Once more the burning day was drawing toward its close when, with the roar of the last shot rolling across the encircling forest and the water frothing muddily down its new outlet, Dane stood beside his comrade, leaning on a shovel, and wondering greatly that the latter could think of anything beyond the result of their experiment.
"The jungle seems to mock us, does it not?" Maxwell remarked. "Already its silence has swallowed the feeble din we made; and the next flood will obliterate forever all traces of your workings."
"Then you don't believe that this is the beginning of a new era, and that those who follow us will change the future of this wilderness?" asked Dane with a show of incredulity.
Maxwell pointed to the jungle fading into the dimness of the east.
"I do not. Look at it," he said. "It has stood so from the beginning, a place of everlasting shadow, for the naked bushmen to hunt each other in; and it will be the same long centuries after you and I are gone. It is too old and changeless for even the Briton to subdue. Phœnician, Roman, Arab, and Moor have all tackled this all-absorbing Africa; and while the brown men have left a plainer stamp on it than the white men, how much has any of them done? Still, all this is beside the question, isn't it? It will be enough for you and me if we can return home safely with some small augmentation of our capital. Hadn't you better resume your digging, Hilton?"
Dane did so, stripped to the waist; and great fires were blazing before he came up out of the river, exultant.
"I can't promise a fortune, but there should be sufficient to pay us for all our toil," he said. "Those little grains will realize almost four pounds an ounce."
They set out a carefully treasured bottle of lukewarm wine that night in the tent, and duly emptied it, though, perhaps for the same reason, neither of them ate much; and afterward they sat long talking under the smoky lamp. It was a night to remember, for it is not often one enjoys the same thrill of triumph twice in a lifetime. Maxwell was unusually communicative; and long afterward Dane could remember how he leaned against a deal case, worn, thin, and haggard, but with a smile of satisfaction on his hollow face.
"Success appears within sight at last, but it is well to take good fortune soberly," he said. "I am, however, sensible of an insane desire to do something extravagant when I remember all that word implies. You have seen Culmeny, Hilton, but it is hardly possible that you can realize the affection I have for the old place. It was fast falling into ruin before my father improved its finances a little by painful economy; and, because we generally fought and plotted for the losing side, the poor acres about it have been starved overlong. Now, after many an arduous search for the wherewithal, I can hope it may be granted me to restore a measure of its former prosperity. The Culmeny mosses could be turned into plow-land and pasture with the aid of a little money."
"You are a young man, Carsluith," Dane replied suggestively. "Being merely one of the swarming people, I don't know that love for—an ancient dwelling—would have exacted so much from me. Drainage schemes are no doubt useful, but was the extension of them your only ambition?"