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364 She writhed back from his grasp, glanced around for help that was nowhere near, and saw the North Star again. The sight of the buoyant ship somehow steadied her. Perhaps, after all, Ben and Cap'n Harve would come. She would wait and pray.

The old man snarled out something, and so, with fingers clutching at crevices in the sea-wall, and listing against its sides all the way to maintain her balance against the threatening winds, she essayed the perilous path once more.

She closed her eyes when she stepped over the mound in the mouth of the cavern, still she did not advance far into its darkness, but sat near the opening where she could see that circle of blue, the only thing in that desolate place which told of hope.

The old man crouched down nearby, chewing ferociously and exercising his marksmanship on the vaulted walls. Now the skeleton seemed to delight his ghoulish fancy, and he began a ribald conversation with the old freebooter of long ago, whose sins could not have been redder or more numerous than his own. They were kindred souls; if the theory of reincarnation were only true, he might have been addressing the remains of his former self.

"Have a swig, my hearty," he hailed his new comrade, taking the skull in his hand and forcing the flask between the rows of teeth, after applying it to his own. "G— blast me hide if ye ain't a good mate, ye grinning deathshead! Ye ain't no kill-joy nuther, but a cheery . Many's the cup o' good wine ye've swallered, and blood i' the