“Better not. We know well enough what’s in it. We’ve got to hurry, work day and night, and get away from here as quick as ever we can.”
“Oh, confound it! We’ll have to open one of them, anyway. We may have made a mistake. Aren’t we going to see any of the plunder?” exclaimed Elliott and Hawke, and Margaret added her entreaty.
“All right, go ahead,” Henninger gave in. “Open it carefully, though, for we’ll want to close the box again. Sullivan, please keep an eye on the hatch to see that nobody looks down.”
Hawke released the grapples, and they dragged the case into the cabin, where, with some difficulty, one of the boards of the cover was pried off. A mass of wet, foul-smelling hay appeared below, and Hawke began to drag this out upon the floor, where it made a great pool of sea-water.
The hay was packed very tightly, but in a few seconds Hawke encountered something solid, and brought it to light. It was a dead yellow brick of gold, exactly similar to the one already acquired.
Hawke continued the disembowelling of the case until the floor was swimming with water and heaped with sodden hay, and the pile of yellow blocks grew upon the floor. At last the box was empty.
“Twenty-five,” remarked Henninger, who had been counting them as they came out. “We might as well weigh them. There are small scales in the storeroom,”—which Elliott at once fetched.
The scales, which were not strictly accurate, indicated the weight of the first brick at a trifle under eight pounds, and the others all gave the same result. Evidently they had been run in the same mould.
“The latest quotation for pure gold, as I suppose this is, was twenty-five dollars an ounce, or thereabouts. At that rate, how much is each of these bricks worth? Remember, these scales weigh sixteen ounces to the pound.”
“Three thousand, two hundred dollars,” replied Hawke, after making the calculation. “The whole case will total up—let me see—eighty thousand dollars!”