At last I reached the twenty-ninth, and it brought me to a stump of a giant tree that had been recently felled and carted away. Usher bent quickly to examine the wood, and declared it to be oak.
Was this the sapling planted by Bartholomew da Schorno to mark the spot where he and his two companions had buried the treasure?
Could the Spanish gold be concealed beneath those enormous roots? Was a fortune lying there hidden beneath our feet?
Excited as we all were, we did not act with any precipitation. My other two companions made measurements, each walking twenty-nine paces, and after some consultation both declared that I was correct. The stump was actually that of the oak planted by the Italian, and our next task was to remove it.
Even though the sun shone brightly, it was damp and gloomy within that lonely wood. The undergrowth and bracken were full of moisture, and already our clothes were wet through. We lost no time, however, in setting to work to dig out the enormous root beneath which we hoped to discover that of which we had so long been in search.
All three of us took off coats and waistcoats, and with our spades first dug a deep trench round the stump, and sawed through the main roots that ran deep into the ground in all directions, hoping by this to be able to remove the main portion of the wood bodily. To the uninitiated the “grubbing-up” of a tree root is a very difficult operation, and through the whole morning we worked without being able to move the big mass an inch. Having sawed off all the roots we could find we attached a rope to it and harnessed ourselves, all of us pulling our hardest. Yet it would not budge.
Of a sudden, while we sat upon the obstinate oak-root, perspiring and disappointed, a way out of the difficulty suggested itself to me. Why not dig down beside it and then drive a tunnel at right angles beneath?
I made the suggestion, and at once we commenced to suit the action to the word, first digging a big hole some eight feet deep and six across, and then driving at right angles beneath the root.
We had been at work over an hour, slowly excavating beneath the base of the root, when of a sudden my pick struck wood. My companions with their shovels quickly cleared away the earth, when there became disclosed to us a sodden, half rotten plank set up on end. The discovery showed that we had come upon something unusual, especially as the spade worked by Usher revealed a few moments later two other boards placed so closely in a line with the first that they seemed joined together.
Twenty minutes afterwards we found five thick planks, each half a foot wide, placed together in a straight line, as though it were the side of a square subterranean chamber that had been excavated and boarded up so as to prevent the earth from falling in.