All three of us were almost beside ourselves with impatience to break down that wooden barrier. I took the crowbar and inserted its curved end between two of the stout elm planks in an endeavour to break out one of them. The attempt was, however, futile.
Indeed, it took us another half-hour before we had sufficiently excavated the earth, top and bottom, to allow us to make a satisfactory attempt. At last, however, I again placed the crowbar beneath the blackened, sodden wood, and we all three jumped against it with all our might. It did not yield at first, but, working by slow degrees, we gradually loosened it, and then of a sudden the heavy bolts or fastenings within gave way with a loud crack and the plank was wrenched out, disclosing a dark cavity beyond.
Usher struck a match and held it within, but its feeble light revealed nothing. We wondered if, after all, someone had been before us, ages ago perhaps, for the chamber seemed hollow and empty.
Without loss of time we broke out three other planks from the side of the wooden wall, and then, lighting a candle, I stooped and entered the place, eager to ascertain the truth.
The moment I stepped within a loud cry involuntarily escaped my lips, for my gladdened eyes fell upon some dark objects which lay piled one upon the other in the centre of the small, close-smelling place.
I took the candle nearer, and saw that they were great, iron-bound chests—the chests which, according to the cipher record, were filled with gold!
In an instant my companions were at my side, eager and wild with excitement as myself. Each of them lit candles, and we examined the place together. It was not square but oblong, and we had entered at the end. All around were rough-hewn planks upon which were growing great fungi; the roof also being of stout oak planks and beams, one root of the great oak had grown through, twisted grotesquely, and entered the ground beneath, while the planks on the right side had been forced in by the tree’s growth. The place was not quite high enough to allow us to stand upright, yet it seemed far drier than the forest earth we had excavated outside. On examining the walls I found that the planks had been soaked in tar to protect them from the ravages of insects, and that after the place had been constructed the interior had been coated with pitch to render it as water-tight as possible.
In the centre, piled together, were the huge locked chests and sacks of leather secured with big leaden seals, almost like that seal on the Italian document I found on board the Seahorse.
To say that we danced for joy would perhaps describe our feelings in those moments. Fortune was mine at last! Even if the heir to the treasure were found one chestful of gold was mine by right. I bent, and by aid of my candle examined the device on the leaden seals, finding it to be the familiar leopard rampant, the arms of the noble house of Da Schorno.
Eager to examine the true nature of our find, we all three of us, by dint of much exertion, managed to move one of the iron-clamped chests from the others and place it on the ground. Then we set about breaking off the lid, a difficult matter, for although the iron was rusty those locked bolts were formidable.