“Rosa would make trouble if you divided that way. She’d howl till somebody came to see what was the matter. But we could do this way. The one who gets the least money gets the most jelly-roll. We’ll wait till the digging is over and then let them divide it to suit themselves.”
By five o’clock that afternoon, the compass had been sent to “hunt brother” in a hundred different places, and the hollow circled by the bayberry bushes and beach plums where the pouch had been hidden filled with deep holes. Captain Kidd had responded to the repeated call of “Rats” until the magic word had lost all charm for him. Even a dog comes to understand in time when a fellow creature has “an axe to grind.” Finally, he went off and lay down, merely wagging his tail in a bored way when any further effort was made to arouse his enthusiasm.
The Fayal children, working valiantly in the trenches, laid down arms at last and strolled home, their faces streaked with jelly-roll, and Georgina went wearily up the beach, dragging her fire-shovel after her. She felt that she had had enough of the dunes to last her the rest of her natural lifetime. She seemed to see piles of sand even when she looked at the water or when her eyes were shut.
“But we won’t give up,” she said staunchly as she parted from Richard. “We’re obliged to find that pouch, so we’ve _got_ to keep hope at the prow.”
“Pity all this good digging has to be wasted,” said Richard, looking around at the various holes. “If it had all been in one place, straight down, it would have been deep enough to strike a pirate’s chest by this time. I hope they’ll fill up before anybody comes this way to notice them.”
“Somehow, I’m not so anxious as I was to go off ‘a-piratin’ so bold,’” said Georgina with a tired sigh. “I’ve had enough digging to last me forever and always, amen.”
The Fayal children, surfeited with one afternoon of such effort, and not altogether satisfied as to the division of wages which had led to war in their midst, did not come back to the Place of the Pouch next morning, but Richard and Georgina appeared promptly, albeit with sore muscles and ebbing enthusiasm. Only stern necessity and fear of consequences kept them at their task.
Cousin James had reported that there was a fishing vessel in that morning with two enormous horse mackerel in the catch, which were to be cut up and salted at Railroad wharf. It was deliciously cool down on the wharf, with the breeze blowing off the water through the great packing shed, and the white sails scudding past the open doors like fans. With Mrs. Triplett busy with the affairs of the Bazaar, it would have been a wonderful opportunity for Georgina to have gone loitering along the pier, watching the summer people start off in motor boats or spread themselves lazily under flapping sails for a trip around the harbor.
But something of the grim spirit of their ancestors, typified by the monument looking down on them from the hill, nerved both Richard and Georgina one more time to answer to the stern call of Duty.
