Chapter VII. What The Shingle Revealed.


Now the explanation of Willie's curious discovery, as we afterwards
fully learned, was this: When I took up the dead falcon, Hercus,
intent upon witnessing Selta's skill at ratting, stood beside the
dog as she scraped with her forefeet the shingle from the crevice
through which the rat had escaped. Disappointed at losing her
prize, the terrier dug and dug away at the shingle and moist sand,
scattering it behind her, and burying her nose deep down. Then a
strange, grim object was unearthed. In the midst of the stones,
Hercus, to his horror, saw lying there a ghastly human skull, with
the great cavities where the eyes had been, staring at him.
Hesitating at the sight of this frightful spectacle, he at last
mustered courage to take the thing in his hand. He was in the act
of examining it, when, from one of the hollow eye sockets, out
jumped the fugitive rat. Had the jaws of the skull moved in speech,
Willie could not have been more terrified than he was by seeing the
rat spring from its strange hiding place.

Dropping the horrible thing upon the rock at his feet, where the
rotten bone broke into fragments, he rushed out upon the beach and
called us back. Attracted to the spot again, he watched the dog
burrowing in the shingle. Amongst the stones and sand he saw the
dull sheen of what he at first supposed was a curious seashell, but
which, when he picked up and examined it, he found to be an old
coin. Believing that there might be more of these buried in the
sand, he went down upon his knees once more to search. He had just
discovered the bar of metal when we returned.