“By Jove, you are right! we have lost our bearings,” growled Hume. “If you’ll believe me, I never thought of retrieving the gold, a work of uncommon difficulty, since we cannot possibly coax the metal from its matrix and will have to load ourselves with a worthless weight of quartz. If the rock is as rich as the specimen implies, we would have to carry away half of quartz, giving twenty-five pounds of gold to each, or only 1,500 pounds. Now, is it worth while advancing for such a little?”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Anstrade, with a frown.
“I am merely looking at the matter from a common-sense point, and Jim has just considered the humorous side. We both apparently come into the same ‘blind alley,’ and see the absurdity of running against a stone wall. We have lost everything, we have narrowly escaped with our lives, and now, even if, when not properly equipped for continuing the enterprise, we do succeed, the reward sinks to insignificant proportions—insignificant, that is, compared to the boundless wealth we originally contemplated.”
“Nonsense,” she repeated; “you originally had the very slightest faith in the existence of this rock, and the value of the reward is not the consideration you would prize. We have risked all and braved all to find it. Let us find it, and the pride of discovery after so many dangers and disappointments will be our reward. You mean to continue the search?”
“Of course,” said Hume.
“How about a canoe?” said Webster, getting up, and jobbing his hunting knife into the fig-tree.
“We don’t want a canoe, for the distance to the belt of reeds must be about nineteen miles, and we can walk that before you would finish your vessel. Afterwards we will ask you to build us a raft, which I think would be better, as there are many rocks in the channel.”
“A raft,” she said, with a smile; “then what would there be to prevent your making two or three trips to load your raft with as much of the metal as you like?”
“Good,” said Hume, laughing; “but, as you observed, we must first catch our hare, and he appears to be vanishing while we talk. Opstan—Klaas—we march.”
In half an hour they struck out of the forest into the glare of the sun, slightly tempered by the feathery mimosa, whose little fluffy buds of yellow bloom scented the heavy air. From the river banks there rose in thick masses the lustrous green foliage of the wild palmiet, rising from out of a ring of golden yellow, where the old leaves drooping had faded, and above the river, defining its winding course, rested a slight vapour, while beyond was the wide plain of rolling grass out of which had come their enemies.