When the captain had covered the two miles of beach and climbed the two
rocky ridges, and reached his tent, it was long after noon, and throwing
his two bags on the ground and covering them with a blanket, he proceeded
to prepare his dinner. He laid out a complete working-plan, and one of
the rules he had made was that, if possible, nothing should interfere
with his regular meals and hours of sleep. The work he had set for
himself was arduous in the extreme, and calculated to tax his energies to
the utmost, and he must take very good care of his health and strength.
In thinking over the matter, he had feared that the greed of gold might
possess him, and that, in his anxiety to carry away as much as he could,
he might break down, and everything be lost.

Even now he found himself calculating how much gold he had brought away
in the two bags, and what would be its value in coined money, multiplying
and estimating with his food untouched and his eyes fixed on the distant
sea. Suddenly he clenched his fist and struck it on his knee.

"I must stop this," he said. "I shall be upset if I don't. I will not
count the bars in those bags. I will not make any more estimates. A rough
guess now and then I cannot help, but what I have to do is to bring away
all the gold I can. It will be time enough to find out what it is worth
when it is safe somewhere in North America."

When the captain had finished his meal, he went to his tent, and opened
one of the trunks which he had brought with him, and which were supposed
to contain the clothes and personal effects he had bought in Lima. This
trunk, however, was entirely filled with rolls of cheap cotton cloth,
coarse and strong, but not heavy. With a pair of shears he proceeded to
cut from one of these some pieces, rather more than a foot square. Then,
taking from his canvas bags as many of the gold bars as he thought would
weigh twelve or fifteen pounds, trying not to count them as he did so, he
made a little package of them, tying the corners of the cloth together
with a strong cord. When five of these bundles had been prepared, his
gold was exhausted, and then he carried the small bundles out to the
guano-bags.

He had bought his guano in bulk, and it had been put into bags under his
own supervision, for it was only in bags that the ship which was to take
it north would receive it. The bags were new and good, and Captain Horn
believed that each of them could be made twelve or fifteen pounds heavier
without attracting the attention of those who might have to lift them,
for they were very heavy as it was.

He now opened a bag of guano, and thrusting a stick down into its
contents, he twisted it about until he had made a cavity which enabled
him, with a little trouble, to thrust one of the packages of gold down
into the centre of the bag. Then he pressed the guano down firmly, and
sewed up the bag again, being provided with needles and an abundance of
necessary cord. When this was done, the bag containing the gold did not
differ in appearance from the others, and the captain again assured
himself that the additional weight would not be noticed by a common
stevedore, especially if all the bags were about the same weight. At this
thought he stopped work and looked out toward the sea, his mind
involuntarily leaping out toward calculations based upon the happy chance
of his being able to load all the bags; but he checked himself. "Stop
that," he said. "Go to work!"

Five guano-bags were packed, each with its bundle of gold, but the task
was a disagreeable, almost a distressing, one, for the strong ammoniacal
odor sometimes almost overpowered the captain, who had a great dislike
for such smells. But he never drew back, except now and then to turn his
head and take a breath of purer air. He was trying to make his fortune,
and when men are doing that, their likes and dislikes must stand aside.

When this task was finished, the captain took up his two empty canvas
bags and went back to the caves, returning late in the afternoon, loaded
rather more heavily than before. From the experiences of the morning, he
believed that, with some folded pieces of cloth on each shoulder, he
could carry without discomfort a greater weight than his first ones. The
gold he now brought was made up into six bundles, and then the captain
rested from his labors. He felt that he could do a much better day's work
than this, but this day had been very much broken up, and he was still
somewhat awkward.

Day after day Captain Horn labored at his new occupation, and a toilsome
occupation it was, which no one who did not possess great powers of
endurance, and great hopes from the results of his work, could have
undergone. In about a month the schooner was to be expected with another
load of guano, and the captain felt that he must, if possible, finish his
task before she came back. In a few days he found that, by practice and
improvements in his system of work, he was able to make four trips a day
between the cove of the Rackbirds and the caves. He rose very early in
the morning, and made two trips before dinner. Sometimes he thought he
might do more, but he restrained himself. It would not do for him to get
back too tired to sleep.

During this time in which his body was so actively employed, his mind was
almost as active, and went out on all sorts of excursions, some of them
beneficial and some of them otherwise. Sometimes the thought came to him,
as he plodded along bearing his heavy bags, that he was no more than a
common thief, carrying away treasures which did not belong to him. Then,
of course, he began to reason away these uncomfortable reflections. If
this treasure did not belong to him, to whom did it belong? Certainly not
to the descendants of those Spaniards from whom the original owners had
striven so hard to conceal it. If the spirits of the Incas could speak,
they would certainly declare in his favor over that of the children of
the men who, in blood and torture, had obliterated them and their
institutions. Sometimes such arguments entirely satisfied the captain;
but if they did not entirely satisfy him, he put the whole matter aside,
to be decided upon after he should safely reach the United States with
such treasure as he might be able to take with him.

