BUILDING THE DAM.
The next morning, almost as soon as it was light, the boys began the
serious work of building the dam across the stream. They chose a place
a little way below the branch channel into which they wished to turn
the water, where the stream was rather wider than it was lower down,
but where also it was shallower. They selected this place for the
reason that it was much less difficult to work in shallow water than in
deep, and this fact more than compensated them for the extra work
entailed upon them by the greater width of the stream. The work was
very heavy, and only the thought of the great reward they hoped to reap
from their exertions could have made them persevere in it. The whole
proceeding was a mystery to Murri, who could conceive no incentive
sufficiently powerful to make men work so hard as the two Laws did.
"What for you put plenty much stone along o' water? Yo bail stop him.
That fellow strong," said he, pointing to the stream. "Yo go chewt"
(shoot) "um kangaroo, mine find chewgah bag" (sugar bag; a nest of wild
honey, of which there is plenty to be found in the bush), "that
_boudgeree cawbawn_, stop um water, that hard work, bail gammon bong."
Thus argued the black philosopher, who disregarded gold--being ignorant
of its worth--and tried to make the boys see things in the same light
that he did. It must be confessed that he was not purely disinterested
in thus painting to them the superior delights of shooting and tracking
the wild bees down to their nests, for he hated work of any continuous
sort, and Alec had set him to cut great lumps and sods of the tussocky
grass that grew by the sides of the stream in the ravine. These Alec
meant to use to fill in the gaps between the stones that formed the
foundation of their dam.
It was slow and rather disheartening work, for although the boys worked
steadily their progress that first day seemed very small. Many of the
stones and rocks that they used had to be carried for some distance,
and the force of the water as it poured down the steep incline, before
it leaped to the valley below, was so great that it was a constant
effort for them to keep their feet on the smooth water-worn rock upon
which they stood. Many of the stones, too, which they had carried with
such labour, and placed in position so carefully, were swept away by
the force of the water directly that they loosed them, and rumbling
heavily along the course of the stream plunged with a splash, heard
above the roar of the waterfall, into the pool below. But neither of
them had, from the first, expected to find the work an easy one, and
they went on stolidly replacing, with a larger and heavier stone, every
one that was swept away, and showed such dogged determination and pluck
that it was evident they did not mean to be beaten.
They had been enormously cheered towards the end of the day, just when
both of them began to feel very fagged and tired from their continuance
at the unaccustomed labour, by a discovery that they made. They had
almost succeeded in laying all the stones necessary for the foundation
of their dam, and thought of knocking off work for that day; but there
was still one place that was a little weak, and Alec was anxious to
strengthen it before they went down to the humpie for rest and supper.
"There's that one place near the bank that is still a bit shaky,
Geordie; I should like to fix that up before we give over."
"Oh, bless the thing!" said George, in a voice whose tones conveyed but
little benison. "We have put a ton of rock there if we have put an
ounce."
"Don't bother about it if you are tired. I daresay you are--it has been
a hard day. I can do it quite well."
"As though I should let you lug those great rocks about by yourself!
Come on. I was only having a bit of a growl--it eases my stiff back."
"Well let us get that big white stone up there--the current can never
sweep that away."
"All right; a thumping big one for the last."
Saying this they stepped out of the water and hobbled over the stones,
which were very painful to their feet, the latter being tender from
remaining in the water so long. The stone was a great lump of white
quartz, and it lay at the edge of the rapid stream.
"I say, it _is_ heavy!" said George.
They both stooped and put their hands to it together, and, loosening
the stone from the bed it had made for itself in the pebbles, they
rolled it over. As they did so George uttered a wild yell of delight.
"Alec, Alec, _it is gold_!"
[Illustration: "HE WAS SO OVERCOME ... THAT HE SAT STRAIGHT DOWN INTO
THE STREAM." (_p. 130._)]
He was so overcome with this sudden proof that their hopes were not all
vain that he sat straight down into the stream with a splash, and,
laughing hysterically, stayed there patting the gold-studded face of
the stone with the palm of his hand.
Alec, who as a rule was not so excitable as George, was himself unable
to say anything for a moment. His face became quite white as he seemed
to see his dreams realised before him.
"Yes," he said at last, as he uttered a great sigh of relief, "it is
gold, real gold, and thank Heaven for it. You don't know," he added, as
he turned to his brother and pulled him up from the water, "how
terrible my doubts have been that after all we might not find it."
