expedition from England had
found the three cairns, but foolishly demolished them on the chance
that gold might be buried underneath. Mr. Knight could find traces of
only one of them, and he discovered also a water-jar, a broken
wheel-barrow and other tools to show where the others had been digging.
The crew of the _Alerte_ were confident that they were at the right
place, and they set to work with the most admirable zeal and fortitude,
enduring hardships cheerfully, and during the three months of their
labors on Trinidad, removing earth and rock literally by the thousands
of tons, until the ravine was scooped out to a depth of from eight to
twenty feet.

Their vessel had to anchor far off shore, and once forsook them for a
fourteen hundred mile voyage to Bahia to get provisions. These London
lawyers and other gentlemen unused to toil with the hands became as
tough and rough and disreputable to see as the pirates who had been
there aforetime. In costume of shirt, trousers, and belt, they became
ragged and stained from head to foot with the soil, and presented a
uniform, dirty, brownish, yellow appearance like so many Brazilian
convicts. Their surf boat was wrecked or upset at almost every attempt
to land or to go off to the _Alerte_, and when they were not fishing
one another out of the surf, they were diving to recover their
submerged and scattered stores. Their leader, Mr. Knight, paid them a
tribute of which they must have been proud:

"They had toiled hard and had kept up their spirits all the while and
what is really wonderful under circumstances so calculated to try the
temper and wear out the patience, they had got on exceedingly well with
each other, and there had been no quarreling or ill feeling of any
sort."

At length the melancholy verdict was agreed upon in council. All the
bright dreams of carrying home a fortune for every adventurer were
reluctantly dismissed. The men were worn to the bone, and it was
becoming more and more difficult to maintain communication with the
_Alerte_. The prodigious excavation was abandoned, and Mr. Knight
indulged himself in a soliloquy as he surveyed the "great trenches, the
piled-up mounds of earth, the uprooted rocks, with broken wheelbarrows
and blocks, worn-out tools, and other relics of our three months strewn
over the ground; and it was sad to think that all the energy of these
men had been spent in vain. They well deserved to succeed, and all the
more so b