"It'll do," said Meade; "we can exist here till we've got all the gold we want—that will not take long, you'll see. Then for England, home, and beauty, eh?"
I said, "All right, it's good enough for me."
We made a pot of tea, boiled part of a salmon we had taken just before we landed—the creek appeared to be full of them—then we rolled ourselves in our blankets, tired out, and I soon slept in spite of dirt and heat.
The sun was high when I was awakened by my companion, who called me excitedly. He held a tin pannikin in his hand. "See," he exclaimed; "it was a shame to rouse you, but I could not help it. I went down to the bar and got a pan of dirt, and this is what I have washed out of it!" and he held the tin close to my face, and there was a handful of gold in it, dust and small nuggets—bright, shining, yellow nuggets, looking like pieces of shelled walnuts which had been gilded!
"Now, Bertie, what d'ye say?" he went on, as I stared at the gold, took some up and let it run through my fingers; "are you sorry you have come? Isn't all we have gone through a mere nothing? isn't it all forgotten?—and there's heaps and heaps of it!"
I was on my feet now. I could not say I was amazed, for I had heard so much about it from my friend, and had learned to trust his words so implicitly; but I was pleased, I was delighted, in fact, to find that he had not been mistaken, and that we had not come up to this dismal place and passed through all our hardships in vain. Indeed it was grand, and I said so.
We hardly had patience to wait for the kettle to boil. We swallowed some breakfast in a hurry, then with shovel and tin dish we each went at it, and we worked away till we judged that it was noon, out on a gravelly point that jutted into the stream close to the shanty.
As we moved this gravel we could see the gold; no wonder Meade had brought out what he did—it was easy to do it. I picked out several handfuls myself that morning, and so did he, and this, with what we washed out, weighed over fifty ounces!
We had thus proved that all was right. I had myself seen it, handled it, washed it, picked it out. Naturally we were both highly elated.
It was hard to drag myself away from all this, but I had to. I took a blanket and a little grub, got into the canoe, and paddled off down the creek. I was returning to Jim and his wife to bring up the rest of our property. Jim was to return with me; Fan was to remain there until her husband came down with the canoe which we had given them, then they were to get back to the headquarters of their band.