“It looks rather dark, Jack,” murmured Percival.  “We had a pretty gruesome experience in a dark cave when we first came to the island and I don’t want to repeat it.”

“You won’t find any devil fish in there, Dick,” said Jack reassuringly.  “Besides, we have our flashes with us and are armed as well, and if we do find anything uncanny we can put up a good fight, I imagine.”

“That’s all right, Jack, but once I have an experience of that sort I am a little shy at venturing into a place anything like it.  The mere look of this cave made me think of the other.”

“But there is no water here and it may be only a hole in the rocks after all.  Then it may lead to some retreat of these smuggler folk, and if it does, so much the better.”

“All right, Jack, I am with you,” said Percival, and the boys entered the hole in the rocks, as Jack called it.

It was more than that, as they presently discovered, for they found that it extended much farther than they thought, and Jack, turning on his pocket flash when there began to be less and less light to guide them, saw that the passage went on for some distance.

It was high enough for them to walk upright and wide enough for three or four persons to walk abreast, there being a few turns, but none sharp enough to cut off the view ahead for some distance.

“Well, we won’t get under water as we did in the other place, Jack,” observed Percival as they walked on, meeting the first sharp turn and being now unable to see behind them, “for we are going toward the interior of the island and not toward the sea.”

“No, and there will be no one to tumble down rocks upon us and shut us in, or think they did, as happened before.  In fact, the place seems to be decidedly uninteresting, Dick.”

“Nothing has happened so far, if that is what you mean,” laughed the other, “but you never can tell.”

They made one or two more sharp turns and at length came to an opening of greater magnitude where they could see three or four passages leading in different directions, some very narrow and one wide enough for them to walk side by side.

“Which one shall we take, Jack?” asked Percival.  “The place begins to grow interesting now that we have several routes to choose from.  Does it look as if men had been here?  Do you see any smudges on the walls or any footprints in the dust?  Is this just an accident, or has it been cut out and made of use for a hiding place?”

“No, there are no smudges which might have been made by torches, Dick, and I don’t see any footprints except our own.  I don’t believe any one has been in here for years.”

“Then you think that there may have been some one here at some time, Jack?  It has been used?”

“Yes, for it has not the looks of a natural cavern which has not yet been discovered.  It has been cleaned up to a certain extent.  Still, I do not think that the particular gang of malefactors we are looking for has ever occupied it.”