issued, and we found the boy staring at several pieces of timber
sticking out of the sand.

"Big fellow canoe been sit down here," he said, on our approach, and
examining the protruding stumps, we soon saw enough to convince us that
the boy was right, and that we were in the presence of a vessel,
wrecked, or abandoned, Heaven only knows how many years ago. With our
hands, with pint pots, with a spade we had brought with us--mindful of
the difficulty we had experienced in finding a resting-place for poor
Cato--with every utensil, in fact, that ingenuity could devise, we set
to work clearing away the sand that had accumulated round the old ribs.
Suddenly, the tin rim of one of the pots gave back a ringing sound, as
if it had struck against metal, and in less than a minute, a much
rusted cannon-shot was exposed to view, and passed round from hand to
hand. It was of small size, weighing, perhaps, five pounds, though its
dimensions were evidently much decreased by the wasting action of damp.

"By Jove!" said Dunmore, "perhaps she was a Spanish galleon, and we
shall come across her treasure. Won't that be a find, eh, old fellow?"

"She's more likely a pirate," I answered, as visions of the old
buccaneers floated through my brain; and Edgar Poe's fanciful story of
the "Gold Beetle" occurring to me, I sung out, "Whatever you do, keep
any parchment you stumble across," and abandoned myself to thoughts of
untold wealth, whilst I wielded a quart pot with the energy born of
mental excitement.

"My word! that been big fellow sit down like 'it here," cried
Ferdinand, who, lying on one side, had his bare arm buried at full
length in the sand. "I feel him, Marmy, plenty cold."

We rushed to the boy's assistance, and speedily scraped away the
shingle, until an old-fashioned gun was exposed to view; it was coated
and scaly with rust to such an extent, that we were unable to form any
idea as to its age or nationality. It would most probably have been a
twelve or eighteen-pounder howitzer, for it was about four feet in
length, and disproportionately large in girth; but one of the
trunnions, and the button at the breech, were broken off, the portion
that had lain undermost had entirely disappeared, and the remainder was
so honeycombed, that beyond ascertaining that it was a piece of
ordnance, we could elicit nothing from this curious relic of a bygone
generation.

Further search brought to light several more round-shot, but in t