“They all seemed to think the suggestion a good one. When they had discussed it for a little while among themselves, Casimiro finally made me this proposition: His brother chiefs, he said, wished to make a test of my good faith. They would deliver into my hands at the Rio Negro settlement a small mule-load of gold. This I was to take to my own country and spend on behalf of the tribe in the purchase of arms, ammunition, supplies of various kinds, and necessary tools, receptacles, etc., for the gathering and transportation of the treasure. I should bring these things in a ship to Rio Negro and meet Casimiro at a point near the settlement fourteen days previous to the longest day of the coming summer, which will be the sixth of December, two months hence. Casimiro would then accompany me on the ship to a point on the coast farther south and nearer to the location of the treasure. If I failed to appear on the day appointed our treaty would be at an end. Of course I agreed. I received about one hundred and fifty pounds of gold-dust ten days later and immediately sailed for Buenos Ayres. I did not dare dispose of any considerable quantity of native gold here, for I am pretty well known and the location of my wanderings in the South was also known. Besides I wished to make a large portion of my purchases elsewhere in order to avoid exciting suspicion. So I sailed to England where I arrived early in August, turned my gold into money, bought all my supplies except food-stuffs, and now here I am laid up with a broken leg with none too great margin of time to keep my appointment with Casimiro in December. “So you see, my lad, I am compelled to seek assistance. If I were well it would probably be impossible to charter a suitable sailing craft, do all that must be done here in buying, fitting, and other preparations, and sail before the end of the month. The five weeks remaining would be none too much for the uncertainties of such a voyage in a small ship. Now you know practically as much about this strange venture as I do. I have money enough left for the trip to Rio Negro and back besides all necessary purchases of supplies, etc. We may come back here penniless, we may bring the most valuable cargo that ship ever carried. Will you take the chances?” Brent had listened to the Scotchman’s extraordinary narrative with ever increasing interest. The Patagonian chief’s description of buried millions in nature’s richest treasure-house bewildered him with its prodigality of wealth, its prodigious massing of riches. The story was almost incredible yet plausible. He knew not what to think. He was unable at first to think at all with calmness. But he had only one answer to Fraser’s fascinating proposition. If the prospect of success had been but one in a thousand it would have been enough.