We had expected to find a pool of rain-water, more or less extensive, seeping through the sand and slowly draining away. What we actually did find was something very different: something which filled us with wonder and excitement!
About the middle of the little crater there came boiling out of the ground a strong spring, which, running along a deep, narrow channel it had in the course of many centuries worn in the solid stone floor of the crater, disappeared in turn beneath the litter of rocks. A short distance below the spring the channel was half filled for some distance with fragments of stone of no great size, which, checking the rush of the water, caused it to lap over the edge. It was this slight overflow which supplied the driblet we had followed up from the cañon below.
“Joe!”I exclaimed, greatly excited. “Do you know what I think?”
“Yes, I do,”my companion answered like a flash. “I think so, too. Come on! Let’s find out at once!”
Following the channel, we went clambering over the rocks, which just here were not quite so plentiful, until, at a distance from the spring of about fifty yards, we came upon a large circular pool in which the water flowed continuously round and round as though stirred with a gigantic spoon, while in the centre it spun round violently, a perfect little whirlpool, and sank with a gurgle into the earth.
For a moment we stood gazing spellbound at this natural phenomenon, hardly realizing what it meant, and then, with one impulse, we both threw our hats into the air with a shout, seized each other’s hands, and danced a wild and unconventional dance, with no witness but a solitary eagle, which, passing high overhead, paused for an instant in his flight to wonder, probably, what those crazy, unaccountable human beings were up to now.
At length, out of breath, we stopped, when Joe, clapping his hands together to emphasize his words, cried:
“At last we’ve found it, Phil! This, surely, is the water-supply that keeps the ‘forty rods’ wet!”
“It must be,”I replied, no less excited than my partner. “It must be; it can’t be anything else. But how are we going to prove it, Joe?”