The men’s talk was all about the gold. ‘If it ain’t under them trees,’ said one of them, ‘it’ll ha’ to come to doing what the gent told us; starting at a hundred paces from the wash of the water there and digging in a line till we strikes it.’ ‘What’ll them as hid it have wrapped it up in?’ exclaimed another. ‘Canvas,’ answered the carpenter shortly. ‘Which’ll have rotted by this time, I allow, and the money’ll be lying loose,’ said a sailor. ‘Who’ll get the first chink of it?’ cried Wilkins. Exclamations of this sort I observed worked a general sense of elation in them; and the rum helping their spirits, they began to crack jokes, and their laughter was loud and frequent. The scene, to any one who could have viewed it without distress, must have been thought admirable for its character of soft romantic beauty. The western atmosphere was brimful of the reddening light of the descending sun; under it, the smooth ocean lay in dark gold that came sifting out into a cool azure, which then ran with an ever-deepening tint of blue into the clear liquid distance. The trembling of the sea to the breeze put a weak coming and going of light and shadow into these dyes, and freshened the western light upon the surface into a very glorious scintillation. The barque floated like a shape of marble in the cerulean water that lay betwixt the reflection of the sun and the darker tints of the east. Her rigging resembled wires of gold, her masthead vane lay like a little flame against the sky, her white shadow fluctuated in dissolving quicksilver under her, and as she slightly leaned with the delicate heave of that wide Pacific breast, stars of crimson flashed off her deck, and her bright lower-masts showed as though they were on fire. The water in the lagoon floated in a tender blue to the coral beach on which it rippled. There was a subtle aroma as of sweet and secret inland vegetation upon the atmosphere. The long grass stirred, and the silken brushing of the leaves of the trees against one another produced the most refreshing sound that could be imagined to ears which for months had received no pleasanter noises than the straining of timbers, the flapping of sails, and the sobbing and washing of the ocean surge. There was nothing in the wildness and rugged looks of the fiery-faced recumbent seamen to impair the tenderness of this picture. On the contrary, their roughness seemed to accentuate its gentle beauty, as the silence of a calm midnight at sea may be heightened by some gruff human voice speaking at a distance, or by some rude sound that assists the hearing as a contrast. The carpenter looked towards the sun. ‘Don’t let’s waste no more time,’ he cried; ‘let’s attack that third clump there afore it falls dark.’