I took in a view of him before he saw me. His image was stamped on my brain in less than ten seconds. In the eleventh second, I was lying on my back in the gloom of the fern-growth, with this great ruffian on my chest, squeezing me by my windpipe. I cannot say that he spoke to me. It was not speech. It was the snarling wild beast gurgle which passes for speech in the slums of our great cities, as though all the filth of a low nature were choking in the throat at once. He was on me too quickly for me to cry out. I could only lie still, cackling for breath, while the fierce face glowered down on me. I understood him to say that he would have my windpipe out if I said a word. I suppose he saw that I was only a very frightened boy; for his clutch upon me relaxed, after a few awful, gasping moments. When he loosed his hold, his great hand pawed over my throat till he had me by the scruff of the neck. He drew me over towards the spring, as one would draw a puppy. Then, still crouching in the fern, he hurried me to a single stunted sloe-bush which grew there. “Go down, you,” he said, giving me a shove towards the bush. “Down th' 'ole.” Just behind the sloe-bush, under a fringe of immense ferns, was an opening in the earth, about eighteen inches high, by two feet across. It was like a large rabbit or fox earth, except that the mouth of it was not worn bare. I did not like the thought of going down th' 'ole; but with this great griping fist on my nape there was not much sense in saying so. I wormed my way in, helped on by prods from the file. It was a melancholy moment when my head passed beyond the last filtering of light into the tomb's blackness, where not even insects lived. After a moment of scrambling I found that the passage was big enough for me to go on all fours. It was a dry passage, too, which seemed strange to me; but on reaching out with my hand I felt that the walls were lined with well laid stones, unmortared. The roof above me was also of stone. You may wonder why I did not shoot this ruffian with my pistol. You boys think that if you had a pistol you would shoot any one who threatened you. You would not. When the moment comes, it is not so easily disposed of. Besides, a filthy, cursing pirate on your throat checks your natural calm most strangely.