said, on the way down.
"They're too useful, though they often treat them badly. Meerta sent me
away to hide here the last time the strange bad men came. She thinks I
go hide to-night, but I won't; so, good-night."

"But surely you don't mean to put yourself in the power of the pirates?"
said Robin.

"No, never fear," returned the child with a laugh. "I know how to see
them without they see me."

Before further remonstrance could be made, the active child had bounded
up the pathway and disappeared.

Not long after Sam and his comrades had taken their departure, the
pirates came up to the cavern in a body--about forty of them--well armed
and ready to fight if need be. They were as rascally a set of
cut-throats as one could desire to see--or, rather, not to see--of
various nationality, with ugly countenances and powerful frames, which
were clothed in more or less fantastic Eastern garb. Their language,
like themselves, was mixed, and, we need scarcely add, unrefined. The
little that was interchanged between them and Meerta we must, however,
translate.

"What! alive still!" cried the ruffian, who appeared to be the leader of
the band, flinging himself down on a couch with the air of a man who
knew the place well, while his men made themselves at home.

Meerta merely smiled to the salutation; that in to say, she grinned.

"Where are they?" demanded the pirate-chief, referring of course to
those who, the reader is aware, were blown up.

"Gone away," answered Meerta.

"Far away?" asked the pirate.

"Yes, _very_ far away."

"Goin' to be long away?"

"Ho! yes, _very_ long."

"Where's the little girl they took from Sarawak?"

"Gone away."

"Where away?"

"Don't know."

"Now, look here, you old hag," said the pirate, drawing a pistol from
his belt and levelling it, "tell the truth about that girl, else I'll
scatter your brains on the floor. Where has she gone to?"

"Don't know," repeated Meerta, with a look of calm indifference, as she
took up a tankard and wiped it out with a cloth.

The man steadied the pistol and pressed the trigger.

"You better wait till she has given us our grub," quietly suggested one
of the men.

The leader replaced the weapon in the shawl which formed his girdle, and
said, "Get it ready quick--the best you have, and bring us some wine to
begin with."

Soon after that our friends, while conversing in low tones in the grove,
heard the unmistakeable sounds of revelry iss