The delight of these two young fellows, the one a boy and the other
just verging upon manhood, at finding their dream of gold likely to be
fulfilled would have been a horrible and unnatural thing to have
witnessed had it been merely a greed for wealth that possessed them,
but as it was nothing but the expression of their desire to be honestly
independent again it lost all its ugliness. As Alec said, with a happy
little tremble in his voice--
"We shall be _free_ men again! As long as that loathsome debt was
unpaid I could never have an easy hour; and now I hope, I believe, we
shall be able to pay it all off and owe no man a shilling."
"Hurrah, hurrah!" sang out Geordie, a wild exultation giving his voice
a noble ring; "we shall be able to call Wandaroo our own again."
They both felt from that moment that they could go on working all
night; all their fatigue had vanished, and a desire to finish their
work possessed them. But the sun would be setting soon, and they knew
they could do but little more that night; so they only rolled and
carried the great piece of gold-laden rock to their dam and
strengthened the one weak place with it.
When they had scrambled down the cliff and had got back to the front of
the humpie they found that Murri had returned from the _quandang_
trees, whither the boys had sent him, with a plump, richly plumaged
pigeon and a parrot. These Murri was already cooking.
"You chewt um bird up along o' there?" asked that intelligent
gentleman, who thought that all exclamations of joy must be the
expressions of delight of a hungry stomach at the near prospect of
food. "Mine heard Missa Law give one coo-ee. Why yo sittum down in um
water?"
"Because I very much fear, my dear Murri--and I blush to confess
it--that I was quite unable to keep upon my feet."
"_Yohi_," (yes) grinned the savage, who did not understand a word.
The boys were able next morning to proceed with filling in the cracks
and openings in their dam with sods of grass and earth, for they found
that the rocks and stones had stood firm. They left an opening a foot
or so wide at the side of the dam, through which the waters might flow
till they were ready to close the embankment. They found that the
pieces of tussocky grass roots, that Murri had cut the day before, were
too dry to be of much service, and they had to carry up, with great
labour, large lumps of the damp sort of turf that grew in the little
marshy place down the stream. These did admirably, and seemed to fit
themselves firmly in between the stones.
It took a long time to cut and transport to the top of the cliff all
these heavy pieces of sod, for they had to use their arms so much in
the climbing that it was difficult to carry more than one or two pieces
of it at one time. But the boys were so excited that they toiled on
nearly all the morning without a break, and resumed the work, after
their mid-day rest, at about four o'clock, with unwearied zeal. Murri
looked on in dumb astonishment at such incredible behaviour.
Some little time before evening set in they were ready to fill up the
last opening. The rest of the dam was finished, every little crack and
cranny that they could find had been filled up with a turf which was
well pressed home, they had strengthened it here and there, and, so
far, the work held good. The moment to try its firmness would be when
the last opening was closed and the dam would have to resist the full
weight of the water. The boys had collected a great pile of rocks and
stones and large and small sods of turf and earth by the side of the
narrow opening, through which the whole force of the stream now rushed.
They stood with a huge lump of stone hanging just over the opening.
"Are you ready, Geordie?"
"Yes."
"Let go."
With a mighty splash the stone fell just where it was wanted, and
without waiting a second both boys began piling on and round it lumps
of rock and turf and large rounded pebbles. It was an exciting moment,
for the flow of the waterfall had entirely ceased, and the strange
silence was fraught with a significance in their ears that was far
greater and more imposing to them than was the loud roar to which they
were accustomed. Wildly they continued piling on turf, and then lumps
of rock to fix it, till the opening was filled up to the level of the
rest of the dam.
It was an anxious time for them as they saw the water rising, rising
rapidly, towards the top of their little embankment. In one or two
places it began to creep in a little wriggling streak over the topmost
layer of turf and rock; but it was never allowed to flow, for one or
other of the boys rushed into the water, that now reached half-way up
their thighs, and added more material and jammed it firmly down. Would
the dam hold out? Could it withstand the enormous pressure of the
water? Yes, _yes_. Hurrah! See there, a silver streak is flowing
into the old disused channel which the boys have so carefully cleared
for it. Every moment, every second it grows broader, deeper, and in a
short time a splash is heard where the new waterfall is beginning to
pour itself over the cliff, not into the pool but on to the dry hot
rocks of the gully some little way to one side of the basin. Every
moment this noise grows louder and louder, till in a very few seconds
the roar of this new cascade is as deep and thundering as the silenced
voice of its dead brother, and the water is pouring down the gully
along a fresh course till it joins the stream again just at the bend of
the ravine.
It is a proud moment for those young engineers, and they feel that glow
of honest satisfaction in successful work which is worth so much more
than other peoples' praises, that are so often given for what one does
not value.
