This fourth cask was different in appearance from the rest, and Broughton had noted it as not belonging to Messrs. Norton and Banks’ consignment. It was more strongly made and better finished, and was stained a light oak colour and varnished. Evidently, also, it did not contain wine, for what had called their attention to its injury was a little heap of sawdust which had escaped from a crack at the end of one of the staves.
‘Strange looking cask this. Did you ever see one like it before?’ said Broughton to the I. and C. foreman who had pulled him back, a man named Harkness. He was a tall, strongly built man with prominent cheekbones, a square chin and a sandy moustache. Broughton had known him for some time and had a high opinion of his intelligence and ability.
‘Never saw nothin’ like it,’ returned Harkness. ‘I tell you, sir, that there cask ’as been made to stand some knocking about.’
‘Looks like it. Let’s get it rolled back out of the way and turned up, so as to see the damage.’
Harkness seized the cask and with some difficulty rolled it close to the ship’s side out of the way of the unloading, but when he tried to upend it he found it too heavy to lift.
‘There’s something more than sawdust in there,’ he said. ‘It’s the ’eaviest cask ever I struck. I guess it was its weight shifted the other casks in the sling and spilled the lot.’
He called over another man and they turned the cask damaged end up. Broughton stepped over to the charge hand and asked him to check the tally for a few seconds while he examined the injury.
As he was returning across the half-dozen yards to join the foreman, his eye fell on the little heap of sawdust that had fallen out of the crack, and the glitter of some bright object showing through it caught his attention. He stooped and picked it up. His amazement as he looked at it may be imagined, for it was a sovereign!
He glanced quickly round. Only Harkness of all the men present had seen it.
‘Turn the ’eap over, sir,’ said the foreman, evidently as surprised as the younger man, ‘see if there are any more.’