Read Ebook: In Quest of Gold; Or Under the Whanga Falls by St Johnston Alfred Browne Gordon Illustrator

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Ebook has 796 lines and 52523 words, and 16 pages

"Plan! what plan?"

"Let me get something to eat first, and then I'll tell you all about it. I had no breakfast this morning, and I want to 'patter um bittee damper,' as Murri would say. Come and sit down on this rock, it is a particularly soft and comfortable one, and well in the shade. Well, sir, this is my idea," said he, throwing off his cap and giving his still damp hair a little impetuous shake that was very characteristic of him. "We must get to the bottom of that pool. It is too idiotic to have come all this way on purpose, and then to go back without doing it."

"And how are you going to do it--dive?"

"Be quiet, don't interrupt," said George, putting down by the side of him the food which in his earnestness he had forgotten to touch. "I will tell you what I believe we can do. It will take some time, and a lot of hard work, but of course that doesn't matter."

"No, of course not."

"We must divert the stream from its present channel and send it pouring over the cliff in another place. I have been up on to the top and have found a branch of the watercourse which we can use if we can manage to dam up the present channel."

Alec had sat listening, perfectly silent up till now, but at this point his admiration broke out.

"What a splendid idea! When did you think of it?" And then, as the thought struck him that diverting the stream would not solve their difficulty, he suddenly added, "But that won't empty the pool for us, that will be as full as ever."

"You jolly old muff, do you think I had not thought of that?"

"Well, and how do you propose to empty it?"

"Drink it all, I suppose," said Geordie, with a bright laugh at the sudden change from hope to doubt that took place in Alec's face. But, seeing how anxious he looked, he laid one hand on his brother's knee to give emphasis to what he said. The novelty and boldness of his own idea had greatly excited him, though he tried to carry it off lightly; and when he spoke his voice was lowered, as though there were any one within some hundreds of miles who could overhear him.

"No," he said, "the pool is no great difficulty after all if we can only carry out my scheme. The bottom of it is on a level with the stream, except just in the middle, where it is deeper, and the wall of rock over which the second little waterfall flows is but a thin one. If we can break through that all the water in the pool, or nearly all of it, will rush out into the stream."

"It will be slow work, but we ought to be able to do it."

"We will do it, and not so particularly slowly after all, for I mean to drill a hole into the rock and blast it up with gunpowder. Margaret little thought when she told us, before we left, to be sure to take plenty of powder, to what a purpose we should put it."

"But how much have we?"

"Plenty. We have used very little since we started."

"Geordie," said Alec, as he rose from the stone, "in my opinion you are a regular genius. Yes, you are; don't deny it."

"Oh, very well," laughed George, "I will be one if you like. It is easy enough to be a genius if that is all that is wanted. I've only just thought of a sort of plan, and, mind you, I shall leave all the details to you, for you always do things so much better than I do."

"Not I; but I am ready to begin at once."

"It is too hot yet, there is not a bit of shade up there on the top of the cliff. We had better wait till a little later in the afternoon."

"Let's go and examine the pool at any rate. It is not too hot for that, and I want to have a look at that wall of rock. So come on."

When they had returned to the camp after their visit to the waterfall, they found that Murri had got back. All that he brought was one kangaroo rat and a parrot. A very poor result for so long a morning's hunting.

"This all you get along um gully?" asked George, pointing to the black fellow's very scanty spoils.

This speech was so characteristic of the Australian black that neither of the boys was at all surprised at it. Although Murri was in many ways an exceptional specimen of the aboriginal race, it was not to be supposed that he should be free from all their faults and failings. Generosity can hardly be expected to be found among the virtues of a man who, like his ancestors for countless generations, has always thought of himself first, and of supplying his own requirements to the full before he gives away of his superfluity. Murri had killed the birds by his own skill and with his own strength, and who had so good a right as he to cook and eat them? That was what he himself would have said had he been asked, and he felt no shame in owning to George that he had cooked and eaten them himself. It was as useless to talk to him of generosity or self-sacrifice as it would be to try to make a man blind from his birth understand the meaning of colours.

Later in the afternoon, about two hours before sunset, the boys again walked towards the waterfall. Alec, who was not nearly so good a climber as George, utterly refused to climb up the cliff at the place Geordie had first ascended it. He said that he had some respect for his bones if Geordie had not, and climb up that cliff, which was no better than a stone wall, he would not. It was with some little difficulty that they found any less steep place, but they did at last discover one, some little way to the right hand side of the fall.

As soon as Alec had been shown the channel that George thought best for their purpose, he began to work. He was never one to spare himself when there was a difficult task on hand, and he flung himself into this new labour with all his usual ardour. George found his energy contagious, and they worked to such purpose that when they left off, some little time before sunset, they had collected a great pile of rocks at the edge of the stream with which they intended to begin their dam next day.

The one great danger in travelling in the wild parts of Queensland is the probability of being attacked by the fierce black natives, and every traveller in that little known country should be constantly on his guard. It is only natural that the native black races should retaliate upon the white intruders, at whose hands they have suffered so much; and as they have not the courage, or indeed the weapons, to enable them to attack a well-peopled station, they wait until they have a chance of murdering a solitary shepherd, or surrounding and surprising a small party when travelling away from civilised parts.

It was the thought of their exposed situation in case of an attack that guided Alec in his choice of a position for their camp. After examining the gully on both sides, he found a place that he thought admirably suited to his purpose. On the opposite side of the stream from that on which they had first encamped, there was a little opening in the side of the ravine. It was only a sort of wide crack in the rock, down which perhaps in times of heavy rain a little waterfall might flow. The width of it across the opening was about ten feet, and it was about the same, or a little more, in depth, at which distance the two walls of rock met at an angle.

It took them the best part of the day to get their house finished, for the stones of their wall would often slip when the boughs were being forced in between them, and the covering in of the roof took some little time, as they had great difficulty in fixing the thick ends of the branches they used for that purpose in the rocky sides of their house. But by working well they managed to get it done, and had installed themselves and all their possessions, saddles, guns, provisions, and stores of every sort--not a great quantity, by-the-by--in their new camp before the sun had set. It certainly was more comfortable than sleeping without any shelter, for the nights felt cold after the great heat of the days, and the dews that fell were quite heavy enough to wet their blankets and clothes right through.

The floor of the "humpie," as the boys called it, using the word that in Australia means hut or house or hovel, indiscriminately, was quite dry, and the roof looked thick enough to keep out all wet, so that they were in no small degree satisfied with their work when at last it was finished.

"You had better go with him. I won't put the Johnny cakes in till you come back."

"Yes, that will be the safest way, and I can have a look at the horses and see that they have not strayed."

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.

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.

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.

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--

"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.

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