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"Big fellow canoe been sit down here," he said, on our approach, and examining the protruding stumps, we soon saw enough to convince us that the boy was right, and that we were in the presence of a vessel, wrecked, or abandoned, Heaven only knows how many years ago. With our hands, with pint pots, with a spade we had brought with us -- mindful of the difficulty we had experienced in finding a resting-place for poor Cato -- with every utensil, in fact, that ingenuity could devise, we set to work clearing away the sand that had accumulated round the old ribs. Suddenly, the tin rim of one of the pots gave back a ringing sound, as if it had struck against metal, and in less than a minute, a much rusted cannon-shot was exposed to view, and passed round from hand to hand. It was of small size, weighing, perhaps, five pounds, though its dimensions were evidently much decreased by the wasting action of damp. "By Jove!" said Dunmore, "perhaps she was a Spanish galleon, and we shall come across her treasure. Won't that be a find, eh, old fellow?" "She's more likely a pirate," I answered, as visions of the old buccaneers floated through my brain; and Edgar Poe's fanciful story of the "Gold Beetle" occurring to me, I sung out, "Whatever you do, keep any parchment you stumble across," and abandoned myself to thoughts of untold wealth, whilst I wielded a quart pot with the energy born of mental excitement. "My word! that been big fellow sit down like 'it here," cried Ferdinand, who, lying on one side, had his bare arm buried at full length in the sand. "I feel him, Marmy, plenty cold." We rushed to the boy's assistance, and speedily scraped away the shingle, until an old-fashioned gun was exposed to view; it was coated and scaly with rust to such an extent, that we were unable to form any idea as to its age or nationality. It would most probably have been a twelve or eighteen-pounder howitzer, for it was about four feet in length, and disproportionately large in girth; but one of the trunnions, and the button at the breech, were broken off, the portion that had lain undermost had entirely disappeared, and the remainder was so honeycombed, that beyond ascertaining that it was a piece of ordnance, we could elicit nothing from this curious relic of a bygone generation.
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