"Well, I suppose we have done half the work," said Alec, as they sat by
the fire in front of the humpie when they had finished their supper.
"Yes, but it is the harder half that is left to be done. It will take a
long time to drill a hole into the rock."
"I don't know how we are going to do it, for we haven't a chisel or a
bit of steel that we can use for one."
"Oh, yes we have," said George, whose more imaginative mind saw to what
different uses one article might be put. It is this imaginative quality
that makes a man an inventor and a devisor of new methods of working,
when an unimaginative person, though perhaps much more learned, will
continue using old ones just for want of the illumination that would
show him new and better means of obtaining the same result.
"What is it?"
"Why the steel extracting rod that is fastened to your revolver. We can
harden and temper it, after we have beaten it roughly into shape with
our tomahawks."
It was with this primitive tool that they set to work next day to bore
holes into the wall of rock which retained the water in the pool. The
rock was all green and slimy with a sort of soft water moss, which they
had to scrape away before they could reach the stone itself. The old
course of the stream was only to be recognised by a few little pools of
water that lay along its track, and by the darker colour of the wet
stones which the sun had not yet dried. The stream flowed along its new
bed as naturally as though it had never known another.
Fortunately for the boys the rock they had to work upon was not very
hard. It was a sort of dark blue slate; had it been quartz, the same as
were the upper rocks of the mountain, it would have taken them weeks to
make any impression on it. Impeded as they were by the want of proper
tools, it took them nearly two days to make a hole deep enough for
their first blasting. They knew it was useless to make a great wide
hole to place their powder in, as the explosion would then have no
force, so they had, with the utmost patience, chipped and drilled and
scraped at the rock until they had bored a sort of rough tube eight or
nine inches deep and a couple of inches across.
Into this they packed a heavy charge of powder, and rammed it tightly
home, and then, as they had no proper fuse, they laid a train of damp
powder to it. Neither of the boys knew anything about mining or
blasting, so that they could only act in the way that their common
sense told them was best. Alec set fire to this train and then ran to
where George and Murri were standing at a safe distance. In a few
moments a tremendous explosion rent the air, and a vast cloud of heavy
smoke filled the end of the ravine. They could hear the falling of
heavy lumps of stone, but as there was no great rush of water down the
old course of the stream they knew that they had not succeeded in
breaking through the wall of rock.
When the clinging white clouds of smoke had slowly rolled up and away
they went to the pool to examine what damage the explosion had done,
and they found that it had torn and shattered the rock to a great
extent, but that as yet the barrier stood firm. They were hardly
disappointed at this result, for they knew the rock to be of some
considerable thickness, and had not expected to break it all down at
once. With his usual energy Alec immediately began to clear away the
_débris_, and the heavy vapour had hardly floated off before he was at
work again, chipping and pecking away to make another blast hole.
Murri who had been capering about in childish pleasure, that was tinged
with delightful fear, at the noise of the explosion, came up to Alec,
from the very safe distance to which he had run when the charge
exploded, and said--
"Mine _pitnee_" (I believe, or think), "_myalls_, come here along o'
that debil-debil. _Myalls_ hear um plenty much long way; um say
debil-debil along o' Whanga, and come see what him do. _Myalls_ come
daytime plenty much, afraid along o' dark-dark."
This was an anxiety that was no novelty to the boys; they had thought
that some such result was probable, but, as the work had to be done,
they did it, without letting fears of possible eventualities interfere
with the business in hand. That night passed quietly without signs of
the nearness of any _myall_, and they began to hope that no tribe had
been near enough to the valley to hear the explosion.
The next morning--the seventh day that they had been in the Whanga--the
two boys returned to their work of blasting the rock. The sun had not
risen when they left the humpie, and a cold mist hung above the water,
like a ghostly stream floating in the air, and following every curve
and bend of its prototype beneath. There was need for haste, for their
provisions, that had been so decreased by Prince Tom's theft, were
running short; the flour was almost gone; and if it had not been for
the fresh meat that Murri obtained for them they would have had to go
back before this.
"What have you got left?" said Alec, when George told him the state of
affairs.
"Well, there is really not more than four days' full rations of flour,
but we must put ourselves on short commons, and we can last out eight
or nine days then, if we can manage to get plenty of fresh provisions.
We must keep Murri at it, and see that he doesn't eat up three parts of
what he catches before he brings the spoil home to us. I have started
him off already."
