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+Project Gutenberg's The Boy With the U.S. Miners, by Francis Rolt-Wheeler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Boy With the U.S. Miners
+
+Author: Francis Rolt-Wheeler
+
+Release Date: May 10, 2010 [EBook #32322]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH THE U.S. MINERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: cover of The Boy With the U. S. Miners]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: NOT DEMONS, BUT SAVIORS.
+
+Mine rescue crew, equipped with oxygen-breathing apparatus, exploring
+mine after a disaster.
+
+_Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines._]
+
+
+
+
+U. S. SERVICE SERIES.
+
+THE BOY WITH
+THE U. S. MINERS
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
+
+With Thirty-six Illustrations
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON
+LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
+
+Copyright, 1922,
+BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
+
+All Rights Reserved
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U. S. MINERS
+
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+BERWICK & SMITH CO.,
+NORWOOD PRESS,
+NORWOOD MASS.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+No walk of life is more wild and adventurous than that of the questing
+miner, whom neither Arctic cold nor tropic heat can bar in his mad
+race for the buried treasures of the Earth; no profession is more
+hazardous than that of the working miner, whose every step underground
+is full of peril.
+
+Wealth is not all. The thrill of the miner's life lies not in the
+making of millions. It lies in the ruggedness of his manhood, in the
+vigor of his partnerships, in the roaring ways of the mining camps,
+and the life of open spaces.
+
+Heroism and daring mark the miner. From the waterless deserts of
+California to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, from the loftiest peaks
+of the snow-capped Sierras to the stifling depths of the Carson Sink,
+the prospector has prowled. Lonely and forgotten, his discoveries have
+brought great states into being; hungry and poor, he has opened vaults
+of riches thousandfold vaster than the treasuries of kings.
+
+To give a glimpse of the lives of such men, to reveal the amazing
+wealth which the Earth yields to those who are willing to dare, and to
+set forth what an incalculable debt of gratitude the United States
+owes to the miner, is the aim and purpose of
+
+THE AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I                               PAGE
+UNDERGROUND TERRORS                       11
+
+CHAPTER II
+ENTOMBED ALIVE                            40
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE DANGERS OF RESCUE                     67
+
+CHAPTER IV
+EIGHT DAYS OF DARK                        98
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE LURE OF GOLD                         128
+
+CHAPTER VI
+NUGGETS!                                 146
+
+CHAPTER VII
+THE FORTY-NINERS                         174
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+THE GREAT BONANZA                        204
+
+CHAPTER IX
+WHERE TREASURE HIDES                     232
+
+CHAPTER X
+THE ROARING NORTH                        256
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE LONELY ISLAND                        276
+
+CHAPTER XII
+A SIBERIAN FILIBUSTER                    298
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Not Demons, but Saviors                       Frontispiece
+                                               FACING PAGE
+How Anton's Father was Killed                           12
+Coal-Hewers at Work                                     13
+Where the Branch Line Forks                             13
+Knockers                                                20
+Gathon, Goblin of the Mines                             20
+Dwarfs in the Mine                                      21
+Miners Descending a Shaft                               54
+Falling-in of a Mine                                    55
+Explosion of "Fire Damp"                                55
+Into the Poison-Filled Air                              82
+U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car                        83
+Interior View showing Life-Saving Equipment             83
+Where the Timber goes                                   90
+Geophone Expert Listening for Tapping of Survivors      91
+Building the Wall for the "Sand-Hogs"                   91
+Divining-Rods                                          138
+The World's Oldest Picture of Gold-Seekers             139
+Australia's Treasure-House                             158
+In the Richest Gold Mine of the World                  159
+Sutter's Mill                                          176
+The Rush to the Gold Mines                             177
+The Prospector of To-day                               184
+Flume at the Melones Mine                              185
+The Coming of the Forty-Niners                         194
+David Egelston                                         195
+The Miner's Sluice                                     214
+Panning Gold on the Klondyke                           215
+Where Deserts Yield Millions                           236
+The Eater of Mountains                                 237
+The Top of the Chilkoot Pass                           260
+Pass in the Sierra Nevadas                             261
+Hydraulicking in Colorado                              300
+America's "Gold-Ship" at Work                          301
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U S. MINERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+UNDERGROUND TERRORS
+
+
+"Ay, lad," said the old miner, the pale flame of his cap-lamp lighting
+up his wrinkled face and throwing a distorted shadow on the wall of
+coal behind, "there's goin' to be a plenty of us killed soon."
+
+"Likely enough, if they're all as careless as you," Clem retorted.
+
+"Carelessness ain't got nothin' to do with it," the old man replied.
+"The 'knockers' has got to be satisfied! There ain't been an accident
+here for months. It'll come soon! The spirits o' the mine is gettin'
+hungry for blood."
+
+"Nonsense, Otto! The idea of an old-timer like you believing in
+goblins and all that superstitious stuff!"
+
+"It's easy enough for you to say 'nonsense,' Clem Swinton, an' to
+make game o' men who were handlin' a coal pick when you was playin'
+with a rattle, but that don't change the facts. Why, even Anton, here,
+youngster that he is, knows better'n to deny the spirits below ground.
+The knockers got your father, Anton, didn't they?"
+
+Anton Rover, one of the youngest boys in the mine, to whom the old
+miner had turned for affirmation, nodded his head in agreement. Like
+many of his fellows, the lad was profoundly credulous.
+
+From his Polish mother--herself the daughter of a Polish miner--Anton
+had inherited a firm belief in demons, goblins, gnomes, trolls,
+kobolds, knockers, and the various races of weird creatures with which
+the Slavic and Teutonic peoples have dowered the world underground.
+From his earliest childhood he had been familiar with tales of
+subterranean terror, and he knew that his father had often foregone a
+day's work and a day's pay rather than go down the mine-shaft if some
+evil omen had occurred.
+
+Yet Anton was willing to accept modern ideas, also. Clem was both his
+protector and his chum, and the boy had a great respect for his older
+comrade's knowledge and good sense. He was aware, too, that Clem
+was unusually well informed, for the young fellow was a natural
+student and was fitting himself for a higher position in the mine by
+hard reading. This Ohio mine, like many of the American collieries,
+maintained a free school and an admirable technical library for the
+use of those workers who wished to better themselves.
+
+
+[Illustration: HOW ANTON'S FATHER WAS KILLED.
+
+Miner, failing to test for vibration when tapping roof-slate, goes to
+work and is crushed by falling slate.
+
+_Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines._]
+
+
+[Illustration: COAL-HEWERS AT WORK.
+
+Holing or Undercutting in a typical seam not high enough for men to
+stand upright.
+
+_From "Mines and Their Story."_]
+
+
+[Illustration: WHERE THE BRANCH LINE FORKS.
+
+Loaded car of coal switched to main line and on its way to the shaft.
+
+_From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams._]
+
+
+The young student miner was zealous in his efforts to promote modern
+ideas among his comrades, and knew that the old superstitions bred
+carelessness and a blind belief in Fate. Despite their differences in
+age and in points of view, he and Otto were warm friends, and he
+returned the old man's attack promptly.
+
+"So far as Anton's father is concerned, Otto," he said, "it was Jim
+Rover's carelessness that killed him. He was caught by a falling roof
+just because he wouldn't take the trouble to make sure that the draw
+slate overhead was solid before setting to work to undercut the coal.
+I know that's so, because he told me, just before he died. I was the
+first one to reach him, after the fall, for I was working in the next
+room, just around the rib."
+
+"An' who made the draw slate fall, just when Jim Rover was a-standin'
+right under it? Answer me that, Clem Swinton!"
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Every man who's ever handled a coal pick knows that draw slate is apt
+to work loose. That's one of the dangers of the business. And the
+danger can be avoided, as you know perfectly well, Otto, if a chap
+will feel the roof for vibration, with one hand, while he uses the
+other to tap on the slate with the flat side of a pick. If he won't
+take the trouble--why, it's his own fault if he gets killed.
+
+"Blaming the 'knockers,' Otto, doesn't hide the fact that nearly a
+thousand miners get killed in the United States every year, just
+through their own carelessness."
+
+The old man shook a finger ominously.
+
+"It isn't always the careless ones what get taken," he declared. "Look
+out for yourself, Clem Swinton; look out for yourself! It's you the
+knockers'll be after, next, an' much good all your readin'll do you,
+then! I warned Jim Rover less'n a week afore he got killed, an' I'm
+warnin' you now."
+
+Anton looked up, fearfully, for old Otto had a reputation as a seer,
+in the mine, but Clem only laughed.
+
+"I put my faith in following out the safety rules, Otto," he replied,
+"not in charms and tricks to keep the goblins away."
+
+The old man, however, was not thus to be set aside. He was as ready to
+defend his old-fashioned beliefs as was Clem to advance his modern
+theories.
+
+"Experience goes for somethin'," he affirmed stubbornly. "Boy an' man,
+I've been below ground for over forty years. I've worked in Germany,
+Belgium, France, and all over this country. Just eight years old I
+was, when I went down the shaft for the first time; there weren't no
+laws, then, to keep youngsters out of a mine.
+
+"I was a door-boy to start off with, openin' doors for the coal-cars
+to come through. That meant keeping one's ears open. The loaded cars
+come a-roarin' down the slopin' galleries, an', if a kid didn't hear
+them, he'd get smashed between the coal car an' the door. Even when he
+did hear them, he had to jump lively, or he'd get nipped, anyhow.
+
+"On the other side o' the door it wasn't much better, for the empty
+cars were hauled up the slope o' the mine galleries by donkey power,
+an', if a kid didn't hear the whistle o' the donkey driver, he'd get
+his head clouted an' would be fined two days' pay beside.
+
+"There warn't no eight-hours' day, then. We worked a shift o' twelve
+hours, an' the miners didn't stop between for meals--just took their
+grub in bites while they went on holin' coal. All piece-work it was in
+them days, an' every miner holed, spragged (or timbered), picked and
+loaded his own coal. The more stuff he got out, the more pay. The men
+didn't get any too much money, either, an' if a miner wanted to have a
+decent pay-check at the end o' the week, he warn't goin' to be
+hindered by havin' any trouble with cars. The poor kid at the door got
+it comin' to him from all sides.
+
+"It's different now in coal-mines to what it was then. We hadn't no
+electric plant to run ventilatin' fans for keepin' the air fit to
+breathe. Nowadays, a man can be nigh as comfortable below ground as he
+can be above; but, when I was a kid, the air in a mine was hot, an'
+heavy, an' sleepy-like.
+
+"After breathin' that air for nine or ten hours, it was hard to keep
+awake. You'd see the pit-boys comin' up out o' the shaft wi' their
+eyes all red an' swollen an' achin'. No, it warn't from gas, it was
+just from rubbin' em to keep em' open. An' rubbin' your eyes with
+hands all gritty with coal-dust ain't any too good for 'em."
+
+"Well, Otto," the young fellow interrupted, "you can't deny that
+modern methods have improved all that. There aren't any door-boys in a
+modern mine. Most of the States in this country have passed laws
+requiring that all doors through which coal cars pass must be operated
+automatically. The United States Bureau of Mines keeps a sharp
+lookout, too. There aren't any donkeys, either, not in up-to-date
+mines; endless-chain conveyors take the coal from the face where the
+miner has dug it clear to the mouth of the shaft, and load it into the
+buckets by a self-tipping device. As for small boys in a mine, as you
+said yourself, there aren't any, not in the United States, anyhow."
+
+"I'm not denyin' that minin' has got easier," was the grudging reply,
+"it'd be a wonder if it hadn't. What I'm sayin' is that all your
+newfangled schemes don't stop accidents and won't never stop
+accidents, not till you get rid o' the knockers an' gas sprites of a
+mine. An' that you'll never do!
+
+"You're like a whole lot o' these young fellows, Clem, who believe
+nothin' that they don't see. You don't never stop to think that maybe
+it's your own blindness an' not your own cleverness that keeps you
+from seem'. Wait till I tell you what happened to me, one time, when I
+was a door-boy in Germany.
+
+"Long afore I first went down into a coal mine, I knew about the
+knockers, and where they come from. Dad told me that all the
+coal-seams o' the world were forests, once. Long afore Noah an' the
+Flood. He'd seen ferns an' leaves o' trees turned into coal. One time,
+when digging out a seam, he'd come across the trunk of a tree standin'
+upright in the coal, with the roots still in the under clay."
+
+"That's right enough," agreed Clem, "but the coal-forests were a good
+many million years older than Noah!"
+
+"Maybe, maybe; but you warn't there to see," Otto retorted. "Anyhow,
+there were forests, an' these forests were standin' afore the Flood.
+Judgin' by what's left, the trees o' these forests must ha' been big.
+
+"All those trees, Dad used to say, had spirits o' their own, just like
+trees have to-day. Elves an' dryads, he used to call 'em. When the
+Flood came an' spread deep water over the whole world, the tops o' the
+hills were washed into the valleys an' all these forests were covered
+in mud an' sand. That's how it is you never find anything but shale or
+slate (which is mud-rock) or sandstone above a coal seam. What's more,
+when pullin' down slate, you'll often find sea-shells, like mussels
+an' clams. Ain't that so?"
+
+"I won't argue with you about the Flood, Otto, for that's a long
+story. But you're dead right in saying that all coal seams are
+overlaid with rocks which have been laid down by water, and that
+fossil shells are found in the overlying layers. But go ahead and tell
+us what you saw."
+
+"When the Flood came," the old man resumed, "the elves an' dryads what
+used to live in the coal-trees were swallowed up in the water. They
+weren't drowned, because spirits can't die--at least, that was what
+Dad told me. They couldn't go away from their trees, because the trees
+were still standin' there, though all covered in mud or sand. So they
+had to change their ways for a new life, first under the water, an'
+when the waters o' the Flood dried up, under the ground. The elves,
+who were the men-spirits o' the forest, became knockers; the dryads,
+who were the women-spirits o' the trees, became the sprites o' the gas
+damps.
+
+"In the old days, folks used to be able to see these spirits o' the
+forests. They used to build temples to 'em, an' have regular festivals
+in the woods, always leavin' some food for 'em to eat. Dad told me
+never to forget that the only way to keep on the good side o' the
+spirits below ground was to keep out o' the mine on the first day o'
+spring an' the last day o' summer, an' every time I took anything to
+eat below ground, to leave a bite behind.
+
+"I've always done it. In all the years I've been minin', I've never
+gone down the shaft on March 21st or September 20th, an' I never will.
+An', every time I've taken my dinner-pail to the face where I was
+workin', I've put a bit o' bread aside for the knockers. You can
+believe it or not, as you like, but when I got back to the place, on
+my next shift, the bread was gone."
+
+"Probably rats," commented Clem, in an aside to Anton.
+
+
+[Illustration: KNOCKERS.
+
+_After a Vignette by Bottrell._]
+
+
+[Illustration: GATHON, GOBLIN OF THE MINES.
+
+_Fragment of a Composition by Phiz._]
+
+
+[Illustration: DWARFS IN THE MINE.
+
+The Other Mythical Personages are the King of the Metals and the
+Keeper of the Treasures of the Earth.
+
+_From a German Engraving after Froebom._]
+
+
+The old miner paid no heed to the interruption, if, indeed, he heard
+it.
+
+"That way, I always knew that the knockers were on my side, an' I've
+been willin' to hole coal in mines that folks said weren't safe.
+What's more, in forty years o' work, I've never lost a day's time from
+an accident of any kind. I know I'm safe, because of what happened to
+me when I was still a kid.
+
+"One day--I don't know just why, maybe the air was worse'n
+usual--after I'd been lookin' after the door for the bigger part o'
+the shift, I dropped right off asleep. Half-dreamin', I heard a loaded
+car come roarin' down, but I didn't wake up until it was so close as
+to be too late.
+
+"I scrambled up on my feet an' was just makin' a wild jump forward to
+the door, when I felt a little fist--it seemed about the size of a
+baby's, but was strong an' hard--hit me right in the chest. It pushed
+me back into the corner, out o' the way o' the car, an' held me there.
+
+"At the same minute, an' just in the nick o' time, the door swung
+open.
+
+"Rubbin' my eyes--they was so gritty wi' coal that I could hardly look
+out o' them--I saw what looked like a little man made o' coal
+standin' back against the door an' holdin' it open for the car to pass
+through. His face was sort o' pale, like a whitewashed wall in the
+dark, an' his eyes were red, like sparks. I thought he had a pointed
+hat an' long pointed shoes, but I was so scared that I couldn't be
+rightly sure. I could just see his whitish face movin' up an' down,
+like he was noddin' his head. Then the door slammed shut, the hand
+suddenly lifted off my chest an' I didn't see nothin' more. I tell
+you, I kept awake after that."
+
+"You must have opened the door unconsciously, while half-asleep, and
+dreamed about seeing the goblin," was Clem's comment.
+
+But, before the old man could retort, Anton broke in.
+
+"Father told me he's seen some, just like that. It was in Wales. A
+woman visitor had gone down to see the mine."
+
+Otto shook his head gravely.
+
+"Never a woman went down a coal mine yet, but an accident happened
+right after," he declared. "In the big explosion at Loosburg, when
+over four hundred miners were killed, it was found out, after, that
+one o' the miners was a woman who had dressed herself in men's
+clothes an' was pickin' coal. But what was it your father saw, Anton?"
+
+"It happened right when the visiting party was in the mine," the boy
+explained. "It was in one of the main galleries, which was strongly
+timbered. A prop, which had been standing firmly for ever so many
+years, suddenly crumbled into splinters and the roof fell on the
+woman, hurting her so badly that she died soon after she was taken to
+the top.
+
+"Just after the roof fell, so Father said, he and all the rest of the
+miners saw a band of knockers gathered around the pile of fallen roof
+and pointing at the figure of the woman crushed beneath. He said the
+knockers were laughing so loudly that some of the miners heard the
+echoes away at the other end of the mine."
+
+"And do you believe that, Anton?" queried Clem, incredulously.
+
+"Father saw them himself," the boy replied, in a tone of finality.
+
+"Then there's the gas sprites," Otto went on, pleased at having found
+a sympathetic listener. "I've never seen 'em myself, but there's
+plenty that have. In a mine where I used to work, in Belgium, there
+was a man who could see 'em as plain as I see you or Anton. That was
+his job, and he was paid handsomely, too.
+
+"He could walk through a gallery, either in a workin' or an abandoned
+mine, an' could tell right away if there was fire damp, or white damp,
+or black damp, or stink damp, in the workin's. He could see the gas
+sprites himself an' give warnin' where men had better not go. He
+didn't have to carry a safety lamp, nor chemical apparatus, nor cages
+of mice an' canaries, the way folks do, now. He just walked into the
+mine an' saw the sprites. He was friendly to 'em, an' they never did
+him no harm."
+
+"What were they like, Otto?" queried Anton.
+
+"Shadows o' women," the old man replied promptly. "Fire damp, this
+diviner used to say, looked like a figure veiled in red, black damp
+was veiled in black wi' white edges, white damp was bluish, an' stink
+damp was yellow. When the gas was faint, all he could see was just the
+glow o' the colors, very dim; but when the gas was strong then the
+shapes o' the women were bold an' clear.
+
+"The gas sprites, bein' women, catch an' hold the young men an' the
+single men more easily than old an' married miners. You don't deny
+that single men are more often killed by damps than married men, do
+you, Clem?"
+
+The young miner looked uncomfortable at the question.
+
+"That's a general belief, and statistics seem to back it up," he
+admitted. "But I don't see that it has anything to do with your goblin
+ideas, Otto. It's just because the single men, generally, are the
+youngest, and they haven't become as immune to the poisonous gases of
+the mine as men who have been working below ground all their lives."
+
+"You can explain away anything, if you have a mind to," Otto retorted
+scornfully. "But as long as men are workin' below ground, there's
+goin' to be knockers an' sprites o' the damps, an' miners is goin' to
+be killed. Me, I've escaped. Why? Because I'm chock-full o' science
+an' modern ideas? Not a bit of it! I get along because I know what the
+spirits o' the mine expect, an' I give it to 'em. Right now, I'm the
+oldest man at work, here, an' I ain't never had an accident."
+
+"Don't you believe his stories, Anton," the young miner protested,
+turning to the boy. "Those antiquated notions will only lead you
+astray. The 'damps' are just various kinds of gases coming out of the
+coal, and the way to fight them is to keep a strong current of air
+going through the mine."
+
+"How do they come out o' the coal, if you know so much?" questioned
+Otto, belligerently.
+
+"Sure I know! But I don't suppose telling you will change your ideas."
+
+"It won't," the old miner admitted frankly. "But I've had my say, an'
+it's only fair to let you have yours. The youngster, here, can believe
+which o' the two he pleases."
+
+"Well, it's something this way," Clem began, casting about in his mind
+for a way to explain the chemistry of mine air as simply as he could.
+"Ordinary air--the air above ground--is made up of a little less than
+21 per cent. of oxygen and a little more than 78 per cent. of
+nitrogen. The rest of it is a mixture of carbon and oxygen which the
+books call carbon dioxide or black damp, with some other rare gases
+beside.
+
+"Now, all animals, including man, depend for their life on the oxygen
+in the air. If the oxygen drops to 15 per cent., a man will suffer.
+That's not likely to happen where miners' lamps or safety-lamps are
+used, because the flame of a lamp goes out when there's less than 17
+per cent. oxygen. Even at 19 per cent., a lamp will burn so dimly as
+to warn of danger. The nitrogen in the air is inert, that is, it does
+neither good nor harm to man. But what I want you to remember, Anton,
+is that even in the purest air above ground, there's always some
+'black damp,' so it's a bit hard to see where Otto's goblin women come
+in!
+
+"Now, when pure air comes down a coal shaft, a lot of changes happen
+to it. Some of the oxygen is consumed by the breathing of the men and
+animals in the mine--if there are any donkeys or such--some is taken
+up by the burning of lamps, some more by the explosion of blasting
+powder, a little is lost by the rusting of iron pyrites--which is
+found in many coal mines--and a lot of it is taken up by the coal,
+just how, we don't quite know."
+
+"It's good to hear o' somethin' you don't know," the old miner
+remarked sarcastically. "But you're talkin' about dry air, an' the air
+in most mines is moist."
+
+"Quite right," Clem agreed. "It has to be. Mine air is made moist, on
+purpose, especially in winter."
+
+"It is?" Otto's voice expressed unqualified astonishment.
+
+"It certainly is! In most coal-mines--this one, for instance--all the
+air that passes down the intake shaft is moistened by a spray of mixed
+water and air, so finely atomized that it floats like a cloud."
+
+"What for? It's easier to work in dry air'n moist air."
+
+"It's easier to get blown up, too! In winter time, Otto, the air above
+ground is a lot colder than the air in the mine. Cold air can't hold
+as much moisture as warm air, and as soon as air gets warmed up a bit,
+it tries its hardest to absorb any moisture with which it happens to
+come in contact.
+
+"What happens in a mine, in such a case? Why, as the cold air from
+above passes through the galleries of a mine, it gets warmed up. As it
+warms up, it draws out from the roofs, the ribs, and the floors all
+the water that there is to draw, and makes the mine dead dry. When
+coal dust is absolutely dry, it crumbles into finer and finer dust,
+until at last the particles are so small that they float in the air.
+Then comes disaster, for finely divided coal dust is so explosive that
+the smallest flame--even a spark from the stroke of a pick--will set
+the whole mine ablaze."
+
+"I don't see that," interrupted Anton. "If dust is so bad, why do the
+bosses hang boards from all the gallery roofs and pile them high with
+dust?"
+
+"Because the dust in those piles is stone dust, my boy," the young
+fellow explained. "When an explosion happens, it drives a big blast of
+air in front of it, so strong, sometimes, as to knock a man down. The
+blast of air blows all the stone dust from those boards and fills the
+air chock-full of it.
+
+"This stone dust, usually made from crushed limestone or crushed
+shale, won't burn. The flame of the explosion can't pass through and
+the fire can't jump a rock-dust barrier. Even the flame of methane,
+which you know better as 'gas,' or fire damp, which has a terrific
+force, is choked back by this dense cloud of rock-dust, and, as you
+know, all coal mines have more or less methane gas."
+
+"They don't, either," contradicted Otto. "I've worked in mines for
+years at a time an' never seen the 'cap' on the flame of the
+safety-lamp, tellin' there's fire damp there."
+
+"You may not have seen it, but there was gas there, just the same. As
+for the cap-flame you're talking about, Otto, I'll admit that it's the
+surest way of telling when there's so much fire-damp that the mine is
+getting dangerous. But it's a risky test, just the same. You can't see
+the little cap of methane gas flame burning above the oil flame of the
+lamp until there's 2 per cent. of gas in the air of the mine, and a
+little more than 5 per cent. will start an explosion."
+
+"What makes that cap?" queried Anton.
+
+"Fire damp or methane gas burning inside the wire gauze of the
+safety-lamp."
+
+"But if the gas is already burning inside, why doesn't it explode
+outside?"
+
+"Just because it's a safety-lamp, my boy. That's why the flame burns
+inside a wire gauze. I'll explain that.
+
+"Suppose you take a lamp with a hot flame--an alcohol or spirit lamp
+will do--and light it. Then hold a piece of close-meshed wire gauze
+right on the flame. You'll find that the flame will spread under the
+wire gauze but will not go through. Hold it long enough, though, until
+the wire gets red hot, and, quite suddenly, the flame will pass
+through and burn above the gauze as well as below.
+
+"Try another trick. Put out the lamp and then hold the gauze just
+where it was before. You can light the flame above the wire but it
+will not pass below the gauze until the wire gets red-hot. That shows
+that gas which is not burning can pass through a wire gauze, but that
+gas which is aflame cannot pass until the wire is red-hot."
+
+"Yes," said Anton, "I can see that."
+
+"Very good. Then, if you have a lamp which is burning inside a
+cylinder of wire gauze, the gas of fire-damp can go through, and, if
+there's enough of it to burn, it will burn above the flame of the
+lamp, making an aureole or 'cap' just as Otto says. But the flaming
+gas can't get back through the wire gauze to set fire to the fire-damp
+outside, at least, not until the wire gets red-hot, which it's not
+likely to do, seeing that the gas is in the middle, not underneath it.
+
+"That's how they test for fire-damp, nowadays. The flame of a
+safety-lamp is drawn down until it shows only a small yellow tip. If
+there's any fire-damp in the air, a light-blue halo appears over the
+yellow flame. At a little more than 1 per cent., an experienced man
+can judge that there is gas there, but the true 'cap,' which is
+pointed like a cone, doesn't show until there's 2 per cent. of the
+gas. At 3 per cent., the cap will be like a dunce's cap, and more than
+half an inch high. At 4 per cent., it will be over an inch high, and
+at 4½ per cent. it'll form a column of blue flame. Then it's high time
+to get out of the mine, and to get out quickly.
+
+"In the improved form of safety-lamps, the oil flame burns inside a
+glass, but the air which reaches the flame has to pass through two
+cylinders of wire gauze. The glass keeps the flame from ever touching
+the innermost gauze, and, if an accident happens--such as the breaking
+of the glass--it would still be fairly safe, for the burning gas
+inside wouldn't pass through the inner gauze until that got red-hot,
+and it wouldn't reach the outer gauze because the current of air
+passing down between the two layers of wire mesh would keep the outer
+gauze cool. This safety-lamp was invented by Sir Humphry Davy, in
+England, in 1815, just after a big explosion in an English colliery
+had cost hundreds of lives. All mines nowadays require that miners use
+either safety-lamps or electric lamps, and it's every miner's
+business to report to the boss when he sees a cap of burning gas
+inside his safety-lamp."
+
+The old miner nodded his head in agreement.
+
+"I won't use an electric lamp," he commented. "It's foolishness. The
+gas sprites ain't really malicious. They're willin' enough to give a
+warnin'. They'll put a cap on a flame if they don't want folks in that
+part of the mine. An electric lamp tells nothin'. It won't even give a
+warnin' against black damp."
+
+"Perfectly true," Clem agreed. "With an oil safety-lamp, the flame
+gets dim or even goes out if there's too much black damp. The electric
+lamp burns on, just the same, because the light is in a vacuum. Black
+damp isn't so dangerous as fire damp, though. It only causes distress
+and hard breathing because it shows that there's too big a proportion
+of nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the air and not enough oxygen. It's
+oxygen that a man misses."
+
+"But black damp'll explode, too," put in Otto.
+
+"No," the other corrected, "it won't. But it often happens that
+there's fire-damp around when black damp is present and the black damp
+makes a test for gas difficult. It's the gas that explodes, not the
+black damp.
+
+"It isn't always the explosiveness of a damp that makes it dangerous,
+though," he went on. "As Otto could tell you, Anton, white damp is the
+worst of the three. And it doesn't give any warning at all."
+
+"That's why we had that diviner in a Belgian mine," the old man
+commented, gravely. "He could see the gas sprites in their blue veils.
+But, if there's a lot o' white damp, you can tell it by the flame of a
+safety-lamp gettin' a little longer an' brighter."
+
+"It's not safe to trust it," the young fellow advised. "You'd have
+trouble seeing 2 per cent, of white damp, and you'd be dead before you
+had much chance to look. Even with 1½ per cent., a man would be likely
+to drop before he reached a better-ventilated part of the mine, and he
+couldn't see that much on the flame of his safety-lamp at all. To
+breathe the air with only 1 per cent. of white damp for an hour would
+put a man in such a state that he mightn't recover, and he wouldn't
+have had any warning.
+
+"Luckily, there's much less danger of white damp in mines than there
+used to be. It's a gas that's formed only when there's been something
+burning. After an explosion in a mine, or a fire, there's sure to be
+a lot of it, and rescue parties have always found it their worst foe.
+But, in the ordinary working mine, it is rare."
+
+"Not so rare as all that!" objected Otto. "We used to have a lot of
+it, on the other side."
+
+"You wouldn't now," was the reply. "The white damp of those days was
+due to the heavy charges of gunpowder or low explosive that were used,
+explosives which are forbidden now in dangerous mines."
+
+"They were better'n the stuff we use nowadays," grumbled Otto, "they
+brought down more coal an' didn't smash it up so bad."
+
+"They smashed up men, instead," Clem retorted. "And they put a whole
+lot of white damp into a mine. That was really dangerous, because, in
+those days, people hadn't found out the value of canaries."
+
+"I've often wondered about that," interjected Anton. "Why do the
+testing-parties carry canaries?"
+
+"Because," answered Clem, with a smile, "canaries are as clever at
+seeing the gas sprites as was the Belgian diviner that Otto talks
+about. No, but seriously," he went on, "the reason is that canaries
+are extremely susceptible to white damp. Less than ¼ of one per cent
+of white damp will cause a canary to collapse at once, and a man could
+breath that proportion for an hour without much harm. Even a tenth of
+one per cent. will cause the little bird to show signs of distress."
+
+"It's tough on the bird," was Anton's sympathetic comment.
+
+"Not especially! As soon as a bird begins to show collapse, it is
+taken back to the open air and is as frisky and lively as ever in five
+minutes. But its value as a warning signal is enormous, for it tells
+rescue parties or investigating parties when to put on gas masks or
+breathing apparatus containing oxygen. In a well-ventilated mine,
+however, where high explosive is used and handled by experienced men,
+there's not likely to be much danger from white damp.
+
+"Stink damp is rare but can sometimes be dangerous. Generally, a
+fellow is warned away, because of the smell--which is just like rotten
+eggs. The worst part of stink damp is that it smells the worst when
+there's only a little of it. When there's so much of it around as to
+be deadly, it doesn't smell any worse. You get small quantities of it,
+sometimes, in blasting, but generally hydrogen sulphide or stink damp
+is found after a mine fire or an explosion. Rescue parties generally
+carry a cage of mice as well as one of canaries."
+
+"With the same idea?" queried Anton.
+
+"Exactly. As little as a tenth of one per cent. of stink damp makes a
+mouse sprawl on his belly, his legs don't seem strong enough to hold
+him up; while, in the same air, a canary doesn't suffer a bit.
+
+"The only real danger in stink damp is when there's water in the mine,
+for example when, after a fire, a lot of water has been pumped down
+into the workings to put the fire out. Water absorbs stink damp very
+easily and gives it up equally easily when stirred. So, if a member of
+a rescue party puts his foot in a puddle of water where there has been
+stink damp around, so much of the gas may suddenly come up in his face
+as to topple him over.
+
+"But you can see, Anton, that most of the gas troubles in a mine come
+from the blasting. That's why, nowadays, the miners who get out the
+coal seldom or never fire the shots. Experienced men, trained
+especially for that work, are used. After a miner has undercut the
+coal, the shot-firer comes. He tests for gas before he begins work,
+bores a deep hole in the coal with a drill, tests for gas again in
+case he should have tapped a leak in the seam, cleans out the hole,
+sends the miner for the box of explosive--which is kept thirty or
+forty yards away from the face where the coal is being cut--and
+prepares the charge with a detonater which he carries in a box over
+his shoulder. The miner never touches either the explosive or the
+detonater. Then the shot-firer puts the primed charge in the hole,
+jams the hole full of clay with a wooden tamper--a steel bar might
+cause a spark and a premature explosion--tests for gas again, connects
+the electric wires from a portable battery around the rib corner,
+fires the shot, returns to the face and tests for gas again. Then, and
+not until then, does the miner begin to dig the coal. That way, every
+one in the mine is safe."
+
+"Yes," growled the old miner, "and the shot-firer doesn't dig any
+coal, nor do any hard work, an' gets paid more'n we do."
+
+"He knows more than you do," Clem responded, "and he gets better pay
+because his experience and prudence is worth a lot of money to the
+mine. Just think what an explosion costs--to say nothing of the risk
+of lives being lost! And you won't find experienced shot-firers or
+mine-managers talking about gas sprites, Otto!"
+
+"Better for 'em if they did!" the old man warned. "For I'm sayin' to
+you again, what I said before--the spirits o' the mine is gettin'
+hungry for blood!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ENTOMBED ALIVE
+
+
+"Danger! You're plumb crazy about danger, Clem!" Anton declared
+impatiently.
+
+The older lad gestured to the big building of the pit-mouth before
+them, above which the spider-like legs of the headgear soared high,
+surmounted by the huge double winding-wheels which give so
+characteristic a note to a modern colliery.
+
+"Any one who forgets that a coal-mine is dangerous is a fool," he
+retorted sharply, "and keep that in your head, Anton, my lad. Not that
+danger would ever stop me from mining. I like it. I like to feel that
+I'm running a risk every time I go into an entry and every time
+there's a blast. And I like to feel that I know enough about safety
+methods to snap my fingers at the risk. There's excitement in that."
+
+"There'll be excitement enough, if old Otto's warnings come true,"
+returned Anton gloomily.
+
+Two days had passed since the old miner's prophecy, two days without
+any unusual incident. Clem had all but forgotten the evil presage, but
+Anton was brooding over it. It was his work to load cars in the room
+where Clem was mining, and the boy's superstitious nature made him
+painfully aware that if any accident happened to his comrade, he would
+probably be caught, too.
+
+Anton had been working in the mine only a few weeks and he had not yet
+been able to grasp the need of Clem's incessant teaching with regard
+to the extreme prudence needed in colliery work. He had almost caused
+a serious accident during his first week by not blocking his car
+properly. The half-loaded car had begun to move down the slope of the
+mine gallery, it might easily have run clear down into the entry and
+possibly killed some one if Clem had not dashed forward and checked
+the car before it had too much speed.
+
+In general, Anton had not reasoned much about the danger or the lack
+of danger in coal-mining. He regarded the pit as a matter of course.
+It was the only life he knew. All his comrades were at work in the
+mine or would be at work therein, as soon as their school-days were
+over. The boy himself had started early, soon after his father's
+death, since it was the only employment to be got in the neighborhood
+and he had his widowed mother to support.
+
+Clem had found a place in the mine for his friend without any
+difficulty, for Anton was powerfully muscled. In this he took after
+his father, who had been almost a Hercules and one of the champion
+wrestlers of the mine. Born of miner stock on both sides, Anton was
+short and squat, able to shovel coal all day without fatigue. He had
+accordingly, been taken on as a loader, Clem undertaking to keep an
+eye over him.
+
+It took the older lad all his time to do so. Anton was absolutely
+reckless by nature, and, though he was constantly being advised as to
+the necessary precautions for making mining safe, he could never be
+persuaded to adopt them.
+
+Instead of blocking his car with one log placed across the track and
+another under the car and resting on the transverse log, he would put
+a piece of coal under the wheel and trust to its staying there; he
+would wear his coat loosely, over his trousers, though he was told
+over and over again that he ran the risk of his coat being caught by
+the cars, when switching, and being dragged along the side of the rib:
+on another occasion, Clem found the boy starting along the
+haulage-way used for the coal cars instead of using the man-way
+reserved for the workers, in order to save a couple of minutes' time.
