the bottom, very large, and Jerry said he
might as well have put 88 and had done with it. We folded the paper
up in the tinfoil that the chocolate came in and jammed it into the
bottle and pounded the cork in tight with a stone. Greg was all for
chucking it immediately, but Jerry said it would have a better
chance if we dropped it right into the current from the ferry going
home. So we cocked the bottle up on a rock and went back to the
pirate-cave-entrance place to finish a game of smugglers.

Wecanicut is a nice place to smuggle and do other dark deeds in, and
I don't believe we'll ever be too old to think it's fun. This time
we cut the rest of the tinfoil into roundish pieces with Jerry's
jackknife, and stowed them into a cranny in the cave. They shone
rather faintly and looked exactly like double moidores, except that
those are gold, I think. We also borrowed Aunt Ailsa's hatpin with
the Persian coin on the end. By running the pin down into the sand
all the way, you can make it look just like a goldpiece lying on the
floor of the cave. She is a very obliging aunt and doesn't mind our
doing this sort of thing,--in fact, she plays lots of the games,
too, and she can groan more hollowly than any of us, when groans are
needed.

This time we didn't ask her to, because she was reading a book by
H.G. Wells to Mother, and anyway all our proceedings were supposed
to be going on in the most Stealthy and Silent Secrecy. The moidores
and the Persian coin were all that was left of an enormous lot of
things which the villainous band had buried,--golden chains, and
uncut jewels, and pots of louis d'ors, and church chalices (Jerry
says chasubles, but I think not). Greg and Jerry had dragged all
these things up from the edge of the water in big empty armfuls, and
we stamped the sand down over them. It really looked exactly as if
the tinfoil moidores were a handful that was left over. Greg was
just giving the final stamp, when Jerry crooked his hand over his
ear and said:

"Hist, men! What was that?" They were having artillery practice down
at the Fort, and just then a terrific volley went sputtering off.

"'Tis a broadside from the English vessel!" Jerry said. "We are
pursued!"

We crept out from the cave and made off up the shore as fast as
possible. Jerry went ahead and jumped up on a rock to reconnoiter.
He did look quite piratical, with my black sailor tie bound tight
over his head and two buttons of his shirt undone. Gr