guns behind them. Shirley said their loads got heavier
and heavier as they ploughed through the sand, and it took them three
days to cover the ground they had gone over before in two. When they got
to the village, they found scarcely a man in the place, for the fellows
who had deserted them were frightened, and kept out of sight. They stayed
there all night, and then they went on with their bundles to the next
village, where they succeeded in getting a couple of travelling-bags,
into which they put their gold, so that they might appear to be carrying
their clothes.

"'After a good deal of travel they reached Callao, and there they made
inquiries for A. McLeish, but nobody knew of him. Of course, he was a
sailor who had had a letter sent there. They went up to Lima and sold a
few pieces of the gold, but, before they did it, they got a heavy hammer
and pounded them up, so that no one would know what their original shape
was. Shirley said he could not say exactly why they did this, but that
they thought, on the whole, it would be safer. Then they went to San
Francisco on the first vessel that sailed. They must have had a good deal
of talk on the voyage in regard to the gold, and it was in consequence of
their discussions that Shirley wanted so much to find me. They had
calculated, judging by the pieces they had sold, that the gold they had
with them was worth about twelve thousand dollars, and they both thought
they ought to do the right thing about it. In the first place, they tried
in San Francisco to find out something about McLeish, but no one knew of
such a man. They then began to consider some persons they did know about.
They had heard in Lima that some of the people of the _Castor_ had been
rescued, and if any of them were hard up, as most likely they were,
Shirley and Burke thought that by rights they ought to have some of the
treasure that they had found. Shirley said at first they had gone on the
idea that each of them would have six thousand dollars and could go into
business for himself, but after a while they thought this would be a mean
thing to do. They had all been shipwrecked together, and two of them had
had a rare piece of good luck, and they thought it no more than honorable
to share this good luck with the others, so they concluded the best thing
to do was to see me about it. Burke left this business to Shirley,
because he wanted to go to see his sister who lives in St. Louis.

"'They had not formed