+
+What exasperated Clem even more was that, since Otto's warning, Anton
+had become more careless than ever. It was evident that the fatalistic
+streak in the boy made him feel that if he were foredoomed to an
+accident, there was no use in trying to prevent it.
+
+The boy's impatient exclamation and his comrade's retort about danger
+had occurred while they were in line in front of the lamp shack,
+waiting to get their safety-lamps before going down for the day shift.
+
+As in most well-organized collieries, the safety-lamps were filled and
+adjusted by experts, who looked after nothing else. After the lamps
+were lighted, they were locked--and not one of the miners was allowed
+a key. Thus the lamps could not be opened below ground and there was
+no chance for a reckless man to expose a naked flame in a room or
+entry where there might chance to be gas. A safety-lamp would not go
+out unless the air in the mine was so vitiated that it was dangerous
+to life to remain therein, or unless there was some defect in the lamp
+which would render it perilous to use.
+
+After the lamps had been given out, Clem and Anton got in the cage to
+go down the shaft. Otto happened to be descending at the same time.
+
+"We're still waiting for your 'knockers' to show themselves!" Clem
+suggested jestingly.
+
+The old man deigned no reply. Instead, he looked round the cage
+meaningly at the other men there, most of whom frowned at Clem's
+remark. Among miners, it is believed to bring bad luck to speak or
+even to hint of accidents when in the cage. Only Otto's personal
+liking for the young fellow kept him from a retort which might have
+brought on a quarrel.
+
+On reaching the bottom, Clem and Anton set out along the man-way
+together. It was a walk of nearly a mile underground from the main
+shaft of the mine to the distant "room" or square hole in the seam,
+where Clem was to dig away the coal face, and which was one of the
+rooms from which Anton was loading coal.
+
+This Ohio colliery was being worked on what is known as the
+pillar-and-room method. This consists in dividing the seam of coal
+into squares like a chessboard, taking out the coal from each
+alternate square, leaving the intervening squares of coal intact to
+act as pillars in holding up the roof. They do not look like pillars
+to a careless observer, often being blocks of coal thirty yards
+square.
+
+"It seems silly," said Anton, after they had walked on a minute or
+two, "to leave all this coal near the shaft and to go digging a mile
+away. Why not take all the coal that is handy first?"
+
+"And have the roof come down and block up all the coal that is beyond?
+That would be just throwing away the wealth of the mine."
+
+"Timber the roof, then!"
+
+"It would cost too much, for one thing," Clem explained, "and, for
+another, all the timber in the world won't hold up a roof if the
+excavation is made too big. There's millions of tons of rock pressing
+down on a mine roof. Judging by the way you talk, Anton, I don't
+believe you understand what a coal formation is, yet."
+
+"Isn't it like Otto said, then?"
+
+"Only in a way. Otto's description of the coal forests was near
+enough--in spite of his ideas about goblins and sprites--and he was
+correct in saying that the forests decayed under water and turned
+into coal after they were pressed down by rock. But it wasn't the
+Flood that did that, at least not the Flood that Otto was speaking of.
+The coal forests existed millions of years before Noah.
+
+"What's more, it wasn't only just once that the forests were covered
+by a deluge. That happened several times, a hundred or more, in some
+places.
+
+"For centuries at a time, these gloomy and steaming forests grew in
+boggy land, only a few inches above the level of the sea. Gradually
+the land sank, the sea came in, the trees fell and decayed under the
+water, and a layer of mud or sand was deposited over them. Then
+gradually the land rose again just above the level of the sea, and a
+new forest grew. Once more the land sank below the water, the second
+forest fell into decay and upon that layer a new deposit of mud or
+sand was laid. That gave two layers or seams of coal-forest-bog, to be
+turned later into coal by pressure; and two layers or strata of mud or
+sand, to be turned into shale and slate or into sandstone, also by
+pressure.
+
+"When a long time elapsed between the swampings, several centuries of
+coal forests had made a deep bed of bog, which, ages after, became a
+thick seam of coal. When the swampings happened close together, the
+layer of bog was shallow, producing a thin seam of coal. In the same
+way, the layers of shale or sandstone are thick or thin according to
+the length of time that the land was under the water.
+
+"Because of that, Anton, in nearly every colliery there is not just
+one layer or seam of coal, but a number of them. There are sixteen
+different seams in this mine, showing that the land rose and fell
+sixteen times, probably in the course of a million years.
+
+"Some mines show much bigger changes. In the famous coal basin of
+Mons, in Belgium, there are 157 layers of coal, of which 120 are thick
+enough to be workable. The Saar basin, on the left bank of the Rhine,
+which has played so important a part in the international troubles
+following the end of the World War, has 164 seams, with 77 of them
+workable, giving a thickness of 240 feet of coal. However, as the
+lowest layers are nearly four miles deep, they will probably never be
+worked."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"To start with, the cost of haulage to the top would be enormous. But,
+aside from that, a good many mining engineers figure that the
+temperature at that depth would be above boiling point. You know, in
+general, the farther you go down in a mine, the hotter it gets."
+
+"What do you mean by a seam being 'workable'?" the boy queried. "Can't
+all coal be dug out?"
+
+"Not by a long shot. At least not so as to be worked at a profit.
+Suppose a seam of coal is only a few inches thick, how is a miner
+going to dig it out? He couldn't crawl in such a seam, let alone using
+his tools there."
+
+"He could cut out enough rock at the top and bottom to give him a
+chance to get in."
+
+"A miner is paid for digging coal, not digging rock," was the answer.
+"What's more, according to your scheme, so much shale or sandstone
+would be mixed with the coal that it would be useless for burning.
+
+"Even seams two feet thick are so hard to work that most of them are
+left alone, and a seam three feet thick means extra expense in getting
+out the coal because of the difficulty of labor in hewing and
+transporting the coal from the face to the shaft. The ideal thickness
+is between six and eight feet, where a man can stand upright and can
+reach to the roof with a slate bar. That height, too, makes timbering
+easy.
+
+"Very thick seams have their own difficulties. The worst of these is
+the supporting of the roof. Take a seam 30 or 40 feet thick, for
+example. Look at the size of the hole that is left when the coal is
+dug away! Timbering becomes a real problem, there, for the longer a
+prop is, Anton, the weaker it is. Coal managers in mines like those
+have to do some careful figuring, or the cost of the timber they put
+into the mine would be more than the value of the coal they take out."
+
+"How do they handle it then?"
+
+"As if it were a quarry, rather than a mine. The seam is worked on
+successive levels, but, even then, it is impossible to prevent
+constant accidents from the fall of coal or the sudden collapse of a
+roof. Take it the world over, and ten miners are killed every day in
+collieries alone. I told you coal mining was dangerous."
+
+"But are there any of those thick seams in the United States?"
+
+"None of the really thick ones. There's a 40-foot anthracite seam in
+Pennsylvania. But in France, near the famous Creusot works, there's a
+bed of coal which is 130 feet thick. It's a basin, though, rather than
+a seam.
+
+"So you see, Anton, every coal mine is different, with its layers or
+seams of coal of different thicknesses and at varying distances apart.
+Some pits are near the surface, some are very deep; some coal is full
+of gas, other has very little; some coal is so hard that every bit of
+it has to be blasted, in other mines the coal is so soft that the
+hewer spends half his time spragging the face so that the coal doesn't
+fall on him when he's undercutting or holing. Don't you make the
+mistake of thinking that all a miner has to do is to use his pick!
+He's got to know his business thoroughly or he's useless to the mine
+boss and a danger to all his fellow-workmen.
+
+"And that isn't all, Anton, not by a good deal!
+
+"Coal mining might be bad enough, even if the coal seams always ran
+level. But it's very seldom that they do. They run up-hill and
+down-hill in all sorts of fashions and play hide-and-go-seek in a way
+that's fairly bewildering.
+
+"Nearly all coal seams are broken up by faults. The coal suddenly
+seems to stop, and, when you go to hewing it the pick suddenly hits
+against a rock wall, right on the level of the seam. In the North
+Gallery of this very mine, there's a fault like that. You know where
+the 'snagger' is?"
+
+"Sure," agreed Anton, "you mean where the cars have to be hitched on
+to a chain?"
+
+"Yes, there! The coal seam jumps upwards fifty feet. That's why the
+cars, after rolling down nearly a quarter of a mile, by gravity, have
+to be pulled up fifty feet by an endless chain, to rejoin the same
+seam and then to go rolling on down by themselves."
+
+"Just what are faults?"
+
+"H'm, that's a bit hard to explain to you, Anton, because you don't
+know anything about geology, but maybe I can get you to see. Faults
+are breaks in the layers of rock, or in the stratification, as it is
+called. All coal seams and the rocks above and below them have been
+laid down by water. Since water levels everything, these layers of
+rock were level, once.
+
+"In ages past, however, the crust of the earth changed a good deal. As
+the crust cooled, it contracted, crumpling up these different layers
+into all sorts of shapes. Sometimes it bulged them up, sometimes it
+hollowed them down so that the edges rose. Quite often a layer of
+rock would be cracked right across, and one half would stay level
+while the other shot up almost a right angle. A good many mountains
+show the result of this, and if you look at such rocks as are sticking
+up out of the ground you will see some of them standing right on edge.
+Once in a while, part of the broken crust slid over the other part.
+Then, too, though the surface may not always show it, there have been
+breaks in the strata below, and at the break, the layer has sunk or
+risen quite a distance from its former level.
+
+"If that happens to a coal seam, you can see that where the seam
+breaks, suddenly, the rest of it will continue on another level,
+perhaps only a few feet higher or lower, perhaps a good deal more.
+It's up to the mine geologist to find where the coal has gone to, and
+it's the business of the mine engineer to remodel the entire system of
+working the mine in order to get at that seam."
+
+"And are all coal mines mixed up in that funny way?" Anton queried.
+
+"Most of them. Oh, there's no end to the tricks a coal seam can play.
+A deep coal seam may split into two narrow ones, too thin to work.
+The whole seam may quickly dwindle away to nothing, showing that, in
+ages past, a river came rolling over it and washed away all the forest
+bog. Sometimes, especially with the lowermost seams, the forest grew
+on rolling land, so that the bottom of the coal seam is irregular,
+causing all sorts of trouble in laying rails for the cars to roll on.
+Sometimes the layer of rock under a coal seam is so soft that when you
+start to timber it, the timbers sink into the floor and the roof comes
+toppling down.
+
+"Among the queerest of all the things a mine geologist strikes are
+what are called dykes. These are great shafts of igneous rock, which
+were thrust up from the interior of the earth in a white-hot state and
+which burned away the coal as they rose. They put a dead stop to a
+working. I could tell you a dozen more freak things that a coal seam
+can do. A mine geologist has not only a new problem to tackle with
+every mine, but, often, with every mine gallery."
+
+"Is that what you're studying to be, Clem?"
+
+"No, indeed!" The young fellow's answer was emphatic. "That's 'way out
+of my reach. It takes a college man, with special technical training
+and a big experience, to be anything of a mine geologist. All I'm
+trying to do is to learn enough about it so that when I get to be a
+mine boss--if I ever do--I'll know what my chiefs are trying to do and
+I'll be able to help them.
+
+"Take Otto, for example. There isn't a better worker in the mine. He
+gets out more coal and less broken stuff than any other man below
+ground. But he'll never be anything but a hewer, because he doesn't
+want to learn. Why, just the other day, he was growling because the
+mine was shut down to repair one of the shafts, though the other shaft
+was working all right."
+
+"So were a lot of the men," Anton put in. "Why couldn't they go on
+working, with one shaft?"
+
+"Against the law," was the crisp answer. "That's the A B C of mining.
+And I'll show you why! All mines are required to have two shafts, in
+case of accident. That law was passed because of a famous disaster
+that happened in England nearly a hundred years ago.
+
+"In those days, colliers had only one shaft. One day, the beam of an
+engine which was directly over a shaft snapped, and a huge piece of
+machinery, weighing several tons, tumbled into the shaft and stuck,
+not far from the bottom. As it fell, it ripped away the planking which
+lined the shaft and a whole lot of loose rock and earth fell on top of
+the piece of machinery, blocking up the shaft entirely and stopping
+any air from passing. There were over two hundred men and boys at work
+below ground.
+
+
+[Illustration: MINERS DESCENDING A SHAFT.
+
+_From an Old Print._]
+
+
+[Illustration: FALLING-IN OF A MINE.]
+
+
+[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF "FIRE-DAMP."]
+
+
+"With only one shaft, you can see what a mess that made! Before any
+digging could be done, the lining of the shaft had to be repaired,
+because dirt and rocks were falling into the shaft all the time.
+Miners--hundreds of them--were brought from neighboring mines, and
+they worked night and day on two-hour shifts, clinging to the sides of
+the shaft as thick as bees in a hive. Others, risking their lives with
+every stroke of the pick, dug away at the earth and rock that had
+fallen on the big chunk of machinery. With all the speed that human
+effort could compass, it was six days and nights before a hole had
+been made through the obstruction big enough for a man to pass. And,
+when the first rescuer reached the workings below, the 200 men were
+dead. Not a single one survived. The miners had been entombed alive
+without any air passage and could do nothing, absolutely nothing, to
+help themselves out of their living grave.
+
+"Ever since then, every colliery in Europe and the United States is
+required to have two shafts, and the law demands that these shall be
+no less than fifteen yards apart and connected by a wide passage. Not
+only that, but each shaft must have a complete outfit of winding
+machinery coupled to separate engines, so that, in the event of an
+accident happening to one shaft, the men below ground can be rescued
+up the other."
+
+"That sounds all right," said Anton, rather gloomily, "but suppose the
+way to both shafts is blocked?"
+
+"Not likely," Clem responded cheerfully, "if a mine has been properly
+laid out. Take this one, there are half a dozen ways to get from the
+face to the shaft."
+
+"But Otto said--"
+
+The other turned upon him sharply.
+
+"I've had about enough of that Otto business! If you can't keep from
+thinking about it, keep from talking about it, anyhow!"
+
+To this rebuke Anton maintained a stubborn silence, and, without
+another word said, the two walked on until they reached their
+respective places of work.
+
+In the gloomy world of below ground, where the dusty wall of sooty
+black is the only landscape to be seen, one day is very much like
+another. Reaching his room, Clem stood his tools in order along the
+rib, hung his safety lamp on a nail which he drove into a prop
+supporting the roof, and, reaching up so as to put one hand on the
+roof, tapped it with the flat side of his pick to make sure that there
+was no loose slate overhead. He then examined the coal face, as it had
+been left by the hewer who had been working on the night shift, to
+make sure that it had been properly spragged or timbered.
+
+This done, Clem stripped naked to the waist, for it was hot in that
+hole far below ground. Then, lying down flat on his side, his bare
+shoulder resting on the gritty ground, he started to pick away the
+coal at the level of the floor and just above it, making a
+wedge-shaped hole extending under the seam for a distance in of three
+feet.
+
+Many mines, especially in America, use mechanical coal-cutters for
+this back-breaking labor. These machines are especially useful in
+mines where the coal-seams are less than 3½ feet thick, and they are
+well adapted to "long-wall" workings where the whole face of the coal
+is removed in a single operation. Some are mounted with a toothed bar
+which moves in and out, chipping the coal; other types are like
+circular saws; several forms have the same action as a miner's pick,
+the percussions being at the speed of two hundred strokes a minute,
+the motive-power being compressed air.
+
+In pillar-and-room workings, such as this Ohio mine, chain heading
+machines were used. This American invention consists of a bed-plate
+which rests on the floor and is secured in position by screw-jacks
+braced against the roof and against the rib. On this bed-plate rests a
+sliding frame which carries a revolving chain on which cutting tools
+are fixed. The machine carries its own motor, which not only drives
+the chain, but also slides forward the frame into the cut. When the
+cut is made to the full depth of the machine, it is withdrawn, and the
+machine moved over its own width and another cut commenced. Several of
+these machines were at work in the mine, but chiefly in that part of
+it where the pillars were being cut away, and where speed in removing
+the coal was a prime necessity. In the more distant rooms, hand labor
+was used.
+
+All these machines work on exactly the same principle as that of the
+miner, lying on his back or on his side, and digging at the coal with
+his pick. The coal must be undercut as far in as a pick or a
+mechanical coal-cutter will reach, for the entire width of the face.
+Every few feet, short props or sprags are put in from the edge of the
+undermined portion to the floor, to prevent a premature fall, which
+might bury the miner.
+
+When the whole face is undercut and spragged, the shot-firer is
+summoned. One or more holes, three feet deep, are bored in the coal,
+close to the roof, these holes are filled with explosive and tamped
+shut with moist clay, and the charges are fired. This blasting brings
+down the coal off the face, clear from the rock roof to the undermined
+portion, for such a distance as it has been undercut.
+
+The miner then shovels away the coal far enough to allow him to lie
+down again and continue his terribly laborious task, while the loader
+comes and shovels the blasted coal into cars or into endless-chain
+conveyors, according to the arrangement of the mine.
+
+Day in, day out, this hewing continues. While the miner is at work, he
+is always in a cramped position, his body twisted, his muscles at a
+strain, performing his toilsome labor in the half-dark, in the heat,
+in poor air, choked with coal-dust constantly and menaced by death
+every moment. He is well paid, but most fully does he earn every cent
+he gets.
+
+The morning had almost passed, and Anton was near the entry, where he
+heard, in the distance, a dull rumble like thunder, followed by a
+queer cracking sound which seemed to travel along the rock overhead.
+
+The boy halted involuntarily in his task of pushing an empty car back
+to a room for loading. Little as he knew of the noises below ground,
+he sensed something strange. The deep silence of a coal mine is
+generally broken only by the sharp report of a blast or the rattle of
+cars, and this rumble did not resemble either sound.
+
+A second or two later, a miner dashed past him, without his tools, his
+safety-lamp swinging as he ran.
+
+"The bank is coming down!" he yelled, and disappeared down the
+gallery.
+
+Almost at the same moment, another man came out of the entry, his
+naked back gleaming as he passed under the electric light hanging at
+the opening of the entry.
+
+"Make for the shaft, kid!" he shouted, when he saw the shine of
+Anton's lamp.
+
+A sudden babble of excited cries, borne on the strong current of the
+ventilating air, reached the boy's ears.
+
+It was the doom of Otto's warning!
+
+Shoving a lump of coal under the car-wheel, Anton whirled on his heel
+to follow the escaping miners, when, like a blow, came the stunning
+thought:
+
+"Clem!"
+
+He hesitated an instant, and, while he halted, a second and a louder
+crash told him that the fall of rock--wherever it might be
+happening--was not over. Every fraction of a second that he delayed
+might ruin his chances of escape.
+
+But Anton was of sturdy miner stock, and, in addition, was thoroughly
+fatalistic. That very feature of his character which his older comrade
+had blamed so often, now was to show its good side. If he were going
+to be caught by the fall, there was no use in his trying to prevent
+it, he thought.
+
+In any case, no matter what might come, though the roof cracked above
+him and the coal-ribs crushed beside him, he must warn his friend.
+
+Turning his back to the way of hope, he tore at his utmost speed
+towards the room where Clem was working, taking some small comfort, as
+he ran, that the rumbling sounded farther and farther away.
+
+"Clem!" he cried, panting, as he turned into the room where his friend
+was digging coal, "run for your life!"
+
+By the terror in Anton's voice, the young fellow realized the peril.
+In his isolated room, he had not heard a sound.
+
+Leaping to his feet and grabbing his safety-lamp from the prop, he ran
+after Anton, who had started back on the road leading to the shaft.
+Fleeter of foot than the boy, he caught up with him in a few yards.
+
+"What is it?" he queried.
+
+"The bank's down!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know. Everywhere. The whole mine's smashing! Every one else
+has got out long ago!"
+
+An ominous creaking sounded over their heads.
+
+Clem caught his comrade by the arm and pulled him into a narrow entry
+near by.
+
+"Go slow! We don't want to get smashed!"
+
+He held up his safety-lamp.
+
+"Look at that prop!"
+
+The heavy timber was bending like a twig.
+
+"Get on quick!" cried Anton, struggling against the grasp, but the
+young fellow held him fast.
+
+"Don't lose your head!" he warned. "The current of air has stopped,
+sure sign that the way to the shafts is blocked. The nearer we get to
+the goaf (waste ground), the more likely we are to get crushed.
+Listen!"
+
+The creaking grew louder, and then, suddenly, with a rush of sound,
+the gallery in front of them, into which Anton had been about to
+plunge, sagged. The bending prop went into splinters, and, with a
+roar, the whole roof fell, the broken rock coming to within a few
+yards of where they were standing.
+
+"Close shave, that!" remarked Clem coolly.
+
+Anton made no answer, but shivered as he looked. He realized that his
+comrade's warning had saved his life.
+
+The trembling and the creaking recommenced, but farther away; then,
+with a gigantic noise of tearing, there came a rending crash, followed
+by utter silence.
+
+"Now!"
+
+He let go the boy's arm and turned sharp off to the right.
+
+"That's not the way to the shaft," protested Anton.
+
+"We'll try the North Gallery," answered Clem. "Likely enough the fall
+has followed the line of the fault."
+
+A sharp run of a hundred yards brought them to a pile of rock blocking
+up the passage. Clem licked his hand to make it moist, and then slowly
+passed it across the entire face of the obstruction.
+
+"No!" he said. "There's not a breath of air coming through. That way's
+blocked."
+
+He turned in another direction. With all the ventilation stopped, the
+air was growing heavy. Fifty yards' run, and then--
+
+Blocked again!
+
+This time Clem made no comment. He turned back to try the farther side
+of the mine. As they wheeled round a corner, and saw a gleam of light
+he cried, with a note of relief:
+
+"There they are! I knew they'd send in a rescue party, right away!"
+
+Then his voice dropped.
+
+"No," he added, "there's only one lamp."
+
+A single miner came running towards them.
+
+"The North Gallery?" he queried.
+
+"No good, Jim," Clem answered, who recognized him as a new-comer in
+the mine. "Blocked solid!"
+
+"So's the entries to the goaf! I've been there! How about the old
+workings I've heard the boys talk of?"
+
+The student miner shook his head.
+
+"Not much chance that way, I'm afraid. They'll be full of gas, sure.
+The ventilation has been cut out of there for months. But we can try
+it, anyway."
+
+"I'd ought to ha' known better'n to work this shift," declared Jim, as
+they ran. "You mind when you talked to Otto in the cage, comin' down?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, Otto wouldn't go to work, nohow. Said the knockers had been
+riled an' he wouldn't take the risk o' goin' agin 'em. The boss swore
+at him some, but that didn' faze Otto. He went to the top, just the
+same. He had the right hunch. Wish I'd followed him!"
+
+They ran on, and Jim broke out again:
+
+"I'd no business to come coal minin', anyway. I'm a prospector, by
+rights. Gold's my end, not coal. You're s'posed to know this game.
+What chance ha' we got?"
+
+Clem made no answer in words. He held up his safety-lamp, already
+showing a marked blue cap of gas over the flame.
+
+"I'd seen it a'ready! That means gas, don't it?"
+
+"We may get through it," said Clem, but his tone was not hopeful.
+
+They turned into a long gallery leading to the old workings, and, as
+they sped along, the cones of gas on the safety lamps grew longer and
+longer.
+
+Presently lumps of slate and rock on the floor heralded the end.
+
+Quite suddenly, the gleam of the lamps shone on a wall before them.
+The roof had fallen in.
+
+"That's the last chance?" queried Anton, gloomily.
+
+"The very last," said Clem, "we're buried."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DANGERS OF RESCUE
+
+
+The midday whistle of the mine had just begun, when a violent blast of
+air roared up the intake shaft, followed by a portentous--
+
+Cra-a-ack!
+
+A terrific crash rose from the bowels of the earth.
+
+The growling rumble of the underground disaster came rolling upward in
+throbbing volumes of sound.
+
+The ground trembled, the buildings shook, the lofty skeleton of the
+pit-head gear wavered as though about to let fall the huge revolving
+wheels overhead.
+
+From the engine-house, from the pumping-room, from the ventilation
+building, from the screeners and washers, from the picking-belts, from
+the loading-yards, from the coking-ovens, from every corner of the
+vast above-ground works of a modern colliery, the men came running.
+
+Some were white of face, some sooty, but all bore an expression of
+the most extreme anxiety.
+
+The mine superintendent, who was also the owner, the mine boss, and
+the mining engineer were among the first at the shaft. The doctor and
+hospital attendant--whom the law requires to be maintained at all
+mines employing more than a hundred men--arrived but a few seconds
+later.
+
+The superintendent, a vigorous Australian, who had taken part in many
+a sensational mining rush in his youth, and who had inherited the
+ownership of this coal mine from a distant relative but a few years
+before, leaped into action. Orders came rattling like hail.
+
+All haulage of coal from below was stopped. The engine on the second
+shaft was thrown into gear, and the cages in both shafts were sent
+down to bring up the men.
+
+Would there be any to bring?
+
+What did the crash denote? A mere fall of roof, which might cause the
+loss of a few lives, or a vast explosion which would sweep every man
+below ground to death in a few seconds?
+
+The cages had hardly reached the bottom when there came the second
+crash.
+
+The crowd around the shaft was thickening. The doors of the hundreds
+of cottages clustered in rows about the colliery had been thrown open;
+from every direction the women came running, their shawls streaming
+behind them. Many of them had already lost fathers or husbands or sons
+below ground; all knew the awful menace of that sickening rumble.
+
+With all the speed that the winding-engines could be made to give, the
+cages were hauled up. They had not yet reached the top when a sudden
+cry of horror arose. Otto, who had not gone home, despite his
+abandonment of the day's work, but who had hung around the pit-head
+all day, pointed with his finger to the steep hillside that rose
+abruptly above the mine.
+
+The hill itself was falling!
+
+The pine forest swayed, as though the huge trees were but blades of
+grass, seemed to move downward a few yards, sending up a cloud of
+dust, and then fairly plunged down the slope in an avalanche of rocks,
+trees and earth mixed with tremendous bowlders. With a roar like the
+fall of a near-by thunderbolt, the landslide ripped away the side of
+the hill, the ground settling with a shiver like that of an
+earthquake, and sagging perceptibly.
+
+"Sound the emergency whistle!" came the command.
+
+A minute or two later, a series of shrill screeches gave the signal
+for summoning the rescue corps. Nearly all American mines, following
+the requirements and suggestions of the U. S. Bureau of Mines,
+maintain elaborately equipped rescue stations, manned by picked miners
+who are regularly drilled in the use of the apparatus.
+
+Before the emergency signal had finished sounding the second time,
+both the rescue team and the first-aid team were at their places.
+Simultaneously, the cages containing the first load of miners came to
+the top.
+
+A great sigh of relief went up.
+
+"Well?" queried the superintendent to one of the mine foremen, who was
+in the first cage.
+
+"A big roof-fall, sir," was the reply. "It was still fallin' when I
+came up. I left Lloyd to handle the men at the bottom while I came up
+to report."
+
+"Gas?"
+
+"None showin' as yet, sir. But I came right away. It might gather a
+bit later."
+
+"How many missing?"
+
+"Can't tell, sir. Most o' the men seemed to be gettin' clear."
+
+"Ready to go down again?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"All right, get in the cage, then."
+
+The assistant superintendent, the mining engineer, the safety
+inspector, and the fire boss were already in. The foreman jumped in
+beside them, and the cage rattled down to the bottom.
+
+Already the word had spread to the gathering crowd that the accident
+was but a roof-fall, not an explosion, that two cages full of miners
+had come and that there was a likelihood that most of the men were
+safe.
+
+Volunteers clustered around the mine-owner, clamoring to be allowed to
+go down.
+
+"We'll dig 'em out, sir!" they cried cheerily.
+
+"Keep back, men!" was the answer. "Wait till we know just what has to
+be done. Maybe every one below ground will have a chance to get out."
+
+There was need for caution. While mine disasters are numerous--over
+two thousand men being killed every year in United States collieries
+alone--such an accident as this one had rarely happened before. The
+landslide above, combined with the sinking of the strata below,
+produced a condition which might be of the extremest danger.
+
+The foreman of the pumping plant was the first to find evidence of
+this trouble. He hurried forward, consternation on his face.
+
+"Mr Owens, the pumps have quit working!"
+
+"What's wrong?"
+
+"Pipes busted, sir, probably. The turbine's goin' all right, but she's
+suckin' air."
+
+"How much water were you throwing this morning?"
+
+"Over three thousand gallons an hour, sir."
+
+"H'm, it won't take long to drown the mine at that rate. And if there
+are any poor fellows cut off--"
+
+He turned to the store-house keeper.
+
+"Got plenty of spare pipe?"
+
+"Lots of it, sir."
+
+"Get it out!"
+
+Then, to the mine boss:
+
+"Murchison, get a new pipe down the uptake shaft as quick as you know
+how! Double pay for every man working on the job! Put them on the
+jump!"
+
+As fast as his eye could travel round the circle of eager men, the
+boss picked his workers, miners of tried worth.
+
+Almost as though by magic a line was formed from the storehouse to the
+shaft. Mechanics, with their tools ready, were on the ladders by the
+time the first joint of pipe reached the shaft, and the first
+nine-foot length was flanged on in less than five minutes after the
+giving of the order. So fast were the joints thimbled and braced
+against the side of the shaft that the long pipe seemed to grow like a
+living thing. In an hour's time, the pumps were going again.
+
+Meanwhile, the time clerk, not needing to wait for his orders, had
+checked the names of all the men who had come up the shaft, until the
+cage came up empty save for the foreman.
+
+"That's the last," he said.
+
+The time clerk closed his book and nodded, then went to the
+superintendent.
+
+"Eight missing, sir."
+
+"That's bad enough, though it might have been a good deal worse. Make
+out a detailed list and bring it here."
+
+Truly it was bad enough. The fire boss and safety engineer had
+reported that fire had broken out in some part of the mine, probably,
+for white damp was leaking through. The report of the mining engineer
+was graver still. The first subsidence of the mine had caused the
+landslide, and the shock of the landslide had crushed all the
+galleries leading from the shafts.
+
+"You mean that all the workings are smashed in?"
+
+"I wouldn't say that. They can't be, the way the workings are laid
+out. But there's more rock to be cleared away than I like to think
+about. How many men are caught?"
+
+"Eight."
+
+"Do you know whereabouts, Mr Owens?"
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute. Here's the clerk now." He scanned the
+list. "Well, three of them were working in the end galleries."
+
+"They might be safe," interjected the mining engineer. "That's under
+the hill."
+
+"Two of them," the superintendent continued, "were working in the
+broken, out towards the old workings, and the other three were near
+the North Gallery."
+
+"We might get at the last three, but, judging from the lie, the old
+workings section will be choked until Doomsday."
+
+"You mean we can't try to get those two men out?"
+
+The mining engineer looked his chief full in the face.
+
+"No, you can't," he said bluntly. "There's a fair chance of rescue in
+the North Gallery section, and, as for the others, we might drive
+galleries through to the rooms under the hill--though it'll take some
+time. The two men in the old workings are gone. They're probably
+smashed under the fall, anyway."
+
+"I'll get all those men out or break my neck trying!" burst out the
+owner of the mine.
+
+"If you scatter your forces, you won't do anything," the mining
+engineer retorted. As an expert in his profession, he was prepared to
+back his own opinion against all the officials of the mine, from the
+owner down, the more so as he knew that his chief had not spent his
+life in coal mining.
+
+Owens glared at him, but he knew that the engineer was right.
+
+"Lay out the work, then, since you know so much! I'll have the gangs
+ready, by the time you are. You think the men in the end galleries can
+be got at?"
+
+"I'm sure of it, if they hold out long enough, and if they're lucky
+enough to escape the damps. Our main trouble is going to be the
+timbering. Now, the farther in we go, the farther we get from the
+break. The roof will be solid back there, most likely. That's why I
+think a good chance of rescue lies that way."
+
+"Get at that end first, then. Clem Swinton's in that group of men. I'd
+be sorry to lose him. He's the most promising young fellow in the
+mine."
+
+The mining engineer nodded.
+
+"I know him. He's been attending the night school. You're right. We
+can't afford to lose him. It's easy enough to find miners--especially
+foreigners--but a young American who wants to learn the colliery
+business thoroughly is rare. I've had my eye on him, too."
+
+At this point, Otto, who had been edging near his superiors and who
+had overheard the conversation, broke in.
+
+"You don't need to worry over Clem Swinton, Mr. Owens," he said.
+"Clem'll get a good scare out o' this, an' that's about all."
+
+"How do you know, Otto?" The superintendent spoke good-humoredly, for
+he knew and liked the old man. On more than one occasion, when a
+strike was threatened Otto's good sense had held back his
+fellow-miners from violent measures, and his chiefs recognized both
+his popularity and his loyalty. "Did your friends the 'knockers' tell
+you so?"
+
+"They did, Mr Owens," was the unperturbed answer. "You'll see if I
+ain't right!"
+
+"I hope you are. I'll put you in charge of one of the gangs at that
+end, if you like."
+
+"I was a-goin' to," responded Otto, who had never doubted that he
+would be chosen for the post.
+
+By four o'clock in the afternoon, work had been thoroughly organized.
+The pumps had got control of the water, a temporary ventilating
+circuit had been established in an effort to keep the mine air
+pure--for the main system had been destroyed by the fall, and the
+mining gangs were at work, digging away the obstruction and loading
+with feverish haste.
+
+This was a very different matter from hewing coal, which is always
+laid out in regular seams and naturally divided by splitting planes.
+The rock from the strata above had fallen into the galleries at all
+angles, and was mixed up with the crushed and partly splintered
+timbers of the roof and sides. Blasting had to be done on a small
+scale and with extreme caution, for there was fire damp in the mine,
+due to the lack of complete ventilation.
+
+The road-bed and rails, on which the cars for the transporting of the
+débris must run, were flattened and twisted. It was necessary to lay
+down new rails, however shakily. Moreover, since all the coal
+conveyors and electric haulage systems were a tangle of wreckage, the
+loaded cars had to be pushed by hand all the way along the underground
+galleries, to the bottom of the shaft.
+
+The timbering gangs had a desperate job to do, for there was no solid
+flat roof overhead under which props could be put, nor could enough
+time be given to build a stable timber roof. Yet, upon the ability of
+the timber boss hung the lives of all the rescuers.
+
+Night came, but without any slacking of the work. The electrical
+engineer and his staff strung temporary wires, and, both below ground
+and above ground, the colliery workings were as bright as day.
+
+The scene was one of furious rush. Neighboring mines sent gangs to
+help. Cars loaded with mine timbers came from all the near-by
+collieries. The news of the accident, published in the local evening
+papers, had brought offers of help from every quarter. Before
+midnight, officials from the Bureau of Mines were on the scene.
+
+At 3 o'clock in the morning, one of the great Rescue Cars maintained
+by the Bureau rolled into the railroad yards of the colliery. In this
+car were experts whose principal work was the direction of rescue
+operations in mining disasters, and the car contained a complete
+equipment of all the most modern scientific appliances.
+
+The first rays of Saturday's dawn showed the crowd still gathered
+around the shaft. Owens, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and from
+watching, was still directing the operations, but with the advice and
+assistance of government officials.
+
+The work was proceeding apace. The miners' picks rang incessantly,
+without a second's pause, each man streaming with perspiration as he
+toiled. Rails were put down as fast as the obstruction was dug away.
+The timber gangs strove like madmen. Each shift was for two hours
+only, with no pause between, for there were men and to spare.
+
+So the day and the night passed.
+
+At ten o'clock on Sunday morning, there came a cry--
+
+"She's fallin' again!"
+
+A tremor ran through the mine.
+
+Another shifting of the strata imperilled all the excavation that had
+been done.
+
+A few minutes' hesitation might have been fatal, but the timber gangs
+rushed forward, though the props were bending on every side of them
+and threatened, from second to second, to engulf them in falling rock.
+In a haste that approached to panic, timbers were thrust up and
+braced, so that but a small section of the roof fell.
+
+Some of the miners quit, the more readily as a couple of them were
+badly hurt in the little fall, but for every man who showed the white
+feather, there were a score to volunteer. They were led by Owens
+himself, who was at the bottom of the shaft when the fall came. With
+all the fire of his adventurous youth, he seized a pick and ran
+forward to the most dangerous place, crying:
+
+"Those men are to be got out, or I'll die down here with them! Who
+follows?"
+
+There was no farther talk of quitting.
+
+On Monday there arrived from Washington a Bureau of Mines expert, with
+a new listening-device, known as a geophone. This is an instrument
+worked on the microphone plan, so sensitive that it responds to the
+slightest vibration, even through dense rock-strata, hundreds of feet
+thick.
+
+"Stop work, all!" came the order. "Not a word, not a whisper! Keep
+your feet and hands as still as if you were frozen!"
+
+There was a tense five minutes as the geophone expert listened.
+
+Presently he detached from his head the ear-clamps leading to the
+microphone receiver.
+
+"The men are alive!" he declared. "I hear them knocking!"
