a tiny spring of ice-cold water, which has worn a clean
rock-channel for itself to the sea. Otherwise the cave is
perfectly dry. The shining white sand of its floor is above the
highest watermark on the cliffs outside. There is no doubt in my
mind that in the great buccaneering days of the seventeenth
century, and probably much later, the place was the haunt of
pirates. One fancies that Captain Sampson of the _Bonny Lass_ may
have known of it before he brought the treasure to the island.
There were queer folk to be met with in those days in the Western
Ocean! The cave is cool at blazing midday, and secret, I fancy,
even from the sea, because of the droop of great rock-eaves above
its mouth. Either for the keeping of stores or as a hiding-place
for men or treasure it would be admirable. Yes, the cave has seen
many a fierce, sea-tanned face and tarry pigtail, and echoed to
strange oaths and wild sea-songs. Men had carved those steps in
the passage--thirty-two of them. In the sand of the floor, as I
kicked it up with my feet, hoping rather childishly to strike the
corner of the chest, I found the hilt and part of the blade of a
rusty cutlass, and a chased silver shoe-buckle. I shall take the
buckle home to Helen--and yet how trivial it will seem, with all
else that I have to offer her! Nevertheless she will prize it as
my gift, and because it comes from the place to which some kind
angel led me for her sake.

I left the cave and hurried back to the cabin for a spade, walking
on air, breaking with snatches of song the terrible stillness of
the woods, where one hears only the high fitful sighing of the
wind, or the eternal mutter of the sea. As I came out of the hut
with the spade over my shoulder I waved my hand to the _Island
Queen_ riding at anchor.

"You'll soon be showing a clean pair of heels to Leeward, old
girl!" I cried. Back in the cave, I set to work feverishly, making
the light sand fly. I began at the rear of the cavern, reasoning
that there the sand would lie at greater depth, also that it would
be above the wash of the heaviest storms. At the end of half an
hour, at a point close to the angle of the wall my spade struck a
hard surface. It lay, I should judge, under about two feet of
sand. Soon I had laid bare a patch of dark wood which rang under
my knuckles almost like iron. A little more, and I had cleared
away the sand from the top of a large chest with a convex lid,
heavily bound in