20 
LAND & WATER 
May 4, 1916 
all native races you will find specimens of manhood that seem 
itiU Clung about by the atmosphere of the Stone Age. I am 
not so sure that you will not find these specimens of humanity 
also in the Higlily Civilised world, but in the native peoples 
the fact is more striking because the specimens are more 
ingenuous and unvarnished. 
Jacky, I have left his full description till now, was a man 
standing six feet in height and exceedingly powerful in make 
and build. Tillman said that he had the strength of three 
men. and Tillman scarcely exaggerated his facts when he made 
this statement. Yet, despite his strength and his height, one 
did not think of this individual as a man, one thought of him 
more as a child. For one thing, his mind was primitive almost 
to childishness, for another his movements were lithe and 
supple and rapid as the movements of a boy. 
In this superb animal dwelt a mind that seemed light and 
shallow and restless as the mind of a bird. A mind engaged 
always with little immediate things. Not an evil mind, but 
a mind so un.speculative and mobile that it could be moved 
towards evil or good by any determined intelligence that 
chose to grapple with it. ■ , j 
Jacky had shouted at a Salvation Army meetmg, had 
been exhibited, like a vegetable, as a fine specimen of what 
earnest Christian endeavour could do working in primitive 
soil, had broken a mans head in during a row in Tallis Street, 
had saved a boys life from a shark in Lane Cove, helped in a 
burglary— anything that came along was good enough for 
Jacky, and it all depended on circumstance and external 
pressure as to the manner in which he would act. 
Tillman had engaged him for the expedition and was his 
real master, but he had never paused to ask himself questions 
as to what had become of Tillman and the others, or whether 
they had been betrayed. He took Macquarfs lead just as 
the Barracuda took the lead of the tow rope, and he stood now 
gazing about him with no thought of anything except what- 
ever vague thoughts the scene around him inspired. 
Macquart, after a moment's rest, rose to his feet and seized 
the pick. 
There was about the whole of this business some touch 
of the enchantment which hangs around the story of Aladdin 
alone wi h the Eastern magician on that desolate plain above 
the treasure cave. 
Wiart felt it as he stood watching Macquirt who, now 
pale and perspiring, stripped of his coat and handling the pick, 
seemed fo' a moment paralysed, vacillating, filled witli inde- 
cision and, one might almost have fancied, fear. 
It seemed impossible now,' at the supreme moment, to 
believe that the treasure was really here. This thing that 
had haunted him for fifteen years, pursued him about the 
world, held him away from it by fear and drawn him towards 
it by desire, had become for him an obsession, almost a 
religion. It was the embodiment of all his desires, the reverse 
of the medal struck by a Deity that had condemned him to a 
life of failure and crime. Here at last was to be glimpsed all 
that he had missed, all that he had failed to reach, all that 
he had seen from a distance, all that he had envied. 
Macquart was no little man. He might have been a great 
man, but for the fatal flaws in his character. He was funda- 
mentally defective. Drunkenness, vice, laziness— all these 
may be outgrown, lived down, lived over, all these may be 
simply functioned diseases of the soul to be cast aside as the 
soul expands and comes to its own. But the disease of Mac- 
quart was a crookedness in the grain and texture of his mind, 
a want, a blindness to the right and wrong of things, a negative 
ferocity that became positive when his desires were checked 
or excited. His fit of indecision and hesitation did not last 
many moments before, raising the pick, he set to work. 
The ground was hard on the surface, but a few inches 
below it was soft sandy soil that promised easy work for the 
mattocks. 
Working methodically, he broke the ground over an area 
of some ten or fifteen square feet. Then dropping the pick, 
he called to Wiart to help, and they' set to work at the digging. 
The point he had chosen was almost exactly midway between 
the two rocks, and they dug without a word, silently, furiously, 
making the soil fly to right and left, whilst Jacky now and then 
lent a hand, relieving the exhausted Wiart. 
After twenty minutes' toil, they paused from pure ex- 
haustion. Then they resumed work again, work the most 
terrific ever undertaken by man. When the shovel begins to 
bring up despair, the treasure digger knows exactly the measure 
of his task, and not before. Macquart labouring, pale as a 
corpse, hollow-eyed and with his mouth gaping, had paused foi 
a moment when Wiart, who had retaken tiie mattock from 
Jacky, struck something, lifted his shoved, and then, with a 
cry as though he had unearthed some terrible object, cast the 
contents of the shovel on the ground. He had brought up a 
spadeful of coins, broken wood, like the wood from which 
cigar-boxes are made, and earth. The golden coins were 
scarcely tarnished. 
