‘Ay, she’ll lie all right off that tree,’ exclaimed the carpenter. ‘In oars, lads! Let her slide quietly stem on. I’ve heard of coral spikes a-tearing of boats’ bottoms out.’
A few minutes later most of us were ashore, the boat lying quietly secured by a line to a small but solidly rooted tree, and two or three fellows in her handing out her freight of odds and ends to the others.
The feel of solid land under my feet was a singular sensation. I had now been incessantly at sea for a time that was growing rapidly into six months, and after those interminable weeks of heaving shipboard, the immovability of this coral rock affected me as something in the greatest degree novel. I sent a hurried glance around; but the eyes I had strained from over the rail of the barque had acquainted me with every material point of the island, and this closer survey yielded nothing fresh. The margin of the beach of the lagoon went gently sloping up from hard coral to a species of soil that appeared to possess some qualities of fertility, for the tall coarse grass was very plentiful and of a most vivid green. The few groups of trees were also richly clad, and the bushes extraordinarily abundant. There were no signs of life of any sort saving birds, of which a score or two were wheeling about in the air over the northward fronting beach. The inland rise was a mere small green acclivity probably not above thirty feet to the summit. All was silent, desolate, lifeless; nothing to hear amid the brief intervals of stillness among the men save the delicate noise of the soft wind amongst the foliage, and the melancholy moaning of surf from the other side of the island.
Everything was landed; the men seized hold of the various implements they had brought with them to dig up the soil; the carpenter flourished a shovel and called to me: ‘Mr. Dugdale, have ye no recollection of the number of paces?’
‘None whatever,’ I responded.
‘What d’ye advise, sir?’
‘Measure a hundred paces, keeping yonder pillar on a line with that clump of trees there, and then dig.’
‘Ay, but Wilkins overheard the capt’n say that the money was buried at the foot of some trees,’ said Forrest. ‘A hundred paces ain’t going to bring us near a tree.’
‘I remember nothing about the foot of some trees,’ I exclaimed.
‘What do you recall?’ the carpenter shouted to Wilkins.