ness mixed up in an affair like this, and James playing the guitar! Then Bompard mercifully interposed. James has got such a fright over Bompard that he's forgotten everything else. I think he's afraid somehow that people may accuse him of having killed Bompard, or something like that.”
“What nonsense,” said Dicky, shrugging his shoulders.
“Of course it's nonsense—he spoke to me about it; he asked me might anything be said about our going off in such a hurry and I told him I didn't think so. We were ready for sea and going, the port authorities knew we were going, and a few hours more or less did not matter. Besides, I knew them all—they've known me and father for years. Of course,” finished Sheila, “I think it was stupid rushing off like that, but when he came on board saying Bompard was dead and we must put out at once, what was I to do?”
“Well, it's done,” said Dicky, “and there's no use in bothering now.”
He himself had been stampeded by James' imagination. He wished now they had stuck and seen the thing through, but it was done and there was no use in bothering any more.
“Even,” said Sheila thoughtfully as she watched the gulls flighting above the sands, “even if Bompard was one of the MacAdam people, they wouldn't have dared to do anything to us. That sort of people must work in secrecy.”
“No,” said Dicky, “but if he had many of them with him at Teneriffe they might have tried to rush the boat and take her out that night. There was no man-of-war or anything at Teneriffe to have chased them.”
“Maybe, and maybe it's just as well James was frightened. Who knows?”
She turned, her eye had caught sight of something moving by the sea edge, close to the boat. It was a crab.
Dicky saw it too, but he said nothing. What he had seen last night might have been only an occasional phenomenon. He had told James of it, but there was no use worrying the girl beforehand. Crabs or no crabs the three of them would have to land that night with Larry and not only land but spend several hours on the spit. In his heart he cursed Longley, the cause of all this bother; only for Longley they could have worked any time and how they willed.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
UNDER THE SAND.
THEY rested till two o'clock, then, taking Longley with them, they landed with the bags and the digging began.
“This sand by the water is no good,” said the wily Larry. “It's got the say in it and iv'ry change of weather the bags will sweat. Dig your sand up be them trees, sor, it's a bit further to carry the bags, but sure what's the matter about that?”
“Right,” said James, leading them up to the spot they had chosen and taking off his coat. “Give me a spade.”
Larry handed him a spade. They had only two spades. They did not want more, for it was not only a question of making a pit in the sand, but of filling the bags direct with every shovelful that was taken out. Sheila held a bag mouth open for James as he dug; Dicky did the same for Longley. Larry stood by with a pipe in his mouth, directing operations and fastening the mouths of the sacks one by one, as they were filled.
One might fancy the gold, in its great heap on the beach just above tide mark, making cynical reflections to itself on the matter.
It had never made them work harder than this. Since it had come together into one corporate body of treasure it had done many and cruel things, filling every one in cognizance of it with anxiety, desire, suspicion and the worry that wealth alone can create, but it had never worked beings harder than this—couldn't.
After the first ten minutes, James, who had never done a stroke of real work before in his life, began to wish himself further. The business was not only back breaking, but niggling. Every spadeful had to go right into the mouth of the sack that Sheila held open and there was so little in a spadeful. They were heart-shaped Spanish spades, rather larger than the English sort, but not large enough. They ought to have brought shovels.
James found himself mentally repeating this fact during the first ten minutes or so; after that he was content to work without thinking. Filling sacks with sand for ballast is the meanest form of labor, or one of the meanest, far beneath the labor of filling them with coal. Coal is a necessity. You are helping the work of the world; sand
