and seem
to be trying to brag as if to make me feel that you are not so weak as
you were then."

"Perhaps so," said the middy, laughing good-humouredly. "I was as weak
as a girl yesterday, but I don't feel so now; and though you are partly
right, and I don't want you to think me such a molly, I really am ready
to make a dash at it if you will."

"I'll do anything that I think is possible," said Aleck, gravely, "but I
don't want to be rash."

"Then you think it would be rash to try and dive out under that
archway?"

"Horribly," said Aleck, with a shudder; and at that moment the candle,
which, unnoticed through the dull horn, had burned down and begun
flickering in the socket, suddenly flashed up brightly, flickered for a
moment or two, and went out.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

"Ugh!" ejaculated the midshipman. "I don't feel half so brave now, and
I don't believe I dare go in here in the darkness, set aside make a
dive. Where's the tinder-box? For goodness' sake, strike a light and
let's have another candle. Oh, you oughtn't to have let that out!"

"Come along," replied Aleck. "I think I can find the way to the place
again. Mind how you come; there are so many stones. I say, why is it
that one feels so shrinking in the dark and frightened of all sorts of
things that we never dream of in the light?"

"I don't know, and don't want to talk about it now. Let's have a light
first. I say, we must do something before the candles are all burnt
out."

"Mind!" cried Aleck, for his companion caught his foot against one of
the pieces of projecting rock against which he had been warned, and but
for the throwing out of a friendly hand he would have gone head first
into the water.

"Ugh!" he panted, as he clung, trembling now violently. "I wonder how
deep the water is just there! How horrible! I say, don't let go of my
hand. What are you doing?"

"I'm feeling for the lanthorn."

"What!" cried the midshipman, aghast. "Don't say you've lost that?"

"I wasn't going to," said Aleck, rather gruffly, as he thought that his
companion was about the strangest compound of bravery and cowardice he
had ever met. "But didn't you hear it go down crash?"

"No, I heard nothing. Here, what's this against my foot?"

Aleck stooped down and found that it was the missing lanthorn.

"It's lucky it did not roll into the water. Now, then, all right. Keep
hold of hands, and let's feel our way to where I left the tinder-b