We made, during the forenoon, fifty dollars. "This will never do," said the president; "we must have another meeting." We sat round on stones—the surnames argued with a deal of heat and acrimony, to which Tom, Dick, and Harry, opposed an impregnable front of sullen disdain.
The president, by far the ablest man in the company,—though, like all the rest, hasty and passionate,—resigned his office in disgust; and all my persuasive flattery could not induce him to resume it. They would go to work in the river, in spite of my remonstrances; so I left them, and returned to assist in working the Long Tom.
The wheel, some eight feet in diameter, was attached to the end of a long, heavy shaft, projecting two or three feet over the current, and supported at a single point by an iron bolt passing through a stout post set firmly among the rocks at the edge of the canal into which the river had been diverted. By means of this shaft, we could raise or depress the wheel at pleasure. The earth we proposed first to wash was a gentle slope, rising from the river towards our bank, and consisting of a fine sand almost free from stones, and paying from three to ten, or even twenty cents to the bucket.
Thursday morning, September 12, we commenced operations. Round goes the restless wheel, scooping up the dizzy water. The canvass hose rises and falls with its frequent pulse, like the great artery of a whale. The thirsty sand drinks eagerly the cooling stream that dissolves and sweeps it away, leaving bright grains of gold sticking here and there on the bottom of the trough. So, if nothing happens, we shall get rich, after all.
"But seems to me, the river is rising," cries St. John.
"So it is, I declare; what in the world is to pay now, I wonder; there comes Cameron; perhaps he can tell us."
"Well, Mr. Raven," cried Cameron, as well as he could for want of breath, "the dam's gone."
"Dam gone! how? where? when?"
"Just now, down the river, swept away. The Missouri Dam has burst, and the flood has swept the top of ours clean off; I just saved the tools and that's all."