Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/110

 CHAPTER XIII

"MINE!"

and his party sat down together the next morning on the plateau to drink their hot coffee and eat their biscuit and bacon, and it was plain that the two ladies, as well as the captain, had had little sleep the night before. Ralph declared that he had been awake ever so long, endeavoring to calculate how many cubic feet of gold there would be in that mound if it were filled with the precious metal. "But as I did not know how much a cubic foot of gold is worth," said he, "and as we might find, after all, that there is only a layer of gold on top, and that all the rest is Incas' bones, I gave it up."

The captain was very grave—graver, Miss Markham thought, than the discovery of gold ought to make a man.

"We won't worry ourselves with calculations," said he. "As soon as I can get rid of those black fellows, we will go to see what is really in that tomb, or store house, or whatever it is. We will make a thorough investigation this time."

When the men had finished eating, the captain sent them all down to look for driftwood. The stock 98