"after all," said rectus, that night, "what was the good of it? that little piece of stone don't amount to anything, and you might have been drowned."
"i don't think i could have been drowned," said i, "for i should have dropped the old thing, and floated, if i had felt myself giving out. but the good of it was this: it showed me what a disagreeable sort of place a sea-garden is, when you go down into it to pick things."
"which you wont do again, in a hurry, i reckon," said rectus.
"you're right there, my boy," i answered.
the next day, the chippertons and ourselves took a two-horse barouche, and rode to the "caves," some six or seven miles from the town. we had a long walk through the pineapple fields before we came to the biggest cave, and found it wasn't very much of a cave, after all, though there was a sort of a room, on[227] one side, which looked like a church, with altar, pillars and arches. there was a little hole, on one side of this room, about three feet wide, which led, our negro guide said, to a great cave, which ran along about a mile, until it reached the sea. there was no knowing what skeletons, and treasures, and old half-decayed boxes of coins, hidden by pirates, and swords with jewels in the handles, and loose jewels, and silver plate, and other things we might have found in that cave, if we had only had a lantern or some candles to light us while we were wandering about in it. but we had no candles or lantern, and so did not become a pirate's heirs. it was corny who was most anxious to go in. she had read about blackbeard, and the other pirates who used to live on this island, and she felt sure that some of their treasures were to be found in that cave. if she had thought of it, she would have brought a candle.
the only treasures we got were some long things, like thin ropes, which hung from the roof to the floor of the cave we were in. this cave wasn't dark, because nearly all of one side of it was open. these ropes were roots or young trunks from banyan-trees, growing on the ground above, and which came through the cracks in the rocks, and stretched themselves down so as to root in the floor of the cave, and make a lot of underground trunks for the tree above. the banyan-tree is the most enterprising trunk-maker i ever heard of.
we pulled down a lot of these banyan ropes, some of them more than twenty feet long, to take away as[228] curiosities. corny thought it would be splendid to have a jumping-rope made of a banyan root, or rather trunklet. the banyans here are called wild fig-trees, which they really are, wherever they grow. there is a big one, not far from the town, which stands by itself, and has a lot of trunks coming down from the branches. it would take the conceit out of a hurricane, i think, if it tried to blow down a banyan-tree.
the next day was sunday, and our party went to a negro church to hear a preacher who was quite celebrated as a colored orator. he preached a good sensible sermon, although he didn't meddle much with grammar. the people were poorly dressed, and some of the deacons were barefooted, but they were all very clean and neat, and they appeared to be just as religious as if they had all ridden in carriages to some fifth avenue church in new york.
