“Look here!” said I, “I’m not going to argue now. Help me carry these
lumps of gold up to the hotel--I guess, with rests, two of you can
manage one, and I’ll trail this chain thing--and I’ll tell you more
when I’ve had some food.”
“And how about that thing?”
“It won’t hurt there,” I said. “Anyhow--confound it!--it must stop
there now. If the tide comes up, it will float all right.”
And in a state of enormous wonderment, these young men most obediently
hoisted my treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like
lead I headed a sort of procession towards that distant fragment of
“sea-front.” Half-way there we were reinforced by two awe-stricken
little girls with spades, and later a lean little boy, with a
penetrating sniff, appeared. He was, I remember, wheeling a bicycle,
and he accompanied us at a distance of about a hundred yards on our
right flank, and then, I suppose, gave us up as uninteresting, mounted
his bicycle, and rode off over the level sands in the direction of the
sphere.