Macquart spoke not a word. He was standing with his 
mattock in his hand, his eyes fixed alternately on the find and 
on Wiart, who was now kneeling pointing to the gold and 
looking up at him. 
He did not seem for a moment to comprehend what had 
happened and then, all of a sudden, he was on his knees, 
laughing like a lunatic and delving his hands in the place 
where the mattock had struck. Fistfuls and fistfuls of gold 
coins he brought up, holding them out in his wide open palm 
for Wiart to look at, whilst Wiart, with his arm round Mac- 
quart's neck, half-demented, inarticulate, and crowing like a 
child, picked up coins and threw them down. 
It was a terrible picture of momentary mental over- 
throw. 
A huge bird passing overhead trailed its shadow across 
them, and Mact[uart with a cry, cast his arm over the stuff he 
had been delving with his naked hand, and glanced up. He 
saw the bird, and as if this incident had brought hiin back to 
reason, he sat up, brushed the soil from his hand and pushed 
his hair back from his forehead. 
" It's half in English coin and nearly half in French," 
he said. " God ! to think it's here. There's some Dutch 
coin. It's all packed in boxes — so big." He held his hands 
a foot and a half apart. " You have broken one of the boxes ; 
look, here's the wood. Pretty rotten it is. We must be care- 
ful how we go. Why, d n it, we've already lost hundreds 
of dollars by your carelessness ; look at the way you've flung 
those sovereigns about ! " He picked up an Australian 
sovereign, light yellow like brass ; he held it between his 
finger and thumb whilst he spoke. He seemed not to be able 
to let it go. He could not escape from the fascination of the 
thing or from the idea that he was in possession of a bank where 
these things lay in thousands, thousands, thousands. As he 
talked, he rubbed it on his left hand as if wishing to feel 
its existence with a new set of nerves. Wiart, with swollen 
face and the dazed look of a man who has been drinking, 
listened in a careless way and laughed at the other's re- 
proaches. 
" We'll pick 'em up, " said he. ' Where's the use of 
bothering. Suppose we lose one or two, will that make us any 
the poorer ? 'What we've got to do now is to cart the stuff 
down to the boat. Lucky we brought those baskets." 
He rose and taking one of the mat baskets, began to 
collect the coins, sifting them from the earth in which they 
lay. Macquart helped, whilst Jacky, squatting on his hams, 
held the basket wide open. 
It took a long time to collect all the loose coins in view, 
and then Macquart, with his sleeves rolled up and just as a 
person breaks up honeycomb, delved with his hand in the 
remains of the box they had broken open, and extracted by 
handfuls the last of its contents. 
" There are hundreds more boxes, ' said Macquart, sitting 
back and wiping his brow, " hundreds and hundreds. We 
brought them up in sacks, the whole crew working double 
shifts. Tons and tons of gold. The English stuf? is atop, 
the French and Dutch below." 
" Let's go steady now," said Wiart. " No more spade 
work, we'll dig 'em up with our hands and so avoid breaking 
them. They're all packed close together, I suppose ? " 
" Side by side, " replied Macquart. 
Kneeling opposite to one another, the two men began 
carefully to remove the earth, till the whole top of the second 
gold box was uncovered. It seemed solid, though the metal 
bindings at the corners were black with rust. Working it 
loose very gently, Macquart got one hand under it for the 
purpose of lifting it, when the whole thing burst to pieces and 
the coins came tumbling out in a jingling cataract. 
" Curse it," said Wiart ; " this is going to give us trouble.' 
It was. Had the boxes not been rotten with age, the 
transportation of the gold to the lagoon oank would have been 
a difficult business, but feasible. As it was, the handling and 
collecting of all this loose stuff was an appalling task, the 
significance of which was just beginning to loom before the'm. 
But it did not daunt them. They set to work, and in less 
than half-an-hour they had collected every loose coin, and 
the two baskets containing the first of the treasure were 
ready for transportation. "Then they found that one basket 
was more tiian one man could carry if it were to be brought any 
distance — that is to say, for a white man. Jacky made no 
difficulty at all about carrying one, yet even for him it was a 
maximum load. They settled the difficulty by carrying a 
basket between them with the help of the pick shaft tlirough 
the handles, Jacky following with the other. They loft \\ iart s 
rifle and ammunition, which they had brought with them, 
by the cache, and started. 
There was no difficulty in finding the way ; before they 
had covered half the distance, the shimmer of the; lagoon led 
them through the trees, but when they readied the Barracuda 
they were so exhausted by all they had gone through and by 
