and you will be as black as I am when you have been sun-scorched here
for forty-three years, as I have been."

"What!" exclaimed Terence; "have you been a slave in the Saara so long
as that? If so, God help us! What hope is there of our ever getting
free?"

The young Irishman spoke in a tone of despair.

"Very little chance of your ever seeing home again, my lad," answered
the invalid! "but I have a chance now, if you and your comrades don't
spoil it. For God's sake don't tell these Arabs that they are the fools
they are, for making salvage of the ballast! If you do, they'll be sure
to make an end of me. It's all my doing. I've made them believe the
stones are valuable, so that they may take them to some place where I
can escape. It is the only chance I have had for years, don't destroy
it, as you value the life of a fellow-countryman."

From further conversation with the man, our adventurers learned that he
had been shipwrecked on the coast many years before, and had ever since
been trying to get transported to some place where he might be ransomed.
He declared that he had been backward and forward across the desert
forty or fifty times; and that he had belonged to not less than fifty
masters!

"I have only been with these fellows a few weeks," said he, "and
fortunately when we came this way we were able to tell where the sunken
ship was, by seeing her foremast then sticking out of the water. The
vessel was in ballast; and the crew probably put out to sea in their
boats, without being discovered. It was the first ship my masters had
ever heard of without a cargo; and they would not believe but that the
stones were such, and must be worth something, else why should they be
carried about the world in a ship? I told them it was a kind of stone
from which gold was obtained; but that it must be taken to some place
where there was plenty of coal or wood, before the gold could be melted
out of it, and then entrusted to white men who understood the art of
extracting the precious metal from the rocks.

"They believe all this: for they can see shining particles in the
sandstone which they think is really gold, or something that can be
converted into it. For four days they forced me to toil, at diving and
assisting them; but that didn't suit my purpose; and I've at length
succeeded in making them believe that I am not able to work any longer."

"But do you really think," asked Harry Blount, "that they will carr