneath the breakers of the Pacific Ocean. And yet there it was before my eyes, and I could hear the sea-song high above me, and the lamps shone upon my face; and, as though to tell me truly that here my journey ended, whom should I espy at the door of one of the rooms but little Ruth Bellenden herself, the woman I had crossed the world to serve.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH JASPER BEGG ENTERS THE HOUSE UNDER THE SEA

I drew back into a patch of shadow and waited for her to come up to me. Others might be with her and the moment inopportune for our encounter. She walked with slow steps. Care had written its story upon her sweet face. I saw that she was alone, and I put out my hand and touched her upon the arm.

"Miss Ruth," said I, so soft that I wonder she heard me—"Miss Ruth, it's Jasper Begg. Don't you know me?"

She turned swiftly, but did not cry out. One wild look she cast about the half, with one swift glance she made sure of every door, and then, and only then, she answered me.

"Jasper, Jasper! Is it really Jasper Begg?" she cried, with a look of joy and gratitude I never shall forget.

Now, she had asked a woman's natural question; but I shall always say that there never were wits quicker than Ruth Bellenden's; and hardly were the useless words out of her mouth than she drew back to the room she had left; and when I had entered it after her she closed the door and listened a little while for any sounds. When none came to trouble her she advanced a step, and so we two stood face to face at last, in as pretty a place as all London, or all Europe for that matter, could show you.

Let me try to picture that scene for you as it comes to me when I write of it and seek to bring it back to my memory. A trim, well-kept cabin, such I call her room—a boudoir the French would name it—all hung round with pale rose silk, and above that again an artist's pictures upon a wall of cream. Little tables stood everywhere and women's knick-knacks upon them; there were deep chairs which invited you to sit, covered in silks and satins, and cushioned so that a big man might be afraid of them.

Upon the mantel-shelf a clock from Paris swung a jewelled pendulum, and candlesticks matched it on either side. A secretaire, littered over with papers and bright with silver ornaments, had its back to the seaward wall; a round window, cut in the rock above it, stood hidden by curtains of the richest brocade. The carpet, I said, was from Turkey; the mats from Persia. In the grate the wood-fire glowed warmingly. Ruth Bellenden herself, the mistress of the room, capped the whole, and she was gowned in white, with rubies and diamonds strung about her stately neck, and all that air of proud command I had admired so much in the days bygone. Aye, such a scene, believe me, as a grand London drawing-room might show you any night of London's months you care to name, and yet so different from that. And I, a plain sailor, found myself thrust forward there to my confusion, yet feeling, despite it all, that the woman I spoke to was woman at heart, as I was man. A few days ago I had come to her to say, "You have need of me." To-night it was her lot to answer me with my own words.

"Jasper," she said, her hand still on the switch of the lamp, "what miracle brings you to this place?"

"No miracle, Miss Ruth," said I, "but a plain road, and five men's necessity. We were dying on Ken's Island and we found a path under the sea. It was starvation one way, surrender the other; I am here to tell Mr. Czerny everything and to trust my life to him."

Now, she heard me almost with angry surprise; and coming forward into the light she stood before me with clasped hands and heated face.

"No," she said, and her "No" was a thing for a man to hear. "No, no; you shall never tell my husband that. And, oh, Jasper!" she cried upon it, "how ill you look—how changed!"

"My looks don't tell the truth," said I, not wishing to speak of myself; "I am up and down like a barometer in the tropics. The plain fact is, Miss Ruth, that the ship's gone, clean gone! I gave Mister Jacob the sure order to stand by us for three days, and that he didn't do. It means, then, that he couldn't. I greatly fear some accident has overtaken him; but he'll come back yet as I'm a living man!"

She heard me like one dazed: her eyes were everywhere about the room, as though seeking something she could not find. Presently she opened the door with great caution, and was gone a minute or more. When she returned she had a flask of spirits and some biscuits in her hand, and this time, I noticed, she locked the door after her.

"Edmond is sleeping; they have sent Aunt Rachel to Tokio," she almost whispered; "Benno, our servant, is to be trusted. I heard that you were starving in the hills; but how could I help—how could I, Jasper? It was madness for you to come here, and yet I am glad—so glad! And oh," she says, "we'll find a way; we'll find a way yet, Jasper!"

I poured some brandy from the flask, for I had need of it, and gulped it down at a draught. Her vivacity was always a thing to charm a man; as a girl she had the laughter and the spirits of ten.

"What shall we do, Jasper?" she kept on saying, "what shall we do next? Oh, to think that it's you, to think that it is Jasper Begg in this strange housel" she kept crying; "and no way out of it, no safety anywhere! Jasper, what shall we do—what shall we do next?"

"We shall tell your husband, Miss Ruth," said I, "and leave the last word with him. Why, think of it, five men cast adrift on his shore, and they to starve. Is he devil or man that he refuses them food and drink? I'll not believe it until I hear it. The lowest in humanity would never do such a thing! Aye, you are judging him beyond ordinary when you believe it. So much I make bold to say!"

I turned to the fire, and began to warm my fingers at it, while he, for her part, drew up one of the silk-covered chairs, and sat with her pretty head resting in a tired way between her little hands. All our talk up to this time had been broken fragments; but this I judged the time for a just explanation, and she was not less willing.

"Jasper," says she of a sudden, "have you read what I wrote in the book?"

"To the last line," said I.

"And, reading it, you will ask Edmond to help you?"

"Miss Ruth," said I, "how shall one man judge another? Ships come to this shore, and are wrecked on it. Now and then, perchance, there is foul play among the hands. Are you sure that your husband has any part in it—are you sure he's as bad as you think him?"

Well, instead of answering me, she stood up suddenly and let her dress fall by the shoulder-knots. I saw the white flesh beneath bruised and wealed, as though a whip had cut it, and I knew that this was her witness to her story. What was in my heart at such a sight I would have no man know; but my fingers closed about the pistol I carried, and my tongue would speak no word.

"Why do you compel me to speak?" she went on, meanwhile. "Am I to tell of all the things I have seen and suffered on this dreadful place in the year—can it be only that?—the long, weary year I have lived here? Do you believe, Jasper, that a man can fill his house with gold as this is filled—this wild house so far from the world—and fill it honestly? Shall I say, 'Yes, I have misjudged him,' the man who has shot my servant here in this room and left me with the dead? Shall I say that he is a good man because sometimes, when he has ceased to kill and torture those who serve him, he acts as other men? Oh, I could win much if I could say that; I could win, perhaps, all that a woman desires. But I shall never speak—never; I shall live as I am living until I am old, when nothing matters!"

