Samba Part 12

"But where's the gold, uncle?"

"That's what remains to be seen--perhaps. Keep your eye on that groove as I tilt the pan round. The black stuff is iron-stone; you needn't trouble about that. See if it leaves anything else."

He gently tilted the pan so that the water slowly flowed round the groove, carrying with it the quartz grains and the powder. Jack watched narrowly. After the contents of the pan had made the circuit two or three times he suddenly exclaimed--

"There's a sort of glitter left behind the powder, uncle."

"I reckon that's enough," said Mr. Martindale, setting down the pan.

"We've hit it, Jack."

Jack could not refrain from giving a cheer. The chief, who had but half approved the proceedings at the beginning, caught the infection of the lad's enthusiasm, and snapped his fingers and slapped his thighs vigorously.

"We'll have another look higher up," said Mr. Martindale. "One swallow don't make a summer--another piece of what you call antiquated rubbish, Jack. There's gold here, that's certain; but I don't know whether it's rich enough to be worth working."

They walked for half a mile up the stream, and Mr. Martindale went through the same process with the soil there. He was again rewarded.

This time, however, the trace of gold was more distinct.

"Jack, my boy," he said, "there's a small fortune in the bed of the stream alone. But I'm not satisfied yet. It's up to us now to discover the mother lode. To judge by the size of the stream it can't be far off. The botheration is we can't talk to the chief, and I say it's most unbrotherly to refuse us the advantage of an interpreter."

"Well, we've plenty of time, uncle. I vote we have our lunch and then go on again."

They sat down on boulders at the edge of the river and ate the manioc cakes and bananas with which Barney had provided them. Imbono seemed pleased when he was invited to share their lunch. Going into the forest, he returned with a large leaf which he shaped like a cup, and in this he brought water from the stream for the white men.

After lunch they followed up the stream. At intervals Mr. Martindale stopped to test the gravel, and found always some trace of gold, now slight, now plentiful. Some three miles up they came to a confluence.

The stream was joined by a smaller swifter one, which evidently took its rise in the steep hilly country now becoming visible through the trees.

"We'll try this, Jack."

"Why?"

"Because the bed's more gravelly than the other. I guess the big stream comes out of the forest somewhere; the other will suit our book best."

They found their progress becoming more and more difficult. The ground was more rocky, the sides of the gully were steeper, and the edging of dry gravel diminished until by and by it disappeared altogether, and the prospectors had to take off their boots and socks and wade. There were trees and bushes here and there on the sides and at the top of the gully, but the vegetation became more and more scanty as they ascended.

Presently the sound of falling water struck upon their ears, and a sudden turn of the stream brought them into full view of a cataract.

At this point the gully had widened out, and the water fell over a broad smooth ledge of rock, das.h.i.+ng on the stones after a descent of some fifty or sixty feet.

"That's fine!" exclaimed Jack, halting to watch the cascade sparkling in the sunlight, and the brownish white foam eddying at the foot.

"Grand!" a.s.sented Mr. Martindale. "There's enough water power there to save many a thousand dollars' worth of machinery."

"I was thinking of the scenery, not machinery, uncle," said Jack, with a laugh.

"Scenery! Why, I've got a lot finer waterfall than that on my dining-room wall. It isn't Niagara one way or t'other, but it'll do a lot of mill grinding all the same. Now, Jack, you're younger than I am. I want to see what there is by those rocks ten feet away from the bottom of the fall. Strip, my boy; a bath will do you a power of good, a hot day like this; and there are no crocodiles here to make you feel jumpy."

Jack stripped and was soon waist deep in the water. Reaching the spot his uncle had indicated, he stooped, and found that he could just touch the bottom without immersing himself. The water was too frothy for the bottom to be seen; he groped along it with his hands, bringing up every now and then a small fragment of quartz or a handful of gravel, which Mr. Martindale, after inspecting it from a distance, told him to throw in again.

At last, when he was getting somewhat tired of this apparently useless performance, he brought up a handful of stones, not to as eyes differing from what he had seen for the past half hour. He spread them out for his uncle, now only two or three yards away, to examine.

"I guess you can put on your clothes now," said Mr. Martindale. "Why, hang it, man! you've thrown it away!"

Jack had pitched the stones back into the water.

