“You can think what you like,” said the other. “I’m telling you what the skipper told old Wat, and you never knew him tell a lie. He said to old Wat, ‘My father found the way rabbiting when a boy, and forgot all about it till he felt the want of a place to store things in unknown to other folk, and then he recollected this.’ He said it was made by folks as lived underground hundreds of thousands of years ago.”
“Oh?” said the other.
“Yes; and they dug first one and then another, as they wanted them, and grew bigger in numbers, and that it went right in farther than they’d ever been on account of the bad air.”
“Same as down among the bilge in the ship’s hold?”
“That’s so. The skipper’s father was most stifled by it once when he tried to go right in.”
“But do they go right in?” The elder sailor struck the top of an empty barrel a sharp rap with the hilt of his sword, and the other’s question was answered, for the sound went echoing into the distance till it died away.
“It be a queer sort of place,” said the other, with a half shudder. “Hang me if I’d like to be boxed up here along with Abel Churr, if the skipper’s stowed him there.”
“Plenty of room and good water,” said the other, pointing down to where the source of the stream outside ran trickling through the interstices of the stone, and formed tiny pools of limpid clearness.
“Ugh! the place smells damp and cold, and I should expect to come out, if I was shut up here, all over blue mould.”
“Like a bit of ship’s cheese, eh? Come along: here’s the skipper.”