"Then," he thought, "we can do what we think is right. I shall listen to
all that may be said by our party, and shall act justly. But what I do
not take away with me has no chance whatever of ever falling into the
proper hands."

But no matter how he might terminate such reflections, the captain always
blamed himself for allowing his mind to occupy itself with them. He had
fully decided that this treasure belonged to him, and there was no real
reason for his thinking of such things, except that he had no one to talk
to, and in such cases a man's thoughts are apt to run wild.

Often and often he wondered what the others were thinking about this
affair, and whether or not they would all be able to keep the secret
until he returned. He was somewhat afraid of Mrs. Cliff. He believed her
to be an honorable woman who would not break her word, but still he did
not know all her ideas in regard to her duty. She might think there was
some one to whom she ought to confide what had happened, and what was
expected to happen, and if she should do this, there was no reason why
he should not, some day, descry a ship in the offing with
treasure-hunters on board.

Ralph gave him no concern at all, except that he was young, and the
captain could foretell the weather much better than the probable actions
of a youth.

But these passing anxieties never amounted to suspicions. It was far
better to believe in Mrs. Cliff and Ralph, and he would do it; and every
time he thought of the two, he determined to believe in them. As to Edna,
there was no question about believing in her. He did so without
consideration for or against belief.

The captain did not like his solitary life. How happy he would have been
if they could all have remained here; if the guano could have been
brought without the crew of the schooner knowing that there were people
in the caves; if the negroes could have carried the bags of gold; if
every night, after having superintended their labors, he could have gone
back to the caves, which, with the comforts he could have brought from
Lima, would have made a very habitable home; if--But these were
reflections which were always doomed to banishment as soon as the captain
became aware of the enthralment of their charm, and sturdily onward,
endeavoring to fix his mind upon some better sailor's knot with which to
tie up his bundles, or to plant his feet where his tracks would soon be
obliterated by the incoming waves, the strong man trudged, bearing
bravely the burden of his golden hopes.




CHAPTER XXIII

HIS PRESENT SHARE


With four trips a day from the caves to the cove, taking time for rests,
for regular meals, and for sleep, and not working on Sundays,--for he
kept a diary and an account of days,--the captain succeeded in a little
over three weeks in loading his bags of guano, each with a package of
golden bars, some of which must have weighed as much as fifteen pounds.

When this work had been accomplished, he began to consider the return of
the schooner. But he had no reason to expect her yet, and he determined
to continue his work. Each day he brought eight canvas bags of gold from
the caves, and making them up into small bundles, he buried them in the
sand under his tent. When a full month had elapsed since the departure
of the schooner, he began to be very prudent, keeping a careful lookout
seaward, as he walked the beach, and never entering the caves without
mounting a high point of the rocks and thoroughly scanning the ocean.
If, when bearing his burden of gold, he should have seen a sail, he
would have instantly stopped and buried his bags in the sand, wherever
he might be.

Day after day passed, and larger and larger grew the treasure stored in
the sands under the tent, but no sail appeared. Sometimes the captain
could not prevent evil fancies coming to him. What if the ship should
never come back? What if no vessel should touch here for a year or two?
And why should a vessel ever touch? When the provisions he had brought
and those left in the Rackbirds' storehouse had been exhausted, what
could he do but lie down here and perish?--another victim added to the
millions who had already perished from the thirst of gold. He thought of
his little party in San Francisco. They surely would send in search of
him, if he did not appear in a reasonable time. But he felt this hope
was a vain one. In a letter to Edna, written from Lima, he had told her
she must not expect to hear from him for a long time, for, while he was
doing the work he contemplated, it would be impossible for him to
communicate with her.

She would have no reason to suppose that he would start on such an
expedition without making due arrangements for safety and support, and
so would hesitate long before she would commission a vessel to touch
at this point in search of him. If he should starve here, he would die
months before any reasonable person, who knew as much of his affairs
as did Edna, would think the time had arrived to send a relief
expedition for him.

But he did not starve. Ten days overdue, at last the Chilian
schooner appeared and anchored in the cove. She had now no white men
on board but the captain and his mate, for the negroes had improved
so much in seamanship that the economical captain had dispensed with
his Chilian crew.

Captain Horn was delighted to be able to speak again to a fellow-being,
and it pleased him far better to see Maka than any of the others.

"You no eat 'nough, cap'n," said the black man, as he anxiously scanned
the countenance of Captain Horn, which, although the captain was in
better physical condition than perhaps he had ever been in his life, was
thinner than when Maka had seen it last. "When I cook for you, you not so
long face," the negro continued. "Didn't us leave you 'nough to eat? Did
you eat 'em raw?"

The captain laughed. "I have had plenty to eat," he said, "and I never
felt better. If I had not taken exercise, you would have found me as fat
as a porpoise."

The interview with the Chilian captain was not so cordial, for Captain
Horn found that the Chilian had not brought him a full cargo of bags of
guano, and, by searching questions, he discovered that this was due
entirely to unnecessary delay in beginning to load the vessel. The
Chilian declared he would have taken on board all the guano which
Captain Horn had purchased at the smaller island, had he not begun to
fear that Captain Horn would suffer if he did not soon return to him,
and when he thought it was not safe to wait any longer, he had sailed
with a partial cargo.

