"Don't you think, Ned, we might be allowed a square inch of damper for lunch to-day? We are going back now, and I am starving," said Steve.
"All right. Half a damper among the three if you like, but not a mouthful more."
Even this was more than he had hoped for, so Steve chewed the heavy damp morsel carefully; not that he distrusted the powers of his digestion, but because he was anxious to make the most of every crumb of his scanty repast.
Just below where the three were sitting grew a patch of orange-coloured Indian pinks. "I guess there's water not far from those flowers," remarked Steve, "and I want a drink badly before I light my pipe."
Dry bread is apt to stick in a man's gullet however hungry he may be, so that the three went down together, and found that, as Steve suspected, the pinks were growing in a damp spot, from which oozed a tiny rill, which, as they followed it, grew and grew until the rapidity of its growth roused their curiosity, and led them on long after they had found the drinking-place they sought.
All at once it seemed as if the stream had been augmented by water from some subterranean source, for its volume grew at a bound from that of a rill to that of a good-sized mountain stream, which gurgled noisily through the mosses for a few hundred yards, and then plunged through a cleft in the rocks to reappear, three or four hundred feet below, a dark rapid mountain-torrent, running between walls of wet black rock.
"It is a queer-looking place, isn't it, Steve? Any fellow might go all over this country and miss seeing that creek. I wonder if it is worth while climbing down that place to prospect it?"
But whilst the strongest stood doubting, the weakest of the party had scrambled like a cat over the rocks, and could now be seen on his knees by the brink of the dark waters, washing as he had never washed before. At last the little blue figure sprang to its feet, and waving its arms wildly, yelled:
"Chicamon! chicamon! Me find him. Hyóu Chicamon!" (anglice heaps of money).