AT seven the next morning the digging began. At six, when Hank turned out of the tent, the aspect of the beach had changed. A north wind, rising before midnight, had blown steadily and strongly unheard and unheeded by the snoring sleepers in the tents. It died out after dawn.

Hank called George to look. Here and there away across the sands white spots were visible, some like the tops of gigantic mushrooms. One quite close to them showed as the top of a whale’s skull. Further on a huge rib hinted of itself. There were little sand-drifts on the windward side of the tents.

“Wind’s been shifting the sand,” said George, “it’s all over me.” His hair was full of sand and his pockets. Hank was in the same condition. Tommie came out of her tent blinking at the sun.

“Say, I’m all sand,” cried Tommie.

“Wind’s been blowing,” said Hank; “look at the bones.”

The sand seemed lower over the cache.

Candon gave it as his opinion that it was at least a foot lower. Then without more ado they began to dig, using the two spades and one of the shovels improvised by Hank.

Candon, Hank and one of the Chinks were the diggers. They had divided themselves into two gangs, George, Tommie, and the other Chink forming the second gang; and they, having seen the work started, went off to prepare breakfast.

After breakfast they started again, working in two shifts of half an hour each, and keeping it up till eleven. Then they knocked off, fagged out but somehow happy. The middle of the day was too hot for work and after dinner they slept till three, knocking off finally somewhere about six. A hole ten feet broad from north to south, eight feet from east to west, and nearly three feet deep was the result of their work, the excavated stuff being banked north and south, so that if the wind blew up from either quarter, there would be less drift of sand into the hole. Hank watered these banks as far as he could with water from the spring in the cliff to make the sand “stay put”; then they went off to supper.

T. C. had worked in her way as hard as any of them, taking as a sort of personal insult any suggestion that she was overdoing herself. Dog-tired now, she was seated on the sand by the middle tent reading an old Chicago Tribune that George had brought ashore, whilst the others prepared supper.

“Lord,” said Hank, as he knelt building up the fire. “If I haven’t forgot to send for your book.” He looked towards the boat on the beach and half rose to his feet.

“I’m not wanting it,” said Tommie. “This is good enough for me, I’m too tired for books—tea’s what I want.”

She dived into the paper again, emerging when supper was announced with the gist of an article on the League of Nations between her teeth. T. C. had strong political opinions, and her own ideas about the League of Nations. She did not favour the League and said so.

Hank, opening a can of salmon and hit in his ideals, forgot it, waved it in the air and started to do battle with Tommie. That was Hank all over; heart-punched, lying on his back with Cupid counting him out, he saw for a moment only the banner of universal peace and brotherhood waving above him.

“But it isn’t so,” cried Hank. “There’s no Monroe doctrines in morality. America can’t sit scratching herself when others are up and doing. Why the nations have got war down, down, right now, kicking under the blanket, and it only wants America to sit on her head to keep her down.”

“America’s got to be strong before she does anything,” fired Tommie. “How’s she to be strong if a lot of foreigners sitting in Geneva can tell her to do this or that? Why they’d cut her fists off.”

“Strong,” cried Hank. “Why armies and navies aren’t strength. Love of man for man—”

“Mean to tell me you could love Turks?”

“Ain’t talking of Turks.”

“Greeks then—Portugueses—say, tell me straight—do you love niggers?”

The sight of Tommie “het up” and with sparkling eyes gave the struggling hero such another heart punch that he collapsed, lost sight of the banner of brotherhood and went on opening the can of salmon.

“Maybe I’m wrong and maybe you’re right,” said he, “it’s a big question. Pass me that plate, will you, Bud?”

Candon had said nothing. He had deserted his co-idealist like a skunk, and seemed engaged in re-reviewing the League of Nations by the light of Tommie.

Half an hour after supper the whole lot of them were snoring in their tents, pole-axed by sleep.