So I put “Chris Holford, aet. 13,” which I thought might look more dignified and scholarly than “aged,” and Jerry wrote “Gerald M. Holford,” and put “aet. 11” after it, but I’m sure he didn’t know what it meant until I did it.  Then we stuck the paper at Greg, and he stared at it ever so long and finally said: 

“Ate eleven!  He ate lots more than that; I saw him.”

Jerry pounced again,—­I was laughing too hard to,—­and said: 

“It’s not olives, silly; it’s an abbreviated French way of saying how old we are.”

Then I had to pounce on him, and tell him it was Latin, as he might know by the diphthong.  By that time Greg had written “Gregory Holford, Ate 8,” across the bottom, very large, and Jerry said he might as well have put 88 and had done with it.  We folded the paper up in the tinfoil that the chocolate came in and jammed it into the bottle and pounded the cork in tight with a stone.  Greg was all for chucking it immediately, but Jerry said it would have a better chance if we dropped it right into the current from the ferry going home.  So we cocked the bottle up on a rock and went back to the pirate-cave-entrance place to finish a game of smugglers.

Wecanicut is a nice place to smuggle and do other dark deeds in, and I don’t believe we’ll ever be too old to think it’s fun.  This time we cut the rest of the tinfoil into roundish pieces with Jerry’s jackknife, and stowed them into a cranny in the cave.  They shone rather faintly and looked exactly like double moidores, except that those are gold, I think.  We also borrowed Aunt Ailsa’s hatpin with the Persian coin on the end.  By running the pin down into the sand all the way, you can make it look just like a goldpiece lying on the floor of the cave.  She is a very obliging aunt and doesn’t mind our doing this sort of thing,—­in fact, she plays lots of the games, too, and she can groan more hollowly than any of us, when groans are needed.

This time we didn’t ask her to, because she was reading a book by H.G.  Wells to Mother, and anyway all our proceedings were supposed to be going on in the most Stealthy and Silent Secrecy.  The moidores and the Persian coin were all that was left of an enormous lot of things which the villainous band had buried,—­golden chains, and uncut jewels, and pots of louis d’ors, and church chalices (Jerry says chasubles, but I think not).  Greg and Jerry had dragged all these things up from the edge of the water in big empty armfuls, and we stamped the sand down over them.  It really looked exactly as if the tinfoil moidores were a handful that was left over.  Greg was just giving the final stamp, when Jerry crooked his hand over his ear and said: 

“Hist, men!  What was that?” They were having artillery practice down at the Fort, and just then a terrific volley went sputtering off.

“’Tis a broadside from the English vessel!” Jerry said.  “We are pursued!”