ight have belonged to the empty sheath was found sticking up to
its hilt in one of the ribs.

Turning from the skeleton, Leslie next proceeded to carefully examine a
great pile of small cases, packages, and casks that had already come
under his casual notice while engaged in lighting up the cave. He took
these as they came most conveniently to his hand, the casks first
claiming his attention. With the assistance of a small axe that he had
taken the precaution to bring with him he soon forced off the head of
one of these, revealing its contents. It consisted of a solid cake of
some hard, black substance, moulded to the shape of the cask, that upon
critical examination proved--as he had more than half expected--to be
gunpowder, caked into a solid mass and completely spoiled by damp. Two
similar casks were also found to contain powder in a like condition; and
therefore, acting upon the justifiable assumption that the contents of
all the casks was the same, he rolled the whole of them, sixteen in
number, to the opposite side of the cave, out of the way, and turned his
attention to a number of small black packages that, when he proceeded to
handle them, proved to be unexpectedly heavy. His first thought was
that they were pigs of lead, intended to be cast into bullets as
occasion might require; but upon removing one of them to the open air,
for greater convenience of examination, he discovered that the block--
whatever it might be--was sewn up in what had once been hide, but was
now a mere dry, stiff, rotten envelope that easily peeled off, revealing
a dark-brownish and very heavy substance within. This substance he
feverishly proceeded to scrape with the blade of his pocket-knife--for
the presence of the hide envelope prepared him for an important
discovery--and presently, the outer coat of dirt and discolouration
being removed from that part of the surface upon which he was operating
with his knife, there gleamed up at him the dull ruddy tint of _virgin
gold_! It was as he had anticipated; the block upon which he was
operating was one of the gold bricks that, sewn up in raw hide, were
wont to be shipped home by the Spaniards of old from the mines of South
America. He lifted the brick in his hands, and estimated it to weigh
about forty pounds. The gold bricks were stacked together in tiers,
twenty bricks long, four bricks wide, and four bricks high; there were
therefore three hundred and twenty of them, and if his e