Page 129 - The English Carnival 7

the neck was puffed and purple, and the hands and ankles swollen. “Pah!” he said, and

suddenly turned away and went towards the excavation. He gave a cry of surprise. He
shouted to Evans, who was following him slowly.

“You fool! It’s all right. It’s here still.” Then he turned again and looked at the dead
Chinaman, and then again at the hole.

Evans hurried to the hole. Already half exposed by the ill-fated wretch beside them lay
a number of dull yellow bars. He bent down in the hole, and, clearing off the soil with
his bare hands, hastily pulled one of the heavy masses out. As he did so a little thorn
pricked his hand. He pulled the delicate spike out with his fingers and lifted the ingot.

“Only gold or lead could weigh like this,” he said exultantly.

Hooker was still looking at the dead Chinaman. He was puzzled.

“He stole a march on his friends,” he said at last. “He came here alone, and some
poisonous snake has killed him... I wonder how he found the place.”

Evans stood with the ingot in his hands. What did a dead Chinaman signify? “We shall
have to take this stuff to the mainland piecemeal, and bury it there for a while. How

shall we get it to the canoe?”

He took his jacket off and spread it on the ground, and flung two or three ingots into
it. Presently he found that another little thorn had punctured his skin.

“This is as much as we can carry,” said he. Then suddenly, with a queer rush of irritation,
“What are you staring at?”

Hooker turned to him. “I can’t stand him ...” He nodded towards the corpse. “It’s so
like...”

“Rubbish!” said Evans. “All Chinamen are alike.”

Hooker looked into his face. “I’m going to bury that, anyhow, before I lend a hand with
this stuff.”

“Don’t be a fool, Hooker,” said Evans, “Let that mass of corruption bide.”

Hooker hesitated, and then his eye went carefully over the brown soil about them. “It
scares me somehow,” he said.

“The thing is,” said Evans, “what to do with these ingots. Shall we re-bury them over
here, or take them across the strait in the canoe?”

Hooker thought. His puzzled gaze wandered among the tall tree-trunks, and up into

the remote sunlit greenery overhead. He shivered again as his eye rested upon the blue
figure of the Chinaman. He stared searchingly among the grey depths between the trees.

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