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."