"I believe the gold is worth all of twenty thousand dollars," said Robert Menden. "Perhaps the stones are worth as much more."
"That will be forty thousand dollars," replied Leander. "Quite a haul, eh?" and he winked his eye joyfully.
They were in the best of spirits, and when Danny was not working, he was dancing, or singing or whistling at the top of his lung power. "We'll be millionaires, dat's wot!" he was wont to say, to anybody who would listen to him. He intended to give nearly all of his share to his mother—a poor widow, who took in washing for a living. "It will most strike her dead; I know it will!" he whispered one day to Don.
But all voyages must come to an end, and one morning old Jacob electrified everybody by announcing that land was in sight. Before night they entered the harbor of Savannah.
It was Robert Menden, old Jacob and Bob, who took the gold to one of the banks and got a receipt for it. Carefully weighed, the treasure proved to be worth twenty-two thousand and three hundred dollars.
Then the stones were taken to a reliable jewelry firm, sorted and tested. Their value brought the total amount of the treasure to a little over fifty thousand dollars.
Of this, Robert Menden insisted upon keeping only one-half. The other twenty-five thousand was placed to Dick's credit. Of this amount the members of the Gun and Sled Club divided five thousand equally between old Jacob and Danny, and kept the twenty thousand for themselves—Dick, Don, Bob and Leander to share and share alike.
The good news was sent ahead by mail, and created a veritable sensation in Waterford. Poor Mrs. Guirk could not believe her good fortune, and shed tears of joy when Squire Hobart read to her the letter Danny had managed to pen, with Bob's aid.
"Sure an' it's a blessing from Heaven, Squire," said she. "Danny's a good b'y, but I niver expected this of him, never!" And she wiped her tears away with her apron.
When the Dashaway arrived at home the boys found the water-front of the town decorated in their honor. A grand feast was had at the home of Dick Wilbur, and here their various adventures had to be told again and again, for the benefit of the club members' parents, and their numerous friends. It was a jolly time and one never to be forgotten; and here we will leave them, satisfied that, no matter what adventures they may have in the future, they will never have any more thrilling than those encountered while treasure-hunting in Porto Rico.