ocking the entrance to our dock effectually. The ship
herself aided us in this respect, by settling down more in the sand
there as it became loosened, and we only had to take care now that the
slight rise and fall of the tide should not cause too great a leakage
into the trench between the keel below and the upper strakes of her
timbers above, at the height to which the dam reached; and, after a
while, although a little water did trickle through the wall of sand and
lava forming the side of the excavation towards the sea, there was not a
sufficient quantity of it to interfere with the labour of digging to any
material extent, nor to arrest our efforts.

The men, indeed, wielded their picks as if anxious to make up for the
half-hour or so that had been wasted since Tom Bullover found the golden
Madonna.

Nor did they content themselves merely with digging.

A keen watch was kept, in case something else might turn up, and every
piece of hard substance disinterred was carefully scrutinised; but,
alas! no more golden images or nuggets of the precious metal gladdened
our eyes! Nothing came in view but sand and lava, lava and sand, varied
occasionally by the sight of some fragment of half-fossilised
tortoise-shell, or the chalky bones of cuttlefish and similar debris of
the deep, washed up by the sea, and buried a fathom deep and more amid
the strata of the shore.

This was disappointing; still, the men comforted themselves with the
reflection that they were really digging for something else beyond the
mere chance of picking up stray finds, such as that of Tom, who was
thought a right good fellow for declaring he didn't consider the Madonna
his own special property, but would sell the figure, and go shares with
all, when they got the ship afloat again, and reached San Francisco. My
friend the carpenter thus artfully `pointed his moral,' in order to make
us work the harder at the novel navvy work at which we were engaged--
strange, at least, to us sailor-folk.

Of course, though, while toiling like this, digging and splashing about
in the insidious water that percolated through the beach, and which
gradually accumulated until it was now almost knee-deep in the bottom of
the trench, we were by no means silent, for a lot of talk went on in
reference to the buccaneers' buried treasure that Jan Steenbock had
spoken of. So, in spite of the second-mate's warning as to the `curse'
which he declared was associated with the hi