“Now, Captain, I have told you all. I am partly justified, if such a vow as mine can be pleaded as justification, but why are you in this business?” Her sudden inquiry, following her bitter denunciation of pirates and those who preyed on them, surprised and embarrassed me. I told her that I was in it only because of the adventure of it; that I had been attracted to the China Sea by Norton’s stories, and that once there I had naturally fallen in with the exciting life and become a part of it; and that all of my fighting blood was aroused and my soul glorified by the fact that the great pirate chief had sworn to crush me. “That is not a sufficient excuse,” she replied, promptly and decisively. “I had some reason for my actions, but you have none.” A moment later she added, gently: “I did not mean to pass judgment on you, for I have no right to do that. We must all be governed by our own consciences.” Neither one of us cared to continue the conversation and I was glad when she suggested that she would have a servant show me to a smaller bungalow, a short distance away, where I was to stay, though taking my meals at the “palace.” She advised a walk through the village and around the lake during the forenoon, and said we would walk toward the top of the mountain after lunch. I looked over my comfortable quarters and then walked back to the lake and went in a boat, with Deverell and Fennell, the “Queen’s” second officer, to the entrance, in which I was much interested. I found it to be just as it had been described. There were two gates, one on each side, about twenty-five feet high, above low water, and fifteen feet wide. They ran on small wheels in grooves cut in the solid rock and had been put in place, evidently, by building a cofferdam around the entrance. Below the water line they were built of heavy iron lattice work, so as to give the tides free ingress and egress. Above the water they were constructed of thick timbers, covered on the seaward side with iron plates. When they were open they ran back into nests cut into granite rock. When they were closed they came together diagonally, in the shape of a wide V, with the apex facing outward, so that the action of the waves only locked them more firmly. It was possible for two men to operate each gate, though six made quicker work of it. Their construction was as fine a piece of elusive engineering as I have ever seen. Their height was so arranged that there was no break in the coast line and they were, as the Queen had said, indistinguishable at a very short distance. There was just room enough over the sill to admit the “Queen” at low tide, and a larger ship could not have gotten through the gates or over the bar.