cture, and when I come home--"

"Towing the King of Spain his plate-fleet behind you," quoth the
mustachioed gentleman.

"--all my sails shall be cloth of gold," continued wine--flushed
one-and-twenty. "The main-deck shall be piled with bars of silver, and
in the hold shall be pearls and pieces of gold, doubloons, emeralds as
great as filberts--"

"At Panama saw I an emerald greater than a pigeon's egg!" cried one who
had sailed in the _Golden Hind_.

Sir Mortimer laughed. "Why, our very speech grows rich--as did thine
long since, Philip Sidney! And now, Giles Arden, show these stay-at-home
gentlemen the stones the _Bonaventure_ brought in the other day from
that coast we touched at two years agone. If we miss the plate-fleet, my
masters, if we find Cartagena or Santa Marta too strong for us, there is
yet the unconquered land, the Hesperidian garden whence came these
golden apples! Deliver, good dragon!"

He of the mustachios laid side by side upon the board three pieces of
glittering rock, whereat every man bent forward.

"Marcasite?" said one, doubtfully.

"El madre del oro?" suggested another.

"White spar," said Arden, authoritatively, "and containeth of gold ten
pounds to the hundredweight. Moreover--" He sifted down upon the dark
wood beside the stones a thimbleful of dull yellow grains. "The sands of
Pactolus, gentlemen! Sure 'twas in no Grecian river that King Midas
bathed himself!"

Those of the company to whom had never before been exhibited these
samples of imperial riches craned their necks, and the looks of some
were musing and of others keenly eager. The room fell silent, and still
they gazed and gazed at the small heap of glistening stones and those
few grains of gold. They were busy men in the vanguard of a quickened
age, and theirs were its ardors, its Argus-eyed fancy and potent
imagination. Show them an acorn, and straightway they saw a forest of
oaks; an inch of a rainbow, and the mind grasped the whole vast arch,
zenith-reaching, seven-colored, enclosing far horizons. So now, in
addition to the gleaming fragments upon the table before them, they saw
mountain ranges with ledges of rock all sparkling like this ore, deep
mines with Indian workers, pack-trains, and burdened holds of ships.

After a time one lifted a piece of the ore, hesitatingly, as though he
made to take up all the Indies, scrutinized it closely, weighed it,
passed it to his neighbor. It went the round of the company, each