Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/228

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN sand. They were an old pair, and appeared to have legs to them. They went to the spot, and found that these shoes belonged to a man who was entirely covered by sand, with the exception of his feet, and dead, of course. They got the sand off of him, and found he was a white man, in sailor's clothes. First they had thought he might be one of our party, but they soon perceived that this was a mistake, for they had never seen the man before. He was dried up until he was nothing but a skeleton with skin over it, but they could have recognized him if they had known him before. From what they had heard of the rainless climate of the Peruvian coast, and the way it had of drying up dead animals of all sorts, they imagined that this man might have been there for years. He was lying on his back, with his arms folded around a bundle, and when they tried to move this bundle, they found it was very heavy. It was something wrapped up in a blanket and tied with a cord, and when they opened the bundle, they were pretty nearly struck dumb; for they saw it held, as Shirley expressed it, about a peck of little hunks of gold.

They were utterly astounded by this discovery, and utterly unable to make head or tail of it. What that man, apparently an English sailor, had been doing out in the middle of this desert with a bundle of gold, and where he got it, and who he was, and where he was going to, and how long he had been dead, were things beyond their guessing. They dragged the body out of its burrow in the sand, and examined the pockets, but there was nothing in the trousers but an old knife. In the pocket of the shirt, however, were about a dozen matches, wrapped up in an old envelope. This was addressed, in a very bad hand, to A. McLeish, Callao, Peru, but they could not make out the date of the postmark. These things were all there was about the man that could possibly identify him, for his few clothes were 214