So they slept in their boat as usual, and next day set out to explore, and to climb the hills.
Everything most unsatisfactory. No beauty nor romance anywhere, except that of the sea itself.
So they determined to return next morning. But the wind had died down to a perfect calm, which held for three days, the stars at night blazing with a brilliancy such as Kep had never witnessed before in all his long life, of "fourteen years, and begun again."
On the third day of their imprisonment on this new island the sun shone with greater fierceness than ever, and Kep, who was a most daring swimmer and diver, stripped and dashed head first from a rock, down, down fathoms and fathoms into a blue-green pool beneath.
For just three minutes this boy had trained himself to hold his breath beneath the water. At the bottom he clutched at and held on to something, and for seconds remained motionless.
But what had he clutched at? Why, it was a piece of shell-encrusted iron--a ring-bolt. He stood on the deck of a sunken ship, and one, too, of olden build, and olden times.
All thought of returning to Great Snake Island was for the time abandoned, and about once an hour, until quite exhausted, Kep dived down, and each time returned to the surface with something strange and stranger to tell. She had sea-worn guns on board. She looked like an old Spanish galleon, or a pirate, or a specie ship.
This last guess proved to be right; for the wreckage about the decks proved that the seamen, whoever they may have been, had tried to save heavy boxes, and from the side of one of these, a piece of gold had fallen, only a small bar, but this the boy took up with him.
He was tremendously excited. "Oh Adolph!" he cried, "we have discovered a treasure ship."
"You have, Kep, not I."