I told him to show the way and not to talk, though I was glad enough to hear the good fellow’s voice. His name was Machie, but a donkey ride at Cowes christened him Balaam for good and all aboard the _White Wings_. Very methodically now, and with a seaman’s widening lurch, he set out to cross the cavern, Okyada and I upon his heels and all the mesh of subterranean wonder about us. Here, for a truth, a man might have feared to go at all, lantern or no lantern in his hand; for the cavern revealed the source of the boiling springs, and there was one great chamber of the rock so dreadful to breathe in, so white with steam and scalding spray, that my own courage would have recoiled from it but for the example set me by these brave fellows. They, however, held straight on without a word spoken, and coming to a clearer air presently they indicated to me that we were approaching some place of danger, and must now go with circumspection. Then I saw that the cavern roof narrowed rapidly until we stood in a passage so regularly moulded that the hand of man might have excavated it. And beyond this lay the Atlantic, plainly visible though the night was moonless. Never did a glimpse of the open water cheer my heart so bravely. Liberty, home, my friends! A man is a man upon the sea, though every port but one be shut against him. And the breath of life is in his lungs, and the desire of life at his heart. Nay, who shall deny it? A sharp exclamation from the Scotchman, a sudden halt upon my servant’s part, quickly tempered these reflections upon liberty and brought me back to a sense of our situation and its dangers. That which they had seen, I now perceived to be nothing less than the figure of a man standing with his back to the rock as though guarding the entrance to the tunnel and there keeping watch, not only upon the path, but upon another figure which lay prone in the fair way and was, I had no doubt whatever, a figure of the dead. To come instantly to the conclusion that the dead was one of our own, and that he had been killed by one of the rifles whose report we had so recently heard, I found natural enough. Not only was it my thought, but that of the others with me, and together we halted in the cavern and asked what we should do. To be sure, we were not to be affrighted by a single sentry, though he carried a rifle in his hand; but the certainty that others would be within call, and that a single cry might bring them upon us, robbed us for a moment of any clear idea, and held us prisoners of the cave. “’Twould have been the firing that I heard syne,” the boatswain whispered. I turned to Okyada and asked him what we should do. His own uncertainty was reflected in his attitude. He stood as still as a figure of marble. “The master wait,” he said presently. “I think that I shall know if the master wait. Let the lantern be covered. I shall see by the darkness.”