“Well, the minute people knows it’s genuwyne sand from the genuwyne Desert of Sahara, they’ll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We’ve got all of ten thousand dollars’ worth of sand in this boat.”
Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:
“And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we’ve carted this whole Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain’t ever going to be any opposition, either, because we’ll take out a patent.”
“My goodness,” I says, “we’ll be as rich as Creosote, won’t we, Tom?”
“Yes—Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn’t know he was walking over the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the driver.”
“Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?”
“Well, I don’t know yet. It’s got to be ciphered, and it ain’t the easiest job to do, either, because it’s over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a vial.”
Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook his head and says:
“Mars Tom, we can’t ’ford all dem vials—a king couldn’t. We better not try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho’.”
Tom’s excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account of the vials, but it wasn’t. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer, and at last he says: