After breakfast they went down to the new cove. The dory lay on the opposite side of the inlet, however, and although Bee suggested wading across, investigation proved that the water was at least four feet deep in the shallowest place. So they removed their clothes, plunged in and swam to the opposite side, Bee remarking that it was quite a thing to be the first bathers there. When they reached the dory, however, they found that it was half full of sand and that their united efforts failed to even budge it.
“Well,” said Jack, “it won’t get away in a hurry. We’ll leave it for someone else to rescue, I guess. There are probably more dories along shore.”
They returned across the inlet and ran up and down in the wind to get dry. It didn’t take long, but it was cold work and they were glad to pull their clothes on again. Afterwards they set out along the edge of the stream. The tide had begun to rise and the water was running in fast. Now and then the edge of the sandy bank on their side would break away and topple down, dissolving like sugar in a tea cup. Bee, who had loitered a few steps behind the others, stopped and said “Hello!” in a surprised voice and the others turned back.
“What have you found?” asked Jack.
Bee was kicking the sand with his foot and by the time Jack and Hal reached him he had laid bare the top of a roughly-laid stone wall or pavement. “It’s a cabin,” he exclaimed eagerly. “I mean it’s the foundation of it. I’m going to get a shovel.”
“Bring them both!” called Jack as Bee sped off around the island.
Five minutes of digging, however, showed them that instead of finding the foundations of the wrecker’s cabin they had unearthed the end of a little stone wharf, and Bee was greatly disappointed. “Still,” he said presently, “if the wharf was here it’s possible the cabin was nearby.” He looked about for a probable site, but the sand continued for nearly a hundred feet before the hill began and he finally agreed with the others that Verny would not have been likely to build his house thereabouts. “Just the same, I don’t see why he needed two wharves,” he objected.
“I guess that other one must have been put up by someone else,” pondered Jack. “When you come to think of it, those wooden spiles wouldn’t have lasted for over forty years, would they? This was probably Old Verny’s wharf and he put it here so he could get to it from either side of the point.”
“Well, we’ve found something,” said Hal, “even if we haven’t discovered the treasure. What’s that?”