They were near the coast at the time and their camp was pitched in the hollow formed by two small hills. They had looked for a favorable location, for this one had no wood near it, as the country was mostly barren, and thickets few and far between. Some green bushes grew nearby and they resolved to use these as a final resource, but before doing so Jim and Terry started out to see it they could find anything more promising. Terry went over the top of one hill and Jim over the top of the other, while the overseer prepared for their supper.
Jim had a small axe which Alaroze had given him and he walked along the ridge of the small hill looking carefully around. On the opposite side of the hill he found a long depression in the soil which looked as though it might have been the bed of a stream at one time, perhaps some creek which had originally flowed from the distant mountains. He wandered down it aimlessly, convinced that his quest for wood was not likely to be very successful. A vast stillness lay over the country and he felt very much alone. A mile or more to the east of him he could hear the sound of the ocean.
There was no use in walking down the defile, he decided, so he started for the slope of the slight hill which was beside him. As he did so his foot struck something solid. He bent down to see what it was and found a small stick of wood protruding from the sand at his feet. He cleared the sand away around the stick, to find that it was quite large and that it ran into the sand for some little distance. When he had finally drawn it from its sheath be examined it with curiosity.
It was a piece of mahogany and it showed the hand of civilization. Although it was now black with age it had at one time been varnished. It was a large splinter and he wondered how it ever got there. Examining it closely he detected signs which led him to believe that it had been burned at some time. There was a thin line running across it that suggested carving.
“That’s funny,” he reflected. “Somebody once had a fire here and used good wood for it. Perhaps there is more nearby.”
With this thought in mind he dug his axe deeper in the sand and began to scoop it out. Before many minutes had passed he ran across another piece of wood, but this one he could not get out. It seemed to have no end and he set to work in earnest to uncover it. But after he had uncovered about twenty-five running feet he stopped in perplexity.
“This must be a house!” he cried. “Every bit of it burned, too.”
The top of the long section of wood had been burned. It was thick wood and he tried to dig down under it. But after he had dug sand out to the depth of four feet he stopped and looked puzzled. It was a straight wooden wall, extending down into the valley of sand.
Jim stopped his work and walked to the top of the rise, where he slowly looked up and down the pass. He looked toward the ocean, calculated thoughtfully and then looked toward the mountains. Then, looking down toward the long strip of black wood which he had uncovered he voiced his thought.
“That’s a ship down there, evidently burned to the water’s edge and later covered up by shifting sand. Now, I wonder——?”