e larger pearls off the shells
that lined Helen's cave. The walls and roof yielded nine enormous pearls,
thirty large ones, and a great many of the usual size.

He made a pocket inside his waistcoat to hold the pearls safe.

Then he took his spade and dug into the Spanish ship for treasure. But
this was terrible work. The sand returned upon the spade and trebled his
labor.

The condition to which time and long submersion had reduced this ship and
cargo was truly remarkable. Nothing to be seen of the deck but a thin
brown streak that mingled with the sand in patches; of the timbers
nothing but the uprights, and of those the larger half eaten and
dissolved.

He dug five days, and found nothing solid.

On the sixth, being now at the bottom the ship, he struck his spade
against something hard and heavy.

On inspection it looked like ore, but of what metal he could not tell; it
was as black as a coal. He threw this on one side, and found nothing
more; but the next day he turned up a smaller fragment, which he took
home and cleaned with lime juice. It came out bright in places like
silver.

This discovery threw light on the other. The piece of black ore, weighing
about seven pounds, was in reality silver coin, that a century of
submersion had reduced to the very appearance it wore before it ever went
into the furnace.

He dug with fresh energy on this discovery, but found nothing more in the
ship that day.

Then it occurred to him to carry off a few hundred-weight of pink coral.

He got some fine specimens; and, while he was at that work, he fell in
with a piece that looked very solid at the root and unnaturally heavy. On
a nearer examination this proved to be a foreign substance incrusted with
coral. It had twined and twisted and curled over the thing in a most
unheard-of way. Robert took it home, and, by rubbing here and there with
lemon juice, at last satisfied himself that this object was a silver box
about the size of an octavo volume.

It had no keyhole, had evidently been soldered up for greater security,
and Robert was left to conjecture how it had come there.

He connected it at once with the ship, and felt assured that some attempt
had been made to save it. There it had lain by the side of the vessel all
these years, but, falling clear of the sand, had been embraced by the
growing coral, and was now a curiosity, if not a treasure.

He would not break the coral, but put it on board his life-boat just