, sitting back almost out
of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when
anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same
bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.

CHAPTER XXXIV

AND LAST

The next morning we fell early to work, for the transportation of this
great mass of gold near a mile by land to the beach, and thence three
miles by boat to the _Hispaniola_, was a considerable task for so small
a number of workmen. The three fellows still abroad upon the island did
not greatly trouble us; a single sentry on the shoulder of the hill was
sufficient to insure us against any sudden onslaught, and we thought,
besides, they had had more than enough of fighting.

Therefore the work was pushed on briskly. Gray and Ben Gunn came and
went with the boat, while the rest during their absences piled treasure
on the beach. Two of the bars, slung in a rope's end, made a good load
for a grown man--one that he was glad to walk slowly with. For my part,
as I was not much use at carrying, I was kept busy all day in the cave,
packing the minted money into bread-bags.

It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones's hoard for the diversity
of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I
never had more pleasure than in sorting them. English, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and
moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the
last hundred years, strange oriental pieces stamped with what looked
like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square
pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round
your neck--nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think,
have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they
were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my
fingers with sorting them out.

[Illustration: _Nearly every variety of money in the world must have
found a place in that collection_ (Page 253)]

Day after day this work went on; by every evening a fortune had been
stowed aboard, but there was another fortune waiting for the morrow; and
all this time we heard nothing of the three surviving mutineers.

At last--I think it was on the third night--the doctor and I were
strolling on the shoulder of the hill where it overlooks the lowlands of
the isle, when, from out the thick darkness below, the wind brou