At a period when such vagaries
of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work
perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent
howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been
evidently but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed
a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle
him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up
the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had
uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons,
intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be
the dust of decayed woollen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned
the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as he dug farther, three or
four loose pieces of gold and silver coin came to light.
At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but
the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme
disappointment. He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and
the words were hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having
caught the toe of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half buried
in the loose earth.
We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more
intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an
oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation and
wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing
process--perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury.
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