s--dungeons for unhappy captives belike, or
strong vaults for the storage of the treasure--I tested the floors by
dropping heavy stones, and they seemed unmistakably to reverberate with
a hollow rumbling sound; but I could find no present way of getting down
into them. As I said, the staircases that promised an entrance into them
were choked with debris. But I promised myself to come some other day,
with pick and shovel, and make an attempt at exploring them.

Meanwhile, after poking about in as much of the ruins as I could
penetrate, I stepped out through a gap in one of the walls and found
myself again on the path by which I had entered. I noticed that it still
ran on farther north, as having a destination beyond. So leaving the
haunted ruins behind, I pushed on, and had gone but a short distance
when the path began to descend slightly from the ridge on which the
ruins stood; and there, in a broad square hollow before me, was the
welcome living green of a flourishing plantation of cocoanut palms! It
was evidently of considerable extent--a quarter of a mile or so, I
judged--and the palms were very thick and planted close together. To my
surprise, too, I observed, as at length the path brought me to them
after a sharp descent, that they were fenced in by a high bamboo
stockade, for the most part in good condition, but here and there broken
down with decay.

Through one of these gaps I presently made my way, and found myself
among the soaring columns of the palms, hung aloft with clusters of the
great green nuts. Fallen palm fronds made a carpet for my feet--very
pleasant after the rough and tangled way I had travelled, and now and
again one of the cocoa nuts would fall down with a thud amid the green
silence. One of these, which narrowly missed my head, suggested that
here I had the opportunity of quenching very agreeably the thirst of
which I had become suddenly aware. My claspknife soon made an opening
through the tough shell, and, seated on the ground, I set my mouth to
it, and, raising the nut above my head, allowed the "milk"--cool as
spring water--to gurgle deliciously down my parched throat. When at
length I had drained it, and my head once more returned to its natural
angle, I was suddenly made aware that my poaching had not gone
unobserved.

"Ha! ha!" called a pleasant voice, evidently belonging to a man of an
unusually tall and lean figure who was approaching me through the palm
trunks; "so you have discove