Captain Gay had been working at the upper end of the inlet, near to the place where a slender mountain stream fell from a precipice above and mingled its fresh water with that of the inlet. This stream fell upon a rocky bottom, but in course of years it had worn a bowl-shaped hollow in the rock, which could be distinctly observed through the transparent water.
“There ought to be a lot of gold in that hollow,” Ned Britton had remarked to the Captain one day. “I’ve an idea all the gold we find in the sands of the inlet has been brought here by the mountain streams.”
“I’ve been thinking that, myself,” answered the Captain; but it was a week later that he climbed the rock and followed the bent of the stream for nearly a mile, marking carefully the lay of the land.
The next morning he went to the Major with his plan, which was nothing less than a proposal to turn the stream from its bed, several hundred yards above, and let it follow a new course and reach the inlet a hundred feet distant from its present fall.
The Major stared thoughtfully at the Captain for a time, and then followed him up the stream and made a careful examination of the territory. The result was an order for all the seamen of the “Flipper” to place themselves at the disposal of Captain Gay and obey his orders.
In three days they had built a dam of rocks and brushwood nearly across the stream, and pried away the banks in another place to allow the water to escape by the new channel.
The fourth day the opening was closed in the dam, and the stream plunged away on its new course, leaving its former bed practically dry.
Immediately the men ran down to the inlet, where the Major himself waded to the hollow caused by the previous fall of water and dipped up a pan of sand from the cavity. Upon examination it proved richer in gold than any of us had anticipated, the sands containing many small nuggets which, being heavier than the grains of metal, had been accumulating for many years in the basin.
All hands were set to work in this locality, and inspired by the rich harvest that rewarded their toil, they labored early and late, until the bags of dust and nuggets had become so numerous that even the Major was filled with amazement.
But this was not all that was gained by turning the mountain stream from its bed. In several hollows up above Captain Gay discovered rich deposits of small nuggets that were secured with ease, and two weeks later the Major called a meeting of all the members of the party on the sands before his tent.