“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.