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!"
"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!"
Hearing this cry, the boys turned and leaped down from the rocks, and joined Murri, who, panting for breath, and half frightened to death, was standing by the stream, down which a little water still was draining. He told them, in his queer English, that he had been following a wounded kangaroo rat, just on the other side of the quandang trees, when he had looked up suddenly, and found that the ravine was peopled with myalls, not a quarter of a mile from him. They had seen him, he said, for as he turned to run a great many men had started in pursuit. He could not say how many, for an Australian cannot count above four, but he told them, "Plenty much black fellow run kill Murri, bail cotch him."
Without wasting time on useless speech, the boys turned, and whistling to Como, who was lying in the shade of a great rock, they ran towards the humpie. It was bitter, very bitter, thus to have the cup dashed from their lips just when it was raised to them; it was hard that, just when success seemed secured, they were not able to reap the fruits of all their toil. But neither Alec nor George was of the sort to rail at Fortune, and without a backward glance or an angry word they hurried away.
It is to be feared that this extremely sensible behaviour was not prompted by a feeling of what was right and dignified; the two lads were far too frank and human to feel anything but angry and provoked at the evil turn things had taken. They were very natural fellows, and not at all angelic, and therefore they felt this sudden check very keenly, but they were possessed with the common sense that, in a time of danger, springs from self-reliance and courage, and they knew that their only chance lay in getting to their arms before they were cut off by the enemy. There was no time to think of the gold, for their very lives might be at stake, and the boys, very wisely, considered their lives of far more value to them than tons of any metal, however precious it might be.
Racing madly along, over rocks and sandy shingle, quite regardless that the mid-day sun was pouring down its burning rays upon them, and that the air of the close gully was quivering in the heat, they reached the shelter of the humpie at last. It was only just in time, for as they darted through the opening in the low stone wall that barricaded the house eight or nine great black fellows came within spear-shot. One of them threw a slender spear at them just as Alec sprang into shelter; it struck the fire-log, just beyond the humpie, raising a little shower of sparks. The instant that they were inside the humpie the boys seized their guns, which were always loaded, and put a heap of cartridges on to the floor near to them both. They had their guns at full cock, and had covered the myalls in much less time than it takes to tell of it, but they did not fire. Alec spoke, without lifting his head or raising his eye from the sight of his gun.
"Don't fire, Geordie. I can't bear killing these poor beggars. I can't forget those we shot before, and that time it was in self-defence."
"So is this."
"No, not yet. They may be friendly, and mean us no harm whatever."
Whilst the boys were thus hurriedly speaking the myalls had stopped in their advance, and stood talking together. It was just as Alec had hoped—they were perfectly friendly, and wished them no harm; in fact, they had not known that there were any white men present till they saw Alec and George rush past them, and they were overwhelmed with curiosity to examine them and their wondrous clothes and property. It is the coast aboriginals, and those that are near the English runs, that so hate the white man. He it is who has settled on their land without their permission; driven away the kangaroo and emu by introducing cattle, which not only deprive the black men of their food, but trample and pollute their springs and water-holes into morasses of mud and filth; and in return has brought the poor savage what he calls civilisation, but which is really extermination.
No wonder that the poor childish native retaliates, and endeavours vainly to stem or drive back the irresistible wave which advances upon him, and which must inevitably sweep him and his whole race away. It is different with the quite wild myall, who has not yet learned what is the fate that follows so closely on the white man's heels. He, poor creature, after the first shock of terror has subsided, often receives the pale stranger well, or, at least, without animosity, and shows him where water is to be found, and which is the best road for him to follow.
Just so it was with this tribe of Wyobree warriors; they had seen Murri run away from the mere sight of them, and had instinctively started in pursuit. We are all alike in that—a remnant of our former savagery, perhaps. Let anything start away and run from us, and instantly we feel the desire to follow and catch, a natural instinct that all these generations of our so-called civilisation have failed to stamp out.
It seemed to the boys an age whilst the Wyobree men (as they afterwards learned they were called) stood thus talking. They still kept them covered with their guns, and the fact that the blacks stood so calmly there—out of spear range, the myalls knew—told the boys that they were ignorant of the deadly power of fire-arms. Murri, with all the hatred of the partly civilised savage for the totally wild, kept urging Alec and George to fire upon the blacks.
"Chewt um, Alec, chewt um, Missa Law. What for you bail kill um? Myall kill white fellow plenty much time. What for yo bail chewt um black fellow dead bong?"
But notwithstanding these pressing invitations to slaughter a few of his countrymen, the boys reserved their fire. They knew it would be useless to try to make Murri understand their reasons for so doing, so they did not attempt to enlighten him, thus giving the poor fellow another incomprehensible mystery to puzzle over. After some moments longer of keen suspense the boys saw the foremost man of the party lay down his spears, nullah-nullah, and throwing stick, and, advancing a pace or two, he addressed them at a very rapid rate, apparently saying the same thing over and over again.
