ay off on a low stool was a dingy Spaniard with a telescope laid
across his knees, which every little while he would raise to his eye and
take a steady glance around the horizon to seaward. At other times he
would roll and light a paper cigar, murmuring some low ditty to himself
as he sent the smoke in volumes through his nose. A small brass bell
hung beside the shed near the battery, together with a telegraphic card,
which was connected by a wire strung on low posts, or hooked from rock
to rock to the stone building away up at the basin. To return, however,
to the building: the veranda rested on square rough masonry full twenty
feet from the ground, which was loopholed for musketry, and with but one
narrow slip of a doorway that fell like a portcullis, banded and
strapped with bars and studs of wrought iron. Within this stone
inclosure was a large and roomy vault, half filled with cases, barrels,
and packages, and at the upper angle was a narrow subterranean vaulted
passage, barred also by an iron-bound door, which led to a succession of
whitewashed chambers--dark, damp, and gloomy--and then on, in a
fissure-like pathway, to another equally strongly secured outlet on the
other side of the crag. Leading to the veranda was a tautly-stretched
rope ladder lashed to eye-bolts let into the natural rock below, and
hooked on to the edge of the floor above. This was the only approach to
the main floor of the building from the outside, though within were
heavy trap-doors like the hatches of a ship, which communicated to the
chambers beneath. The whole structure was of stone and tiles, roughly
built, but yet strong and durable, and capable of resisting any assault,
unaided by cannon, that could be brought against it. The floor was
divided into four rooms, the smallest used for a kitchen, the next for a
magazine of small arms, and the third a spacious bedchamber, which
opened into a large square apartment facing the veranda, and which
deserves more notice.

[Illustration: THE PIRATE DEN.]

The lofty ceiling came down with the slant, showing the bare red tiles
and heavy square beams which supported the roof. In one of the stoutest
of these beams was an eye-bolt and copper-strapped block, through which
was rove a long green silk rope, with one end secured by a cleat on the
wall, and the other dangling loose, and squirming, whenever a current of
air struck it, like a long, slim snake. Around the sides of the room,
which were paneled