“I would take it all,” he replied. “What!” I exclaimed. “Take it all! Thou art mad, Bukári. Why, there is more than thirty men could carry, and we are but two.” “I know it,” he answered calmly. “We could not carry it all away, but what I would do is this. I would take out the gold and bury it in a safe place, where I would make a mark to find it again by. Then I would go to my country and tell my brothers of what I had done, and they should come to this country as if to buy guru, and when they had bought the guru at Juabin, they should come back this way, dig up the gold, and take it to my country.” “Why bury the gold?” I asked. “Why not leave it in the tunnel. Nobody seems to know of the existence of this passage.” “Who knows?” he answered. “Perhaps some hunters may know of this place and come here to sleep in the rains; besides, thinkest thou that the wizards, when they miss their treasure, will not search every place? They have only to bring a ladder to the treasure chamber to find this tunnel, and then all our labour would be in vain.” I could not deny that Bukári’s reasoning was sound, that is, if one admitted the desirability of meddling with the treasure at all; and as I have already admitted, the sight of the gold had aroused my own cupidity to no small extent. Moreover the treasure had really been the object of my quest from the first, although I had never dreamed of laying my hands upon the actual hoard, so, in the end I fell in with the Moshi’s plan, and agreed to commence lifting the treasure at daybreak on the morrow. There were, indeed, other matters to settle, such as the proportions of our respective shares and the security to be offered to me against treachery on the part of his brother Moshis, but as the marks must necessarily be made by me, and my assistance would be indispensable in identifying the locality, I left the details for settlement at a later date. On the following morning we were awake and on the move before daybreak, and Bukári was full of childish eagerness to commence removing the gold. But there were one or two things to be done before we could begin. First it would be wise to settle on the place where the gold was to be buried, so that there should be no delay when once the removal was begun. Then it would never do to risk carrying the uncovered gold even a short distance, for if we were observed even by a chance stranger, disaster would be sure to follow. Lastly, we must have food of some kind. As to the first question, we agreed that the gold would best be buried near to the river that I had seen from the plateau, as we should thus have a landmark that would help in the subsequent finding of the hoard; so, as soon as the sun had risen, I set off down the precipitous hillside to examine the river, leaving Bukári to plait a couple of wicker bags out of the grass on which we had slept.