Maseden noticed that the other man’s hands and moccasins were soiled with the whitish-brown deposit through which a channel for the boat had been delved. Then he saw that no small part of the said channel was blocked by the débris of a fresh excavation.
Now, among the treasures on the boat were a couple of axes. Given an ax, some spice of ingenuity and a fair stock of patience, and any man can fashion an astonishing variety of useful articles. Singularly enough, Sturgess, who was gifted with the artist’s sense of proportion, could hew a spade out of a plank more skillfully than Maseden, and he was inordinately proud of the achievement.
“What the deuce have you been up to?” demanded Maseden at sight of so much misdirected industry.
“You wouldn’t guess in a week,” was the complacent answer. “This morning I was standing around doing nothing, when, as the tide fell, I spotted a bulge in the right bank of our canal. I wondered what had caused it, after our trouble in lining the walls with stakes, so I nosed around with a shovel. Then I got all fussed up, and didn’t care where I threw the dirt.... See what I’ve found, old scout!”
By this time they were in the trench, from which the tide had only recently receded. Sturgess’s zeal had cleared away some two cubic yards of silt, and Maseden saw at once that a part of the hull of a small vessel of some sort had been laid bare. Moreover, a few blows with an ax had removed sufficient of the rotting timbers to give access to the hulk’s interior.
It was a most interesting find. An old-time craft had been brought to her last resting-place within a few feet of the spot where the Southern Cross’s life-boat was embedded. Evidently in the course of years she had sunk in the soft deposit, and probably formed a nucleus for a new sand-bank. At any rate, she was completely covered, and lay there keel uppermost.
“Have you been inside?” said Maseden, eyeing the doorway broken by the ax.
“You bet your life,” said Sturgess.
“Was the air foul?”