LAND AND WATER 
March i6, 1916. 
" It's just as well to keep in with the beggars," said he, 
" and not one of us can speak their lingo. Did you ever 
see such a depressed-looking lot of savages — don't seem to 
have any sense — all slit ears and wTinkles." 
" They're like that from screwin' up their faces against 
the sun," said Hull. " There, they're off ; look, Wiart has 
come out ; ain't he a sleepin' beauty ; he looks as if he'd just 
woke up after another bout of dilirium trimins." 
Wiart had come out on his verandah, close to which the 
rubber gatherers had placed their baskets. The Papuans, 
who at the sight of him had drawn off from the new encamp- 
ment, were now picking up their baskets and following the 
factor to a godown among the trees, where the rubber would be 
weighed. 
Hull and his companions watched this proceeding, and 
they noticed how carefully Wiart, at the scales, was attending 
to his work. 
" Look at him," cried Hull. " There you have a trader 
every time, nearly done in with drink he is, yet he's alive to 
his bizzinesS; which is diddling the niggers out of rublier. Them 
traders take the cake, they do so ; you might cut 'em in pieces 
and all they'd say'd be ' bizziness.' I ain't a particular man, 
but I'd sooner berth with a pirate than a trader ; they're 
a fish-blooded lot, sharks in britches, that's what they are." 
When the idbber weighing was over and the natives gone 
back to their village, Wiart approached the tent. 
He seemed very much freshened up, and as he took his 
seat on the ground close to Hull and proceeded to light a 
cigarette, he began to talk. Earlier in the day he had been so 
dazed with drink that he had accepted their statement of 
having come from down river without question. Now he 
threatened to show more interest in their origin and intentions. 
" It's good to see white faces again," said he, licking 
the gum on the cigarette-paper. " You're not come up here 
trading, are you ? " 
" No," said Hull ; " we're prospectors," 
" Oh, prospectors — and what, might I ask, are you 
prospecting for ? " 
" O, one thin' or nather," replied the Captain. " Metals 
mostly." 
" Well, I don't know there's any metals worth turning 
up the ground for," said Wiart ; " and if there was, you'd find 
it difficult working any mine ; you'd have to import labour, 
for one thing — where's your ship ? " 
" She's lyin' off and on," replied Hull, " mostly on. 
We're a private-owned party, and we haven't come up the 
river to sell information, but to look after our own bizziness, 
same as you are looking' after yours." 
" O, I don't want to put my nose into your affairs," said 
Wiart. " You can prospect as much as you want, it's no 
affair of mine. This isn't my river, but I'll be glad to do what 
I can for you — where doyou propose to sleep ? " 
It had been suggested by Macquart earlier in the day 
that he and Jacky should sleep in Wiart's house, but second 
thoughts had made this impossible. 
They required to be free in their movements at night, 
and if Macquart were to sleep at Wiart's, it would be impossible 
for him to come and go without the chance of rousing Wiart 
and making him suspicious. 
" Some in the boat and some in the tent," said Hull. 
" We have mosquito nets enough for both." 
" Well, you can put up at my place, if you want to," 
replied Wiart. 
They talked for awhile on various things, and then Wiart 
went off to supper. 
The sun was setting now across the river, and just as his 
lower limb was cutting the tree tops, Tillman went to the 
stores that lay under the boat sail and fetched out the pick- 
axe and the mattock. Then, as the darkness took the river 
and the stars rushed out, led by Macquart, they set off. 
Half a mile or so above the village, the bank projected 
into the water, forming a promontory some twenty 
yards from base to apex ; the river took a bend here, so that 
the apex of the promontory formed the apex of the bend, and 
as they stood they could hear the water gurhng and sobbing 
round it, a mournful sound in the absolute stillness of the night. 
Stillness, that is to say, of the river and its bank, for the far 
forest stretching away in bosky billows under the now rising 
moon, could be heard vibrating to the touch of night, just as 
a musical glass vibrates to a wet finger. Millions, of insects 
and thousands of night birds were beginning their concert in 
those haunted groves, where the moon burned green through 
the tropical foliage and the fathoms of liantasse and con- 
volvulus cables sagged across paths untrodden by man. 
Macquart standing and looking around him, seemed at 
fault. 
Tillman was the first to speak. 
