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Show Or, The Adventures of s An Eton Boy... jj H3Y JAME8 GRAIN T. ; to its lase. by tha -way ofhTi bank, and to where the cascade ed over the rocks, waking the J, echoes of the otherwise silent raw Their instructions were to sLn themselves near the rocks which the Spanish legend to keep a h lookout on the face of the cliff zf. the way up to the grove of banarl trees that grew on its summit. Billy the cabin boy was left in char? of the hut and boat, while HlsioV with the rest of us advanced toward the cliff, up the sloping bank of wnlch Us only accessible point we mn. eeeded to climb. It was, or is (twelve months can make no change) a hundred and Oftv feet in height, as I have stated rls ing sharply up from the side o'f tha great mountain, and is covered by jungle of wild shrubs that must ha'v9 been growing there since the dava nf the deluge. ys ot The creepers with gummy branches the sharp serrated grass, the yellow gourd vines, the wild tendrils and plants of which we knew neither the names nor the nature, were there In terwoven as closely as a herring net to the depth or seven or eight feet from their roots. Amid this jungle the hum of the myriads of great Insects which we roused and dislodged was deafenlnn-while deafenlnn-while the black clouds of gad-files and cockroaches were very bewildering and, to say the least, annoying We floundered and fell as we waded through this sea of .leaves and verd-ure; verd-ure; hut rose and scrambled on again pausing ever and anon, breathless and' exhausted, to sit and fan ourselves or to aid in pulling each other out of thi CHAPTER XXX (Continued.) Whoever amo.:g us had done this was guilty of wanton malice and treason trea-son to the rest of his friends for friends we hoped we were, ns well as brothers in misfortune. We also examined the mutilated bread bag. In the side thereof was a clean slash a foot in length, made by some sharp instrument, and by this aperture the biscuits had been abstracted ab-stracted by some one who had inserted his hands through the fragile wall of our hut, which, as I have stated, was composed only of turf and branches. The theft had been committed in the night, but by whom? Was the thief one of ourselves? The eyes of each seemed to ask the hateful hate-ful question of the others, and to repel their inquiring glances; but soon after three of our missing biscuits were discovered by Tom Lambourne, lying a few yards apart among the long grass, as if the abstracter had dropped them during a hasty flight toward the woods or the Devil's Mountain. "In addition to ourselves there is was heard by them, and at the same instant both saw a flock of petrels and storm finches rise up in the moonlight moon-light from the face of the bluff, where they revolved above the breakers, like a swarm of knats in a sunbeam. So if Ned and the carpenter were, mistaken in the sound, the birds were also roused and alarmed. Mark Hislop ridiculed their story.but he was considerably bewildered, and so were we all when two days afterward after-ward a seaman named Hugh Chute, when rambling in the woods, found one of our goats, which we knew by the fragment of rope still tied round its neck, lying dead, with a bullet in its throat. He brought it to the hut, where the wound was cut open and the bullet extracted. It was small, and had evidently evi-dently been fired from a pistol; this event caused the most exciting speculations, specu-lations, amid which the carcass was hastily buried, as none of us would eat of it. What or who could this person be? were the prevailing questions; and some one else on this island," exclaimed exclaim-ed Hislop. emphatically; "and this accounts ac-counts for the loss of the studding-sail boom; and without delay, this someone some-one else must be discovered." We dreaded lest savages might be concealed in some of the caverns or woods, and that they might come upon 1 us in the night and slay all, or that they might make off with or destroy the long boat, our most valuable possession. pos-session. It was at once resolved that one of our number (to be regularly relieved) should remain in it day and night, armed with the hatchet, our only weapon, and that he should be well flogged if he slept or neglected the double duty of watching the hut and boat, which were close by each other. .'. ; j CHAPTER XXXI. ' The Mystery Increases. An immediate search was resolved upon. Lots were cast for the one who was to remain behind to guard our property and the duty fell upon me. Armed with the boat stretchers, or with clubs which they had carefully selected and cut from the trees, Hislop His-lop departed with all my companions; and after proceeding over the grassy plain, they soon disappeared in the woods that covered all the lower slope what was his reason for concealing himself from us, in the thick woods of the island? In the thorough exploration of the latter, caused by these episodes, our people fortunately discovered a fine grove of banana trees, and returned laden with their yellow and luscious fruit. At the same time Tattooed Tom found some letters "in a foreign lingo," as he said, cut on the face of a steep rock, overhanging the river, which formed the cascade at the beach. To this rock he conducted Hislop and me the next day, and after tearing aside some masses of creepers and scraping off a rich coating of moss, we found this old legend on the smoothed face of the basalt: "El Noble Caballero, D. Alphonso de Albuquerque; A. D. 1506. Rvgven a Dlos por el." "The year of the discovery of tha island!" is-land!" said Hislop. "Have other eyes ever seen this inscription in-scription since?" added I. "It is very doubtful. This Alphonso also discovered the Albuquerque Kays, as he named the three islets which lie off the Mosquito shore in the Caribbean Carib-bean sea." Hislop copied the inscription in to jungly network, for it resembled that which sprang by magic -spell around the palace of the sleeping beauty n the old fairy tale to baffle all Intruders Intrud-ers for a hundred years. Hislop, who had not yet recovered his strength, was among the first to give In, and declare, when half way up that "he could climb no further1" ' Two or three took advantage of th'n admission to remain with him for a time; but I, refreshed by a ripe banana ba-nana which had fallen from the trees at the top, and which I found juat at hand, pushed on, and being lighter than any of my companions, got ahead of them all. After half an hour's severe toil, during dur-ing which my hands and knees'were lacerated and torn by sharp blades of gigantic grass, and by the gummy creepers to which one's very flesh adhered ad-hered at times, I reached at last the banana trees, the foliage of which waved like a gigantic plume on the summit of this isolated rock. The banana rises with a stem which is about six or seven inches in diameter diam-eter at the root, and from thence tapers upward to the height of eighteen or twenty feet, to where the leaves spring like a bright green tuft, broad, wavy, feathery, and drooping, as those of the palm do. I uttered a shout an "Io poean!"