Fortunately, further examination showed that the visitors to the hut must have been hurried in their movements, and had been either unable to carry away, or had overlooked, a portion of the remaining stores, so that starvation did not quite stare them in the face; but it was absolutely necessary that a journey to the settlement should be made at once.
“My job this time,” said Tregelly, as the matter was discussed by the fire, where, armed with an axe, he was busily chipping a way into the centre of the block of ice they had brought back. “Now, if those two mates of mine hadn’t grown sick of it, and gone back before the winter come on, they’d just have been useful now.”
“Did you quarrel?” asked Dallas.
“Quarrel? No, my son,” said Tregelly, as he chipped away at the ice. “They took the right notion one day that there was the long winter to face, and that they’d better share and be off while their shoes was good.”
“Well?” said Dallas.
“Well, we shared, and they went home.”
Then there was silence, save that the Cornishman went on chipping away at the ice, more and more carefully, for he was getting through the top of the shell, and the golden kernel was near, Scruff watching the proceedings in rather a cynical or dog-like way, as if sneering at the trouble these two-legged animals took to obtain something not good to eat.
“Yes; it’s terrible work in the dark,” said Abel. “Perhaps they were right.”
“But the long days are coming,” said Dallas cheerfully, “and then we’ll go farther north up one of the other creeks, towards the mountains. There is abundance of gold if we could find it. And we must—we will find it before we’ve done.”
“That’s right, my son,” cried Tregelly. “We three won’t give up till we’ve had a reg’lar good try. Now then, here we are: all mixed up and froze into a lump. Just hand me that iron bucket, Mr Wray, and I’ll chip it out into that, and throw it down by the fire. Wonder,” he added, as he began to break out the gilded ice, “whether there’s much of my share left.”