It was a very bitter and a very surprising thing for me to hear her speak in this way. Trouble I knew she must have suffered on Ken's Island; but this was a story beyond all imagination. And what could I say to her, what comfort give her—I, a rough-hearted sailor, who, nevertheless, would have cut off my own right hand if that could have served her? Indeed, to be truthful, I had nothing to say, and there we were for many minutes, she upon one side of the fire and I upon the other, as two that gazed into the reddening embers and would have found some old page of our life therein recorded.

"Miss Ruth," said I at last, and I think she knew what I meant, "I would have given much not to have heard this thing to-night; but as it is spoken—if it were twenty times as bad for me and those with me—I am glad we came to Ken's Island. The rest you will anticipate and there is no need for me to talk about it. The day that sees me sail away will find a cabin-passenger aboard my ship. Her name I will not mention, for it is known to you. Aye, by all a man's promise she shall sail with me or I will never tread a ship's deck again."

It was earnestly meant, and that, I am sure, Miss Ruth knew, for she put her hand upon mine, and, though she made no mention of what I had said, there was a look in her eyes which I was glad to see there. Her next question surprised me altogether.

"Jasper," she asked, with something of a smile, "do you remember when I was married?"

"Remember it!" cried I; and I am sure she must have seen the blood rush up to my face. "Why, of course, I remember it! How should a man forget a thing like that?"

"Yes," she went on, and neither looked at the other now, "I was a girl then, and all the world was my playground. Every day was a flower to pick; the night was music and laughter. How I used to people the world my hopes created—such romantic figures they were, such nonsense! When Edmond Czerny met me at Nice, I think he understood me. Oh, the castles we built in the air, the romantic heights we scaled, the passionate folly with which we deceived ourselves! 'The world is for you and I,' he said, 'in each other's hearts'; and I, Jasper, believed him, just because I had not learnt to be a woman. His own story fascinated me; I cannot tell how much. He had been in all countries; he knew many cities; he could talk as no man I had ever met. Perhaps, if he had not been so clever, it would have been different. All the other men I knew, all except one, perhaps——!"

"There was one, then," said I, and my meaning she could not mistake.

But she turned her face from me and would not name the man.

"Yes," she went on, without noticing it, "there was one; but I was a child and did not understand. The others did not interest me. Their king was a cook; their temple the Casino. And then Edmond spoke of his island home; I was to be the mistress of it, and we were to be apart from all the world there. I did not ask him, as others might have asked him, 'What has your life been? Why do you love me?' I was glad to escape from it all, that little world of chatter and unreality, and I said, 'I will be your wife.' We left Europe together and went first to San Francisco. Life was still in a garden of roses. If I would awake sometimes to ask myself a question, I could not answer it. I was the child of romance, but my world was empty. Then one day we came to Ken's Island, and I saw all its wonders, and I said, 'Yes, we will visit here every year and dream that it is our kingdom.' I did not know the truth; what woman would have guessed it?"

"You learnt it, Miss Ruth, nevertheless," said I, for her story was just what I myself had imagined it to be. "You were not long on Ken's Island before you knew the truth."

"A month," she said, quietly. "I was a month here, and then a ship was wrecked. My husband went out with the others; and from the terrace before my windows I saw—ah, God! what did I not see? Then Edmond returned and was angry with the servant who had permitted me to see. He shot him in this room before my face. He knew that his secret was mine, he knew that I would not share it. The leaves of the rose had fallen. Ah! Jasper, what weeks of terror, of greed, of tears—and now you—you in this house to end it all!"

I sat for a long while preoccupied with my own thoughts and quite unable to speak to her. All that she had told me was no surprise, no new thing; but I believe it brought home to me for the first time the danger of my presence in that house, and all that discovery meant to the four shipmates who waited for me down below in the cavern.

For if this man Czerny—a madman, as I always say—had shot down a servant before this gentle girl, what would he do to me and the others, sworn enemies of his, who could hang him in any city where they might find him; who could, with one word, give his dastardly secret to the world; who could, with a cry, destroy this treasure-house, rock-built though it might be? What hope of mercy had we from such a man? And I was sitting there, it might be, within twenty paces of the room in which he slept; Miss Ruth's hand lay in my own. What hope for her or for me, I ask again? Will you wonder that I said, "None; just none! A thousand times none"! The island itself might well be a mercy beside such a hell as this.

"Miss Ruth," said I, coming to myself at last, "how little I thought when you went up to the great cathedral in Nice a short year ago that such a sunny day would end so badly! It is one of the world's lotteries; just that and nothing more. Edmond Czerny is no sane man, as his acts prove. Some day you will blot it all out of your life as a page torn and forgotten. That your husband loved you in Nice, I do believe; and so much being true, he may come to reason again, and reason would give you liberty. If not, there are others who will try—while they live. He must be a rich man, a very rich man, must Edmond Czerny. God alone knows why he should sink to such an employment as this."

"He has sunk to it," she said, quickly, "because gold is fed by the love of gold. Oh, yes, he is a rich man, richer than you and I can understand. And yet even my own little fortune must be cast upon the pile. A month ago he compelled me to sign a paper which gives up to him everything I have in the world. He has no more use for me, Jasper; none at all! He has sent my only living relative away from me. When you go back to England they will tell you that I am dead. And it will be true—true; oh, I know that it will be true."

She had come to a very low state, I make sure, to utter such a word as this, and it was a sorry thing for me to hear. To console her when I myself was in a parlous plight was just as though one drowning man should hold out his hand to another. To-morrow I myself might be flung into that very ocean whose breakers I could hear rolling over the glass of the curtained windows. And what of little Ruth then?

That question I did not answer. Words were on my lips—such words as a driven man may speak—when there came to us from the sea without the boom of a distant gun, and, Miss Ruth springing to her feet, I heard a great bell clang in the house and the rush of men and the pattering of steps; and together, the woman I loved and I, we stood with beating hearts and white faces, and told each other that a ship was on the rocks and that Edmond Czerny's devils were loose.

CHAPTER XVIII

CHANCE OPENS A GATE FOR JASPER BEGG, AND HE PASSES THROUGH

The devils were out; never once did I doubt it. The alarm bell ringing loudly in the corridor, the tramp of feet as of an army marching, the cry of man to man proclaimed the fact beyond any cavil. If the clang of arms and the loud word of command had found me unwilling to believe that sailors must die that night on the reef to the southward side, the voice of Edmond Czerny himself, crying by the very door behind which I stood, would have answered the question for good and all. For Czerny I heard, I would have staked my life on it—Czerny, whom last I had seen at Nice on the morning of his marriage.

