“Those are nuggets,” he said. “That pile contains, I believe, about two tons of solid gold!”
XL.
CLAIMING THE REWARD.
For three weeks the Billowcrest lay a prisoner off the South Shetlands—just which of these islands, I do not consider it proper at this time to say. Assisted by Chauncey and Edith Gale, my uncle and I put the treasure into bags and had it conveyed to the vessel as “mineral specimens,” for we felt that we could not wholly trust our crew. Then at length a wind from the northwest set the currents a new pace and altered the sand drift. We found ourselves afloat one morning, and crowding on sail and steam made all speed northward, arriving safely in New York harbor on the evening of February second, after an absence of nearly eighteen months.
As we came in through the dusk, the splendid cities and the bridge between to us seemed gloriously illuminated; but if so, it was not in our honor. Nobody knew that we had returned, or even that we had gone.
We steamed up North River to our old dock, and Chauncey Gale set forth at once to catch a Broadway car for a certain down-town theater, which he greatly feared had been discontinued during our absence. Next morning I went with my uncle to establish some desirable banking connections, through which his treasure might be properly transferred, and converted into funds.
As to when and in what manner we should make our adventures, and the results of the expedition, public property, we were at first undecided. Newspaper notoriety was not a pleasant prospect, particularly as we were already contemplating a second voyage to the South. We therefore concluded to say nothing immediately, and meanwhile to have the old Billowcrest thoroughly overhauled and outfitted for the voyage to be undertaken in the late summer—not to the South Pole this time, but to the South Shetlands, to develop in the spot of his exile the mines which my uncle believes to be almost inexhaustible.
And so—to use the so-called Irish form—we have “continued to say nothing” through the spring and summer, during which period I have prepared the matter already in the proper hands for publication.
We are about to sail again now, and by the time my report is given to the reader I shall be beyond the reach of either approval or condemnation—far on my way to our new “Treasure Island” of the South, where the rarest treasure will be one who joins in this, our unique honeymoon—she who was Edith Gale.
For I claimed my reward this morning—two years from the day when she jestingly agreed that I should name my price for a new world—and in the little forward cabin of the Billowcrest where the agreement was made.
