“I don’t hesitate,” said I. “Let’s get to the bottom of the thing. The rice is nothing; the rice will neither make nor break us.”
“That’s how I expected you to see it,” returned Nares. And we called the boat away and set forth on our new quest.
The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which there went forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and now crowded the ship’s waist and forecastle. It was our task to disembowel and explore six thousand individual mats, and incidentally to destroy a hundred and fifty tons of valuable food. Nor were the circumstances of the day’s business less strange than its essential nature. Each man of us, armed with a great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth the rice upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden down, poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the vents. About the wreck thus transformed into an overflowing granary, the sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. The sight of so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the grain from between our fingers. The men—their hands bleeding from these assaults—turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the birds, drew them out crimsoned, and turned again to dig among the rice, unmindful of the gawking creatures that struggled and died among their feet. We made a singular picture—the hovering and diving birds; the bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling, slaying, and shouting aloud; over all the lofty intricacy of rigging and the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the immediate hope of fifty dollars, and I of fifty thousand. Small wonder if we waded callously in blood and food.
It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted. Nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth and slung at his feet, among the rice, a papered tin box.
“How’s that?” he shouted.
A cry broke from all hands. The next moment, forgetting their own disappointment in that contagious sentiment of success, they gave three cheers that scared the sea-birds; and the next they had crowded round the captain, and were jostling together and groping with emulous hands in the new-opened mat. Box after box rewarded them, six in all; wrapped, as I have said, in a paper envelope, and the paper printed on in Chinese characters.
Nares turned to me and shook my hand. “I began to think we should never see this day,” said he. “I congratulate you, Mr. Dodd, on having pulled it through.”
The captain’s tones affected me profoundly; and when Johnson and the men pressed round me in turn with congratulations, the tears came in my eyes.
“These are five-tael boxes, more than two pounds,” said Nares, weighing one in his hand. “Say two hundred and fifty dollars to the mat. Lay into it, boys! We’ll make Mr. Dodd a millionaire before dark.”
It was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. The men had now nothing to expect; the mere idea of great sums inspired them with disinterested ardour. Mats were slashed and disembowelled, the rice flowed to our knees in the ship’s waist, the sweat ran in our eyes and blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our fire abated not. Dinner came; we were too weary to eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet dinner was scarce done, before we were afoot again and delving in the rice. Before nightfall not a mat was unexplored, and we were face to face with the astonishing result.