The next morning—the seventh day that they had been in the Whanga—the two boys returned to their work of blasting the rock. The sun had not risen when they left the humpie, and a cold mist hung above the water, like a ghostly stream floating in the air, and following every curve and bend of its prototype beneath. There was need for haste, for their provisions, that had been so decreased by Prince Tom's theft, were running short; the flour was almost gone; and if it had not been for the fresh meat that Murri obtained for them they would have had to go back before this.
"What have you got left?" said Alec, when George told him the state of affairs.
"Well, there is really not more than four days' full rations of flour, but we must put ourselves on short commons, and we can last out eight or nine days then, if we can manage to get plenty of fresh provisions. We must keep Murri at it, and see that he doesn't eat up three parts of what he catches before he brings the spoil home to us. I have started him off already."
"Not only that, but we will work a bit harder, and hurry on matters as much as possible. I think we can have our second explosion to-day, and that will about do the job. I declare, when I think how much depends upon what we may or may not find at the bottom of that pool, I can hardly go on with the work."
"It is disgusting to have to go on tinkering away at this fiddling little hole," said George, who was taking a spell at the chisel, "when all the time one wants to do some good slogging work with one's muscles that would let the steam off a bit. Don't you feel like that?"
"Yes; and once or twice, after I have been chipping away for about half an hour, just as though I were breaking the tops of eggs, and have been rewarded for all my pains by loosening a bit of rock about the size of a pea, I have caught the top of the chisel two or three such thundering whacks that it is a wonder to me it hasn't doubled up."
About mid-day they had sunk the bore-hole to a sufficient depth for their purpose and, quite silent from excitement, they proceeded to fill it with a huge charge of powder. They generally stopped working at this time, for the heat in the middle of the day was very great; but this morning both boys were too tremblingly anxious to see the result of their labours to let heat, or fatigue, or hunger, interfere with what they were doing. Carefully ramming the powder down, and laying the train to it, they applied the fire-stick that Geordie had run to fetch from their smouldering fire.
They hurried back from the mine to a safe place a little way down the ravine, and stood there awaiting the explosion. Alec, whose face was rigid with anxiety, stood leaning upon George, with his arm round his shoulders. Geordie, for all his excitement, had time to feel how icy cold was his brother's hand and to think how nervous and troubled the poor fellow must be for his hands to be like that. They stood thus, perfectly still and silent, for a moment or two; it seemed an age to their excited fancy. The spark of creeping fire advanced slowly along the train, and then, with a dull, low roar, the mine exploded, and for a second they heard nothing but the rending of rock and the crashing of great pieces of stone as they fell on the crags. A little later they heard the patter, like rain, of the smaller fragments, that had been thrown higher into the air, as they fell, with a sharp little rattle, on the rocks.
Then the boys heard a sound of seething, rushing water, and by the time they had started to run towards the pool they saw a foaming mass of tumbling water emerge from the grey curtain of the heavy smoke, and tear wildly and rapidly along the old course of the stream.
They knew that the waters had escaped from the pool.