"To the work, to the work!" I heard him shouting; "let Steinvertz come to me. There is a ship on the Caskets—a ship, do you hear?"

His voice was hoarse and high-pitched, like the voice of a man half mad with delirium. Those that answered him spoke in terms not less measured. Had a pack of wild hounds been slipped suddenly to its prey, no howls more terrifying could have been heard than those which echoed in that house of mystery. And then, upon the top of the clamour, as though to mark the meaning of it, came silence, a silence so awesome that I could hear myself breathing.

"They've left the house, then," I said to Miss Ruth in a whisper; "that's something to be glad about!"

She passed the remark by and, seating herself in a chair, she buried her face in her hands. I could hear her muttering "God help them—God help them!" and I knew that she spoke of those dying out on the dangerous reef. For the time being she seemed to have forgotten my presence; but, after a spell, she looked up suddenly and answered the question.

"Yes," she said; "my husband will be on the yacht. He has not the courage to be anywhere else. You and I are quite alone now, Jasper."

My fingers closed tight about my seaman's cap, and I went to the door and unlocked it. Strong and clear in my head, and not to be denied, was something which seemed to set my brain on fire. "My God," I said, "what does it mean?" Was it chance or madness that I should pass it by?

"There would be men below at the furnaces and others standing to guard," I put it to her; "how many in all do you make out that a man might chance to meet if he went below just now, Miss Ruth?"

She became very calm at the words, I thought, and stood up that she might take my words more readily.

"Jasper!" she exclaimed, "what are you going to do, Jasper?"

"God knows," said I. "Tell me how many men there are in this house."

She stood and thought about it. The flushed face told the story of her hopes. Neither of us would speak all that came leaping to our tongues.

"There would be five, I think, in the engine-house and six for the guards," she said, and I could almost see her counting them; "the lower gate is the second in the corridor. There is a ladder there, and—oh, Jasper, what do you mean?" she asked again.

"Mean?" said I; "why this: that it is time my shipmates shared your hospitality. Aye, we'll bring them along," says I, "Seth Barker and the others. And then," says I, coming quite close to her, "the luck being with us, we'll shut the doors. Do you say there are two of them?"

She said that there were two; one for the men, a small gate on the reef; the other for Czerny—they called it the great gate. "And, oh," she cried, while her very gladness seemed to thrill me through—"oh, if you could, if you could, Jasper—!"

"Whether I can or no the night will prove," said I, more quietly than before. "One thing is sure, Miss Ruth, that I am going to try. It's worth the trying, indeed it is. Do you find your own room and know nothing at all about it. The work below is men's work, and there are men, thank God, to do it."

You say that it was a boast; aye, perhaps it was that, yet what a boast! For think of it. Here at the very moment when it appeared that our lives were at Czerny's mercy, at this very moment when we must look to his cruel hand for succour or sleep in the death-pit of the island, there comes this message from the sea and the devils go out. There is not a sound in the house, and I know that my comrades are waiting for my word. I have three brave men behind me; the peril fires my blood so that, man or devil against me, I care nothing for either. Was it a boast for a man to stake all on a throw at such an hour? Not so, truly, but just what any English seaman would have done, saying, "All or nothing, the day or the night," as chance should decide for him.

Now, my hand was upon the key when I told little Ruth that it was men's work, and without waiting to hear her wise displeasure I opened the door and stepped out into the silent hall. One man alone kept watch there, and he was in the shadows, so that I could not see his face or tell if he were armed. I knew that this man was the first between me and my liberty, and without a moment's hesitation I crossed the hall; and aware of all the risks I took, understanding that a word of mine might bring the guard down from the sea, I clapped a pistol to the sentry's head and let him know my pleasure.

"Open that gate, Benno Regnarte!" said I.

He was a short man, burly, with curly hair, and not an unpleasant face. So quick had I come upon him, so strange, perhaps, he thought it that I named him at hazard, that he fell back against the iron and stood there gaping like one who had seen a bogey in the dark. Never, I believe, in all this world was a seaman so frightened. He could not speak or utter a sound, or even raise his hand. He just stood there like a shivering fool.

"Benno Regnarte, open that gate!" I repeated, seeing that I had the name all right; "I'll give you half a minute."

The threat brought him to his senses. Without a word, a sign, a sound, he opened the iron doors and waited for me to go through.

"Now," said I, "give me those keys and march on. And by the heaven above me, if you open your lips far enough for a fly to go in, I'll shoot you dead where you stand!"

He gave me the keys with a hand that trembled so that he nearly dropped them. In spite of my injunction he mumbled something, and I was not unwilling to hear it.

"I am the friend of Mme. Czerny," said he, cringingly; "trust me, signor, for God's sake trust me!"

"When you earn the trust," said I, grimly; "now march, and remember!"

I let him go through, and then locked the iron doors behind me. Miss Ruth, at least, must be protected from the rogues below. The lamps in the corridor were still burning, and, by here and there, I thought that I saw figures in the shadows. But no man hailed me, and when I came to the great dormitory which, at first passing, was full of seamen, I found the door of it open and no more than six or seven men still about its tables. If they heard me come up they suspected nothing. I shall always say that the brightest idea of that night was the one which came to me while I stood by the open door and counted the devils that Czerny had left to guard his house. For what should I do, upon the oddest impulse, but put my hand round the door very quietly and, closing it without noise, turn the key first in the lock and then in my pocket.

"Six," said I to the man before me; "and you make seven. How many more in this place now, Benno Regnarte?"

He held up his hands and began to count.

"In the engine-room one, two, three," he said; "upon the ladder hereby two; at the great door two more. Seven men altogether, signor. Your party will be more than that?"

I laughed at his notion, and, seeing that the man still shivered with fear and was not to be counted, I went straight ahead to the greater work I had to do. Already the alarm was raised in the room behind me, and men were beating with their fists upon the iron door. It was ten to one that their cries must be heard and one of the sentinels called from the sea; but, miracle if you will, or greed of plunder if that is the better term, none came; none answered that heavy knocking. And I—why, I was at the cavern's head by that time, and, opening the trap, I had spoken to my shipmates.

