right, for if he isn't
where can the stuff be? On the other hand, if he's wrong we destroy a
hundred and fifty tons of good rice for nothing. It's a point to be
considered."

"I don't hesitate," said I. "Let's get to the bottom of the thing. The
rice is nothing; the rice will neither make nor break us."

"That's how I expected you to see it," returned Nares. And we called the
boat away and set forth on our new quest.

The hold was now almost entirely emptied; the mats (of which there went
forty to the short ton) had been stacked on deck, and now crowded the
ship's waist and forecastle. It was our task to disembowel and explore
six thousand individual mats, and incidentally to destroy a hundred and
fifty tons of valuable food. Nor were the circumstances of the day's
business less strange than its essential nature. Each man of us, armed
with a great knife, attacked the pile from his own quarter, slashed into
the nearest mat, burrowed in it with his hands, and shed forth the rice
upon the deck, where it heaped up, overflowed, and was trodden down,
poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the
vents. About the wreck thus transformed into an overflowing granary, the
sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. The sight of
so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill
tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the
grain from between our fingers. The men--their hands bleeding from these
assaults--turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the
birds, drew them out crimsoned, and turned again to dig among the rice,
unmindful of the gawking creatures that struggled and died among their
feet. We made a singular picture--the hovering and diving birds; the
bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers
vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling,
slaying, and shouting aloud; over all the lofty intricacy of rigging and
the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the
immediate hope of fifty dollars, and I of fifty thousand. Small wonder
if we waded callously in blood and food.

It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted.
Nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth and slung at his
feet, among the rice, a papered tin box.

"How's that?" he shouted.

A cry broke from all hands. The next moment, forgetting their own
disappointment in that cont