“I have bored three holes,” said Hume; “to-morrow I will split it without doing more work.”
“It is true: white men are never content. They have been bitten by the water-beetle, and never rest.”
The next night the people in the kraals saw once again the pale globe flitting about, and as they marvelled there was a flash of fire and a dull rumbling report. The next morning, when they looked across, they saw that the Golden Rock was no more, and, with a sense of something old and familiar gone from their lives, they wailed in their sorrow.
Chapter Thirty Eight.
Better than Gold.
When Sirayo saw that no harm befell Hume for the act of sacrilege, he helped him bring the scattered fragments of the rock to the hidden valley, and when the mass of now shapeless ore was stored up, with its threads and veins of gold gleaming yellow, preparations were made to break it up. From the crowbar, after much labour about a roughly-made furnace, Hume made two great hammers, and for days he and Sirayo battered at the hard quartz, reducing it by slow degrees to small fragments. This work they had done on a wide flat rock, banked in so that nothing should be lost, and next, with native-made shallow dishes of baked clay, they began on the less arduous and more exciting business of washing for gold-dust. So alternately washing and crushing from week to week, they at last succeeded with their primitive methods in rescuing a vast amount of gold-dust, coarse grains, and large pellets from the mass of rich ore.
At one time they were threatened with trouble, a prying witch-doctor having braved the unknown dangers by crossing the river and surprising the little party at work. Sirayo and the old woman, setting their wits to work, managed, however, to detach Inyame, who moved over with his entire regiment, and placed himself under the chief. A fierce conflict was prevented by a meeting between Sirayo and Umkomaas, and by the time Webster was expected back a new kraal had been built about the shattered rock, and herds of cattle grazed on the rich grass.
Sirayo was now a respected chief with a royal household, the lively Noenti being the head wife.