lofty intricacy of rigging
and the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the
immediate hope of fifty dollars; and I, of fifty thousand. Small wonder
if we waded callously in blood and food.

It was perhaps about ten in the forenoon when the scene was interrupted.
Nares, who had just ripped open a fresh mat, drew forth, and slung at
his feet, among the rice, a papered tin box.

"How's that?" he shouted.

A cry broke from all hands: the next moment, forgetting their own
disappointment, in that contagious sentiment of success, they gave three
cheers that scared the sea-birds; and the next, they had crowded round
the captain, and were jostling together and groping with emulous hands
in the new-opened mat. Box after box rewarded them, six in all; wrapped,
as I have said, in a paper envelope, and the paper printed on, in
Chinese characters.

Nares turned to me and shook my hand. "I began to think we should never
see this day," said he. "I congratulate you, Mr. Dodd, on having pulled
it through."

The captain's tones affected me profoundly; and when Johnson and the
men pressed round me in turn with congratulations, the tears came in my
eyes.

"These are five-tael boxes, more than two pounds," said Nares, weighing
one in his hand. "Say two hundred and fifty dollars to the mat. Lay into
it, boys! We'll make Mr. Dodd a millionnaire before dark."

It was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. The men had now
nothing to expect; the mere idea of great sums inspired them with
disinterested ardour. Mats were slashed and disembowelled, the rice
flowed to our knees in the ship's waist, the sweat ran in our eyes and
blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our fire abated not. Dinner
came; we were too weary to eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet
dinner was scarce done, before we were afoot again and delving in the
rice. Before nightfall not a mat was unexplored, and we were face to
face with the astonishing result.

For of all the inexplicable things in the story of the Flying Scud, here
was the most inexplicable. Out of the six thousand mats, only twenty
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 contr