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Descending the hill and returning to the cave, Sam found his comrades still asleep. Letta was assisting old Meerta in the preparation of a substantial breakfast that would not have done discredit to a first-class hotel.
Their language, like themselves, was mixed, and, we need scarcely add, unrefined. The little that was interchanged between them and Meerta we must, however, translate. "What! alive still!" cried the ruffian, who appeared to be the leader of the band, flinging himself down on a couch with the air of a man who knew the place well, while his men made themselves at home.
"Well, I never had such a narrow escape," said Sam, as he issued from the cave, still holding Meerta firmly, though not roughly, by the wrist. "Why, there's enough powder there, I do believe," said Jim Slagg, "to split the whole island in two."
Stumps, having sprained his ankle slightly, remained at the cave, for the purpose, as he said, of helping Meerta with the garden, but Jim Slagg gave him credit for laziness.
I was so glad, for they won't be back again for a good long while, and Meerta and Bungo won't get any more hard knocks, and whippings, till they come back." "Ha! they won't come back in a hurry not these ones at least," said Sam in a voice that frightened Letta, inducing her to cling closer to Robin.
Meerta merely smiled to the salutation; that in to say, she grinned. "Where are they?" demanded the pirate-chief, referring of course to those who, the reader is aware, were blown up. "Gone away," answered Meerta. "Far away?" asked the pirate. "Yes, very far away." "Goin' to be long away?" "Ho! yes, very long." "Where's the little girl they took from Sarawak?" "Gone away." "Where away?"
Then, descending the mountain on the side opposite to the harbour they disappeared in the dark and tangled underwood of the palm-grove. Letta went a short distance with them. "They won't kill Meerta or blind Bungo," she said, on the way down. "They're too useful, though they often treat them badly. Meerta sent me away to hide here the last time the strange bad men came.
"Not a moment to be lost, Robin," said Sam Shipton hurriedly, as he led the way back to the tavern, where old Meerta and blind Bungo, aided by Letta, had already cleared away all evidence of the late feast, leaving only three tin cups and three pewter plates on the table, with viands appropriate thereto. "Ha! you're a knowing old lady," exclaimed Sam, "you understand how to help us, I see."
"Mud no, not quite. I have got a glimmer o' su'thin'," said Johnson. "Ditto," said Slagg. "Supper," said old Meerta. "Ha! that's the battery for me," cried Stumps, jumping up. "Not a bad one either," said Robin, as they entered the cave; "alternate plates of beef and greens, steeped in some such acid as lemonade, cause a wonderful commotion in the atoms of the human body."
Snatching the lamp from his hand, old Meerta now led the party to a remote corner of the cave, where a number of large casks were ranged at one end, and covered with a sheet of leather. "Ha! ha!" laughed their wild guide, in a sort of screech, "here be de grandest jools, de finest dimunds of all, what buys all de rest!"
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