Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/276

 sprawled beside the hole. He attacked it again vigorously, and the trowel clinked against something which did not sound like a stone.

"And it isn't a stone!" Garth shouted, throwing the trowel down. "I can get my hand under it, and it's a queer shape! Was there anything here, Joan? Anything more?"

"On my honor, no," said Joan, running up.

"Dig it away with your fingers," he commanded. "I'm afraid of breaking it, if I pull."

They scooped the earth away from under the thing, coaxed and urged and pulled gently, until they got it out.

"What is it?" Joan wondered. Then, both at once, they saw what it was, or had been.

It was the hilt of a broad-sword, corroded frostily green. Six inches of blade remained, crumbling with rust. Garth gazed at it, his face lit with a sort of grave ecstasy.

"I'd much rather find that," he said soberly, "than boxes and boxes of real doubloons. It's—it's more exciting, somehow. I don't mean zackly that—I don't know how to say it. But—it might have done so many things. It—it might have belonged to a sea-captain!"

He grasped it suddenly in a brown fist and held it aloft exultantly.