“It’s queer about those bits of ground ice, Phil. Do you notice how they all float clean side up? Wait a bit and I’ll show you.”
Taking the ice-hook, he turned over one of the bits with its point, showing its soiled side, but the moment he released it, the bit of ice “turned turtle” again.
“Do you see?” said he. “The sand acts like ballast. It must be heavy stuff.”
“Yes,” said I. “Hook a bit of it out and let’s look at it.”
This was soon done, when, on examining it, we found the under side to be crusted with very black sand, which, whatever might be its nature, was evidently heavy enough to upset the balance of a small fragment of ice.
“What is it made of, I wonder?” said Joe.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but perhaps it is that black sand which the prospectors are always complaining of as getting in their way when they are panning for gold.”
“That’s what it is, Phil, I expect,” cried Joe. “And what’s more, that’s what Yetmore thought, too, or else why should he throw that bit of ice back into the water so quickly when you held out your hand for it? He didn’t want you to see it.”
“It does look like it,” I assented. “Poke up a few more, Joe, and we will take them home and show them to my father: perhaps he’ll know what the stuff is.”
Joe took the ice-hook and prodded about on the bottom, every prod bringing up one or two bits of ice, each one as it bobbed to the surface showing its sandy side for a moment and then turning over, clean side up. Drawing these to the edge of the ice, we picked them out, laying them on a gunny-sack we had with us, and when, towards sunset, we had carried home and housed our last load, and had stabled and fed the mules, we took our scraps over to the blacksmith-shop, where the tinkle of a hammer proclaimed that my father was at work doing some mending of something.