nugget shaped somewhat like a
potato and as big as an orange, and the dislodging of that revealed
another sticking in the clay behind it. Naturally we all with one
accord went to work picking out nuggets, some using our bare fingers
only, while those who happened to have knives about them used them. In
the course of half an hour we had each picked out as many nuggets as we
could dispose about our persons, and then the lessening number of
torches warned us that it was high time to beat a retreat; but our
labours seemed to have produced no visible effect, for where we had
removed one nugget we had, as a rule, disclosed another. I estimated
that, during that short half-hour, each of us had collected an average
of about seven pounds weight of gold.

Now, for a day or two after this discovery, it threatened to be a most
serious misfortune; for the ability to acquire large quantities of gold
at the mere cost of the exertion necessary to pick it out of the soil
appealed so strongly to the boatswain, carpenter, and sailmaker that
during the two days immediately following Cunningham's sensational
announcement they absolutely refused to do any work whatever except dig
out nuggets of gold, and the more they gathered the more eager did they
appear to be to gather more. But at the end of that time, the fact that
Cunningham and I had steadfastly refrained from the display of any
anxiety to share in their good fortune, having, on the contrary, pursued
the task of breaking up the wreck, together with our reiterated
insistance on the greater importance of the work upon which we were
engaged, steadied them a bit; and by the end of the second day we
detected signs that the sharp edge of their enthusiasm had worn off, and
that they were once more beginning to think. Then Cunningham and I
proceeded to remind them of a fact to which, at the outset, they
stubbornly refused to listen, namely, that we knew where the gold was,
and could get it at any time; but the matter which most vitally
concerned us was to get the schooner built and in the water as quickly
as possible, so that, should it become necessary for us to quit the
island in haste, we might have the means to do so. The three
recalcitrants came to see this at last, persuaded thereto, perhaps, by a
rather exaggerated attitude of indifference to the gold on the part of
Cunningham and myself, and an equally exaggerated anxiety to push on
with the schooner; with the ultimate result t