Captain Horn was very angry, for every bag of guano properly packed with
gold bars meant, at a rough estimate, between two and three thousand
dollars if it safely reached a gold-market, and now he found himself with
at least one hundred bags less than he had expected to pack. There was no
time to repair this loss, for the English vessel, the _Finland,_ from
Callao to Acapulco, which the captain had engaged to stop at this point
on her next voyage northward, might be expected in two or three weeks,
certainly sooner than the Chilian could get back to the guano island and
return. In fact, there was barely time for that vessel to reach Callao
before the departure of the _Finland_, on board of which the captain
wished his negroes to be placed, that they might go home with him.

"If I had any men to work my vessel," said the Chilian, who had grown
surly in consequence of the fault-finding, "I'd leave your negroes here,
and cut loose from the whole business. I've had enough of it."

"That serves you right for discharging your own men in order that you
might work your vessel with mine," said Captain Horn. He had intended to
insist that the negroes should ship again with the Chilian, but he knew
that it would be more difficult to find reasons for this than on the
previous voyage, and he was really more than glad to find that the matter
had thus arranged itself.

Talking with Captain Horn, the Chilian mate, who had had no
responsibility in this affair, and who was, consequently, not out of
humor, proposed that he should go back with them, and take the English
vessel at Callao.

"I can't risk it," said Captain Horn. "If your schooner should meet
with head winds or any other bad luck, and the _Finland_ should leave
before I got there, there would be a pretty kettle of fish, and if she
touched here and found no one in charge, I don't believe she would take
away a bag."

"Do you think they will be sure to touch here?" asked the mate. "Have
they got the latitude and longitude? It didn't seem so bad before to
leave you behind, because we were coming back, but now it strikes me it
is rather a risky piece of business for you."

"No," said Captain Horn. "I am acquainted with the skipper of the
_Finland,_ and I left a letter for him telling him exactly how the matter
stood, and he knows that I trust him to pick me up. I do not suppose he
will expect to find me here all alone, but if he gives me the slip, I
would be just as likely to starve to death if I had some men with me as
if I were alone. The _Finland_ will stop--I am sure of that."

With every reason for the schooner's reaching Callao as soon as possible,
and very little reason, considering the uncordial relations of the two
captains, for remaining in the cove, the Chilian set sail the morning
after he had discharged his unsavory cargo. Maka had begged harder than
before to be allowed to remain with Captain Horn, but the latter had made
him understand, as well as he could, the absolute necessity of the
schooner reaching Callao in good time, and the absolute impossibility of
any vessel doing anything in good time without a cook. Therefore, after a
personal inspection of the stores left behind, both in the tent and in
the Rackbirds' storehouse, which latter place he visited with great
secrecy, Maka, with a sad heart, was obliged to leave the only real
friend he had on earth.

When, early the next morning, Captain Horn began to pack the newly
arrived bags with the bundles of gold which he had buried in the sand, he
found that the bags were not at all in the condition of those the
filling of which he had supervised himself. Some of these were more
heavily filled than others, and many were badly fastened up. This, of
course, necessitated a good deal of extra work, but the captain sadly
thought that probably he would have more time than he needed to do all
that was necessary to get this second cargo into fair condition for
transportation. He had checked off his little bundles as he had buried
them, and there were nearly enough to fill all the bags. In fact, he had
to make but three more trips in order to finish the business.

When the work was done, and everything was ready for the arrival of the
_Finland_, the captain felt that he had good reason to curse the
conscienceless Chilian whose laziness or carelessness had not only caused
him the loss of perhaps a quarter of a million of dollars, but had given
him days--how many he could not know--with nothing to do; and which of
these two evils might prove the worse, the captain could not readily
determine.

As Captain Horn walked up and down the long double rows of bags which
contained what he hoped would become his fortune, he could not prevent a
feeling of resentful disappointment when he thought of the small
proportion borne by the gold in these bags to the treasure yet remaining
in the mound. On his last visit to the mound he had carefully examined
its interior, and although, of course, there was a great diminution in
its contents, there was no reason to believe that the cavity of the mound
did not extend downward to the floor of the cave, and that it remained
packed with gold bars to the depth of several feet. It seemed silly,
crazy, in fact, almost wicked, for him to sail away in the _Finland_ and
leave all that gold behind, and yet, how could he possibly take away any
more of it?

He had with him a trunk nearly empty, in which he might pack some
blankets and other stuff with some bags of gold stowed away between them,
but more than fifty pounds added to the weight of the trunk and its
contents would make it suspiciously heavy, and what was fifty pounds out
of that vast mass? But although he puzzled his brains for the greater
part of a day, trying to devise some method by which he could take away
more gold without exciting the suspicions of the people on board the
English vessel, there was no plan that entered his mind that did not
contain elements of danger, and the danger was an appalling one. If the
crew of the _Finland_, or the crew of any other vessel, should, on this
desert coast, get scent of a treasure mound of gold ingots, he might as
well attempt to reason with wild beasts as to try to make them understand
that that treasure belonged to him. If he could get away with any of it,
or even with his life, he ought to be thankful.

