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Show "Holy Mother of God!" and De Nova, No-va, in his excitement, danced about recklessly, forgetting the slipperiness of deck underfoot. "It was ze treasure treas-ure ship! It was ze t'ree million pesos! Sa'cre dam'! It does not appear possible that I perceived it all, but now, looking back, I can recall the attitude of every man as this revelation of the vessel's identity iden-tity was swiftly borne in upon his consciousness. con-sciousness. Sanchez sank affrighted-ly affrighted-ly to his knees, fingering the beads of a rtasary, his lips muttering inarticulate inar-ticulate fragments of prayer; Dade stared, white-faced and trembling, his mouth wide open; Kelly jerked his cap from off his red hair and swung it over his head with a wild yell; Johnson never stirred, a motionless statue, his lips compressed; the negro joined De Nova, his eyes rolling, his great feet pounding the snow; while McKnight grabbed the ax from Kelly's Kel-ly's heedless fingers and began slashing slash-ing at the door. As for myself, at the instant everything was chaos. Tuttle Tut-tle was right, then ; he had seen all that he said; our voyage had not been causeless, a search after a will-o'-the-wisp; the sacrifices, suffering, loss of these past months, were not all in vain. Out of Antarctic solitudes, released re-leased from the merciless grip of the ice by some marvel of deliverance, this treasure galleon of Old Spain, this ancient tomb fit dead sailors, had come drifting down to us, a veritable gift of God. The knowledge stunned me; dazed my perceptions. It seemed a miracle. I could only press my hands to my eyes, stare blindly at that inscription, and struggle back to a conception of reality. It was Kelly's wild shout and McKnight's blow that aroused me, recalling me as instantly to command. "Stop that!" I shouted, catching the latter roughly by the arm. "We shall need that cabin door. If there indeed he a treasure down below, we can hunt for it like men and not maniacs. McKnight, if you strike another blow I'll drop you where you stand. Take knives and dig the ice out of the cracks. Get down on your knees at the bottom, Datle, and don't stand there like a fool. De Nova, see if you can locate the front whitlows there must be two of them and cut the ice away from the shutters." As they labored feverishly, their breath steaming in the frosty air, lha moonlight silvering them and gleaming gleam-ing weirdly on the scattered ice-fragments, the haunting mystery of that hermetically sealed cabin brought lo me a feeling of unul l.erahle horror. Heaven! how long had it been thus frozen in? What awful tragedy of another an-other century was about to he revealed? re-vealed? What years of loneliness, of darkness, of polar night and cold had litis derelict of the grim Antarctic experienced? ex-perienced? Where had II. been? What of those who had soiled on board out of Guayaquil that fair June clay of 175", dreaming of the glad welcome awaiting llieiu in sunny Spain? What of thi! crew, hardy seamen all, blat'lc-beardeil, blat'lc-beardeil, the gold loops in their cars? What of the passengers? What of I ho live women who had walked these decks? Wheru had they died, am.' how? (TO 1110 CONTINUED.) |