"I'm only a little bit scared," she confessed.
"Mr. Trask, yo' better take a look at this mess," Doc called up the companion. He betrayed his suppressed excitement in his voice, and when Trask went down, followed by the others, the steward's hands were trembling and his eyes snapping with the spirit of discovery which possessed him. He might have been a scientist making a test which promised to realize lifelong dreams and labours.
"Fine! It's fairly glowing!" said Trask, as he passed a hand over the dish of sand.
They all pressed around him as he took a bottle of water from Doc and dashed the liquid into the sand. There was a cloud of steam and a terrific hissing.
"Now," said Trask, "pass me that wooden chopping bowl," and he dumped the wet sand out into the bowl, and laid it on the cabin table.
"Bring me another pan," he called, "and more water."
He began twisting the bowl with a rotary motion, and when Doc arrived with the pan, nursed the sand out into it, and as the last of the sand went over the lip of the bowl, ran out on deck into the sun, and examined the bottom of the wooden bowl.
"Lordy me!" gasped Doc, leaning over Trask's shoulder. "Look at the sparkle!"
The wet bowl was shot with tiny points of yellow, which caught the sunlight.
"Gold!" exclaimed Marjorie.