“Then I am correct in saying that this is alabaster,” the boy answered; “for alabaster is a compact variety of sulphate of lime.”
“Now for the mine!” exclaimed Ferguson, and they at once turned from the shaft and made ready to continue the journey.
“Old Huayno directed you to proceed farther north for a half mile, until you should see another white rock, did he not?” asked the captain.
“Yes.”
“Then put your compass on something level, Hope-Jones, and give us the bearings.”
The Englishman did so, and the needle pointed in a direction that took them away from the stream, into the light growth of woods. They tightened their belts and started, pushing forward rapidly and eagerly. Months afterward Harvey said that no stage or event of the journey, not even the encounter with the savages, was so firmly impressed on his mind as was this period after they swung to the left from the bank of the river Marañon.
“I had a stuffy feeling,” he explained; “all choked up, and didn’t know whether I should cry like a baby when I reached the mine, or shout like a man. I thought all the time of mother, father, Rosita, and Louis, of what riches would do for them. Yes, to be sure, I thought of myself as well, but to tell the honest truth, it was not so much with the idea of having great riches at hand, as it was to be able to purchase some books that I wanted, and a sail-boat.”
These thoughts of the boy were shared in their intensity by the other members of the party. Hope-Jones had left an aged mother in England, who, though not in want, would be none the less a sharer in any good fortune that might come to her son; Ferguson built air-castles for his sister, who was studying music in Boston, and who had written him only by the last mail that she would be perfectly happy, could she but go abroad. As for the captain, he had long wished that six months might be passed in Lima and the remaining period of the year in their home in Huari. Thus busied they said little or nothing during the first ten minutes after leaving the Marañon, but kept on diligently, making as much speed as was possible over the rough country.
Their speculating reveries were interrupted by the captain, who called a halt for a conference.
“Your old Indian friend said something about trees having been felled across the path from the river to the mine, did he not?”