“That’s a stroke of luck,” muttered Phil thankfully, then looked for his companions.
They were there, looking kind of white and shaken and staring as though fascinated out to sea. One wave had followed another, each smaller than the last, finally settling into a froth of white capped combers, a seething whirlpool of writhing waters.
“Say,” remarked Steve with a shadow of his famous grin, “if you ask this old boy I’ll say we sure stirred things up some. Who’d have guessed that that much dynamite would have made all that fuss?”
“It was a mighty pretty sight,” said Tom, waxing enthusiastic now that the danger was passed. “A magnificent sight.”
“And we ought to thank our stars we lived to see it,” said Dick dryly. “Say boys, what’s become of the boats?”
Phil pointed them out and they went over to examine their contents and see how much loss there was—if any. They found that a couple of batteries had been swept overboard, but as they had more safe in the cave, this was not an important loss.
The diver’s suit which Phil had removed before setting off the charge, had been thrown clear off the raft but it was so heavy that it had dug a hole for itself and lay there, distorted and grotesque like some monster thrown up from the sea.
“Lucky for us we didn’t lose that,” said Phil softly. “We’d have had a pretty time trying to get hold of the treasure without.”
As though the word itself had some magic power the minds of the boys immediately returned to the hunt. As though moved by a single impulse, they turned and looked out to sea.
The tumultuous waters had quieted until now only a slight eddy and swirl marked the spot of the explosion.