"Up you come, every one of you—up for your lives!" cried I. "Do you, Seth Barker, lift the doctor, and let Peter Bligh follow after. There's no time to lose, lads—no time at all."

I took them by surprise, be sure of it. That opening trap, the light flashing down upon them, the message when they had begun to despair of any message, the call to action—aye, how they leaped up to answer me with ready words!

"To God be the glory!" cries Peter Bligh, and I can hear him now. "To God be the glory! 'It was the captain's voice,' says I, before ever you spake a word."

"And oh, aren't we sick of it—just sick of it!" chimes in Dolly Venn as he climbs the ladder like a cat and stands willingly at my side.

I pressed his hand, and showed him the revolver I carried.

"Whip it out, lad, whip it out," said I; "we've work to do to-night for ourselves and another. Oh, I count on you all, Dolly, as I never counted before!"

He would have said something to this, I make sure, but the others came through the trap while I spoke, and four more astonished men never stood in a cavern to ask, "What next?"

"The ladder to the reef side," said I, putting their surprise by and turning to the Italian in whose hands our lives might lie; "can men hold the top of it, or is it best taken by the sea?"

He answered me with a dramatic gesture and a face which spoke his warning.

"At the rockside it is straight; they shoot you from the top, captain. No man go up there from this place. They fire guns, make noise."

"And the report will call the others," said I. "So be it; but we'll close that door, anyway."

It was Greek to the others, and they gaped at the words. From the room which I had locked loud shouts were to be heard and heavy blows upon the iron panels. That such cries would call men from the sea presently, I knew well. We had but a few minutes in which to act, and they were precious beyond all words. The gate must be shut though a hundred lay concealed in the rooms of mystery about us. On our part we staked all on chance; we threw the glove blindly to fortune. And, remember, I alone knew anything of that house in which we stood; that house, above which the sea ever rolled her crested breakers and lifted her eerie chantry. My shipmates were but astonished strangers, not willing to go back, yet half afraid of that which lay before them. The bright lights in the caverns, the dark doors opening into darkness, and upon these the great corridor, so vast, so gloomy, so mysterious, were to them new pictures in a wonderland the like to which they had never seen before and will never see again.

"What place is this, and where is the best parlour?" asks Peter Bligh, his clumsy head blundering to a question even at such a time. "'Tis laid out for a small and early, and crowns to be broken," says he. "Have you took it furnished, or are there neighbours, sir? 'Tis a queer house entirely."

I cut him short and turned to the doctor.

"What news of the foot, sir?" I asked him; "how are you feeling now?"

He replied light-heartedly enough, wishful, I could see, to make light of it.

"Like a man who has bought a wooden leg and prefers the old one," said he; asking at the same time, "What's the course, captain, and why do we follow it?"

"The course," said I, "is to Mme. Czerny's boudoir, and a good couch to lie upon. Do you two get on as fast as you can and leave us to the parley. It's coming, sure enough, and lame men won't help the argument. We'll need your help by-and-bye, doctor, when the heads are broken."

I made the guess at hazard, little knowing how near the truth it was to prove. We were almost at the head of the first stairway by this time, and the uproar in the corridor might have awakened the seven sleepers. Impossible, I said, that such a warning should not bring in men from the sea, sentinels who would ask by whose hand the key had been turned; but the danger lay behind us in the shadows where we had not looked for it. Aye, the three in the engine-house, how came I to forget them? They were atop of us before the doctor was out of hearing, and a great hulking German, his face smeared with soot and a bar of iron in his hands, caught me by the shoulder and swung me round almost before I had done speaking.

"Who, in thunder, are you?" asks he. It was a question which had to be answered.

Now, I had picked up a wrinkle or two about "rough-and-tumbles" in the years I traded to Yokohama, and though my heart was in my mouth and it was plain to me that this was the crisis of the night, when a single unlucky stroke or misspoken word might undo all that chance had done for us, I nevertheless kept my wits about me, and letting the man turn me round as he willed I presently caught his arm between both of mine and almost broke the bone of it. Upon which he lifted up a cry you might have heard at the sword-fish reef, and writhing down I struck him with all my force and he fell insensible.

"Seven and one makes eight," said I, and a man might forgive himself for boasting at such a time; for, mark you, but two were left to deal with, and while one was making for little Dolly Venn, Peter Bligh had the throat of the other in such a grip that his friends might well have said, "God help him!"

"Hold him, Peter, hold him!" cried I, my blood fired and my tongue set loose; but there was no need to be anxious for Mister Bligh, I do assure you.

"He'll need new teeth to-morrow, and plenty of 'em!" says he, shaking the man as a dog shakes a rat. "Aye, go on, captain, the fun's beginning here."

I waited to hear no more, but ran at the man who closed with little Dolly Venn. "Dolly's is the need," said I; though in that I was mistaken, as you shall see presently. And I do declare it was a picture to watch that bit of a lad dancing round a hulking Dutchman, and hitting the wind out of him as though he had been a cushion. Grunt? The lubber grunted like a pig, and every time he stopped for want of breath in come Master Dolly again with a lightning one which shook him like a thunder-bolt. No "set-to" that I have seen in all my life ever pleased me half as much; and what with crying and laughing by turns, and singing out "Bravo, Dolly!" and dancing round the pair of them, the sweat ran off me like rain, and I, and not little Dolly Venn, might have been doing for the Dutchman in the shadows of that corridor.

In the end, believe me, this foreign bully turned tail and ran like a whipped cur. It was all I could do to keep the lad from his heels.

"Next time, Dolly," cried I, holding him back roughly, "next time, lad; we have better work to do, much better work to do. Here's Peter needing a box for his goods—and a pretty big one, too. Is it over, Peter? Will he be talking any more?" I asked Mister Bligh.

He answered me by pointing to a figure on the floor beside him, stark and motionless and very still. Peter had played his part, indeed; I knew that the gate of Czerny's house was open.

"All together, lads," said I, leading them on now with a light heart; "all together and out of the shadows, if you please. We've another gate to close, and then—as God's above me, I do believe we have bested Edmond Czerny this night!"

It was something to say, a thought to thrill a man, and yet I would not dwell upon it, remembering all that lay between us and Miss Ruth's freedom—all that must be done in the doubtful hours before us.

"The iron ladder by which the men come in," I asked of the Italian, suddenly, "where is that, Regnarte?"

