Still, as Edgar had said, it is not every day that one can dig for
treasure, and in thinking of what was to come I forgot my hands
that quickly blistered, and my breaking back. After an hour I
insisted that Edgar should take a turn; but he made such poor
headway that my patience could not contain me, and I told him I was
sufficiently rested and would continue. With alacrity he scrambled
out of the hole, and, taking a cigar from my case, seated himself
comfortably in the hack. I took my comfort in anticipating the
thrill that would be mine when the spade would ring on the
ironbound chest; when, with a blow of the axe, I would expose to
view the hidden jewels, the pieces of eight, coated with verdigris,
the string of pearls, the chains of yellow gold. Edgar had said a
million dollars. That must mean there would be diamonds, many
diamonds. I would hold them in my hands, watch them, at the sudden
sunshine, blink their eyes and burst into tiny, burning fires. In
imagination I would replace them in the setting, from which, years
before, they had been stolen. I would try to guess whence they came
from a jewelled chalice in some dim cathedral, from the breast of
a great lady, from the hilt of an admiral's sword.
After another hour I lifted my aching shoulders and, wiping the
sweat from my eyes, looked over the edge of the hole. Rupert, with
his back to the sand-hill, was asleep. Edgar with one hand was
waving away the mosquitoes and in the other was holding one of the
magazines he had bought on the way down.
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