But the delusion was short-lived; my voice broke the spell, and perhaps the consciousness of their idle alarm increased their rage. “Spies!” was then the outcry, and this dreaded sound brought from beds and tables the whole band. It was in vain that I attempted to speak; the mob have no ears, whether in cities or caves, and we were dragged forward to undergo our examination. Yet what was to be done in the midst of a host of tongues, all questioning, accusing, and swearing together? Some were ready to take every star of heaven to witness that we were a pair of Paphlagonian pilots, and the identical ones hired to run two of their ships aground, by which the best expedition of the year was undone. Others knew us to have been in the regular pay of the procurator, and the means of betraying their last captain to the ax. But the majority honored us with the character of simple thieves, who had taken advantage of their absence to plunder the baggage. The question next arose, “How we could have got in?” and for the first time the carousers thought of their sentinel. I told them what I had seen. They poured into his chamber, and their suspicions were fixed in inexorable reality: “We had murdered him.” The speediest death for us was now the only consideration. Every man had his proposal, and never were more curious varieties of escape from this evil world offered to two wretches already weary of it; but the Arab’s voice carried the point. “He disliked seeing men tossed into the fire; ropes were too useful, and the sword was too honorable to be employed on rogues. But as by water we came, by water we should go.” The sentence was received with a shout; and amid laughter, furious cries, and threats of vengeance, we were dragged to the mouth of the cave. [Sidenote: The Arrival of the Captain] There was a new scene. The tempest was appalling. The waves burst into the anchorage in huge heaps, dashing sheets of foam up to its roof. The wind volleyed in gusts, that took the strongest off their feet; the galleys at anchor were tossed as if they were so many weeds on the surface of the water. Lamps and torches were useless, and the only light was from the funereal gleam of the billows, and the sheets of sulfurous fire that fell upon the turbulence of ocean beyond. Even the hardy forms round me were startled, and I took advantage of a furious gust that swung us all aside, to struggle from their grasp, and seizing a pike, fight for my life. Jubal seconded me with the boldness that no decay could exhaust, and setting our backs to the rocks, we for a while baffled our executioners. But this could not last against such numbers. Our pikes were broken; we were hemmed in, and finally dragged again to the mouth of the cavern, that with its foam and the howl of the tumbling billows looked like the jaws of some huge monster ready for its prey.