" Well," said he, " is this the spot ? " 
" It is the spot right enough," replied Macquart ; " but 
the indications are gone." 
" The which is which ? " cried Hull. " What are you 
say in' ? " 
" There was a camphor tree there," said Macquart, 
pointing to the apex of the promontory, " and another there," 
pointing to the base. " The trees are gone, damn it ! Maybe 
they've been felled, maybe a hurricane knocked them down ; 
anyhow, they are gone ; but it doesn't matter. The stuff 
was buried between them and digging will find it." 
The last words took a load off the minds of the adven- 
turers. 
" The cache was right in the middle, between the two 
trees," said Macquart, " and we have only to dig in the middle 
of this bit of the bank to find it." 
. " Well, we'd better take a measurement, so's to get right 
in the middle." said Tillman, producing a ball of fishing line 
from his pocket. " Here, Houghton, lend a hand." 
Houghton took one end of the line and took it to the apex 
of the promontory, whilst Tillman at the base held the other end. 
" That would be about the position of the trees ? " said 
he to Macquart. 
" There, or thereabouts," replied the other. 
Tillman told Houghton to hold firm to his end of tlie 
hne, then he walked up to him and came back with the doubled 
Une, which gave them the half-distance. 
" This is the spot — or ought to be," said he. " Give us 
the pick." 
He drove the pick into the soft earth again and again, 
breaking up the surface ground ; then he began to dig with the 
mattock. The others stood by, watching. 
" What I can't make out," said Hull, " there ain't no 
tree trunks left. If them trees were cur down or broken by 
a storm, where's them trunks." 
Macquart laughed. 
" A tree trunk in this part of the world doesn't last 
long," he said. " What between the climate and the insects, 
a year would see it gone." 
Ten minutes later, Tillman stopped work and wiped his 
forehead ; he had cleared away the earth from a space some 
yards square, leaving a hole about a foot deep. HuU, now, 
took up the spade and went on with the digging. 
Not one word was spoken by any of the party in this, 
the supreme moment of their lives. All their labours, aU 
their seafaring, all their dreams, all their future centred and 
balanced on this spit of river bank, on this form digging, 
literally, for fortune under the light of the great calm, tropical 
moon. 
Macquart, standing with his arms folded, seemed the 
genius of the scene. 
Then Hull flung down the spade, exhausted, and Hough- 
ton took it up. After him Macquart. 
Three hours of superhuman labour produced an enormous 
cavity wide and yawning to the moon, but not a sign of what 
they sought. 
Macquart had stated that the cache was covered by only 
three feet of earth. The hole was five feet deep and more, yet 
it showed nothing. 
They sat down on the edge of it. 
" Well," said Hull, to Macquart, " what are we to make 
of this ? — where's your cache .' " 
Macquart said nothing for a moment, then he spoke : 
" It was here ; it is here. The trees being gone, I can't 
get the exact measurements between trunk and trunk ; I've 
figured it out to the best of my ability. All I can say is, that 
it is here on this spit of shore, and we must go on digging till 
we find it." 
■" I can't dig anj' more to-night," said Tillman. " I'm 
broke." 
" So am I," said Houghton. " It's beastly, but the only 
thing for us to do is knock off and start again to-morrow 
night. I'm going to dig the whole of this spit up before I 
stop." Then turning to Macquart. " Are you sure this is 
the place ; maybe you have mistaken ; there may be another 
spit like this ifith the trees growing as you said." 
" I tell you, I am sure," rephed the other. " The distance 
frofn the village is correct. It was here the stuff was buried, 
and unless it was taken away, it is here still. And it cannot 
have been taken away. No one knew of it." 
" Well," said Hull, rising up, " there's no manner of use 
talking, we've got to dig, and if the stuff don't turn up, b'gosh, 
I'll brain you, Mac ! I feels that way." 
" There's no use in talking like that," said Tillman, 
gloomily. " Macquart is in the swim along with the rest of 
us, and if the stuff doesn't turn up, it hits him as well as us. 
He picked up the mattock, and Hull taking the pick, 
they turned from the spit and walked back along the bank, 
It was only now that the gold they were Imnting for began 
to cry out to them with a full voice ; only now that they began 
to perceive fully the awful difference between returning to 
Sydney empty-handed and returning with a fortune. 
(.To be continued.) 
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