Champe thrust the candle flame among the dry pine splinters, and when the blaze began to murmur in the chimney, he filled a kettle from the water bucket bracketed on the wall and hung it on the crane. At this juncture my curiosity came to life. “Give it a Dutch name, Champe; whose house is this you’re making so free with?” I demanded, drawing a chair up to the table and sitting down to hold my buzzing head in my hands. “You’ve guessed it at the first word,” chuckled the sergeant. “It’s the Dutch boat-builder’s house, sure enough--or it was before I buried him in the cellar and took possession in the name of General Washington and the Continental Congress. That’s my dinner you’re looking at--or what remains of it. And there’s more where that came from--such as it is.” “But the man?” I exclaimed in honest horror. “You didn’t murder him, Champe?” “That’s as it may be. I wrapped him up in some of his own boat cordage, with a knotted turn of it between his teeth for quietness’ sake, and lowered him into the hold. Alive or dead, he’ll be there now, if the rats haven’t eaten him.” “This won’t do at all, Sergeant!” I protested in shocked deprecation. “The fact that the man happened to own a boat which we needed is no reason why we should turn rawhead-and-bloody-bones pirates. Bring the candle and show me where you have put him.” “Going to have him up for our supper guest, Captain Dick? He’ll be most awkwardly in the way, won’t he?” “Never mind; bring the candle and show me the way. Why, good heavens, man! what has the poor devil done that we should treat him as if we were red Indians? He may be one of our friends, for aught we know!” “He’s a Dutchman, and he builds small-boats for the king’s ships,” growled Champe stubbornly; but he took up the candle and piloted the way to a room in the rear, a bare shed of a place, with fire-wood stacked along two sides of it, a dismantled baking oven buttressing the chimney of the fore-room, and a great pile of the bricks heaped upon a huge square trap-door leading to the cellar. From a ceiling beam above the trap a stout iron hook depended, as if the cellar had been a ship’s hold to be filled and emptied with a block and tackle. Champe put his candle on the oven ruins and addressed himself to the task of removing the door weightings. The uncovering revealed a ring sunk in the planking of the trap, and when the door was lifted, an ill-smelling black cavern, with rude steps leading down into it, came into view. The sergeant swung into the dank pit and held up his hand for the candle. “Give me the glim and I’ll fetch him out,” he said. “There’s no need for two of us.” And when the yellow glow of the candle disappeared in the liquor-smelling depths I was left in the dark. It seemed a long time before the glow reddened again in the darkness below as Champe made his way back to the stair-head. “Come down, Captain Dick, if your head’s steady enough,” he called. “I’m fairly stuck.”