“Oh, it’s gold !” said another.

“Gold, right enough,” said the third.

Then they all stared at me, and then they all stared at the ship lying at anchor.

“I say!” cried the little man. “But where did you get that?”

I was too tired to keep up a lie. “I got it in the moon.”

I saw them stare at one another.

“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 “seafront.” Halfway there we were reinforced by two awestricken 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.

I glanced back after him.

“ He won’t touch it,” said the stout young man reassuringly, and I was only too willing to be reassured.