likely to happen.

The young submarine captain lay on a pile of dried grass that had been
thrown on a board floor. His hands were still manacled. Worse, one of
his feet now had an ankle-ring fastened securely, and this was chained
to a stout staple driven in the floor.

It was a curious place in which young Benson lay, a place with a strange
history.

Years before a tunnel had been bored into the side of a hill. After
the tunnel had been lined with a masonry of stone it was not more than
three feet in diameter. This tunnel led into an artificial cave some
eighteen feet square and nine feet high. This cave had been shored up
and boarded as to ceiling, floor and walls.

A great deal of labor had been expended in building this curious place
under a low hill. Yet the original builders had figured that their time
so spent would yield large returns. This part of the Florida coast lay
conveniently near to Cuba. On moonless nights a small sailing craft
would put in along the coast, laden with smuggled Havana cigars. There
being no safe place along the shore in which to store the cigars, this
place, hidden well in a forest, had been constructed as a safe
depository. For some time the cigar smugglers had prospered. Then, as
was to have been expected, Uncle Sam's sharp eyed customs men ran the
illegal business down, arresting the smugglers, all of whom were
subsequently imprisoned.

For a while afterwards this cave had been visited by the curious. All
this smuggling, however, was now a thing of many years past, and