We looked among the old boxes and broken chairs and fenders and empty bottles and things, and at last we found the spades we had to dig in the sand with when we went to the seaside three years ago.
They are not silly, babyish, wooden spades, that split if you look at them, but good iron, with a blue mark across the top of the iron part, and yellow wooden handles.

We wasted a little time getting them dusted, because the girls wouldn't dig with spades that had cobwebs on them.
Girls would never do for African explorers or anything like that, they are too beastly particular.
It was no use doing the thing by halves.

We marked out a sort of square in the mouldy part of the garden, about three yards across, and began to dig.

But we found nothing except worms and stones--and the ground was very hard.
So we thought we'd try another part of the garden, and we found a place in the big round flower bed, where the ground was much softer.

We thought we'd make a smaller hole to begin with, and it was much better.
We dug and dug and dug, and it was jolly hard work! We got very hot digging, but we found nothing.
Presently Albert-next-door looked over the wall.