In Quest of Gold; Or, Under the Whanga Falls

by Alfred St. Johnston

"Oh, yes we have," said George, whose more imaginative mind saw to what different uses one article might be put. It is this imaginative quality that makes a man an inventor and a devisor of new methods of working, when an unimaginative person, though perhaps much more learned, will continue using old ones just for want of the illumination that would show him new and better means of obtaining the same result.

"What is it?"

"Why the steel extracting rod that is fastened to your revolver. We can harden and temper it, after we have beaten it roughly into shape with our tomahawks."

It was with this primitive tool that they set to work next day to bore holes into the wall of rock which retained the water in the pool. The rock was all green and slimy with a sort of soft water moss, which they had to scrape away before they could reach the stone itself. The old course of the stream was only to be recognised by a few little pools of water that lay along its track, and by the darker colour of the wet stones which the sun had not yet dried. The stream flowed along its new bed as naturally as though it had never known another.

Fortunately for the boys the rock they had to work upon was not very hard. It was a sort of dark blue slate; had it been quartz, the same as were the upper rocks of the mountain, it would have taken them weeks to make any impression on it. Impeded as they were by the want of proper tools, it took them nearly two days to make a hole deep enough for their first blasting. They knew it was useless to make a great wide hole to place their powder in, as the explosion would then have no force, so they had, with the utmost patience, chipped and drilled and scraped at the rock until they had bored a sort of rough tube eight or nine inches deep and a couple of inches across.

Into this they packed a heavy charge of powder, and rammed it tightly home, and then, as they had no proper fuse, they laid a train of damp powder to it. Neither of the boys knew anything about mining or blasting, so that they could only act in the way that their common sense told them was best. Alec set fire to this train and then ran to where George and Murri were standing at a safe distance. In a few moments a tremendous explosion rent the air, and a vast cloud of heavy smoke filled the end of the ravine. They could hear the falling of heavy lumps of stone, but as there was no great rush of water down the old course of the stream they knew that they had not succeeded in breaking through the wall of rock.

When the clinging white clouds of smoke had slowly rolled up and away they went to the pool to examine what damage the explosion had done, and they found that it had torn and shattered the rock to a great extent, but that as yet the barrier stood firm. They were hardly disappointed at this result, for they knew the rock to be of some considerable thickness, and had not expected to break it all down at once. With his usual energy Alec immediately began to clear away the débris, and the heavy vapour had hardly floated off before he was at work again, chipping and pecking away to make another blast hole.

Murri who had been capering about in childish pleasure, that was tinged with delightful fear, at the noise of the explosion, came up to Alec, from the very safe distance to which he had run when the charge exploded, and said—

"Mine pitnee" (I believe, or think), "myalls, come here along o' that debil-debil. Myalls hear um plenty much long way; um say debil-debil along o' Whanga, and come see what him do. Myalls come daytime plenty much, afraid along o' dark-dark."

This was an anxiety that was no novelty to the boys; they had thought that some such result was probable, but, as the work had to be done, they did it, without letting fears of possible eventualities interfere with the business in hand. That night passed quietly without signs of the nearness of any myall, and they began to hope that no tribe had been near enough to the valley to hear the explosion.