"Then sit by the fire!" it said.
"Come up!" said Leger sharply. "If you must have the truth, I've borne about as much as you could expect of me to-day. We'll probably know the result soon enough."
"I can't wait," said Ingleby.
Leger said nothing further. He could not leave his comrade there, and he sat down by the windlass with his fingers trembling a little on the pipe he did not light. The faint sighing in the fir tops had died away, and only the noise of man's petty activity ran on, discordant and, it almost seemed, presumptuous. A half-moon hung above the shoulder of a towering peak wrapped in a mantle of everlasting white, the river twinkled in the gloom below; but it counted for nothing with Leger that earth and sky were steeped in a profound serenity. He was sensible only of the jar of the pick below.
In the meanwhile Ingleby, stripped to the waist, toiled feverishly by the light of a few blazing resin-knots in the narrow pit. His hands were bleeding, and the dew of effort dripped from him while he swung with the clinking pick like an automaton. He was grimed with mire, his long boots were sodden, and the drip from the shaft side splashed upon his naked shoulders, while his face was grim and grey with the weariness he did not feel. At last there was a sharp ringing as the pick went down, and while his raw hands tingled he flung the implement aside.
"Bed rock or a boulder!" he said hoarsely. "Send the bucket down."
It was a bald announcement, but that was not a time for speech, and Leger fully realized the significance of it. The crazy windlass rattled, and the rude receptacle of deer-hide stretched on a willow-hoop came down. Ingleby filled it with the shovel, and then pressed down a further load of sand and soil and pebbles with quivering hands.
"Heave!" he said sharply.
The bucket went up, and it was with a little grim smile Ingleby struggled into his rent shirt, though the operation cost him at least a minute. There was, he knew, a necessity for keeping his head now, and, holding himself in hand by an effort, he crawled slowly up the notched fir-pole lowered into the little shaft. Then he and Leger, saying nothing, proceeded to the creek with the heavy bucket and a big indurated basin. Ingleby went in knee-deep, with the firelight flickering on him, and with a twirl of his hands washed out half the lighter contents of the basin. Then he glanced at Leger.
"Shall we try it now?" he said.