n estimate of the little man's appearance as
he drew nearer. "By Jove!" he said, "you've had a time of it! I thought
you-- Well-- Where were you cast away? Is that thing a sort of floating
thing for saving life?"

I decided to take that line for the present. I made a few vague
affirmatives. "I want help," I said hoarsely. "I want to get some stuff
up the beach--stuff I can't very well leave about." I became aware of
three other pleasant-looking young men with towels, blazers, and straw
hats, coming down the sands towards me. Evidently the early bathing
section of this Littlestone.

"Help!" said the young man: "rather!" He became vaguely active. "What
particularly do you want done?" He turned round and gesticulated. The
three young men accelerated their pace. In a minute they there about me,
plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. "I'll tell all that
later," I said. "I'm dead beat. I'm a rag."

"Come up to the hotel," said the foremost little man. "We'll look after
that thing there."

I hesitated. "I can't," I said. "In that sphere there's two big bars of
gold."

They looked incredulously at one another, then at me with a new inquiry.
I went to the sphere, stooped, crept in, and presently they had the
Selenites' crowbars and the broken chain before them. If I had not been so
horribly fagged I could have laughed at them. It was like kittens round a
beetle. They didn't know what to do with the stuff. The fat little man
stooped and lifted the end of one of the bars, and then dropped it with a
grunt. Then they all did.

"It's lead, or gold!" said one.

"Oh, it's gold!" said another.

"Gold, right enough," said the third.

Then they all stared at me, and then they all stared at the ship lying at
anchor.

"I say!" cried the little man. "But where did you get that?"

I was too tired to keep up a lie. "I got it in the moon."

I saw them stare at one another.

"Look here!" said I, "I'm not going to argue now. Help me carry these
lumps of gold up to the hotel--I guess, with rests, two of you can manage
one, and I'll trail this chain thing--and I'll tell you more when I've
had some food."

"And how about that thing?"

"It won't hurt there," I said. "Anyhow--confound it!--it must stop there
now. If the tide comes up, it will float all right."

And in a state of enormous wonderment, these young men most obediently
hoisted my treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like
lead I headed a