After this they set about the work with more system. They built a breakwater of stakes, between which they wove twigs and grass. This was Tom’s plan, and they found that it kept the sea back completely, for, as I have said, it was only the wash of the breakers that ran over the place that they were at work. It never filled up again as long as Tom and Jack were engaged upon it. But all this cost a great deal of time and labor, and I doubt very much if they had not found the box of money whether they would ever have struck a shovel into the sand again after the first storm came upon them; so that it was a lucky thing that they found the box when they did, and that the southeaster did not come a day sooner. For three or four months they worked as never men worked before. It is strange to think of how men will labor and toil for money, even when money will do them as little good as it did Jack and Tom on this lonely island. It is a wonder that they did not kill themselves with the work and the hardships that they went through during that time. However, the excitement that they were living under kept them up to a great degree. During all these months they lived upon little else than fish. Now and then they would gather a few mussels or catch a crab or two, but their chief living was fish—broiled fish for breakfast, dinner and supper, until they both grew to loathe the very sight of it. Tom got such a surfeit of them in that time that he could never bear the smell of a frying fish from that day to this. Upon the first of September they counted over the money that they had unearthed, and they found that they had over eight thousand dollars in all. It was made up of silver coins of all sizes, large and small. They only had three days more of work on the island, and, as two of those days were blank, they did not add very much to the sum that they had already gathered. CHAPTER XIII. IT was the morning of the 3d of September of the same year,—1814. Tom and Jack had just finished their breakfast;—it was of broiled fish. Hughy! It makes me shudder even now to think of it, for I do hate the very sight of a fish. The work of digging at the wreck had settled down to a very jog-trot business by this time. Neither of the men were in a hurry to quit their comfortable seat on the sand and turn to hard work, that had lost all the savor of novelty it had had at first. The first day that they had struck shovel into the sand above the wreck, Jack had started off eagerly, without eating a bite; he was quite willing to eat a meal now,—even a meal of broiled fish—and to take a goodly while to the eating of it also. So they both sat dwadling over their unsavory food, not at all anxious to make a start. “Well, Jack,” said Tom, at last; “I suppose that we might as well be stirring.” “I reckon we might,” said Jack, and then he stretched himself, as a first step toward getting up.