n feet below the surface they came to a
covering of heavy oak plank which was ripped out with much difficulty.

At a depth of twenty feet another layer of planking was uncovered, and
digging ten feet deeper, a third horizontal bulkhead of timber was laid
bare. The excavation was now thirty feet down, and the three men had
done all they could without a larger force, hoisting machinery, and
other equipment. The natives of Mahone Bay, however, were singularly
reluctant to aid the enterprise. Hair-raising stories were afloat of
ghostly guardians, of strange cries, of unearthly fires that flickered
along the cove, and all that sort of thing. Superstition effectually
fortified the place, and those bold spirits, Smith, MacGinnis, and
Vaughan were forced to abandon their task for lack of reinforcements.

Half a dozen years later a young physician of Truro, Dr. Lynds, visited
Oak Island, having got wind of the treasure story, and talked with the
three men aforesaid. He took their report seriously, made an
investigation of his own, and straightway organized a company backed by
considerable capital. Prominent persons of Truro and the neighborhood
were among the investors, including Colonel Robert Archibald, Captain
David Archibald, and Sheriff Harris. A gang of laborers was mustered
at the cove, and the dirt began to fly. The shaft was opened to a
depth of ninety-five feet, and, as before, some kind of covering, or
significant traces thereof, was disclosed every ten feet or so. One
layer was of charcoal spread over a matting of a substance resembling
cocoa fibre, while another was of putty, some of which was used in
glazing the windows of a house then building on the nearby coast.

Ninety feet below the surface, the laborers found a large flat stone or
quarried slab, three feet long and sixteen inches wide, upon which was
chiselled the traces of an inscription. This stone was used in the
jamb of a fireplace of a new house belonging to Smith, and was later
taken to Halifax in the hope of having the mysterious inscription
deciphered. One wise man declared that the letters read, "Ten feet
below two million pounds lie buried," but this verdict was mostly
guess-work. The stone is still in Halifax, where it was used for
beating leather in a book-binder's shop until the inscription had been
worn away.

When the workmen were down ninety-five feet, they came to a wooden
platform covering the shaft. Until then the hole had b