Bananas, oranges, and prickly-pears growing within the cactus-hedge of the chapel partly mollified their thirst and hunger, and they turned their steps towards the long, rambling, barrack-looking building, with its low windows and red-tiled roof, which they had first noticed.  Here, too, the tenement was deserted and abandoned; but there was evidence of some previous and more ambitious preparation:  in a long dormitory off the corridor a number of scrupulously clean beds were ranged against the whitewashed walls, with spotless benches and tables.  To the complete astonishment and bewilderment of the party another room, fitted up as a kitchen, with the simpler appliances of housekeeping, revealed a larder filled with provisions and meal.  A shout from Winslow, who had penetrated the inner courtyard, however, drew them to a more remarkable spectacle.  Their luggage and effects from the cabins of the Excelsior were there, carefully piled in the antique ox-cart that had evidently that morning brought them from Todos Santos!

“There’s no mistake,” said Brace, with a relieved look, after a hurried survey of the trunks.  “They have only brought our baggage.  The ladies have evidently had the opportunity of selecting their own things.”

“Crosby told you they’d be all right,” said Banks; “and as for ourselves, I don’t see why we can’t be pretty comfortable here, and all the better for our being alone.  I shall take an opportunity of looking around a bit.  It strikes me that there are some resources in this country that might pay to develop.”

“And I shall have a look at that played-out mine,” said Crosby; “if it’s been worked as they work the land, they’ve left about as much in it as they’ve taken out.”

“That’s all well enough,” said Brace, drawing a dull vermilion-colored stone from his pocket; “but here’s something I picked up just now that ain’t ‘played out,’ nor even the value of it suspected by those fellows.  That’s cinnabar—­quicksilver ore—­and a big per cent. of it too; and if there’s as much of it here as the indications show, you could buy up all your silver mines in the country with it.”

“If I were you, I’d put up a notice on a post somewhere, as they do in California, and claim discovery,” said Banks seriously.  “There’s no knowing how this thing may end.  We may not get away from here for some time yet, and if the Government will sell the place cheap, it wouldn’t be a bad spec’ to buy it.  Form a kind of ‘Excelsior Company’ among ourselves, you know, and go shares.”

The four men looked earnestly at each other.  Already the lost Excelsior and her mutinous crew were forgotten; even the incidents of the morning—­their arrest, the uncertainty of their fate, and the fact that they were in the hands of a hostile community—­appeared but as trivial preliminaries to the new life that opened before them!  They suddenly became graver than they had ever been—­even in the moment of peril.