The goddess asked me at once where I was going. When I told her she seemed deeply to regret my resolution, but she sat there, grimly, and made no comment. Brave girl, I knew she was terribly agitated, but a girl could not be expected to do or to know any better. I admired her pluck in restraining her natural impulse to protest and coax and make a fuss. In the briefest time, the prow was grating on the bank. Fatty leaped out, wild with delight to find himself again on solid earth. “We’ll only be gone a minute,” I told the goddess, and led the way up through the brush and the darkness. To tell the truth I was more than half afraid that something might happen, myself. Jungle noises had commenced and the place seemed to breathe of my flight, struggles and pains of the time before. Stumbling about, as silently as possible, I began to search for the treasure. I had pictured myself walking straight to where the gold was lying, but I now began to realise that to re-discover the particular thicket where I had dropped it would be a matter involving considerable luck. A fruitless time elapsed while I plunged about. Fatty was of no assistance, for he knew nothing of what I was seeking. Presently the same old grumble and roar, from the mighty cauldron, commenced to roll outward on the air. I knew at once I was off the track, at least twenty yards. Changing my base rapidly, I began the search anew. But it seemed utterly hopeless. A doubt came over me; was the bag still there? Might not the Blacks have found it and carried it away? It seemed as if this must be so. I was worried about the goddess; if anything should happen to her, how terrible it would be! On the point of giving up the gold, and persuading myself that I did not care anyway, I turned to leave, and stumbled heavily over some obstacle and into a tangle of creepers. “Here it is, all the time!” I grumbled. My excitement rose to fever pitch in a second. The bag, exactly as I had dropped it down, was under my very hand. Lifting it out of the embracing tendrils, I got it boosted up on my shoulder in a hurry. Then back we plunged, through the growth. If I live to be a thousand, I shall never see a face so expressive of dread and fright as was that of the poor, trembling girl in the boat, when at last we came to where she was waiting. I believe that hers had been a more cruel ordeal to endure than had been my own on the former occasion. I had not even thought to whistle a bit, by way of assurance that all was well. She had to cry, dear little woman, when the strain was over and the boat once more headed down the stream. I spurned the gold with my foot, as it lay in the boat, and hated myself for a miserly, greedy fool, yet in spite of myself I felt a tremendous elation inside, to think of having all this wealth, after all. It seemed too good for me to contain myself over. I wanted to roar out in laughter, to sing, and to shout a mad defiance to all the Blacks in kingdom.