"How jolly I feel!" Could he but have guessed that through an adjoining crack another figure was drinking in every word he uttered, and taking it down in official shorthand, he would have spoken in less audible tones! Yes.

The second stowaway is Solomon Smellie, of Scotland Yard, and he has the plaster cast in his pocket.
"This must be about the spot," says Sep, comparing his chart with the figures on the mariner's compass.

"Here goes." Two vigorous turns of the gimlet, and the "Harnessed Mule" rears on her beam ends, and, with one stupendous lurch, goes to the bottom.
"That's all right," says Sep, as he hauls himself to the summit of a mountain of naked rock, which rises sheer out of the sea on all sides to a height of a thousand feet.
The words are scarcely out of his mouth when his face turns livid, and he trembles violently from head to foot, as he perceives standing before him Solomon Smellie, the detective of Scotland Yard.
Sub-Chapter VI.
THE RENCONTRE.
"This is an unexpected pleasure," says Solomon.
"Delighted, I'm sure," says Septimus, craftily.
Then they talk of the weather, eyeing one another like practised fencers in a death struggle.
"Ha! ha!" thinks Sep; "he has heard of the sunken doubloons." "Ha! ha!" thinks Solomon.

"If he only knew I had that plaster cast in my pocket!" "Are you making a long stay here ?" says the former naively.
"Depends," is the dark, laconic reply.
"Sorry I must leave you for a little," says Sep.

"An appointment." And he takes a magnificent header from the cliff into the very spot where the wrecked gold-ship lies buried.
When, after a couple of hours, he rose to the surface for breath, Sep was relieved to find himself alone.
"Peeler was right," said he to himself, flinging back the matted hair from his noble brow.