“No; I didn’t notice that.” “Well, it did, and, what’s more, it’s all Spanish money.” “But where did it come from?” said Jack. “Jack,” said Tom, slowly, “as sure as I’m lying here, that wreck on the sand-spit is the wreck of a Spanish treasure ship.” “Tom!” shouted Jack, “you’re right! What a fool I was not to think of that! Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face!” No doubt you who read this have guessed the matter long ago, and have wondered that Tom and Jack were so dull of wits as not to have thought of it before. But the idea never entered their heads that a fortune was lying buried in the sand that covered the poor old wreck that had been so constantly before their eyes for almost a year, and when they found money like pebbles along the beach, it never struck them that it could have been washed out of those crumbling ribs, whose only value had been that they gave them a rusty spike every now and then. Jack was wild to go out into the night, and to hunt for money there and then, and it was as much as Tom could do to quiet him and make him lie down and try to get a little sleep. Of course, neither of them caught a wink, and both were stirring at the dawn of day. They hardly ate a bite of food before they set to work. By noontide Tom had made a couple of rude shovels, the blades of which were of the plankings of the cutter over their heads, and the handles of which were two straight limbs, cut from the neighboring thicket. It was a long tedious piece of work to make these shovels, for Tom had no tools to work with but Jack’s knife, and only half of the blade of that was left. Tom labored steadily at the shovels, but Jack was very impatient at the slowness of the work, and was continually urging him to hurry matters. I suppose that he was back and forth from the hut to the wreck a dozen times in the course of the morning. But at last the shovels were finished. Tom tried to persuade Jack to eat a bite before he went to work, but Jack would have nothing to do with food; he shouldered the two shovels and started away to the sand-spit, leaving Tom to cook and eat his dinner by himself. When Tom went over to the wreck a half an hour later, he found Jack busily at work, and a great hole already scooped out in the sand,—but Jack had not yet found a cent of money. I do not think that they had any idea of what they were undertaking, and what a tremendous piece of work it was that lay before them. I confess that Tom was as foolish as Jack, in having a notion that all they would have to do would be to scoop away a little sand, and pick up money by the handful; but they found nothing either on that day or the next, or the next, or for a week or more to come. Jack began to be very much discouraged, and said more than once that he was certain that Tom had been mistaken in his notion that the wreck was that of a treasure ship.