The captain was a man who, since he had come to an age of maturity, had
been in the habit of turning his mind this way and that as he would turn
the helm of his vessel, and of holding it to the course he had
determined upon, no matter how strong the wind or wave, how dense the
fog, or how black the night. But never had he stood to his helm as he
now stood to a resolve.

"I will bring away a couple of bags," said he, "to put in my trunk, and
then, I swear to myself, I will not think another minute about carrying
away any more of that gold than what is packed in these guano-bags. If I
can ever come back, I will come back, but what I have to do now is to get
away with what I have already taken out of the mound, and also to get
away with sound reason and steady nerves."

The next day there was not a sail on the far horizon, and the captain
brought away two bags of gold. These, with some clothes, he packed in his
empty trunk.

"Now," said he, "this is my present share. If I permit myself to think of
taking another bar, I shall be committing a crime."




CHAPTER XXIV

HIS FORTUNE UNDER HIS FEET


Notwithstanding the fact that the captain had, for the present, closed
his account with the treasure in the lake cave, and had determined not to
give another thought to further drafts upon it, he could not prevent all
sorts of vague and fragmentary plans for getting more of the gold from
thrusting themselves upon him; but his hand was strong upon the tiller of
his mind, and his course did not change a point. He now began to consider
in what condition he should leave the caves. Once he thought he would go
there and take away everything which might indicate that the caves had
been inhabited, but this notion he discarded.

"There are a good many people," he thought, "who know that we lived
there, and if that man who was there afterwards should come back, I would
prefer that he should not notice any changes, unless, indeed,"--and his
eyes glistened as a thought darted into his mind,--"unless, indeed, he
should find a lake where he left a dry cave. Good! I'll try it."

With his hands in his pockets, the captain stood a few moments and
thought, and then he went to work. From the useless little vessel which,
had belonged to the Rackbirds he gathered some bits of old rope, and
having cut these into short pieces, he proceeded to pick them into what
sailors call oakum.

Early the next morning, his two canvas bags filled with this, he started
for the caves. When he reached the top of the mound, and was just about
to hold his lantern so as to take a final glance into its interior, he
suddenly turned away his head and shut his eyes.

"No," he said. "If I do that, it is ten to one I'll jump inside, and what
might happen next nobody knows."

He put the lantern aside, lifted the great lid into its place, and
then, with a hammer and a little chisel which he had brought with him
from the tools which had been used for the building of the pier, he
packed the crevices about the lid with oakum. With a mariner's skill he
worked, and when his job was finished, it would have been difficult for
a drop of water to have found its way into the dome, no matter if it
rose high above it.

It was like leaving behind a kingdom and a throne, the command of armies
and vast navies, the domination of power, of human happenings; but he
came away.

When he reached the portion of the cave near the great gap which opened
to the sky opposite the entrance to the outer caves, the captain walked
across the dry floor to the place where was situated the outlet through
which the waters of the lake had poured out into the Rackbirds' valley.

The machine which controlled this outlet was situated under the
overhanging ledge of the cave, and was in darkness, so that the captain
was obliged to use his lantern. He soon found the great lever which he
had clutched when he had swum to the rescue of Ralph, and which had gone
down with him and so opened the valve and permitted egress of the water,
and which now lay with its ten feet or more of length horizontally near
the ground. Near by was the great pipe, with its circular blackness
leading into the depths below.

"That stream outside," said the captain, "must run in here somewhere,
although I cannot see nor hear it, and it must be stopped off by this
valve or another one connected with it, so that if I can get this lever
up again, I should shut it off from the stream outside and turn it in
here. Then, if that fellow comes back, he will have to swim to the
mound, and run a good chance of getting drowned if he does it, and if
anybody else comes here, I think it will be as safe as the ancient
Peruvians once made it."

With this he took hold of the great lever and attempted to raise it. But
he found the operation a very difficult one. The massive bar was of
metal, but probably not iron, and although it was not likely that it had
rusted, it was very hard to move in its socket. The captain's weight had
brought it down easily, but this weight could not now be applied, and he
could only attempt to lift it.

When it had first been raised, it was likely that a dozen slaves had
seized it and forced it into an upright position. The captain pushed up
bravely, and, a few inches at a time, he elevated the end of the great
lever. Frequently he stopped to rest, and it was over an hour before the
bar stood up as it had been when first he felt it under the water.

When this was done, he went into the other caves, looked about to see
that everything was in the condition in which he had found it, and that
he had left nothing behind him during his many visits. When he was
satisfied on these points, he went back to the lake cave to see if any
water had run in. He found everything as dry as when he had left it, nor
could he hear any sound of running or dripping water. Considering the
matter, however, he concluded that there might be some sort of an outside
reservoir which must probably fill up before the water ran into the cave,
and so he came away.

"I will give it time," he thought, "and come back to-morrow to see if it
is flooded."