The boys, who knew but very little even of the language of the tribe near their own run, were quite unable to follow what he said; but Murri seemed to understand him.
"Myall say um bail go kill um white fellow. Myall say um plenty big corroborree" (night dance and singing), "along o' Parwango gully. Um say yo go."
"What's that? A big corroborree at Parwango, and will we go with them to it? Shall we, Alec?"
"No, no, let us stay here, collect the gold, and get home as quickly as possible. We have run enough risks already. Lie down, Como!"
Alec told Murri to go to the entrance of the humpie and tell the men that they could not go with them; and he did so, calmly enough now that he saw the myalls were friendly. But the black men did not seem inclined to take a refusal; they spoke angrily when they understood Murri's message, and their speaker returned to the rest of the party and snatched up his weapons from the ground. Just then more savages came upon the scene, and matters presenting rather a dangerous appearance, the boys began to think whether it would not be safer for them to agree to their demand and go with them than to enrage them further with a refusal.
Alec asked Murri if he knew how far the Parwango gully was from there, and was told—
"Um Parwango bail long way. Plenty much near Whanga. Along o' there," added he, pointing his lank, black arm to the north-west. "Mine pitnee" (I think) "um black fellow go bora."
"Oh, let's go, Alec, if they are going to hold a bora. No Englishman has ever been present at one."
"That is to say, has ever come away from one."
"Well, we may just as well chance it as stay here and be prodded to death with those nasty spears, and battered to a jelly afterwards. They are getting angry, but they mean well as yet, so here goes." Without another word, and disregarding Alec's call, Geordie laid down his gun and stepped out into the sunshine, followed closely by his great dog. He quietly walked up to the myalls, who received him in the friendliest way; indeed in too friendly a style, for they wished to examine him and all that he had on in the most curious manner. Murri, who had followed close upon George's heels, was plied with a multiplicity of questions which he answered as well as he could.
It seemed that George had been right in his opinion of the friendliness of the myalls, for from the moment he joined them they showed no sign of ill-feeling or treachery. They were inquisitive and curious, but were otherwise entirely amicable. Without further argument the two boys and Murri accompanied them to the Parwango valley, which was at the distance of about two hours' journey, and there they stayed, in the little camp the Wyobrees had made for themselves, till after dark. They witnessed one or two little corroborrees (dances) amongst the men, and then without let or hindrance they returned to the Whanga. The bora (a mysterious native ceremony) and the big corroborree were not to take place till the following night.
When they left the Parwango valley the night was rather dark, for the moon was in its first quarter, but Murri could find the way easily enough, and they were back in their own valley after a walk of less than two hours. Everything was as they had left it, and, as by this time they were all thoroughly tired, they turned into the humpie, and, flinging themselves down on the heaps of fern and leaves that they had collected for their beds, they slept soundly till nearly sunrise.
A movement of Como, who always slept at his master's feet, awoke Geordie next morning, and looking up he saw by the lightness of the sky (for the leaves of the branches that formed the roof had shrivelled in the heat of the sun, and he could see between the boughs) that day was at hand. He gave a great yawn and half rolled over to go to sleep again, when he remembered how much they had to do that day, and determined to get up. He stretched himself, and gave himself a vigorous shake and sat up. Alec still slept.
"Now then, wake up, you lazy beggar!" called out George from where he sat stretching his arms and rumpling his hair.
Alec bounded up as though he were shot. "What's the matter, what's the matter?" asked he in a startled voice.
"All sorts of things are the matter, but getting up is the one on hand just now, so turn out and come and have a dip in the stream—that'll wake you up."
The morning was cool before the sun was up, and the mists lay all about the valley. Leaving Murri in the humpie still asleep, or pretending to be so, the boys came out as they were, and, with Como barking a glad morning bark and leaping by the side of them, they ran to the stream. The water was cold, and the boys came out of it rosy and steaming, and feeling fresh and strong. It did not take them long to get into their clothes, and soon they were walking back to the humpie, where they combed their crisp wet hair and made Murri get up and make a fire.
They were in capital spirits, and whilst the "billies" were boiling for their tea they walked together to have a look at their gold. There it all lay, just as they had left it. Nuggets and lumps of pure gold, yellow and heavy and chill; great pieces of rich quartz, with bits of gold stuck all over it, and gold mixed with the sand that covered the bottom of the rocky basin. The boys leaped down from the rocks into the dried-up pool, and began picking up the heavy pieces of the precious metal, for the mere pleasure of handling it. Geordie laughed aloud.
"Isn't it wonderful? Look at this piece and that one, why it is pure solid gold! Alec, how much do we owe that old beast of a Crosby?"
