Diphtheria, cholera, the black death itself, rapid though they are in their spread, and appalling though they are in their strength, are sluggish and weak compared to the gold fever. In one moment, at that cry of "chicamon! chicamon!" (money! money!), Chance had recovered from his fatigue, Corbett had awakened from his dreams of vengeance, and both together were scrambling recklessly down the rocks to the pool, beside which Phon was again kneeling, washing the golden dirt.
In spite of his native phlegm and his professed disregard for gold, Ned Corbett actually jostled his companions in his eagerness to get to the water; and though his pet pipe dropped from his mouth and broke into a hundred pieces, he never seemed to know what had happened to him.
When Phon washed his first panful of dirt in Pete's Creek it was broad noon; when Ned Corbett straightened his back with a sigh and came back for a moment almost to his senses, it was too dark to see the glittering specks in their pans any longer.
From noon to dusk they had toiled like galley slaves, without a thought of time, or fatigue, or hunger, and yet two of these were weak, tired men, and the third, under ordinary circumstances, really had quite a beautiful contempt for the sordid dollar.
When Corbett looked at the gleaming yellow stuff, and realized what power it had suddenly exerted over him, he actually felt afraid of it. There was something uncanny about it. But there was no longer any doubt about Pete's Creek. They had struck it this time, and no mistake; and if there was much "dirt" like that which they had been washing since noon, a few months of steady work would make all three rich men for life. In most places which they had seen, the gold had been found in dust: here it was in flakes and scales, as big as the scales upon the back of a chub. In most places a return of a few cents to the pan would have been considered "good enough:" here the return was not in cents but in dollars, and yet even now what was this which Phon the Chinaman was saying, his features working as if he were going into an epileptic fit?
"This nothing, nothing at all! You wait till to-mollow. Then we see gold,—heap gold not all same this, but in lumps!"
And he got up and walked about, nodding his head and muttering: "You bet you sweet life! Heap gold! You bet you sweet life!" whilst the red firelight flickered over his wizened features, and dwelt in the corners of his small dark eyes, until he resembled one of those quaint Chinese devils of whom he stood so much in awe.
As far as Ned and his companions could calculate, their first seven hours' work had yielded them something like a thousand dollars-worth of pure gold; and already Ned Corbett almost regretted the price he had paid for it, as he listened to the eager, crazy chatter of his companions, and tried in vain to put together the good old pipe which he had shattered in his rush for that yellow metal, which gleamed evilly, so Ned thought, from the tin pannikin upon Chance's knee.
There was another thing which Corbett could not forget. It was true that they had found Pete's Creek and the gold, but there was no trace of Cruickshank.