"How do you usually get a light?" he asked at length.
"You are anticipating me, Bob," laughed Bentley. "At night we use the flints, in the old primitive way, but in the daytime I use the lens of my pocket microscope which was left to me. If I hold it in the sun's rays it will light a fire of these twigs in less than sixty seconds. That was the first thing the natives saw me do that made them marvel. They couldn't understand how I could call down fire from heaven, and it's one of the few things which that knowing old king of theirs hasn't grasped yet."
In a few minutes Stewart and Pioneer Bill were busy preparing supper. There seemed to be no lack of cooking utensils, and each vessel was most peculiarly marked, as if it had been stamped out of the solid. Mackay, who had thrown off his encumbering outer garb, sat gazing into the fire, apparently lost in the depths of his thoughts; Bentley and Phil were talking earnestly together in a subdued voice; Emu Bill roamed aimlessly about the room; Bob, Jack, and the Shadow were glaring with wide-open eyes at the thin metal platters with which Stewart had adorned the table;—not one of them could find words to speak.
"Is—is it another mirage?" muttered the Shadow, at length, stretching out a hesitating hand; then a whoop of delight burst from his lips. "Say, boss," he cried, shaking Mackay energetically by the shoulder. "Look! Look at this!"
Mackay awoke from his reverie with a start, and turned his head.
"Ay, it's gold, Shadow," said he, calmly. "I am no' vera surprised."
Bentley gave a whistle of annoyance. "Well, boys," he explained, "I absolutely forgot to mention the matter, but gold is so plentiful in this quarter that I have got quite accustomed to it, and I do believe I had also forgotten that the stuff has such a powerful value——"
"Spin us your yarn after supper, Dick," said Mackay. "I'm as hungry as a starved dingo just now."
"I've felt a bit sick ever since I saw them plates an' things," said Emu Bill, pausing in his perambulations. "Howlin' blazes! I wish we could cart the whole mountain away wi' us."
"I don't suppose you've got a bit o' tea in your pocket?" interjected Stewart, eyeing Mackay pathetically. "No? Weel, I'll just have to mak' up my ain concoction. It's no' vera bad when you get accustomed to it; but I'm sair wearyin' for a ceevilized drink. I hope the flavour o' the leaves winna disagree wi' ye; I gather them off a wee bush that grows in the forest, but the taste is naething like the real article."