Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/216

 their ship came hastily in and said something, she could not tell what, which caused them at once to leap up and rush out of the cave, and they had not come back since.

"And they're not likely to come back, little one," said Robin through a mouthful of rice.

"Ha! ha—a!" laughed Sam through a mouthful of pie-crust.

"Ho! ho!" cried the old woman, with a look of surprise, "yous bery brav boy, I dessay, but if dem roberts doos kum back, you soon laugh on wrong side ob de mout', for dey screw yous limbses off, an' ho! skrunch yous teeth hout, an' roast you 'live, so yous better heat w'at yous can an' go hof—fast as you couldn't."

"I say, Robin," said Sam, unable to restrain a smile at the expression of Letta's face, as she listened to this catalogue of horrors, "that speech might have taken away our appetites did we not know that the 'roberts' are all dead."

"Dead!" exclaimed the old woman with a start and a gleam of serious intelligence, such as had not before appeared on her wrinkled visage; "are de roberts all dead?"

"All," replied Sam, who thereupon gave the old pair a full account of what had been witnessed on the shore.

Strange to say, the old man and woman were