Now, this man had been very frightened during the brawl at the stairs-head; but, seeing the stuff we were made of, and being willing all along to join with us (for I learned afterwards that he nursed a private spite against Czerny), he replied to me very readily:

"The ladder is the second door, captain; yet why, since no man can go up? I tell you that two hold it, and they have guns. You cannot go, captain! What good the key when men have guns?"

"We'll see about that," said I. And cocking my pistol I strode to the door he indicated.

It was an iron door, opening inward to a small apartment cut out of the solid rock. For a while I could see nothing when I entered the little cavern—it laid bare; but, becoming used to the dim light presently, I took a few steps forward, and looking up I saw a rocky chimney and an orifice far up and the stars glimmering in the grey—blue sky above me. This, then, was the second gate to Czerny's house, I said; the seagate by which his men passed in. Here, as yonder where Miss Ruth's apartment lay, the reef lifted itself above the highest tides; here was the gate we must shut if the night were to be won. And who would dare it with armed men on the threshold, and a ladder for foothold, and the knowledge on our part that one word of the truth would dig a grave for recompense? And yet it had to be dared; a man must go up that night for a woman's sake.

Well, I took off my boots at the ladder's foot, and thrusting my pistol into my waist-belt I spoke a warning word to Peter Bligh.

"This," said I, taking from Regnarte the key I needed, "this opens the iron doors you will meet down yonder. If misfortune happens to me, go straight through and take my place. Hold the rooms as long as you can and let your judgment do the rest. Belike Mister Jacob will come back with the ship. I wish to God I could think so!" I added.

He nodded his head, and but half understanding what I was about he watched me anxiously when I put my naked foot with wary step on the ladder and began to go up. I saw him for a moment, a comrade's figure in the dim light of the cavern, and then thinking only of my purpose, and of what it would mean to one who waited for me, I clenched my teeth and began my journey. Below me were the little cave and the glimmer of a distant lamp, shipmates crying "God speed!" the hidden house, the mystery; above me that dark funnel of the rock and the sky, which seemed to beckon me upward to freedom and the sea.

If danger lay there I could not espy it nor detect its presence. Not a sound came from the open trap, no figures were to be seen, no spoken voice to be heard. The moaning waves upon the iron reef, the echo of gunshots in the silence of the night, alone spoke of life and being and the open sea without. And I went up like a cat, rung by rung, my hand hot upon the iron, the thought in my head that madness sent me and that I might never see another day.

No man appeared at the orifice, I say; the gate might have been unguarded for any sentinel I could espy. Nevertheless, I knew that the Italian spoke the truth, and that his reckoning was good. Edmond Czerny was no fool to leave a sea-gate open to all the world. Somewhere on the foothold of the rocks men were lurking, I made sure. That they heard nothing of their friends' outcry in the corridor below, that they did not answer it, was a thing I had not, at the first, understood; but it became plain when the chimney I climbed shut out every sound but that of the breaking seas, and gave intervals of silence so great that a man might have heard a ticking watch. No, truly, it was no wonder that they had not gone down nor heard that loud alarm, for they hungered for the wreck; for pillage and plunder, and all the gruesome sights Ken's Island that night could show them; and this hunger kept them at the water's edge, hounds kennelled when others were free, unwilling idlers on a harvest day. God knows, they paid a price for that when the good time came.

Now, at the ladder's head, everything was as I had seen it in the mind's picture; and even before I made the top fresh spray would shower upon my face, while the sea sounded as though its waves were breaking almost at my very ears. Unchallenged and, for all I could make out, unwatched, I grew bolder step by step, until at last I touched the topmost rung; and, looking over, I saw the white crests of the breakers and the pinnacles of the reef and the distant island under its loom of gold-blue fog. Halted there, with one hand swung free and my good pistol ready, I peered intently into the night—a sentinel watching sentinels, a spy upon those that should have spied. And standing so I saw the men, and they saw me; and quickened to the act by the sudden danger, I swung over the first half of the trap which shut the chimney in, and made ready to close the second with all the deftness I could command.

There were two men at the sea's edge, and they did not hear me, I believe, until the first door of that trap was down. Perchance, even then, they thought that a comrade played a jest upon them, and that this was all in the night's work, for one of them coming up leisurely peered into the hole and put a question to me in the German tongue. This man, my heart beating like a piston, and my nerves all strung up, I struck down with the butt-end of my pistol, and, as God is my witness, I swung over the trap and shot the bolts and locked the great padlock before the other could move hand or foot. For the foreigner fell, without a cry, headlong into the sea which played at his very feet.

"Shut—shut, by thunder!" cried I to those below, and gladder words a seaman never spoke to comrades waiting for him. "One gate more and the night is ours, lads!"

They heard me in astonishment. Remember how new this place of mystery was to them; how little I had told them of that which I do. If they followed me like the brave men that they were, set it down to the affection they bore me, and the belief that I led them on no child's errand. So much must have occurred to them as we gained the upper house and shut the iron doors behind us. The way lay to the sea again, the road most dear to the heart of every sailor. Let the main gate of Czerny's house be closed and all was won, indeed.

Aye, and you shall stand with me as, mounting a broad stairway beyond Miss Ruth's own door, I found myself out upon a great plateau of rock, and beheld the silent ocean spread out like a silver carpet before my grateful eyes, and knew that the house was ours—that house the like to which no man has built or will build during the ages.

CHAPTER XIX

WHICH SHOWS THAT A MAN WHO THINKS OF BIG THINGS SOMETIMES FORGETS THE LITTLE ONES

I was the first to be out on the rock, but Peter Bligh was close upon my heels, and, wonderful to tell, the Italian almost as quick as any of us. To what gate of the sea the staircase was carrying me I knew no more than the others. The time was gone by when anything in Czerny's house could surprise me; and when at the stairs' head we found that which looked for all the world like a great port-hole with a swing door of steel to shut it, I climbed through it without hesitation, and so stood in God's fresh air for the first time for nearly three days.

That this was the main gate to the sea I had all along surmised, and now proved surely. No sooner was I through the door than all the world seemed to spread out again before my eyes—the distant island, the shimmering sea, the blue sky shut to us through such long hours. The rock itself, where we gained foothold, lifted itself clear and dry above the breakers at my feet. There were steps leading down to the water's edge, a still pool wherein boats were warped, other crags of the reef defying the tides; these and the silence of the night everywhere; but of men I saw nothing. The bloody fight we had anticipated, blow for blow, and ringing alarm, the struggle for foothold on the rock, the challenge to Czerny's men—such things did not befall. We stood unchallenged on the plateau, and we stood alone.

