In spite of the failure of the day's work they all felt hopeful; but they resolved to push on farther before doing any more prospecting.
The next morning they launched the canoe, and for four days more faced the river. Each day the work was harder. Each day they had a succession of back-breaking portages; sometimes they were able to pole a little; they hauled the canoe for hours by the tracking-line, and in those four days they traveled scarcely thirty miles.
On the last day they met with a serious misfortune. While they were hauling the canoe up a rapid the craft narrowly escaped capsizing, and spilled out a large tin that contained twenty-five pounds of corn meal and ten pounds of rice—their entire stock. What was worse, the cover came off, and the precious contents disappeared in the water.
About fifteen pounds of Graham flour and five pounds of oatmeal were all the breadstuffs they had left now, and they had to use it most sparingly.
But they were well within the region where Horace thought that the diamond-beds must lie. On the map it had seemed a small area; but now they realized that it was a huge stretch of tangled wilderness, where a dozen diamond-beds might defy discovery. Even Horace, the veteran prospector, admitted that they had a big job before them.
"However, we'll find the blue clay if it's on the surface—and the supplies hold out," he said, with determination.
The next morning each of the boys went out in a different direction. Late in the afternoon they came back, one by one, tired and fly-bitten, and each with the same failure to report. The ground was much as they had found it before, covered with rock and gravel in rolling ridges. Nowhere had they found the blue clay.
They spent two more days here, working hard from morning to night, with no success. The next day they again moved camp a day's journey upstream; that brought them into the heart of the district from which they had expected so much. The river was growing so narrow and so broken that it would be almost impossible for them to follow it farther by canoe. If they pushed on they would have to abandon their craft, and carry what supplies they could on their backs.
But they intended to spend a week here. They set out on the diamond hunt again with fresh energy. A warm, soft drizzle was falling, which to some extent kept down the flies.
Horace came back to camp first; he had had no success. He was trying to find dry wood to rekindle the fire when he saw Fred coming down the bank at a run. The boy's face was aglow.