“How?”
“You have tried pumping without avail, have you not?” said Ernest Wilton.
“That’s a fact,” said Seth Allport, with the full power of his down-east nasal intonation. “Yer couldn’t hit nearer the mark than thaat, I guess, sirree.”
“And you could never get the water lower than fifty feet off the bottom of the shaft?” pursued the young engineer, stating his case, “could you?”
“No, not a foot lower,” said Mr Rawlings.
“Then what think you of a countermine?”
“I don’t quite understand you,” said Mr Rawlings.
“Don’t you?” said Ernest Wilton, smiling, “and yet it is easy enough to answer, as you told me just now, when I wondered how you did not know when the water came into the shaft.”
“Pray explain,” replied Mr Rawlings. “I didn’t keep you in suspense, you know, when you confessed your inability to answer the question.”
“No,” said the other, “and I’ll treat you as fairly now. You see, at present there is only an intervening wall, of about one hundred yards in gross thickness, dividing the shaft from the channel of the gulch outside. The upper part of the stratum is mere gravel, for as you found, in winter the river extends beyond the point where you are sinking. Judging by the eye, I should say that the mouth of the shaft is twenty feet above the level of the water in the river. So far you would naturally find no water. When you began work the water in the river must have been ten feet at least lower than it is at present, consequently it was no higher than the solid rock where you began to work down in the quartz. So long as the river was below that level you naturally would meet with no water whatever, however deep you might sink, but directly it rose so that it was higher than the level of the rock, it would penetrate through the gravel like a sieve, and will fill your shaft as fast as you can pump it out. Gradually the river will sink as the dry season comes on, and in the autumn will be again below the level of the rock. You can’t wait for that, and must therefore carry your shaft from the top of the bed rock to the level of the water in the stream, say twelve-feet in all, but of course we will get the levels accurately.”