"But it must be employed much more strenuously," I remarked, moving a little away, "if you are to get me what I want. Before you came, I was meditating possible ways of getting it for myself. I wanted it for a melancholy relic—a sort of mausoleum in which all my hopes were buried. Now its purpose is quite different; it is to be my bride's chest and hold the dowry which I shall bring to one Dugald Shaw."
"You mean the chest—the chest that held the Spanish doubloons—that lies under the sand in the sloop?"
"Exactly. And now I shall know whether you are the true prince or not, because he always succeeds in the tasks he undertakes to win the princess."
It was low tide, such a tide as had all but lured me to my death in the cave. One could go and come from the beach along the rocks, without climbing the steep path up the cliff. It was not long before Dugald was back again with spade and pick. He tore off the shrunken, sun-dried boards from the cabin roof, and fell to work.
It was not, after all, a labor of Hercules. The cabin was small and the chest large. I watched with the pride of proprietorship the swift ease with which the steel-sinewed arms of the Scot made the caked sand fly. Then the spade struck something which sent back a dull metallic sound through the muffling sand.
I gave a little shriek of excitement. Hardly could I have been more thrilled if I had believed the chest still to contain the treasure of which it had been ravished. It was filled to its brass-bound lid with romance, if not with gold.
A little more and it lay clear to our view, a convex surface of dark smoky brown, crossed by three massive strips of tarnished brass. Dugald dug down until the chest stood free to half its height; then by its handles—I recognized the "great hand-wrought loops of metal," of the diary—we dragged it from its bed, and drew it forth into the cockpit.
For a little while we sat before it in happy contemplation. It was indeed for its own sake quite well worth having, that sturdy old chest. Even in an antique shop I should have succumbed to it at once; how much more when we had dug it up ourselves from a wrecked sloop on a desert island, and knew all its bloody and delightful history.
At length, kneeling before it, I raised with an effort the heavy lid.
"Empty, of course—no more brown bags. But oh, Dugald, had ever a girl such a wonderful bride's chest as this? O—oh!"