+
+"To work, men!" cried the boss, and the picks rang with redoubled
+zest.
+
+It was Tuesday, shortly before dawn, when the rescuers pierced the
+first obstruction, only to find another and a worse break beyond.
+
+A draft of air sucked through. Almost immediately the caps of the
+safety lamps showed blue. At the same time, the safety inspector
+called, "Back from the face, men! Back, all!"
+
+He pointed to the little cage he had been holding.
+
+The canaries had collapsed!
+
+Carbon monoxide was pouring out, the deadly white damp, that kills as
+it strikes!
+
+The hewers retreated, grumbling.
+
+"We can stand it, with reliefs!" they declared.
+
+But the Bureau man was adamant.
+
+"Get back when you're told," he said shortly. "We'll get those men out
+all right. Bring the gas gang here!"
+
+Then it was that the researches of the trained workers of the Bureau
+of Mines showed to their best advantage.
+
+Along the gallery came a line of strange-eyed and humped figures,
+inhuman of appearance, wearing the newly devised respirators by which
+men can work in the most vitiated air without harm.
+
+There are several types of these "gas masks," most of them based on
+the principle of carrying compressed oxygen for breathing, and bearing
+chambers containing chemicals which absorb the carbonic acid gas and
+moisture of the exhaled breath. These masks proved their utility at
+the great explosion at Courrières in 1906, the greatest mining
+disaster on record, when 1100 miners were killed.
+
+
+[Illustration: INTO THE POISON-FILLED AIR!
+
+Rescue-Crew of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, equipped with
+oxygen-breathing apparatus, facing the deadly "damps."
+
+_Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines._]
+
+
+[Illustration: U. S. BUREAU OF MINES RESCUE CAR.]
+
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW, SHOWING LIFE-SAVING EQUIPMENT.]
+
+
+It was not long, however, before it became evident that there was a
+limit to the usefulness of the respirators. Excellent as they were for
+exploring galleries filled with poisonous gas, it was difficult to do
+fast digging in them. The work slowed down.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Owens," protested Otto, "if we don't go no faster'n
+we're goin' now, it'll be a month afore we get through. Let us go in!
+If the gas is bad, we'll take hour shifts, or half-hour shifts, or
+ten-minute shifts, if it comes to that! The men'll tough it out as
+long as they can!"
+
+"What about it?" said the superintendent, to the Director of the
+Bureau of Mines car.
+
+"If the men are willing to take the risk! But we can purify the air to
+some extent, anyway. I've a man down there with a Burrell gas
+detector, which is several hundred times more sensitive than any
+canary, so that we can keep a close watch on the air changes, and
+there are plenty of tanks of compressed oxygen to be got. I've some
+here in the car, and a telegram to Pittsburgh will bring us more in a
+few hours. We can put in another bellows, too.
+
+"This miner's right enough, about the digging. Fast work can't be done
+in respirators. The men will have to use electric cap lamps, of
+course, but I've a big supply in the car."
+
+Back into the poisoned air the miners went. That strain soon tested
+out the men, and, as the old miner had said to Clem, a week before,
+the young men and the single men were compelled to give up, first. Old
+Otto stood up to his work with the best of them, but forty minutes at
+a stretch was as long as any of the men could stand.
+
+On Tuesday night, the rescuers working out from the up-take shaft
+broke through the obstruction into the North Gallery. The three men
+who had been imprisoned there were found asleep, close to the sleep
+that knows no waking, terribly poisoned by the lack of oxygen.
+
+The mine doctor, who had been waiting at the face until the moment of
+breaking through, was the first through the hole. Rapidly he examined
+the unconscious men.
+
+"One's nearly gone," he shouted back, "but I reckon we can save all
+three!"
+
+A mighty cheer rolled through the galleries at the news that the North
+Gallery men were saved. It was echoed at the shaft and above ground.
+
+Without loss of time, the men were brought to the open air and rushed
+to the mine hospital. Two hours passed before the first of them
+recovered consciousness.
+
+The geophone expert was at his bedside, waiting impatiently.
+
+"Have you been knocking any signals lately?" he asked, eagerly, as
+soon as the survivor was able to speak.
+
+"No," the miner answered feebly, "we'd gave up. Thought it wasn't no
+use."
+
+"I heard knocking again this morning," the expert announced. "The men
+at the far galleries must be alive still!"
+
+Wednesday saw no diminution of the endeavor, but more than half the
+miners of the rescue crews were down and out, suffering to a greater
+or lesser degree from the terrible strain of the short shifts in the
+deadly mixture of fire damp and white damp. Yet volunteers were as
+plentiful as ever, for both the mine managers and the miners of
+neighboring collieries stood ready to help.
+
+By Wednesday night came the cheering news that the roof overhead was
+more solid and that the rock fall had not broken in the floor. The
+cars rattled in and out, a car to each shaft in less than three
+minutes, loaded and pushed by willing hands. With the North Gallery
+men saved, both shafts had been set hauling the débris from the
+galleries leading to where Clem, Anton, and Jim were imprisoned.
+
+At breakfast time, Thursday morning, just at the change of shift, the
+geophone expert reported voices.
+
+The message was sped aloft:
+
+"The men are still alive! We have heard them talking!"
+
+The news seemed too good to be credited. Seven days the three men had
+been entombed, seven days without food, water or light, seven days in
+foul air, probably impregnated with noxious vapors.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: A very similar accident, wherein a landslide accompanied
+the fall of the coal bank, occurred at Blue Rock, Ohio, in 1856.
+There, also, four entombed men were rescued after an imprisonment of
+eight days. (F. R-W)]
+
+Suddenly, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the signal came from below to
+the pit-head to cease hauling.
+
+What had happened?
+
+There could be but one explanation. The cars must have stopped.
+
+There had been another fall in the mine, blocking off the gallery.
+
+The rescuers were caught!
+
+Like wild-fire the news spread through the mining village.
+
+Great and excited as had been the crowd before, it was ten times more
+excited now. Women, whose husbands were in the rescue gang, shook
+their fists at Owens, clamoring that he had sent fifty men to death in
+order to save three. The animosity spread to the miners who had lacked
+the nerve to volunteer, and all sorts of wild rumors passed among the
+crowd.
+
+There might have been serious trouble, but the gates of the high
+fences around the pit-head enclosure had been closed, and the mine
+guards, armed with rifles, patrolled the place. Ever since the days of
+the "Molly Maguires,"--and many much more recent bloody outbreaks
+among coal miners--colliery owners have maintained armed guards.
+
+Happily there was no actual trouble, though the crowd was getting
+ugly, for, a little more than two hours later, there came the cheering
+news that a supporting gang of rescue workers had driven a new gallery
+through one of the pillars of coal, and that union with the old line
+was effected.
+
+Again a faint rumble!
+
+Hopes dropped once more, but, after a brief inspection, the mining
+engineer reported that the fall had taken place in another part of the
+mine and that there was no immediate danger.
+
+At 8 o'clock that evening, voices could be faintly heard. An hour
+later, using a megaphone, the rescuers made the survivors hear that
+help was near them.
+
+"How many of you are there?"
+
+Thinly, so thinly that the voice could scarcely be heard, came back
+the answer:
+
+"Three."
+
+"All alive and well?"
+
+"We are all alive. Jim Getwood and Anton Rover are unconscious. This
+is Clem Swinton talking."
+
+"How is the air?"
+
+"Getting bad, now."
+
+"Keep your courage up! We'll have you out soon!"
+
+The hewers set to work in high spirits, hoping that every blow of the
+pick would drive through.
+
+Then:
+
+"Stop work, men!" said the Bureau chief suddenly.
+
+The men stared at him, amazed at the order. All stopped, however,
+except old Otto, who continued to use his pick-axe steadily.
+
+The official grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him round with none
+too gentle a hand.
+
+"Stop, you thick-head, when you're told!"
+
+"What for? We'll be through this wall in an hour!"
+
+"You'll have a hole through it, maybe. But what good will that do?"
+
+Otto stared at the official amazed, and the Bureau of Mines man went
+on:
+
+"You've had to start working in a respirator, after all, haven't you?
+Why? Because of white damp! Haven't you got sense enough to see what
+would happen as soon as you drove a hole through big enough to let the
+white damp in and not big enough to get the men out? How long do you
+think they'd last in this air, in their weakened state?"
+
+Otto looked at him a moment, and then nodded his head.
+
+"You're right, boss," he admitted. "I'm a fool. I'd never ha' thought
+o' that. But what are you goin' to do?"
+
+"You don't seem to know enough to use your eyes," the official
+answered, shortly, "and they told me you were one of the best men in
+the mine! What do you suppose we've been doing all this cement
+construction along this gallery for the last couple of shifts?"
+
+"I hadn't stopped to think," admitted Otto, taken aback.
+
+"Well, you'll have a chance to do some thinking, now."
+
+In effect, it was not surprising that Otto should not be able to see a
+way out of the difficulty, for the problem was a serious one.
+
+The proportion of white damp, or carbon monoxide, in the air where the
+rescuers had now been compelled to work in respirators, was strong
+enough to kill a man in ten or fifteen minutes. In the undoubtedly
+weakened state of the three survivors, a lesser time than this would
+suffice to be fatal.
+
+If, in the course of digging away the obstruction which remained
+between the rescuers and the entombed men, a small hole were made, or
+if the rocks should lie in such a manner that there were
+interstices between, Clem and his comrades would succumb before a
+sufficiently large breach could be made in the wall whereby they might
+be dragged through to liberty.
+
+
+[Illustration: WHERE THE TIMBER GOES.
+
+Whole forests are cut down to hold up the mine galleries. On the
+strength of this work the lives of the miners depend.
+
+_Courtesy of the Wigham Coal Co._]
+
+
+[Illustration: GEOPHONE EXPERT LISTENING FOR TAPPING OF SURVIVORS.
+
+_Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines._]
+
+
+[Illustration: BUILDING THE WALL FOR THE "SAND-HOGS."
+
+_Courtesy of U. S. Bureau of Mines._]
+
+
+If, indeed, it were safe to blast, it might be possible to get rid of
+the obstruction by the use of a heavy blast and then rush through and
+grab the men. But this was impossible. The Burrell tester showed a
+large proportion of methane gas or fire damp, and a blast of any size
+might easily start an explosion which would not only wreck the mine,
+but also kill every member of the rescue parties, while affording no
+chance of getting the imprisoned men.
+
+How could the wall be taken down, without allowing the gas to
+percolate through?
+
+"Stand back, men," said the official, "here come the 'sand hogs,'
+now."
+
+Amazed, the colliers retreated from the coal face to give place to a
+very different group of men. Small and wiry folk, these, dressed in an
+entirely different fashion from the miners. The respirators gave them
+the same goggle-eyed goblin faces. Not one of them had ever been in a
+coal mine before.
+
+With a speed and dexterity that showed their knowledge of the work,
+these men proceeded to build up, at the side of the gallery, close to
+the point where the last obstruction still held, a solid face of
+concrete, and rapidly cemented it to the somewhat elaborate
+construction that had been in process of making all the preceding day,
+and to which Otto had paid no heed.
+
+It was not long before it became evident that a completely closed room
+was being made. Other gangs came along, carrying strange screw-doors
+of iron, and a multitude of devices new to the eyes of miners.
+Everything had been measured and prepared above-ground. It remained
+only to throw the material together, according to a prearranged plan.
+
+By midnight, all was ready.
+
+Three "sand hogs," with a gallant young doctor who had volunteered,
+prepared to enter.
+
+A steady throbbing sound told that machinery connected with an outlet
+pipe--solidly embedded in the cement--had been set in motion. The
+newly made walls threatened to bulge inwards, and the signal was given
+to stop.
+
+Then a rushing noise was heard in the inlet pipe, similarly embedded.
+The outer of the double doors was opened and the four men stepped in,
+entering a tiny ante-chamber. They closed the outer door, which was
+absolutely air-tight, opened the inner one, and passed into the
+chamber built against the coal face, made of solid cement except for a
+circle of coal a yard in diameter.
+
+A minute or two later, could be heard, faintly, the high screech of
+some rapid-cutting machine.
+
+When Otto came back on his next shift, at 2 o'clock on Friday morning,
+the sand hogs were still working.
+
+Curiosity overcame the old miner's desire not to seem ignorant.
+
+"Just what is that, sir?" he asked the Bureau official, who was still
+on watch.
+
+"That you, Otto? So you want to know, now, do you? Well, that's a sort
+of lightly made caisson, or air-tight chamber, with an air-lock or
+double door. It's used a good deal for working under water, but for
+the job we have here, it doesn't have to be very solidly built.
+
+"It's simple enough, when you think it out. We just cemented it up,
+put in an air-pump to take out the gassy air that was in it, and then
+turned in compressed air, with a pressure of a little more than one
+atmosphere, just enough to keep any of the gas from entering the hole
+that is being dug through the coal pillar."
+
+"Why can't gas get in? Gas'll go through coal."
+
+"Because the pressure from inside is bigger than from outside. The
+compressed air is leaking through the coal and driving any gas away."
+
+"Why didn't you let us get in there to finish the job, if that's all
+there is to it?" protested Otto, indignant that strangers should have
+the glory of the final rescue, after the miners had done so much.
+
+"Because you couldn't stand it. Those men are sand hogs. They're used
+to working in compressed air. Just as soon as a man gets into a
+pressure of two or three atmospheres, unless he's mighty careful he's
+apt to get dangerously ill. His blood absorbs too much air. While he's
+under compression, he doesn't feel it so much, but if he comes out of
+the compression too quickly, the surplus air in his blood can't come
+out as slowly as it ought, and little bubbles form in the blood
+current. That's deadly. Sometimes these bubbles cause a terrible
+caisson disease known as the 'bends,' when all the muscles and joints
+are affected; or it may give a paralysis known as 'diver's palsy,'
+because divers working in compressed atmospheres suffer the same way;
+all too often, it causes sudden death. So you see, Otto, it's not a
+chance a man ought to take who knows nothing about it."
+
+"An' the sand hogs are diggin' in there?"
+
+"No, they're not digging. We put in a tunnelling machine driven by
+compressed air, which is sometimes used for making sewers and the
+like. It will bore an even, round hole, just big enough for a man to
+crawl through, comfortably.
+
+"As soon as that hole is pierced through into the room where the
+imprisoned men are, the doctor will go in, taking food, wine and
+medical supplies, and three respirators as well. Then, when the
+survivors are protected against the possible results of a sudden
+inrush of gas, it'll be up to you men to get the rest of the wall down
+as quick as you can."
+
+"So that's how it is! We'll be ready, sir, as soon as you give the
+word."
+
+At 6 o'clock, on the Friday morning, the outer door of the caisson
+clanged and the foreman of the sand hogs came out.
+
+"We've pierced through," he said. "The doctor's in there. He says all
+the men are alive, as yet, but he doesn't know if they'll recover.
+There's not much time to lose, judging by what he says."
+
+"At the wall, men!" came the order.
+
+The miners cheered. They were to have the glory of getting their
+comrades out, after all.
+
+The picks hammered on the rock like hail. The cars roared through the
+galleries once more. The cages shot upward with their loads.
+
+At 8 o'clock, a miner's pick went through the wall into the space
+leading to the room beyond, but there was still a lot of rock to move
+before a clear passage could be made.
+
+Otto remembered the warning of the Mine Bureau official, and realized
+that, had he been left to himself, he would have killed his comrades
+at the very moment of rescue.
+
+At 9 o'clock, the hole was big enough for one of the rescuers to pass.
+As before, a doctor was the first to scramble through the opening.
+
+The excitement above ground was enormous. Each car might bring a
+survivor!
+
+Every time that the cage was a few seconds late, hope rose high.
+
+"Keep silence, now," said the Mine Bureau's surgeon to the waiting
+crowd. "No cheers or shouts remember! The nerves of the men are apt to
+be at the breaking point."
+
+The silence added to the tension. The atmosphere was electric with
+anxiety.
+
+What was happening?
+
+The cage was rising slowly, slowly!
+
+Surely the men were there!
+
+It reached the surface.
+
+A limp form was borne out and laid on a waiting stretcher.
+
+It was Anton, his face pinched, his lips blue.
+
+In the next cage, Jim Getwood was brought up. On seeing his condition,
+the mine doctor shook his head dubiously. Artificial respiration was
+begun, then and there.
+
+The cage rose for the third time, bearing Clem Swinton, unconscious
+like his comrades, but clearly in better case.
+
+He stirred as he reached the open air, and his glance encountered that
+of the mine owner.
+
+"I said American mine pluck would get us," he gasped, "if we stuck out
+long enough!"
+
+And he relapsed into unconsciousness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+EIGHT DAYS OF DARK
+
+
+The three comrades were saved, indeed, but it was none too soon. Eight
+days below ground without food or light and without any sure hope of
+rescue, had brought them to a low ebb.
+
+Clem, owing to his longer experience in the mine and his more prudent
+conserving of the scanty supply of food that fell to his share, had
+withstood the strain better than the two other survivors. He was badly
+shaken, however, and his nerves were on the edge of collapse. His
+efforts to help his companions had held him tense during those
+unending hours of darkness and famine, and his optimism had kept him
+from the ravages of despair.
+
+Anton had received a terrible shock, both to body and mind. His hands
+and feet had become deadened, as though frozen, and the most vigorous
+treatment failed to restore the circulation. From time to time he was
+seized by convulsive fits; resembling those of epilepsy, and
+characteristic of white damp poisoning. His speech remained thick and
+mumbling, and he repeated the same word over and over, a score of
+times, without being conscious that he had spoken it.
+
+Jim Getwood, the prospector, was in the weakest condition of the
+three. He lacked the degree of immunity that Clem possessed through
+his half-dozen years below ground, and that Anton possessed, in a
+minor degree, through heredity. His former life of adventure in the
+open air made him all the more susceptible to the poison gases.
+Violent headaches brought him to the verge of madness, and alternated
+with periods of delirium. He could retain little or no food, and,
+several times, the doctor despaired of saving his life.
+
+Yet, in the history of coal-mining, there are several cases on record
+in which men have been even a longer time below ground and recovered.
+In a French colliery, two out of thirty men who were buried for
+fourteen days, recovered; in a Welsh colliery, one man survived out of
+seventy who had been entombed for seventeen days.
+
+A still more astonishing case occurred in a Scotch coal-mine. A big
+roof-fall in a pit in Ayrshire had blocked off all the outlets to the
+shaft, save one, by which all the miners were able to escape. One man,
+however, finding that the way to the shaft was clear, returned to the
+face of the coal where he had been working, in order to get his coat.
+
+On his way back to the shaft, a second fall occurred, blocking him in.
+This happened in 1835, when rescue work was still done in a primitive
+fashion. It was not until the twenty-third day that the miner was
+reached. He was alive, but in a dying state, his body being covered
+with a species of fungus that grows upon decaying mine timbers. He
+lived three days after being brought to the surface.
+
+The longest record of endurance under such conditions occurred in
+France, some years later. A well-digger, near Lyons, was buried alive
+with a comrade, the sides of a deep well caving in after such a manner
+that an air-space of 37 feet was left above the entombed men.
+
+It was impossible to try to remove the obstruction, for any effort to
+do so would only cause the earth and stones to fall on them and crush
+the men. In order to attempt rescue, it was necessary to sink a well
+as deep as the first, and, when the full depth was reached, to drive
+an underground gallery from one to the other.
+
+Up to the very last day, the rescuers were able to hear tappings, sure
+sign that at least one of the men was alive. On the thirtieth day the
+rescue was effected. The oldest of the two well-diggers was found
+alive, but he was in a terrible condition because of the infection
+caused by the corpse of his comrade, who had died two weeks before.
+He, also, lived three days after his rescue, but the doctors were
+unable to save his life.
+
+None of these men, however, had to withstand the effects of white damp
+in the air; on the other hand, none of them had any supply of food,
+however small, to begin with.
+
+Clem's account of the experiences of the three men in the mine was
+awaited with a great deal of interest. Reporters from various
+newspapers hung around the mine for several days, waiting for a chance
+to get his story. The mine doctor refused permission, however, until
+he was assured that the young miner was well on his way to health,
+fearing that a reawakening of the memories of that terrible week might
+bring about a relapse. Finally he admitted the reporters to the
+hospital ward where the three survivors lay, though forbidding Anton
+and Jim to speak.
+
+Clem was willing enough to tell his tale.
+
+He began with the incident in the cage, on the morning of the
+accident, when he had joked with Otto, to the old miner's manifest
+objection. He told of Otto's refusal to work that day, according to
+the account given him by Jim. He described, also, how Anton had
+gallantly abandoned his own chance of safety to come and warn him, and
+explained how they had vainly searched an outlet in the direction of
+the North Gallery.
+
+"Right after we met Jim," he went on, "we ran as fast as we could
+towards the old workings, to see if we could get out there. I didn't
+think there was much chance, because, so far as I could make out, the
+fall had happened between where we were working and the shafts. But it
+was worth trying, anyway. When we found the wall down, in that
+section, and the rock piled up clear to the roof, I knew we were
+trapped, sure.
+
+"Thanks to what I had learned in the night-school classes, I had a
+pretty good idea of the general lay-out of the mine. I knew how the
+faults lay, and miners, who'd been in this mine a long time, had told
+me how gassy the old workings were.
+
+"In a lesson I'd had on mine ventilation, we'd been told that the
+ventilating plant, here, had been enlarged twice over to try to keep
+the mine clear of gas. It wasn't hard to figure out that, with the
+ventilation stopped, gas would soon begin to collect, and that would
+be the end of us.
+
+"There was a big-enough cap on our safety lamps, as it was, and it
+seemed to me that the blue cone grew longer as I looked. I told Jim
+that it wasn't safe for us to hang around those old workings, we'd get
+poisoned before we knew it and lose any chance we had of rescue.
+
+"Jim didn't see it my way, at first.
+
+"'Might as well die here as anywhere!' he said.
+
+"I didn't like that spirit. I'd read in a book, somewhere, that if a
+chap gives up hope, he dies a whole lot quicker than if he keeps up
+his spirits. It was about Anton that I was worrying most. I was bent
+on trying to get the youngster cheerful if I could, because he was
+moping over Otto's prophecy that there was going to be an accident.
+You've heard about that, I suppose?"
+
+The reporters nodded, and Owens, who was listening, added:
+
+"We've heard a lot about it. The old man called the turn, all right.
+But maybe you don't know that he told me, too, that you'd be rescued
+and that you'd come out of it, alive?"
+
+"Did he?" queried Clem, in amazement.
+
+"Point-blank. It's a good thing for you he did, too, for a whole lot
+of first-class men volunteered for the rescue work who couldn't have
+been persuaded to enter the mine again, otherwise. The old man stuck
+to his belief, even after most of us thought you would be dead. The
+geophone expert backed him up, by saying he heard tapping, but it was
+Otto's persistence that did the most."
+
+"It's a queer thing he should guess so closely," commented Clem
+thoughtfully.
+
+But a reporter from a Pittsburgh evening paper, who was anxious to get
+the survivor's story on the telegraph wires, broke in impatiently:
+
+"What was the first thing you did, after you'd found you were
+trapped?"
+
+"We got busy and made a barricade," Clem answered. "I showed Jim and
+Anton that, in the old workings where we were, there was a lot of gas.
+Our lamps showed it up, good and strong. Now, back in the rooms where
+Jim and I had been hewing, there wasn't any gas to speak of. We could
+go back there, of course, and that was what Jim wanted to do.
+
+"But I figured out that, since the ventilation was shut off from our
+rooms, the gas which had accumulated in the old workings and which was
+steadily seeping through the coal in that section would gradually
+creep along the galleries our way. If that happened, we'd be down and
+out, before the rescuers had a chance to cut their way through. We
+could put up a barricade, though, and cut off the gassy part of the
+mine.
+
+"Jim didn't want to work, at first. If he was going to die, he said,
+he might as well die of gas as of hunger. He talked a lot of rot about
+its being the easiest death. I was that sore, I could have kicked him.
+
+"Anton was willing enough to work, though, and when Jim saw the two of
+us actually at work, he got over his grouch, went and got his pick and
+shovel and slaved as hard as any of us. We piled up the coal and rock,
+good and thick, and then scraped up all the fine dust we could find
+and made a thick blanket of that to keep the gas from coming through,
+as best we could.
+
+"Putting up that barricade made us mighty hungry. We were working fast
+because the gas there was bad, and we knew the quicker we got away
+from it, the better for us. Being hungry didn't do us much good.
+There wasn't much grub.
+
+"We had only two pails of dinner, Jim's and mine. Anton's dinner pail
+was out by the entry where he took the loaded cars. So we pooled the
+food, and divided it into three exactly equal parts, each one of us to
+hide his share, and to eat it as quickly or as slowly as he pleased.
+
+"Jim ate his at once, said he'd rather have one good meal than a lot
+of little bites which didn't mean anything. Anton made his last
+longer, he still had some food left when the lamps burned out. I only
+took a bite or two of mine, at that time, and managed to make eight
+meals of it, though, of course, I couldn't tell how many hours or days
+apart those meals were."
+
+"How long did the safety-lamps burn?" asked the reporter.
+
+"Eight hours after we were caught. They all went out within a few
+minutes of each other--and we had them pretty well turned down, too. I
+looked at my watch, just as the last one flickered out. It wasn't
+quite a quarter past eight."
+
+"You had no matches?" the reporter asked.
+
+"Matches? What a fool idea!" exclaimed Clem, amazed at the reporter's
+ignorance. "I should say not! Even the lamps are locked. We could
+have had light three times as long, if it wasn't for that, burning
+first one and then the other, but there's no way to light a lamp below
+ground.
+
+"Before the lamps went out, each of us had scraped up a pile of coal
+dust to sleep on. It was plenty warm down there, and getting warmer
+all the time. The lack of air made us all heavy and drowsy. We were
+all asleep pretty soon after the lamps went out.
+
+"We woke up in the dark. It was black as pitch, a blackness which
+weighed on you. It hurt. One's eyes wanted to fight against it.
+
+"How long had we been asleep? An hour, ten hours, or the whole
+twenty-four? Not one of us could tell.
+
+"But the sleep had done one good thing. It had helped Jim a lot. He
+was full of pep, again. The old prospecting optimism had come back. He
+was dead sure that he could find a way out. All it needed was looking
+for, he thought.
+
+"Anton wasn't awake yet, and I didn't want to wake him up. The longer
+he slept, the better. I tried to reason with Jim that we'd already
+gone to all the openings there could be, but he wouldn't listen to
+reason. He wouldn't stay with us. He was restless. He just had to be
+up and wandering.
+
+"'How are you going to find your way back?' I asked him. 'It's easy to
+get lost in the dark, and you don't know much about the mine.'
+
+"'I'll be back with a full dinner-pail while you're sitting there
+doing nothing!' he boasted, and off he started. I'd have gone with
+him, quick enough, but I didn't want Anton to wake and find himself
+alone.
+
+"After a while Anton woke up. I heard him munching, so I knew he was
+at his grub. I warned him not to finish it all at once, but he was so
+hungry he couldn't stop. I couldn't blame him much, at that. I was so
+ravenous that my stomach seemed to be tying itself up in knots, and
+the flesh inside seemed to crawl.
+
+"I had to tell him that Jim had gone off by himself. Anton didn't say
+much to that. In fact, he didn't want to talk at all. He was brooding
+all the time. Twice I overheard him muttering to himself, and both
+times he was talking about Otto and his warning.
+
+"I could see he was blaming me, but I'll say this for the boy--he
+never once said that he regretted having come back to warn me."
+
+"That," interrupted the superintendent emphatically, "shows the boy is
+good stuff. It takes a good deal of moral courage to keep from blaming
+some one else, when you're in a pinch. I remember, once, in West
+Australia--" He checked himself. "Go ahead with your story, lad."
+
+Clem resumed.
+
+"Some time after--it seemed about an hour, though it may have been a
+good deal less or a good deal more--we heard shouting.
+
+"'Jim's found the way out!' cried Anton, and scrambled to his feet.
+
+"I grabbed him as he rose.
+
+"'Don't run off in that fool fashion,' I said to him. 'Make sure where
+the shouts are coming from, first. You've been down in a mine long
+enough to know that the echoes are apt to make a noise sound as if it
+comes in a directly opposite direction from the right one.'
+
+"'I'm going to find Jim!' he insisted.
+
+"'If you must run chances, why, I suppose you must,' said I. 'But I'm
+going to stay here, where the air's good. Try to get back here. Keep
+in touch. You take ten paces forward, then stop and shout. I'll
+answer. If you don't hear me, come back.'
+
+"He promised and started off. For the first fifty yards or
+so--supposing that he shouted at every ten paces--I heard him clear
+enough.
+
+"Then--not another sound! What had happened to him?
+
+"I shouted again and again.
+
+"No reply!
+
+"What was I going to do? Both Jim and Anton were wandering around
+loose in the mine galleries, and they might stray until they dropped,
+without ever finding the way back. I yelled till I was hoarse.
+
+"Then I got another idea. I took my pick, and kept on hitting the roof
+in three regular strokes: 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' and then a pause--just like
+that." He illustrated on the head-rail of his hospital bed. "I knew
+that the vibration would carry along the rock, farther than the
+voice."
+
+"That's what the geophone man heard," Owens commented to the reporter.
+"Go on, lad!"
+
+"I kept that up," Clem went on, "until my arms ached. I was so tired
+in my back and so weak with hunger that bright violet spots kept
+dancing before my eyes. But I kept on, just the same.
+
+"Then I heard a shout, and, presently, Anton came staggering along,
+dead beat. He'd been guided back by the sound of the tapping.
+
+"'No sign of Jim?' I asked
+
+"'Nothing!'
+
+"He lay down on the coal dust, and, pretty soon, I heard him breathing
+hard. He'd gone right off to sleep, exhausted, poor kid!"
+
+"How long do you suppose he'd been wandering?" queried the reporter.
+
+"No way of knowing. But I'm pretty husky, and I can stand an eight
+hours' shift of coal hewing without getting too tired. And, I tell
+you, I was about done out, just from reaching up and tapping that roof
+with a pick. Of course, I was weak. But I reckon it must have been
+eight hours, good, that the youngster was straying in those mine
+galleries, in the dark, alone. Maybe it was more.
+
+"I must have gone to sleep, too, but it didn't seem for long.
+Half-asleep, I heard Anton say,
+
+"'There's a rat gnawing at my stomach!'
+
+"I woke up right quick, at that, for though mine rats are ugly
+customers, I thought if we could catch a rat or two, that might give
+us food. But what the boy meant was that he was so hungry that it felt
+as if a rat were there.
+
+"I wasn't exactly hungry, leastways, not all the time. The pain came
+in cramps, that were bad enough while they lasted, but I didn't feel
+anything much between. My tongue was getting swollen, though. I knew
+what that meant. Drink of some sort we must have.
+
+"'Look here, Anton,' I said, 'you tap on the rock, in threes, the same
+as I did, and I'll go try to find water. I know the lay-out of this
+mine better than you do, and there used to be a sump (hole) near the
+goaf (waste rock taken from the main gallery roofs). Maybe there'll be
+water there.'
+
+"I started off, cheerfully enough. I reckoned I knew the mine. So I
+do, with a lamp, but I didn't have any idea what it meant to wander in
+the pitch-dark. The galleries were low there, too, not more than four
+feet high. I had to keep one hand stretched out in front of me to keep
+from going headlong into the wall, and the dinner pail that I was
+carrying in that hand struck the side more times than I could count; I
+kept the other hand above my head, to keep me from cracking my skull
+against the cross-timbers holding up the low roof.
+
+"Before I'd gone a hundred yards, I was so mixed up that I didn't know
+which way I was going or where I'd come from. It's a horrible feeling.
+The dark is like a trap that you can't feel and you can't see, but you
+know it's there. It's being blind with your eyes open.
+
+"Then it was so ghastly silent, too. A blind man can always hear
+something. There's life around him. Down there, not a sound! I'd lost
+all hearing of the 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' I'd told Anton to make.
+
+"All sorts of nasty things came into my head. I might step into a hole
+and get crippled. I might walk straight into a pocket of gas, and,
+without any safety lamp to tell me of the danger, be poisoned then and
+there. The roof might be bulging down, right over my head, ready to
+fall and I'd have no warning.
+
+"I tried to reason it out that all these ideas were just imagination.
+Reasoning didn't do much good. Fright got a grip of me. I was in a
+cold sweat all over. My heart thumped so that it hurt. I was just
+horribly scared, right through, and I had to bite my lips till they
+were raw to keep from screaming.
+
+"I'd have gone under, sure, if I'd been alone, but I had the kid to
+think of, and every time the tin dinner pail banged against the wall,
+it reminded me of what I'd come to look for. Anton would die of thirst
+in a few hours, if I didn't find water. As for Jim, I reckoned he was
+probably done for, anyway.
+
+"I think--I'm not sure but I think so--I had a spell of running
+crazily round and round in a circle, trying to get away from
+something--I don't know what. It was then I gave my head a bang," he
+pointed to the bandage still on his head, "and while that stunned me a
+bit, it steadied me, too.
+
+"By that time, I was lost for fair. I couldn't hear Anton's tapping. I
+couldn't hear anything. I tried to turn back and got all mixed up in
+the run of the galleries. I wandered this way and that, as blindly as
+if I'd never been in the mine before.
+
+"And then I heard a sound like the ticking of a big clock.
+
+"That scared me more than anything.
+
+"I remembered all Otto's' stories about the 'knockers,' and, though I
+didn't believe them, I couldn't get them out of my head. Somebody,
+something, was knocking softly underground!
+
+"It wasn't human, that was sure!
+
+"It couldn't be Anton, because he'd been told to tap in threes. It
+couldn't be Jim, for the ticks were too close together to be the
+strokes of a pick; besides, I knew that Jim had left his tools behind.
+It couldn't be rescuers, because the sound was near me. Near me? It
+was almost at my ear.
+
+"Sometimes breaking timber cracks. It might be a prop gradually giving
+way, I thought, just ready to let down a new fall of rock on my head.
+But a creaking timber is sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and this
+ticking, as I said, was regular, like a big clock.
+
+"Then I guessed!
+
+"It was drops of water falling!
+
+"I could have shouted with relief, but down there, in the dark and the
+stillness, the silence was so heavy that I was afraid to shout.
+
+"I felt my way forward, one step and then a second, and the ticking
+stopped.
+
+"I took a third step and it began again. I stepped backward, and a
+little to one side, and the drop fell on my bare shoulder.
+
+"I took my dinner-pail, moved it forward, backward, this way and that,
+until at last I heard the drops falling in the tin.
+
+"I was too thirsty to wait long. As soon as there was a teaspoonful of
+water in the pail, I moistened my tongue with it. That was a relief! I
+was able to hold out the tin pail, the next time, until there was a
+reasonable drink.
+
+"Ugh, it was bitter! It tasted coppery and twisted up my mouth, but it
+was liquid, at least. After I had a drink or two, I felt better. My
+scare passed away.
+
+"Then I began to think a bit. If water was dropping as quickly as
+that, it must be running somewhere. But where? I got down on my hands
+and knees and began to feel along the floor. Here it was damp; there,
+dry. I crawled along for a few minutes, following the line of the damp
+floor, and, sure enough, came to a hollow where a good-sized puddle
+had collected. There I was able to half-fill the pail.
+
+"So far, I was all right. I'd found the water. But how was I to get
+back to Anton? And where was Jim, if he were still alive? I hadn't any
+idea, any more, of which way to turn.
+
+"Then I got a scheme. Suppose I just walked straight ahead, keeping my
+right hand against the wall, and turning to the right at every opening
+I came to? I knew that we were hemmed in at every point. Therefore, I
+figured, we must be inside some kind of an irregular circle. The place
+where we had made our beds was in the room where I had been working,
+which was in the end gallery, and, at that rate, somewhere on the
+circumference of that circle. If I kept on going, long enough, I'd be
+bound to strike the place.
+
+"Off I started with the pail half-full of water. I walked, in and out,
+up one gallery and down another, coming back to the rock falls which
+had blocked the way, and on again. I tried to count my paces, and,
+though I forgot sometimes, I figured that I'd done about seven
+thousand paces when I heard, faintly:
+
+"'Tap! Tap! Tap!'
+
+"It seemed to come from behind me.
+
+"I wasn't to be fooled by the echoes, though, and so I kept on as I
+had been going. Just a little further and I turned a corner and came
+to the place where we had made our beds.
+
+"Anton was down.
+
+"He hadn't been able to keep on tapping on the roof, as I had told him
+to. He hadn't the strength. But the kid's pluck was holding, though
+his vitality wasn't. He'd taken his maul (a large hammer used for
+driving wedges in the coal) and was lifting this from the ground and
+then dropping it, three strokes at a time, like I'd told him to do.
+
+"When I spoke to him he couldn't answer. His tongue was so swollen
+that it just about filled up his whole mouth.
