eep you's nose out o' dat pie, Bungo, you
brute. Vous git sik eff you heat more."

Regardless of this admonition, the poor old man broke off a huge mass of
pie-crust, which he began to mouth with his toothless gums, a quiet
smile indicating at once his indifference to Meerta and consequences,
while he mumbled something about its not being every day he got so good
a chance.

"Das true," remarked the old woman, with another hilarious laugh. "Dey
go hoff awful quick dis day."

While Sam and Robin sat down to enjoy a good dinner, or rather
breakfast, of which they stood much in need, Letta explained in a
disjointed rambling fashion, that after a feed of this kind the naughty
men usually had a fight, after which they took a long sleep, and then
had the dishes cleaned up and the silver things locked away before
taking their departure from the cave for "a long, long time," by which,
no doubt, she indicated the period spent on a pilfering expedition. But
on this particular occasion, she added, while the naughty men were
seated at the feast, one of their number from their ship came hastily in
and said something, she could not tell what, which caused them at once
to leap up and rush out of the cave, and they had not come back since.

"And they're not likely to come back, little one," said Robin through a
mouthful of rice.

"Ha! ha-a!" laughed Sam through a mouthful of pie-crust.

"Ho! ho!" cried the old woman, with a look of surprise, "yous bery brav
boy, I dessay, but if dem roberts doos kum back, you soon laugh on wrong
side ob de mout', for dey screw yous limbses off, an' ho! skrunch yous
teeth hout, an' roast you 'live, so you better heat w'at yous can an' go
hof--fast as you couldn't."

"I say, Robin," said Sam, unable to restrain a smile at the expression
of Letta's face, as she listened to this catalogue of horrors, "that
speech might have taken away our appetites did we not know that the
`roberts' are all dead."

"Dead!" exclaimed the old woman with a start and a gleam of serious
intelligence, such as had not before appeared on her wrinkled visage;
"are de roberts _all_ dead?"

"All," replied Sam, who thereupon gave the old pair a full account of
what had been witnessed on the shore.

Strange to say, the old man and woman were much depressed by the news,
although, from what they afterwards related, they had been very cruelly
treated by the pirates, by whom they had been enslaved for many years.
Nay, old Me