"He lent us £4,000, and there's another £600 or £700 interest, I suppose, by this time. Just think of the old usurer extorting 15 per cent., and from a friend, too."
"Well, do you think there is £5,000 worth of gold here?"
"Yes, and more—much more; twice or three times that much, but we can't take it all."
"Nor want it. To get five or six thousand pounds worth is all that I pray for. Funny to think, isn't it, that those yellow stones there mean so much to us? Wandaroo, and freedom from debt; and a mile or so of fencing; and a new strain of sheep perhaps! It makes me laugh to think of it."
And laugh he did, a jolly, happy peal, that rang through the clear morning air and echoed from the rocks.
"When you have finished that morning exercise of yours, my young hyena, we'll go and get some breakfast," said Alec, whose own face was radiant with pleasure, taking his brother's arm. "We will get as much gold as we can carry, catch the horses, pack up, and be off for home this morning, before any of those worthy, but probably changeable, Wyobrees take it into their heads to visit us."
It did not take the boys very long to eat their breakfast, they were too excited to linger over it, and leaving Murri still solemnly munching away—he had not nearly done—they went back to the pool. They at once began to collect the pieces of gold, and to pile them into little heaps. Some of these lumps still had bits of quartz attached to them, and these the boys rejected, only taking those nuggets which were free from them. It was evident from the rounded and worn condition of the nuggets that they had been subjected to years, perhaps centuries, of grinding and rubbing amongst the stones at the bottom of the pool, into which they had been brought by the torrents, in flood time, from the gold-bearing rocks of the mountain. The strange shape of the rock basin, which the cascade had slowly formed, had prevented the stream from carrying them still farther down the valley.
"Why, Geordie!" suddenly exclaimed Alec, as he added a nugget weighing five or six ounces to his rapidly increasing pile. "What a fool I am. I clean forgot all about carrying the gold back with us. What have we got to pack it in?"
"Canvas bags, which your thoughtful little brother George brought on purpose!" said Geordie, with a grin.
"Well, you are a young Solomon! You think of everything," said Alec, a moment or so later, when his brother came back from his humpie with the shot bags.
"They'll each hold fourteen pounds weight of gold, not troy weight pounds, but honest sixteen ounce pounds, the sort that I like, so that we can tell somewhere about the value of our booty. What is gold worth an ounce?"
"Don't know exactly; something about four pounds."
"Then each of these bags," said Geordie, after two or three minutes of calculation—he was not very quick at figures—"will be worth between seven and eight hundred pounds when it is full!" And he slapped his thigh and capered about on the top of the flat stone on which he was perched.
Putting the value of the gold into figures in this manner seemed to make its worth much more definite to the boys; it was hard to realise, without the aid of numbers, of how great value were those rather ugly-looking, heavy lumps of metal.
"It makes one feel rich merely to handle it, doesn't it?" said Alec, as he threw a smooth little nugget of gold into the open mouth of the bag he was filling.
"I should think it did just," answered Geordie, with an excited laugh; "and listen to this," he added, as he took up his bag and bumped it on the rock to make the pieces lie close together. "Doesn't that noise suggest wealth? No paltry clinking, but a good rich solid thud, like a piece of cold plum pudding."
"Yes, delicious! And only think that all of this is going to swell old Crosby's coffers." Alec spoke regretfully, and with a sound of avarice in his voice that was not at all natural to it. There is something terrible about great quantities of gold that seems to instil a spirit of miserliness into most men, however generous, or even prodigal, they may be. Geordie noticed this novel tone in Alec's voice, and said—
"But I don't think anything of the sort; I don't consider old Crosby's or anybody else's coffers; all I think of, and so do you, is that we shall be out of debt, and able to call Wandaroo our own again. If I thought the gold was going to change you, and turn you into a money-grub and a screw, I'd slit every bag open, and let the beastly stuff roll out in the scrub as we rode along. So pull yourself together and don't talk like that." Geordie got rather red in the face over this long speech, which he delivered with great energy, for although these two fellows always spoke out to each other, without fear of misunderstanding, what they thought, neither of them liked to sermonize.
Alec only said, "Right you are, younker; it is beastly stuff in some ways, and I won't think of it in that manner any more. What a beggar you are to spot what I am thinking of. How many bags does that make?"
"I am just filling number nine. I should almost think that——"
But what it was that George Law almost thought at that interesting moment was never known, for as he was speaking they heard a loud shout at the camp, just round the bend of the gully. Como, who was lying basking in the early sunshine, raced off to see what it was, and the boys, leaving their filled bags on the rocky wall of the pool, scrambled up the stones and leaped down to the bed of the stream. Just as they started to run to the humpie, Murri, with a face of a dirty slate colour from fright, came tearing round the cliff.
