ken out of the hold, for no one
could know at what time, whether on account of wind from shore or waves
from the sea, the vessel might slip out into deep water. This was a
slower method than if everybody had worked at getting the gold on deck,
and then everybody had worked at getting it ashore, but it was a safer
plan than the other, for if an accident should occur, if the brig should
be driven off the sand, they would have whatever they had already
landed. As this thought passed through the mind of the captain, he could
not help a dismal smile.

"Have!" said he to himself. "It may be that we shall have it as that poor
fellow had his bag of gold, when he lay down on his back to die there in
the wild desert."

But no one would have imagined that such an idea had come into the
captain's mind. He worked as earnestly, and as steadily, as if he had
been landing an ordinary cargo at an ordinary dock.

The captain and the men in the boat carried the bags high up on the
beach, out of any danger from tide or surf, and laid them in a line along
the sand. The captain ordered this because it would be easier to handle
them afterwards--if it should ever be necessary to handle them--than if
they had been thrown into piles. If they should conclude to bury them, it
would be easier and quicker to dig a trench along the line, and tumble
them in, than to make the deep holes that would otherwise be necessary.

Until dark that day, and even after dark, they worked, stopping only for
necessary eating and drinking. The line of bags upon the shore had grown
into a double one, and it became necessary for the men, sometimes the
white and sometimes the black, to stoop deeper and deeper into the water
of the hold to reach the bags. But they worked on bravely. In the early
dawn of the next morning they went to work again. Not a negro had given
the ship the slip, nor were there any signs that one of them had thought
of such a thing.

Backward and forward through the low surf went the boat, and longer and
wider and higher grew the mass of bags upon the beach.

It was the third day after they had reached shore that the work was
finished. Every dripping bag had been taken out of the hold, and the
captain had counted them all as they had been put ashore, and verified
the number by the record in his pocket-book.

When the lower tiers of bags had been reached, they had tried pumping out
the water, but this was of little use. The brig had keeled over