Inch by inch I shifted my position until the red patch appeared midway between the palm and the silk-cotton. Then I stooped, and began frantically driving my knife into the soft moss; and I had scarcely made a dozen stabs when I felt the point arrested by something hard. With a hasty glance around to make sure that my solitude was undisturbed, I cut out a square slab of the moss, and thrusting my hand into the hole, dragged out a bunch of the gold manillas. Very absurd was the triumph with which I gloated over the precious trash and dusted the black mould from their shining surfaces. Indeed, I could not but be struck by the irony of the situation. Here I was, sitting upon a fortune of some seventy thousand pounds, of which the whole was mine--or, at least, I considered it to be--with death from starvation or exposure staring me in the face! It was a fine commentary upon the worthlessness of riches, to which my gnawing hunger gave a special point; and as my momentary exultation flickered out, I sadly poked the manillas back into the hole, and replaced the moss, carefully pinching the cut edges together. The treasure was mine indeed, but should I ever possess it? Through what perils and miseries must I pass before I could finally lay hands upon it? I had yet to creep like some belated ancient Briton in a wretched coracle of wicker and skin down an unknown river, through a land swarming with savage beasts and peopled by savage men. Should I ever reach the coast? and if I did, would even this great fortune tempt me again into this loathsome wilderness? Or even if I did come with trusty companions, if the natives permitted us to pass, could I make sure of finding the treasure again? To none of these questions could I give a confident and satisfactory answer, and my short-lived triumph was succeeded by black despair. Suddenly a new idea flashed into my mind, and although I put it away at once as preposterous, it returned again and again with such insistence that I presently began to seriously entertain it. It was this. I had resolved that the river should not only be my guide to the sea, but should actually carry me to my destination. Why should it not carry the treasure, too? If I were lost, then it would matter nothing that the treasure should be lost with me; while if I could succeed in navigating the river, the presence of the treasure need not materially add to the danger. Of course, it would be no wicker-built coracle that would carry half a ton of metal. A really stout canoe would be required, and the construction of this was the main, and almost the only, difficulty. Now, given the materials and appliances, there was no doubt of my ability to build a canoe or boat, since I had both built and rigged the canoe-yawl in which, as I have mentioned, I used to sail around the Thanet coast; but my sole appliances at present were my knives, my spear, and a few needles, and as to materials, they would have to be gathered in the forest.