This was a camp in the verge of a clump of palms. A dozen brawny men in white shirts, loose trousers and sombreros, were sitting about smoking and talking.
All the paraphernalia of a camp, with a train of mules, was behind them. They had apparently been on the spot for some while.
Words can hardly express the sensations of the captain.
He stared at the scene, and then a sharp ejaculation escaped him.
“By Neptune! it is Jerry Dooley!”
His gaze was fixed upon a man who stood in the edge of the camp talking with three others. He was a man of smooth face, shifting gaze and stealthy manner. His appearance was that of a sea-faring man.
In him Nicodemus recognized one of the crew of the wrecked ship, who had been a companion of his at the time that the lake came back, and as Nicodemus had always believed, had drowned the entire crew left at the mound of gold.
But there had been one exception. This was Jerry Dooley, the ship’s steward. As fate had it, he had started himself right after Nicodemus and Langley to go back to the camp on an errand. He was overtaken by the waters of the lake, but dashed high and dry upon an eminence on the lake shore.
Dooley had made ineffectual search for the camp, and not finding it, finally started back for the Pacific coast.
After many hardships he reached it and pluckily put to sea in the ship’s boat left there. Good fortune became his.