+
+"I gave him some water, a sip or two at a time, and then, when I
+thought he could stand it, a real drink. Even then, I had to go slow,
+for my dinner pail was only half-full.
+
+"I still had a few bites of food left, but I wasn't hungry, I'd gone
+too far for that. My mouth was sore, too. The copperas water screwed
+up my palate and my tongue like eating unripe bananas does, only a lot
+worse. It worked the same way on Anton."
+
+"It was that water that helped you, though," put in the mine doctor.
+"The sulphate of iron in it lowered the activity of the body, drying
+it up, so that you could go on with less loss of tissue."
+
+"It tasted nasty enough to have anything in it! Just the same, it was
+water. When I woke up from a nap, I found the pail empty. The
+youngster had finished it, but when I rowed him for doing it, he
+couldn't remember having drunk it at all. He was only half-conscious,
+any way.
+
+"My tongue was beginning to swell again. I saw we'd have to shift our
+headquarters so as to be near that water, or the time would come when
+we'd be too weak to go hunting it. So, following the same scheme of
+making a whole circle of the part of the mine where we were trapped, I
+went back the way I'd come, making sure that Anton was following right
+behind me.
+
+"It seemed a whole lot farther off than I'd thought, I suppose because
+I was afraid of passing the place. After a couple of hours, though, I
+heard the sound of the dropping water. It was great to hear it again!
+We took some long drinks there, I can tell you. Then we scooped up
+with our hands some coal dust to lie on, and slumped down again. I was
+beginning to feel pretty weak."
+
+"About what day do you suppose that was?" the reporter asked.
+
+"I haven't any idea. Sometimes I thought we'd only been down there a
+few hours, sometimes it seemed like weeks. I suppose, really, it was
+about the third or the fourth day.
+
+"I woke up suddenly.
+
+"Somebody was laughing!
+
+"It was a queer high-pitched laugh, and half-choked, something like
+the neighing of a horse.
+
+"Anton heard it, too.
+
+"'The knockers are coming for us!' he said to me, hoarsely. 'It's just
+like Father said. They're laughing at us!'
+
+"Well, I don't mind telling you my blood ran a bit cold. I'm not
+superstitious, but, for the second time in that mine, I was scared
+enough to run. But where to?
+
+"Anton was gasping horribly; it made me worse to hear him. I put my
+hand on his shoulder to quiet him. He was trembling and shaking, like
+as he had a chill.
+
+"The laughing came nearer, and louder.
+
+"The louder it got, the less I was scared. After the first few seconds
+of fright, I got all right again, and started to think quietly. Then
+the real reason came to me.
+
+"It must be Jim!
+
+"I let out a loud shout.
+
+"The laughing stopped dead.
+
+"Then I knew it was Jim; things that weren't human wouldn't care if I
+shouted or not.
+
+"'Keep quiet!' I said to Anton. 'It's Jim, and he's coming this way.'
+
+"Presently the laughter began again, a sort of half choked scream,
+like I said, but it was laughing just the same. It made my flesh creep
+to hear it. Somehow it wasn't quite human, more like an animal trying
+to laugh like a man.
+
+"It was quite close to us, now. I got up, for I could hear steps
+shuffling along the gallery.
+
+"Suddenly, something bumped into me, though I thought the steps were
+several yards away.
+
+"It was Jim, sure enough.
+
+"He gave a sort of screech and both his hands went up to my throat, in
+a strangling grip.
+
+"I'm a good deal bigger than Jim, but I was like a baby in his hands.
+He had me like in a vise.
+
+"'Help! Help! Anton!' I called. 'He's throttling me! It's Jim!'
+
+"At that, the kid got up, tottering. He was weak enough, but, as you
+know, he's really got muscles of iron. In spite of his scare--for he
+was dead sure that it was something supernatural--he came to my help.
+
+"The minute he got his hands on Jim and found that it was really flesh
+and blood that he was tackling, and not any sort of goblin, he got
+furious. He wrenched at his opponent savagely, and the more furious he
+got, the more his strength came back. I could hear his sinews
+cracking.
+
+"But Jim's grip was that of a madman.
+
+"It was a good thing for me that Anton was the son of the champion
+wrestler of the mine. Despite his powerful muscles, he could do
+nothing, absolutely nothing against the madman. I felt him let go, and
+thought that was the end. My head was bursting, my heart fluttering.
+
+"Then, with a swift change of hold, the youngster took Jim in a
+wrestler's grip, one he had learned from his father. It's a death
+hold, unless the other weakens. I heard Jim gasp. The clutch loosened.
+At last I could breathe and I shook myself free.
+
+"But the madman was not tamed. His fists shot out like flails. One
+blow took Anton full in the chest. I heard his body crash against the
+wall. I could do little to help him, that choking grip had taken away
+every ounce of force I had.
+
+"There wasn't any need for my help. That blow had roused Anton to a
+rage but little less than that of his mad foe. He knew nothing of
+boxing, but he could wrestle. It was a grim fight, down there in the
+dark!
+
+"Despite the madman's blows, Anton ran in, clutched him in some kind
+of a wrestler's grip, lifted him clear off his feet and threw him over
+his shoulder.
+
+"The madman fell heavily on the rock floor and lay like a log.
+
+"For a minute or two we panted, saying nothing. Then,
+
+"'Have you killed him, Anton?' I asked.
+
+"'I don't know. I hope so,' he answered savagely.
+
+"I felt pretty much that way, myself, at first, for my throat felt as
+if it were twisted clear out of shape. But, as I began to feel a bit
+better, I thought of Jim lying there.
+
+"After all, he hadn't had any water! Small wonder he'd gone mad.
+
+"Staggering--for that grip had nearly done for me--I got over beside
+him and knelt down. His heart was still beating, pretty rapidly, at
+that. But his jaws were almost locked upwards, forced apart by his
+thickened and swollen tongue.
+
+"I got some water into his mouth, but with difficulty. I couldn't pry
+his tongue down far enough to get more than a drop or two in. But I
+kept at it--hours, I reckon--and kept on giving him sips of water
+until he began to breathe a bit more naturally.
+
+"Then I reckon I fainted, for, when I came to, I was lying right
+across Jim. He was still unconscious, but the tongue was a whole lot
+better and he was nearly able to close his mouth. I poured a lot more
+water into him. Then I tried to give him a bite from the bread I had
+left, but he couldn't swallow. So I gave it to Anton, who was moaning
+a good bit.
+
+"Me, I was getting less and less hungry. The gnawing pain that I'd
+felt at the beginning, especially that first time that I was hunting
+water, only came back at longer and longer intervals. In between, I
+felt quite all right, rather jolly, in fact. I caught myself laughing,
+once, the way I'd heard Jim, and I had hard work to stop it.
+Hysterical, I reckon.
+
+"I must have slept a lot, or fainted, I don't know which. I remember
+having dreamed that I was rescued, oh, a score of times! Always, when
+I was asleep, there seemed plenty of light, generally a bright violet.
+It was only when I woke up that it was dark. The blackness was like a
+rock lying on my chest. The air I breathed seemed to taste black.
+
+"Jim got violent, more than once. To end up, I had to tie his feet
+with my belt, so he couldn't get up on his feet. I wasn't going to
+risk any more fights like we'd had with him at the start.
+
+"When he wasn't struggling, he was talking. He talked nearly all the
+time, and mostly about some gold mine that he'd found, that he knew
+would make him a millionaire and that he wanted to go back to. He
+described the place, over and over again. I believe I could go right
+there, just from hearing him. The only thing that quieted him was when
+I answered. Then he'd shut right up, only to begin again, after a
+while.
+
+"What worried me the most about Jim was that he couldn't keep the
+bitter water on his stomach. He'd vomit it up, almost as soon as I'd
+get it down. I kept pouring it into him, just the same.
+
+"When I put the last bite of grub into Anton--he was dead
+unconscious--it seemed like the end of everything. I lost all track of
+time. I don't know what happened, after that. I got quite
+light-headed, I think.
+
+"Half the while, I didn't know whether the time I was dreaming was
+real, or the time I was awake. I knew somehow that the air was getting
+bad, and I remember thinking that this might be because a rescue party
+was trying to get down the wall.
+
+"But there was always plenty of light when I was asleep, and I liked
+that, so, every time I was awake, I tried to go back to sleep."
+
+"Didn't you hear any sounds of the rescue party coming nearer?" Owens
+asked.
+
+"I heard them all the time, even when they weren't there," Clem
+answered. "How was I to tell what was real and what was dream?
+
+"On one side was Jim telling about his gold mine, on the other was
+Anton, crying out from time to time that the knockers had him. Poor
+kid, he seemed to be in a nightmare all the while."
+
+"But when the rescuers first spoke to you," the owner of the mine
+suggested, "you answered naturally enough."
+
+"Perhaps I did, but I don't remember hearing them, at all, and I don't
+remember answering, at least, not more than I had a dozen times
+before. I'm not sure that I remember when the doctor came in and put a
+gas mask on me. It's all sort of vague.
+
+"The first thing I do remember was coming up to the top and seeing a
+green tree. The trees weren't green when I went down a week ago, and I
+hadn't dreamed about trees, at all.
+
+"Right now, it's hard to realize that I was buried down there for a
+week. If I wasn't so feeble, I'd think it was only a nightmare."
+
+"And about this gold mine of Jim's," queried the reporter, scenting
+another phase of the story. "What was that?"
+
+Jim, in a neighboring bed, half-raised himself in anxiety, but his
+comrade threw him a reassuring look.
+
+"You'll have to ask Jim that, when he gets better," Clem answered. "I
+can't give away his secret. It might be true!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LURE OF GOLD
+
+
+In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all
+ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores
+to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the
+borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure,
+lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word:
+
+Gold!
+
+Many years had passed since Owens had felt this auriferous fever, many
+years since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of the
+camps of his youth, but the word had rung again in his ears as of old.
+The subtle poison of the lure was in his veins once more. He could not
+sleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point of
+death in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret of
+millions, untold.
+
+He reasoned with himself for his foolishness. Over and over again he
+reminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, and
+that coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done.
+The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat late
+in his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had once known
+so well, and dreaming avid visions over the pages.
+
+The records of human daring do not reach so far back in the dawn of
+history as to show a time when gold was not a goal. In the earliest
+laws as yet known--the Laws of Menes in Egypt, B. C. 3000--both gold
+and silver were sought and used as standards of value in the royal and
+priestly treasuries. Breastplates and ornaments of gold were buried
+with the mummies of kings and nobles of Egypt and Mycenae.
+
+There was gold in Chaldea and Armenia. The fable of Tantalus, who kept
+unlawful possession of a golden dog which had been stolen from Zeus,
+the great All-Father, was a legend of the gold placer deposits near
+Mt. Sipylus, north of Smyrna. The earliest records show a knowledge of
+gold in the Caucasus, Ural, and Himalaya Mts.
+
+The Phoenicians, most adventurous of all the early races, went on long
+expeditions to distant lands in search of gold. Cadmus, the
+Phoenician, in B. C. 1594, sent miners to Thrace and established a
+regular gold-trade thence. As a curious forecast of what was to happen
+on the other side of the world, tens of centuries later, the ancient
+historian Strabo tells of a wagon-wheel uncovering a nugget of gold
+near Mt. Pangeus, not far from the present Bulgarian frontier.
+
+One of the oldest of all the tales of high adventure was the Quest of
+the Golden Fleece, and the fifty heroes who set out on that quest in
+the oared ship _Argo_--and hence called the Argonauts--have given
+their name to gold-seekers for hundreds of generations. Few tales in
+all the world are so wonderful as the old Greek legend of Jason and
+the Golden Fleece, a quest of daring, of magic, and of peril.
+
+The Golden Fleece, itself, was a thing of mystery. Its origin harks
+back to the earliest days of the Age of Fable. Thus, in its briefest
+form, runs the tale:
+
+In a minor kingdom of what is now Northern Greece, there lived a king,
+Athamas, son of the god of the sea, who had married Nephele, the
+goddess of the clouds. But Athamas proved faithless and fell in love
+with Ino, grand-daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and
+beauty. The cloud-goddess, indignant at this neglect, disappeared,
+leaving behind her two children, Phrixus and Helle.
+
+It was not long before the stepmother conceived a violent hatred for
+the children of the first wife. Counting on the spell of her beauty,
+she tried to persuade Athamas to get rid of them, but the king
+refused. Then Ino fell to base plotting. She brought about a famine in
+the land by secretly heating the grains of wheat before they were sown
+and thus preventing their growth; then, by a false oracle, she
+persuaded the king that the gods were angry and would only be appeased
+if he offered his eldest-born, Phrixus, as a sacrifice. For the sake
+of his country, the king agreed.
+
+All was in readiness, Phrixus was on the altar, the officiating priest
+had the knife raised, when masses of cloud and fog rolled over the
+scene and Nephele appeared, leading a ram with a fleece all threads of
+gold. So thick was the fog, that, in an instant, it blotted out all
+vision; the priest's hand stayed uplifted, for he could no longer see
+his victim to deal the fatal blow. Then came a rift in the fog, and,
+through the swirl of mist, Athamas and Ino saw Phrixus and his sister
+leap upon the back of the gold-fleeced ram.
+
+Down the mountain and across the plain the great ram sped, and plunged
+into the waters of the strait that lies between Europe and Asia Minor,
+breasting the waves with ease. Helle fell from the back of the ram and
+was drowned, so that the strait (now known as the Dardanelles) was
+known to the Greeks as the Hellespont.
+
+Phrixus reached the other side in safety. Following the counsel of his
+cloud-mother, he sacrificed the ram to the honor of the gods and took
+the fleece to Æetes, king of Colchis. Æetes at first received him with
+honor, but later proved false to his promises of friendship and made
+Phrixus a prisoner. The Golden Fleece was hung up on a tree in the
+grove of Ares (god of battle and grandfather of Ino), and there the
+mystic treasure was guarded by a dragon which never slept.
+
+Now Pelias, brother of Athamas, had usurped the throne of Thessaly.
+When Jason, son of the true king, Aeson, had grown to man's estate, he
+presented himself before Pelias and challenged him to surrender the
+kingdom.
+
+The wily Pelias, knowing well that the people of Thessaly would side
+with Jason, did not refuse outright. He demanded, only, that Jason
+should show his rightfulness to be deemed a king's son by some act of
+heroic bravery. Such a test was not unusual in the Days of Fable, and
+Jason agreed.
+
+"This will I do," said Jason, "name the deed!"
+
+Cunningly the king answered,
+
+"Bring me the Golden Fleece!"
+
+Jason, high-hearted, set out on the quest. Since he must cross the
+sea, there must be built a ship. Through the advice of the
+cloud-goddess, his mother, he appealed for help to Athene, goddess of
+wisdom, and a bitter enemy of Ares and his grand-daughter Ino. The
+fifty-oared ship Argo was built, and Athene herself placed in the prow
+a piece of oak endowed with the power of speaking oracles.
+
+The Quest of the Golden Fleece was a deed worthy of heroes, and none
+but heroes were members of the crew. Such men--demigods, most of
+them--had never been gathered in a crew before. Orpheus, of the
+charmed lyre; Zetes and Calaïs, sons of the North Wind; Castor and
+Pollux, the divine Twins; Meleager, the hunter of the magic boar;
+Theseus, the slayer of tyrants; the all-powerful Hercules, son of
+Zeus, whose twelve labors were famous in all antiquity; and others of
+little lesser fame, were numbered in that gallant company.
+
+Many and strange were their adventures in the _Argo_, of which there
+is not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: the
+battle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of the
+Sirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menace
+of the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when a
+ship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who used
+their feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of the
+voyage of the _Argo_ is a story that will never die.
+
+Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the Golden
+Fleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months--or it may
+have been years--Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought.
+There they presented themselves before Æetes and demanded the Golden
+Fleece.
+
+The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knew
+that neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He took
+refuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason the
+performance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame the
+bulls of Hephæstus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs of
+red-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god of
+battle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from
+which a host of armed men would spring, and he must defeat that army.
+
+Truly, the task was one to tax a hero. But, as the gods would have it,
+Jason found a new but dangerous ally. This was Medea, the
+witch-daughter of Æetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She
+loved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her for
+sorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, her
+dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly
+from hatred of Æetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.
+
+Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the
+task Æetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted
+from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof
+against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the
+bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field
+of Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm
+among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil,
+which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were
+slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.
+
+There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept.
+Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs
+she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the
+snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at
+last!
+
+Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully
+as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their
+quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward,
+Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the _Argo_, and
+she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in
+the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words
+and could not retract.
+
+The _Argo_ had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that
+Æetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of
+battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young
+brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The
+anguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return them
+to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the
+Argonauts escaped.
+
+So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to
+draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered
+at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red
+with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing.
+At the first land where the _Argo_ stopped, he married her.
+
+At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and
+terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands
+of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a
+quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whose
+body was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which they
+were saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journey
+of the _Argo_ was not less wild and difficult than her coming.
+
+Yet, at the last, Jason brought back the Golden Fleece to Thessaly,
+only to find that the false Pelias had slain Aeson and Jason's mother
+and brother during the absence of the Argonauts. His crime was not
+left unpunished. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut their
+father into small pieces and to boil the fragments in a pot with
+certain witch-herbs that she gave them, falsely promising that by this
+means the old king would regain his youth. Of the later life of Jason
+and Medea, there is no need to speak. Misery was their lot, and their
+deaths were not long delayed.
+
+Thus, in fanciful guise, appears in the old Greek legend the record of
+the European discovery of the alluvial gold deposits of Colchis, and
+to the Argonauts was ascribed the honor of being the first to bring to
+Greece the gold of Asia Minor. Even in those early days, the gift of
+gold was regarded as the favor of the gods.
+
+[Footnote 2: One book that should be in every boy's library is Charles
+Kingsley's "The Heroes," in which the "Quest of the Golden Fleece" is
+related with a beauty unequaled in the English language. The books of
+A. J. Church, also, especially his "Stories from Homer," make the old
+Greek demigods live once again.]
+
+There is good reason to believe that the Siege of Troy--the subject of
+Homer's Iliad--was not waged alone because of the beauty of Helen of
+Troy, but also because the Greeks coveted Mycenæan gold. Excavations
+made on the site of ancient Troy have revealed many thin plates of
+beaten gold.
+
+
+[Illustration: DIVINING-RODS.
+
+A, Twig; B, Trench.
+
+_From an Old Print._]
+
+
+[Illustration: THE WORLD'S OLDEST PICTURE OF GOLD-SEEKERS.
+
+The three ships of Queen Hatshepsut sent to the Land of Punt (possibly
+Somaliland) in 1503-1481, B.C.
+
+_From a wall-painting in the Temple of Deir-el-Bahri, near Thebes._]
+
+
+Nor was the _Argo_ the only ship to set sail to unknown lands for
+gold. As early as the fabled voyage of the Argonauts, or even earlier,
+Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt--a mighty woman monarch of whom all too
+little is known--sent an expedition to Punt (possibly Somaliland) for
+incense and for gold. On the walls of the great temples built during
+her reign are found paintings telling the story of this expedition,
+picturing, among other things, the bags of gold that the three-masted,
+thirty-oared ship brought home.
+
+Hiram, King of Tyre, who was engaged by King Solomon to bring
+treasures for the Temple at Jerusalem, made a long journey to some
+distant land (about B. C. 1000) and, after having been three years
+away, brought back gold and silver, as well as ivory, apes, and
+peacocks. He certainly went to India and may have visited Peru.[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: For the theory of this early voyage to America, see the
+author's "The Quest of the Western World."]
+
+The Phrygians were known not only as miners of gold but also as
+workers in the precious metal. The "golden sands of Pactolus" were
+washed a thousand years before the Christian era. The proverbial
+wealth of Croesus and the legend of the "golden touch of Midas" remain
+as historic memories of the gold mines of Asia Minor and Arabia,
+worked by the Lydian kings.
+
+When Persia became the mistress of the world, most of this gold was
+taken to the courts of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. Some of it, but
+not all, came back in the victorious train of Alexander the Great,
+when ten thousand teams of mules and five hundred camels were required
+to carry the treasure to the new world capital at Susa.
+
+Spain, in addition to Egypt and Arabia, became one of the principal
+gold-bearing sources of the ancient world. The Carthaginians,
+colonists from Phoenicia, conquered the Iberians, who then populated
+Spain, and forced them to work in gold mines. They captured negroes
+and shipped them to Spain as slaves in the gold diggings. The
+Carthaginians also exploited mines in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
+
+Then Rome, rising into power, cast covetous eyes on the gold possessed
+by Carthage, and sought to seize it by force of arms. As a result of
+her victory in the First Punic (Carthaginian) War, Rome secured the
+three islands of the Mediterranean, rich in minerals.
+
+The Carthaginians, under the leadership of Hannibal, worked the mines
+of Spain and Portugal the harder. The rivers Douro and Tagus were
+found to be rich in gold-bearing sands. Rome's envy grew. In the
+Second Punic War, she captured Spain. From the gold-mines there,
+worked by slave labor, came a large share of the riches and luxury of
+the Roman Empire.
+
+To Owens, sitting in his library in an American colliery town, the
+long story of civilization seemed to unroll before his eyes and,
+everywhere, possession of gold brought power and fame. In every case,
+also, that same possession led to luxury and decline.
+
+When Rome fell, beneath the impact of the barbarian hordes, the
+Byzantine Empire, holding the gold-mines of Macedonia, Thrace, and
+Asia Minor, rose to a bought magnificence. It crumbled easily, because
+it depended on gold to buy its mercenary armies, even as Carthage had
+crumbled before Rome.
+
+The same story was repeated in the Saracenic power, when the
+Caliphates of Bagdad and of Damascus rose to that wealth of which the
+"Arabian Nights" gives a picture. The mines of Arabia, Egypt, and
+Spain were in their hands, and the luxury of such Moorish towns as
+Granada was made possible by the final workings of the almost
+exhausted alluvial deposits of Spain. It was not until the days of
+Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile that the Moors were conquered, and,
+in those days, Cortés tapped the gold-stores of Mexico, and Pizarro,
+those of Peru.
+
+As ever, the gold of the Aztecs and the Incas, ruthlessly seized so
+soon after the voyages of Columbus, made Spain the mistress of the
+world. While the Conquistadores were fighting, Spain remained strong.
+When the gold was acquired, Spain began to fall.
+
+England was a frugal country, then. But, like Rome, as soon as her
+neighbor began to acquire vast stores of gold, she sought a pretext
+for a war. English pirates and privateers commenced to harry the
+treasure-ships of Spain, to plunder the Spanish settlements in
+America, and to sack every town that was thought to contain American
+gold. Upon this stolen treasure, England rose to wealth and power, as
+did also Holland and France, the three nations having made a naval
+alliance for greed of Spanish gold.
+
+Nor was England content with her ill-gotten gains. Through commercial
+companies which only thinly disguised colonization projects, she
+sought possession of gold-bearing regions. The gold of India, of
+Australia, and of South Africa, changed the Kingdom of England into
+the British Empire, during the reign of a single queen. No one will
+seriously dispute that the annexation of the Transvaal and even the
+Boer War of recent years were based on England's desire to control the
+enormous gold resources of the Rand, as well as the diamond fields.
+
+The gold history of the United States is little less striking. The
+Louisiana Purchase was based largely on the mineral wealth known to
+exist in that territory, the annexation of California and her rise to
+statehood were built on gold. The purchase of Alaska in 1867 was
+largely due to the discovery of gold in British Columbia in 1857, 1859
+and 1860, and to the discoveries on the Stikine River, Alaska, in
+1863.
+
+The 146 years of life of the United States may be sharply divided into
+two equal periods, that before the discovery of gold in California in
+1848 and the period following. The amazing strides forward which the
+United States has made during this last period are not to be ascribed
+only to her virgin soil, to her geographic isolation, or to her form
+of government, but more, a thousand times more, to her mining
+development. Coal, iron, silver, copper, and above all--gold, opened
+up the continent with passionate swiftness and hurled the United
+States into the position of one of the great powers of the modern
+world.
+
+So Owens sat a-thinking in his library and racking his brain about
+Jim. There, not a stone's throw away, lay a sick man, possibly
+possessed of a secret that might change the face of history anew.
+
+How many times it had happened that a lonely prospector, weary, ragged
+and hungry, had, with a stroke of a pick or the flick of a pan,
+revealed such sources of wealth as to change a burning desert, a fetid
+swamp or a bleak mountain range into a hive of industry! What
+statesman has ever wrought as many wonders for his country as has that
+questing nomad with his shovel and his shallow pan?
+
+The spirit of rugged honesty and of fair play which so sharply
+distinguishes the real miner from the mere mining speculator lay deep
+in Owens. He had worked in the gold diggings, himself, and his
+standards of principle were those of the great outdoors. He scorned to
+take advantage of the opportunity given him by his position as owner
+of the mine to overhear the delirious ravings of the sick man. That he
+might not be tempted, he kept away from the hospital ward, except for
+a short daily visit of inquiry.
+
+When Jim grew better, however, and evinced a marked liking for Owens'
+company, the mine-owner yielded to his interest in the prospector.
+Even then he restrained himself from making so much as an indirect
+reference to the secret of his employe, though the matter was seldom
+out of his mind.
+
+He had no thought of filching Jim's secret from him. Honest to the
+core, Owens' thoughts were on a larger scale. As a mining man, he
+thought naturally what personal profit he could turn, should the
+secret prove to be worth while; but he thought far more of Jim. He
+rejoiced in the hope that, perhaps, he could bring to fulfilment the
+prospector's hidden dream. And, most of all, he wished to play a part
+in adding another treasure-hunt to the golden glory of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+NUGGETS!
+
+
+Weeks had passed since the accident, and Jim was still in the
+hospital. The disaster had been costly to the colliery, but not
+crippling. The shafts--always the most costly portion of mine
+development--had not been injured. Many of the galleries had been
+reopened. The great ventilation fans were working again at full speed.
+The cages of coal were whirling up the shaft as of old.
+
+Otto, after a short rest, had gone to work. The old miner was well
+satisfied with the fulfilment of his prophecies. The "knockers" had
+indeed tasted blood, for the two men in the old workings had never
+been found. As the mining engineer had supposed, that section of the
+mine must be abandoned forever. Moreover, Otto's forecast that Clem
+would be rescued, uninjured, also had come true.
+
+Clem, indeed, was recovering, but the doctor declared him as yet
+unfit to resume the arduous work of hewing below ground. Accordingly,
+Owens had given him a temporary position as assistant to the safety
+inspector of the mine, for the accident had awakened the interest of
+the men in safety work, and the young fellow was quite competent to
+help in the simpler forms of instruction.
+
+Anton was still in a weak state. His lungs were affected. He was
+living at home with his mother, Owens having granted the boy leave on
+full pay until he was entirely well again.
+
+As the mine fell more and more into its old routine, Owens found
+himself oftener at the hospital. The remembrance of old times was
+strong in him, and the mine owner seemed to renew his youth in the
+rude speech of the prospector, sprinkled as it was with mining terms
+once so familiar to his ear.
+
+Jim's liking for his employer was rapidly growing into comradeship. He
+was fully conscious of Owens' delicacy in never referring to the
+secret and began to feel that here, at last, was a rich man he could
+trust. In the course of time, it was the old prospector who brought
+the matter up, first.
+
+"Has Clem ever said anything more to you about my mine?" he asked
+abruptly.
+
+Owens started, but he got a grip on himself at once. When he answered,
+it was in as casual a tone as he could assume.
+
+"Not another word. I don't suppose he has, to anybody. He seems to
+know enough not to talk. You heard how he snubbed the reporter!"
+
+"I know. I heard him. He's square, is Clem. But I ain't never yet
+asked him what I said, down there in the mine. It's been eatin' me,
+all the time I've been lyin' here. To think I kep' it quiet all these
+years, an' then go blurt it out, jest 'cos I was hungry!"
+
+"You haven't any reason to blame yourself for that, you were
+unconscious. And, like you, I believe Clem is as straight as a
+string."
+
+"Ay," agreed Jim, "he shows color in every pan (specks of gold in
+every handful of washed sand). I'd ha' gone West, judgin' from what he
+said the other day, if it hadn't been for him."
+
+"You certainly would."
+
+"An' that makes us pards (partners) in a way, don't it?"
+
+Jim paused, and then burst out again, "But I can't help wonderin'
+jest how much I told!"
+
+"You'll have to ask Clem that. You remember, he said nothing to the
+reporter except that, in your delirium you were talking about gold."
+
+"Gold! Did I say gold? Are you dead sure that I said gold?"
+
+"That's what Clem told, anyway."
+
+"Then I must sure ha' been dreamin'!" Jim's tone was both embarrassed
+and evasive.
+
+Owens saw, at once, by the prospector's manner that he was nervously
+fearful of having betrayed himself and that he wanted to drop the
+subject. This seemed a sure sign that the hinted discovery was true.
+
+It was a ticklish moment. The mine-owner realized that if the matter
+were dropped, now, he might never have another chance to get back to
+it. Any attempt on his part to renew the subject would be sure to
+arouse Jim's suspicion. If he were to be of any service to the old
+prospector, he must seize the present opportunity.
+
+"Too bad that it isn't gold then," he said, half commiseratingly.
+"There's nothing in all the world that can make a man rich in a
+minute, as gold can. I saw that, often enough, in Australia. That's
+the land of nuggets, Jim, big ones! Most of them were found by sheer
+luck, and it was poor men who found them, too, mostly.
+
+"The Australian black-fellows--pretty much savages, those
+fellows--knew gold, long before the white men came. They used to make
+their javelin-heads of gold because it's the easiest metal to work,
+when cold, and is found pure.
+
+"So it was not so surprising, Jim, that one of the first big gold
+finds was made by a black-fellow, a husky tattooed chap who owned no
+property except a small apron of matting for his middle, a bunch of
+feathers for his hair, a long-handled stone hatchet, and a boomerang.
+
+"This Cl'ck, as he was called, was employed as a shepherd by Dr. Kerr,
+a large sheep-owner in New South Wales. Cl'ck was a fairly intelligent
+fellow and had learned to talk a few words of English. He knew gold
+when he saw it. Just at the time I'm speaking of, the whole world was
+excited over gold, for it was just after the discovery of gold in
+California in 1848 and the great gold rush of '49."
+
+"My father was one of the 'forty-niners,'" put in Jim, eagerly.
+
+"So you're of the real Argonaut breed, then!" exclaimed Owens, but he
+did not push the enquiry, preferring to allow Jim to tell his story in
+his own way and in his own time. In order, however, to keep the
+subject of gold present in Jim's mind, he continued:
+
+"For some time there had been vague hints that there might be gold in
+Australia, but, before the time of the 'forty-niners' no attention had
+been paid to it.
+
+"For example! Once, in 1834, a ticket-of-leave man (convict out on
+parole), working in New South Wales, found a small nugget of pure gold
+in the earth and brought it to the nearest town to sell. Being a
+convict, he was at once arrested for having possession of the gold,
+and not being able to explain how he had got it. His story that he had
+found it in the earth was laughed at, for never--so far as the
+Australians knew, then--had gold been found in nuggets. As it
+happened, a white settler had lost a gold watch a little time before.
+The weight of the nugget was just about that of the weight of the case
+of a gold watch. The ticket-of-leave man was accused of having stolen
+the watch, thrown away the works and melted down the case. He was
+found guilty and punished with a hundred and thirty lashes."
+
+"Whew, that was pilin' it on heavy!" commented Jim.
+
+"They had to be severe in those days," Owens explained. "Botany Bay
+and Port Jackson were penal stations. In those days there were about
+fifty thousand white folks in New South Wales and three-quarters of
+them were convicts. That meant ruling with an iron hand, if mutiny was
+to be prevented.
+
+"Twice, after that, white settlers found signs of gold, but in such
+small quantities that the deposits were not worth working by the
+primitive means employed at that time. In 1841, signs of gold were
+found not far from Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, but the
+Governor personally asked the finder to keep the matter a secret for
+there were 45,000 convicts in the colony by that time, and he was
+afraid that news of a gold-find might start a revolt that the military
+would not be able to quell.
+
+"Two years later an even more curious discovery was made. Mr. H.
+Anderson, who owned a sheep-station where now are found the great
+gold-fields of Ballarat--in the province of Victoria, south of
+New South Wales--threw away the finest chance to become a
+multi-millionaire that ever came to any man.
+
+"While walking from the home kraal (corral) to his house, in company
+with a neighbor, he saw on the ground a small piece of white quartz
+shining in the sun and noticed a few thin streaks of yellow in the
+quartz.
+
+"He picked it up in a casual way, cast a glance at it, and handed it
+to his companion.
+
+"'We're the richest men in the world,' he said, jokingly. 'You and I
+are running sheep over a gold-mine.'
+
+"This jesting statement was literally true.
+
+"But the other, who knew just enough about such matters to be really
+ignorant, wanted to display his small store of knowledge.
+
+"'Gold!' he said contemptuously, 'that's what they call fool's gold.
+It's pyrites of some sort. Tut, tut, man! Golden nonsense! The only
+gold in this country is what grows on the backs of sheep.'
+
+"Mr. Anderson, trusting to his companion's supposed better knowledge,
+threw the piece of quartz at a pair of wallabies (small kangaroos)
+that were leaping about, near by, and thus lost the chance of
+becoming the richest man in Australia. Five years later came the news
+of the gold-finds in California, and the more thoughtful men in New
+South Wales remembered these vague stories about gold having been
+found in the island continent.
+
+"Now, let us get back to Cl'ck. His employer, Dr. Kerr, had bidden him
+keep his eyes open for any signs of gold, during his wanderings over
+the wild pasture land with his flocks. He promised to give him five
+pounds--a large sum for a black-fellow, in those days--for any piece
+of gold he should bring in, no matter how small.
+
+"One day, in February, 1851, while leading his flocks to water at
+Meroo Creek, Cl'ck happened to see what looked like a smudge of yellow
+on the surface of a good-sized bowlder of quartz. He chipped at it
+with his long-handled hatchet, and there, solidly embedded in the
+bowlder, was a huge chunk of gold. It weighed over 102 pounds and was
+sold for over $20,000.
+
+"This accidental discovery, which made Kerr rich, and which,
+incidentally, gave Cl'ck a hut and a sheep-kraal of his own, was
+amazing enough in itself. Even in California, which was then regarded
+as the very fountain-head of gold, no such nugget had been found.
+Yet, a couple of weeks later, a strike was made of such importance as
+to throw even the Black-fellow Nugget in the shade. This second strike
+determined the fortunes of Australia.
+
+"One of the 'forty-niners,' who went to the California gold-fields in
+the first ship that sailed from Sydney after the news of the
+Sacramento discoveries had reached Australia, was a prospector called
+E. H. Hargraves. He got to California in the middle of the rush, but
+luck was against him.
+
+"As happened so often with the men who knew only a little mining, he
+thought he could do better than merely follow the crowd. He staked a
+claim that looked more promising than the ground on the outskirts of
+the established mining camps. The claim proved worthless, or nearly
+so.
+
+"Seeing the vast crowds streaming into California, and being convinced
+that there would not be gold enough for all, Hargraves decided to go
+home, rather than to stay in the California gold-diggings and die of
+hunger--as so many of the forty-niners did."
+
+Jim nodded assentingly. He knew those stories. Many a one had his
+father told him. He was well aware that the trail of gold is a line
+of graves.
+
+"On his way back home," Owens continued, "Hargraves remembered that he
+had seen ground in New South Wales which bore a marked resemblance to
+the regions where gold had been found in California. It was not
+ordinary alluvial gold land, such as prospectors were apt to seek, and
+no one had ever suspected that gold might be found there. Hargraves
+had kept his eyes open, when in California, and had realized that
+alluvial gold was but a beginning, that the biggest amount of wealth
+lay in a reef.
+
+"Reaching Sydney in December, 1850, Hargraves made his way towards
+what is now the town of Bathurst. He was out in the field,
+prospecting, when the Black-fellow Nugget was found, and heard nothing
+about it.
+
+"Near the end of February, 1851, working in Summerhill Creek, he
+discovered sure signs of gold, though in no such alluring quantity as
+had been found on the creeks leading into the Sacramento River. He
+worked steadily up the creek, not only panning as he went, but also
+striking off to right and left to see if the ground gave promise of a
+reef. There, on the last day of the month, he found a bowlder of
+quartz and gold, or, to speak more correctly, a detached piece of
+quartz from a reef, the greater part of which was almost pure gold and
+weighed 106 pounds.
+
+"Hargraves was a man of sense. Instead of hurrying back to the nearest
+town with his find, selling it and blowing the money, he did some
+further prospecting. He collected specimens from different parts of
+the neighborhood, realizing that he had made a discovery not less
+sensational than when Sutter found the first gold in his mill-race in
+California.