"I thought you'd done, uncle," he said.

"So I have, and you're done too--done brown. D'you know you've thrown away a nugget worth I don't know how many dollars?"

"You didn't tell me what you were after," said Jack, somewhat nettled.

"I couldn't be expected to know you were hunting for nuggets."

"No, you couldn't be expected: and that's just exactly what I brought you over to America for. When you've had the kind of smartening up I mean you to have, you won't talk about what's expected or not expected; you'll just figure it out that there's some reason in everything, and you'll use your own share of reason accordingly."

"All right, uncle," replied Jack good-humouredly. "I might have put two and two together, perhaps. At school, you see, they liked us to do as we were told without arguing. 'Theirs not to reason why'--you know.

Shall I fish for that nugget?"

"Not worth while. A few dollars more or less are neither here nor there. I know what I want to know, and now I think we'd better be getting. Put your clothes on. Our brother Imbono has several times anxiously pointed to the sun. He evidently isn't comfortable at the idea of being benighted in these regions."

s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g some of the sifted gravel into a bag of leaves, Mr. Martindale signed to the chief that he was ready to return. They reached the camp just as the sun was setting. In honour of the recent discovery, Mr.

Martindale invited the chief to supper, and gave him a regale which astonished him. To see the white man bring peaches out of a closed pot made Imbono open his eyes; but the sensation of the evening was furnished by a bottle of soda water. When the stopper was loosed and the liquid spurted over, the chief shrank back in amazement, uttering a startled cry. Nando, not skilled in European politeness, guffawed uproariously.

"Him say debbil water, sah. Yah! yah!"

Nothing would induce Imbono to drink the stuff. But he took kindly to tea, and being prevailed on to try a pinch of snuff, he laughed heartily when the paroxysm of sneezing was over, and asked for more.

"Him say like laugh-cry dust plenty much," said Nando.

When the chief had eaten his fill, Mr. Martindale, with considerable diplomacy, explained that the discovery of gold was of little use to him unless he could take men to the spot, and desired the withdrawal of the prohibition. Nando took a long time to convey this to Imbono, and Jack suspected that he was making somewhat lavish promises in the nature of _quid pro quo_. Imbono at length agreed to the white man's request, provided none of the workers he wished to take with him were servants of the Great White Chief. He consented also to lead him back to the cataract next day, so that he might complete his search for the gold-bearing rocks.

On this second journey Mr. Martindale and Jack were accompanied by two of their negroes with picks. On arriving at the spot the men were set to break away portions of the rocky wall on the left of the cataract.

"You see, Jack," said Mr. Martindale, "the fact that we found gold in the stream shows that it is still being washed down by the water; otherwise it would have been swept away or buried long ago. The rock must be of a soft kind that offers comparatively little resistance to the water, and I'm rather inclined to think that not so very many years ago the cataract was a good deal farther forward than it is now. Well, the gold-bearing stratum must run right through the cataract, horizontally I suspect. It may not be a broad one, but it will probably extend some distance on each side of the fall, and a few hours' work ought to prove it."

As the rock fell away under the negroes' picks, Mr. Martindale and Jack carefully washed samples of it. In less than an hour the glittering trail shone out clear in the wake of the granules of rock as they slid round the groove.

"So much for the first part of our job," said Mr. Martindale, with a quiet sigh of satisfaction. "The next thing is to see if the gold extends above the cataract."

Under Imbono's guidance the party made their way by a detour to the river banks above the falls. After a search of some hours Mr.

Martindale declared himself satisfied that the lode was confined to the rocks over which the water poured.

"We can't do much more for the present," he said. "The next thing is to get machinery for working the ore. We'll have to go back to Boma.

We can probably get simple materials for working the alluvial deposits there, but the machinery for crus.h.i.+ng the ore must be got from Europe, and that'll take time. We'll pack up and start to-morrow."

But after breakfast next morning, when Mr. Martindale had lighted his morning cigar, he startled Jack by saying suddenly--

"Say, Jack, how would you like to be left here with Barney and some of the men while I go back to Boma?"

"What a jolly lark!" said Jack, flus.h.i.+ng with pleasure.

"Humph! That's a fool's speech, or a schoolboy's, which often comes to the same thing. I'm not thinking of larks, or gulls, or geese, but of serious business."