preparing to ascend his foot touched something firm, which proved to
be a part of the wooden frame of the ship.

But even when found the difficulties had only begun. The tenacious,
elastic sand defied all tools or leverage: no petard could blast so
fickle and treacherous a substance. Wit and ingenuity can devise where
ordinary art or engineering has failed. The diver took a lesson from
the neighboring gold-miner, whose hydrostatic pump chisels away the
mountain-side to lay bare the mother quartz. Fitted with such an
engine, he swept the silted sand from the deck of the prize, and dug
it out of the elastic matrix after the fashion of Macduff's birth.

By a great misfortune, incipient jealousies and the eager spirit of
covetousness now showed themselves. It was at first whispered, and
then asseverated, that if the bullion was once recovered the rebel
might whistle for his sixty per cent. salvage. It was a bitter, bad
time--a time of mistrust and suspicion--and the plan of defrauding
the diver was only too feasible. He would be involved in a suit with
a wealthy company at a time when prejudice, if not the form of law,
regarded him as having forfeited a citizen's right. It placed him in
a difficult position--more difficult because he could get no safe
assurance, and was evidently suspected and watched. The diver
concluded that his only way to secure his sixty per cent. salvage was
to take it.

So it was that, with something of the feelings of the
resurrectionists, a bold, dark party went to rob the charnel-house of
the sea, to spoil it of its golden bones and wedgy ingots of silver.
They chose a mirky night, when the thick air seemed too clotted and
moist to break into hurly-burly of storm, and yet too heavy and