In a few minutes Antonino and the other man came to the side, carrying an odd-looking black bundle, sewn up in what Ruggiero felt was oiled canvas as he steadied it down into the stern of the little boat, and neatly hitched round from end to end with spun-yarn, so as to be about the shape of an enormous sausage.

The two men lowered it without much caution; it was heavy but rather limp.

Then came another exactly like the first, which they also lowered into the boat, and a moment later Don Antonino came over the side as quickly and noiselessly as he had gone up, and shoved off quietly into the starlight.
Half an hour later he ran alongside of a narrow ledge of rock, apparently quite inaccessible from the land above, but running up along the cliff in such a way that, in case of danger from the sea, a man could get well out of reach of the breakers.

He went ashore, taking the end of his own coil of rope with him.

He made it fast in the dark shadow, and he must have known the place very well, for there was but one small hole running under a stone wedged in a cleft of the rock, through which he could pass the line.