He found himself near the entrance to a small oblong chamber, perhaps twenty feet by sixteen, and scarcely eight feet high. The walls were shored up by thick balks of wood: the roof was supported by rough beams. The place was dimly illuminated by two lanterns standing on the top of a pile of barrels that reached within two feet of the roof. At the far end a man was working a windlass over a hole in the floor. Two barrels, slung on ropes, emerged from the depths, were unhooked by the man, and rolled against the wall on the other side of the chamber. A whiff of cold salt air struck gratefully on Dick’s senses; the smugglers’ mysterious hiding-place was clearly very near the sea. Dick was watching the man lower the hooks into the space beneath when he was startled by the sound of footsteps at no great distance behind him. Looking back, he saw a glimmer of light. Regress was barred; in a few moments he would be discovered unless he could find a new place of concealment. There was no time for hesitation. The back of the man at the windlass was towards him; the tackle creaked as more tubs ascended. In the corner of the chamber to the right was the stack of barrels on which the lanterns stood. There appeared to be just squeezing space between them and the wall. With his heart in his mouth Dick stole across to them on tiptoe, and had barely gained their shelter when the man released the tubs which had just ascended, and added them to those that were arranged along the opposite wall. As Dick was creeping between the barrels and the wall, his foot touched an obstacle, over which he almost stumbled. Fortunately, having no boots on, he made no sound. He stood still, panting, in desperate anxiety. In the urgency of the moment he had made for the first hiding-place that offered itself, without reflecting that the carriers were no doubt returning for these very barrels, and their removal must reveal him without a possibility of escape. A thrill shot through him as he felt a slight movement in the object at his feet, and he edged instinctively away from it, wondering what it could be. The light from the lanterns did not reach the floor; indeed, scarcely illuminated the space behind, they being closed in that direction. He heard the footsteps drawing nearer, and, peeping through a chink between two barrels, saw, not one, but the whole twenty-two carriers file into the chamber, which they nearly filled. He suspected that they had deposited their burdens at the foot of St. Cuby’s Well, whence, in all probability, these were being hoisted to the surface by means of the windlass, which he remembered having seen near the door when he first approached it from the seal cave. The man at the windlass had raised only a few barrels during their absence, and these having been slung on the shoulders of the men who had first entered, they returned to the entrance of the tunnel, waiting for their comrades in turn to receive their loads.