Page:Aristopia (1895).pdf/68

 covered the whole with dead leaves. The fifth day he made two trips and brought in the remaining two pieces. The tools he hid in the mud of the creek.

The next day he collected a sufficient quantity of micaceous earth and prepared his boxes for inspection. That all this time he had been hunting for gold he did not conceal from Captain Nelson and his brothers, but he did not announce having found any.

While at work alone lie was naturally considerably apprehensive on account of Indians, partly because he feared to have the Indians discover his mine, and partly from a natural fear of an encounter with the savages. But he remembered how, when Captain Smith was captured he had kept at bay two hundred savages until he had mired and was unable to fight (at least, Captain Smith said he did, and there was no one to dispute him), and Ralph felt confident of being able to stand off, if not two hundred, at least eighty, which he knew was about the fighting-strength of the Nacotclitanks and greater than the ordinary number of a Massawomek war-party. He was in little danger from the latter, for they always came in canoes, and did not wander far from the shore.