"You'll lose your life quickly enough if you stay," I said to the yelping fool, though, Heaven knows, the poor soul had gone through enough to turn her mind entirely. Her mouth grew like a round O, and I was preparing for another shriek when I suddenly thought of something. "Miss Connie will be quite safe with me," I said quickly, "and I shall put you in charge of Charles Thumbwood. You remember him? He'll look after you all right, Wilson." It acted like a charm. I had remembered Charles's attention to the pretty maid in the train. "Ow!" said Wilson. "Is Mr. Thumbwood here, then, Sir John?" "Very much so. You will be his especial charge, and the journey won't take more than three-quarters of an hour." The girl picked up the dressing-bag, which she had dropped upon the floor. "Then that will be all right," she said with a flush, and I wondered if she thought Charles was going to pilot the ship himself. How true it is that Faith can move mountains! No doubt Constance felt just the same about me as Mary Wilson did about Charles. ... We had come out into the cave, and had walked a few yards towards the looming bulk of the ship, when the telephone bell on the cave-side ahead of us rang furiously. It kept on like an alarm-clock, and telling the girls to remain still for a moment, I ran up and unhooked the receiver. A voice was bawling at the other end, so loud that the words rang and buzzed one into the other, and I could only distinguish one or two. I heard enough to know what had happened, though. "Chief ... coastguard police ... rifles ... all round the house on the moor were coming down ... two of us stay ... hold till last moment...." So that was it! Billy Pengelly, the coastguard, had made good. The wires had been at work while we had been about our mole-like warfare underground. The avengers were among the gorse and heather, and the remainder of the pirates were doomed.... "Come on," I shouted to Connie, realizing that there was literally not a moment to lose, and, alarmed by the excitement in my voice, they started to run. When they had come up to me, and I started to run with them towards the ship, there was a sudden thunderous report. Looking to the right, I saw that Thumbwood had taken cover, and was lying on his stomach behind the barrier. The open door was but a dim oblong of yellow light at that distance, and I could not see a yard down the passage in the rocks. Thumbwood fired again, and the echoing roar had not died away when something went by my ear with a vicious _zipp_, and I heard the splash of a bullet upon the granite. The pirates were coming down in force, and, finding themselves between Scylla and Charybdis, had turned at bay. I knew Thumbwood would keep them where they were for a minute or two, and I raced to the ship with Connie at my side. Wilson had fainted, and we had to drag her between us.