“Can’t be far,” she told herself. She thought of Percy O’Hara, the “Phantom.”
“Air’s strange tonight,” she told herself.
“Perhaps he’s still away up there. Sound carries a long way at times.”
Once again her spade cut deep in the sand. But now her heart skipped a beat. She had struck some solid object.
“Only a rock or a log buried by a storm centuries ago,” she told herself. “And yet—” she was digging fiercely now. Like a dog close to a ground squirrel’s nest, she made the dirt fly.
The thing she had found was not a rock. “Not hard enough for that,” she told herself. “A log? Well, perhaps. But it—it’s—”
She ceased digging. Seizing a firebrand, she fanned it into flame, then held it low in the hole she had dug. Next instant she was all but bowled over with astonishment.
“It is a barrel!” she breathed. “Or, at least a keg. And it has heavy copper hoops. It—”
But at this instant a light shone full upon her face. It was there for only an instant, but long enough to give her warning. Seizing her spade, she had half filled the hole when a small boat came around the point.
* * * * * * * *