“Get away from here in a hurry, Jack!” gasped Ballyhoo; “we’ve seen something that threatens all sorts of tough things, and Captain Shooks ought to know about the same.”
The boat was launched without loss of time, Ballyhoo even wading in the wash of the sea up to his knees, in order to shove off, for that was the kind of a fellow the Jones boy was.
Then the paddles fairly flew, and they sped out toward the spot where the float and the squatty submarine lay. How fortunate, Oscar told himself as he worked his paddle, that the undersea boat chanced to be on the surface just then. Had it been otherwise the delay consequent upon getting their message to the skipper might have made all the difference imaginable with regard to results.
Captain Shooks was on the float talking with the diver, who had apparently just before come to the surface. Oscar noticed that the bronzed face of the skipper appeared to be wreathed in a broad smile, as though he had received some happy news in the report of the diver.
As the three boys hastened to climb aboard the float, he called out to them:
“Well, we’ve struck oil, lads! What d’ye think of that for a starter, now?”
He was holding something out toward them, and the boys could see first of all that it required an effort for him to do so, as though the brick-like object might be quite heavy. They stared hard at it. So far as a first look went there did not seem to be anything very remarkable about the thing. It had a peculiar, greenish look, as though the action of the sea water had covered it with a slime in all the long years that it had lodged there far down in the depths.
“What is it?” asked Ballyhoo eagerly, yet evidently puzzled to guess the truth.
“Bullion!” said Captain Shooks with a queer chuckle, “some of the bully stuff that we organized this expedition to find. And Hicks here says there’s more down in the bowels of the old Spanish galleon where he got this, much more!”
“Oh! what d’ye think of that, now?” cried Ballyhoo, reaching out his hands for the weighty object, and showing by his actions as soon as he received it that he had all he could do to hold the same, it was so heavy.