‘I thought I heerd something about the foot of trees,’ answered the fellow, turning his pale meaningless countenance upon Lush. But Mr. Dugdale’ll know best, of course.’
‘If the money be here at all,’ said I, ‘you may take it as lying hidden somewhere in this space,’ and with pointing finger I indicated an oblong surface one end of which went a little beyond the fourth group of trees, whilst I defined the other as starting from about a hundred paces away from the edge of the beach where the boat was.
Ten minutes were now expended in heated discussion. Where should they begin? One or two were for leaving it to me and carrying out my suggestions; others were for measuring two hundred paces and starting there; whilst others were for digging at the roots of the clumps of trees, taking them one after another.
‘See here, lads,’ cried the carpenter; ‘we han’t had anything to eat yet. Better tarn to and get some dinner and grog. By that time we shall ha’ settled what to do and be the fitter to go to work.’
This was a proposal which all hands found perfectly agreeable. They flung down the implements they held, and in a very short time were seated about the grass, sheath-knives in hand, making a hearty meal off salt beef and biscuit and cheese, and tossing down pannikins of rum-and-water. They invited me to join them, and treated me with all the respect I could desire. Again and again, whilst we thus sat, I would direct looks at the barque as she lay as it might seem almost within musket-shot of us. The figure of a man paced the forecastle; but Miss Temple was not to be seen. Once the carpenter, catching me looking, exclaimed with a sort of enthusiasm in his voice: ‘Well, the little hooker is a beauty and no mistake. What a slaver she’d make!’ Commendation probably could not go higher in such a man. A beauty, indeed, she looked; the reflection of her white sides floated under her like a wavering sheet of silver; her canvas hanging in festoons showed with the milk-white softness of streaks of clouds against the blue sky past her; her rigging had the exquisite minuteness of hair. Would to God, I thought to myself with a sudden heavy sinking of my heart, that I were on board of her alone with Miss Temple, ay, with no other hands than mine to work the ship! I should find the strength of half-a-dozen seamen in me for her sake. Poor girl! and there arose before me a vision of the Indiaman—a recollection of the proud Miss Temple scarcely enduring to send a glance my way—— But this was a reverie that must be speedily disturbed by the company I was in.
They had hoarsely debated until they had come to an agreement, and, having concluded their meal, each man lighted his inch of sooty clay, picked up his shovel or his crow, or whatever else had been brought off from the barque, and marched to the nearest of the clump of trees, at the foot of which they fell to digging. Every man was in motion: they laboured with incredible activity, and with such faces of rapturous expectation as again and again forced a smile from me, depressed, anxious, miserable as I was. With my hands clasped behind me, I paced to and fro, watching and waiting. Now that the island had proved an absolute fact, I could no longer feel certain that the gold was a madman’s fancy. Nay, I was now indeed imagining that it was all true, and that Braine had fallen crazy through possession of his incommunicable secret acting upon a mind congenitally tinctured with insanity, and irremediably weakened yet by the horrible sufferings he had undergone before he was cast away upon this spot. Yet never did I glance at the barque without a prayer trembling from my heart to my lips that the wretches might not find the gold. An old scheme, that this unexpected lighting upon the island had quickened and given shape to, was fast maturing in my mind, even while I paced that stretch of grass; but the discovery of the money would render it abortive.
I watched the seamen with an interest as keen as their own, but with hopes diametrically opposite. The soil was dry, stubborn, perhaps through the intermingling of coral-grit and the coarse fibres of its herbage. Yet there were many of them, and every man worked with desperate energy, and presently they had dug up a good space to some little depth. I awaited with a beating heart the exultant shout which I might be sure the first man who turned up one of the yellow pieces would raise. They continued to toil in silence. Presently the carpenter, resting his chest upon his shovel, with the sweat falling in rain from his crimson face, bawled out to me: ‘How fur down, d’ye think, we ought to keep on a-digging?’
‘I would give up at two feet,’ said I. ‘Captain Braine and his friend would not find strength to go much beyond two feet.’
One of the fellows plumbed with his crow, and, bringing it out, with his thumb at the height of the level, cried: ‘It’s more’n two feet already.’
They dug a little longer, nevertheless; then a few curses ran among them, and the carpenter, with a note of irritation in his voice, roared out: ‘No good going on here. Try this clump.’ He walked over to it and drove his shovel into the soil. The men gathered about him, and in a trice were all in motion again.