+
+"Then he went straight to the government authorities of New South
+Wales, and, in addition to establishing his own claims, he asked that
+a reward be given him by the government. The governor, anxious to stop
+the emigration from New South Wales to California, and realizing that
+a gold-find would bring enormous wealth and prosperity to the colony,
+made him a grant of $50,000 and a pension, providing that he would
+reveal the gold-bearing locality to the authorities, first, and
+providing the territory should produce a million dollars' worth of
+gold.
+
+"Hargraves was as good as his word. He showed not only the famous
+Lewis Ponds, Summerhill, but also another and even bigger field on
+the upper waters of the Macquarie River. Owing to their prior
+information, the authorities were able to establish mining laws and
+good government before the rush set it, and Bathhurst was freed from
+the wild orgy of lawlessness which marked the days of the
+'forty-niners.'
+
+"All this, Jim, was a wonderful jump forward for New South Wales, and
+the town of Sydney boomed. But it was equally bad for the other
+provinces of Australia, and Victoria, being the nearest, suffered
+most. Almost every man able to wield a pick or rock a miner's cradle,
+deserted his work and rushed to Bathurst. The gold was so easy to
+separate from the quartz that a man could get rich using no other tool
+than an ordinary hammer.
+
+"Shepherds and even sheep-owners deserted their flocks, farmers let
+their land go to weed, merchants abandoned their shops, manufacturers
+allowed their machinery to rust, school-teachers locked the doors of
+schools, and workmen of every line of labor flocked to Sydney and
+toiled along the widely beaten track to Bathurst.
+
+
+[Illustration: AUSTRALIA'S TREASURE-HOUSE.
+
+One of the shafts of the Kilgoorlie Gold Mine, more than 1000 feet
+below the surface.
+
+_From "Mines and Their Story," by Bernard Mannix Sidgwick and
+Jackson._
+
+_Courtesy of Kilgoorlie Gold Mining Co._]
+
+
+[Illustration: IN THE RICHEST GOLD MINE IN THE WORLD.
+
+Drilling the rock for blasting on the Rand Reefs of South Africa; the
+compressed-air drills give a million blows a day, each with the force
+of half a ton.]
+
+
+"The authorities of the province of Victoria were in despair. The
+colony was plunging into ruin. Something must be done at once. They
+offered a huge reward to any one who should find gold within two
+hundred miles of Melbourne. On the very same day, two men came to
+claim the reward. One had made a strike on the Plenty River, the other
+on the Yarra-Yarra. In August, 1851, came the discovery of gold at
+Ballarat, gold in its pure form and in large grains. The Bendigo
+fields developed immediately after.
+
+"Then came a rush unparalleled! Money came easy, just as it comes easy
+to any man who has the good luck to be first at a strike. Every one
+got rich in Ballarat. There were no blanks. It was the richest ground
+that ever was found. The grains of gold were so big that they stuck
+out and looked at you!
+
+"Geelong, which was the nearest town to Ballarat, was deserted. Three
+months after the discovery of gold the mayor of Geelong complained
+that there were only eleven men and over three thousand women and
+children in the town."
+
+"Ay," agreed Jim, "and I remember in Pot-Luck Camp, the first time a
+decent woman came into the town, a miner offered her a bag of
+gold-dust to just shake hands with him. I've seen seven camps in a
+string, wi' maybe a thousand men in each an' nary a woman in the lot!"
+
+"A camp like that becomes right wild," Owens agreed. "Ballarat, for a
+while, was about as dangerous a place as ever the world saw.
+Ticket-of-leave men from New South Wales, escaped or paroled convicts
+from Tasmania, roughs that had been run out of camps by vigilance
+committees in California, Chinese and Malays swarmed there. The
+diggers refused to take out licenses, fired on the police, charged the
+military stockade, and when the troops charged back and took 125
+prisoners, a jury acquitted every one of the mutineers as upholders of
+individual liberty. If a man did not find gold, he starved at the
+exorbitant prices demanded for food; if he did make a strike, the
+chances were ten to one he would be murdered the next day. Colorado,
+at is worst, could not be compared with early days at Ballarat.
+
+"Bendigo followed right after. That was a nugget corner. During the
+year 1852, alone, three big nuggets were found there, one of 24
+pounds, one of 28 pounds, and one of 47 pounds. All these nuggets
+revealed outcrops and the finders all became rich men.
+
+"One of them was found in a queer way. A prospector, or 'fossicker' as
+they call them back there, had been panning all along a small creek,
+finding hardly enough color to pay him for his day's work. He was
+walking on the very edge of the bank, scanning every stone he came to,
+but seeing no prospects. Suddenly the bank caved in under him,
+throwing him into the water. He came up, spluttering, and there, right
+in front of him, the water was washing off the dirt, was one of the
+purest nuggets that Australia ever produced. That was probably the
+most profitable bath in history."
+
+"Some men are born lucky!" declared Jim, enviously.
+
+"That's true," Owens agreed, "and it has been a characteristic of
+Australia that all the big finds have been made by lucky accidents.
+Even recent discoveries are no exception. Did you ever hear the story
+of Pilbarra and the crow?"
+
+"Never did."
+
+"It's a classic in Australian gold mining. It's as queer a story as I
+know. It doesn't sound true, a bit, but all the documents in the case
+are on record.
+
+"One fine day, a youngster in West Australia--clear across the other
+side of the continent from Bathurst and Ballarat--was idling along a
+narrow track, as youngsters will, even when sent on a hurried message.
+On his way, he saw a black crow hopping some distance away. With a
+natural boy movement, he picked up a stone and shied it at the crow.
+The bird gave a loud croak and flew away a little distance, but in the
+same direction in which the boy was walking. Presently the crow was
+within throwing distance, again. The boy stooped to pick up another
+stone.
+
+"Just as he was about to let fly, however, he noticed some gold specks
+in it and took it home. There he showed it to his father, who was an
+employe in the convict prison there. His father showed it to the
+Warden, as he was compelled to do, for he was also a convict, though a
+'trusty.'
+
+"The much-excited Warden knew that the governor of the colony ought to
+be notified at once, but how was he to do so without the secret
+leaking out through the telegraph office? Forgetting, in his
+excitement, that the governor did not know as much about the matter as
+he did, he sent the following message:
+
+"_'Boy here has just thrown stone at crow.'_
+
+"He entirely neglected to mention that there was anything special in
+either the stone or the crow.
+
+"The telegram puzzled the governor not a little. But he had a sense of
+humor, and he replied to the Warden's telegram with the following
+message:
+
+"_'Yes; but what happened to the crow?'_
+
+"The Warden realized his former omission, and risking discovery,
+telegraphed:
+
+"_'Stone, gold.'_
+
+"The telegraph operator, not seeing how this could be a reply to the
+governor's question thought an error had been made and forwarded the
+message:
+
+"_'Stone cold.'_
+
+"The governor thought his friend the Warden must have gone crazy, but
+he was not to be outdone. He wired back:
+
+"_'Forward crow.'_
+
+"This time it was the turn of the Warden to be puzzled, and, as soon
+as his duties would permit, he went to the capital--almost a
+thousand-mile journey--taking, not the crow, but the stone filled with
+specks of gold. This was in 1888. Over half-a-million dollars' worth
+of gold was taken from Pilbarra before the end of the year.
+
+"The richest gold field in Australia was hit on by accident four
+years later. This was Kimberley. Signs of gold had been found there in
+1882, and again in 1886 but not enough to be worth working. In 1892
+two prospectors started out to explore the region. They worked for
+weeks and found nothing. One of them, thoroughly disgusted, gave up
+the search and started for home.
+
+"Two nights after, while camping, his horse became restless and
+started to plunge and kick at a wombat, near by. The prospector got up
+to quiet the beast, fearing he would break the picket-rope. On his
+way, he stumbled over a stone, which, in the light of early dawn, he
+saw to be rich in gold. He pegged out a claim at once, fetched his
+partner, and the two men took out $50,000 worth of gold in three
+weeks. This was the beginning of the great Coolgardie field.
+
+"In the same region, about 24 miles away, not long after the opening
+of the Coolgardie field, a miner just missed wealth. There was a small
+camp there, but one man had no luck. While sitting dispiritedly in his
+dog-tent, just before going to sleep, he began to burrow with his
+fingers in the loose soil on which he was slouching and discovered a
+small pocket of gold. He was so excited that he shouted out the news
+to the camp.
+
+"Before he could realize what was happening, the other miners crowded
+round, and pegged out claims to the very borders of his tent. All he
+got out of it was the small bit of ground on which his tent stood. The
+pocket only yielded a hundred dollars' worth of gold, his neighbors to
+right and left, got more than ten times that amount in the first three
+days.
+
+"I could go on for hours, Jim, telling you about the Australian
+gold-fields, but I've said enough to show you that I meant what I said
+when I suggested that it was a pity that you hadn't found gold. The
+mining of every other metal needs a lot of capital to begin with--as
+gold does, when you begin to work a reef--but, in nearly every gold
+deposit, there are placers or pockets where a man can clean up
+quickly."
+
+Jim's face was glowing with a lively interest. His excitement had
+grown as the mine-owner proceeded.
+
+"And these here nuggets," he queried, "what makes 'em? Where do they
+come from? We don't find anything like that over here!"
+
+"No," agreed Owens, "you don't. Chunks like 'The Welcome Stranger'
+which sold for $48,000 and which was found right in the road, the
+wheel of a passing wagon having cut through the soft earth and exposed
+it, are peculiar to Australia. Even South Africa, which is the largest
+gold-producing country in the world, hasn't any nuggets like that.
+
+"As for where nuggets come from, Jim, that's a bit of a puzzle. Some
+say they grew in the earth, water heavily laden with gold, depositing
+more and more of the metal in the one place; other scientists claim
+that the nuggets were made in the days when the earth was all fire,
+and that the nuggets have been there ever since. Neither theory
+answers all the facts. It's truer to say that we don't know, yet, how
+nuggets came to be, nor why Australia has most of them.
+
+"Some day, Jim, if you're interested, I'll try to explain to you the
+geology of gold. It's pretty complicated. I did a lot of study on it,
+when I was a young chap. Somehow, I seemed to be one of the men who
+didn't have any luck at the diggings. So I took to assay work
+(ore-testing), out there in Australia, and made more with my little
+assay outfit than most of the miners did with their claims."
+
+Jim propped himself up on one elbow and stared fixedly at the
+mine-owner.
+
+"You know how to make an assay, yourself?"
+
+"Roughly, yes. Of course, only for field work, you understand. I don't
+pretend to be a mineralogical chemist."
+
+"You can do it yet?"
+
+"I suppose so. I haven't done any for years. This coal-mine business
+has kept me busy. But I've still got my portable assay outfit up at
+the house. I kept it for old-time's sake."
+
+Jim's eyes glistened eagerly.
+
+"You go to my cabin, Owens," he said, and it was noticeable that he
+dropped the "Mr.," "and five long paces due north from my kitchen
+window, you dig! You'll find a chunk of ore, there. Assay it, and then
+come back here!"
+
+"But--"
+
+The old prospector waved the interruption aside, impatiently.
+
+"Do it, and then talk!"
+
+Owens shrugged his shoulders and left, but little less excited than
+Jim.
+
+That evening, during the middle of the night shift, when no one was
+likely to see him, the mine-owner went to the spot designated and
+began to dig. A foot or two beneath the surface, he found the chunk of
+ore. He put it in his pocket and hurried to his own house.
+
+It was nearly dawn before he completed the assay. Then he put the ore
+and his memorandum of results in the safe and went to bed for a short
+sleep.
+
+That morning, after breakfast, he returned to the hospital. He found
+Jim in an excited state.
+
+"No, Mr. Owens, there's nothing wrong with him," the doctor explained,
+"only he hasn't slept all night. He's been asking for you, every few
+minutes."
+
+When the mine-owner entered the ward, Jim struggled up to a sitting
+position.
+
+"What about it?" he queried.
+
+Owens closed the door carefully, came up to the sick man's bedside,
+and answered quietly,
+
+"About 110 grains of gold to the ton and 800 ounces of silver. There's
+some native copper, too."
+
+"It's a real find then?"
+
+"It isn't what you'd call rich," the Australian answered cautiously.
+
+"How about this, then?"
+
+Jim took his old coat, which he had got the hospital attendant to
+bring him the night before, ripped open a seam, showing a narrow tube
+of buckskin running around the hem, and, opening its mouth, poured out
+a few grains of yellow metal into the palm of his hand.
+
+"Free gold!" he said, triumphantly.
+
+One glance of a trained eye sufficed.
+
+"That's the stuff, sure enough. But you didn't find much of it, eh?"
+
+"Where do you get that idea?"
+
+"The grains are big enough to pan easily. If there was much of it, you
+wouldn't have left the place without cleaning up a good stake."
+
+"There is plenty of it. But I had to get out."
+
+"Why, then?"
+
+"To save my skin. An' I couldn't get back there."
+
+"Back where?"
+
+"Where I found it."
+
+"That doesn't tell me much."
+
+"It ain't intended to."
+
+"Then why," said Owens, showing irritation, "did you show me the ore
+at all?"
+
+Jim looked at him under lowered eyelids.
+
+"Have you ever been a prospector, honest?"
+
+The owner of the coal mine put his hand in his breast pocket.
+
+"I thought this might interest you," he said, "so I brought it along.
+That's me!"
+
+He put his finger on one of the figures in the picture that he handed
+to the prospector. It showed a young fellow, bearded, in the typical
+Australian digger's rig-out, panning gold. The photograph was an old
+one, evidently, and there was no doubt that it was a resemblance of
+Owens in his youth.
+
+"Ay, it's you," said Jim.
+
+For some minutes there was silence. The mine-owner let the prospector
+think the matter out in his own way. Finally, with an air of desperate
+determination, Jim began:
+
+"I'm gettin' old, now, an' times has changed since I found that ore. I
+ain't never give up hope of gettin' back there, but it don't look like
+it, now. I ain't the man I was. This last spell has crippled me up,
+pretty bad, too. I ain't never goin' to be right husky, again. The
+doctor says so."
+
+"You can have a job above ground, here, as long as you want to."
+
+Jim nodded appreciation of the offer.
+
+"That's a square deal," he admitted. "But," he went on viciously,
+"I've had enough o' coal. I don't want to see a bit o' coal again,
+long's I live! I want to get back to God's country."
+
+"Which is?"
+
+"Where I found that!" replied Jim, evasively.
+
+Owens made no protest. He kept silent, being sure that his companion
+would go on to talk.
+
+"I'm gettin' old," Jim repeated, after a while, "an' it takes two
+things to get where I found that ore--a tough constitution an' money.
+I got neither. It's a job for a young fellow."
+
+"I'm not much younger than you are," suggested Owens.
+
+"Clem is."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But he hasn't got any more money'n I have."
+
+The mine-owner bent a level glance at the old prospector.
+
+"Don't beat about the bush so much, Jim. If you don't want to say
+anything, why, drop the whole business. If you have anything to say,
+spit it out! You want me to grub-stake you? Is that it?"
+
+"Me an' Clem. I won't do nothin' without Clem. A man has to have a
+pardner."
+
+"I've no objection to Clem. On the contrary. But I don't grub-stake a
+man just because he shows me a bit of ore! I've been in the game too
+long for that. How do I know where that gold comes from? It might have
+been picked up from some mine now working at full blast. As for the
+gold-dust--why, it would be queer if you hadn't found some of it,
+somewhere.
+
+"No," he went on, anticipating Jim's interruption, "I'm going to do
+the talking for a minute. You wanted to be sure I was a prospector. I
+showed you. You wanted to be sure I knew enough about gold to make an
+assay. I've done that for you.
+
+"But confidence can't be all on the one side. You'll have to show your
+cards, the same way. You'll have to convince me that you're on the
+square, too. I'm not suspecting anything, mind, but this has got to be
+an open-and-shut deal, or I don't go in.
+
+"Tell me who you are, where you've been, what you've done and what you
+know about gold deposits, anyway. I've got to know where you found
+this ore, how you came to find it, and why you haven't been able to
+get back there. You'll have to show me some proof, to start with, and
+what chances there are of taking the necessary machinery to the
+place, before I think about investing any capital.
+
+"You can keep back the exact location of the strike to the last, if
+you like. If it sounds right, why, I'll think about it. But, mark you,
+Jim, I make no promises. You can talk, or not, just as you choose. I'm
+not hunting trouble, understand, this colliery keeps me busy enough.
+But if you want help, maybe I can give it to you. That ore deposit--if
+it's a deposit--can either be let alone or developed. If you let it
+alone, it's no good to anybody. If it's developed, there's a chance
+that it might make money for the both of us. Decide! It's up to you!"
+
+Silence fell in the hospital ward. Jim's eyes were far away, evidently
+in that strange and distant land where he had made his find. Then he
+turned a piercing glance on the mine-owner, who returned it frankly.
+
+The old prospector cleared his throat and swallowed hard. For a moment
+he seemed about to speak, and then stopped himself. At last his
+features settled into decision.
+
+"Send for Clem to come here to-morrow," he said, "I'll tell the
+yarn."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE FORTY-NINERS
+
+
+Several days elapsed before Jim took up his story, Owens preferring to
+wait until the prospector grew stronger. The mine-owner was shrewd
+enough to see that if he did not show too much haste, Jim would be
+less suspicious.
+
+When the time arrived, Jim was up and dressed, though the doctor would
+only allow him out of doors for a few minutes at a time. The
+prospector had evidently been thinking out the beginning of his story,
+for, when his visitors arrived, he opened without preface.
+
+"There's a lot o' wild yarns been told about the findin' o' gold in
+Californy," he began. "I've heard some, an' wild an' woolly they was;
+an' I've read some in books, an' they was wilder yet; an' I've seen
+some in the movies, an' they was a crime!
+
+"Not but what them days wasn't tough! They was! The crowds what hit
+the minin' camps o' the Sierras in the fifties was out for gold an'
+nothin' else, an' they didn't much care how they got it. Father, he
+was a forty-niner himself, an' he was a rough un if anything got in
+his way. But he had more sense'n most, an', without any book-l'arnin'
+to speak of, he knew a heap about gold. If he'd been alive when I made
+my strike, old as he was, he'd ha' gone there, an' he'd ha' got there,
+too.
+
+"I come o' Mormon stock, I do. My grand-pap, he made the trail to Salt
+Lake City wi' Brigham Young. Grandma, she used a rifle to defend the
+home camp, when the Illinois and Indiana folk came to massacre the
+women an' children, after the men were gone. Judgin' from what I've
+heard about her shootin', there wasn't many bullets wasted. Some o'
+these days, when you ain't got nothin' better to do, I'll tell you the
+story o' my grand-pap. He come to be one o' the Danites, later.[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: For the relation of the Mormons and the Danites to the
+forty-niners and the emigrant trains going west, see the author's "The
+Book of Cowboys."]
+
+"You'll know the story o' Sutter's Mill, likely, Mr. Owens,"--Jim
+returned to the "Mr." in Clem's presence,--"but Clem, he don't know
+nothin' about it, an' he ought to be put wise if he's goin' to take a
+hand in this game.
+
+"It all come about in queer fashion, a good deal like it did in
+Australia, as Mr. Owens was a-tellin' me a few days ago. The first
+signs o' gold was found on the Americanos River, which runs into the
+Sacramento. Found by accident, they was, too.
+
+"There was a chap out them parts--an Indian-fighter--Cap'n Sutter by
+name. He owned a lot o' land an' used to run cattle in a small way,
+for the time I'm tellin' about was long afore the days o' the cowboys
+an' the ol' Texas-Drive trail.[5] This Sutter had a foreman called
+James W. Marshall, who, besides his reg'lar job o' handlin' cattle an'
+greasers, looked after the runnin' of a one-horse saw-mill on the
+Americanos. It was an over-shot water-wheel mill, an' jest roughly
+chucked together.
+
+[Footnote 5: For the history of the Texas trail and the winning of the
+West for the United States, see the author's "The Book of Cowboys."]
+
+"By-'n'-by Marshall begin to notice that the ol' mill wasn't workin'
+any too good. A lot o' sand an' gravel had come down wi' the water,
+chokin' up the tail-race some. The run-off wouldn't get away fast
+enough an' churned up under the water-wheel, causin' a loss o' power.
+
+"To get the tail-race clear an' to widen her out a bit, Marshall,
+he throws the wheel out o' gear, pulls up the gate o' the dam, an'
+lets the whole head o' water in the mill-pond go a-flyin'. That water
+hit into the tail-race like a hydraulic jet an' scooped her out clear,
+carryin' a mass o' sand an' gravel into the river below.
+
+
+[Illustration: SUTTER'S MILL.
+
+Where Marshall discovered gold, January 19, 1848.]
+
+
+[Illustration: THE RUSH TO THE GOLD MINES.
+
+Scene in San Francisco in 1849.]
+
+
+"Next day, that was January 19, 1848, Marshall goes down to the river
+below the tail-race to see how she's shapin' an' if the cut-out is big
+enough. He's walkin' along the bank when he notices something glitter.
+He looks again, an' sees what he thinks is a bit o' Spanish opal, not
+the real gem, Clem, but a soft stone they find out there which looks
+even prettier'n an opal, but wears off an' gets dull in no time. They
+sell 'em to greenhorns, still.
+
+"Marshall don't worry none about that, but by-'n-by, seein' a lot
+more, as he thinks, he figures to pick up some, jest to show.
+Accordin' as he used to tell the tale, he didn't think it was worth
+the trouble, but spottin' one that looks different from the rest, he
+reaches down into the water an' fishes it out.
+
+"It ain't no opal at all. It's a bit o' shiny white quartz wi' a line
+o' yellow runnin' through. That's what makes the glitter. He hunts
+around some, rememberin' that he'd seen other bits shinin' yellow the
+same way, an' finds quite a few, all of 'em looking like scales o'
+pure gold. They was jest about the size an' thinness o' the scales
+that comes off a rattlesnake's skin after it's dry, an' for a while,
+Marshall figured they was some kind o' scale or horn, washed down thin
+by the water.
+
+"In them times, the folks in Californy hadn't no idee o' minin'. It
+was still Spanish territory, for one thing, an', for another, there
+wasn't any minin' done. So Marshall wasn't thinkin' about gold. It was
+jest curiosity what made him hunt up some more o' those queer yellow
+scales.
+
+"The more he found, the more puzzled he got. They was heavy; they bent
+like a bit o' metal, a thing a stone won't never do; they could be
+scratched with a pocket-knife; they didn't show no layers like horn
+does when it's old. The biggest bit he found weighed less'n a quarter
+of an ounce, an' this one was stickin' in the bank o' the tail-race,
+where the water had been washin' the earth away.
+
+"He puts this last bit on a flat rock an' hammers it with a stone. It
+beats out flat quite easy. Marshall wasn't no fool, an' he knew there
+wasn't no yellow metal acted that way but gold or copper, an' native
+copper ain't that color.
+
+"There was one o' the mill-hands wi' Marshall at the time, a chap
+called Peter Wimmer. He didn't know any more about gold'n Marshall
+did, but he'd heard said that every metal, savin' gold, gets black if
+it's boiled in strong lye. Marshall gets Wimmer to keep quiet by
+promisin' him a stake in whatever's found, an' tries the boilin'
+trick. The flakes o' metal stays put, an' shows nary a sign o'
+tarnishin'.
+
+"By this time, Marshall was gettin' pretty sure that what he'd found
+was gold. He hadn't no notion of a gold mine, though, seein' he'd
+never heard of any. He reckoned that these flakes must be gold that
+had been buried by the Indians, long ago, an' had been washed down;
+from a grave, maybe, or some o' the treasure that the Spaniards had
+been huntin'.
+
+"Jest the same, he was curious. He strolled away from the tail-race,
+idle-like, an' started huntin' promiscuous. He found specks o' gold
+all over. That settled him. He jumped on a horse an' rode down to
+Cap'n Sutter wi' the news.
+
+"Sutter was a whole lot more excited than Marshall was. He was
+educated an' knew the history o' Mexico. He knew the Indians in
+Californy had possessed gold in the time o' the first comin' o' the
+Spaniards, an' he reckoned that gold must ha' come from somewhere.
+There'd always been some talk o' gold around where the Spanish
+missions had started, and, jest three years afore, a Spanish don had
+sent some ore to Mexico, sayin' that there was gold an' silver
+a-plenty around, an' the government had better get busy an' develop
+it. But the Spaniards weren't havin' any. Ever since they got so badly
+fooled, a couple o' hundred years afore, in their hunt for the 'Golden
+Cities o' Cibola,'[6] they let Californy alone.
+
+[Footnote 6: For the gold-hunting expedition of the Spanish
+Conquistadores in North America--records of extraordinary heroism and
+adventure--see the author's "The Quest of the Western World." For the
+gold-stories of Ancient Mexico, see the author's "The Aztec-hunters."]
+
+"Sutter didn't waste no time. He rode right back to the mill wi' the
+foreman. They didn't have to poke around long afore Sutter was plumb
+sure it was the real stuff. There was some of it in the Americanos,
+but the gold was even thicker in the dried-up creeks an' gulches that
+run into the river on both sides. With his penknife, Sutter pried out
+o' the rock-face a piece o' gold weighin' nigh two ounces.
+
+"Some o' the mill-hands had got wise, too. Maybe Wimmer talked--though
+he said he hadn't. Maybe they just got a hunch, when they saw Sutter
+an' Marshall prospectin' around. They started huntin', too, but the
+flakes were small an' took a long time to find. None o' them knew
+enough to try washin' the sand, an' all they found didn't amount to
+much.
+
+"Sutter took samples o' the gold to the fort at Monterey, where
+General Mason was in command. Mason was more interested in tryin' to
+keep the Apaches an' Comanches quiet than he was in fussin' about
+metals. He was a soldier, an' minin' wasn't his line. But he knew that
+the federal authorities at Washington ought to be notified.
+
+"There weren't no post nor telegraph in them times--that was 'way
+afore the days o' the Pony Express,[7] even--an' Mason sent a special
+messenger. Politics were queer in Californy around that time. Spain
+claimed the territory, the United States claimed it, an' for a
+while--a month, maybe--Californy was a republic on her own. The
+messenger reached Washington, all right, an' his report hurried up the
+signin' o' the treaty which made Californy American. That happened
+jest six weeks after Marshall had picked up his first bit o' gold an'
+only two weeks after the messenger arrived. Word was sent to Mason to
+be sure an' keep law an' order, no matter what happened. It was a bit
+too late, then; goin' an' comin' from Washington took months.
+
+[Footnote 7: See the author's "The Boy with the U. S. Mail."]
+
+"Things were happenin' out 'Frisco way. Geo. Bennett, who'd been
+workin' at the mill, left there about the middle o' February, takin'
+some flakes o' gold with him. When he got to 'Frisco, he met Isaac
+Humphrey, who'd worked on the Dahlonega strike, in Georgia, in 1830.
+Humphrey took jest one look at the stuff, an' said right away that it
+was gold.
+
+"Bennett an' Humphrey hot-footed it back to the mill. They found it
+workin' jest as usual. Some o' the men had picked up more gold, but
+casual-like, after workin' hours. Marshall hadn't done any more
+prospectin'. Sutter was waitin' to hear from Mason.
+
+"Humphrey, bein' a gold miner, panned up an' down the river, an' found
+plenty o' color. He got quite excited an' declared it was richer'n
+the Dahlonega field, which had been pretty good, though the surface
+diggin's had petered out fast."
+
+"What do you mean by 'he panned up and down the river and found
+color?'" queried Clem.
+
+Jim gave a short laugh of surprise.
+
+"That's right," he said, "you don't know nothin' about prospectin', do
+you? I'll tell you. Pannin' is how a prospector gets gold. It sounds
+easy, but there's a trick to it, jest the same.
+
+"A prospector's pan is just like an ordinary tin wash-pan, wi' slopin'
+sides, only it's smaller; about a foot across at the bottom, an' made
+of iron, not tin. Many a hundred men have got to be millionaires with
+nothin' but a pick, a shovel, an' a pan.
+
+"Supposing now, you're at the gold diggin's. You fill your pan, near
+full, with sand or with gravel or earth, or whatever stuff you think
+may have a little gold mixed up with it--"
+
+"Can't you see the gold, then?" queried Clem.
+
+"Not often, you can't. It don't lie around the ground like
+twenty-dollar gold-pieces! Some o' the richest placers ever found
+have the gold ground down so fine that it ain't much bigger'n grains
+o' dust.
+
+"Well, havin' nigh filled the pan, like I said, you take it to the
+river, an' squattin' down, you hold it jest below the surface o' the
+water, one side a trifle higher 'n the other, so the water jest flows
+continual over the lower lip o' the pan. Then you give it a sort of
+rockin' an' whirlin' motion, so,"--he illustrated with his hands,
+Owens smilingly doing the same, "lettin' the lighter mud flow out over
+the top.
+
+"You keep on doin' that, without stoppin', for ten minutes or more. By
+the end o' that time, you're rockin' pretty hard, for the heavier
+stuff has got to be flicked out; but you've got to mind out, for if
+you go too hard, the gold--if there is any--will go out, too.
+
+"Then you stop, pick out any pebbles in the bottom, lookin' at 'em
+hard--for they might show color--an' rock an' whirl the pan some more.
+If you've done it right, when you're through, there isn't more'n a
+handful o' sand an' grit at the bottom. You look at that as closely as
+you know how, an' if here an' there's a little speck o' yellow, you've
+found color. That's gold. You spread that handful out in the sun to
+dry an' blow away the lighter part. What's left is gold."
+
+
+[Illustration: THE PROSPECTOR OF TO-DAY.
+
+Gold-bearing stream of Western Canada being panned for dust.
+
+_Courtesy of the Grand Trunk Railway._]
+
+
+[Illustration: FLUME AT THE MELONES MINE.
+
+To carry 600 miner's inches of water from the Stanislaus River to the
+120-stamp mill.]
+
+
+"Always supposing that there was some gold there to start with," put
+in Owens. "How many times have you panned, Jim, without finding any
+color?"
+
+"Millions, I reckon! I panned every day an' all day, once, for two
+years, without gettin' enough gold dust to fill a pipe-bowl, an' then
+I got a double-handful in half a day. In general, you're doin' all
+right if you can get out of each pan enough dust to cover a
+finger-nail. So now you know what pannin' is, Clem."
+
+"It's not such a cinch, at that!" the young fellow commented.
+
+"But you may strike it rich any day, any hour, any minute!" Jim
+exclaimed, the fever of search in his eyes. "When Humphrey got up to
+Sutter's Mill, the first man to know anything about gold-washin' that
+got there, he was takin' out a thousand dollars a day, easy, for a
+month or more. The placers were rich."
+
+"A 'placer,' Clem," Owens interrupted to explain, "is a deposit where
+there is gold mixed with sand, or gravel or mud. It is always a
+deposit which has been washed down by water, either a river which is
+actually running, or which is found in a dry bed where a river used to
+run. Mining people call it an 'alluvial or flood deposit.' Most of the
+gold-strikes have been found in this way. Go ahead, Jim."
+
+"Right about the time that Humphrey was prospectin' an' doin'
+handsomely, an Indian, who had worked on placers in Lower California,
+told another o' the mill-hands how to get hold o' the dust. Besides
+that, a Kentuckian, who'd been spyin' on Marshall an' Sutter, had
+noticed that they'd found gold not only in the tail-race, but up the
+creeks. Both of 'em went down to 'Frisco.
+
+"It was interestin', but nobody got excited. Gold strikes weren't
+known yet. There'd only been two gold rushes in the United States
+afore, neither of 'em big ones.
+
+"The first was in North Carolina. A young chap, Conrad Reed, was
+shootin' fish with a bow and arrow in Meadow Creek. He saw in the
+water a good-sized stone with a yellow gleam. Pickin' it up, he found
+it heavy--seventeen pounds it weighed--an' he reckoned it was some
+kind o' metal, but he didn't think o' gold. That was in 1799. The
+stone was used to prop open a stable door for a couple o' years.
+
+"One day, runnin' short o' groceries an' bein' shy o' ready cash, Reed
+thought he'd go into Fayetteville an' see if, maybe, he could raise a
+few dollars on the stone, as a curiosity. He took it to a jeweler, who
+said he thought there might be gold in it, an' told the young fellow
+to come back in the afternoon.
+
+"When Reed came back, the jeweler showed him a thin wire o' gold,
+about as long as a lead pencil, an' said that was all the gold in the
+chunk. He offered Reed $3.50 for the gold an' Reed took it. How much
+the jeweler kept for himself, no one can't say.
+
+"That started a little local talk, an' one or two men begun
+prospectin' in a shiftless sort o' way. They found nothin'. In 1813,
+some placers were found an' there was a mild rush, but it died right
+out. There was gold there, sure enough, but scattered so's a man
+didn't earn more'n a day's wages at washin'. Jest the same, all the
+gold in the United States came from North Carolina for twenty years
+after that, more'n a hundred thousand dollars' worth bein' sent to
+the Mint. But that's durn little, when you come to look at it, less'n
+fourteen dollars a day. An' that's not much for a bunch o' men!"
+
+"No," admitted Owens, "you couldn't start a gold rush on that. And the
+second strike, Jim?"
+
+"That was the Georgia deposits, at Dahlonega, where Humphrey came
+from. They're workin' yet, though small potatoes beside Californy an'
+Colorado.
+
+"Californy was jest about uninhabited, then. There was only fifteen
+thousand folks in the whole durn State in 1848. Over a hundred
+thousand more came in the two years followin'. O' that lot, ninety per
+cent. was prospectors an' the rest was sharks, livin' off 'em. At the
+time o' the strike, 'Frisco didn't boast a hundred houses wi' white
+folks in them, an' they didn't know nothin' about Georgia an' Carolina
+gold.
+
+"On May 8th, though, one o' the mill-hands come down from Sutter's
+Mill. He'd quit work to try gold-findin' on his own, an' takin' a tip
+from Humphrey, he'd washed out 23 ounces in four days. A 'Frisco man
+paid him $500 for his dust, cash down. That was good earnin's for four
+days.
+
+"Sudden, the fever hit! The news got over the little town like a
+prairie fire durin' a dry spell. By night, half the town was talkin'
+gold; next mornin', the other half. Nine out o' every ten men quit
+work. A pick an' shovel an' a tin pan was worth a hundred dollars
+before night. One man paid a thousand dollars for an outfit, includin'
+a tent an' a month's grub. He was found dead half-way to the diggings,
+murdered for his outfit.
+
+"The more excited ones an' those with the least money an' sense,
+started right off on foot, though it was all of a hundred an' fifty
+miles to Sutter's Mill, an' no trail, sixty o' these miles across a
+desert without water. No one ever did know how many o' that bunch
+ended up by feedin' the turkey buzzards.
+
+"On the 14th an' 15th, a whole fleet o' launches an' small boats
+started out across San Francisco Sound an' Pablo Bay an' up the
+Sacramento River, every boat loaded to the gunwales. They said there
+was 2,000 men on the way.
+
+"That wasn't jest a rush, it was a stampede. Not ten men in the entire
+crowd knew the first durn thing about prospectin'. They had some fool
+idee that pannin' gold was like pickin' flowers, all you had to do was
+to find it. Any one what knew better could ha' told 'em, but there
+wasn't any one to tell 'em, an' likely, they wouldn't ha' listened if
+he had. What's the use o' talkin' to a crazy man? An' a gold-rush is a
+bunch o' lunatics. I know! I've been that way myself, more'n once.
+
+"Out Salt Lake City way, the winter had been bad. We Mormons had gone
+to Utah to avoid bein' citizens o' the United States, an' the
+government had took in Utah as soon as we made it worth takin'. My
+grand-pap an' my father were sore at that, an' they decided to start
+off with a party for Californy, which was still Spanish.
+
+"Right around the 1st o' May, they reached the Sacramento River an'
+heard about gold bein' found. They took it as a sign that Providence
+was protectin' 'em, an' settled right down there to pan out the
+stream. Travelin', as the Mormons always did, with a proper leader,
+they pitched an organized camp. Trained to the last notch by their
+wanderin's in the wilderness, there wasn't a tenderfoot or an idle man
+in the bunch, an', workin' steadily, they begun to clean up pretty
+good.
+
+"Jest a month later come the first wave o' the rush from 'Frisco. They
+struck the placers, their mouths fairly waterin' for gold, only to
+find the Mormons there already. That was a bit too much! After all
+their trouble an' misery, all the expense, all the deaths, they come
+to find all the claims along the strike staked out by Mormons.
+
+"Durin' this time, Californy had been taken over by the United States.
+The 'Frisco bunch knew they'd be protected by law for anything they
+did against the Mormons, an', after a short pow-wow, they tried to
+rush the camp.
+
+"But my grand-pap, an' some more o' the leaders, who were right handy
+with their rifles, were standin' at the ready. They'd fought their way
+across the plains, when the redskins were swarmin', an' they weren't
+the kind to take back water before a crowd o' tenderfeet. The 'Frisco
+men, city chaps a lot o' them, begun to waver, an' asked a parley.
