and this time the
treasure was sought in up-to-date fashion.

Almost twenty deep shafts were dug, one after the other, in a ring
about the Money Pit, and tunnels driven in a net-work. It was the
purpose of the engineers to intercept the underground channel and also
to drain the pirates' excavation. Hundreds of pounds of dynamite were
used and thousands of feet of heavy timber. Further traces of the work
of the ancient contrivers of this elaborate hiding-place were
discovered, but the funds of the company were exhausted before the
secret of the Money Pit could be revealed.

Considerable boring was done under the direction of the manager,
Captain Welling. The results confirmed the previous disclosures
achieved by the auger. At a depth of one hundred and twenty-six feet,
Captain Welling's crew drilled through oak wood, and struck a piece of
iron past which they could not drive the encasing pipe. A smaller
auger was then used and at one hundred and fifty-three feet cement was
found of a thickness of seven inches, covering another layer of oak.
Beyond was some soft metal, and the drill brought to the surface a
small fragment of sheepskin parchment upon which was written in ink the
syllable, "vi" or "wi." Other curious samples, wood and iron, were
fished up, but the "soft metal," presumed to be gold or silver, refused
to cling to the auger. It was of course taken for granted that the
various layers of oak planking and spruce were chests containing the
treasure.

During the various borings, seven different chests or casks, or
whatever they may be, have been encountered. It seems incredible that
any pirates or buccaneers known to the American coast should have been
at such prodigious pains to conceal their plunder as to dig a hole a
good deal more than a hundred feet deep, connect it with the sea by an
underground passage, and safeguard it by many layers of timber, cement,
and other material. Possibly some of the famous freebooters of the
Spanish Main in Henry Morgan's time might have achieved such a task,
but Nova Scotia was a coast unknown to them and thousands of miles from
their track. Poor Kidd had neither the men, the treasure, nor the
opportunity to make such a memorial of his career as this.

Quite recently a new company was formed to grapple with the secret of
Oak Island which has already swallowed at least a hundred thousand
dollars in labor and machinery. For more than a century, sane,
hard-headed N