stless sea as if he were
expecting his good fortune would come from thence, a large wave rolled
a yellow ball to his feet amongst a mass of moss and loosened stone--a
ball of gold!

Falcon stood as if bewitched. His hopes, then, had not been
unsubstantial dreams; the sea had given him gold, beautiful shining
gold, the fragment probably of a heavy bar of gold which the sea had
rolled on its bottom into the size and shape of a musket ball. And now
it was clear to his mind that somewhere on this coast there must have
been a treasure ship wrecked, and that he had been selected as the
chosen one to raise this buried treasure from the sea. From this time
forth, this search for treasure became the passion of his life. He
strove to conceal the golden nugget even from his friend, so that
others might not discover his purpose. He neglected everything else,
and spent his days and nights on this coast, not casting his net for
fishes, but throwing out a scoop, that he had specially prepared for
the purpose, for gold.

But he found poverty instead of wealth; for he earned nothing now
himself, and Kaspar's sleepy efforts would not support them both. In
the search for the larger mass of gold, not only the nugget was used
up, but the entire property of the two men as well. But as Strumpf had
formerly received the largest part of his living by Falcon's efforts,
taking it all as a matter of course, so now he looked on the profitless
undertaking of his friend silently and without a murmur; and it was
just this meek forbearance on the part of his friend that spurred
Falcon on to continue his restless search for wealth. But what made him
still more active in his search was, that as often as he laid down to
rest and closed his eyes in sleep, a word was sounded in his ear that
he seemed to have heard very plainly, and that always appeared to be
the same word, and yet he could never recall it. To be sure, he did not
see what connection this circumstance, singular as it was, might have
with his present purpose; but upon a spirit like William Falcon's
everything made an impression, and even this mysterious whisper helped
to strengthen his belief that great good luck was in store for him,
which he expected to find only in a heap of gold.

One day he was surprised by a storm on the shore in the same place
where he had found the nugget, and he was forced to take refuge from
its fury in a cave near by. This cave, which the inhabitants called the