"Ye're faur too impatient," Mac reproved. "Ye didna expec' tae see it floatin' on tap o' a' that stuff surely?"
I tilted the pan obliquely several times in order to make the contents slide round in the circular groove provided, and as it slowly moved under the gentle pressure of the little water remaining, it left a glittering trail in its wake, which caused my three companions to break out in a whoop of delight.
Some sixty seconds later the Union Jack floated bravely above our windlass, and was hailed with a thunder of applause.
[CAMP-FIRE REMINISCENCES]
For many weeks work went on merrily. One after another the various claims reached paying gravel, and flags of all designs and colours soon marked the course of the lead for fully half a mile, after which distance the golden vein effectually eluded discovery; it had apparently disappeared into the bowels of the earth. For the first few days succeeding our location of the auriferous wash we contented ourselves in dollying the more easily disintegrated parts of the white conglomerate, and collecting the solid and cumbrous blocks excavated into sacks, each of which when filled weighed over a hundred pounds. These I meant to send to some crushing battery when several tons had been raised.
The water for dollying as well as for all other purposes was obtained from a deep shaft sunk near at hand by a speculative individual, who considered that water might ultimately pay him as generously as gold, and as he charged eightpence a gallon for the brackish fluid, and had an unlimited demand for it at that, he probably found it a less troublesome and much more lucrative commodity than even a moderately wealthy claim on the Five-Mile Lead. As it so happened, however, when other claims began to copy our tactics and dolly portions of their wash, it was made evident that the water bore was not equal to the strain, and once or twice it ran dry at a most critical time. After a careful computation of its capacity we saw that it could only be drawn upon for domestic purposes in future, and even then there was every probability of the supply giving out if a good rainfall did not soon occur to moisten the land and percolate to the impervious basin tapped by the bore in question.
| Our Shaft. |