"Not only that, but we will work a bit harder, and hurry on matters as
much as possible. I think we can have our second explosion to-day, and
that will about do the job. I declare, when I think how much depends
upon what we may or may not find at the bottom of that pool, I can
hardly go on with the work."
"It is disgusting to have to go on tinkering away at this fiddling
little hole," said George, who was taking a spell at the chisel, "when
all the time one wants to do some good slogging work with one's muscles
that would let the steam off a bit. Don't you feel like that?"
"Yes; and once or twice, after I have been chipping away for about half
an hour, just as though I were breaking the tops of eggs, and have been
rewarded for all my pains by loosening a bit of rock about the size of
a pea, I have caught the top of the chisel two or three such thundering
whacks that it is a wonder to me it hasn't doubled up."
About mid-day they had sunk the bore-hole to a sufficient depth for
their purpose and, quite silent from excitement, they proceeded to fill
it with a huge charge of powder. They generally stopped working at this
time, for the heat in the middle of the day was very great; but this
morning both boys were too tremblingly anxious to see the result of
their labours to let heat, or fatigue, or hunger, interfere with what
they were doing. Carefully ramming the powder down, and laying the
train to it, they applied the fire-stick that Geordie had run to fetch
from their smouldering fire.
They hurried back from the mine to a safe place a little way down the
ravine, and stood there awaiting the explosion. Alec, whose face was
rigid with anxiety, stood leaning upon George, with his arm round his
shoulders. Geordie, for all his excitement, had time to feel how icy
cold was his brother's hand and to think how nervous and troubled the
poor fellow must be for his hands to be like that. They stood thus,
perfectly still and silent, for a moment or two; it seemed an age to
their excited fancy. The spark of creeping fire advanced slowly along
the train, and then, with a dull, low roar, the mine exploded, and for
a second they heard nothing but the rending of rock and the crashing of
great pieces of stone as they fell on the crags. A little later they
heard the patter, like rain, of the smaller fragments, that had been
thrown higher into the air, as they fell, with a sharp little rattle,
on the rocks.
Then the boys heard a sound of seething, rushing water, and by the time
they had started to run towards the pool they saw a foaming mass of
tumbling water emerge from the grey curtain of the heavy smoke, and
tear wildly and rapidly along the old course of the stream.
They knew that the waters had escaped from the pool.
Stirred by one impulse, the two boys started to run to the pool before
the suffocating cloud of vapour had cleared off. By the time they had
reached the wall of rock, in which the last explosion had made a wide
breach, the air was pure enough for them to breathe, and they scrambled
up the rocks, and stood by the side of the opening, through which they
could hear the last of the water flowing. Although they could breathe
they could not yet see, for the dense vapour, which seemed to drift
above the surface of the basin, had not all disappeared.
They stood there, motionless, waiting for the air to clear itself.
Their hearts were beating tumultuously, and their chests were high with
anxiety and excitement. They stood just as when they were children
together, Geordie with his hand on Alec's arm, both divining what the
other felt, though no word was uttered.
It was not very long that they had to wait, for a faint wind stirred in
the gully, rustling the leaves of the shrubs and creepers on the cliff,
which wafted away, as though a veil were being withdrawn, the cloud of
blue-grey mist that had hung about the hollow of the basin. The boys
eagerly looked down.
There below them, in amongst the stones, half buried in the sand,
shining up through the little pools of water that still remained among
the rocks, were lumps and nuggets of the precious metal. They looked,
and looked again. Yes, there, beyond a doubt, gleaming in the hot,
strong sunlight, was the dull, yellow gold they sought. It almost
seemed to their wildly excited minds that the rocky basin was covered
with it, for look where they would they could see the yellow gleam of
gold, pure gold.
It was Geordie who spoke first. He was still clutching Alec's arm, with
a grasp that must have been painful in its intensity. A little half sob
of emotion and delight caught his breath as he said--
"It's gold, Alec, it's gold! A fortune, a great fortune, is lying at
our feet!"
He held one brown arm eagerly stretched out, and pointed to the empty
pool beneath him, as though to emphasise what he said.
Whilst the words were on his very lips, and before Alec had had time to
answer, a loud and piercing cry behind them made them turn their heads,
and there, rushing wildly towards them along the rocky ravine, was the
black figure of Murri, leaping great stones and boulders, plunging
through the stream, and running as they had never seen him run before.
His breath was almost gone, but he was just able to cry out in strange,
hoarse tones, that they could hardly recognise as his--
"Run, run, _burrima_, get um gun. _Myall_ have come. Um black fellow
along o' this place, one, two minute!"