them, but it was just as well to have the gun. As for sleeping, that was
impossible. He had heard and seen too much that day.




CHAPTER XIII

"MINE!"


Captain Horn and his party sat down together the next morning on the
plateau to drink their hot coffee and eat their biscuit and bacon, and it
was plain that the two ladies, as well as the captain, had had little
sleep the night before. Ralph declared that he had been awake ever so
long, endeavoring to calculate how many cubic feet of gold there would be
in that mound if it were filled with the precious metal. "But as I did
not know how much a cubic foot of gold is worth," said he, "and as we
might find, after all, that there is only a layer of gold on top, and
that all the rest is Incas' bones, I gave it up."

The captain was very grave--graver, Miss Markham thought, than the
discovery of gold ought to make a man.

"We won't worry ourselves with calculations," said he. "As soon as I can
get rid of those black fellows, we will go to see what is really in that
tomb, or storehouse, or whatever it is. We will make a thorough
investigation this time."

When the men had finished eating, the captain sent them all down to look