Georgina saw the justice of the claim and allowed Captain Kidd to join in as he pleased, but no sooner did they stop digging to give him a chance than he stopped also.
“Rats!” called Richard in a shrill whisper.
At that familiar word the dog began digging so frantically that the sand flew in every direction. Each time he paused for breath Richard called “Rats” again. It doubled the interest for both children to have the dog take such frantic and earnest part in their game.
When the hole was pronounced deep enough the can was dropped in, the sand shoveled over it and tramped down, and a marker made. A long, forked stick, broken from a bayberry bush, was run into the ground so that only the fork of it was visible. Then at twenty paces from the stick, Richard stepping them off in four directions, consulting the little compass in so doing, Georgina placed the markers, four sections of a broken crock rescued from the ash-barrel and brought down in the basket for that especial purpose.
“We’ll let it stay buried for a week,” said Richard when all was done. “Unless somebody claims it sooner. If they don’t come in a week, then we’ll know they’re never coming, and the gold will be ours.”
Chapter XV
A Narrow Escape
Mr. Milford was stretched out in a hammock on the front porch of the bungalow when the children came back from the dunes with their empty basket. They could not see him as they climbed up the terrace, the porch being high above them and draped with vines; and he deep in a new book was only vaguely conscious of approaching voices.
They were discussing the “Rescues of Rosalind,” the play they had seen the night before on the films. Their shrill, eager tones would have attracted the attention of anyone less absorbed than Mr. Milford.
“I’ll bet you couldn’t,” Georgina was saying. “If you were gagged and bound the way Rosalind was, you _couldn’t_ get loose, no matter how you squirmed and twisted.”