But, one late afternoon they had exhausted the contents of the hole as far as gold was concerned. There were several large objects, presumably golden placques or perhaps they were silver; but they were too heavy to be dislodged, much less to be lifted to the surface.
All of the company agreed that it was hardly worth while to try for them any longer, and the white men, with Jim, began to pick their way over to the two boats, both filled with their last load of wealth. But Nicky motioned to his chums to delay for a moment.
“Mr. Coleson had a despatch box of some kind almost at the surface, just a little while ago,” he told them. “Let’s make a try to get it again. He dropped it because he said it probably contained only papers.”
“What do we want with papers?” argued Tom. “We can come back some time and get it.”
“It may have the log of the old ship in it, or papers about the cruise,” Nicky argued. “Cliff’s father would like them more, I think, than the gold. He could write a whole history about the Spanish times in America from them, maybe.”
Cliff, being the oldest and strongest, decided to do the diving. Divesting himself of clothing which he hung on the remaining bushes on the rim of the islet they had not disturbed, he plunged.
On his first rise he clutched an ancient ornament, something like part of a figure of a god, but it was of some stone, not of gold; he was about to throw it aside but Nicky took it. “It might be a relic, like those we found in the Carib diggings,” he suggested.
Cliff made several tries, and finally brought up an old, and very much rusted bronze box, of very curious workmanship, with a handle at each end. It was badly eaten away by oxide and Cliff urged Tom, who took it, to handle it with care. Then Cliff was helped up onto the water-covered bedrock and reached for his clothes.
“Why—” Nicky, turning toward the boats, gasped. “What are they doing?”
“They’re putting gold from our boat into theirs!”