"Stand up, Jack, and paddle for your life!" commanded Wat. He had often enough crossed Loch Ken in this manner, after having read Captain John Smith's Adventures in Virginia with profit and pleasure. "'Fore the prince!" cried Scarlett, indignantly; "I had just learned one way of it, sitting with my nose to the rear-guard, which as soon as I can make shift to do without the oar taking me in the stomach--lo, I am sharply turned about and bidden begin all over again with my face to the line of advance!" "Stop talking--get up and do it!" cried Wat, impatiently; "grumble when we get through. This is no sham fight on the common of Amersfort with the white-capped young frows sitting on benches at their knitting." Obediently Scarlett rose, grasped his oar short in his hands, and imitated as best he could in the darkness Wat's long sweeping stroke past the side of the boat, as he stood and conned the passage from the stem. The tunnel seemed long to Wat, who had formerly swum it swiftly enough with thoughts of Kate singing in his head. The dark dripping walls on either side of them stretched on interminably. Ever a denser dark seemed to envelop them. The gloom and weight of rocks above them shut them in. They had dived, as it seemed, into the very earth-bowels as soon as ever the boat swam noiselessly into the arched blackness of the water-cavern. "Now take your oar by the middle and stand by to push off if we come too near to the rocks on either side," commanded Wat, from the prow. "Aye, aye, sir," cried Scarlett, taking good-humoredly the sailor's tone and using words he had heard on his sea voyages. "Belay the binnacle and part the ship's periwig abaft the main-mast!" He muttered the last part of the sentence below his breath, and Wat, who straddled in the narrow angle of the stem, peering eagerly ahead and paddling to either side, was far too anxious to give heed. Suddenly the boat bumped heavily on a hidden obstacle. Scarlett went forward over a thwart and his oar fell overboard, and doubtless the latter would have floated away but for Kate's ready hand, which rescued it and brought it aboard, dripping sea-water from blade to handle. "Let me help," she said; "I can see very well in the dark." "Agreed," answered Scarlett, with infinite relief. "Old Jack is noways fond of butting at his enemies with a steering-oar in a rabbit-hole." So he took Kate's place in the stern, while the girl stood erect and picked the words of command from Wat--sometimes even venturing to advise him when with her more delicate perceptions she felt, more than saw, that they were approaching the shadowy-green phosphorescent glimmer where the water floor met the walls of the cave.