“That’s the stuff!” exclaimed Jack, jumping up. “All hands turn loose and hunt for clay!”
I have said before that Jack did not profess to know much about gold-washing. Had his friend, the old prospector, been at hand, he would have told him that the extraction of gold from clay was a process of notorious difficulty and tediousness; but of this fact Jack was ignorant,—very fortunately for him, as it turned out. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” perhaps, but, strange to say, the littleness of Jack’s learning in the art of gold-washing proved to be most advantageous to him.
The two clay-hunters had not far to seek. On the bare stone beneath the Mushroom Rock they found a fair supply of some white material which they took to be clay—it was soft and sticky, and would therefore suit their purpose excellently,—and gathering all they could find they carried it to the edge of the stream, where Jack, going down again upon his knees, made up a ball as big as his two fists, dropped it into the pot-hole, and kneaded it about all over the bottom until he supposed it must have picked up everything there was down there. He could not see how the process was working, for the water turned “milky” the moment the clay was put into it.
Percy having returned the black sand from the pan to the cup, Jack fished up the clay ball, which being now in a slimy condition concealed anything it might contain, dropped it into the pan, and filled the pan with water. As the clay gradually dissolved, he poured away the muddy water and renewed the supply, repeating the process many times, until at length the soft material had been all washed away and the water remained clear.
“OUT CAME A LITTLE PATCH OF YELLOW GOLD.”
Percy, gazing into the pan as Jack held it up, concluded that they had had all their trouble for nothing, for the only result appeared to be a further supply of that ever-intruding black sand,—he was tired of black sand,—but Jack, telling him to have a little patience, poured away nearly all the water, and then, holding the pan almost upright, he, by a dexterous turn of the wrist, set the sand trickling from left to right along the hollow where the bottom of the pan turned up to form the side.
And then, like the passing away of an eclipse of the sun, the black shadow moved to one side, and out came a little patch of yellow gold,—a teaspoonful.
