Dodd a millionaire before dark."
It was strange to see with what a fury we fell to. The
men had now nothing to expect; the mere idea of great
sums inspired them with disinterested ardour. Mats
were slashed and disembowelled, the rice flowed to our
knees in the ship's waist, the sweat ran in our eyes
and blinded us, our arms ached to agony; and yet our
fire abated not. Dinner came; we were too weary to
eat, too hoarse for conversation; and yet dinner was
scarce done, before we were afoot again and delving in
the rice. Before nightfall not a mat was unexplored,
and we were face to face with the astonishing result.
For of all the inexplicable things in the story of the
FLYING SCUD, here was the most inexplicable. Out
of the six thousand mats, only twenty were found to
have been sugared; in each we found the same amount,
about twelve pounds of drug; making a grand total of
two hundred and forty pounds. By the last San
Francisco quotation, opium was selling for a fraction
over twenty dollars a pound; but it had been known not
long before to bring as much as forty in Honolulu,
where it was contraband.
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