Several days went by, and still the treasure was unfound.  Of course, as the unexplored space in the cave contracted, so daily the probability grew stronger that Fortune would shed her golden smile upon us before night.  Nevertheless, it seemed to me that the optimistic spirits of most were beginning to flag a little.  Only Mr. Shaw, though banned as a confirmed doubter and pessimist, now by the exercise of will kept the others to their task.  It took all Cuthbert Vane’s loyalty, plus an indisposition to be called a slacker, to strive against the temptation to renounce treasure-hunting in favor of roaming with Crusoe and me.  As for Captain Magnus, his restlessness was manifest.  Several times he had suggested blowing the lid off the island with dynamite, as the shortest method of getting at the gold.  He was always vanishing on solitary excursions inland.

Mr. Tubbs remarked, scornfully, that a man with a nose for money ought to have smelted out the chest before this, but if his own nasal powers were of that character he did not offer to employ them in the service of the expedition.  Miss Higglesby-Browne, however, had taken to retiring to the hut for long private sessions with herself.  My aunt reverentially explained their purpose.  The hiding-place of the chest being of course known to the Universal Wisdom, all Violet had to do was to put herself in harmony and the knowledge would be hers.  The difficulty was that you had first to overcome your Mundane Consciousness.  To accomplish this Violet was struggling in the solitude of the hut.

Meanwhile Mr. Tubbs sat at the feet of Aunt Jane, reading aloud from a volume entitled Paeans of Passion, by a celebrated lady lyric poet of our own land.

After my meeting with Captain Magnus in the forest, Lookout Ridge was barred to me.  Crusoe and I must do our rambling in other directions.  This being so, I bethought me again of the wrecked sloop lying under the cliffs on the north shore of the cove.  I remembered that there had seemed to be a way down the cliffs.  I resolved to visit the sloop again.  The terrible practicality of the beautiful youth made it difficult to indulge in romantic musings in his presence.  And to me a derelict brings a keener tang of romance than any other relic of man’s multitudinous and futile strivings.

The descent of the gully proved an easy matter, and soon I was on the sand beside the derelict.  Sand had heaped up around her hull, and filled her cockpit level with the rail, and drifted down the companion, stuffing the little cabin nearly to the roof, Only the bow rose free from the white smother of sand.  Whatever wounds there were in her buried sides were hidden.  You felt that some wild caprice of the storm had lifted her and set her down here, not too roughly, then whirled away and left her to the sand.

Crusoe slipped into the narrow space under the roof of the cabin, and I leaned idly down to watch him through a warped seam between the planks.  Then I found that I was looking, not at Crusoe, but into a little dim enclosure like a locker, in which some small object faintly caught the light.  With a revived hope of finding relics I got out my knife—­a present from Cuthbert Vane—­and set briskly to work widening the seam.