Hamish knelt down and thrust one of his lately manicured hands deep into the hole. "Feel anything?" his sister asked hopefully.
He shook his head. "It's a washout," he said disgustedly. "I don't believe there ever was any bally old treasure!"
"Sure you got the measurements right?" Michael inquired with faint irony. The difference between his attitude and Hamish's was that Hamish was in deadly earnest, while with Michael it was almost as if he was playing a game.
So perhaps it was only fair that it should be Hamish who was wielding the shovel when it finally did strike something. We all heard the impact. Hattie May screamed and began to jump up and down. Hamish dropped the shovel and dived, almost literally head first into the hole. "There goes his shampoo, too!" I thought.
"There--there's something!" he gasped. "Some--something hard----!"
I giggled, I couldn't help it. It was partly nervous excitement and partly the sense which had been with me all along of the ridiculousness of the whole proceeding. "That," I said, "will be the iron bound chest full of doubloons and pieces of eight, no doubt!"
No one paid any attention to me. Hamish was groping desperately with his fingers. "I c-can't--seem--to--get hold----!" he panted.
"Let me have a try?" Michael put in quietly. Reluctantly Hamish moved a little and, kneeling down in his turn, Michael thrust one bare brown arm into the hole. A minute later he was holding up a small, dirt-encased object. As he shook off the clinging earth, we saw an oblong tin box like a tobacco tin. I stared dazedly at it--"Royal Plug" I read.
Hamish seized the box from Michael's hand. He shook it. It rattled! Hattie May screamed again. "It's the emerald--the blue emerald!"
Hamish was prying at the lid with fumbling awkward fingers. His sister snatched at it impatiently. "It would take you a week to get that cover off!" she cried.
But the cover stuck obstinately. Michael took out his jackknife. "Perhaps this will do it," he offered.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HAMISH took off his spectacles and wiped them carefully as if he hoped by so doing to see something different from the object which was lying in Michael's open palm. The object at which the rest of us were also incredulously staring. It was just a key--a long old-fashioned rusty key!