“No.” He hesitated. “But there are a good many soldiers here. I—I never saw these steps before.”
“I should think not,” boasted Bobby. “I discovered them. I guess nobody else in the world knows about them. I put up a flag at the bottom and took possession. They’re mine.”
“Really!” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, quite delighted. He would never have thought of such a thing.
A door of iron bars at the foot of the long flight of steps—there were four of them—stood open. Here daylight, which had been growing fainter, entirely ceased. And here Bobby, having replaced his mask, placed an air-rifle over his shoulder, and lighted a candle and held it out to the Crown Prince.
“You can carry it,” he said. “Only don’t let it drip on you. You’ll spoil your clothes.” There was a faintly scornful note in his voice, and Ferdinand William Otto was quick to hear it.
“I don’t care at all about my clothes,” he protested. And to prove it he deliberately tilted the candle and let a thin stream of paraffin run down his short jacket.
“You’re a pretty good sport,” Bobby observed. And from that time on he addressed His Royal Highness as “old sport.”
“Walk faster, old sport,” he would say. “That candle’s pretty short, and we’ve got a long way to go.” Or—“Say, old sport, I’ll make you a mask like this, if you like. I made this one.”
When they reached the old dungeon the candle was about done. There was only time to fashion another black mask out of a piece of cloth that bore a strange resemblance to a black waistcoat. The Crown Prince donned this with a wildly beating heart. Never in all his life had he been so excited. Even Dick Deadeye was interested, and gave up his scenting of the strange footsteps that he had followed through the passage, to watch the proceedings.
“We can get another candle, and come back and cook something,” said the senior pirate, tying the mask on with Pieces of brown string. “It gets pretty smoky, but I can cook, you’d better believe.”