I said that it was a miracle, and yet the Lord knows it was no miracle at all.

Let me try and describe this place for you that you may understand our situation more clearly, and how it befell that such a simple circumstance brought about such a strange turn of fortune. We had come up from the heart of the reef, as you know, and the staircase led out to a gate of steel opening in the face of a rocky crag, which stood well above the level even of the storm-seas. A lower plateau (unwashed by the sea) stood below the gate, and other crags jutted out of the sea and showed windows to the western sun. I made a bit of a map of the land and water thereby to keep it in my memory: and such as it is it will enable any one easily to get the position truly. If one places himself at the main gate of this house of wonders and puts Czerny's crew by the sword-fish reef, all will be plain to him.

The island lay perhaps a mile to the southward; and nearer to us, at a cable's length as I reckoned it, a group of rocky pinnacles in the open sea marked the door we had shut and the ladder by which Czerny's men went in to shelter. But the oddest thing of all was this, that the main gate to this house of wonders should be left unguarded at an hour so critical. Dark as it was, with only the soft grey light of a summer's night shimmering on sea and land, nevertheless the mere fact that we had passed unchallenged told me that we were alone. For why should two men let three pass up and raise no alarm when alarm might mean so much?

Could they not have struck us down as we came out, one by one, firing their guns to call comrades from the sea, and bringing a hundred more atop of us to end our chances there and then? Of course they could; and yet it was not done. No man hailed us; we had the breaking seas at our feet, the fresh air in our lungs, the spindrift wet upon our faces. And who was the more surprised, I at finding the gate unguarded or my comrades to discover that there was such a gate at all, the Lord only knows. Like three who stumbled upon a precipice we halted there at the sea's edge, and looked at one another to ask if such great good fortune could, indeed, be ours.

I have told you before that the Italian was at our heels when we gained the rock, and it was to him now that I addressed my question.

"You said there were two at the gate, Regnarte. Where are they, then, and what keeps them?"

He cracked his bony fingers many times, and began to gabble away vociferously in his own language—a tongue I like the sound of, but which no right-minded man should talk. When he came to some calmness and to a sane man's speech, he pointed to the pinnacles of the lesser gate and began to make the truth clear to me.

"You come lucky, sir, you come lucky, true! Hafmitz gone yonder; he and mate, too; he go to see why other men cry out!"

I saw it like a flash. The alarm had been given at the other end of the reef, and the two that should have guarded this, had put out in their boat to see what the matter was. If a man had wished to believe that Providence guided him that night, he could not have found a circumstance to help him farther on the road. I make no pretence to be what folks call a religious man, doing my duty without the hymn-books; but I believe, and always shall believe, that there was something more than mere chance on our way in all that venture, and so I set it down here once and for all. The fingers of the white man's God pointed the road for us; and we took it, fair or crooked let it prove to be.

"Luck! Luck's no word for it, my lads," said I. "If a man told such a thing ashore, who'd believe him? And yet it's true—true, as your own eyes tell you."

They had not found their tongues yet and none of them uttered a syllable. The wonders they had seen: that house of mystery lying like a palace of the story-books far down below the rolling Pacific; the surprise of it all; the picture of lights and rooms and of a woman's face; and now this plateau of rock with breakers at their feet and the island mists for their horizon; and, in the far distance, away upon the sword-fish reef, sights and sounds which quickened every pulse—who shall blame them if they could answer me never a word? They simply halted there and gazed spellbound across the shimmering water. I alone knew how far we stood from the end where safety lay.

Now, Peter Bligh was the first to give up his star-gazing; and, shaking himself like a great dog, he turned to me with a word of that common sense which he can speak sometimes.

"'Tis a miracle, truly, and a couple of doors to it," cried he, like one thinking keenly. "Nevertheless, I make bold to say that if they have a key to yonder hatch we are undone entirely, captain."

I sat upon a crag of the rock and tried to think of it all. Czerny's men would return in an hour, or two at the most, and the truth would be out. They would come—the seamen to the lesser gate, the others to this door of steel by which we sat—and, finding that knocking did not open, they would take such measures as they thought fit to blast the doors. A gun well fired might do as much if gun could be trained upon the reef. Once let them inside and it needed no clever tongue to say how it would fare with us or with those we sought to protect. No man, I said, would live to tell that story, or to carry the history of Edmond Czerny's life to a distant city. All that lay between us and life was this door of steel shutting like a port-hole in the solid rock. And could we hold it against, it might be one, it might be three hundred men? That was a question the night must answer.

"Regnarte," I said, upon an impulse, "you have guns in this house?"

He held up his fingers and opened them many times to express a great number.

"One, two, three hundred guns," said he. "Excellency has them all; but here one gun much bigger than that. You seamen, you shall know how to fire him, captain. Excellency say that no man take the gate while that gun there. Ah! the leg on the other boot now!"

Now he cracked his fingers all the time he said this, and shook his keys and danced about the plateau like a madman. For a while I could make neither head nor tail of what he meant; but presently he turned as though he would go down to the cabins again, and, standing upon the very threshold of the staircase, he showed me what I had never seen or should have looked for in twenty years—the barrel of a quick-firing gun and the steel turret which defended it.

"'Tis a pom-pom, or I'm a heathen nigger!" cries Peter Bligh, half mad at the sight of it. "A pom-pom, and a shield about it. The glory to Saint Patrick that shows me the wonder!"

And Dolly Venn, catching hold of my hand in like excitement, he says:

"Oh, Mr. Begg, oh, what luck, what luck at last!"

I crossed the plateau and saw the thing with my own eyes. It was a modern Krupp quick-firing gun, well kept, well fitted, well placed behind a shield of steel which might defend those who worked it against a hundred. Those who set it upon the rock so set it that not only the near sea but the second gate could be covered by its fire. It would sweep the water with a hail of lead, and leave unseen those that did the work. And the irony of it was chiefly this, that Edmond Czerny, seeking to defend the door of his house against all the world, now shut it upon himself.

"Yes," said I, at last, and I spoke almost like a man drunk with excitement; "give me shell for that, and we'll hold the gate against five hundred!"

The hope of it set every nerve in my body twitching; sweat, I say, began to roll down my face like rain.

"You have a magazine in this place," I continued, turning upon the Italian in a way that surprised him; "you have arms in this house and shot for that gun. Where are they, man, where are they?"

He stood stock-still with fright, and stammered out a broken reply.

"Excellency has the key, captain—I show you! Don't be angry, captain!"