That night, as he lay on his little pallet, looking through the open
front of his tent at the utter darkness of the night, the idea struck him
that it was strange that he was not afraid to stay here alone. He was a
brave man,--he knew that very well,--and yet it seemed odd to him that,
under the circumstances, he should have so little fear. But his reason
soon gave him a good answer. He had known times when he had been very
much afraid, and among these stood preeminent the time when he had
expected an attack from the Rackbirds. But then his fear was for others.
When he was by himself it was a different matter. It was not often that
he did not feel able to take care of his own safety. If there were any
danger now, it was in the daytime, when some stray Rackbirds might come
back, or the pilferer of the mound might return with companions. But if
any such came, he had his little fort, two pistols, and a repeating
rifle. At night he felt absolutely safe. There was no danger that could
come by land or sea through the blackness of the night.

Suddenly he sat up. His forehead was moist with perspiration. A shiver
ran through him, not of cold, but of fear. Never in his life had he been
so thoroughly frightened; never before had he felt his hands and legs
tremble. Involuntarily he rose and stood up in the tent. He was
terrified, not by anything real, but by the thought of what might happen
if that lake cave should fill up with water, and if the ancient valves,
perhaps weakened by his moving them backward and forward, should give way
under the great pressure, and, for a second time, a torrent of water
should come pouring down the Rackbirds' ravine!

As the captain trembled with fear, it was not for himself, for he could
listen for the sound of the rushing waters, and could dash away to the
higher ground behind him; but it was for his treasure-bags, his fortune,
his future! His soul quaked. His first impulse was to rush out and carry
every bag to higher ground. But this idea was absurd. The night was too
dark, and the bags too heavy and too many. Then he thought of hurrying
away to the caves to see if the lake had risen high enough to be
dangerous. But what could he do if it had? In his excitement, he could
not stand still and do nothing. He took hold of one end of his trunk and
pulled it out of his tent, and, stumbling and floundering over the
inequalities of the ground, he at last got it to a place which he
supposed would be out of reach of a sudden flood, and the difficulties of
this little piece of work assured him of the utter futility of
attempting to move the bags in the darkness. He had a lantern, but that
would be of little service on such a night and for such a work.

He went back into his tent, and tried to prevail upon himself that he
ought to go to sleep--that it was ridiculous to beset himself with
imaginary dangers, and to suffer from them as much as if they had been
real ones. But such reasoning was vain, and he sat up or walked about
near his tent all night, listening and listening, and trying to think of
the best thing to do if he should hear a coming flood.

As soon as it was light, he hurried to the caves, and when he reached the
old bed of the lake, he found there was not a drop of water in it.

"The thing doesn't work!" he cried joyfully. "Fool that I am, I might
have known that although a man might open a valve two or three
centuries old, he should not expect to shut it up again. I suppose I
smashed it utterly."

His revulsion of feeling was so great that he began to laugh at his own
absurdity, and then he laughed at his merriment.

"If any one should see me now," he thought, "they would surely think I
had gone crazy over my wealth. Well, there is no danger from a flood,
but, to make all things more than safe, I will pull down this handle, if
it will come. Anyway, I do not want it seen."

The great bar came down much easier than it had gone up, moving, in fact,
the captain thought, as if some of its detachments were broken, and when
it was down as far as it would go, he came away.

"Now," said he, "I have done with this cave for this trip. If possible, I
shall think of it no more."

When he was getting some water from the stream to make some coffee for
his breakfast, he stopped and clenched his fist. "I am more of a fool
than I thought I was," he said. "This solitary business is not good for
me. If I had thought last night of coming here to see if this little
stream were still running, and kept its height, I need not have troubled
myself about the lake in the cave. Of course, if the water were running
into the caves, it would not be running here until the lake had filled.
And, besides, it would take days for that great lake to fill. Well, I am
glad that nobody but myself knows what an idiot I have been."

When he had finished his breakfast, Captain Horn went to work. There was
to be no more thinking, no more plans, no more fanciful anxieties, no
more hopes of doing something better than he had done. Work he would, and
when one thing was done, he would find another. The first thing he set
about was the improvement of the pier which had been built for the
landing of the guano. There was a good deal of timber left unused, and he
drove down new piles, nailed on new planking, and extended the little
pier considerably farther into the waters of the cove. When this was
done, he went to work on the lighter, which was leaky, and bailed it out,
and calked the seams, taking plenty of time, and doing his work in the
most thorough manner. He determined that after this was done, and he
could find nothing better to do, he would split up the little vessel
which the Rackbirds had left rudderless, mastless, and useless, and make
kindling-wood of it.

But this was not necessary. He had barely finished his work on the
lighter, when, one evening, he saw against the sun-lighted sky the
topmasts of a vessel, and the next morning the _Finland_ lay anchored off
the cove, and two boats came ashore, out of one of which Maka was the
first to jump.

