“But,” persisted Mr. Boon, “how, then, do you account for the nuggets scattered over the mountain? And, beside, what object could Dr. Syx have in pretending that there is free metal to be had for the digging?”
“He may have salted the mountain, for all I know,” said Hall. “As for his object, I confess I am entirely in the dark; but, for all that, I am convinced that we shall find no more metal if we dig ten miles for it.”
“Nonsense,” said the president; “if we keep on we shall strike it. Did not Dr. Syx himself admit that he found no free artemisium until his tunnel had reached the core of the peak? We must go as deep as he has gone before we give up.”
“I fear the depths he attains are beyond most people’s reach,” was Hall’s answer, while a thoughtful look crossed his clear-cut brow, “but since you desire it, of course the work shall go on. I should like, however, to change the direction of the tunnel.”
“Certainly,” replied Mr. Boon; “bore in whatever direction you think proper, only don’t despair.”
About a month after this conversation Andrew Hall, with whom a community of tastes in many things had made me intimately acquainted, asked me one morning to accompany him into his tunnel.
“I want to have a trusty friend at my elbow,” he said, “for, unless I am a dreamer, something remarkable will happen within the next hour, and two witnesses are better than one.”
I knew Hall was not the person to make such a remark carelessly, and my curiosity was intensely excited, but, knowing his peculiarities, I did not press him for an explanation. When we arrived at the head of the tunnel I was surprised at finding no workmen there.
“I stopped blasting some time ago,” said Hall, in explanation, “for a reason which, I hope, will become evident to you very soon. Lately I have been boring very slowly, and yesterday I paid off the men and dismissed them with the announcement, which, I am confident, President Boon will sanction after he hears my report of this morning’s work, that the tunnel is abandoned. You see, I am now using a drill which I can manage without assistance. I believe the work is almost completed, and I want you to witness the end of it.”
He then carefully applied the drill, which noiselessly screwed its nose into the rock. When it had sunk to a depth of a few inches he withdrew it, and, taking a hand-drill capable of making a hole not more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, cautiously began boring in the centre of the larger cavity. He had made hardly a hundred turns of the handle when the drill shot through the rock! A gratified smile illuminated his features, and he said in a suppressed voice: