With young Bill Saxby and eager old Trimble Rogers he
hastened from the grave of the pirate seaman whom they had buried on the
knoll and fetched up at the shore where the pirogue had been left.
Beside it floated Blackbeard's boat filled with water.

Having cut two or three long poles, they sounded the depth and prodded
in the muddy bed to find the treasure chest. It had sunk no more than
eight feet below the surface, as the tide then stood, which was not much
over the head of a tall man. The end of a pole struck something solid,
after considerable poking about. It was not rough, like a sunken log,
and further investigation with the poles convinced them that they were
thumping the lid of the chest.

"D'ye suppose you could muster breath to dive and bend a line to one o'
the handles, Master Cockrell?" suggested Trimble Rogers. "Here's a coil
of stout stuff in Cap'n Teach's boat what he used for a painter."

"The bottom of the creek is too befouled," promptly objected Jack, "and
I confess it daunts me to think of meeting that drownded corpse down
there. Try it yourself, if you like."

"I be needed above water to handle the musket if Blackbeard sneaks back
to bang at us with his pistols," was the evasive reply. The mention of
the corpse had given old Trimble a distaste for the task. To his
petulant question, Bill Saxby protested that he couldn't swim a blessed
stroke and he sensibly added:

"What if you did get a rope's end belayed to a handle of the chest? Even
if the strain didn't part the line, we couldn't heave away in this tipsy
canoe. And I am blamed certain we can't drag the chest ashore lackin'
purchase and tackles."

"The smell o' treasure warps my judgment," grumpily confessed Trimble
Rogers. "We ain't properly rigged to h'ist that chest from where she
lays, and that's the fact."

"Give us the gear and we'd have it out and cracked open as pretty as you
please," said Bill. "Set up a couple o' spars for shears, stay 'em from
the bank, rig double blocks, and grapplin' irons for a diver to work
with----"

"Which is exactly what Cap'n Teach will be doin' of when he finds his
ship again," lamented the buccaneer.

"He will be some time findin' his ship afoot," grimly chuckled Bill.
"We have naught to smash his boat with, but we'll just take it along
with us."

"If we make haste to report to Captain Stede Bonnet," spoke up Jack
Cockrell, "he may make sail in time to give Blackbeard other things to
think on th