only business at the Palace was to supply us
with food from the village, and to prepare
the food for eating—made their last batch
of Tortillas, and then left the ruins in a body,
at the usual trot of those savages when
they are travelling in a hurry.

When the sun had set, the darkness came
down upon us, I might almost say, with a
rush. Bats whizzed about, and the low
warning hum of Mosquitos sounded close to
our ears. Flying beetles, with lights in their
heads, each light as bright as the light of
a dozen glowworms, sparkled through the
darkness, in a wonderful manner, all night
long. When one of them settled on the
walls, he lighted up the hideous sculptures;
for a yard all round him, at the very
least. Outside, in the forest, the dreadful
stillness seemed to be drawing its breath,
from time to time, when the night-wind
swept lightly through the million-million
leaves. Sometimes, the surge of monkeys
travelling through the boughs, burst out with
a sound like waves on a sandy shore;
sometimes, the noise of falling branches and trunks
rang out suddenly with a crash, as if the great
ruins about us were splitting into pieces;
sometimes, when the silence was at its deepest
—when even the tread of the watch outside
had ceased—the quick rustle of a lizard or a
snake, sounded treacherously close at our ears.
It was long before the children in the women's
room were all quieted and hushed to sleep—
longer still before we, their elders, could
compose our spirits for the night. After all
sounds died away among us, and when I
thought that I was the only one still awake,
I heard Miss Maryon's voice saying, softly,
"God help and deliver us!" A man in our
room, moving on his bed of leaves, repeated
the words after her; and the ship's boy,
Robert, half-asleep, half-awake, whispered to
himself sleepily, "Amen!" After that, the
silence returned upon us, and was broken no
more. So the night passed—the first night
in our Prison in the Woods.

With the morning, came the discovery of a
new project of the Pirate Captain's, for which
none of us had been prepared.

Soon after sunrise, the Pirate Captain
looked into our room, and ordered all the
men in it out into the large hall, where he
lived with his big soul and his little body.
After eyeing us narrowly, he directed three
of the sailors, myself, and two of my
comrades, to step apart from the rest. When
we had obeyed, the bundle of axes which had
troubled my mind so much, was brought into
the hall; and four men of the guard, then
on duty, armed with muskets and pistols,
were marched in afterwards. Six of the
axes were chosen and put into our hands, the
Pirate Captain pointing warningly, as we
took them, to the men with fire-arms in the
front of us. He and his mate, both armed to
the teeth, then led the way out to the steps;
we followed; the other four Pirates came after
us. We were formed, down the steps, in single
file; the Pirate Captain at the head; I myself
next to him; a Pirate next to me; and so on to
the end, in such order as to keep a man with a
loaded musket between each one or two of us
prisoners. I looked behind me as we started,
and saw two of the Sambos—that Christian
George King was one of them—following us.
We marched round the back of the Palace, and
over the ruins beyond it, till we came to a
track through the forest, the first I had seen.
After a quarter of an hour's walking, I saw
the sunlight, bright beyond the trees in front
of us. In another minute or two, we stood
under the clear sky, and beheld at our feet a
broad river, running with a swift silent
current, and overshadowed by the forest, rising
as thick as ever on the bank that was opposite
to us.

On the bank where we stood, the trees
were young; some great tempest of past
years having made havoc in this part of the
forest, and torn away the old growth to
make room for the new. The young trees
grew up, mostly, straight and slender,—
that is to say, slender for South America,
the slightest of them being, certainly, as
thick as my leg. After peeping and peering
about at the timber, with the look of
a man who owned it all, the Pirate Captain
sat himself down cross-legged on the grass,
and did us the honor to address us.

"Aha! you English, what do you think
I have kept you alive for?" says he.
"Because I am fond of you? Bah!
Because I don't like to kill you? Bah! What
for, then? Because I want the use of your
arms to work for me. See those trees!"
He waved his hand backwards and
forwards, over the whole prospect. "Cut
them all down—lop off the branches—
smooth them into poles—shape them into
beams—chop them into planks. Camarado!"
he went on, turning to the mate, "I mean to
roof in the Palace again, and to lay new
floors over the rubbish of stones. I will
make the big house good and dry to live in,
in the rainy weather—I will barricade the
steps of it for defence against an army,—I
will make it my strong castle of retreat for
me and my men, and our treasure, and our
prisoners, and all that we have, when the
English cruisers of the devil get too many
for us along the coast. To work, you six!
Look at those four men of mine,—their
muskets are loaded. Look at these two
Sambos who will stop here to fetch help if
they want it. Remember the women and
children you have left at the Palace—and
at your peril and at their peril, turn those
axes in your hands from their proper
work! You understand? You English fools?"

With those words he jumped to his feet,
and ordered the niggers to remain and place
themselves at the orders of our guard.
Having given these last directions, and having
taken his mate's opinion as to whether