"Run, run!" he shouted; "um Wyobree fellows here one more time; plenty much myall, um kill us all. Climb up along o' that place," he said, pointing to the cliff over which the waterfall poured; and only waiting for him to come up to them the boys scrambled like cats up the crag, and hid themselves in the thick brushwood at the top. Como had not come back, but they could trust to his good sense to keep out of harm's way.
No sooner had they reached this place of vantage than six Wyobree men, in full paint and finery, and fully armed, came rushing round the bend of the ravine. They had seen Murri run thither, and without waiting to search the humpie, had followed in hot pursuit.
It was evident that their friendly feelings of the night before were completely changed. The desire to possess the white men's goods had been too strong for them to resist.
From where they lay crouching the boys could see the myalls stop, evidently puzzled at the surprising way their quarry had so entirely vanished, but it was only for a moment; one of them very soon found some of their old traces, and followed their tracks along the now dry bed of the drained stream till they came to the emptied pool. The astonishment of the Wyobree men at the change that had taken place there was beyond measure; they looked about them in bewilderment and talked rapidly together.
Whilst they were standing consulting with each other, Murri whispered that he recognised one of the men as the fellow who had acted as spokesman for the tribe the night before.
"Then you may be sure that they are here for no good," said George to his brother.
"No; so get your revolver ready."
"But I haven't got it with me; I didn't put it on this morning."
"And neither have I mine! There it is, see, on the rocks below. I took it out of my belt when I was filling the bags, and forgot to pick it up when Murri shouted out."
"Then we are done for if they see us. We must trust to their not finding us."
But that hope was blighted even as he spoke, for in drawing back a little from the edge of the cliff George loosened a tiny pebble, which rolled over and fell on to the rocks beneath.
Alec's agonised "Hush, hush!" was all in vain. The tiny sound had struck the acute ears of the savages, and instantly betrayed the boys' hiding-place. One of the men had fitted a spear to his throwing stick, and before a second was passed a quivering dart whirred through the bushes just above their heads. The Wyobrees lost no time; without waiting a moment they began to climb up the cliff from the dry basin. They did not stop to choose the easiest place of ascent, but boldly began to scale up the very place over which the great waterfall used to pour.
The rock is very steep there, but they seem to find no difficulty in climbing it. In another moment they will have reached the edge of the cliff. They have left their spears down below, but their boomerangs are in their belts of kangaroo sinew, and they hold their waddies in their great strong jaws.
The boys are absolutely unarmed. Their fate seems sealed. They had risen to their feet when they saw that their hiding-place was detected, and now, white to the lips from the very anguish of excitement that they suffer, but quite calm, they look in each other's eyes steadily and prepare to meet their death. The myalls have almost reached the top of the crag; the foremost man will be able to place his hands on the edge in another moment. Suddenly, with a voice like a trumpet, Alec yells out—
"Follow me! Run for your life; we'll do the beggars yet!"
As he spoke—his face was pale no longer, and his eyes were blazing—he darted off, closely followed by George, to the old course of the stream. They wildly tore through the tangled scrub, heedless of the wounds their arms and faces received, and leaped madly across the new channel of the rapid stream.
"Make haste!" shrieked Alec, his voice shrill with excitement.
"What to do?" gasped George.
Without pausing Alec plunged waist deep into the water that their embankment retained, and shouted—
"Burst the dam!"
Alec followed, and the two together began to push and beat and tear at the stones they had so carefully built up a day or two before.
But had they built too firmly? would the heavy rocks never give way? Already the first man is breast high above the edge of the cliff; others are close behind him. If once they get on to their feet the boys know they are dead men. The two lads work like maniacs; they know that death is but a yard or two away. Their hands are bleeding on the jagged edges of the stones; they do not feel it; their muscles are strained till their limbs are like iron, and the veins stand out like cords in their necks and on their temples, and they know nothing of it.
Push harder, lads; tear down the stones; do not die at the hands of these butcher blacks!
It is useless; the dam stands firm.
"Once more, Geordie. Together now. Shove with your whole soul." Alec's voice was hoarse, and he spoke through his wildly clenched teeth.
One more fierce struggle they made, as though their very hearts would burst. The great stones tremble; the whole dam sways. It gives, it gives! They feel the stones totter, and clasping each other grimly round the waist, as the mighty swirl of the escaping water almost tears them from their feet, the boys stagger to the edge of the channel.
The dam has given way; the pent-up waters pour along all white and foaming, and the stream, rediverted into its old channel, adds all the force of its great current to the escaping flood. With a loud roar the waters rush forward, sweeping the rocks and stones of the dam along in their resistless strength, and with a noise as of thunder, above which the despairing shrieks of the myalls rise for one brief second, the hapless wretches are torn from their feeble hold of the rock and, swept into the awful rush and crash of the cascade, are flung with the rolling stones of the broken dam, and battered into silence and death upon the frightful rocks below.