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 had silted around her. In places her deck had caved in, and most of the woodwork had either been rotted or washed away. Flagg had evidently been breaking away timbers in the neighborhood of the poop, endeavoring to reveal any locker which might contain the platinum, but the task did not seem to have been a very promising one.

Tempest scratched his head and pulled a wry face.

"It's no use spoiling the ship for a penn 'orth of tar," he said lugubriously. "Now that we are here, we might as well finish the search; but it's pretty clear that this isn't where we get rich quick, eh, Dave?"

Though their hopes had now dwindled down to zero, they worked hard throughout that day and the following one without the slightest encouragement. With an immense amount of labor they dug into a cavity which appeared to have been the captain's cabin, and cleared it of tons of sand. They came across sundry half-decayed articles,