As a last resort, however, we resolved to go over the whole ground, and endeavor to detect the spot, by discovering if the earth had been recently removed.
We no longer placed confidence in the story of Steel Spring, yet we thought it better to keep him at work in the hole, which was now even with his neck, than permit him to mingle with us in the dark, for somehow, we began to have strange suspicions that he was not dealing fairly by us.
Luckily, the sky was cloudless, and the stars shone with uncommon brilliancy, as though the constellations wished to afford us every facility for carrying our designs into effect.
The clearing was sufficiently large to enable the light to penetrate the open space, and with no other guide, we commenced striking our shovels and picks into the earth, in hopes of reaching the right spot.
I still clung to the idea that the money was buried under the ashes of the burned bushrangers, and with this impression, carefully scraped them aside, and felt with the point of my shovel, until I touched earth which I considered had been disturbed.
I said nothing to my companions, but worked diligently for a few minutes, until I became convinced that the ground had been moved at no distant day.
Wishing to be convinced that I was on a track which corresponded with the last words of Gulpin, I set the compass, and by the light of a match, noted its bearing.
The place where I had been at work bore in a south-west direction, and on pacing off the distance where the hut stood, I found it to be exactly ten paces.
"Hurrah, boys!" I shouted, commencing work with renewed energy, "I think that I have discovered the spot!"
My comrades hurried to my side, and all of us concentrated our energies upon that particular spot, and none worked harder than the aged convict, who appeared, since his recovery from the effects of too intense an application to my flask, to be desirous of making amends for his weakness.
"You are not vorking in the right place!" shouted Steel Spring, from his excavation, stopping his labors to watch our movements; "you will find nothing there, I gives you varning. Come and hassist me, and we shall find all the gold!"
"Cease your cries," said Smith, sternly; "do you wish to bring a band of bushrangers upon us in this lonely spot, where they can murder us without opposition?"