It was mounted on a float twenty-five feet wide and sixty-five feet long. For power it carried two fifty-horse-power distillate engines. Tom was in charge of one and Joe of the other. For raising the sand and gravel containing the gold two big Jackson gravel-pumps were located on opposite corners at the front end of the float.
Old Tom blew the whistle, the engines started, and in an hour the pumps had raised a hundred tons of sand and gravel and deposited them in the concentrating flumes. Norman worked the dredge all night without a moment's pause and in twelve hours his pumps had lifted fifteen hundred tons of sand, showing a capacity of 3,000 tons per day. When the gold was extracted and weighed it was found that the dredge had averaged twenty cents from each ton of sand and that it would cost less than three cents a ton to operate the entire machinery of its production. The first experimental machine alone would net $500 dollars a day, or $150,000 a year. He could put five of these machines to work in three months and make $3,000 a day.
The invention stirred the colony to its depths. Norman's appearance was the signal for a burst of cheering wherever he went.
Wolf was dumfounded. He called his board of governors together at once and ordered them to enact a new law to meet the situation.
Norman announced in the Era that he would give the Brotherhood from the beginning one half the net earnings of his machines, and asked the board of governors at once to grant him the men needed to build and operate enough dredges to reduce the hours of labour from nine to seven.
Wolf met the emergency with prompt and vigorous action. He suspended the editor for printing the announcement and set him to work carrying a hod.
He issued a proclamation as regent that the dredge in the hands of its inventor threatened the existence of the State, declared the law of inventions under which it was built suspended, and ordered Norman to at once operate the machine for the sole benefit of the State and begin the construction of twenty dredges of equal capacity.
When Norman received this order he set to work without a moment's delay and made a half-dozen dynamite bombs, gave one each to Tom and Joe and their assistants, laid in a supply of provisions, erected a tent on the beach beside the dredge, and set the big machine to work for all it was worth.
Wolf promptly ordered his arrest. The men who attempted to execute the order fled in terror at the sight of the bombs and reported for instructions.