were found to have been sugared; in each we found the same amount, about
twelve pounds of drug; making a grand total of two hundred and forty
pounds. By the last San Francisco quotation, opium was selling for a
fraction over twenty dollars a pound; but it had been known not long
before to bring as much as forty in Honolulu, where it was contraband.

Taking, then, this high Honolulu figure, the value of the opium on board
the Flying Scud fell considerably short of ten thousand dollars, while
at the San Francisco rate it lacked a trifle of five thousand. And fifty
thousand was the price that Jim and I had paid for it. And Bellairs had
been eager to go higher! There is no language to express the stupor with
which I contemplated this result.

It may be argued we were not yet sure; there might be yet another cache;
and you may be certain in that hour of my distress the argument was not
forgotten. There was never a ship more ardently perquested; no stone
was left unturned, and no expedient untried; day after day of growing
despair, we punched and dug in the brig's vitals, exciting the men with
promises and presents; evening after evening Nares and I sat face
to face in the narrow cabin, racking our minds for some neglected
possibility of search. I could stake my salvation on the certainty of
the result: in all that ship there was nothing left of value but the
timber and the copper nails. So that our case was lamentably plain; we
had paid fifty thousand dollars, borne the charges of the schooner, and
paid fancy interest on money; and if things went well with us, we
might realise fifteen per cent of the first outlay. We were not merely
bankrupt, we were comic bankrupts: a fair butt for jeering in the
streets. I hope I bore the blow with a good countenance; indeed, my mind
had long been quite made up, and since the day we found the opium I had
known the result. But the thought of Jim and Mamie ached in me like a