The wind remained strong into the beginning of March, but the temperatures eased. Ned was at last nearing the end of the excavation. He found a long, narrow box with two dozen flintlock guns packed in straw. A merchant might have planned to trade them to Indians for beaver skins. Ned also found another box of a settler’s belongings. The clothes must have been made of linsey-woolsey; all that was left were nests of woolen fibers, the linen ones having rotted. The final box contained mostly glass beads, also designed to be used in trading with the Indians. Ned had raised nearly two hundred tons of artifacts. Now all that remained for him to do was to hoist up the engines, and then that would be everything. He would shut off the pumps and within two days his big hole in the ground, the one he had dreamed of digging since boyhood, would be full of water. Phil, of course, wanted to make a big whoopla out of shutting off the pumps—another town festival with more ceremony and speeches, another excuse to get people to come to Fleur-de-lis and buy cornhusk dolls and antique cups.
