“We’re mates, we are,” cried the great fellow, holding out his broad hairy hand to take Dick’s in his grasp, and shake it steadily up and down. “I heven’t forgot, I heven’t forgot.”
“Are you all right again, Bargle?” said Dick, trying in vain to extricate his hand.
“Yeees. Knock o’ the yead don’t hot me. See here.”
He slowly drew out of his pocket a great piece of dark-yellow ivory, evidently the point, and about a foot in length, of the tusk of some animal, probably an elephant.
“Theer’s what I promised you, lad. That’s a tush, that is. What yer think o’ that?”
Dick did not seem to know what to think of it, but he expressed his gratitude as well as he could, and had to shake hands again and again with the great fellow, who seemed to take intense delight in smiling at Dick and shaking his head at him.
How long this scene would have lasted it is impossible to say; but at last, as it was growing irksome, there came a shout from the end of the drain.
“They’ve found something else,” said Mr Marston; and the lads needed no telling to hasten their steps, for the finding of something buried in the peat could not fail to prove interesting; but in this case the discovery was startling to the strongest nerves.
As they neared the end of the drain where the men were slowly delving out the peat, and a section of the bog was before them showing about twelve feet of, the wet black soil, Mr Marston stepped eagerly forward, and the group of men who were standing together opened out to let him and his companions pass through.
Dick shuddered at the object before him: the figure of a man clothed apparently in some kind of leather garb, and partly uncovered from the position it had occupied in the peat.