NEXT day passed in labour, another two feet being added to the depth.

At ten o’clock on the morning after as the Tommie-Chink-Bud shift were taking on digging, Hank, shaking sand from his clothes, called out to the others to look.

Down from the southern defile in the cliffs a small procession was coming on to the beach. First came a man in a broad-brimmed hat, then another leading a mule, and another following after.

“Mexicans,” said George.

“Sure,” said Hank. “Look! they’ve seen us, they’ve stopped, now they’re going on, right down to the sea edge. Wonder what they’re after?”

The Mexicans, having reached the sea edge, began to wander along it coming in the direction of the tents. Every now and then they stopped to gather something.

“Seaweed,” said Hank. “Look, they are shoving it into a sack on the mule.”

“Well, come on,” said Tommie. She jumped into the sand pit and began to dig, Bud and the Chink following her. Hank rolling a cigarette, sat down and watched the seaweed gatherers.

The tide was half out and they were following it, walking along the extreme edge of the water. Then he saw them stop and take something from the mule’s back.

“Shovels,” said Hank to himself. As chief engineer of the business, Hank, from the first, had been impressed by the fact that the deeper they went the harder the work would be, simply because the sand had to be flung out of the pit. The first few feet in depth it was easy enough, but the depth already gained was beginning to tell, and the banks of excavated stuff to north and south made matters worse by increasing the height over which the sand had to be flung.

“B. C.!” suddenly cried Hank, springing to his feet. “Shovels!”

Candon, who was lying on his back with his hat over his face, resting for a moment, sat up.

Hank was gone, running full speed and whooping as he ran.

He reached the sea edge and caught up with the beach-combers who were digging for huge clams just when a bank of sand and mud touched the true sand. Close to them now, they showed up as three tanned, lean, hard-bitten individuals, carrying big satisfactory heart-shaped Mexican shovels, and looking all nerves and sinews, with faces expressionless as the face of the mule that stood by with its two sacks bulging, one evidently with provender, the other with gathered sea-weed.

“Hi, you jossers,” cried Hank, “want a job, hey? Mucho plenty dollars, dig for Americanos.” He made movements as of digging and pointed towards the sand hole.

“No intende,” replied the tallest of the three.

“Come on,” said Hank, taking the long man by the arm and leading the way. He had remembered that Candon said he could talk Spanish.

The others were all out of the sand hole watching, and halfway up Candon and George joined Hank.

“Here’s your dredging machine,” cried Hank. “Look at the shovels, ain’t they lovely? Get at them, B. C., and ask their terms.”

Candon spoke with the long man, seeming to explain matters.

“Five dollars a day each,” said Candon. “They say they’ll work all day for that.”

“Fifteen dollars,” said Hank. “Take’em on, it’s cheap. We can get rid of them before we strike the stuff, take’em on for one day, anyhow.”

Candon concluded the bargain. Then he led the beach-combers to the hole and explained matters. They understood, then, having consulted together like experts, they took the matter into their own hands, asking only that the others should set to work and remove the banks of refuse to north and south of the hole.

“Well,” said Hank as they sat at dinner that day, “give me Mexicans for work. A raft of niggers couldn’t have moved the dirt quicker’n those chaps. Why, we’ll be down to bed rock by to-night.”

“I gingered them up,” said Candon, “told them if they got down to what I wanted to find by tonight, I’d give them ten dollars extra apiece. But they won’t do it.”

By six o’clock that evening, however, the job was nearly done. Candon reckoned that only a few hours more work would find the stuff, unless a heavy wind blew up in the night and spoiled things.

He paid the hired men off with dollars supplied by George and then they sat down to supper, the beach-combers camping near by and having the time of their lives with canned salmon, ship’s bread and peaches supplied for nothing.

Tommie had fallen in love with the mule. It had eaten half a Chicago Tribune blowing about on the sands and she was feeding it now with wafers, which the brute took in a gingerly and delicate manner, as though chicken and asparagus had been its up-bringing, instead of old gasoline cans and esparto grass.

“She’s made friends with that mule,” said George.

“She’s made friends with Satan,” said Hank. “Look at her talking to those greasers as if she knew their lingo.”

“She’s making them laugh,” said Candon.

An hour after supper the beach was at peace. Even the mule had fallen into the frame of the picture.

It was lying down by its sleeping masters. Away out across the water, the amber light of the Wear Jack showed beneath the stars.

An hour passed. Then things changed. The mule was lying dreaming, maybe, of more wafers, and in the starlight, like shadows, the forms of the three Mexicans, each with a shovel over its shoulder, were passing towards the sand-hole.