He turned to enter the house again, and I followed him, as eager a man as ever hunted for that which might take a fellow-creature's life.

"Do you, Peter and Dolly, keep a watch here," said I, indicating the place, "while I go below with this man. We must hold the gate, lads, hold it with our lives! If the two yonder come back, be sure you close their mouths. You understand, Peter—close their mouths!"

"Aye, I understand, captain!" said he, very quietly. "They'll not sing hymns when I've done with them!"

I followed the Italian down the stairs, and we made for the great hall again. Many lights were burning there, and the figures of women passed in and out of the splendid rooms. At the far corner, opposite Miss Ruth's own apartment, the Italian came to a halt and began to gabble again.

"Excellency live here, sir," said he; "the gun-room—you go right through to him; but Excellency, he have the key. Me only doorman. I speak true, sir!"

I opened the door of the room he indicated, and feeling upon the wall switched on a lamp. It was the palace of a place, with great book-racks all round it, and arm-chairs as long as beds in every corner, and instruments and tables and pretty ornaments enough to furnish a mansion; but for none of these things had I eyes that night. Yonder, at the end of the room, a curtain opened above a door of iron; and through that door I saw at a glance the way to the gun-room lay. Ah, how my head tried to grapple with the trouble! The keys—where lay the keys? What chance or miracle would show me those? Was the key on Czerny's person or here in one of the drawers about? How much would I have paid to have been told that truly! But how to open it!

Now the Italian watched me with curious eyes as I went up to the door and drew the curtain back from it. A quick glance round the room did not show me what common sense was seeking—an iron safe in which Czerny's keys might lie. That he would keep the key of the armoury in the room, unless it were on his person, I had no doubt; and argument began to tell me that, after all, a safe might not be necessary. If alarm came it would come from the sea; or from the lower doors, which were locked against his devil's crew. I began to say that the keys would be in a drawer or bureau, and I was going to ransack every piece of furniture, when—and this seemed beyond all reason—I saw something shining bright upon a little table in the corner, and crossing the room I picked up the very thing for which a man might have offered the half of his fortune.

"Heaven above!" said I, "if this is it—if this is it——"

And why should it not have been? News of the wreck had come to the house like a sudden alarm leaping up in the night; the keys, which I held with greedy fingers, might they not have been in Czerny's hands when the bell clanged loudly through the startled corridors? I saw him, forgetful in his very greed, serving out rifles to his willing men, running up at hazard to be sure of the truth, leaving behind him that which might open his house to the world forever. And in my hand the fruit of his alarm was lying.

Ah, Heaven! it was the truth, and the door opened at my touch, and arms for a hundred men glittered in the dim light about me.

CHAPTER XX

THE FIRST ATTACK IS MADE BY CZERNY'S MEN

We carried the shot to the stairs' head, each man working as though his own life were the price of willing labour. If Miss Ruth had tidings of the great good fortune the night had sent to us, she would neither stay our hands with questions nor wait for idle answers. For a moment I saw her, a figure to haunt a man, looking out from the door of her own room; but a long hour passed before I changed a word with her or knew if that which we had done would win her consent. Now, indeed, was Ruth Bellenden at the parting of the ways, and of all in Czerny's house her lot must have been the hardest to bear. She had blotted the page of her old life that night and it never would be rewritten. None the less, a woman's courage could show me a bright face and all that girlish gentleness which was her truest charm. Never once would she speak of her own trouble, but always lightly of ours; so that we three—little Ruth, Dr. Gray, and Jasper Begg—might have been friends met upon any common adventure, and not at the crisis of that desperate endeavour. And so I think it will befall in all the perilous days, that what is written in the story-books about loud exclamations and pale faces and all the rest of it is the property of the story-teller, and that in plain truth you find none of these things, but just silent actors and simple talk, and no more noise of the difficulty than the common day will bring. This, at least, is my memory of that never-to-be-forgotten night. To-morrow might give us life or death—a grave beneath the seas or mastership of that house of mystery; though of this no word passed between us, but briefly we gave each other the news and asked it in return.

"Captain," says the doctor, he being the first to speak, "they tell me you've struck a gun-store. Is it true or false?"

I told him that it was true, and making light of it—for I did not wish Miss Ruth to be upset before there was good reason—I named another thing.

"Yes," said I, "we shall defend ourselves if there's need, and give a good account, I hope. For the rest, we'll take it as we find it. I am trusting that Mister Czerny will listen to common sense and not risk bloodshed. If he does, the blame be on his own head, for I shall do my best to make it easy for him."

"I know you will—I know you will, Jasper," says little Ruth, closing her hand upon mine, and not caring much what the doctor thought of it, I'll be bound; "we can do no more than our duty, each of us. Mine is very hard, but I shall not turn from it—never, while I know that duty says, 'Go on!'"

"That I'm sure you won't, Miss Ruth," was my answer to her; "if ever duty justified man or woman it justifies you and I this night. Let us begin with that and all the rest is easy. What we are doing is done as much for the sake of our fellow-men as for ourselves. We work for a good end—to let the world know what Ken's Island harbours and to keep our fellow-men from such a place. Accomplish that much, and right and humanity owe us something, though it's not for me to speak of it, nor is this the time. My business is to hold this house against the devils who are pillaging the ship yonder. The sea-gate I can take care of, Miss Ruth. It's what's below in the pit that I fear."

She listened with a curiosity which drank in every word and yet was not satiated. Nevertheless, I believe but half of my story was plain to her. And who blames her for that? Was not it enough for such a bit of a girl to say, "My friends are with me. I trust them. They will win my liberty." The arguments were for the men—for Mister Gray and me, who sought a road in the darkness, but could not find one.

"Two doors to this house, captain," says the doctor, after a little while, "and one of them shut. So much I understand. Are you sure that the cavern below is empty, or do you still count men in it?"

"'Tis just neither way," said I, "and that's the worst of it, doctor. The sea's to be held while the shell lasts and perhaps afterwards; but if there are men down below, why, then it's another matter. I'm staking all on a throw. What more can I do?"

He leaned back upon the sofa and appeared to think of it. Presently he said:

"Captain, a man doesn't shoot with his foot, does he?"

And then, not waiting for me to answer, he goes on:

"Why, no; he shoots with his hand. Just you plant me in the passage and give me a gun. I'll keep the door for you—by Jove, I will!"

