Then mist once more, and a sort of awakening, as if sunlight had come
through the mist, and she was in the garden with the Reverend Arthur
Rosebury, who looked strange in his long coat, as he stooped to pick her
flowers, and handed one to her that had a shape like a cup; and he said
to her "Drink--drink!" and in her dream she seemed to drink, expecting
to find that out of that flower-cup she would drink honey, while this
was intensely bitter; and it was not a flower-cup, but metal, and it was
not the Reverend Arthur Rosebury who offered the cup to her, but someone
else; and while she was trying to listen who it was, for she could not
see, all became silent once again, and blank, and she knew no more.
VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER TWELVE.
DOCTOR BOLTER'S SPIRIT.
Gold! What ideas that one word opens out--what magic it contains! But
credit must be given to Doctor Bolter for the fact that it was no sordid
love of the yellow metal that prompted him to search for gold.
He wanted it for no luxury; he had no wealthy man's desires to quell;
all he wished was to make that grand discovery that would prove the
Malay Peninsula to have been the Ophir to which King Solomon's ships
came in search of treasure; and of this he wanted ample proof, such as
he could lay before a committee of learned men. How was it to be
obtained?
Doctor Bolter asked himself this question a dozen times over, but no
answer came. He asked the question as he stood there up to his knees in
water, examining his pannikins full of sand and gravel, which he took
from the bottom of the little river, where it now displayed all the
characteristics of a mountain stream.
He tried several pannikins full, scooping up the sand and gravel from
likely places, and after picking out the larger stones, washing
carefully till nothing remained after the water had been drained off but
pure sand.
This he would examine in the full light of the sun, seeking in vain for
little water-worn nuggets or specks and scales of gold; but for some
time his efforts were unsuccessful; and they went on higher and higher,
the shallowness, and the difficulties of the journey increasing at every
stride, till, trying at a spot where the rapid stream swirled round the
end of a great mass of stone, the doctor washed a pannikin of sand, and
then uttered a grunt of satisfaction, for there at the bottom,
glittering in the sunshine, were dozens of tiny specks of gold mingled
with the grit.
"Plenty like that, master, the farther up the stream we go," said the
chief boatman. "It comes out of the mountains where the wicked spirits
live."
"Indeed," said the doctor, sarcastically; "then we must go up and see
the wicked spirits. Do you think they will be at home?"
"It is very dreadful, master, and we shall all be killed! They send
down little specks of gold like that in the water; but if we went up to
try and get the great pieces stuck in the mountain side, they would
smite us, and our people would see us no more."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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