“It’s a cave!” shouted the Captain, and his voice echoed and re-echoed weirdly, until the place seemed to be filled with dozens of voices. A cold draught played upon them from somewhere, and, although they all had on sweaters and caps, they shivered in the chilly atmosphere. There was no glimmer of light anywhere to indicate an opening to the outside.
The light of the lantern fell upon a wooden bench and a rough table, both painted bright red. On the table stood two tall bottles, thickly covered with dust, and between them was a grinning human skull with two cross bones behind it. Katherine and Sahwah involuntarily jumped and shrieked when they saw it.
“Somebody died down here!” gasped Sahwah.
“Nonsense!” said Justice. “It was Uncle Jasper playing pirate. See, there’s his chest over there.”
Against the rocky wall stood a large wooden chest, likewise painted bright red, with a huge black skull and cross bones done on its lid.
“That must be Uncle Jasper’s ‘Dead Man’s Chest,’ that he mentions in his diary,” said Sahwah. “Of course, this is the pirates’ den where he and Tad played.”
The five looked around them with interest at this playroom of the two boys of long ago, its treasures living on after they were both dead and gone. Truly the den was a place to inspire terror in the heart of a luckless captive. Skulls and cross bones were painted all over the rocky walls, grinning reflections of the one on the table. Sahwah and Katherine clung to each other and peered nervously over each other’s shoulders into the darkness beyond the radius of the lantern light.
“What a peach of a pirate’s cave!” exclaimed the Captain enthusiastically. “Captain Kidd himself couldn’t have had a better one. It seems as if any minute we’ll hear a voice muttering, ‘Pieces of eight, pieces of eight.’” He picked up one of the bottles from the table and set it down again with a resounding bang.
“‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo! ho! ho! And a bottle of rum!’”