And the Parson jammed his spade into the ground the same instant. The great treasure hunt had begun.
Fairly bubbling over with fun, the conspirators gathered about him, stooping down and staring anxiously, jumping about and exclaiming excitedly, and above all urging the workman to still greater haste.
“Dig! Dig!” they cried.
And you can rest assured the Parson did dig! His long bony arms were flying like a machine. Beads of perspiration gathered on his classic brow; his breath came in gasps that choked off his numerous learned exclamations. And yet he kept on, flinging the dirt in showers about the room until the place began to look as if a sandstorm had struck it. The Parson was working as never had a parson worked before.
The others gave him little chance to rest, either; they kept up his frenzy of excitement by every means they could think of. But such working as that was bound to end soon, for even geological muscles can’t stand everything. In this case the end came of its own accord, for the simple reason that the hole got too deep. In his wild excitement Stanard had dug only a narrow one; and by and by he got down so far that he could barely reach the bottom with the end of his shovel. Then he stopped.
“By Zeus!” he gasped, “Gentlemen, this is—outrageous!”
“A shame!” cried Mark. “What are we going to do? Hurry up, it’s away after midnight.”
The Parson gazed around him wildly; he was as anxious to hurry as any one, but he didn’t know what to hurry at.
“Wow!” growled Texas. “Why don’t you fellers hurry up thar? Whar’s that air treasure? Did you bring me ‘way out hyar to git nothin’?”
This and dozens of similar remarks got the Parson very much discouraged and disgusted indeed.