"As you like, but, personally speaking, I have a perfect craving for hard work," replied Uncle Herbert, "so I'll beat up volunteers and recover the blasting powder."
"You won't bring it aboard?"
"No, I will take it off to the reef, close to the channel you mentioned."
"I'll go, too," I exclaimed, "for I want very much to have a look at the great cave that we can see from here."
"I don't think so," objected my uncle. "A boatload of explosives, powerful enough to blow, us to infinitesimal particles, is hardly a safe cargo, so you will be safer on board the 'Fortuna.'"
"I know, but you can take the stuff off to the reef and come back for me. It's only a ten minutes' pull, you know. Don't be hard on a fellow, uncle. It's the first time I've had a chance to go ashore in that part of the bay, and I want to explore the cave."
"Very well, then," replied my uncle ungraciously. "But mind, no monkey-tricks, and don't run into mischief."
I ran below to the bos'n's locker, where I abstracted a ball of seaming-twine and a couple of candles, and, putting these articles into my coat pocket in company with a box of matches, I went on deck and clambered into the gig.
The spot where the explosives had been buried was in a grove, a short distance from a little bay, which was enclosed on either hand by tall cliffs, and inaccessible from the rest of the lagoon except by means of a boat, unless a path was cut inland through the dense scrub, which apparently had never yet been penetrated by human beings.
The taller of the two cliffs was almost divided from base to summit by the curiously shaped cave which Old Humphrey had laid particular stress upon in his log, and directly the boat touched the sandy beach I bounded off towards it on my trip of exploration, a final warning from my uncle falling lightly upon my ears.