Chapter Thirty Five.
Exciting Times.
Light—more light, but still not enough to tell of what our treasure was composed. If we had been at the mouth of the cave it would have been, possible, but where we were the darkness was still thick darkness.
Twice I had impatiently gazed at the metal I had been fingering with all a miser’s avidity, when my attention was taken by an object upon a rock close by where we had worked during the night—a toil that I had been ready to declare a dream, time after time, but for the solid reality beneath my hands.
Tom caught sight of the object at the same moment as myself; and together, moved by the same impulse, we raced down, secured it, and then ran panting back with a gloriously-worked but battered golden cup, that we had placed upon the rock above us, and which had thus escaped our search.
The next minute we were gazing tremblingly back to see whether we had been observed, for to lose now the wondrous treasure in our grasp seemed unbearable.
But no—all was still; and, for my part, I could do nothing but pant with excitement as the truth dawned more upon me with the coming day, that I was by this one stroke immensely rich. The treasure was gold—rich, ruddy gold, all save one of the great round shields, and that was of massive silver, black almost as ink with tarnish; while its fellow-shield—a sun, as I now saw, as I afterwards made out the other to be a representation of the moon—was of the richer metal.
I was right, then—Garcia could be set at defiance, my uncle freed. But it was all too good to be true; and that little If thrust itself into my thoughts—that little If that has so much to do with our lives.
If I could get the gold safely away!
My brow knit as I thought of this, and my hand closed involuntarily upon the gun; but directly after I felt that we must bestir ourselves to pack our treasure safely.