"Only throwing overboard some salt," returned Charley, with a chuckle, as if he had been performing some very brilliant action.
"Why," replied Busby, staring very hard as if he did not exactly see the humour of the thing; "you might have given it away if you didn't know what else to do with it."
"Oh," said Charley, "'taint worth anything."
"Ain't worth anything!" retorted the other indignantly; "it's worth twenty-five cents a pound, and I call that something."
This turned out to be the fact; and Charley never heard the last of this adventure, though he said he didn't care, the fun was worth the money any day.
Every one vented his delirium in his own fashion. Dan Carpenter, who was one of the worst affected, clasped his hands on the top of his head as if afraid it should fly away like a balloon; but in spite of this precaution he was raised bodily from the deck, and danced up and down for the space of half an hour, striking his heels three times against each other at every spring; when thoroughly exhausted he was dropt with such violence into a campstool, that it gave way, and let him treacherously down on to his back; whereupon Captain Bill advised him to keep steady, and haul in his jib-sheets; and every one gave him a word of counsel and exhortation.
Such being the food of our waking imagination, it is easy to see what stuff our dreams were made of. All day long we talked and thought of nothing but gold,
And then, in dreaming,
The clouds, we thought, would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon us; that when we waked,
We cried to dream again.
The mines were now all before us where to choose; but there was no visible Providence for our guide; and among so many conflicting reports, it was difficult to arrive at any fixed conclusion. The southern mines abounded more in lumps and rich deposits, but the gold was distributed more equally in the northern, and the labourer was accordingly more certain of his reward. In each of these grand divisions there was an endless variety of creeks and rivers, every one of which had its advocates, who set forth its advantages to the best of their ability, till the new comer, weary of weighing these opposing probabilities, often rested his decision upon the most trifling coincidence. Twenty dollars a day was said to be the average earned by the miners, but each man's hope told him a far more flattering tale.