“It’s a barrel,” says Vee.

“Water butt,” says Killam.  “An old ship’s water butt.  There are the staves of another, fallen apart.  And look!  Will—­you—­look, all of you!”

Would we?  Say, we was crowded around that black hole in the mound as thick as noon lunchers at a pie counter.  And we was strainin’ our eyes to see what the faint light of the torch was tryin’ to show up.  All of a sudden I reaches in and makes a grab at something, bringin’ out a fistful.

“Hard money,” says I, “or I don’t know the feel!”

“Why, it—­it’s gold!” says Vee, bringin’ her flashlight close.

“There’s more of it, a lot more!” shouts Killam, who has his head and shoulders inside and is pawin’ around excited.  “Quarts and quarts of it!  And jewels, too!  I say, Mr. Ellins!  Jewels!  Didn’t I tell you we’d find ’em?  See, here they are.  See those!  And those!  Didn’t I say so?”

“You did, Captain,” admits Old Hickory.  “You certainly did.  And for a time I was just ass enough to believe you, wasn’t I?”

“Oh, Auntie!” calls Vee.  “We’ve found it!  Honest to goodness we have.  Come and see.”

“As though I wasn’t coming as fast as I could, child!” says Auntie, who has scrambled over the bow somehow and is plowin’ towards us with her skirts gripped high on either side.

Thrillin’!  Say, I don’t believe any of us could tell just what we did do for the next half hour or so.  I remember once Old Hickory got jammed into the hole and we had to pry him out.  And another time, when we was rollin’ out the cask, it was Auntie who helped me pull it through and ease it down the slope.  She’d lost most of her hairpins and her gray hair was hangin’ down her back.  Also, she’d stepped on the front of her skirt and ripped off a breadth.  But them trifles didn’t seem to bother her a bit.

“Ho, ho!” she warbles merry.  “Gold and jewels!  The jewels of old Spain and of the days of Louis Fourteenth.  Pirate gold!  We’ve dug it!  The very thing I’ve always wanted to do ever since I was a little girl.  Ho, ho!”

“And I rather guess,” adds Old Hickory, fishin’ a broken cigar out of his vest pocket, “that as treasure hunters we’re not such thundering jokes, after all.  Eh?”

And say, when Old Hickory starts crowin’ you can know he sees clear through to daylight.  I looks over my shoulder just then, and, sure enough, it’s beginnin’ to pink up in the east.

“My dope is,” says I, “that it’s goin’ to be a large, wide day.  Anyhow, it opens well.”

CHAPTER XVI

TORCHY TAKES A RUNNING JUMP

Course, it don’t sound natural.  A merry sunrise party is an event that ain’t often listed on the cards, unless it’s a continuous session from the evenin’ before.  But this wasn’t a case of a bunch of night-bloomin’ gladiolas who’d lasted through.  Hardly.  Although Auntie does have something of a look like the parties you see lined up at Yorkville Court, charged with havin’ been rude to taxi drivers; and Mr. Ellins might have been passin’ the night on a bakery gratin’ with a sportin’ extra for a blanket.