Max Pemberton

“ Reason said that one of the Spaniards had been hurt in a quarrel and that he lay wounded in the apartment next my own. Driven by the thought, I slipped on my clothes and went out to the great cavern, thence to the water-side. There I heard the voice very plainly but could not locate it. It was just as though a man had been shut in some dark place and cried piteously but could get no hearing. ”

“ I gathered that they were a famous place with the gentry of the neighbourhood, the wild Spaniards of the western hills, who shot at the law by day and made a jest of it by night. Such rogues had found a friend in Black and were his sworn allies; but as the Spaniard said, there were few of them now living who had the secret of the great cavern. ”

“ Jack's the boy, says you, and so he is, by thunder. Captain trusts Jack, to be sure he do. Keep that in your head, sir; him as dies hard don't cry soft. I wouldn't give sawdust for no Frenchman's chances when the skipper comes back. Let him rip, says you, and the skipper's the man, be sure he is."
It was black talk and I shrank from it. ”

“ Whither did they run, and were they but so many blind alleys leading into the bowels of the mountain? A more daring thought said that by one of them a man must be able to pass out to the open country; for if he could not, by what means had the Spaniards come into the caverns at all? ”

“ Why, yes, you do, says you, and here's another of 'em, least-wise, where our skipper's concerned. I don't trust that man, sir, no more than Thames mud. Give him a chain's length and we swing—by the Lord, we swing high. ”