- of the great mountain. I cannot describe the sensations of loneliness that came over me on finding find-ing myself for the first time single, alone, and left entirely to my own reflections and resources. The carpenter's hatchet was my only on-ly weapon; and armed with it I sat on a grassy slope midway between the hut and sea gazing anxiously inland, listening for any passing sound; but all remained still, save the chafing of the waves on one hand, and the loud buzz of tropical insect life in the thickets thick-ets or among the long grass on the other. What, I asked myself, if savages were actually lurking in the woods, and, on seeing that all my companions were gone, they should come tumultu-ously tumultu-ously down upon the hut and boat? I would at ence become their victim. his notebook, and just as we turned to leave the spot a large stone, about sixty pounds in weight, came crashing down the cliff, hurled, apparently, from its summit, and, if so, by no inexpert hand, for it struck the rock of the legend within a foot of where Hislop stood, and was shivered into a hundred hun-dred pieces, covering him over with dust. Had it struck him instead, he had been slain and mangled on the spot. Had a fragment broken any of his limbs, in how miserable a plight would he have been on that desolate island, without proper shelter or surgical aid? Looking up to the summit of the cliff, which was about a hundred and fifty feet in height, I perceived among the dense fringe of wild gourds.shrubs, leaves and plantain trees, then waving in the wind, something like a human to my companions, announcing that I had gained the summit before them, and armed with my only weapon, the teak-wood spear, pushed my way forward for-ward between the smooth stems of the bananas, till I reached the abrupt brow of the cliff, from the verge ol which I saw, far down below, the bright blue stream that rose on the slopes of the great mountain, running through the heart of the isle and glittering glit-tering in the setting sun among groves and ravines, to where it poured in foam upon the white sandy beach, and mingled with the mighty Southern sea. I saw also the figures of Chute and Carlton, as they stood near the rock which bore the inscription, but they could neither distinguish me nor hear my shout, which gave fresh ardor to those whom I had left half-way down, and who now resumed their ascent. (To be continued.) Or what would be my fate if my friends fell into an ambush, or perished per-ished in detail? Could any human beings be lurking in the two adjacent isles? was my next surmise. We had never seen anything alive on them not even wild goats or boars, and if there were other inhabitants! ythe steepness of the rocks, which rose sheer from the water, and the fury of the surf that rolled between, forbade for-bade any attempt to cross. So in such painful surmises, and in keen watching, I passed the most of the day alone. In the afternoon, one by one, all my shipmates returned to our little headquarters head-quarters on the shore, weary and jaded torn by briers and brambles in the thickets and all had the same tale to tell. They had seen and heard of nothing save wild boars, wild goats and sea birds. Hislop now directed that one of outnumber out-number should guard the hut by night, and a second the boat, with orders to hail each other in this fashion: "Boat, ahoy!" "Hut, ahoy!" This was to insure a watchful lookout; look-out; but with all these precautions wise and necessary though they vere' our feeling of security, and even of reliance on each other, was gone for the time. As these occurrences excited the imagination im-agination of our companions, some of those who watched the hut and boat by night asserted that when all our party, save themselves, were safely lodged and asleep, something like the figure of a very tall man had appeared for an instant on the bluffs that overhung over-hung the sea, between them and the moonlight. But of this mysterious personage if such existed anywhere, except in the overstrained imagination of a lonelv midnight watcher, we could discover no trace during the day. One night, when Francis Probart and Ned Carlton were on watch a Bound like the distant report of a oi'stol face, that, after peering over at us, was suddenly withdrawn. "That stone was never dislodged, either by goats or by accident," said Hislop; "there is not a vestige of clay upon the fragments besides, all the face of the cliff is smooth and solid rock!" "And it is the only place we did not overhaul yesterday, Master Hislop," said Tom Lambourne. "Then there must be the thief of our biscuits of our goats " "Of our stun'sail boom and my old guernsey. Let us have all hands turned up for a hunt again," exclaimed Tom. I now mentioned what I had seen. "A man! do you think jt was a man's head?" "I can not be certain. Hislop," said I; "it seemed a face of some kind, and a very hairj one, too." "It might be an old pumpkin," suggested sug-gested Tom, in his matter-of-fact way. "Or a goat at all events, it could not have been a baboon!" said I. "No, no; there is no such animal hereabouts, Master Rodney," replied Tom. "Man or monkey, goat or devil, we'll overhaul the place this very afternoon," after-noon," exclaimed Hislop, with increasing increas-ing energy, and anger; "but first we shall return with all expedition to the CHAPTER XXXII. The Mystery Solved All day the air had been unusually sultry and breathlessly hot, even for he tropics at that season; but when he sun sank westward, when the air became cooler, and the shadows of the island w,th its wooded bluff and towering tow-ering blue mountain, across the slope of winch the light gossamer clouds ay floating, half-way up, wei, thro v, fa. eastward over that lonely sea which no keel seemed ever to furrow we prepared for a further explor, Ion or, as Hugh Chute said, "to ovml that ere em from truck to keelson " Chute and Carlson were dispatched |