In five hours the guano had been transferred to the ship, and, twenty
minutes later, the _Finland_, with Captain Horn on board, had set sail
for Acapulco. The captain might have been better pleased if his
destination had been San Francisco, but, after all, it is doubtful if
there could have been a man who was better pleased. He walked the deck of
a good ship with a fellow-mariner with whom he could talk as much as he
pleased, and under his feet were the bags containing the thousands of
little bars for which he had worked so hard.




CHAPTER XXV

AT THE PALMETTO HOTEL


For about four months the persons who made up what might be considered as
Captain Horn's adopted family had resided in the Palmetto Hotel, in San
Francisco. At the time we look upon them, however, Mrs. Cliff was not
with them, having left San Francisco some weeks previously.

Edna was now a very different being from the young woman she had been.
Her face was smoother and fuller, and her eyes seemed to have gained a
richer brown. The dark masses of her hair appeared to have wonderfully
grown and thickened, but this was due to the loose fashion in which it
was coiled upon her head, and it would have been impossible for any one
who had known her before not to perceive that she was greatly changed.
The lines upon her forehead, which had come, not from age, but from
earnest purpose and necessity of action, together with a certain
intensity of expression which would naturally come to a young woman who
had to make her way in the world, not only for herself, but for her young
brother, and a seriousness born of some doubts, some anxieties, and some
ambiguous hopes, had all entirely disappeared as if they had been
morning mists rolling away from a summer landscape. Under the rays of a
sun of fortune, shining, indeed, but mildly, she had ripened into a
physical beauty which was her own by right of birth, but of which a few
more years of struggling responsibility would have forever deprived her.

After the receipt of her second remittance, Edna and her party had taken
the best apartments in the hotel. The captain had requested this, for he
did not know how long they might remain there, and he wanted them to have
every comfort. He had sent them as much money as he could spare from the
sale, in Lima, of the gold he had carried with him when lie first left
the caves, but his expenses in hiring ships and buying guano were heavy.
Edna, however, had received frequent remittances while the captain was at
the Rackbirds' cove, through an agent in San Francisco. These, she
supposed, came from further sales of gold, but, in fact, they had come
from the sale of investments which the captain had made in the course of
his fairly successful maritime career. In his last letter from Lima he
had urged them all to live well on what he sent them, considering it as
their share of the first division of the treasure in the mound. If his
intended projects should succeed, the fortunes of all of them would be
reconstructed upon a new basis as solid and as grand as any of them had
ever had reason to hope for. But if he should fail, they, the party in
San Francisco, would be as well off, or, perhaps, better circumstanced
than when they had started for Valparaiso. He did not mention the fact
that he himself would be poorer, for he had lost the _Castor_, in which
he was part-owner, and had invested nearly all his share of the proceeds
of the sale of the gold in ship hire, guano purchases, and other
necessary expenses.

Edna was waiting in San Francisco to know what would be the next scene in
the new drama of her life. Captain Horn had written before he sailed from
Lima in the Chilian schooner for the guano islands and the Rackbirds'
cove, and he had, to some extent, described his plans for carrying away
treasure from the mound; but since that she had not heard from him until
about ten days before, when he wrote from Acapulco, where he had arrived
in safety with his bags of guano and their auriferous enrichments. He had
written in high spirits, and had sent her a draft on San Francisco so
large in amount that it had fairly startled her, for he wrote that he had
merely disposed of some of the gold he had brought in his baggage, and
had not yet done anything with that contained in the guano-bags. He had
hired a storehouse, as if he were going regularly into business, and from
which he would dispose of his stock of guano after he had restored it to
its original condition. To do all this, and to convert the gold into
negotiable bank deposits or money, would require time, prudence, and even
diplomacy. He had already sold in the City of Mexico as much of the gold
from his trunk as he could offer without giving rise to too many
questions, and if he had not been known as a California trader, he might
have found some difficulties even in that comparatively small
transaction.

The captain had written that to do all he had to do he would be obliged
to remain in Acapulco or the City of Mexico--how long he could not tell,
for much of the treasure might have to be shipped to the United States,
and his plans for all this business were not yet arranged.

Before this letter had been received, Mrs. Cliff had believed it to be
undesirable to remain longer in San Francisco, and had gone to her home
in a little town in Maine. With Edna and Ralph, she had waited and waited
and waited, but at last had decided that Captain Horn was dead. In her
mind, she had allowed him all the time that she thought was necessary to
go to the caves, get gold, and come to San Francisco, and as that time
had long elapsed, she had finally given him up as lost. She knew the
captain was a brave man and an able sailor, but the adventure he had
undertaken was strange and full of unknown perils, and if it should so
happen that she should hear that he had gone to the bottom in a small
boat overloaded with gold, she would not have been at all surprised.

Of course, she said nothing of these suspicions to Edna or Ralph, nor did
she intend ever to mention them to any one. If Edna, who in so strange a
way had been made a wife, should, in some manner perhaps equally
extraordinary, be made a widow, she would come back to her, she would do
everything she could to comfort her; but now she did not seem to be
needed in San Francisco, and her New England home called to her through
the many voices of her friends. As to the business which had taken Mrs.
Cliff to South America, that must now be postponed, but it could not but
be a satisfaction to her that she was going back with perhaps as much
money as she would have had if her affairs in Valparaiso had been
satisfactorily settled.

