“Gee whizz!” I muttered.
“Gee wizz!” said Fatty, with remarkable distinctness.
I looked at the creature in a sort of wonder. Animal or man, my heart sent a great gush of feeling all through my being toward him, as I saw him smiling fondly in my face. He should always have my friendship after this. I could almost fancy the old fellow was wagging a tail all to pieces, such a light was in his restless eyes; and yet his face was almost that of a fat, good-natured Negro.
Being careful where I stepped, I moved along the edge of a great well, came to a place where the shelf widened, and found myself facing a short hall, at the end of which there was light, dim and diffused. We were soon at the limit of our journey in this direction, for here also the precipice terminated the passage.
As I looked below I saw that vapour was rising, as if from heated rocks. Then I made out fissures in the floor, fifty feet below us; and this floor was covered with peculiar excrescences, half-hidden by the steam. When revealed, these resembled stalagmites, melted and slumped down like great nodules, “double-chinned,” I am tempted to write, but “double” would not express the multiplicity of “chins.” These nodules appeared to be of the brightest yellow colour, but so often were they veiled in the mist that I could not be sure of anything concerning their appearance and formation.
Presently, while I was trying to study the odd features of the place, as well as to determine the source of the light, the rumbling and roaring we had heard before recommenced. It was louder, more awe-compelling, for it came from the fissures directly beneath us. It seemed to go booming upward and through the cavern as if the god of the under world were grumbling out a huge complaint. This noise increased, in wave-like volumes; the rock gave a tremor, and then with a seething and hissing, with a tumble of sound which issued from the depths of the earth-creature, as if it were growling at having to work, a great geyser of boiling water and steam shot upward and toppled back to its bed. I reeled away, with an involuntary movement. Below, the water swashed about and foamed in mighty agitation. The cauldron heaved up swirling tides and the drowned murmur burst forth through bubbles. The giant below gathered anew a mighty strength and blew up a fountain as high as where I was standing.
I saw a falling blob of the water strike on a small projection near my foot. Then the demonstration ceased, the roar became subdued, as if the grumbler withdrew to his realm of molten substance, and only great clouds of the vapour arose as before. The projection where the water had struck caught my glance, for assuredly it possessed a remarkable gleam. Stooping I looked at it closely. It was a nodule of something metallic, shaped somewhat like a small pear. I touched it, finding it barely warm; then I grasped it firmly and gave it a wrench. It came away from the rock in my hand.
By its remarkable weight, its colour and its lustre, I knew it instantly for gold. It was solid gold, Nature’s own deposit—a nugget most peculiarly constructed. I knew in that moment that all those massive nodules below had a right to gleam with yellow colour, for all were gold—the purest gold, from the great inscrutable laboratory of earth itself!
I recalled what I had read and learned of the waters and acids mingled with the molten interior of the planet; how they dissolve the precious metals, hold them in solution and come with them bubbling to the surface, spouting through the fissures in the crust; how through the centuries they deposit atom by atom of their rich freightage on the rocks, permeating the very tissue of stones and porous substances, to leave them at last all streaked and flaked with gleaming yellow; and then how the fluids retire, the earth cools down, and man—ages after—comes wandering by and delves day and night to rob the fissures of their hoardings.
I knew that below us a monster treasure-house was being filled by this wonderful process, slowly, surely, regularly, hour after hour, while generation after generation of men came and strove and went to their graves, willing to bargain off souls to know where to get but a little of this cold, glinting metal of the earth. We had come upon the hoary alchemist and caught him at his work.