“I’ll take the pickaxe,” said Bruce. “Very well,” said Bart; “you begin. Stir up the earth, and we’ll all dig. But after the first stroke, remember--not one word!” Bruce then seized the pickaxe with nervous energy, and raising it, he hurled it into the ground. As it struck, Solomon shuddered, and clasped his hands. Captain Corbet stepped back, and looked wildly around. Again and again Bruce wielded the pickaxe, dashing it into the earth with powerful blows, and then wrenching it so as to pry up the sods. The others looked on in silence. At length he had loosened the earth all about, and to a considerable depth. After this he stood back, and the other boys went to work with their spades. Bruce waited for a little time, and then, dropping the pickaxe, he seized a spade, and plunged it into the ground, and rapidly threw up the soil, doing as much work as any two of the others. For some time they worked thus. The silence was profound, being only broken by the clash of the spades against the stones, and the hard breathing of the boys. At last they hod dug up all the earth that had been loosened by Bruce, and the hard soil began to present an insuperable barrier to the progress of the spades. Seeing this, Bruce seized the pickaxe once more, and again hurled it with vigorous blows into the ground, loosening the earth all around. At last, as he flung it down with all his force, it struck against something which gave so peculiar a sound that the boys all started, and caught one another’s arms, and looked at one another in the dim moonlight, each trying to see the face of the other. Bruce stopped for an instant, and then, swinging the pickaxe again over his head, he dashed it down with all his force. Again it struck that hard substance under ground, and again there was that peculiar sound. It was a sound that could not be mistaken. It was not such a sound as would be given by a stone, or by a stick of timber; it was something very different. It was hard, ringing,--metallic! And as that sound struck upon the ears of the “B. O. W. C.” there was but one thought, a thought which came simultaneously to the minds of all--the thought that Bruce’s pickaxe had reached the buried treasure. But the pot of gold now became to their imaginations an iron chest filled with coin, and it was against this iron chest that the pickaxe had struck, and it was this iron chest which had given forth the sound. Yet so schooled were they, so determined upon success, that even the immensity of such a sensation could not make them forget their self-imposed silence. Not one word was spoken. They felt, they thought, but they did not speak.