n onward by a broad opening, which, seen from their
fresh point of view, looked beautiful but strange.

"Is that--" began Mike, in a dubious, hesitating way.

"Yes, of course. Look: we don't know it from out here, but there's the
seal hole and our fishing place, where we caught the crab. It's all
shadowy inside, or we could see our kitchen and fishing tackle."

"No, no; it can't be," said Mike despairingly: "if it was, we should
come directly upon the smugglers' place."

"Yes, you'll see: we shall be carried by directly."

"But there'll be some one there. Here, quick: let's row away,"--and
Mike seized an oar.

"You can't row against a current like this," said Vince quietly; "and if
anybody had been in there they would have been awake and seen us long
before this."

"Then I don't believe this is the cove, and that can't be our cavern,"
cried Mike sharply.

"Very well; but you soon will. Now look: here we go. I say, how smooth
the walls of rock are worn by the water!--that accounts for our never
having been upset in the night. We shall see the big cave directly.
Shall we try and land?"

"Yes; no; I don't know what will be best to do. Yes; but let's make
sure first."

"And land when we come round again?" said Vince.

"Yes, if you like. I don't know what to say."

"Seems best way," said Vince thoughtfully. "And yet I don't know. We
might hide, for they've blocked up the passage; but they'd hunt us out,
as we couldn't keep hidden very long. And they'd know we were there,
because they'd find the boat."

"Perhaps they'd think we were drowned," said Mike; and then, excitedly,
"Why, it is the big cavern, Cinder!"

"Yes, it's the big cavern, sure enough; and if it wasn't so dark inside
we could see the stack of kegs."

There was no room for further doubt, as they glided by the mouth of the
great opening, with its wonderful beach of soft sand, and directly after
began to recognise the piled-up masses of rock. As they went on, they
saw the outlying masses round which the waters foamed and bubbled, but
became quite bewildered as they tried to make out which was the outlet
by which the smuggler crew had taken them and the captain through on the
previous day. They passed narrow rifts, but the water always seemed to
be flowing swiftly into the great basin in which they were and joining
the seething waters in their continuous round.

Vince pointed to this and then to that gap between the rocks, as the on