"Yes. From Niven's description we have reached our goal at last. I was almost afraid his memory or imagination had betrayed him," he said. "That must be the bluff he camped on, and this, according to his assertion, the river which sprinkles its sand with gold. However, he hinted that it would pay better to prospect the higher pools. I want you to test his statement, Hilton. The result of the experiment promises to be eventful."
Maxwell's voice was slightly uneven, but his fingers seemed steady as he lighted one of their few last cigars. Dane felt his own knees weak beneath him, and his voice was hoarse when he hailed a carrier whose load consisted of prospecting tools. Carrying a tin dish and a small shovel, he waded into the shrunken river. There was a patch of sand near its center from which he filled the metal basin, and then halted with a curious sickly feeling, afraid almost to test its contents. He had sunk too much of his slender capital in the venture, and his future depended upon that test. Its issues were prosperity and the realization of the hope that had sent him to Africa, or a weary struggle for daily bread; and the climate-weakened man felt that, after all they had dared and suffered, he could hardly face failure. The perspiration trickled into his eyes, and oozed from his hair, and he stood still, knee-deep in the nameless river, for the space of almost a minute.
Then, stooping suddenly, he dipped the vessel and whirled it round and round until partly empty. There was a color about some of the particles remaining that caught his attention; but he would not trust a partial test, and continued the washing until, except for a very trifling residue, the pan was empty. Still, Maxwell made no comment and asked no question, for, if one was now swift in action, the other was great in silence.
Dane straightened himself, and waded back with dry lips and tickling throat, but with triumph in his eyes; and Maxwell laughed softly as he grasped the hand he stretched out.
"What have you found?" he asked.
"Enough to prove your dead friend right, and encourage us to search for something better!" Dane spoke as calmly as he could. "It is only stream gold, and doubtless readily worked out, but heaven knows how much more there may be up yonder where this came down from."
"You think——"
"That Niven was not mad, but eminently sane! I'm not a practical gold prospector, but I couldn't well help learning a little of the theory when working on the drawings of hydraulic mining machinery. It's a question of the velocity of the current and specific gravity—for even with a stream behind gold grains of any size don't travel far; and their matrix lies in yonder hills, or beyond them, somewhere."
"We'll go on again to-morrow," said Maxwell quietly.
For a week they hewed a way through the jungles on the hillside, or waded up the bed of the river where it promised an easier road; and finally, daring to penetrate no farther, they pitched camp on a palm-crested bluff overhanging a breadth of dry sand and a deep pool beneath a fall. Since leaving Shaillu's stronghold they had neither been followed by their persecutors nor seen anything with life in it. Maxwell left all operations to his friend's direction, and toiled beside him for several days like a galley slave, digging and blowing out with explosives a new channel to empty the pool, besides hewing troughs to bring down the water from above the fall.