"But the very fact that they are away makes it necessary for us to hurry up our work," he continued. "As soon as they get back to San Domingo, they'll get talking to fellows of their own kind, the wharf rats and toughs that infest the water front. It might be an easy enough thing to get up another expedition, especially when they tell them how few we are. We'll have to scratch gravel now and make every minute tell."
They turned in early that night, in order to rise at the first streak of dawn. The hurried look they cast at the sea told them that it was scarcely disturbed by a ripple, and they looked forward to a day of fruitful work. They hastened through their breakfast and then made for the beach.
Phil was in the van, and as he reached the shore he gave a startled shout that speedily brought his comrades to his side.
There, scattered along the beach were the timbers of a ship, while other debris of a vessel, hatches, parts of masts and deck planks bobbed up and down in the surf.
They looked at each other in utter perplexity.
"Some ship must have foundered," exclaimed Dick, "and yet I don't see how that could be. There hasn't been any big storm recently.
"An old ship it must have been too," said Tom, stooping to examine a piece of timber. "This beam is worm eaten. No wonder the old tub went to pieces. I only hope that her crew has escaped."
"They didn't escape," said Phil quietly. "The ship went down with all on board. And it went down more than two hundred years ago."
"You mean, you mean--" he stammered and stopped, his brain whirling with the tumultuous thoughts that surged through it.
"The old pirate ship!" gasped Tom, who had caught Phil's meaning.
"By ginger, that's what it is," cried Benton excitedly. "See," he went on, pointing to a piece of hatch. "Look at that splintered piece that has been torn off. See how new the broken place looks compared to the old. That's where it was torn apart by our charge of dynamite."
They stood for a moment as if stunned. There was something awe-inspiring in the sight of the remnants of the old ship that had come again into the sunlight after its two-hundred years' sleep on the ocean bed.
"How could it have happened?" he asked in bewilderment.