The next second he was sitting again in the shaded gallery of the upper patio, its flowers and bird song, sunshine and fountain splash in his eyes and ears. As on the other day, he watched Francesca bending over her godchild, and while he was contrasting her air of tender solicitude with the cold hauteur of her face a month ago he thought she looked up with a smile. He was answering it when the smiling eyes were wiped out by the intrusion of some unpleasant thought.
“You fool!” he chided himself. Then, sitting suddenly up, he smote Billy on the thigh with force that drew a yell of anguish. “It’s a mint, boy! A blooming mint! I wouldn’t trade my share for the best gold mine in Tonopah. Next year we’ll put in a big plant—”
“Reverberatories with water jackets!” Billy enthusiastically took up the tale.
“Sure, and we’ll build down on the flat by the river and deliver the ore by—”
“Gravity. Aerial cable—self-dumping buckets—”
“We’ll refine our own matte—”
“Market our own copper and gold.” His blue eyes shining, Billy ran on: “In five years we’ll be rich, then for a rest and a trip. New York, London, Paris, with Nice and Monte Carlo thrown in. Europe in a touring-car, by golly! Egypt and the Pyramids! A steam yacht and a trip around the world! Hurray for us!”
“In the mean time”—Seyd led him gently back to earth—“remember, please, that this is your trick. Go and stoke up, or there’ll be no Paris in yours.”
And surely their days of ease lay a long way off. Long and hard as they had labored, the completion of the smelter merely marked the beginning of still more strenuous tasks. Upon them and the two peons would rest the entire weight of running the smelter at its full capacity. Besides the breaking of the ore, tapping of the slag, continuous firing, they would have to burn their own charcoal after the first supply ran out. Though they had spread the strain by dividing day and night into shifts, it would have been work enough for four times their number.
Seyd’s first shift ended at twelve that night, but, though he sent Caliban off to his sleep, he himself sat up to wait for the first matte, which was due to come trickling from the spouts at any moment. Reclining his head, propped on his hand, he watched Billy and Calixto, both now of one color, each at his task, one working the blowers while the other dumped fresh ore and charcoal into the loading trap. At such times the blast would send a burst of flame high over the chimney top, lighting the house, stables, green ore mounds, showing ghostly trees beyond as under a calcium glare. Though the roar of the blast fell like a lullaby on his tired ears, excitement kept him awake till the first matte flowed in a red stream out of the tap.