41 Lure O Gold 1904

The Lure o
"Mighty glad that blear-eyed
Gold
Arizonian didn t find
the stuff that time,"
I heard one of the passengers re
mark to a man at his side.
"
So m I. But if it had been it, he wasn t very smart.
He could a let it lay there a while and took it out when
nobody was a-lookin . He wasn t
very smart."
This remark was very disconcerting to me. It
showed that the doctrine of "finding
is keeping"
was
too freely and fully held aboard the Modesto to assure
the owner of lost treasure of any interest he might have
in it
unless he was capable of exerting an unremitting
vigilance.
I felt sick and disgusted when I thought
of how
lightly
my fellow-passengers treated my ownership of
the missing gold. It seemed to me that between some
of them and the pirates I had so strongly execrated
there was but little choice.
By noon of the next day the lower hold had been en
tirely stripped of whatever it could afford in the way
of fuel, and every shovelful of coal screenings and wheat
sif tings had been scraped from the concrete bottom.
I watched the men taking up the last plank, and
heaved a deep sigh as I saw that on its removal I was
no nearer than before to the recovery of my lost gold.
[198]