As the wave receded, Ben sat up spluttering. He was drenched.
Harry and Edmond exchanged a glance, then burst out laughing.
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Ben sat in the sand, picking feathery strands of seaweed from his hair and flinging them off.
Harry and Edmond staggered up, clutching their sides.
“Your face…” Edmond gasped.
“Fumblefoot,” Harry said.
Ben looked mulish. “I didn’t trip. Well, not over my own toes, anyway.”
He didn’t wait to hear his brothers’ opinions on that, but instead scrambled down to a spot below his feet and started sticking his fingers in the sand. “Here.” He stopped poking and started digging.
Harry frowned and shifted closer. “What?”
“It’s here.” Ben worked his hand into the sand. “What I tripped over. The wet sand keeps filling in the hole….”
Edmond glanced at Ben’s face, then crouched down and used his hands to pull the sand back from the spot where Ben was digging. Harry did the same on the other side; between them, they eased aside the surrounding sand enough to stop it sliding back immediately Ben dug down.
“Got it!” With a wriggle and a wrench, Ben pulled a sand-encrusted object free. A thick strand of seaweed dangled from it; wrapped around it, the seaweed had anchored the object in the sand.
“Look out!” Edmond pointed down the beach to where another, larger wave was rolling in.
Leaping up, they ran back to where the sand was dry.
Ben stopped and brushed at the damp, compacted sand clumped all over his find. Metal winked; the object was shaped like a long oval big enough to cross Harry’s palm. But the wet sand stuck.
“Here—let me.” Pulling his shirt from his breeches, Harry lifted the oval from Ben’s hand and, using his shirttails, carefully dried it, then poked, flicked and blew the sand free…a clump covering the center finally fell away.
“Oh, my God.” Harry stopped and stared.
Edmond’s and Ben’s eyes grew round. Their mouths fell open.
Ben recovered first. “We did it!” he shrieked. He danced around. “We found buried treasure!”
“Sshhh!” Edmond said. He grabbed Ben and held him still.
“Shut up!” Harry glanced around.
So did Edmond and a contrite Ben. But there was no one on the beach but them, no one on the cliffs that they could see.
“Sorry,” Ben mumbled. He looked back at their find.
Then, simultaneously, the three looked down the beach to where they’d made their discovery, the sand now smoothed by the wave. They walked back, searching the surface, kicked, prodded, poked, but there was no sign of any other buried items. Finally retreating from the incoming waves, they glanced at the cliffs again.
“Lucky it’s so early. No one’s about.” Halting, Harry studied the oval; the other two gathered close, staring as he cradled it in his palms. “It’s a brooch, isn’t it?”
Edmond picked it up and turned it over, exposing a long pin running the length of the oval. “It looks like a brooch.” He set it back on Harry’s palms right side up.
Reaching out a wondering finger, Ben traced one delicate metal curve. “That’s gold, isn’t it? And are those diamonds?” The awe in his voice touched them all. “And what’s that?” He pointed to the large rectangular stone in the brooch’s center.
Harry swallowed. “We’ll need to take it home and clean and polish it, then we’ll be better able to see…but I think that’s an emerald.”
They stared in stunned silence, then Edmond, the most practical, said, “What should we do with it?”