ace where the pirates had driven their first peg, and
where Tom Chist had afterwards seen them kill the poor black man. Tom
Chist gazed around as though expecting to see some sign of the tragedy,
but the space was as smooth and as undisturbed as a floor, excepting
where, midway across it, Parson Jones who was now stooping over
something on the ground, had trampled it all around about.

When Tom Chist saw him, he was still bending over, scraping the sand
away from something he had found.

It was the first peg!

Inside of half an hour they had found the second and third pegs, and
Tom Chist stripped off his coat, and began digging like mad down into
the sand, Parson Jones standing over him watching him. The sun was
sloping well towards the west when the blade of Tom Chist's spade
struck upon something hard.

If it had been his own heart that he had hit in the sand his breast
could hardly have thrilled more sharply.

It was the treasure-box!

Parson Jones himself leaped down into the hole, and began scraping away
the sand with his hands as though he had gone crazy. At last, with some
difficulty, they tugged and hauled the chest up out of the sand to the
surface, where it lay covered all over with the grit that clung to it.

It was securely locked and fastened with a padlock, and it took a good
many blows with the blade of the spade to burst the bolt. Parson Jones
himself lifted the lid.

Tom Chist leaned forward and gazed down into the open box. He would not
have been surprised to have seen it filled full of yellow gold and
bright jewels. It was filled half full of books and papers, and half
full of canvas bags tied safely and securely around and around with
cords of string.

Parson Jones lifted out one of the bags, and it jingled as he did so.
It was full of money.

He cut the string, and with trembling, shaking hands handed the bag to
Tom, who, in an ecstasy of wonder and dizzy with delight, poured out
with swimming sight upon the coat spread on the ground a cataract of
shining silver money that rang and twinkled and jingled as it fell in a
shining heap upon the coarse cloth.

Parson Jones held up both hands into the air, and Tom stared at what he
saw, wondering whether it was all so, and whether he was really awake.
It seemed to him as though he was in a dream.

There were two-and-twenty bags in all in the chest: ten of them full of
silver money, eight of them full of gold money, three of them full of
gol