Now it so happened that the shouts and yells to which we have more than once made reference in this chapter attracted a band of savages who had been put to flight by Henry Stuart’s party.  These rascals, not knowing what was the cause of so much noise up on the heights, and being much too well acquainted with the human voice in all its modifications to fancy that ghosts had anything to do with it, cautiously ascended towards the cavern, just a few minutes after the disappearance of John Bumpus and his companions.

Here they sat down to hold a palaver.  While this was going on, Keona carried Alice in his unwounded arm to the other end of the cave, and, making his exit through a small opening at its inner extremity, bore his trembling captive to a rocky eminence, shaped somewhat like a sugarloaf, on the summit of which he placed her.  So steep were the sides of this cone of lava, that it seemed to Alice that she was surrounded by precipices over which she must certainly tumble if she dared to move.

Here Keona left her, having first, however, said, in a low, stern voice: 

“If you moves, you dies!”

The poor child was too much terrified to move, even had she dared; for she, too, had heard the unaccountable cries of Poopy, although, owing to distance and the wild nature of these cries, she had failed to recognize the voice.  When, therefore, her jailer left her with this threat, she coiled herself up in the smallest possible space, and began to sob.

Meanwhile, Keona re-entered the cavern, with a diabolical grin on his sable countenance, which, although it savored more of evil than of any other quality, had in it, nevertheless, a strong dash of ferocious joviality, as if he were aware that he had got his enemies into a trap, and could amuse himself by playing with them as a cat does with a mouse.

Soon the savage began to step cautiously, partly because of the rugged nature of the ground and the thick darkness that surrounded him, and partly in order to avoid alarming the three adventurers who were advancing towards him from the other extremity of the cavern.  In a few minutes he halted; for the footsteps and the whispering voices of his pursuers became distinctly audible to him, although all three did their best to make as little noise as possible.

“Wot a ’orrid place it is!” exclaimed Bumpus, in a hoarse, angry whisper, as he struck his shins violently, for at least the tenth time, against a ledge of rock.  “I do b’lieve, boy, that there’s nobody here, and that we’d as well ’bout ship and steer back the way we’ve comed; tho’ it is a ’orrible coast for rocks and shoals.”

To this, Corrie, not being in a talkative humor, made no reply.

“D’ye hear me, boy?” said Jo, aloud, for he was somewhat shaken again by the dead silence that followed the close of his remark.

“All right; I’m here;” said Corrie, meekly.

“Then why don’t ye speak?” said Jo, tartly.