said--how cheap is notoriety!--that secret knowledge of hidden wealth
which good luck had revealed during our holiday camp had induced us to
surreptitiously secure the land, that in our own good time we might
selfishly gloat over untold gold! Some came frankly to prospect our hills
and gullies, others shamefacedly, when our backs were turned; for had it
not been foretold that gold was certain to be found on the Island, and
were not the invincible truths of geology verified by our covert ways?
Had not one of the natives told of a lump so weighty that no man might
lift it and on which hungry generation after hungry generation had
pounded nuts? Had not another used a nugget as a plummet for his
fishing-line? It mattered not that the sordidly battered lump proved to
be an ingot of crude copper--probably portion of the ballast from some
ancient wrecks--and that Truth was sulking down some very remote well
when the fable of the golden sinker was invented. Ordinary men--men of
the type whom Kinglake designated "Poor Mr. Reasonable Man"--men with
common sense, in fact, the very commonest of sense--were not to be
beguiled by the plain statement that apparently sane individuals wilfully
ventured into solitude for the mere privilege of living. Gold must be the
real attraction--all else fictitious, said they. "They have" [Rumour is
speaking] "the option of an unwitnessed reef, sensationally, romantically
rich, or know of a piratically and solemnly secreted hoard." Indeed, we
did think to enjoy our option, but over something more precious than
gold.

But one visitor was so confidentially certain about the gold that he
boldly made a proposition to share it. A fair exchange it was to be. He
would, then and there, lead to a shaft 60 feet deep, and deep in the
jungle, too, at a spot so artfully concealed that no mortal man could
ever unguided hope to find it, where was to be revealed a reef--a rich
reef blasted by the mere refractoriness of the ore, a disadvantage which