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—
"We shall be free men again! As long as that loathsome debt was unpaid I could never have an easy hour; and now I hope, I believe, we shall be able to pay it all off and owe no man a shilling."
"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.
When they had scrambled down the cliff and had got back to the front of the humpie they found that Murri had returned from the quandang trees, whither the boys had sent him, with a plump, richly plumaged pigeon and a parrot. These Murri was already cooking.
"You chewt um bird up along o' there?" asked that intelligent gentleman, who thought that all exclamations of joy must be the expressions of delight of a hungry stomach at the near prospect of food. "Mine heard Missa Law give one coo-ee. Why yo sittum down in um water?"
"Because I very much fear, my dear Murri—and I blush to confess it—that I was quite unable to keep upon my feet."
"Yohi," (yes) grinned the savage, who did not understand a word.
The boys were able next morning to proceed with filling in the cracks and openings in their dam with sods of grass and earth, for they found that the rocks and stones had stood firm. They left an opening a foot or so wide at the side of the dam, through which the waters might flow till they were ready to close the embankment. They found that the pieces of tussocky grass roots, that Murri had cut the day before, were too dry to be of much service, and they had to carry up, with great labour, large lumps of the damp sort of turf that grew in the little marshy place down the stream. These did admirably, and seemed to fit themselves firmly in between the stones.
It took a long time to cut and transport to the top of the cliff all these heavy pieces of sod, for they had to use their arms so much in the climbing that it was difficult to carry more than one or two pieces of it at one time. But the boys were so excited that they toiled on nearly all the morning without a break, and resumed the work, after their mid-day rest, at about four o'clock, with unwearied zeal. Murri looked on in dumb astonishment at such incredible behaviour.