The cylinder of bamboo was plugged at the one end with a section of wood, the edges being sealed with raw pitch. We heated the thing at the fire, and then pried out the plug of wood.
"Hooray!" cried Norris and Ray together, as I poured the contents into a tin.
There was fine dust of gold mixed with many small nuggets.
"How many of those things did you say you saw in there?" asked Ray.
"I didn't count them," I returned. But I showed with my hands the dimensions of that space that was filled with them.
"And that's only the beginning," said Norris. "Say, Carlos, we've found your gold mine," he continued, seizing that black by the shoulder.
"Yes, we find him now," grinned Carlos. "Maybe I find where my father buried." And his face went serious again with the sadness I saw there, something that was doubtless hatred of Duran, his father's murderer, showed too. And I wondered—and conjectured—what was in Carlos' mind, and shuddered.
Marat and Robert came at last, in the dark, and they marvelled at the tale of success we had to tell them.
"But, Bob," said Ray, in the midst of the tale, "to think that Wayne would play a trick like that on me!—who nursed him through measles, mumps, chicken pox, cholera morbus, and a stubbed toe, and even fed him up, dozens of times, on all-day suckers!—to pop out of the water like that, and bow, and tell me he had been playing Jonah, and that the whale had just stopped behind to wipe his feet on the mat and would be in directly."
Everything, Captain Marat told us, was going well on the Pearl; and Julian, good lad, was content to wait indefinitely, while we searched for the mine.