hungry sharks were seen tearing their
bodies in pieces, while the sea was tinged around with a ruddy hue. We
afterwards fell in with the ship the pirates had attacked, for which we
got a good round sum as salvage money, besides other substantial marks
of the gratitude of the merchants in the West Indies, for having
destroyed one of the greatest pests their trade had for a long time
known.

The pirates were hung at Port Royal, in Jamaica, and the evening before
their execution, one of them, for reasons I will some day tell you,
desired to see me. I visited him in his cell, and from him I learned
that the chief of their band, whose dreadful death I had witnessed, the
man who had led them into crime and ruin, was, as I suspected, Jan
Johnson, the smuggler.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning Mr Clare and Captain Mugford went over to ---, where
they found Commander Treenail, to whom they gave all the information
they possessed about the smugglers' cave. He heard this account with
surprise, for he did not suppose it possible that any spot of ground had
remained in that neighbourhood unvisited by his people. However, he was
a man of action; and immediately that he comprehended the facts of the
case, he signalled from his residence to a cutter which lay off in the
bay to get under way, and to wait for him to come on board. "You will
accompany me, gentlemen," he said to our tutors; "and as soon as we can
get the lads on board who discovered the cave to show us its entrance,
we will lose no time in routing out these smuggling vagabonds."

The old lieutenant commanding the cutter was waiting with his gig for
Captain Treenail at the quay, and they, with our tutors, were quickly on
board the _Scout_.

How proud Harry and I felt when the _Scout's_ gig pulled up to the
wreck, and we were summoned to show the way to the smugglers' cave. We
jumped with alacrity into the gig, feeling as if we had the whole weight
and responsibility on our shoulders of leading some important
expedition. Captain Treenail received us very kindly, and
cross-questioned us minutely as to the whereabouts of the cave and the
various articles we had found within it. The cutter, when rounding the
cape, had kept some distance from the little bay near which the cave
lay, so that, even had smugglers been on the watch near it, they would
probably not have been alarmed; the captain had hopes, therefo