Now, I saw that this promise frightened Miss Ruth more than she would say, for it was the first time that it occurred to her that men might come out of the pit. But she was just the one to turn it with a laugh, and crying, "What folly! what folly!" she called out at the same time for little Rosamunda, and began to think of that which I had clean forgotten.

"Jasper," says she, "you will never make a general—never, never! Why, where's your commissariat? Would you starve your crew and think nothing of it? Oh, we shall feed Mister Bligh, and then it will be easy," says she, prettily.

I made no objection to this, for it was evident that she wished to conceal her fears from us; but I knew that the doctor was wise, and before I left him there was a rifle at his side and twenty rounds to go with it.



"If there's any sound at the door of the corridor—as much as a scratch," said I, "fire that gun. I shall be with you before the smoke's lifted, and you will need me, doctor—indeed, you will!"

I left him upon this and went up, more anxious than I would have confessed, to my shipmates at the gate. I found them standing together in the moonlight, which shone clear and golden upon a gentle sea, and gave points of fire to the rocky headlands of Ken's Island. So still it was, such a scene of wonder and of beauty, that but for the words which greeted me, and the dark figures peering across the water, and something very terrible on the distant reef, I might have believed myself keeping a lonely watch in the glory of a summer's night. That delusion the East denied. I knew the truth even before Mister Bligh named it.

"They've fired the ship, captain—fired the ship!" says he, with just anger. "Aye, Heaven do to them as they've done to those poor creatures! Did man ever hear of such a villainy—to fire a good ship in her misfortune? It would be a sin against an honest rope to hang such a crew as that!"

I stepped forward to the water's edge that I might see the thing more clearly. Looming up upon that fair horizon were wreathing clouds of smoke and crimson flames, and in the heart of it all the outline of the ship these fiends had doomed. No picture ever painted could present that woful scene or describe its magnificence as we saw it from the watch-tower of the reef. It was, indeed, as though the very heavens were on fire, while the sea all about the burning hull shone like a pool of molten gold in which strange shapes moved and the shadows of living things were to be seen. Now licking the quivering masts, now blown aside in tongue-shaped jets, the lambent flame spurted from every crack and crevice, leaped up from every port-hole of that splendid steamer. I saw that her minutes were numbered, and I said that before the dawn broke she would sink, a mass of embers, into the hissing breakers.

"Good Lord, Mister Bligh!" cried I, the seaman's habit coming to me at the dreadful spectacle, "was ever such a thing heard of? And the poor people aboard—what of them now? What haven may they look for?"

"They've put the men ashore, sir," said Dolly Venn, hardly able to speak for his anxiety. "I saw two boat-loads go across to the bay while Mister Bligh was piling the ammunition. They've sent them to die on the island. And we so helpless that we must just look on like schoolgirls. Oh! I'd give all I've got to be over yonder with a hundred bluejackets at my elbow. Think of it, sir! Just a hundred, and cutlasses in their hands."

"Aye," said I, "and a tree for every rogue that rows a boat yonder. Well, my lad, thinking's no good this night, nor can you get the bluejackets by whistling. We haven't all served our time in a Queen's ship, Dolly, and we're just plain seamen; but we'll try and speak a word to Edmond Czerny by-and-bye, or I'll never speak another. Now, help me with your young eyes, will you, and tell me if that's a ship's gig yonder, or if it isn't——"

He said that it was a ship's gig, and he pointed out that which I had not seen before—a steam yacht lying off to the east of us and waiting for some of her crew to go aboard. Edmond Czerny would be on deck there, I thought, watching the hounds he had sent to the work; and if that spectacle of death and destruction did not gratify him, then nothing would in all the world. And surely such a sight even he had not beheld in all his years. That shimmering molten sea, the island catching the reflected lights and making its own pictures of them; the distant forests, whose trees lifted fiery branches and leaves of flame; the mist-clouds raining blood and gold, the burning steamer, the great arena of fire-flecked sea and the small-boats swimming upon it—what more of delight or devilry could Ken's Island give this vulture of the deep?

So much the night would show us as Providence willed and good hearts might determine.

Now, I have told you that little Dolly Venn had served in the Naval Reserve and knew more of gunnery than the most of us. To this, I bear witness, we owed much that night.

"You've got a skipper's part, Dolly, lad," said I, "and yon gig begins the trouble, if my eyes don't deceive me. Why, she's coming in here, lad, straight to this very door, just as fast as oars can bring her. And there's more to follow—a fleet of them, as any lubber could tell you."

"'Tis like a fete and gala on the old stinking Liffey," says Peter Bligh, peering with me across the busy sea. "A dozen boats, and every one of them full. I'd give something to see Mister Jacob to-night; indeed, and I would, captain. We are over few for such an 'out and home' as this."

It was rare to see Peter Bligh serious, but he had the right to be that night, and I was the last to blame him. Consider our situation and ask what others would have felt, placed as we were—four willing men upon a bit of craggy rock rising sheer out of a thousand fathom sea, and commanded to hold the gate for our lives and for another life more precious against all the riff-raff that Ken's Island could send against us. Out on the shimmering sea I counted twelve boats with my own eyes, and knew that every one of them was full of cut-throats. In the half of an hour or sooner that devil's crew would knock at our gate and demand to come in. Whatever way we answered them, however clever we might be, was it reason to suppose that we could hold the rock against such odds, hold it until help came when help was so distant? I say that it was not. By all the chances, by every right reason, we should have been cut down where we stood, and our bodies swimming in the sea before the sun shone again on Ken's Island and its mysteries. And if this truth was present in my mind, how should it be absent from the minds of the others? Brave faces they showed me, bright words they spoke; but I knew what these concealed. We stood together for a woman's sake; we knew what the price might be and made no complaint of it.

"We are over few, Peter," said I, "but over few is better than many when the heart is right. Just you drink up that grog and put yourself where there is not so much of your precious body in the moonlight. It will be Dolly's place at the gun, and mine to help him. There is this in my mind, Peter, that we've no right to shoot fellow-creatures unless they call upon us so to do. When the gig comes up I'll give them a fair challenge before the volley's fired. After that it's up and at them, for Miss Ruth's sake. You will not forget, Peter, that if we can hold this place until help comes, belike we'll carry Miss Ruth to Europe and shut down this devil's den forever. If that's not work good enough to put heart into a man, I don't know what is. Aye, my lads," said I to them all, "tell yourselves that you are here and acting for the sake of one who did you many a kindness in the old time; and mind you shoot straight," says I, "and don't go wasting honest lead when there's carrion waiting for it."