“Almost nothing,” replied Dutch. “If there is anything below there, it is buried deep in sand, which, I think, we must blast away, for it runs back as fast as it is dug.”
“Then you found absolutely nothing,” said Mr Parkley, while the others waited eagerly for the young man’s answer.
“Unless this proves to be something,” replied Dutch, taking the shelly mass from his net basket and handing it to his partner.
Mr Parkley received it with trembling hands.
“It is heavy,” he said, turning it over and over. “Here Rasp, a hammer, quick.”
The old fellow handed a bright steel-headed tool, with the ordinary hammer head on one side, but a sharp wedge-shaped edge at the other, and with this Mr Parkley chipped away the small barnacles and other shells conglomerated together, and at about the fourth stroke laid bare something bright and shining.
“My dear Dutch,” cried his partner, dropping the hammer, “we are right. Look—silver!”
He wrung Dutch’s hand vigorously, as the young man’s face flushed with pleasure; and then, picking up the hammer, he struck off the remainder of the shelly concretion, and passed round a blackened wedge-shaped ingot of about a couple of pounds weight, and undoubtedly of fine silver.
“Here, lay hold of the legs of this soot,” cried Rasp eagerly, as he seized the second suit which lay ready on a seat. “I’m a-going down dreckly.”
“We’d better wait first, and make some definite plan of action,” said Mr Parkley, who was nearly as excited as his old assistant.