Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/248

234 quality than the anthracite we are accustomed to use, but very welcome when we are close pressed. He is filling his bunkers now, in case we should decide to break up this party before the end of the winter. That will depend on our friends over in Europe. We have given them a nightmare, but it won't last, and they'll go to bed again to get another."

"Who are your miners?" I asked suddenly, interrupting him, for I saw that the rock above the nameless ship was pierced with tunnels leading down to the shafts, and that forty or fifty coal-black fellows were shooting the stuff into the bunkers.

"These are our guests," he said lightly, "honest British seamen whose voyages have been interrupted. We give them the alternative of work in the mine, or their liberty on the snow yonder."

"But how can they live in such a place?"

He laughed as though the whole thing were a joke.

"They don't live," said he. "They die like vermin."

"I'm evidently afloat with a lot of fine-spirited fellows," said I; "or, to put it in plain English, with a beautiful company of blackguards."

"Why not say with a lot of devils—that would be more accurate? But you can't forget that you came to us unasked, and now you must stop."