+
+"The Mormon leader, he told 'em, cold, what they'd get if they come
+any farther, an' hinted, pretty broad, that there was more cold lead
+around those diggin's than there was gold. But he told 'em, too, that
+there was a lot o' the other placers around wi' no one washin' 'em.
+The others grumbled but got out. Luckily, there was gold enough for
+all, at first. Later on, there was a sure-enough fight over a sluice,
+and the bullets went thick. The Mormons knew how to shoot, an' there
+was fifty o' the Gentiles dead when they broke back. Our folks were
+let alone on the Sacramento, after that.
+
+"Durin' this month, John Bidwell struck it rich on the Feather River,
+75 miles away from Sutter's Mill, and Pearson B. Reading on the Clear
+River, 100 miles further on. The news scattered the 'Frisco crowd,
+many a man leavin' a good claim in hopes to find a better. Others went
+prospectin' on their own. By the end o' the year, along the whole
+western slope o' the Sierra Nevada, from Pitt River to the Tuolumne,
+there wasn't a stream or a creek or a dry ravine that didn't have some
+one prospectin' or pannin' on it.
+
+"Most o' those that got on to the diggin's in the first two months
+made money an' made it fast. A few struck bonanzas and took out a
+thousand dollars a day. Quite a lot got good pickin's an' cleaned up
+at the rate of a hundred a day. The rest were doin' good if they
+cleaned up twenty, an' that was jest about enough to live on, at
+minin'-camp prices. I've seen potatoes sell at five dollars apiece to
+be eaten raw, when the scurvy was ragin', an' three men were killed
+in a fight over the buyin' of a fresh cabbage.
+
+"Those was tough times, even for the first lot that come from 'Frisco.
+There was no sort o' law an' order in the camps, no sanitation an' no
+doctors. Typhoid an' dysentery got a good hold by the end o' June. You
+could get the reek o' fever an' disease a mile away.
+
+"Men too sick to walk crawled out to their claims an' died there,
+scary lest some claim-jumper should seize their claims. Hope stuck
+with 'em to the last. Scores fell dead into the stream, wi' the pan
+still in their hands. One time, when they come to carry a dead man
+from beside his pan, that he hadn't time to clean up afore death took
+him, there was the first color in it that had been found on the claim.
+It brought in a pile o' money later.
+
+"Later, when the real forty-niners came, men o' red blood, vigilance
+committees were organized an' the camps got sort o' human. But at the
+start, it was ugly. If a man didn't clean up quick, he starved. If he
+did, somebody jumped his claim, or put a bullet in him. If the body of
+a miner was found floatin', it was called accidental death, even if
+his head was blown off, for, the sayin' used to go, 'A miner ought to
+carry enough gold dust on him to sink.' Scores, aye, hundreds, died o'
+gun-play.
+
+"About the fine breed o' men that come later, the forty-niners that
+crossed the whole plains o' the West from Missouri to Santa Fé an'
+beyond, men that brought their women an' children in long lines o'
+prairie schooners, keepin' scouts out ahead an' one each side,
+fightin' famine, thirst an' redskins all the way, you won't want me to
+tell you. Every American knows their story.
+
+"But every one don't know what them trains o' gold-seekers looked
+like, when they reached the diggin's! My father's told me, though.
+
+"He's seen 'em reach the Sacramento, half-scalped an' with wounds that
+never healed. He's seen swingin' at their saddles the scalp-locks o'
+Indians they'd scalped theirselves. He's seen women come in with nary
+one o' their men-folk left alive. He seen 'em come in crazy, never to
+be sane again, after the horrors o' that trail. He's seen a man come
+in safe an' untouched, after wheelin' a wheelbarrow nigh three
+thousand miles. He's seen seven men an' nine women get to the
+Sierras out of a party of 118, leaving 102 dead on the road.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE COMING OF THE FORTY-NINERS.]
+
+
+[Illustration: DAVID EGELSTON.
+
+A Forty-Niner, and the Discoverer of Gold Hill.]
+
+
+"I've heard tell, an' I believe it, that across the desert stretch a
+man could ha' walked for forty miles an' put his foot on a bone at
+every step. An' o' those who did reach, most o' them were so weak that
+camp fever an' dysentery took 'em off like flies. A good half died at
+the diggin's before they ever found a bit o' gold.
+
+"How many o' the forty-niners died at sea? There's no tellin'. Ships
+set out from all corners o' the globe. There was a wild rush from
+England. That meant goin' round the Horn, an' there weren't many
+steamships, then. Sailin'-ships, so rotten that their owners were glad
+to get rid of 'em, were sold to forty-niners at fancy prices. In one
+week, eighteen ships sailed from England to go round the Horn to
+Californy an' seven arrived. The gold o' Sutter's Mill called many a
+good man to leave his bones on the ocean bottom.
+
+"But it wasn't all bad luck an' dyin'. Lots o' the diggers struck it
+rich an' spent it quick. Gamblin' an' drinkin' an' work--that's all
+there was to a minin' camp in them days. Spendin' freely give a man a
+minute's glory. Treatin' the crowd was the only way to be popular.
+An', in a minin' camp, where there's no women to live with, no
+children to think of, no homes to go to, what is there but the saloon,
+an' what's the use o' the saloon without friends! A bag o' gold-dust
+was enough for a spree.
+
+"Gold-diggin' don't go to make a man careful. It's always to-morrow
+that's goin' to be the lucky day. What's the use o' savin' ten dollars
+when a stroke o' the pick or a swirl o' the pan may suddenly give a
+man a thousand? So they thought. One miner found a pocket that netted
+him $60,000 in two weeks, an' when he sobered up, he hadn't six
+dollars' worth o' dust left.
+
+"There was some that stuck to their earnin's, just the same, but they
+was either quick with a gun or slow wi' their tongues. Six brothers
+come out from England, none o' them ever havin' roughed it before, but
+they stuck together an' stayed sober. They were let alone, because to
+touch one meant to fight six. They went back to England, at the end o'
+the first season, with a million dollars between 'em.
+
+"One man, who started out from 'Frisco wi' a drove of a hundred hogs,
+figurin' on sellin' 'em in the minin' camps for fresh meat, reached
+Feather River wi' five. But he sold those five for more'n twice as
+much as he'd paid for the hundred. An' that was only the beginnin'! On
+the way, his hogs rootin' in the ground had uncovered two pockets. He
+covered the places an' marked 'em wi' crosses, so's folks should think
+they was graves. On his way back, he took $5,000 out o' one pocket an'
+$10,000 out o' the other. An' then some folks try to make out that
+there ain't no such thing as luck!"
+
+"But is it all so chancy as that?" queried Clem. "Surely if a chap
+knew in what sort of ground or near what sort of rock gold was
+generally found, he'd have some idea where to look."
+
+"Sure he would," agreed Jim, "but gold goes where it durn pleases, an'
+that's the only rule I know. O' course, every prospector has his own
+idees, same as he has for playin' poker, but he don't win any quicker
+because o' that. Leastways, not so far as I've seen.
+
+"As for judgin' by the rock an' the color o' the soil, why, you can
+take your pick. Take San Diego County, Californy, where I've worked,
+the gold lies in schist, sometimes blue, green, or grey. In the
+Homestake, South Dakota, red looks good, a sort o' rotten quartz
+stained with iron. Black flint's a good sign in Colorado. Snow-white
+quartz is often lucky. Purple porphyry sometimes has veins that work
+up rich. An' I've seen gold come out o' pink sandstone, yellow
+sandstone, all shades o' granite, an' even coal!"
+
+Clem turned an incredulous glance at Owens, but the mine-owner nodded
+agreement.
+
+"Jim's right," he said, "color isn't any clue. Gold can be found in
+any kind of rock. So far as that goes, it shows up in strata of any
+geological age. There's gold everywhere. There isn't a range of hills
+in any country of the world which may not contain gold. There isn't a
+bed of sand or gravel that may not be auriferous. Even the sea beach,
+in places, has yielded fortunes. For that matter, there's gold in
+every bucket of water you dip up from the sea.
+
+"But there's not much of it. Geologists have figured that there's
+about one cent's worth of gold to every ton of rock in the earth's
+crust, but it would take fourteen dollars a ton to handle it. There's
+about a hundredth of a cent's worth of gold in a ton of sea water, and
+it would cost about ten dollars a ton to get it out. Not much chance
+of getting rich that way, is there?"
+
+"I should say not," declared Clem, with decision.
+
+"But, as Jim has been pointing out, gold isn't scattered evenly all
+through the earth. In some places, it's moderately plentiful, in
+others it's scarce or entirely absent. Prospecting for gold, Clem,
+doesn't mean looking for a place where there is gold, but looking for
+a place where the proportion of gold to the soil or to the rock is
+high enough to give a profit in the working of it.
+
+"It isn't always the place where the gold is most plentiful that gives
+the greatest profit, either. A low-grade ore, that is a rock
+containing only a small proportion of gold, may be worth a great deal
+if it is near the surface, if the rock is easily crushed, if it is
+near water-power, and if transportation is not too difficult.
+
+"A high-grade ore, in which there is a large proportion of gold, may
+be worth a good deal less, if it is more difficult to work and less
+easy of access. The richest gold-field in the world, that of the Rand,
+in South Africa, which gives one-third of the total gold output of the
+world, is of an ore so poor that a forty-niner would have turned up
+his nose at it, and the machinery, even of thirty years ago, could
+have done nothing with it. Nearly all the big mines of to-day are
+winning wealth out of low-grade ore.
+
+"Some of these days, Clem, I'll explain the geology of gold to you,
+and show you how it is that the mines which give the richest specimens
+are sometimes the poorest mines to work. But I'm breaking into Jim's
+story."
+
+"I was jest a-sayin'," continued Jim, who had listened with impatience
+to Owens' explanation, "that them as says there ain't no luck in
+minin' ain't never done no minin'. I've been showin' you how some men
+got rich in a minute an' hundreds got nothin'.
+
+"But there was some fields that was a frost, right from the start.
+They promised big an' give big for the first scratch or two.
+Then--nothin'! Kern River was one o' those an' Father got bit.
+
+"My grand-pap, he'd gone back to Utah to take command of a band o'
+'Destroyin' Angels', as the Gentiles called the Danites, leavin'
+Father to go on pannin' on the Sacramento. The claims was peterin' out
+fast, but there was good day's wages to be got, still.
+
+"Then, in 1855, come the news o' the Kern River strike. If folk had
+gone crazy in forty-nine, they got crazier still this time. There was
+all the fame o' the last strike to lure 'em on. The same ol' story o'
+desert trails without water, o' minin' camps that were death-traps,
+was repeated, only ten times worse. Twenty thousand started in the
+same week. The last few miles was a trail o' blood. Men stabbed their
+friends in the back to get to the diggin's first. The stakin' o'
+claims was done, six-shooter in hand.
+
+"And, o' the twenty thousand, there wasn't twenty that cleaned up
+rich. My father, he wasn't one o' the twenty. He prospected, up an'
+down, until he'd spent the last ounce o' gold-dust he'd got from five
+years' work, an' all but starved to death on his way across the
+desert, headin' for Utah.
+
+"When he got into Nevada, he didn't have a pound o' flour left. He
+didn't have nothin' left, nothin' but his pick an' shovel an' pan. All
+the rest was gone. He didn't have no trade but prospectin'. Well
+enough he knew he'd leave his bones on the trail if he tried to foot
+it to Salt Lake City.
+
+"He'd heard about gold being found on the Carson River, in Nevada, in
+1850, by Prouse Kelly and John Orr, an' he knew that they'd gone back
+an' done well. Several other small placers had been found, noways
+rich, but still enough to keep a busy man goin'. He'd learned from his
+Kern River experience that a man did better, stickin' to a small
+claim'n tryin' for the big prizes, an' he made for the small placers
+o' the Carson River. A store-keeper grub-staked him, to start with,
+an' in a month or two, he was clear.
+
+"Next year, that was '56, his pard struck what looked like a silver
+vein, an' started off to the city wi' some samples. Father, he stuck
+by the gold. That's where he lost out. He prospected in Six Mile Cañon
+an' found little color--his bad luck again, for, in '57, two
+prospectors made a rich strike less'n a quarter of a mile away from
+where he'd been pannin'. They found signs o' silver, too, but chucked
+the stuff aside. Father plugged along, an' at last struck a little
+pocket in a creek off the Carson. A month's work gave him near a
+thousand dollars' worth o' dust, an' he reckoned he'd go back to Salt
+Lake City. He'd been away eight years.
+
+"Grand-pap was still alive an' told Father to stay home an' go
+farmin'. But it didn't go. The prospectin' bug had hit Father too
+hard. In the spring o' '59 he started back for the Carson River
+again, an' Mother come along. She reckoned she might never see him
+again, if she didn't.
+
+"That summer, there was three folks on the claim. Another pard had
+come, a little one, what had for his first toy a nugget o' gold tied
+on a bit o' string. I was born on a minin' claim, for that little pard
+was--me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GREAT BONANZA
+
+
+"You certainly started young enough in the prospecting game," said
+Owens, when Jim told of his birth in a mining camp, "and have you been
+at it all your life?"
+
+"Ever since I was big enough to twirl a pan or rock a cradle!"
+
+"How do you mean rock a cradle?" queried Clem. "I thought you were in
+the cradle!"
+
+"Not that kind, boy," Jim answered, "what I'm meanin' is a miner's
+cradle, or a rocker, as some calls it. I gradooated from one to
+t'other."
+
+"What's a miner's cradle, then?"
+
+"It's a scheme to make pannin' easier. Pannin' is durn hard work,
+Clem. You're squattin' on your hams beside a river all the day long,
+you got to hold a pan full o' earth an' water at arm's length an' down
+at an angle what nigh tears your arms out o' their sockets, an' then
+keep revolvin' the mixture with a circular twist that wrenches the
+muscles somethin' cruel. I've seen big men, tough uns, too, fair
+cryin' from the pain, at first.
+
+"Not only that, but you got to work the sodden lumps o' dirt soft wi'
+your fingers, so's the grit gets right into the skin. Your hands are
+wet nigh all the time. The grit an' the constant washin' o' the water,
+in all weathers, cracks the skin all over, so's it's bleedin' most o'
+the time. You got to have hands like a bit o' rawhide to stand it.
+
+"The cradle does the work quicker'n' easier, but it takes three men to
+work it right. It looks like a child's cradle from the outside, though
+most o' them I've seen was made pretty rough. About six inches from
+the top there's a drawer, or sometimes jest a tray, with a bottom o'
+iron, punched wi' holes o' different sizes, accordin' to the kind o'
+dirt you're workin' in. If your pannin' out don't show no big grains
+o' gold-dust, why, you keep the holes o' the cradle small, otherwise,
+you got to have 'em bigger. Below that drawer is another one, slopin'
+like. It hasn't got no holes. It has cross-bars or cleats, what we
+call 'riffles,' to keep the gold from washin' away.
+
+"One man digs up the pay dirt an' chucks it in at the top o' the
+cradle. Another dips up bucket after bucket o' water, continuous, an'
+sloshes it in; it's his job, too, to break up the soft lumps an' keep
+stirrin' the pasty mess, an' to keep the cradle full o' water. The
+third man goes rock, rockin', without stoppin', hours at a time.
+Mostly, the pardners spell each other off."
+
+"But I should think a good deal of gold would be washed away by that
+system," objected Clem, "surely the rocking must dash some of it over
+the riffles."
+
+"Some does go," Jim agreed, "but a gang can handle so much more pay
+dirt in a day that it more'n makes up. Three men with a cradle can
+handle twice as much dirt as the three men workin' separately would,
+each with a pan. Team work pays, in minin'--if you can trust your
+pardners.
+
+"Just about the time I was born, Father made pardners with five other
+prospectors, all pannin' on the Carson. Their claims were all in a
+string, one after the other, so they figures on makin' a sluice.
+That's jest a long trough. In richer an' more settled camps they're
+made of iron, length after length, all ready to be fixed together like
+a stove-pipe, but on the Carson, they was jest hollowed-out logs.
+
+"Sluices was always a foot deep, a foot an' a half wide, an' as long
+as could be made, slopin' slightly, so the water wouldn't run too fast
+or too slow, an' wi' riffles every few inches all along. The six
+claims I'm tellin' about give a chance for a sluice over a hundred
+foot long. To save the trouble o' liftin' water up in a pail, or
+pumpin' it, Father made a sort o' small flume, leadin' from the river
+higher up right into the sluice, so's the water would run continuous.
+
+"Bein' there was six o' them, the pardners worked three shifts, eight
+hours each. One man dug the dirt, wheeled it in a barrow to the head
+o' the sluice an' dumped it on a wooden platform. The other shoveled
+it into the sluice, stirred it up, an' broke up the lumps when they
+got pasty. Eight hours o' that was a day's work, I'm tellin'! Mother,
+she cooked an' washed for all six men, aside lookin' after me. Wi'
+meals to be got for all three shifts, she was kep' busy.
+
+"The sluice didn't stop runnin', day nor night, for a month at a
+stretch. Then the water in the flume was turned off, the sluice,
+riffles an' platform were scraped clean wi' knives, an' all six
+pardners panned the scrapin's. That was the clean-up. It was divided
+by weight o' dust into seven equal parts, Mother gettin' a man's
+share."
+
+"Didn't they use any mercury at all on the Carson?" queried Owens.
+
+"After a bit, our gang did. Not until each man had a bag o' dust set
+aside, big enough to buy a few weeks' grub, though. They'd all got
+badly bit in Californy, an' quicksilver cost a lot o' money in them
+days."
+
+"What's the quicksilver for?" queried Clem.
+
+"To catch the gold. If you spread it on the riffles it seems to grab a
+hold o' 'color' like glue, an', what's more, nothin' but gold'll stick
+to it."
+
+"Why is that?"
+
+"I don't know," Jim answered, a bit irritably, "it does, that's all."
+
+Owens interposed.
+
+"You can't blame Jim for not knowing why, Clem," he said. "So far as
+that goes, I don't believe any chemist in the world can tell you
+exactly why quicksilver catches gold. It does, though, sure enough.
+But I can show you how it does it, in a way.
+
+"You know that if iron is exposed to damp air, it turns red with rust?
+That is due to the chumminess or the affinity of iron with oxygen. You
+know if silver is exposed to city air, where the burning of coal in
+furnaces and fireplaces sends a sulphurous smoke into the air, it
+turns black? That's due to the fact that silver is a natural chum of
+sulphur. Chemically speaking, they make compounds easily.
+
+"It's the same way with mercury, or, as it is generally called,
+quicksilver. Gold and quicksilver are chums, and the minute they get
+together they join to form a mixture which is called an amalgam.
+That's one of the great discoveries of the age. Gold-mining has taken
+a big jump forward since that was found out.
+
+"You can see yourself how that would work. Whether with a pan, a
+cradle, or a sluice, the only thing that enables a miner to separate
+the gold from the worthless dirt is that the gold is smaller and
+heavier. But suppose the gold dust is so fine as to be invisible, it
+will be so light as to wash away easily; if it is in fine flakes, the
+flakes will almost float. All that light gold would be lost in the
+dirt that flows out of the bottom of the sluice, the tailings, as they
+are called.
+
+"In the days that Jim is describing, two-thirds of the gold was lost
+that way. Every one, absolutely every single one of the forty-niners
+would have made a fortune, if the chemistry of gold had been as far
+advanced then as it is to-day. Even now, men are working over with
+profit the tailings that the forty-niners threw away.
+
+"Suppose, now, you make your sluice, cover the bottom of it and the
+riffles with copper plates to hold the quicksilver better, and then
+cover your copper with quicksilver. What happens when the dirt and
+water come flowing down the sluice? The riffles will catch your heavy
+gold, just as well as before, and the quicksilver will catch a lot of
+the light gold that used to escape. You've got your gold in the
+riffles, then, and you've got a mixture of gold and quicksilver which
+has formed an amalgam.
+
+"Now, the mixture has to be made to give back that gold. First of all
+it is pressed through canvas or buckskin in order to get rid of the
+liquid quicksilver, which will pass through the weave of the first and
+the pores of the second, leaving inside only such of it as has firmly
+allied itself with the gold to form the amalgam.
+
+"The next thing to do is to put this amalgam into a retort, out of
+which leads a long pipe, and to subject this retort to intense heat.
+Quicksilver is vaporized at a comparatively low temperature--for a
+metal. It is driven from the amalgam in the form of vapor, much as
+water may be driven off in steam. The quicksilver vapor passes along
+this long pipe, which leads to several coils placed in a tank of
+running cold water. The cold chills the vapor, condensing it into the
+liquid state again, and the quicksilver runs out of the end of the
+pipe, ready for use once more. The pure gold is left.
+
+"But, even with the use of quicksilver on the sluice there was still
+40 per cent. of the gold that got away. For many years there was no
+practical way of recovering this loss, and the chemists of the world
+tore their hair in despair. What was needed was to find some other
+chum of gold, even more affectionate than mercury. The chemists found
+this new friend, at last, in cyanide, which is a salt of prussic acid.
+Cyanide, Clem, is an arrant flirt, as I'll show you, in a minute.
+
+"Nowadays, the tailings, after passing over the long sluice or flume,
+and after having dropped the heavy gold in the riffles and given some
+of the light gold to the quicksilver, are led to a huge churn. There
+the earth and water are pounded together into a sort of slime. A wheel
+lifts this slime into a movable chute from which it is poured into a
+series of vats or tanks. These tanks contain cyanide, which has
+already allied itself with a chum--potassium.
+
+"But cyanide likes gold even better than it does potassium, and, as
+soon as the slime strikes the vat, the cyanide lets go the potassium
+and clings to the gold. Cyanide of gold is formed. So far, so good.
+But what the miner wants is pure gold.
+
+"The cyanide is pumped up out of those tanks into another chute, which
+pours it into a second lot of tanks, fastened to the side of which are
+large bundles of zinc shavings. The cyanide liked the gold better than
+the potassium, but it has the bad taste to prefer zinc even to gold.
+It releases the gold and flies to the embrace of the zinc. The gold,
+suddenly deserted of the friendship of the cyanide, powders down to
+the bottom of the tank, in absolutely pure form, ready to be melted
+down into bars. By other processes, which I won't bother you by
+describing now, the zinc is released from the cyanide, and the cyanide
+is led to its old friend the potassium, ready to begin work anew. So,
+you see, nothing is wasted.
+
+"This process, and this only, has made the astounding wealth of South
+Africa, for, as I told you, the reefs there are of very low-grade ore,
+so low that Jim, here, would have turned up his nose at it. The
+modern ability of chemists to get out the tiniest particle of gold
+that lies in the most stubborn rock has made the Rand a richer region
+than a prospector's wildest dream."
+
+"If I'd known all that, forty years ago, I'd be a rich man now," said
+Jim, regretfully.
+
+"You'd have been a millionaire, ten times over," Owens agreed, "but,
+since it hadn't been found out, you couldn't have known it. But did
+you always stick to gold, Jim? That Carson River country has got more
+silver in it than it has gold."
+
+"Don't I know it? 'Ain't it been rubbed into me, good an' hard? Father
+wasn't a cussin' man, noways, but he couldn't keep his tongue in order
+like a man should, when he got to talkin' about silver. He threw away
+any amount o' high-grade silver ore, while huntin' for gold. The
+richest silver mine in the whole world, I reckon, was found less'n a
+hundred yards from where he'd been pannin'.
+
+"It was the same ol' story--he didn't know enough! Workin' hard may
+bring a man some money, but havin' savvy will bring him a lot more.
+
+"Right where Father was workin', he was havin' all sorts o' trouble
+wi' a heavy black sand that kep' on fillin' up the riffles like it was
+gold. He shoveled away cubic yards of it! An' do you know what that
+was? That dirty black sand was nigh pure silver, an' Father was
+pannin' less'n quarter of a mile away from the richest section in all
+Nevada. He was campin' right on the Comstock Lode! I reckon you've
+heard o' that, Mr. Owens!"
+
+"Every mining man has heard of the Comstock," the mine-owner replied.
+"Personally, I don't know a great deal about silver, although the
+Broken Hill mine, New South Wales, which is nearly as rich as the
+great Nevada deposit, is located not far from my home. I went straight
+from gold to coal. So I never did hear the real story of the Comstock.
+But you ought to know about it, Jim. Was it found by accident, too?"
+
+"Rank good luck an' rotten bad luck mixed," Jim answered. "Do I know
+that story! The first week's pay I ever drew was on the Comstock. An'
+I was born, as I told you, near enough to throw a stone right on to
+the Comstock outcrop. This was how it begun!
+
+"There was two prospectors, Patrick McLaughlin an' Peter O'Riley,
+Irishmen both, what had been pannin' gold on Gold Cañon, where, I
+told you, Father had been. Luck was poor. Grub was hard to get. The
+water o' the Carson had a strong taste, an' wasn't none too healthy.
+So the two pardners started diggin' a water-hole down in the gulch,
+near where they was workin'. What come up out o' the hole was a yellow
+sand, all mixed up with bits o' quartz an' a crumblin' black rock,
+much the same as the black sand Father'd been worried with.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE MINER'S SLUICE.
+
+Such a device as this was being worked by Jim's father when the
+Comstock Lode was discovered.
+
+_Courtesy of Netman & Co._]
+
+
+[Illustration: PANNING GOLD ON THE KLONDYKE.
+
+Typical summer scene on the junction of the Eldorado and Bonanza
+Creeks; "color" showing in both pans.]
+
+
+"Now a prospector'll wash any durn dirt he sees, an' O'Riley, while
+waitin' for some bacon to fry, chucked some o' the yellow an' black
+sand in a pan an' give it a twirl or two. You can reckon he jumped
+some when the pan showed color. He yelled to McLaughlin an' the two o'
+them got busy. Every pan showed color, not big, but enough. The
+cleanin' up wasn't what you'd call rich but it was steady, an' there
+was any amount o' pay dirt in sight. The two begin to fill their
+buckskin bags wi' dust, right smartly.
+
+"Then a low-down, dirty, ornery coyote of a man, Henry Comstock by
+name, come amblin' along. A shifty critter was Comstock, trapper,
+fur-trader, gambler, claim-jumper, mine-salter, sneak-thief, an'
+everything else. He see O'Riley an' McLaughlin cleanin' up the cradle
+an' guessed they'd struck it rich. Lyin' glibly, like the yaller dog
+he was, he told the prospectors he was the owner o' the land, an' made
+'em give up their claims. They went on workin', but on small shares.
+The hole got deeper, but by-'n-by got hard to work because this seam
+o' black rock got wider'n wider as it went down. Riley an' McLaughlin
+dodged the rock, the best they knew how, findin' gold enough to pay
+for workin' in the loose dirt on either side.
+
+"One or two other prospectors drifted up that way, though the pickin's
+was small. One o' them, wonderin' what the black rock might be, an'
+havin' a hunch it might be lead it was so heavy, put a chunk in the
+hands of an assayer in Placerville.
+
+"The expert couldn't believe his eyes, at first, an' thought some one
+was playin' a joke on him. His assay showed a value o' $3,000 per ton
+in silver an' $800 per ton in gold. He assayed one or two other bits,
+wi' the same result. Here was millions, jest beggin' to be picked up!
+Folks got wind of it, right away. That was in November, 1859, too late
+in the winter to cross the high Sierras into Nevada.
+
+"The rush started a-hummin', early in 1860. 'Frisco was fair frothin'
+at the mouth. It was a long trail, an' the silver-hungry crowd
+couldn't wait. Some o' the craziest got away as early as January. They
+caught it heavy!
+
+"From Sacramento up the old emigrant trail to Placerville weren't no
+gentle stroll in winter time! From Placerville to the bottom o'
+Johnson Pass was a trail for timber wolves, not for humans. Snow lay
+thick. Winds, fit to freeze a b'ar, come a-howlin' down the high
+Sierras. A few men got through an' froze to death on Mount Davidson,
+the silver actooally ticklin' the soles o' their feet. Some got caught
+in slow-slides in the Johnson Pass an' their bodies didn't show up
+till June. A lot more died o' starvation an' exposure on the way.
+
+"That didn't keep the rest from comin'. They fair stormed the Pass. In
+March there was a thaw, an' the flood o' men broke through.
+
+"It was a bad crowd. Aside from decent prospectors and miners, there
+was a pack o' gamblers, saloon-keepers, 'bad men,' fake speculators,
+an' all the rest o' the human buzzards that follow on the heels of a
+rush. They remembered the first days o' the forty-niners, an' every
+bad egg in Californy wanted to be the first to murder an' to rob. In
+three weeks, the silent an' deserted slopes o' Mount Davidson was
+peppered wi' tents. Virginia City had been started an' had become a
+roarin' town.
+
+"That wasn't a minin' camp, it was a hell-hole. I've seen tough joints
+in my day, but Virginia City beat all. It wasn't jest the miners lost
+their heads, but experts, geologists, an' all, went plumb crazy.
+'Twasn't much wonder. That black rock was jest one continooal bonanza.
+A gold mine was a fool to it.
+
+"The ore in one of the shafts--the Potosi Chimney, it was called--was
+rangin' steadily over a hundred dollars a ton silver, an' that shaft
+alone was bringin' up 650 tons a day. Three prospectors tapped the big
+lode at another point, near Esmeralda, worked a week an' took six
+thousand dollars apiece for their claims. The man who bought first
+rights on Esmeralda, sold them before the end or that summer, for a
+quarter of a million. An' yet McLaughlin an' O'Riley havin' given up
+their claims to Comstock, got nothin' out of it. As for Comstock, he
+filed a false claim of ownership which the courts wouldn' give him,
+an' he went down an' out.
+
+"The Gould & Curry mine, one o' the richest, was bought from its
+finders for an old horse, a bottle o' lightnin'-rod whisky, three
+blankets, an' two thousand dollars in cash. After four millions had
+been taken out of it, an Eastern syndicate come along an' bought it
+for seven millions o' dollars--an' they made money out of it, at that!
+Six years after the openin' o' the Gould & Curry, there was 57 miles
+o' tunnels, all in rich ore, an' the owners had to work it like a coal
+mine, leavin' great pillars o' silver to prop up the roof!
+
+"A telegraph line was run through an' that made Virginia City ten
+times worse. It weren't a town o' miners, rightly, not like a gold
+placer camp. Silver ore needs capital to work it, an' Virginia City
+become a town o' loose fish, speculators, crooked brokers, an'
+suckers. One man sold the Eureka mine to eight different people at the
+same time, an' he'd never even seen the place an' didn't own a claim
+in it. He pocketed eighty thousand dollars in eight days an' was
+strung up to the limb of a pine-tree the ninth!
+
+"There was some good work done, though. Durin' 1861 an' 1862
+road-makers was busy, though laborers was gettin' fancy prices. But
+the engineers kep' at it, an' afore the winter o' '62, there was a
+wide road where two eight-mule coaches could cross each other at full
+gallop without slacking the traces. Tolls were high, so high that the
+road-makers got all their money back in the first year. Crack coaches
+with relays made the trail from Sacramento to Virginia City in twelve
+hours, instead of six weeks, like it was first. Hold-ups were frequent
+an' plenty, but a 'road agent' didn't last long where every one
+carried a gun.
+
+"Then come the 'year o' nabobs,' that was '63. The Comstock Lode put
+out over $26,000,000 in silver bullion alone, half-a-million dollars
+o' silver every week in the year. By that time there was forty big
+minin' plants operatin' wi' steam machinery. There weren't no place
+for a small man any more, unless he wanted to do minin' on days'
+wages, an' mighty few o' the early prospectors ever got any o' the
+later wealth o' the Comstock. Father, he wouldn't touch silver, nohow,
+but he made more'n the miners did by pannin' the dirt the mines were
+throwin' away. They were makin' so much money out o' silver that they
+wouldn't bother to take out the gold.
+
+"Then come the first big smash. Half o' the mines sold to the suckers
+weren't worth shucks. Wild-cat mines, they called 'em. There was one,
+the Little Monte Cristo, which give the promoter half a million
+dollars in shares which he sold to folk in New York an' Philadelphy.
+An' they never made more'n an 8-foot pit in it an' didn't take out
+enough bullion to melt down into a silver spoon!
+
+"What was worse, the big mines got down to the rock water-level. At
+first, they run little tunnels, what they called 'adits' from the side
+o' the mountain an' drained that way. That wasn't no good, much. They
+soon got below that. The lode got richer the farther down they went
+an' some o' the big companies took to pumpin' out the water. Right
+away, they started in to lose money. It cost more to pump than the
+silver was worth. The boom dropped with a thud.
+
+"Then Adolph Sutro come along. He was a big man was Sutro, one o'
+these here engineers folks talk about. He offered to build a drainage
+tunnel from the foot-hills o' the Carson Valley, just above the river
+smack into the heart o' the lode, a distance o' four miles, tappin'
+all the mines. He figured that, if it weren't done, all the mines'd
+get flooded an' all the wealth o' Comstock'd go to smash.
+
+"Seein' things were going' so bad, the mine-owners balked at first.
+After a while, though, the water come in so free that they all agreed
+to give him two dollars a ton for all the ore raised from the mines,
+providin' his tunnel drained 'em all, an' providin' he fixed it so
+that they could get men an' material through the tunnel, instead o'
+having to pull it all up the shaft. It took Sutro six years to get the
+capital, but he got it. He begun work in '71. Toward the end o' the
+job the work was so hot an' tough that he doubled his rate o' wages,
+an' in '77, bein' eighteen years old then, I started operatin' a drill
+in the tunnel. I was thar on the day that we broke through."
+
+Few engineering feats in the history of mining are more famous than
+the making of the Sutro Tunnel. In one of the publications of the
+U. S. Geological Survey, Eliot Lord has told its story of perseverance
+and triumph.
+
+"Sutro's untiring zeal," wrote Lord, "kindled a like spirit in his
+co-workers. Changing shifts urged the drills on without ceasing;
+skilled timberers followed up the attack on the breast and covered
+the heads of the assailants like shield-bearers.
+
+"The dump at the mouth of the tunnel grew rapidly to the proportions
+of an artificial plateau raised above the surrounding valley slope;
+yet the speed of the electric currents which exploded the blasts
+scarcely kept pace with the impatient anxiety of the tunnel owners to
+reach the lode, when the extent of the great Consolidated Virginia
+Bonanza was reported; for every ton raised from the lode was a loss to
+them of two dollars, as they thought.
+
+"Urged on by zeal, pride, and natural covetousness, the miners cut
+their way indomitably towards the goal, though, at every step gained
+the work grew more painful and more dangerous.
+
+"The temperature at the face of the heading, had risen from 72°
+(Fahr.) at the close of the year 1873 to 83° during the two following
+years; though in the summer of 1875 two powerful Root blowers were
+constantly employed in forcing air into the tunnel. At the close of
+the year 1876, the indicated temperature was 90° and, on the 1st of
+January, 1878, the men were working in a temperature of 96°.
+
+"In spite of the air currents from the blowers, the atmosphere before
+the end of the year 1876 had become almost unbearably foul as well as
+hot. The candles flickered with a dull light and men often staggered
+back from their posts, faint and sickened.
+
+"During the months preceding the junction with the Savage Mine, the
+heading was cut with almost passionate eagerness. The miners were then
+two miles from the nearest ventilating shaft, and the heat of their
+working chamber was fast growing too intense for human endurance.
+
+"The pipe which applied compressed air to the drills was opened at
+several points and the blowers were worked to their utmost capacity.
+Still the mercury rose from 98° on the 1st of March 1878 to 109° on
+the 22nd of April, and the temperature of the rock face of the heading
+increased from 110° to 114°. Four shifts a day were worked instead of
+three, and the men could only work during a small portion of their
+nominal hours of labor.
+
+"Even the tough, wiry mules of the car train could hardly be driven up
+to the end of the tunnel and sought for fresh air not less ardently
+than the men. Curses, blows, and kicks could scarcely force them away
+from the blower-tube openings, and, more than once, a rationally
+obstinate mule thrust his head in the end of the canvas air-pipe. He
+was literally torn away by main strength, as the miners, when other
+means failed, tied his tail to the bodies of two other mules in his
+train and forced them to haul back their companion, snorting
+viciously, and slipping with stiff legs over the wet floor.
+
+"Neither men nor animals could long endure work so distressing.
+Fortunately, the compressed air drills knew neither weariness nor
+pain, and churned their way to the mines without ceasing.
+
+"A blast from the Savage Mine tore an opening through the wall, in the
+evening of that day. The goal for which Sutro had striven so many
+years was in sight. He was waiting at the breach, impatient of delay,
+and crawled, half-naked, through the jagged opening, while the foul
+air of the heading was still gushing into the mine."
+
+Meanwhile, over the heads of the workers of the Sutro tunnel, a not
+less marvelous change had come over the Comstock Lode. This was the
+discovery of the Great Bonanza. After the slump of 1864 and the
+terrible handicap of the water, mine-owners on the Comstock fell
+deeper and deeper into despair. Gone were the wild days of riot and
+extravagance. Only by extreme care, by the use of every modern
+appliance, by the lowering of wages--some thirty pitched battles, with
+six-shooters, marked this period--were they able to keep going at all.
