it a rock embedded in the sand? Yet a distinct sound rang out,
as of one metal striking against another!

Madge did not know how she summoned Captain Jules back to her side. She
was wild with curiosity and excitement. Captain Jules was smiling behind
his copper mask. The young girl diver had probably found a piece of old
iron cast off from some ship. Still, she should unearth whatever she had
discovered so near the dark kingdom of Pluto.

The captain worked with her. Whatever her find might be, it was larger
and heavier than Captain Jules had expected. They could afford to spend
no more time with it. It was time for Madge to leave the water.

It is difficult to make an imploring gesture in a diver's suit. Yet,
somehow, Madge must have managed to do so. For one moment longer the old
pearl diver relented. The hole that they were digging in the bottom of
the bay was widening before them. A chunk of what looked like solid iron
was visible. Then a triangular end came into view. It was rusted until it
shone like beautiful green enamel. The top was absolutely flat and of
some depth, as it was so hard to excavate.

The time was growing short. Madge had been under the water as long as was
safe for any amateur diver. The captain was a man to be obeyed, as she
knew instinctively. She gave one more dig into the mud about her iron
treasure. It now became plain, both to her and to Captain Jules, that she
had found an old iron chest. The captain tugged at it with both his
great, strong hands. It was strangely heavy. But he managed to lift it in
his arms.

Straightway he gave the signal to ascend; three sharp tugs at his life
line. Madge followed suit. But she cast one long backward glance at the
watery world into which she might never again descend, as slowly,
steadily, the boat tenders pulled up her long life line. Her feet dangled
above the sandy bottom of the bay. Now she could see even farther off.
About forty feet from the rapidly filling hole from which she and the
captain had extracted the iron chest was a spar of a ship jutting above
the sand. The little captain may have been wrong, but it looked like the
very spar on which Tania's dress had caught the day she was so nearly
drowned. Madge could not tell how far she and Captain Jules had traveled
on the bottom of the bay, but she knew they had made their descent at a
place no very great distance from the spot where Roy Dennis's yacht had
run down their skiff, and Captain J