‘This is a well-licked whelp,’ replied Elzevir, ’who got a bullet in the leg two months ago in that touch under Hoar Head; and is worth more than he looks, for they have put twenty golden guineas on his head—­so have a care of such a precious top-knot.’

So long as we stopped at the Bugle we had the best of lodging and the choicest meat and drink, and all the while the landlord treated Elzevir as though he were a prince.  And so he was indeed a prince among the contrabandiers, and held, as I found out long afterwards, for captain of all landers between Start and Solent.  At first the landlord would take no money of us, saying that he was in our debt, and had received many a good turn from Master Block in the past, but Elzevir had got gold from Dorchester before we left the cave and forced him to take payment.  I was glad enough to lie between clean sweet sheets at night instead of on a heap of sand, and sit once more knife and fork in hand before a well-filled trencher.  ’Twas thought best I should show myself as little as possible, so I was content to pass my time in a room at the back of the house whilst Elzevir went abroad to make inquiries how we could find entrance to the Castle at Carisbrooke.  Nor did the time hang heavy on my hands, for I found some old books in the Bugle, and among them several to my taste, especially a History of Corfe Castle, which set forth how there was a secret passage from the ruins to some of the old marble quarries, and perhaps to that very one that sheltered us.

Elzevir was out most of the day, so that I saw him only at breakfast and supper.  He had been several times to Carisbrooke, and told me that the Castle was used as a jail for persons taken in the wars, and was now full of French prisoners.  He had met several of the turnkeys or jailers, drinking with them in the inns there, and making out that he was himself a carter, who waited at Newport till a wind-bound ship should bring grindstones from Lyme Regis.  Thus he was able at last to enter the Castle and to see well-house and well, and spent some days in trying to devise a plan whereby we might get at the well without making the man who had charge of it privy to our full design; but in this did not succeed.

There is a slip of garden at the back of the Bugle, which runs down to a little stream, and one evening when I was taking the air there after dark, Elzevir returned and said the time was come for us to put Blackbeard’s cipher to the proof.

‘I have tried every way,’ he said, ’to see if we could work this secretly; but ’tis not to be done without the privity of the man who keeps the well, and even with his help it is not easy.  He is a man I do not trust, but have been forced to tell him there is treasure hidden in the well, yet without saying where it lies or how to get it.  He promises to let us search the well, taking one-third the value of all we find, for his share; for I said not that thou and I were one at heart, but only that there was a boy who had the key, and claimed an equal third with both of us.  Tomorrow we must be up betimes, and at the Castle gates by six o’clock for him to let us in.  And thou shalt not be carter any more, but mason’s boy, and I a mason, for I have got coats in the house, brushes and trowels and lime-bucket, and we are going to Carisbrooke to plaster up a weak patch in this same well-side.’