41 Lure O Gold 1904

"
"
"
The Lure o
Gold
I thanked my new friend heartily and forgot all
his
former insolence, which I now set down to his natur
ally uncouth ways.
He evidently had no real intention
of injuring anyone.
Looking out over the blue waves to the Flying Mist,
which lay a mile to seaward, and noting how the masses
of water rose and tumbled, I could appreciate the ad
vantage of the line-and-buoy device.
lighter being perfectly flat and smooth,
The deck of the
it would be a
simple matter for Neptune to rock the craft heavily
and get my gold.
"Once," said the lighterman,
"we lost a box that
had sixty thousand in it, going
off to the Caroline
Stevens.
She just slid right off the boat and down to
the bottom an nobody never seen her ag
in. Ever
since then we ve hitched buoys to em. It s a good
plan if yeh don t want the sharks to be a-buyin fancy
store clo es with yer gold."
"
But the owners of the lost dust,"
I asked,
didn t
they recover anything from you ?
Recover ? I guess you don t think we take any
thing like that, here in this wild place, except at owner s
risk. That s understood. When a reg lar shippin
company gits
in here it will be different, but I d like to
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