They were hungry, but they did not delay to eat. It was best for them, they felt, to get away from that part of the Beach.
Accordingly they got their boat under way, and as they sailed eastward along the Beach, tired and chilly, they ate their breakfast. After they had sailed four or five miles they headed out into the bay. When the sun was well up, they put about and steered directly for the Beach. On the flats they anchored, lay down in their boat, and went to sleep.
Just before dusk that night they were back at the Point of Woods. As soon as the day had completely gone they stood up the shovels in the mounds they had made at daybreak that morning, undid again the mineral-rod and began anew the search. They worked carefully for three hours, becoming at times confused, as on the previous night, and frequently retracing their steps and going over many places a second time. They had worked their way, however, nearly over to the outskirts of the wood. John had come to a small hillock, perhaps four feet high, and was walking up over it when suddenly he felt the end of the rod drawn strongly down. He could not mistake this. Some decided force had pulled the end of the mineral-rod down, and it pointed obliquely to the hillock.
“There’s no doubt this time,” he said as he stepped back a few paces, feeling as he did so some decrease in the force exerted upon the end of the mineral-rod. “You get the shovel to the west and bring the old coat here. I’ll get the shovel behind us. This, I tell you, is the very spot.”
Each of them was highly excited as he came back to the hillock.
“Hold on,” said John as he restrained Pete from striking his shovel into the sand. “Let’s begin together, and remember that come whatever will, not one word must be spoken while we’re digging—not a sound till we’ve got what there is here completely out of the hole.”
“Now I’m ready,” said John after a second, and they began to dig vigorously.
It proved warm work, and shortly each in silence took off his coat and laid it with the mineral-rod. Half an hour passed and there was a decided slackening in the rate of digging. Whether they were beginning to doubt or not, nothing could be said. At length Pete’s shovel struck something. He drove it into the same spot for another shovelful. As it struck he heard a hollow thud. Then John struck it with his shovel and again came the same hollow sound.
There was something here surely, each thought, yet neither of them spoke. They were unable to make out exactly what it was, other than wood of some sort, for their shovels cut into it as they struck it. But every time there came the hollow sound.
John began to widen the hole they were digging, and Pete soon noticed this, and followed John’s example.