Page:Barbour--Lost island.djvu/414

 Gee! I never saw anything that pleased me so much in all my life!"

He weighed the bar in his hand.

"There's a good sixteen ounces in that, I fancy: maybe more," he added. "Let's see how many bars there are."

With trembling fingers they laid the metal out on the sandy counting as they did so.

"Twenty-seven!" they said at last in chorus.

"Over four hundred ounces, sure as you're alive!" Tempest added. "I reckon it must be worth between forty and forty-five thousand dollars altogether, if it's worth a cent!"

"Goodness!" Dave exclaimed. "Enough to buy back my dad's place ten times over."

Three pairs of eyes were staring from the Nautilus at an old tramp steamer which, two days later, had overhauled the little sailing-boat in a dead calm.

"That's a stroke of luck," said Tempest, while