the night in
these caves, I have seen enough, and have enough imagination at the back
of it, to desire nothing so little."

"I will escort you," said the Doctor.

"That was implied," I answered: and after shaking hands with my kinsman
and promising to visit him on the morrow, I suffered myself to be guided
back along the horrible passages. On the way the Doctor Gonsalvez
paused more than once to chuckle, and at each remove I found this
indulgence more uncanny.

In the great cellar we came upon the sergeant of the 36th, still
slumbering. I stirred him with my foot, and, sitting up, he amicably
invited us to join him in a drink. I did so, the Doctor drawing it from
the spigot into a pail.

"Might be worse!" hiccupped the sergeant, watching me.

I agreed that it might be a great deal worse. Between us we steered him
out, through the tunnel, along the ledge, and so to the archway under
which Venus sparkled in the purple heaven. Here the Doctor bade us
good-night, and left me to pilot my drunkard down the cliff. At the
foot he shook hands with me in a fervour of tipsy gratitude: and I
returned the grasp with an _empressement_, a passion almost, the exact
grounds of which unless he should happen to read these lines and
remember the circumstances--contingencies equally remote--he will spend
his life without surmising.

THE HAUNTED YACHT.

A YARN.

If any one cares to buy the yawl _Siren_, he may have her for
200 pounds, or a trifle less than the worth of her ballast, as lead goes
nowadays. For sufficient reasons--to be disclosed in the course of this
narrative--I am unable to give her builder's name, and for reasons quite
as sufficient I must admit the figures of her registered tonnage
(29.56), cut on the beam of her forecastle, to be a fraud. I will be
perfectly frank; there is a mystery about the yacht. But I gave
400 pounds for her in the early summer of 1890, and thought her dirt
cheap. She was built under the old "Thames rule," that is, somewhere
between 1875 and 1880, and was therefore long and narrow to begin with.
She has been lengthened since. Nevertheless, though nobody could call
her a dry boat, she will behave herself in any ordinary sea, and come
about quicker than most of her type. She is fast, has sound timbers and
sheathing that fits her like a skin, and her mainmast and bowsprit are
particularly fine spars of Oregon pine; her mizzen doesn't count for
much. Let me mention the new