[CHAPTER XXIX]
INTERNATIONAL COMPLICATIONS
Excitement was intense among the gold-seekers. They crowded around Mr. Brill, eagerly examining the nugget so strangely found, weighing it in their hands, and rejoicing over its discovery.
“That’s one of the sixty!” repeated the miner, over and over again. “Now to find the other fifty-nine!”
But this was not going to be so easy as they imagined. Feverishly they searched among the rocks and dirt, but when darkness finally fell they had only recovered eleven of the lumps of gold, some larger, but most of them smaller than the first one.
“But we’ll get the rest in the morning,” declared Jim Nestor. “The box they were in must have upset when it was washed away, and they spilled out.”
This was the explanation accepted by everyone, and, while they were disappointed in not recovering all the gold at once, they felt that they had good chances of ultimate success.
“For it stands to reason,” said Ned, “that the rest of the gold is somewhere around here, and if we trace the course of the flood we’ll find it.”