If the Indians could trace me and dared to come across the river all this distance down and into the civilised region, I knew that my life would not be safe, and that they would have the treasure back at any cost.
But then it was not likely that the simple savages would venture after me even if they could find out where I had come.
Then there were the Spaniards about us. If they knew of the wealth we had in the ordinary house of which we had taken possession they would either get it away by legal means, claiming it as belonging to one or the other government, or else make a regular filibustering descent upon us and secure it by violence, even taking our lives as well.
Secrecy, then, seemed to be the only thing possible; and after a good deal of thinking and planning, my uncle, Tom, and I constructed a little furnace in a corner of the house, after boarding up the window and covering it with blankets as well. Here we purposed to melt down the treasure into long ingots, which we hoped to mould in sand—little, long, golden bars being the most convenient shape in which we could carry our gold.
I knew even then that it was a great pity to destroy what were equally valuable as curiosities as for their intrinsic worth as precious metal; but any attempt to dispose of them would have meant confiscation, and such a treasure was not to be introduced to the notice of strangers with impunity.
My uncle joined with me in lamenting the difficulties of the case, and that we should be under the necessity of melting the cups and plates down; but he urged me to do it as soon as possible, and we soon set to work, carrying on our metal fusing in secret by the help of a crucible and a great deal of saltpetre, which soon helped to bring the heat to a pitch where the gold would melt like so much lead, and then by the help of a strong handle the pot was lifted out and its glowing contents poured forth into the moulds.
The ingots we thus cast had to be filed and the rough projections taken off, the dust and scraps being remelted down with the other portion.
It was a tremendous task, though. The plates we managed pretty easily, but the discs had to be cut up first by means of a great hammer and a cold chisel, and the progress we made upon some days was very small.
The cups, too, were very difficult to manage; and Tom and I used to work exceedingly hard, hammering and breaking the gold into small pieces that would go into the melting-pot. Sometimes our fingers were quite sore with the hammering and filing.
Still we kept on making progress, nervous progress, lest people should find out what we were about; and by slow degrees we added ingot to ingot—little, bright, yellow bar after bar—to one heap, and bar after bar of silver to another heap, which were kept buried under a stone in the floor of one of the rooms.