And not all their efforts would budge it one particle. So they began to dig around the base. They dug and they dug; they heaved and they perspired; 136 they threw out the dirt by shovelfuls until it made a heap several feet high, and still they did not come to the bottom of the rock.
“I bet it goes clear through to China,” said the Captain disgustedly, resting on his spade and mopping his brow.
“What sillies we are!” said the Bottomless Pitt. “What are we trying to dig the blooming rock out for? There wouldn’t be anything under it that far down. If anything’s buried here it’s in the ground at the base of the rock.”
“Well, there’s the ground at the base of the rock,” said the Captain, pointing to the heap of dirt. “We’ve dug it all up. There wasn’t anything in it.”
Slowly but undeniably the fact began to dawn on all of them. The marked rock was not the burying ground of any Indian relics. Hinpoha held out the longest, but even she had to admit it at last. Katherine, who had been skeptical from the first, laughed loud and long.
“What fools these mortals be!” she quoted disgustedly. “Breaking our backs digging up clay that’s like iron and cutting up dozens of perfectly good angle-worms all on account of an old rock with a mark on it!”
“But the colonel said there might be Indian relics,” said Hinpoha, “so it wasn’t so silly.”
“Well, there aren’t any,” said Katherine.
“Never mind,” put in Gladys pacifically, “if we 137 didn’t find anything we didn’t lose anything either, and I’ve worked up such an appetite from digging that I could eat an ox.”
“So could I,” said Sahwah. “Let’s take the worms home with us and go fishing this afternoon. Then all our digging won’t be for nothing.”