+
+Then, just as two Irishmen had first found the Comstock, two other
+Irishmen forged to the front. These were John W. Mackay, who had begun
+work as a day-laborer in the mine, and James G. Fair, a young fellow
+who had come to Virginia City with only a few hundred dollars'
+capital. They made a daring team. Seizing the opportunities of the
+dull times, they bought property after property as it was abandoned by
+the owners, who declared that the great lode had "pinched out." With a
+third Irishman, Wm. O'Brien, and a 'Frisco miner, James C. Flood, they
+bought the entire stretch between the two famous mines--the Ophir and
+the Gould & Curry--thus forming what became known to history as the
+Virginia Consolidated. The four men paid $50,000 for this huge
+property; risking their all on the chance that deeper mining might
+reach the supposedly "pinched out" vein.
+
+They sank a shaft, down, down and down,--nothing! They ran a drift to
+meet it from one of their purchased mines, and drilled for
+weeks--nothing! Then a thin seam of ore appeared, but so small as to
+seem insignificant. Fair pursued this vein. A quarter of a million
+dollars were eaten up in chasing this elusive line of ore but the vein
+would neither disappear nor get wider. Fair's partners tried to insist
+on running galleries in various directions to explore--and did so for
+one month while he was ill--but Fair returned insistently again to
+that thin thread of silver. There was one place where it was only two
+inches thick. And then, in October 1873, the miners cut suddenly into
+the Big Bonanza.
+
+"No discovery," wrote Lord, "to match this one had ever been made on
+this earth from the time when the first miner struck a ledge with his
+rude pick. The plain facts are as marvelous as a Persian tale, for the
+young Aladdin did not see in the glittering cave of the genii such
+fabulous riches as were lying in the dark womb of the rock.
+
+"The wonder grew as the depths were searched out foot by foot. The
+Bonanza was cut at a point 1167 feet below the surface, and, as the
+shaft went down, it was pierced again at the 1200-foot level. One
+hundred feet deeper and the prying pick and drill told the same story,
+yet another hundred feet, and the mass appeared to be swelling. When,
+finally, the 1500-foot level was reached and ore richer than any
+before met with was disclosed, the fancy of the coolest brains ran
+wild. How far this great Bonanza would extend, none could predict, but
+its expansion seemed to keep pace with the most sanguine imaginings.
+To explore it thoroughly was to cut it out bodily; systematic search
+through it was a continual revelation."
+
+The wealth revealed was beyond believing. This Bonanza, alone, yielded
+$3,000,000 of silver every month for the first three years.
+
+Yet it was hard to win. Mackay believed in high wages and paid more
+than double the wages given to any miners in any place in the history
+of the world. All were picked men, who had passed a severe medical
+test. The hours were short. The men worked naked save for a loin-cloth
+and shoes to protect them from the hot rocks. The heat reached 110°.
+Three men, who stepped accidentally into a deep pool of water, were
+scalded to death. The air was foul. The toil was severe.
+
+Yet ever, the deeper they went, the richer grew the ore. When, at
+last, Mackay, Fair, O'Brien, and Flood sold their holdings, the
+Bonanza had yielded more than $150,000,000 worth of silver, one-third
+of which had passed directly into the pockets of the four men.
+
+But what of the first discoverers, McLaughlin and Riley? They had
+found the silver, but the Bonanza was not for them. McLaughlin worked
+for a while as a laborer and then was thrown out of the mine by a
+foreman who said he was too old. He tried a dozen small ventures and
+not only lost in everything he touched, but caused his partners to
+lose, also. Bad fortune dogged him steadily. An old man, worn out and
+hopelessly dispirited, died in a hospital and was buried in a pauper's
+grave. Later, it was learned that this was McLaughlin.
+
+O'Riley fared no better. He refused to work for others, believing that
+luck would turn, and that he, who had once discovered so rich a prize,
+would, some day or other, discover another. One night, in a dream, he
+heard what he took to be the voices of the fairies of the mountain
+bidding him dig at a certain barren spot on the hill-slopes of the
+Sierras, many miles away from the Comstock Lode.
+
+For days, for weeks, for years, he dug, ever hearing the fancied
+voices leading him on, deeper and deeper still. Mackay offered him
+money, but O'Riley refused to accept it, demanding that he be given an
+equal share in the mine, or nothing. He starved and suffered,
+sometimes finding pieces of pure silver and pure gold in his tunnel,
+which he ascribed to his fairies (but which rumor says Mackay had
+arranged to be placed there) and, in old age, his tunnel fell in and
+crippled him. From the hospital he was taken to an insane asylum,
+where he died.
+
+Henry Comstock met the fate he deserved. For years he swaggered about
+Virginia City claiming to be its founder and the discoverer of the
+Comstock Lode, living on the charity of luckier men who threw him a
+bar of silver as one throws a bone to a dog, or else selling wild-cat
+shares to greenhorns. More than once he was justly accused of being in
+league with the disorderly elements of the city and having taken part
+in robberies. But a certain rough sense of pity kept him from being
+strung up to a tree as he deserved a dozen times over--and he died, at
+last, a suicide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WHERE TREASURE HIDES
+
+
+"You won't be achin', none, to hear all o' my roamin's after I quit
+the Sutro Tunnel," Jim resumed, a couple of days later, when Owens and
+Clem came to hear the rest of his story, "so I'll cut 'em short. But
+you'll be wantin' to hear how it was I got into that queer part o' the
+country where I made my strike.
+
+"It was Father's doin's more'n it was mine. I reckon I'd ha' stuck
+around the Comstock Lode an' got into reg'lar silver-quartz minin' if
+I'd gone my own way. But Father didn't have no use for silver. He was
+a gold prospector, he was, an' he didn't want to do nothin' else.
+
+"After the Comstock got goin' good, with big stamp-mills poundin' an'
+roarin' night an' day, an' when Virginia City begun to settle into a
+sure-enough town, Father begun to itch to be away. Folks worried him.
+Gold, he used to say, had savvy enough to hide itself when a mob come
+around, an', accordin' to Father's ideas, a placer wasn't no good,
+anyhow, after two seasons' pickin's.
+
+"He jest wanted to come along an' skim off the cream o' some new find,
+clean up enough dust to keep him goin' for a while, an' then pick up
+his stakes an' git! It wasn't jest the money Father was after. He
+liked huntin' after gold, jest for the sake o' huntin'. I've seen him
+quit a claim that was makin' a fair profit an' start off prospectin',
+for the sake o' the change. The wilder the spot, the more chance there
+was o' findin' gold, he used to say; the fewer the folks, the bigger
+the clean-up. Looked like he was right, too, placer fields peter out
+mighty fast when a gang gets there."
+
+"They are bound to," Owens agreed.
+
+"But why? There ain't no rule about gold. One placer'll give up
+millions in dust, an' another ain't worth pannin'."
+
+"There's no rule that will tell you where to find placer gold," the
+mine-owner corrected, "but don't run away with the idea that gold
+deposits are all freaks. As a matter of fact, there is a regular
+science to help a good prospector in hunting for reef or quartz gold.
+Whether he will find it in sufficient quantity to make the deposit
+worth working is quite another matter.
+
+"You mustn't think, Jim, that gold happens to be in one place and
+happens not to be in another as a result of mere chance. There's no
+chance in Nature. We think there is, sometimes, merely because the
+factors are so terribly complicated that we can't follow them all.
+
+"What makes the finding of gold seem so much a matter of luck is not
+because we don't know how the gold came to be where it is, but because
+we can't know the whole history of the Earth before Man came, and we
+can't read everything from the rocks which crop out on the surface.
+But we have some clues, and if you studied out the big money-making
+gold-mines of to-day, you would find that chance has played but a
+small part in their discovery and no part at all in their working.
+
+"A lucky prospector may have been the first to find signs of gold in
+the region, but most likely, he got but little out of it. It was the
+scientific search which followed that revealed the location of the
+great rock deposits below in which the gold was thinly scattered, and
+it was highly specialized mining engineering which made them possible
+to work. There are mines where ores containing only two dollars'
+worth of gold (48 grains, a tenth of an ounce) to the ton are
+successfully handled, and the greater part of the big gold-mines run
+along quite comfortably on five dollars' worth."
+
+"You mean on a quarter of an ounce o' gold to the ton!" exclaimed Jim,
+amazed. "I've often got ten times that much in one pan!"
+
+"Exactly. Yet you're not a millionaire, are you? Most gold-mines run
+on a narrow margin of profit, a dollar or two to the ton of ore
+crushed. So, you see, the works must be on a huge scale in order to
+return a dividend on the investment. What's more, you can't afford to
+establish a big plant unless there's an enormous amount of ore
+available.
+
+"It's an old rule of wise investors not to put money into a mine that
+looks too rich. Why?
+
+"Because rich ore generally peters out fast. The rich mines always
+catch the suckers easily, and they're the ones who lose. A few cents a
+ton profit on an immense deposit of low-grade ore means a sure return,
+because, as a rule, such ore comes from a very old geological
+formation where the gold is evenly scattered, and labor-saving
+machinery can be put in with a certainty that those few cents of
+profit will continue indefinitely.
+
+"Gold, as you know, Jim, is always the same price. This has been
+agreed upon by all nations. It is the one standard of value. It is
+worth a fraction over $20 an ounce. Year in, year out, all over the
+world, gold is worth the same.
+
+"As a result, a gold-mine manager who knows the exact proportion of
+gold per ton in the ore of his mine, can calculate to a cent how much
+he can afford to pay for mining the ore, crushing it, and separating
+the gold by chemical processes. He must figure on the cost of
+installing his machinery, on his interest for original outlay, on
+depreciation, on the cost of power for his machinery, on the water
+power needed for crushing and washing, on transportation for his
+supplies and on wages. Usually he will have to build his own railroad
+and his own aqueducts. A little saving in one place--even a few cents
+per ton--will enable him to make a big profit; a little extra cost,
+such as an increase in the price of fuel, of chemicals, or of wages,
+will make him bankrupt.
+
+
+[Illustration: WHERE DESERTS YIELD MILLIONS.
+
+Mill of the Pittsburg-Silver Peak Gold Mining Co., Blair, Nevada.]
+
+
+[Illustration: THE EATER OF MOUNTAINS.
+
+A hydraulic jet of high pressure, washing away a hill of gravel and
+sending the pay dirt through a sluice.
+
+_From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams._]
+
+
+"That is why, Jim, even the richest-ored mine in the world--if it be
+uneven in its yield of gold per ton--may be worthless, and why a
+low-grade mine with an unchanging percentage may be worth millions, so
+long as there is plenty of it. It all depends on the cost of
+extracting the metal. There are scores, yes, hundreds of gold-deposits
+well known to-day, which cannot be worked as long as gold stays $20 an
+ounce, because it costs almost as much as that to get it out, but
+which would be big money-makers if the gold were worth $25.
+Three-quarters of the gold-mines of to-day would shut tight like a
+clam, if gold were to drop in price even a dollar or two. What a
+capitalist wants to-day is ore, and he is not interested in free gold.
+What a prospector looks for, is free gold, and he ignores the rock.
+I'm telling you all this, now, Jim, because it's what will be the
+important thing when we get to talking, later, over your find."
+
+"That's all right," the old prospector answered, "but how can a man
+tell when he's tappin' a big lot o' rock or jest a little, if it ain't
+the free gold what shows him?"
+
+"He can't tell, as a rule," the mine-owner rejoined. "It takes a
+geologist to do that. As I was saying, there are some rules to go by.
+Here, I'll give you a notion of how gold came to be in the rocks, and
+then you'll see what a geologist can tell and what he can't.
+
+"To start with, you've got to begin 'way at the beginning of things,
+before the crust of the earth was solid and when all the rocks of the
+crust were in a melted and half-liquid state. So far as we can make
+out, the metals seems to have classified themselves at that time, more
+or less, according to density. The lighter elements came to the
+surface, the heavier ones stayed at the bottom. It wasn't merely a
+question of weight, but of gravitation, centrifugal action and a lot
+of things I won't stop to explain to you now. Gold, as you know, is
+heavy, that is, it possesses extreme density. It stayed therefore,
+mainly at the bottom of this semi-molten sea.
+
+"But this sea, which covered the whole of the earth's surface, wasn't
+altogether liquid, as the oceans are to-day. It was a seething mass of
+different densities, some of it liquid, some of it slimy, some of it
+thick like sticky mud, acted upon by fearful whirlwinds of electric
+forces such as astronomers see in the sun to-day, and by powerful
+internal currents which created vast churning whirlpools of
+super-heated matter.
+
+"It's impossible for us to tell where these electric whirlwinds passed
+or where these currents were. So, since the original separation of the
+metals was highly irregular, no geologist can say with certainty where
+gold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.
+
+"Then there's another complication. As you know, most of the metals
+have chums or affinities with other substances, just as gold has with
+mercury. These chums of the metals were also in that molten ocean, but
+not always in the same proportions, nor yet distributed regularly. So
+metallic compounds were formed at different times and in diverse
+places. These compounds had varying densities, with the result that in
+later ages they behaved in a way quite different from the pure metal.
+You see, Jim, long before the crust of the earth was even formed, gold
+was scattered far and wide, and already was in different forms.
+
+"Then, little by little, the crust began to form as the earth cooled.
+It was just a scum, at first, and was constantly broken up from below.
+As it got thicker, it resisted more and more, until the upheavals of
+the crust formed the mountains of the earliest or Primary Age. This
+crust, which was now solid rock, contained gold, but, naturally,
+nowhere in the same proportions. Some had much metal inclusion; some,
+little; some, none at all. Besides, between the mountains or in them,
+were vast volcanic craters, pouring up molten matter which became what
+are known as the eruptive rocks, and these, too, carried up gold from
+below. These rocks crystallized and the gold remained in them.
+
+"But even that wasn't complicated enough for Mother Nature. In those
+same eruptive rocks, both of the early and later periods, gold is
+mainly found in veins. These veins are of dozens of different sorts,
+depending on the rock in which they occur and on Nature's ways of
+putting them there.
+
+"To make it simple to you, I'll only mention two. The most general
+method was by fumaroles. These are subterranean blow-holes of vapor
+containing sulphur, tellurium, and chlorine compounds, as well as
+super-heated steam. These vapors, projected from deep down in the
+earth with incredible pressure and energy, acted on the new-made
+rocks, formed compounds with the metals, or, when united with hydrogen
+in the steam, separated the metals from solutions of their salts, and
+forced the metals into cracks in the new-made and cooling eruptive
+rocks. According to the kind of rock and the nature of the chemical
+agent, a geologist will know for what type of vein to search. The
+other most general agent of vein-making was hot water--generally
+heavily saturated with sulphur and other chemicals--which dissolved
+the gold. This hot water, with gold in solution, seeped into the
+cracks and crevices made by the rock as it cooled, thus forming other
+types of veins."
+
+"Hold on a minute, there!" protested Jim. "Water won't dissolve gold."
+
+"It will and does," was the retort, "especially when certain chemicals
+are in the water. As a matter of fact, even to-day, the geysers at
+Steamboat Springs, California, and at several places in New Zealand,
+deposit gold and silicon in their basins. But let me go on.
+
+"After the gold was placed in veins in these primary rocks, there came
+a period of erosion, and the mountains were worn away. The gold being
+harder than rock, it remained and made alluvial deposits of a very
+early age. Some, of these old 'placers' are several miles below the
+surface, now, others have come again to the surface by all the
+superposed rock having been washed away, anew. Some of the gold was
+dissolved, as before, and got into the crevices of the newly deposited
+rocks made by erosion, known as sedimentary rocks. So, you see, Jim,
+even millions of years ago, there was gold in the crystallized
+eruptive rock, gold in veins of igneous rock, gold in alluvial
+deposits, and, again, gold in veins in the sedimentary rocks.
+
+"Then came another period of elevation, with a second raising up of
+mountain ranges, and with a renewal of violent volcanic action. The
+crust was getting more and more unequal, the way in which the metals
+were distributed became more and more scattered. Mountains of the
+Secondary Age were often made of Primary sedimentary rocks, or of
+Primary igneous rocks, so much changed that geologists call them
+metamorphic rocks. And, Jim, every time that the rock was changed, the
+gold changed either its place or its compound character, or both. Then
+came another period of erosion, lasting millions of years, the gold
+was washed away to form new placers, or made its way into veins in the
+Secondary sedimentary rocks.
+
+"Then came the great upheaval of the Third or Tertiary Age, in which
+new mountains rose, new volcanic vents were opened, and, once more,
+much of the gold was acted upon by chemicals, mainly sulphur and
+tellurium. In many places silver showed a strong affinity with gold,
+forming deposits where the ores were commingled. Once more the
+hundreds of centuries of erosion came, to be followed by the upheaving
+of the newer mountains of the Fourth or Quaternary Age. So, you see,
+Jim, as I told you before, gold can be found in almost every rock and
+of every geological period."
+
+"I don't see that it helps much, then!" declared the old prospector.
+"You can go lookin' where you durn please."
+
+"There's nothing to stop you," agreed Owens cheerfully, "but that's a
+hit-and-miss method. And I can show you just how even this little bit
+of geology comes in to help the miner.
+
+"Get this clearly in your head, Jim! Three-quarters of the present
+gold production of the world comes from gold that is mixed with
+pyrites--which is a sulphide of iron, or from tellurides--in which a
+tellurium-hydrogen compound has been the chemical agent. A prospector,
+therefore, who uncovers a new field where the gold is in the pyritous
+or the telluride form has ten times more chance of attracting capital
+than one who finds lumps of native gold lying around loose.
+
+"It is when a prospector strikes a section where all the gold-bearing
+rock has been eroded that he is apt to find the 'pockets' so dear to
+his heart. The amazing riches of the Klondyke lay in the fact that
+prospectors found, first, the alluvial deposits from the present age
+in the sands of the running creeks, and, on ledges high above the
+creeks and running into the rocks on either side, the alluvial
+deposits, even thicker and richer, of a bygone time."
+
+"You've got it right," declared Jim, emphatically. "I know 'cos I was
+there!"
+
+"Was it on the Yukon, then, that you made your famous strike?"
+
+The prospector winced. Evidently, he intended to reach that point in
+his own way.
+
+"I'll tell you about that, after a bit," he answered evasively. "But
+you ain't said why placer claims peter out."
+
+"Can't you see? A placer claim doesn't show where the big store of
+gold is, but where it isn't! It shows that the gold has gone. A placer
+is just a spot where a little heavy gold, that hasn't been acted on
+by chemicals, happens to have been deposited during the erosion of a
+mountain which was composed of gold-bearing rock. The rock has been
+washed into sand and gravel and a great deal of it taken out to sea.
+There's plenty of gold in the sea, as I told you before.
+
+"But the amount of sand or gravel to be panned along a creek or river
+is limited. When that's washed over, there's no more to find. A
+prospector gets down to bed-rock and he's through. Then he's either
+got to pack up and hunt some new spot where the same erosion has
+happened, or, if he's clever enough, he's got to find the rock or reef
+from which the gold was washed out. If he doesn't know his geology,
+he's apt to waste his time.
+
+"Then the scientific expert and the capitalist come in. It's the man
+with money who profits most by a poor man's strike. He can afford to
+sit back and wait. Presently the expert will come back and report
+where the gold-bearing rock lies. The capitalist arrives with huge
+machinery for mining and crushing the rock, for turning on enormous
+water-power, in short, for performing a sort of artificial erosion in
+a few days which Nature took hundreds of thousands of years to do. He
+pockets millions, where the prospectors who did the first work only
+get thousands, or even hundreds, or, sometimes, nothing at all.
+
+"Your father was perfectly right, Jim, in saying that the prizes of
+prospecting are for the man who gets there first. Placers are bound to
+peter out quickly. They are Nature's purses, and a purse hasn't any
+more money in it than you put in. Even the Klondyke, that astounding
+pocket of riches, lasted only three years and then dwindled down.
+
+"Some of these days, all the available places of the earth will have
+been worked over by the casual prospector, and then his day will be
+done. The ever-hoping rover of the pick, shovel, and pan is becoming
+extinct. Even now, the only spots which hold out any chance of pockets
+of gold are in the almost inaccessible section of the globe.
+
+"The daring seeker for gold must go to the bleak ranges of the frigid
+North, where, even in the middle of the summer, the ground is frozen
+as hard as a rock a few inches below the surface; or else to the
+jungle-clad slopes of the tropics, where fever and stewing heat menace
+him with ever-present death; or yet to regions so far removed from
+civilization that the white man has not yet penetrated there. The
+shores of the Arctic Ocean, the steaming equatorial forests of the
+Eastern Andes, or the untrodden valleys of the inner Himalayas offer
+the most hopes to the prospector. But he may spend all the gold-dust
+he finds, and more, to go there and return.
+
+"The tundras of Alaska and eastward to Hudson Bay still contain placer
+gold, to a surety, gold not difficult to find if a man is willing to
+face an Arctic winter and a mosquito-haunted summer to work there.
+It's a wonder to me, Jim, that your father didn't join the great rush
+to the Fraser River, in British Columbia, in 1856. That was a mad and
+sorrowful stampede, if ever there was one!"
+
+"He was crazy about the Fraser," Jim answered. "All that kep' him from
+goin' was the smash-up o' the Kern River rush, which lef' him
+dead-broke an' nigh starvin', like I told you. But he never forgot the
+Fraser. That's what took us up north, to wind up with.
+
+"It was in '79, when I was twenty years old, that Father comes into
+the cabin, an' says, point blank,
+
+"'We're a-goin' to the Kootenay.'
+
+"'Where's that?' I asks.
+
+"'Somewheres up near the Fraser River. There's gold there, so they're
+sayin', like there was on the Sacramento in '49. An' thar ain't no
+one, hardly, thar! Fust one in gits it all.'
+
+"I tried to reason with him. So did Mother, but it weren't no manner
+o' use. A week later, we was gone."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought he'd have found much on the Kootenay," said
+Owens reflectively, "it's all vein mining there. That needs heavy
+crushing machinery."
+
+"Not all," Jim corrected. "There's some glacial gravel there an' we
+washed out enough to pay our way. But Father wanted something bigger.
+
+"We struck out from West Kootenay an' hit the trail for Six Mile
+Creek, near Kicking Horse Pass, in Upper East Kootenay. We stayed
+there a while, but some one, who had a grudge agin the Mormons, pulled
+his gun on Father. A 'forty-niner' ain't apt to be lazy on the shoot,
+an' Father's gun spit first. We didn't wait for the funeral, but moved
+on, an' lively, at that, strikin' for the Fraser."
+
+"Good thing for you the N. W. M. P. (North West Mounted Police),
+didn't strike your trail!" commented Owens.
+
+"It was a straight-enough deal," protested Jim, "an' the N. W.'s ha'
+got plenty o' sense. But that wasn't no reason for hangin' around,
+lookin' for trouble. We thought the Fraser'd be healthier. As it
+turned out, it wasn't.
+
+"The Fraser boom was dead. The shacks in the ol' minin' camps was
+rottin' to ruin. The machinery--what little there was of it--was lyin'
+there, rustin'. The sluices had all fallen to bits, except on Hop
+Rabbit Creek. A couple o' hundred men was there still, workin' over
+the tailin's, but they was all Chinamen. Up the creek a ways some o'
+them was pannin'.
+
+"Second day we was there, a big Chink comes up to me, an' says, very
+quiet like,
+
+"'You plenty sabbee? Run away quick!'
+
+"It didn't look that way to me, for I don't take to orderin'. I was
+good an' ready to drop that Chink in his tracks, but I did a little
+thinkin' first. Two hundred agin two is big odds. I nodded, an' the
+big Chink turns away.
+
+"I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was that
+stubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the whole
+camp. He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' got
+himself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jest
+told him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike on
+the Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was off
+in an hour."
+
+"But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimed
+Clem.
+
+"If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' do
+what he's told. But in a boom camp that white folks have given up an'
+quit, if Johnny Chink comes in, he won't let nary a white come back. I
+know! One o' my pardners was in the massacre o' Happy Man Gulch in
+'87. That's a yarn worth hearin'! I'll tell it you, some time.
+
+"Out we trailed to the Cassiar, an', funny enough, though I'd only
+been bluffin' to Father about the strike there, we landed on the pay
+gravel the very day after French Pete had struck a pocket. He was a
+good prospector, was French Pete, an' knew more'n most, but he was
+timid like, an' glad to have us there. He could handle Indians--he was
+a half-breed himself--but he was that superstitious, he was afraid o'
+the dark, alone. He was religious, too, an' Father an' him got along
+together famous. We staked out a claim, right next to his, an', for a
+few weeks, cleaned up a good fifty dollars a day.
+
+"Then, one fine mornin', a bunch o' redskins come down, friends o'
+French Pete. They palavered some, an', after a while, French Pete he
+comes over to us an' says:
+
+"'We got three days to get out!'
+
+"Father he put up an awful howl an' was for plugging the redskins full
+o' holes, pronto. But French Pete puts it to him that these Injuns was
+his friends, an' shootin' wouldn't go. There'd been some kind o' deal
+between this tribe an' the Chilkoots, an' every miner on the Divide
+knew more'n plenty about the Chilkoots. They'd tortured to death
+Georgie Holt, the first prospector that ever went over the Chilkoot
+Pass, an' more'n one miner that got into their country wasn't never
+heard of no more.
+
+"So Father puts it up to French Pete where he's goin' next. French
+Pete is a good pardner, an' tells a queer tale, but he tells it
+straight. He allows there's gold on the islands off the coast an'
+shows the lay.
+
+"Some years afore, so he says, Joe Juneau, an old-time Hudson Bay
+trapper, an' Dick Harris, one o' the forty-niners, had found color on
+Gold Creek, near the coast, an' had made a pile. Juneau went on
+prospectin', though he was rich, an', havin' a generous streak,
+grub-staked any man what asked him. That way he got a big share in the
+placers found on Silver Bow and doubled his pile. Some other
+prospectors what he'd grub-staked reported havin' found gold on the
+islands, but nothin' extraordinary. Harris, havin' a business head,
+stuck around Gold Creek (the present town of Juneau was formerly
+called Harrisburg) an' got rich a-plenty. Juneau an' Harris had more'n
+enough to look after, an' never got over to the islands.
+
+"French Pete, he's an old friend of Juneau an' he knows about this
+island game. He reckons it'd be worth pannin'. There's sure-enough
+gold up thar to pay for the workin', an' there might be a chance for a
+big haul, seein' no one is prospectin' thar. He offers to show Father
+where the placers are supposed to be, if he's willin' to come along.
+Father likes to stick by his pardner an' agrees.
+
+"From Cassiar we hoofed it back to Juneau--a long an' a hard
+trail--an', after buyin' a small sailboat an' grub enough for three
+months, we struck out for Douglas Island. French Pete handled that
+boat like a cowboy does a buckin' bronc. We was green wi' scare in
+that wild sea, full o' chunks o' ice clashin' all around, but the old
+trapper never turns a hair. Presently we landed on a beach which
+looked like it was a seal rookery, once, an' works our way to where a
+good-sized creek comes plungin' down to the sea.
+
+"Juneau had it right. The sands along the creek were full o' color,
+but the dust was small an' it was slow pannin'. It was all we could do
+to make fourteen dollars a day in dust, workin' fourteen hours a day,
+maybe; poor pickin's for a spot costin' so much cash an' trouble to
+get to.
+
+"French Pete, though, had plenty o' savvy. From the lie o' the rock,
+he reckoned this thin placer gold must ha' been washed out o' the
+little mountain what sticks up in one corner o' the island. He let his
+placer claim go for a while and prospected for ore. At last he found
+what he thought looked like the best spot. The ore was poor in color,
+but so soft an' rotten that it could be smashed into dust with a
+hammer, an' the gold--what little there was of it--separated out easy.
+
+"We all staked out half-a-dozen claims, doin' enough work on each to
+hold title. Since French Pete had brought us to the island, an' shown
+the rock besides, Father an' I promised to give him a quarter o'
+whatever we got for our claims, if we ever sold 'em.
+
+"Off went French Pete in the sail-boat, leavin' us marooned on Douglas
+Island, an' in a pickle of a mess supposin' he shouldn't return! But
+he come back, sure enough, after about six weeks, havin' found John
+Treadwell, a minin' man, who undertakes to buy our claims if Juneau,
+after havin' looked 'em over, says they're all right.
+
+"Juneau an' Treadwell come, a couple o' days after, wi' one o' these
+up-to-date engineer Johnnies. The ore's low-grade, but there's head
+enough in the creek to run stamp mills by water-power, which makes
+cheap crushin'. Treadwell pays French Pete $15,000 for his claims an'
+Father an' me $10,000 apiece. Then he buys up the rest o' the island
+for next to nothin'. The Treadwell mine's a big un, now, workin' 540
+stamp mills, an', as Mr. Owens says, it's makin' millions out o' low
+grade ore.
+
+"Father had promised Mother, as soon as he got $10,000 clear, he'd go
+back home. She holds him to it. After payin' French Pete what we
+promised, there's $10,000 for Father an' $5,000 for me, besides what
+was left from the Cassiar an' Douglas Island placer clean-ups. Father
+an' Mother went back to Utah, leavin' me wi' French Pete an'
+Treadwell.
+
+"But Father couldn't stand it long. While he was prospectin', all
+hours, all weathers, he was tough an' strong. Back in town, he begun
+to pine. In less'n a year he was dead. Mother didn't live long after
+him. That lef' me on my own hook. Douglas Island was too slow, though
+Treadwell offered me a good job as long's I cared to stick it out. But
+I wanted to be off an' away, feelin' sure, some day, I'd make my big
+strike.
+
+"I was foot-loose, now, wi' five thousand in dust an' the whole world
+to roam in. Where was I goin' to find the place where the sands was
+nothin' but gold? Somewheres, I was sure! Some day I'd strike it rich
+an' never have to work no more. Out in the wild beyond, where no one
+else was, millions was waitin' for me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ROARING NORTH
+
+
+"I was young an' tough in them days an' liked to buck agin hard goin'.
+If gold was gettin' scarce where folks was, it was plenty an' free in
+the lands that folks didn't dare go to. Naturally enough, I begun to
+think o' the Chilkoot country.
+
+"Ever since Georgie Holt had been tortured to death in a Chilkoot
+Indian camp, prospectors had been leery o' that huntin' ground. But
+French Pete had heard from a pard o' Juneau's that Dumb MacMillan had
+got over the Chilkoot an' struck it rich on what he called Dumb Creek,
+runnin' into the Tanana. He'd come back an' cashed his dust, blowed it
+in on one wild spree, an' gone over the Pass again. He hadn't never
+been heard of no more.
+
+"Since his second trip, though, the Canadian Government had got a
+strangle-hold on the Chilkoots an' was makin' 'em behave. It had
+forced 'em to make peace wi' the Stick Indians o' the interior, an'
+thrown the fear o' the whites into 'em good an' plenty. So I wasn't
+worryin' over Injuns none. The Chilkoot Pass, though, was said to be
+something awful to cross, but that wasn't goin' to stop me, when I
+knew there was good goin' on the other side an' all the creeks full o'
+gold.
+
+"So I quit Treadwell an' French Pete an' got back to Juneau. There, I
+heard that a bunch o' prospectors led by the Schiefflin Brothers had
+taken a steamboat, got as far as St. Michael, gone up the Yukon,
+wintered at Nuklukayet an' found gold all the way. They'd struck good
+placers on Mynook, Hess an' Shevlin Creeks, but the Schiefflins found
+the ground always frozen an' terrible hard to work, an' the summer was
+so short they figured pannin' on the Yukon wouldn't pay.
+
+"Think o' that, will you! The Klondyke an' the Eldorado wouldn't pay!
+
+"That same summer, we heard that there was new gold strikes on the
+Lewes an' Big Salmon Rivers, which run into the Upper Yukon. Dumb
+MacMillan had found payin' color on the Tanana, flowin' into the
+Middle Yukon. The Schiefflins had located plenty o' placers on the
+Lower Yukon.
+
+"It didn't take much figurin' to guess that there was gold all the
+way along. I made up my mind to strike over the Chilkoot into the
+Stewart River section, jest about unknown then; preparin', durin' the
+winter, for an early start.
+
+"Early in the spring o' '84, eight of us was ready. We had a
+sure-enough outfit an' plenty o' grub. We was well fixed for
+shootin'-irons, too, for we was goin' up into hostile Injun country.
+
+"Joe Juneau, who knew a lot about the mountains, tried to head us off,
+tellin' what happened to Holt an' MacMillan, but we was sot on goin',
+an' struck out for Dyea along the canal trail. There we headed for the
+interior.
+
+"I've seen some rough goin' in my time, an' I come of a stock o' tough
+uns, but, I'm tellin' you, that first trip over the Chilkoot Pass was
+more'n horrible. I dream about it, yet--an' it's over thirty years
+ago!
+
+"From Dyea to Sheep Camp was bad enough goin', half-frozen muskeg
+(mucky swamp), lyin' under soft snow an' all covered with a tangle o'
+thorn-vines climbin' over spraggly berry-bushes. There warn't no
+trail. It was cut your way, an' drag! We didn't have no dogs, but
+lugged the sleighs ourselves. It's only nine miles as the crow flies,
+but it took us four days to make it, with our loads.
+
+"An' then the Chilkoot Pass stuck up in front of us, all black rock
+an' white snow, reachin' to the sky, an' clouds hidin' the top. It
+seemed like it was a-defyin' of us, well-nigh impossible.
+
+"We'd ha' gone back, sure, but we knew two men had climbed it a'ready,
+Georgie Holt in '72, and Dumb MacMillan, in '80. What they'd done, we
+reckoned we could do.
+
+"Sheer rock, she was, all slick an' icy, to begin with; above that,
+stretches o' snow-fields on so steep a slope that a false step meant a
+snow-slide an' good-bye! crevasses in the snow goin' down below all
+knowin', an' mostly covered over wi' light snow so's you couldn't see
+'em; an', near the top, a pile o' loose an' shaky rocks built up like
+a wall, straight as the side of a house, an', in some spots, leanin'
+over. That was the Chilkoot Pass!
+
+"The cold was cruel; a steady wind, nigh to a blizzard, sucked through
+the Pass continooal, tearin' a man from his footin.' There was no
+shelter, an' high up, no fire-wood.
+
+"There was no trail, neither! We had to go it, blind. An', up that
+rock, over them snow-fields, across them crevasses, an', fly-like,
+crawling up that wall o' bowlders, we had to drag our dunnage! The
+sleighs had to be pulled up, empty. Our sacks o' flour had to be toted
+on our backs! An' our bacon an' groceries, enough to last us months!
+An' our tools an' cradles! I made five trips to get my stuff
+across--an it took me five weeks. Between whiles, I rested, if lyin'
+exhausted means rest!
+
+"There was eight of us that started. There was only three when the
+stuff was on the summit o' the pass! Two had been crushed by fallin'
+rocks. The other three had all disappeared sudden in a crevasse, what
+they thought was solid snow givin' down under 'em. Only Red Bill, Bull
+Evans an' me was left.
+
+"Mind, there was no trail an' no guide! Holt had been over years
+before, but the Indians killed him. Dumb MacMillan went over it twice,
+an' never was heard of no more. Me an' my pardners was the third, an',
+as I was sayin', o' the eight that started, only three got to the
+top."
+
+"Yet how many thousands climbed that Pass after gold had been struck
+on the Klondyke?" queried Owens.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE TOP OF THE CHILKOOT PASS.
+
+The neck to the Klondyke as it appeared in April, 1898, during the
+height of the stampede.
+
+_From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams._
+
+_Copyright, 1898, by S. A. Hegg._]
+
+
+[Illustration: PASS IN THE SIERRA NEVADAS OF CALIFORNIA.]
+
+
+"Thirty thousand an' more, so folks said. Two thousand o' them,
+though, died in tryin'. An' they had Injun an' half-breed porters to
+tote their dunnage, too! The trail was marked for them. In the last
+years o' the big rush, there was an aerial tramway to take up the
+stuff. It wasn't like that in my day. We tackled it on our own.
+
+"When we reached the top, the trouble wasn't over neither. 'Tother
+side was rough an' dangerous, all loose rock an' mighty little snow.
+We loaded the sleighs an' let 'em down by jerks, all three men hangin'
+on to the drag-ropes. But we made the bottom, safe, an' started off
+again. No trail, no map, no nothin'! We jest pushed on, blind, three
+white men in a country o' hostile Injuns huntin' for a river which we
+didn't even know where it was.
+
+"Followin' a small creek an' pannin' now an' agin--though not findin'
+any color--we came at last to Crater Lake an' then on to Lindeman, an'
+final, to Lake Bennett. Here, we'd heard before leavin', the Yukon
+River begun, an' we started to go round the lake, so's to strike the
+bank o' the river.
