“They will help—won’t you?” said Senor Ortiga with a pleasant look that surprised the chums. “Just because they fibbed to us we can’t tie them up again! It was perfectly natural for them to want all the treasure for themselves. We felt the same way!”
“So we did,” replied Mr. Coleson. “After we roped them up for a whole day I can’t say that I blame them. Very well. Here is Jim. Let us clear away the roots and see what we have.”
Under the changed attitude of the white men, Nicky, Tom and Cliff fell to with a will. The axe helped, the spades were very useful; eager hands made the work seem a delight. After all, there would be probably be plenty of gold—or whatever it might be—for each to have a good share.
When they had cleared away a good portion of the earth and the matted undergrowth clinging to the crumbly soil, they saw, as soon as the mud they had created was settled, a fairly wide, and not very deep fissure in the coral beneath.
Probably, they decided, the castaways, in the days they had been there, had taken advantage of a naturally formed depression in the limestone formation, perhaps had widened it somewhat with picks.
At any rate, when the moiled water had cleared, they beheld a mass of metallic bars, thrown in, helter-skelter.
Mr. Coleson, being the tallest, lowered himself onto the top of the mass and found that his chin was just above water. By taking a deep breath, holding it, and plunging, naked as he was, beneath the surface, he could get down, for a brief time to the hoard of metal.
After his first plunge he came up, and sputtering till he rid his nostrils of water, he held up above the water a bar, which Senor Ortiga almost snatched from him in his excitement.
They all crowded around to look.
Ortiga scraped the dirt and slime, accumulated partly from their recent digging, from the bar and gave an exultant cry.