d to this dry cave.

This window I write by is the only daylight opening of the dry cave,
and it is full forty feet above the beach. But we had no nerve to look
deeper into the black guts of this awful place, and we decided to use
this cave. So, I rigged the handy billy, and we hoisted all the grease
in through the window, and stowed it. And we have taken up our
quarters here, and I have made a ladder from the rope of the handy
billy, so we can come in through the window, and don't have to pass
through that fearsome place where the hole is.

"There--that was written a week after the wreck," said Little Billy.
"The next one, three days later:

We have been here ten days now, and I think things look mighty black.
Silva's nerve is gone, and I have to fight to keep mine. The mountain
shakes continuously, and we fear it will erupt. And always, there is
the noise, the moaning in the hole, and the great rumble. It has got
Silva.

Silva has gone down to the beach to get shellfish. We are saving the
beef, as much as we can. I am glad Silva is out of my sight. He is
mad--and, God help me! I fear I am going mad, too. He sits and looks
at me by the hour, just looks, looks, and says not a word, and his eyes
burn.

I am feared of him. He is a murderer. He told me so, when his
conscience mastered him. He told me why he feared the hole. He drank
of the hot spring, and when he got a bellyache, he thought he was
dying. Then he told me that he was one of the hands on the _Argonaut_,
a dozen years ago, and that there was mutiny, and that he strangled the
captain with his hands. And he says the moaning down in the hole is
the captain calling him. He is very superstitious. Now he prays by
the hour, and then curses horribly. And he goes down to the edge of
the hole and howls at the captain. I try to talk with him, and plan to
reach the mainland in the quarterboat, but he shakes his head, and just
looks, looks. I have taken his sheath knife, but I fear to wake and
find him strangling me. But I will leave here, whether he will go or
not. Better to die at sea, than in this black place!

"Now--the next entry. Day or two later, I judge," said Billy.

He is gone! He was sitting opposite me, and suddenly he sings out
something in his own lingo, and sprang to his feet, and rushed down
toward the hole leading to the windy cave. He was laughing awfully. I
followed--but could not catch him. He jumped into the