We had the gold, though, twenty leather bags of it; and we carried it to the cabin and packed it into the safe, which it just filled. "Now," said Roger, "we _have_ a story to tell Mr. Johnston." "So we have!" exclaimed Mr. Cledd, who had heard as yet but a small part of this eventful history. "Will you tell me, though, how that beggar ever knew those bags were just there?" "Certainly." Roger's eyes twinkled as of old. "He put them there. When the islanders were everywhere aboard ship, and the rest of us were so much taken up with them and with the fight we'd just been through that we didn't know what was on foot,--it was still so dark that he could work unnoticed,--he sneaked below and opened the safe, which he had the craft to lock again behind him, and hauled the money forward to the hatch, a few bags at a time. Eventually he found a chance to crawl over the cargo, start a plank in the ceiling, drop the bags down inside the jacket one by one, and mark the place. Then, holding his peace until the cargo was out of the hold, he drew a chalk line straight down from his mark to the lower deck, took bearings from the hatch, and continued the line from the beam-clamp to the bilge, and cut on the curve. There, of course, was where the money had fallen. He worked hard--and failed." Then I remembered the hatch that had been pried off when the natives were ranging over the boat. Early next morning Roger, Mr. Cledd, and I, placing the money between us in the boat and arming ourselves and our men, each with a brace of pistols, went ashore. That brief trip seems a mere trifle as I write of it here and now, so far in distance and in time from the river at Whampoa, but I truly think it was as perilous a voyage as any I have made; for pirates, or Ladronesers as they were called, could not be distinguished from ordinary boatmen, and enough true stories of robbery and murder on that river passed current among seafaring men in my boyhood to make the everlasting fortune of one of those fellows who have nothing better to do than sit down and spin out a yarn of hair-raising adventures. But we showed our cocked pistols and passed unmolested through the press, and came at last safe to the landing. Laboring under the weight of gold, we went by short stages up to the factory, where Mr. Johnston in his dressing-gown met us, blessing his soul and altogether upset. "Never in my life," he cried, clasping his hands, "have I seen such men as you. And now, pray, what brings you here?" "We have come with one hundred thousand dollars," said Roger, "to be paid to the Chinese gentleman of whom you and I have spoken together." Mr. Johnston looked at the lumpy bundles wrapped now in canvas and for once rose to an emergency. "Come in," he said. "I'll dispatch a messenger immediately. Come in and I'll join you at breakfast."