Edna and Ralph had come to be looked upon at the Palmetto Hotel as
persons of distinction. They lived quietly, but they lived well, and
their payments were always prompt. They were the wife and brother-in-law
of Captain Philip Horn, who was known to be a successful man, and who
might be a rich one. But what seemed more than anything else to
distinguish them from the ordinary hotel guests was the fact that they
were attended by two personal servants, who, although, of course, they
could not be slaves, seemed to be bound to them as if they had been born
into their service.

Cheditafa, in a highly respectable suit of clothes which might have been
a cross between the habiliments of a Methodist minister and those of a
butler, was a person of imposing aspect. Mrs. Cliff had insisted, when
his new clothes were ordered, that there should be something in them
which should indicate the clergyman, for the time might come when it
would be necessary that he should be known in this character; and the
butler element was added because it would harmonize in a degree with his
duties as Edna's private attendant. The old negro, with his sober face,
and woolly hair slightly touched with gray, was fully aware of the
importance of his position as body-servant to Mrs. Horn, but his sense of
the responsibility of that position far exceeded any other sentiments of
which his mind was capable. Perhaps it was the fact that he had made Edna
Mrs. Horn which gave him the feeling that he must never cease to watch
over her and to serve her in every possible way. Had the hotel taken
fire, he would have rushed through the flames to save her. Had robbers
attacked her, they must have taken his life before they took her purse.
When she drove out in the city or suburbs, he always sat by the side of
the driver, and when she walked in the streets, he followed her at a
respectful distance.

Proud as he was of the fact that he had been the officiating clergyman at
the wedding of Captain Horn and this grand lady, he had never mentioned
the matter to any one, for many times, and particularly just before she
left San Francisco, Mrs. Cliff had told him, in her most impressive
manner, that if he informed any one that he had married Captain Horn and
Miss Markham, great trouble would come of it. What sort of trouble, it
was not necessary to explain to him, but she was very earnest in assuring
him that the marriage of a Christian by a heathen was something which was
looked upon with great disfavor in this country, and unless Cheditafa
could prove that he had a perfect right to perform the ceremony, it might
be bad for him. When Captain Horn had settled his business affairs and
should come back, everything would be made all right, and nobody need
feel any more fear, but until then he must not speak of what he had done.

If Captain Horn should never come back, Mrs. Cliff thought that Edna
would then be truly his widow, and his letters would prove it, but that
she was really his wife until the two had marched off together to a
regular clergyman, the good lady could not entirely admit. Her position
was not logical, but she rested herself firmly upon it.

The other negro, Mok, could speak no more English than when we first met
him, but he could understand some things which were said to him, and was
very quick, indeed, to catch the meanings of signs, motions, and
expressions of countenance. At first Edna did not know what to do with
this negro, but Ralph solved the question by taking him as a valet, and
day by day he became more useful to the youth, who often declared that he
did not know how he used to get along without a valet. Mok was very fond
of fine clothes, and Ralph liked to see him smartly dressed, and he
frequently appeared of more importance than Cheditafa. He was devoted to
his young master, and was so willing to serve him that Ralph often found
great difficulty in finding him something to do.

Edna and Ralph had a private table, at which Cheditafa and Mok assisted
in waiting, and Mrs. Cliff had taught both of them how to dust and keep
rooms in order. Sometimes Ralph sent Mok to a circulating library. Having
once been shown the place, and made to understand that he must deliver
there the piece of paper and the books to be returned, he attended to the
business as intelligently as if he had been a trained dog, and brought
back the new books with a pride as great as if he had selected them. The
fact that Mok was an absolute foreigner, having no knowledge whatever of
English, and that he was possessed of an extraordinary activity, which
enabled him, if the gate of the back yard of the hotel happened to be
locked, to go over the eight-foot fence with the agility of a monkey, had
a great effect in protecting him from impositions by other servants.
When a black negro cannot speak English, but can bound like an
india-rubber ball, it may not be safe to trifle with him. As for trifling
with Cheditafa, no one would think of such a thing; his grave and
reverend aspect was his most effectual protection.

As to Ralph, he had altered in appearance almost as much as his sister.
His apparel no longer indicated the boy, and as he was tall and large for
his years, the fashionable suit he wore, his gay scarf with its sparkling
pin, and his brightly polished boots, did not appear out of place upon
him. But Edna often declared that she had thought him a great deal
better-looking in the scanty, well-worn, but more graceful garments in
which he had disported himself on the sands of Peru.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE CAPTAIN'S LETTER


On a sofa in her well-furnished parlor reclined Edna, and on a table near
by lay several sheets of closely written letter-paper. She had been
reading, and now she was thinking--thinking very intently, which in these
days was an unusual occupation with her. During her residence in San
Francisco she had lived quietly but cheerfully. She had supplied herself
abundantly with books, she had visited theatres and concerts, she had
driven around the city, she had taken water excursions, she had visited
interesting places in the neighborhood, and she had wandered among the
shops, purchasing, in moderation, things that pleased her. For company
she had relied chiefly on her own little party, although there had been
calls from persons who knew Captain Horn. Some of these people were
interesting, and some were not, but they all went away thinking that the
captain was a wonderfully fortunate man.

