“Can’t say. If we work hard and have good luck, I should think we ought to cross-cut the dyke in from two to three weeks.”
These objections, and all the obstacles likely to be encountered, as well as the probable success of the venture, having been thoroughly discussed and a favorable decision reached, no time was lost, next day, in beginning upon their plan of opening at the farthest end a cross-cut through the porphyry dyke separating the Aurora from their own vein.
The whole of the first day’s toil, however, was expended in setting the broken car (of which I have already spoken) in good shape upon its wheels; in dragging it over to the other mine, a work of no little difficulty, and in clearing the floor of the tunnel of fallen fragments, so that the car could be pushed along the rails without impediment.
On the second day, however, digging could be done in earnest. As only two could work to advantage at once, and as they did not care to labor for ten or twelve hours at a stretch, they arranged a series of watches by which each one had about two hours in the tunnel and then two hours outside, when he could be attending to the house, preparing meals, or, as presently became necessary, stand guard over the defenses.
The rock of the dyke proved to be a pinkish quartzose porphyry, containing crystals of felspar, garnets,—many of which were very perfect, and these were carefully saved by the miners,—hornblende and several other minerals. Though in many places so tough that they were obliged to drill holes and blast it, much of the time the rock could be knocked down with the pick, and at one point proved to be so soft and spongy that it fairly crumbled under their blows, and they made as much progress in one morning as had before cost two whole days of labor.
As fast as the rock was tumbled down from the breast it was shoveled into a wheelbarrow and taken to the mouth of the cross-cut, where it was reloaded into the little car which ran on rails in the old Aurora. As soon as this had been filled, it was pushed out to the mouth of the tunnel and its cargo thrown down the side of the mountain, over the front of the great dump of waste rock already built out from the mouth of the cave.
Thus two weeks of hard and systematic work with shovel, pick and barrow, carried them through the dyke, and on the morning of the fifteenth day their tools struck into the darker and wholly different vein-rock of their own lode, a hundred feet or so beyond the breast, or interior end, of the Last Chance tunnel.