"That means, wi' gold at £4 an ounce, £480 between the three o' us, my lads," said Mackay, when he heard the news. "An' we can calculate on twelve times that amount afore we're on to the mirage stuff."
"How does that compare with our home earnings, Jack?" laughed Bob.
"I think the steam yacht is coming a bit nearer," admitted that youth, lightly. "But," and his voice grew sorrowful, "isn't it a pity that we haven't two or three thousand tons——"
"Now, now, young 'un," Mackay interrupted sternly, "you must never give way to useless reflections. What is, is, and let us be thankful. The future is before ye, my lad, look to it for your Eldorado."
"After all," reasoned Bob, "we are never really contented. Our ideas of happiness seem to change so much; we are always seeking what we imagine to be a definite object, and when we reach it, another and apparently far greater incentive beckons us on—on to what?"
"There you go," grumbled Jack, "preaching a first-class sermon when we ought to be slogging away down in the shaft."
Bob started to his feet at once. "I clean forgot, Jack," said he; "your mention of the steam yacht which we used to talk about in the old days set me thinking."
They disappeared together, engaged in earnest conversation. A rough ladder-way had been fixed in the shaft by this time, so that it was not necessary for the windlass to be called into requisition every time an ascent or descent was made. Mackay, who had just been returning from his labours below when he received the information about the battery results, sat musing on the edge of his bunk for some minutes after the boys had departed. Bob's words had aroused in him a strange feeling of restlessness and discontent, which, try as he might, he could not shake off.
"It's the call of the Never Never gripping me again," he muttered hoarsely. "I wonder what great secret that terrible country holds as a recompense for all the lives it has taken. Is it only a shadow that attracts, after all?"