For some time they stood in silence, until the sailor commenced to reproach himself for his rough protest. Perhaps he had hurt her sensitive feelings. What a brute he was, to be sure! She was only a child in ordinary affairs, and he ought to have explained things more lucidly and with greater command over his temper. And all this time Iris's face was dimpling with amusement, for she understood him so well that had he threatened to kill her she would have laughed at him.
"Would you mind getting the lamp?" he said softly, surprised to catch her expression of saucy humor.
"Oh, please may I speak?" she inquired. "I don't want to annoy you, but I am simply dying to talk."
He had forgotten his own injunction.
"Let us first examine our mine," he said. "If you bring the lamp we can have a good look at it."
Close scrutiny of the work already done merely confirmed the accuracy of his first impressions. Whilst Iris held the light he opened up the seam with a few strokes of the pick. Each few inches it broadened into a noteworthy volcanic dyke, now yellow in its absolute purity, at times a bluish black when fused with other metals. The additional labor involved caused him to follow up the line of the fault. Suddenly the flame of the lamp began to flicker in a draught. There was an air-passage between cave and ledge.
"I am sorry," cried Jenks, desisting from further efforts, "that I have not recently read one of Bret Harte's novels, or I would speak to you in the language of the mining camp. But in plain Cockney, Miss Deane, we are on to a good thing if only we can keep it."
They came back into the external glare. Iris was now so serious that she forgot to extinguish the little lamp. She stood with outstretched hand.
"There is a lot of money in there," she said.
"Tons of it."