“What a curious stone; and how heavy it is!” she remarked, holding it up to view.
Her companions came to inspect it, and Mrs Staunton took it in her hand to make a close examination.
“Stone!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Why, my dear girl, this is gold—a genuine nugget, unless I am greatly mistaken. Mr Thomson, a friend of my husband’s in Sydney, showed us several gold nuggets, and they were exactly like this, only they were none of them nearly so large.”
“Do you really think it is gold?” asked Blanche. “My dear Mrs Staunton, my dear Violet, only fancy what a delightful thing it will be if we have actually discovered a gold mine; why, we shall be able to present our husbands with a magnificent fortune each.”
A charming blush mantled the speaker’s cheek as she said this, notwithstanding the fact that by this time the three women had no secrets from each other.
“I wonder if there are any more,” remarked Mrs Staunton; “surely that cannot be the only one here. I fancy I stepped on something hard just now.”
The three women at once went groping along the sand with their feet, and not in vain. First one, and then another encountered a hard object which proved to be similar in substance to the one found by Blanche; and in a quarter of an hour they had between them collected upwards of a dozen of them, though one only—found by Mrs Staunton—exceeded in size that of the first discovery.
Then, feeling somewhat chilled by their long immersion, they returned to terra firma, and were soon once more wending their way homeward. In passing through the wood they contrived to lose their way; but, as it happened, this proved of but slight consequence, as though they eventually came out at a point nearly a mile distant from the pathway which they had followed in the morning, they were quite as near the settlement as they would have been had they faithfully retraced their original footsteps; and by four o’clock in the afternoon they found themselves once more within the shelter of the walls of Staunton Cottage, greatly fatigued, it is true, by their long ramble, but with an elasticity of spirits and a sense of renewed life to which they had long been strangers.
Meanwhile the party at the shipyard had been thrown into a state of unwonted excitement by an incident which at one moment threatened to have a tragic termination.
A strong gang of men were at work upon the rock—all, indeed, who were left upon the island, excepting some dozen or fourteen, most of whom were employed in providing for the daily wants of the others, such as in baking bread, cleaning out the huts, airing bedding, and so on—and the scene at the mouth of the harbour was therefore a tolerably busy one.