With trembling fingers Dick fumbled with the strings of the bag then plunged his hand to the bottom of it. The hand returned, grasping three golden coins, the first fruits of the treasure.
For a moment pandemonium reigned. The boys acted like crazy men. They grasped each other about the waist and rollicked in a sort of wild war dance about the place, shouting at the top of their lungs. Bimbo’s mouth was stretched in a grin that must have hurt.
“Yassir,” he was saying over and over again, his rich darky voice raised above the din, “I don said ef anybody could find dat dere gol’en treasure, dat man was Marse Phil. Yassir, dis nigger done allus said Marse Phil de greatest treasure hunter what is. Yassir!”
After they had quieted down sufficiently to care to hear details, Phil recounted his adventures in the hull of the ship, not even omitting the part where he had stumbled over the dead man’s bones.
At this part in the narrative Bimbo was seen to gaze apprehensively over his shoulder. Trying to attract as little attention as possible, he crept nearer to the absorbed group about Phil.
However, Bimbo was not the only one who felt an uncanny chill in the atmosphere. For a moment each one had put himself in Phil’s place, had stumbled over some horrible object, the skeleton of a man who generations ago had lived and breathed.
“Gee, Phil,” Tom said, in an awed voice. “I bet a little company would have come in handy just then—something beside dead men’s bones.”
“You said something,” replied Phil fervently adding, with a gleam in his eyes that seemed to be reflected from the gold itself, “But when I found that chest burst wide open, spilling out its golden contents, believe me, I forgot all about skeletons and everything else. I even forgot that my oxygen was running low. Say, but that was a sight!”
“You lucky dog,” cried Steve, enviously. “What do you mean by hogging all the fun, anyway?”
“I haven’t,” replied Phil, with a grin. “Didn’t I bring a chunk of it up with me?”