Carlos.

Two years later, in 1905, the work was fairly begun with a costly
equipment. The bottom of the bay was photographed and a mound of sand
revealed, which, it was concluded, covered the surviving part of the
galleon. Digging into this bank, the divers found many curious
trophies, among them more arms and munition, bottles or canteens,
boarding pikes, copper powder pans, and other small furniture, much
corroded and encrusted. It was surmised that the vessel lay with her
stern cocked up, and that in this end, indicated by the swelling of the
sand bank, the treasure was hidden.

Powerful suction pumps worked by steam were set going to clear away
this bank, and they bored into it steadily for three weeks while the
divers dug shafts to clear away obstructions. At length, a massive
silver candlestick was fetched up, and the sand pumps clanked more
industriously than ever. At the end of the summer, about one hundred
square feet of the bank had been removed, but the whereabouts of the
galleon was by no means certain.

As soon as the weather became favorable in the following spring,
Captain Burns and his crew returned to the quest with more men and
machinery than before. It was really impossible that such a business
as this could be carried on without some touch of the fantastic and the
picturesque. There now intrudes a Mr. Cossar, employed as "the famous
expert, who, by means of delicate apparatus can indicate where metal or
wood is buried in any quantity underground," and he spent the summer
taking observations and buoying the bay with floats or markers. At
these places boring was carried on means of steel rods to a depth of
one hundred and forty feet, while the dredges were busy exploring the
vicinity of the sand bank.

The area thoroughly explored was increased to eight acres in 1906, in
water from seven to fourteen fathoms deep. That famous expert, Mr.
Cossar, and his delicate apparatus were reinforced by Mr. John Stears
of Yorkshire, one of the most notable diviners of England. He operated
with no more apparatus than a hawthorn twig and professed to be able to
locate precious metals no matter how many fathoms deep, and more than
this, _mirabile dictu_, to tell you whether it was gold, or silver, or
copper that made his inspired twig twist and bend in his fingers. Mr.
Stears was taken as seriously as Mr. Cossar had been, and the findings
of one confirmed the verdicts of the other. The powerful salvage