heavily-laden ship labored exceedingly.

At its height, Sedgwick and Jordan stood watching the majesty of the
forces exhausting their fury around them, when Jordan said:

"Jim, I needed this. Yo' know how grand ther other ship wur; yo' know how
great and strong this ship are. Well, watchin' both, a senseless kind uv
pride cum over me, and I sed ter myself over and over, 'This ere ship cud
outride any gale whatever blow'd.' Look now! It's only a toy on ther
water when God's wind goes out ter battle with God's everlastin' seas.

"Cumin' over, I stopped and tuk a look at Niagry. It wur grand, but a
dozen Niagrys wouldn't make one hurrycane out ter sea. I can't explain
what I wanter, but I mean as how God's majesty is nowhar else revealed as
when his hurrycanes is sent ter paint a picter on ther face of a mad
ocean. Nowhar else did I ever feel thet small as when watchin', as we is
now, all these forces that is makin' the commotion 'round us. They all
show us what pitiful weak creaters we is, and ther man who ever watched
one storm at sea and ever arter dares to hev one feelin' uv pride or
scornfulness, that thar man are weak somewhar and makes a spectacle of
hisself."

But the storm was weathered safely; the temperature grew cooler as the
ship stretched away to the South, and after a generally prosperous voyage
the steamer dropped anchor in Port Natal roadstead.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE WEDGE OF GOLD.

The voyagers were glad enough to stand once more on the solid earth. It
had been twenty-one days since they had left London.

Quickly as they could they made arrangements for a journey inland. They
chartered conveyances to go to the end of the road and sent forward to
the capital to charter a train of riding and pack animals, with a full
corps of attendants, to meet them where they had to take the trail. They
employed, moreover, a civil engineer and a half-dozen frontiersmen, Boers
and Kaffirs, who knew the country well.

Studying their maps and the description supplied them by the former owner
of the mine, they calculated the mine was distant some 250 miles, and
that it would require some thirty-five days to make the examination and
return to D'Umber, the town on Port Natal Roadstead.

Sedgwick had written daily to his bride, sending the letters from every
port called at.

Now he wrote her that it would probably be forty days before he could
forward her another letter.

When everything was ready they starte