“Hold up, hold up, you two lunatics!” he cried, at last. “Don’t you think you’ve made yourselves ridiculous enough already without winding up in this way?”
At this we rushed upon Jack, each seized one of his hands and shook it as though he were a long-lost friend whom we had expected never to see again, and at last, entirely out of breath, we flopped down on either side of him and sat there panting.
“May I inquire,” said Jack, with extreme politeness, “whether this is your usual style of behaviour, or whether the altitude has affected your brains? Or were you, perhaps, merely born foolish?”
It was our turn to laugh. In fact, we felt so light-hearted we were ready to laugh at anything—ourselves included. What did we care about having made ourselves ridiculous! When we thought of how our parents had never been worried about us all this time; how they had kept watch over us without our knowing it; how, too, Sir Anthony had never thought of putting us into jail at all,—the relief to our minds was such that it was no wonder we “carried on” in this flighty manner. For the first time in six or seven weeks we felt free from anxiety. All the policemen in England and America could not make us tremble. We were fugitives no longer!
“But, Jack,” said Percy, after we had sat for some time asking innumerable questions of our new friend, “what is going to become of us now?”
“That is for you to say,” replied Jack. “I have a letter of instructions up at the house. You are to have your choice: you may go straight home again if you like, or—” Jack paused, and sat eying us in a critical manner, as if he were taking our measure; “sizing us up,” as he would have expressed it.
“Or what?” exclaimed Percy and I, together.
“Or this. What do you say to cutting loose from civilization altogether; riding away into the mountains; camping out all summer; living on what we can shoot; and prospecting for gold as we go?”
So magnificent an idea fairly took away our breath for a moment, but then, with one voice, we cried enthusiastically: “I say ‘Yes.’”
“All right,” said Jack. “Then that is what we will do; and uncommonly glad I shall be of your company. You can be of great help to me; for, as soon as you have learned to shoot straight, I shall leave to you the task of providing the camp with game, and that will set me free to go prospecting. You see,” he went on, “I am very anxious to find gold, if possible; for this reason: My father owns a silver mine here in Golconda. He has done an immense amount of work upon it, and has spent a great deal of money in developing it, but just as we were going to begin stoping,—that is, taking out the ore,—a blast in the bottom of the shaft broke into an underground reservoir, apparently. At any rate, the water rushed in and drove out the miners; we rigged a bucket and tried what that would do, but it was quite useless; nothing short of a good pumping-engine will keep the water down.