One thing which used to be a pleasure to Edna she refrained from
altogether, and that was the making of plans. She had put her past life
entirely behind her. She was beginning a new existence--what sort of an
existence she could not tell, but she was now living with the
determinate purpose of getting the greatest good out of her life,
whatever it might be.

Already she had had much, but in every respect her good fortunes were but
preliminary to something else. Her marriage was but the raising of the
curtain--the play had not yet begun. The money she was spending was but
an earnest of something more expected. Her newly developed physical
beauty, which she could not fail to appreciate, would fade away again,
did it not continue to be nourished by that which gave it birth. But what
she had, she had, and that she would enjoy. When Captain Horn should
return, she would know what would happen next. This could not be a
repetition of the life she was leading at the Palmetto Hotel, but
whatever the new life might be, she would get from it all that it might
contain for her. She did not in the least doubt the captain's return, for
she believed in him so thoroughly that she felt--she knew--he would come
back and tell her of his failure or his success, and what she was to do
next. But now she was thinking. She could not help it, for her tranquil
mind had been ruffled.

Her cogitations were interrupted by the entrance of Ralph.

"I say, Edna," said he, throwing himself into an easy-chair, and placing
his hat upon another near by, "was that a returned manuscript that
Cheditafa brought you this morning? You haven't been writing for the
magazines, have you?"

"That was a letter from Captain Horn," she said.

"Whew!" he exclaimed. "It must be a whopper! What does he say? When is he
coming here? Give me some of the points of it. But, by the way, Edna,
before you begin, I will say that I think it is about time he should
write. Since the letter in which he told about the guano-bags and sent
you that lot of money--let me see, how long ago was that?"

"It was ten days ago," said his sister.

"Is that so? I thought it was longer than that. But no matter. Since that
letter came, I have been completely upset. I want to know what I am to
do, and, whatever I am to do, I want to get at it. From what the captain
wrote, and from what I remember of the size and weight of those gold
bars, he must have got away with more than a million dollars--perhaps a
million and a half. Now, what part of that is mine? What am I to do with
it? When am I to begin to prepare myself for the life I am to lead when I
get it? All this I want to know, and, more than that, I want to know what
you are going to do. Now, if I had got to Acapulco, or any other
civilized spot, with a million dollars in solid gold, it would not have
been ten days before I should have written to my family,--for I suppose
that is what we are,--and should have told them what I was going to do,
and how much they might count on. But I hope now that letter does tell?"

"The best thing to do," said Edna, taking up the letter from the table,
"is to read it to you. But before I begin I want to say something, and
that is that it is very wrong of you to get into these habits of
calculating about what may come to you. What is to come will come, and
you might as well wait for it without upsetting your mind by all sorts of
wild anticipations; and, besides this, you must remember that you are
not of age, and that I am your guardian, and whatever fortune may now
come to you will be under my charge until you are twenty-one."

"Oh, I don't care about that," said Ralph. "We will have no trouble
about agreeing what is the best thing for me to do. But now go ahead
with the letter."

"'I am going to tell you'" (at the beginning of the second paragraph)
"'of a very strange thing which happened to me since I last wrote. I will
first state that after my guano-bags had all been safely stored in the
warerooms I have hired, I had a heavy piece of work getting the packages
of gold out of the bags, and in packing the bars in small, stout boxes I
found in the City of Mexico and had sent down here. In looking around for
boxes which would suit my purpose, I discovered these, which had been
used for stereotype plates. They were stamped on the outside, and just
what I wanted, being about as heavy after I packed them with gold as they
were when they were filled with type-metal. This packing I had to do
principally at night, when I was supposed to be working in a little
office attached to the rooms. As soon as this was done, I sent all the
boxes to a safe-deposit bank in Mexico, and there the greater part of
them are yet. Some I have shipped to the mint in San Francisco, some have
gone North, and I am getting rid of the rest as fast as I can.

"'The gold bars, cast in a form novel to all dealers, have excited a good
deal of surprise and questioning, but for this I care very little. My
main object is to get the gold separated as many miles as possible from
the guano, for if the two should be connected in the mind of any one who
knew where the guano was last shipped from, I might have cause for
anxiety. But as the bars bear no sort of mark to indicate that they were
cast by ancient Peruvians, and, so far as I can remember,--and I have
visited several museums in South America,--these castings are not like
any others that have come down to us from the times of the Incas, the
gold must have been cast in this simple form merely for convenience in
transportation and packing. Some people may think it is California gold,
some may think it comes from South America, but, whatever they think,
they know it is pure gold, and they have no right to doubt that it
belongs to me. Of course, if I were a stranger it might be different, but
wherever I have dealt I am known, or I send a good reference. And now I
will come to the point of this letter.