THERE WAS EXCITEMENT FOR A MINUTE AND EVERYBODY CAME RUNNING
“There’s something in that,” he says kind of thoughtful. “I’ll think it over.”
It wasn’t long before the digging commenced right alongside of us, and you can bet we were pretty interested. Any shovelful might uncover the treasure, and then things would pop. It was like waiting for somebody to jab a pin into you. Exciting? Sure it was, but I can do with less excitement and more peace and comfort.
Then I remembered the case of sardines we buried the night before. I just remembered it in time. One of the diggers let out a yell, and everybody gathered around and there was excitement. I never saw a mutiny start, so I don’t know exactly how it’s done, but I was ready for anything, and I was glad I could swim. My mind was all made up to take a header into the water—if I could get that far—and just swim. I’d swim any place so long as I got away from where I was. Treasure didn’t mean a thing to me. Whatever interest I had in it could have been bought for a rusty horseshoe nail.
There was excitement for a minute and shouting and everybody came running. But then a man busted open the case with his pick, and it wasn’t anything but sardines. We were peeking out from under the tarpaulin, and you never saw anything sag like that gang of men did. The mutiny was ripe to pick, I guess, but it just laid down and groaned. You never saw any crowd so disgusted in your life. Even Mr. Dunn came running over, but when he saw what had been dug up he was the maddest man in the country, and he acted it.
“If I find out the joker who buried that thing,” he says, as vicious as a yellow dog, “I’ll fix him so he won’t joke again for a day or two.”
The men just looked at him and scowled. He walked off and the digging commenced again, but somehow there didn’t seem to be such a lot of enthusiasm about it. We could see one man who kept circulating among the others, and right off we guessed he was the fellow who had got up the mutiny, and that he was patching it together so it would run again when he needed it. He was a big man, and there was something about his face that I didn’t like a bit. He looked like the kind of man who would be careless with other folks’ health.
So things quieted down again and the digging went on and waiting went on.
“I wonder,” says I, “what they think on board the Albatross. I’ll bet Naboth and Rameses III are boiling over. They’ll think we’re drowned or something.”
“Can’t be helped,” says Catty. “When there’s an adventure like this going on, somebody’s got to worry. They always do. It might as well be Naboth.”