His heart pounded violently; excitement sent the blood rushing to his brain in blinding swirls. He was gripped by the gold fever that comes upon a man when he makes the astounding discovery of untold wealth lying at his feet, passed over and disregarded by other and less-discerning men for days and years!
It was oil, no question about it. An extremely slight quantity, true; so slight a quantity that there was no film on the water, no discernible taste to the water. Gramont brought it to his mouth and rose, shaking his head.
Where did it come from? It had no connection with the gas bubbles—at least, it did not come from the dome of water and gas. How long he stood there staring Gramont did not know. His brain was afire with the possibilities. At length he stirred into action and started up the bayou bank, from time to time halting to search the water below him, to make sure that he could still discern the faint iridescence.
He followed it rod by rod, and found that it rapidly increased in strength. It must come from some very tiny surface seepage close at hand, that was lost in the bayou almost as rapidly as it came from the earth-depths. Only accidentally would a man see it—not unless he were searching the water close to the bank, and even then only by the grace of chance.
Suddenly Gramont saw that he had lost the sign. He halted.
No, not lost, either! Just ahead of him was a patch of reeds, and a recession of the shore. He advanced again. Inside the reeds he found the oily smear, still so faint that he could only detect it at certain angles. Glancing up, he could see a fence at a little distance, evidently the boundary fence of the Ledanois land; the bushes and trees thinned out here, and on ahead was cleared ground. He saw, through the bushes, glimpses of buildings.
Violent disappointment seized him. Was he to lose this discovery, after all? Was he to find that the seepage came from ground belonging to someone else? No—he stepped back hastily, barely in time to avoid stumbling into a tiny trickle of water, a rivulet that ran down into the bayou, a tributary so insignificant that it was invisible ten feet distant! And on the surface a faint iridescence.
Excitement rising anew within him, Gramont turned and followed this rivulet, his eyes aflame with eagerness. It led him for twenty feet, and ceased abruptly, in a bubbling spring that welled from a patch of low, tree-enclosed land. Gramont felt his feet sinking in grass, and saw that there was a dip in the ground hereabouts, a swampy little section all to itself. He picked a dry spot and lay down on his face, searching the water with his eyes.
Moment after moment he lay there, watching. Presently he found the slight trickle of oil again—a trickle so faint and slim that even here, on the surface of the tiny rivulet, it could be discerned only with great difficulty. A very thin seepage, concluded Gramont; a thin oil, of course. So faint a little thing, to mean so much!
It came from the Ledanois land, no doubt of it. What did that matter, though? His eyes widened with flaming thoughts as he gazed down at the slender thread of water. No matter at all where this came from—the main point was proven by it! There was oil here for the finding, oil down in the thousands of feet below, oil so thick and abundant that it forced itself up through the earth fissures to find an outlet!