+
+"It couldn't be done. Muskeg an' thick forest run clear down to the
+shore o' the lake, an' a b'ar couldn't ha' pushed his way through.
+Small creeks shot out every which way. Sleighs were worse'n useless.
+
+"There warn't nothin' to be done but build a boat, an' nary one o' the
+three of us knew the fust durn thing about boat-buildin'. But we put
+together a kind of a log-raft, that floated, anyway, put the dunnage
+aboard it, an' drifted down the lake. This was easy goin', for a
+while.
+
+"All of a sudden, a swift current took us, the lake narrowed into a
+river, an', afore we had a chance to pole our heavy an' clumsy raft to
+the bank, we was shootin' wi' sickenin' speed down white water. It was
+Grand Canyon Rapids, a mile long! Half-way through, the raft struck a
+rock an' went to bits, the logs bustin' free. I grabbed one an' went
+spinnin' down the rapids. I must ha' hit my head on a snag, for I
+don't remember no more till I woke up to find myself on the bank, an'
+Bull Evans leanin' over me.
+
+"'What's the worst, Bull?' I asks, as soon as I realizes.
+
+"'Red Bill's gone,' he says, 'an' so's most o' the grub. The dunnage
+is scattered anywheres along a mile or two. We hoofs it from here. No
+more rafts in mine!'
+
+"An' a good thing we did hoof it, too. If we'd got through the Grand
+Canyon Rapids an' struck, unknowin', the White Horse Rapids--what they
+afterwards called the 'Miners' Grave'--nary a one o' the three of us
+would ha' come out alive.
+
+"As it was, bein' afoot, we broke away from what afterwards was the
+Klondyke Trail, an', instead of striking across Lake Labarge, kep'
+between it an' Lake Kluane, strikin' some creeks leadin' into the
+White River. There, at last, after three months on the trail, we
+panned an' found color. We trailed on, pannin' as we went, cleanin' up
+pretty fair, an' final, struck some placers on the Stewart River. The
+Injuns was peaceful an' we could get grub from a half-breed tradin'
+store near old Fort Selkirk. We wintered there."
+
+"That was in '85?" Owens queried.
+
+"Winter o' '85 an' spring o' '86."
+
+"Then you must have been right on hand for the great strike on
+Forty-Mile?"
+
+"We sure was."
+
+"But, man, you should have made a fortune, there!"
+
+"I did!" came Jim's laconic answer.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I made a hundred thousand dollars in three months."
+
+"What happened to it, then?"
+
+"That," said the old prospector, leaning back, and looking at his two
+hearers, "is a wild an' woolly yarn! Do you want to hear it, or do I
+go on to the findin' o' that ore you've got in your hand?"
+
+"Oh, tell the yarn, Jim!" pleaded Clem, who was less interested in
+Jim's strike than was the mine-owner. Owens nodded assent.
+
+"Pannin' gold," Jim began, "is pretty much the same all over. One
+minin' camp is a good deal like another, though Forty-Mile was the
+cleanest an' straightest camp I ever struck. I could spin a good many
+yarns o' Forty-Mile an' near-by camps, but I'll leave 'em to another
+time an' tell you how it was I got poor, again, all in a hurry.
+
+"With a bunch o' buckskin bags holdin' a hundred thousand dollars in
+the coarse nuggety gold o' Forty-Mile, I was good an' ready to take
+the back trail. I thought maybe I'd get back again next spring, for
+I'd become a sure-enough 'sour-dough' (old-timer of the northern
+gold-fields, so-called from camp bread). But I wanted to eat heavy
+an' lie soft for a while. I'd spend one winter in 'Frisco, any way,
+an' have a run for my money.
+
+"The more I thought of it, the less I liked the notion o' goin' back
+over the Chilkoot Pass. Savin' for the first climb, the out trail was
+worse'n the in. All the rapids'd have to be portaged.
+
+"What was more, the news o' the Forty-Mile strike had reached the
+outside, an' the human buzzards was a-flockin' in. The Canadian
+authorities held the camps in a tight grip, but the trail was a
+No-Man's-Land. A sour-dough comin' out from a strike stood a good
+chance o' bein' plugged for his gold an' no one the wiser.
+
+"A few weeks after the Forty-Mile strike, a rich placer had been
+located at Circle, a hundred miles lower down on the Yukon an' across
+the Alaskan Boundary jest above where Circle City is now. Nothin' was
+easier'n to buy a small row-boat an' float down the Yukon to Circle.
+The rapids wasn't worth speakin' about. At Circle we'd take the river
+craft runnin' to Fort Yukon, an' then ship on board the steamer for
+St. Michael, Skagway an' 'Frisco.
+
+"No weary miles o' hoofin' it on the trail, no portages, no work, jest
+sit in a boat an' take it easy! That hundred thousand made me feel too
+lazy to move.
+
+"We got the boat, bein' willin' to pay whatever fancy price was asked.
+While she was still tied up at Forty-Mile, one o' the North West
+Mounted Police come up an' asked us where we was headin'. We told him.
+He wanted to know how many were goin'. There was my pardner, Bull
+Evans, me, an' four more. He shakes his head.
+
+"'That's about twenty too few,' says he. 'Are you takin' the dust
+along?'
+
+"'Right with us, Johnny,' says we.
+
+"'You've got more gold'n you have sense,' he comes back, cheerfully.
+'Better wait a month or so. We're goin' to convoy a party through the
+White Pass to Skagway, takin' the express an' the bank gold, an' you
+can come along, safe.'
+
+"'It's too long a trail for millionaires,' says we.
+
+"'A dead millionaire ain't worth much,' he says. 'You'll have your
+bones picked clean by the crows if you get across the border that
+a-way. Alaska ain't the Dominion, not by a long shot.'
+
+"That hit us wrong. We thought he was jest bluffin', tryin' to make
+out that Canada was the only country that could run things right. Most
+of us was from the U. S., an' we grouched at his pokin' in.
+
+"'Law an' order's as good 'tother side o' the line as it is here!'
+says Bull.
+
+"'Have it your own way! I'll send the patrol boat with you as far as
+the border. I can't do no more.'
+
+"We didn't want the patrol, but he sent it, any way, an' we started
+out.
+
+"'Last chance!' he yells, when the border's reached, 'better come
+back!'
+
+"'We ain't quitters!' Bull shouts back, an' on we go, six of us, an'
+close on to half a million dollars in dust among the lot. Every man
+had a rifle, a six-shooter, an' plenty o' ammunition. All was
+old-timers an' quick on the shoot. We reckoned we could take care of
+ourselves, good an' plenty. Any way, we weren't goin' to land
+anywheres until we struck Circle, so there wouldn't be no danger.
+
+"We hadn't got more'n ten miles the other side o' the line, jest
+beyond the little minin' camp of Eagle, when of a sudden:
+
+"'Spat!'
+
+"A bullet strikes the boat, right at the water line, an' she begins to
+leak.
+
+"It was pretty shootin', an' every man reaches for his gun. There's a
+curl o' smoke driftin' up from a pile o' rock, but no one shoots,
+knowin' well the marksman's under cover. We trims the boat, to keep
+the hole out o' water, and then:
+
+"'Spat! Spat!'
+
+"One on each side. We stuffs some bits o' rag in the holes, but the
+boat begins to fill. One side o' the river's sheer rock, an' there
+ain't no landin' there. Cussin' free, an' every man wi' his rifle
+ready, we beaches the boat on the other shore an' gets out, ready for
+the scrap.
+
+"Then some one starts to talk, over our heads, hidden in the rocks:
+
+"'Gents, I'm sure sorry to stop your trip! There's twenty of us, an'
+each has his man covered. It ain't no use for you to make trouble.
+Them as is reasonable can leave their bags o' dust an' their pop-guns
+on the beach, an' walk off fifty paces to the left. Them as wants to
+show their shootin' can wait jest two minutes by the watch, an' the
+fun'll begin, us havin' the pick o' the shots an' bein' under cover.
+The cards is stacked agin you, gents, an' there ain't no use to
+play.'
+
+"We all shoots back, o' course, more to relieve our feelin's'n
+anything else, for we knows this new-style road-agent has dodged back
+to cover.
+
+"Me an' four others, we don't hesitate. We lays our bags o' dust an'
+our guns on the beach an' toddles off, as directed. Then I looks back
+an' sees Bull standin' there, alone.
+
+"He's a durn fool an' I knows it. But he's my pardner, is Bull!
+
+"I goes back an' tries to persuade him to eat crow. But Bull's
+stubborn as a mule an' don't budge. I ain't a-goin' to leave him. So
+we both stands there.
+
+"The road-agent has been takin' this in, an' presently he pipes up:
+
+"'Very pretty, gents. Pardners is pardners and that's doin' it
+handsome. Put up your hands an' we won't shoot.'
+
+"For answer, Bull snaps his rifle to his shoulder an' fires.
+
+"A volley rings out, an' Bull drops dead, a dozen bullets through him.
+I wasn't two yards away, but not a shot touched me.
+
+"Then this road-agent, a tall thin galoot, heavily masked, comes down
+to where I'm standin' alone.
+
+"'It was a dirty bit o' shootin'!' says I, indignant.
+
+"'You've no cause to complain,' says he, 'nothin' hit you! I like your
+spunk in standin' by your pardner. He seems to ha' been a he-man, too,
+even if he was a fool. Had he any folks?'
+
+"'A baby girl back in Montana,' I tells him.
+
+"'I'm not robbin' babies,' he says to that. 'She gets my share o' the
+loot. I give my word. Do you know the address?'
+
+"I reaches down into Bull's coat, takes a letter from it what he'd
+written to his sister, what was lookin' after the kid, an' hands this
+bandit the envelope. He reads it, nods an' puts it in his pocket."
+
+"Did he ever send the money?" suddenly interrupted Owens.
+
+"He did. I heard, years after, that the sister received thirty
+thousand dollars in cash, in a registered letter, sent from Skagway,
+an' in the envelope a slip o' paper 'From the Chief o' Circle.'"
+
+"What happened next, Jim?" queried Clem, excitedly.
+
+"What, after I'd given the galoot the envelope? He makes a sign an'
+half a dozen o' his gang comes down out o' the rocks where they've
+been hidin'. They gather up the guns an' the bags o' dust lyin' on the
+beach, while some more o' them goes over an' searches the other four
+men.
+
+"'What's the next turn?' I asks the chief.
+
+"'I don't do things in a small way,' he says. 'Your nerve's good. For
+bein' willin' to stand by your pardner, when the rest run like
+rabbits. I'll leave you five thousand in dust, an' see you get back to
+the border. Unless you want to join our band?'
+
+"'I don't!' I answers, snappy like.
+
+"But he was as good as his word. He weighs out an' hands over the
+dust, an' two of the gang takes me back to the line. There they gives
+me back my shootin'-irons, though, o' course without any ammunition.
+Next day I'm back in Forty-Mile."
+
+"And the other four men?" queried Owens.
+
+"Two joined the gang, an' later, started to get funny on the Canadian
+side. A Vigilance committee strung 'em up. The other two turned up at
+Circle City and I never heard no more about 'em.
+
+"I staked out another claim--though there wasn't much to choose from,
+then--an' begins to pan again. But the luck had turned, an' I didn't
+strike nothin' rich.
+
+"I stayed at Forty-Mile that winter, buildin' fires at night on the
+frozen dirt to thaw it, an', next day, shovelin' an' haulin' it up to
+the top o' my little shaft on the windlass I'd made myself. The pile
+o' pay dirt had to be left till the spring thaws for cleanin' up.
+
+"Ten years I stayed inside, goin' from one placer on the Yukon to
+another, makin' a livin', an' that's about all. Now an' again, when I
+gets a bit ahead, I sends a bag o' dust to Bull's little gal.
+
+"In '98, I joins the rush to Nome, an' there's a roarin' wild town!
+But luck ain't runnin' my way. Like the rest, I starts to wash the
+sand o' the sea-beach, the last place a prospector'd ever look. I
+clean up thirty a day, maybe, jest enough to keep goin'. I'm no
+richer'n no poorer'n I was ten years afore, but I got Bull's little
+gal to work for, an' that keeps me pluggin'.
+
+"Then, sudden, I gets a letter from the gal, enclosin' a note she's
+received. It's short:
+
+"'Rich pay gravel here.' It's signed with a circle, an' a cross. On
+the back, there's a map.
+
+"I figures this is the Road-Agent o' Circle, an' he's dyin' an' wants
+to make restitootion. It's my dooty to Bull's little gal to go an'
+find the place. I've jest about money enough to go there, an' the lay
+is right. There's a bank of pay gravel more'n two miles long, an' a
+hundred feet deep, maybe more. It's frozen, summer'n' winter, an' too
+hard for thawin' with wood fires."
+
+Jim halted for emphasis and looked keenly at the mine-owner.
+
+"I was thawin' it out wi' coal, when I was there," he said, slowly,
+"soft, smudgy coal, brown an' sticky-like."
+
+"What!" cried Owens in amazement. "Lignite coal?"
+
+"Not a mile away from the gravel."
+
+"But why, man--?" Owens stopped.
+
+"A bunch o' Russian seal-poachers come up an' chased me off, sayin' it
+was Russian territory. I believed 'em, at first. I didn't say nothin'
+about the gold, but made believe I was huntin' coal. But that lignite,
+as you call it, was so sure low-grade that they jest laughed at me.
+
+"It ain't in Russian territory. It's in the United States, I've found
+out that much. But minin' men don't take much stock in what I tell
+'em, an' coal men say it's too long a haul. But a man wi' money what
+knows coal an' knows gold, an' could do some steam thawin' an'
+hydraulickin' would make good."
+
+Owens looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"It's a wild and woolly yarn, all right," he said, "and it sounds like
+a story from a book, with the hold-up, and the girl and the idea of
+restitution, and the treasure-map and all the rest of it. You haven't
+any proof?"
+
+"Nothin' but what I've told you--an' the map. My pardner's got to take
+my say-so."
+
+"You say you wrote frequently to Bull Evans' daughter?"
+
+"Once a season--sometimes twice. Whenever I could get some money
+through."
+
+"She will have kept those letters, certainly," the mine-owner mused,
+"and the payments through the Express Company will be easy to trace.
+Where does the girl live?"
+
+"In Pittsburgh, now, with her aunt."
+
+"If I guarantee to advance two hundred thousand, when satisfied that
+your story is straight, will you produce the map and come along,
+yourself?"
+
+Jim looked him over.
+
+"I'll trust you more'n you're willin' to trust me," he said, and took
+a thin slip of paper from the buckskin tube out of which he had shaken
+the gold dust the day before. "Here's the map. It's an island due
+north o' the Diomede Islands in the Behring Sea. The Eskimos call it
+Chuklook. There's quartz gold on Ingalook, too. But mind, one-third o'
+what you pay for the claim belongs to Bull's little gal."
+
+"Agreed!" declared Owens. "You trust me an' I'll trust you. The
+letters an' the express records, being as you say, I'll go in."
+
+"Clem bein' a pardner!" Jim insisted.
+
+"Clem being a partner, sure!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE LONELY ISLAND
+
+
+The little _Bunting_, brigantine-rigged, and, yacht-fashion,
+possessing an auxiliary screw, plowed the waters of Behring Sea.
+
+Jim, with Clem and Anton beside him, stood on the foc's'le head,
+gazing into the foggy distance. Owens was on the poop, with the owner
+of the tiny yacht, who was a personal friend, and moodily scanned the
+horizon. Otto, utterly disregarding the universal sea injunction:
+"Don't Talk to the Man at the Wheel!" stayed at the stern and
+exchanged occasional sentences with the helmsman.
+
+There were, also, two other passengers on board, both down in the
+cabin. One was a grizzled giant, the other was a young woman, some 25
+years of age. The first was a half-brother of Joe Juneau, and was
+known throughout the Far North as "The Arctic Wizard" from his uncanny
+knowledge of Alaskan mining deposits, and his ability as a mining
+engineer in overcoming the peculiar difficulties of frozen ground and
+of maintaining machinery in working order under the most rigorous
+conditions of weather. The second was "Bull's little gal," more
+properly known as Jameine Evans, herself a graduate of the Pittsburgh
+School of Mines.
+
+With the money that had been sent her, when a baby, by the Road-Agent
+of Circle, and with the additional sums forwarded from time to time by
+Jim, Jameine (so christened as a namesake of the old prospector) had
+been able to pay her way through school and college and had taken a
+mining course besides.
+
+This specialized education had been her plan of gratitude. Only by
+making herself efficient in a kindred field, she felt, could she ever
+be a real "pardner" to Jim; only thus could she repay, in some
+measure, the generosity of the old prospector. She had long realized
+the unselfishness of the man who had stayed winter after winter in the
+frozen North, denying himself the rude pleasures of a mining camp in
+order to help "Bull's little gal."
+
+Ever since Jim had made his famous strike, as a result of the map
+which had been sent to her by her father's murderer, Jameine had
+regarded herself as the heiress of a dream mine, but a dream which
+might, some day, come true. For her own sake, as well as Jim's, she
+had read and studied as much as she could of Alaskan conditions.
+
+It was she who finally disclosed to Jim that the Russian seal-poachers
+were probably at fault in chasing him from his strike, and only wanted
+to get rid of the inconvenient witness. Thus she had reawakened the
+prospector's lagging interest in his find, but lacking the large store
+of capital necessary to exploit the mine, she could do nothing. Jim
+had used up all his savings in going from town to town trying to
+interest a big investor and had finally entered Owens' coal mine in
+order to get a little stake again.
+
+Wizard Juneau was amazed at the extent of mining knowledge shown by
+this girl shipmate, and he had spent the greater part of the voyage
+from Sitka in imparting to her some of the secrets distilled from his
+long experience in frozen mining. He had brought on board the
+_Bunting_ many of the publications of the U. S. Geological Survey, and
+of the Bureau of Mines, annotated by himself. He had brought, also, a
+number of crude maps of half-explored territory, either drawn by his
+own hand or by old prospectors, which maps and charts were among his
+most prized possessions.
+
+"Some of these," he explained, "were made by Alf Brooks,[8] one of the
+nerviest explorers that the U. S. ever sent out. I've been with him on
+more than one reconnoissance survey. And some were made by experts on
+the U. S. Revenue Cutter _Bear_.[9] I sailed on her two seasons."
+
+[Footnote 8: For the Alaskan explorations of Brooks ("Rivers") see the
+author's "The Boy with the U. S. Survey."]
+
+[Footnote 9: For the Behring Sea work of the _Bear_, see the author's
+"The Boy with the U. S. Lifesavers."]
+
+"And do you think, Mr. Juneau, that this island of Uncle Jim's is on
+the American side of the line?"
+
+The "Wizard" pursed his lips with an expression of doubt.
+
+"It's a toss of the dice," he said. "Ingalook, the easternmost of the
+Diomede Islands, where Jim found that piece of gold-bearing quartz, is
+sure American territory. I don't take kindly to Ingalook, though.
+There'd be trouble, there, in trying to install proper mining and
+crushing devices. There's no landing place on that isolated granite
+dome standing forlornly out of the sea, except for seals, polar bears,
+or crazy prospectors like Jim, there.
+
+"But this Chukalook Bank of the Road Agent's map, where the pay gravel
+and the lignite coal lie--supposing that it's the same as this little
+unnamed dot marked on the charts--seems to be right on the
+international boundary line. We'll have to wait until we get there to
+make accurate observations."
+
+"Can you do that, too, Mr. Juneau?"
+
+"Me? No! I can take a sight of course, but not accurate enough where
+it's a matter of minutes or even seconds of a degree. But Captain
+Robertson can. Like many of these amateur yachtsmen, he's a better
+navigator than the captain of some Atlantic liners. It's his hobby.
+Besides, he's got instruments of precision aboard that an admiral
+would envy. What's more, he's a certificated man, and his say-so on a
+nautical observation of longitude would be legal in the courts. Mine
+wouldn't."
+
+"And suppose the island should prove to be on the Russian side?"
+
+"Then, young lady, you'll have to turn Russian!"
+
+"What nonsense! You know I wouldn't. No, but speaking seriously?"
+
+"Well, seriously, then, you'd have to buy the island from the
+Bolsheviks, or from the Eastern Siberian Republic, or from the
+Japanese, or whoever happens to be claiming it. International rights
+up in the Asiatic Arctic are badly mixed up, these days. And that
+wouldn't be the worst of it. You'd have to pay stiff royalties and you
+wouldn't be sure of any sort of protection--unless it was the
+Japanese."
+
+"We'll buy it, if we have to!" declared Jameine decidedly. "I'm not
+going to have anything happen that will spoil Uncle Jim's strike!"
+
+"He's a regular dad to you, Miss Evans, eh?"
+
+"He's the only one I ever remember," the girl replied. "My real father
+went up to Skagway, just a few weeks after I was born, only having
+stayed down in Montana long enough to see me. And, as you know, Mr.
+Juneau, he went over the Chilkoot Pass with Uncle Jim and never came
+back any more. Mother died when I was quite small. I know Uncle Jim
+feels that 'Bull's little gal' is his own. I feel so, too!"
+
+The grizzled mining engineer patted the hand with which the girl was
+holding open the chart.
+
+"Don't ye worry," he said, kindly, "we'll make good. We'll bluff any
+one that comes to Chukalook--supposing we find it--long enough to get
+the best o' the pay gravel. If that don't do the trick, we'll fight.
+
+"And there's another thing. If Chukalook doesn't pan out, there's the
+quartz at Ingalook. I've never seen the gold deposit yet--no matter
+how poor--that I couldn't turn into money, so long as I could get
+enough capital behind me to exploit it."
+
+"Mr. Owens will give that," asserted Jameine confidently.
+
+The "Wizard" shook a warning finger.
+
+"Not just for sentiment, he won't," he said, "not if I read him right.
+He's generous enough, and he'd see that you and Jim didn't suffer. But
+he's too keen a business man to invest his money unless he sees a fair
+chance of return. We've got to show him!"
+
+"He certainly doesn't seem as enthusiastic about it now, as he did
+when we started," Jameine agreed, thoughtfully.
+
+"That's natural enough! Don't ye forget he's an Australian, and all
+the gold fields he's ever seen, there, and in South Africa, were in
+hot desert country. These waters don't look promising to him!"
+
+The "Wizard" was right. Owens was scanning the slate-gray water
+flecked with foam and the sky of dripping fog with equal distrust and
+dislike. The pieces of ice-floe bobbing in the choppy current inspired
+him with uneasiness, even with fear. The assurances of his friend, the
+yachtsman, gave him no confidence.
+
+Had it been possible, he would have been heartily glad to back out of
+his agreement, but there was no way he could do it with honor. He had
+sought out Jameine in Pittsburgh, had seen Jim's letters, and had
+checked up the Express Company's receipts of gold forwarded by the old
+prospector from the mining camps of Forty-Mile, of Circle, of Juneau,
+of Klondyke, of Dawson City and of Nome. Jameine's hopeful spirit and
+her determination to make good on Jim's strike had been infectious.
+Owens had set out, almost gaily. But this grim, inhospitable sea put a
+damper on his spirits.
+
+"Doesn't the sun ever shine here, Jack?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Not often," was the yachtsman's cheerful answer. "That's why the fur
+seals love it. Why, bless you, on Pribilof Islands, where the seal
+rockeries lie, there aren't twenty days of sunshine in a year. I know
+these waters. I came hunting sea-otter once. We ran two summer months
+without seeing the sun."
+
+"It's no place for me!" declared the mine-owner. "Those who like the
+sea can have it, and be welcome!"
+
+The yachtsman bridled. He loved the sea.
+
+"Open your nostrils, man, and sniff; that's pure air, at least. It
+isn't like what I smelt last time I visited your dirty old coal mine!"
+he retorted. "Every dog to its own kennel, Owens! After all, you
+wanted to come here."
+
+Jim felt much the same way. Standing on the foc's'le head, the raw
+air, with its sudden hot spells when the sun gleamed dully through the
+fog, brought him welcome memories. It seemed homelike, after his brief
+experience in a coal mine. As he had said himself, he was a
+"sour-dough." The uncanny fascination that the Far North exerts on
+those who have once lived there, gripped him hard.
+
+"Ain't no crowd here to worry a man!" he declared, drawing in deep
+breaths, "an' there's room enough to stand straight! Would you want
+to go back to them coal galleries, Clem, four feet high an' stinkin'?"
+
+"They suited me all right before, Jim," the young fellow answered,
+"and I don't see why they shouldn't again. I got mightily interested
+in coal. Still, I needed a rest, and this trip is interesting, I'll
+allow. But wait till we get to the actual mining of the gold, and then
+I'll tell you which I like best."
+
+"An' you, Anton?"
+
+"I never want to go below ground again," the boy answered promptly.
+"But it must be awful cold here in winter--if this is summer!"
+
+"Ay, it's cold an' dark, no sun at all for two months. An' a man'll go
+hungry often. But it's free an' open an' no one has a boss! What's
+more, there's gold!"
+
+Anton shivered. The call of the North had not gripped him, yet.
+
+Otto, beside the helmsman, was worrying him--neither with the weather,
+nor with the question of treasure. To the first he was indifferent, to
+the second he was satisfied with drawing full pay every day and not
+doing any hewing for it. With huge delight, he was absorbing all the
+superstitions of the sea, and giving the steersman a gruesome crop of
+tales of knockers and gas sprites underground.
+
+There was no special reason why he should have come on the voyage,
+except that he had asked to come. Owing to Anton's hatred for coal
+mining--born of the entombment--Clem had used his position as Jim's
+"pardner" to bring the boy along. Otto, having taken what might be
+termed a paternal and prophetic interest in the imprisoned men, wanted
+to join the party.
+
+Owens made no objection. He knew laborers would be wanted, and he
+preferred men who would not be likely to betray the secret of the
+gold. He knew the miner's unswerving loyalty, and was well aware that
+loyalty is the one quality which is beyond all price.
+
+Towards the close of the afternoon, the _Bunting_ shortened sail. They
+were drawing near.
+
+Somewhere, not far from them, lay the Diomede Islands, those two great
+granite crags rising sheer out of the sea with deep water on every
+side. The lead would give no sign. There is no fog signal on the
+Diomedes. In such a thick and clammy mist as hung over the water, a
+ship could wreck herself upon those bleak coasts almost before she
+saw the surf under her bows. The wind was light, and the brigantine
+slid slowly over the water.
+
+The "Arctic Wizard," his eyes accustomed to the northern skies, was
+the first to see a faint purplish blotch in the swirling mist.
+
+"Land! Captain!" he warned, quickly. "Keep away! Keep well away!"
+
+Almost instantly, the booming of breakers was heard.
+
+Well was it for those on board that the _Bunting_ was quick on her
+helm! She bore off, just in time, the creaming surf not more than
+three cables' length ahead.
+
+"A little too close for my liking!" exclaimed the yachtsman, but
+treating the danger lightly. "That's Ingalook, I suppose, Mr. Juneau?"
+
+"Ingalook she is. At least, I think so. I've never been quite so
+close, before."
+
+"And I don't want to be, again! Well now, I suppose, the real treasure
+hunt begins."
+
+He called Jim.
+
+"How did you say Chukalook Bank bore from here?"
+
+"From Chukalook," Jim answered, "on a clear day, I could see this
+island two points east o' south, an' the other island, the Russian
+one, three points west o' south."
+
+The yachtsman looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"And there's no knowing what compass correction to allow for a pocket
+compass, and there's the magnetic variation besides. Well, we'll work
+it out! And how far away do you reckon the island was?"
+
+"I don't know nothin' about sea distances, Cap'n. She looked just
+about the size o' my thumb-nail."
+
+"So! How high was Chukalook Bank above the water?"
+
+"She goes up like a wedge o' cake, Cap'n. Maybe five hundred feet at
+the highest point. Where I was workin' wasn't more'n fifty foot above
+sea level."
+
+"Well," commented the yachtsman thoughtfully, "allowing for the
+curvature of the earth, and for low visibility on these seas that
+ought to make Chukalook about thirty or forty miles from here. We'll
+put on a little sail and cruise N. N. E. for a few hours."
+
+But the bank was nearer than Jim supposed.
+
+Shortly after dawn, a sailor posted in the cross-trees reported a
+flat berg to starboard. The sails were furled, and the _Bunting_ came
+up to it slowly under her auxiliary screw.
+
+Jim heard the engines and rushed up on deck.
+
+"That's Chukalook!" he cried, after the first look. "Now, who says I'm
+dreamin'? Wait till I tell Bull's little gal!"
+
+He had not long to wait.
+
+The sound of excited voices on deck had awakened the girl, and she
+dressed and came up hastily.
+
+"Jameine!" he shouted, as soon as she came up the companion ladder,
+"there's our gold!"
+
+The girl ran lightly across the deck and pressed the old prospector's
+arm.
+
+"I knew you'd find it, Uncle Jim," she rejoiced, "I said so, all
+along!" Then, turning to the mine-owner, who had also come on deck,
+she added, "There it is, Mr. Owens!"
+
+The Australian looked. That low flat bank, slowly sloping upwards,
+fringed with ice and deep in snow, was none too reassuring.
+
+"You're sure?" he asked suspiciously. "It looks to me a whole lot more
+like an iceberg than it does like a gold-field!"
+
+The "Wizard" interrupted, fearing lest Jim should make some rough
+rejoinder.
+
+"It looks like an easy landing-place and that's one good thing," he
+said, cheerfully. "The Captain, here, has been making soundings and
+says there is good holding ground."
+
+"That's all I will say, though," put in the yachtsman. "It's not a
+harbor. You're exposed here to every wind that blows!"
+
+"You mean I'd have to build a breakwater?" Owens queried.
+
+"Probably, if you want smooth water for handling cargoes. But I doubt
+if you could manage it. The winter ice would chew your breakwater all
+to bits. There's five months of open water, anyway, and the summer
+months are not so stormy."
+
+"I wouldn't try to build a breakwater!" Owens burst out. "How would I
+get men and materials up here?"
+
+The "Wizard" winked at Jim, who was growing restive.
+
+"Wait till we get Owens ashore and start on the gold," he whispered.
+"I've seen these backers get cold feet before, when they hit this
+northern country for the first time. They're the worst to hold back,
+often, after they once get going."
+
+But Jim was thoroughly dissatisfied. There was more than a little
+likelihood that the old prospector would make some scornful remark,
+for he was in his own land now, and had all a "sour-dough's" contempt
+for a "tenderfoot." But Jameine's hand was on his arm and he obeyed
+the warning pressure.
+
+The little motor-launch was lowered from the davits, with every member
+of the party aboard. None of the sailors was taken, for Jim did not
+want to run any risk of strangers taking up claims. The "Wizard" ran
+the engine, and the yachtsman took the helm.
+
+One piece of mechanism, small but very heavy, was lowered into the
+boat. It sank her low in the water, but it belonged to the "Wizard"
+and he was not the kind of man whose acts any one would question.
+Picks, shovels, sledge-hammers, wedges, and dynamite were included in
+the cargo. Thus heavily loaded, the boat reached the shore, Jim
+pointing out the landing-place. It was not so easy to land as the
+Wizard had suggested. It was necessary to wade through the sponge-ice,
+churned up the shore, Jameine being carried in the huge arms of the,
+"Wizard."
+
+The snow on the island was almost knee-deep, but, except Owens, none
+of the party minded. Jameine was the gayest of all.
+
+"Lead on to the millions, Uncle Jim!" she cried.
+
+But the old prospector made the girl take his arm.
+
+"We'll git there fust, together!" he declared.
+
+A few minutes tramping brought them to a depression in the snow.
+
+"Here's the old glory-hole (an open pit, not a shaft), an' nobody's
+been here!" he announced triumphantly. He grabbed pickaxe and shovel
+and slithered in, with the confidence of a man who knew every inch of
+the ground.
+
+A few scoops of the shovel cleared away the snow.
+
+Below, though overgrown with dry weeds of many seasons' growing, were
+the infallible signs of human handiwork. Even the old sluice was
+there, though fallen to pieces.
+
+The others crowded around the glory-hole. The moment of test had come.
+
+"Here, 'Wizard'," said Jim, when he had exposed the workings, "there's
+where I was pannin' last. Jump in an' take a look."
+
+The expert, despite his years, leaped in lightly. He took the pick
+from Jim's hand, and, with a few vigorous strokes, loosened some of
+the gravel. He scrutinized it carefully, first with the naked eye, and
+then with a strong pocket lens.
+
+"Well?" asked Jim, impatiently.
+
+"Where are the other prospects?" The "Wizard's" kindly tone had
+vanished. He was now a mining expert, at his work. Personalities had
+faded. Geological questions, only, had weight.
+
+Silently Jim led him up the slope, Jameine and Clem following.
+
+Despite the veiling snow, the old prospector located hole after hole
+with unfailing accuracy, until seven had been found and examined. The
+last one was half-way up the cliff.
+
+At each prospect the "Wizard" loosened a small handful of gravel,
+examined it carefully and put it in a small buckskin bag, pencilling
+each bag in order. His expression changed not at all; he bore the true
+Western "poker face."
+
+"What overlies this gravel?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Slate," said Jim.
+
+"Let's see it!"
+
+They climbed upwards.
+
+On arriving at the stratum which lay above the gravel, dipping down
+at a sharp slope, the expert examined carefully the carbonaceous slate
+of which it was composed.
+
+"We'll go back, now," he said at last.
+
+But he expressed no opinion.
+
+"What do you think of it, Mr. Juneau?" queried Owens, when the four
+climbers returned to the glory-hole. His tone seemed to suggest that
+he half hoped for an unfavorable answer.
+
+"I'll tell you presently," was the non-committal answer.
+
+Then he turned to the prospector.
+
+"Show me that lignite outcrop, now!"
+
+"Kick the snow away with your feet!" answered Jim, curtly.
+
+Every one kicked vigorously. Under the snow was a thin layer of soil,
+and, below that, not more than two inches beneath the surface, was the
+brown-black gleam of a low-grade lignite. Owens broke off a piece from
+the outcrop and his expression cleared slightly. Certainly Jim's
+statement about the coal was justified, though it was of too low-grade
+a quality to be worth exportation; possibly his story about the gold
+might prove to be true, also.
+
+Then the "Wizard," still without a word which might be construed
+either as hopeful or as discouraging, brought from the boat the heavy
+piece of machinery. He fitted it with a handle and bade Otto turn. The
+machine proved to be a small but very powerful crushing-mill, so
+devised that the hardest quartz could be ground to powder by hand.
+Besides which, it contained within itself, some modern devices for
+separating out the gold.
+
+Bag after bag of the decisive seven was poured in, ground to dust, and
+passed through the separating riffles. Each of these riffles had a
+self-cleaning device. The expert weighed the gravel before grinding,
+weighed the scrapings of the riffles, and made careful notes on the
+results of each batch. All was done in utter silence.
+
+Jim, the true prospector, who had often seen wealth or poverty decided
+by the twirl of a pan, stood immovable. If he were worried, he did not
+show it. Jameine, on the other hand, was trembling and white.
+
+At last, the "Wizard," note-book in hand, turned to give his decision.
+
+"Judging from a direct crushing and separating process, without the
+use of mercury," he said, "this gravel ought to give about
+six-dollars'-worth of gold to the ton. With mercury, perhaps two or
+three more dollars' worth can be extracted, and another couple of
+dollars by cyaniding. The gravel is soft and can be hydraulicked,
+during the summer. The gold is coarse and easy to separate. The quartz
+pebbles will yield more than enough to be worth crushing, but just how
+much is indeterminate.
+
+"That's not rich! By itself, or in the interior, the deposit might not
+be worth working. But with lignite right on the ground, to make steam
+both for running the machinery and for steam thawing points, and with
+a pumping plant using heated sea water for hydraulicking, there ought
+to be a net profit of about three dollars a ton."
+
+The news was received in silence, each voyager occupied with his own
+viewpoint of the decision.
+
+Clem was the first to speak.
+
+"We've come a long way to get three dollars!" said he, with an attempt
+at jocularity.
+
+Anton grinned assent. Like Clem, he knew nothing about gold-mining.
+
+Otto waited, well aware that the final result lay between Owens,
+Juneau and Jim.
+
+It was Jameine, with her book-knowledge of mining, who put the vital
+question.
+
+"How many tons do you estimate there may be in the deposit, Mr.
+Juneau?"
+
+"Impossible to say, exactly, especially when the island is masked
+under snow. But the prospects have been carefully chosen. They suggest
+about four hundred thousand tons in sight, and probably a good deal
+more. The gravel is an early Tertiary deposit, lying between two beds
+of carbonaceous slate, the lower of which is lignitic. Judging from
+the strike of the beds, the gold-bearing gravel runs down under the
+sea."
+
+"Then," said the girl, slowly, "if there are four hundred thousand
+tons in sight, which would yield a net profit of three dollars a ton,
+you figure on over a million dollars, clear?"
+
+"If modern machinery is put in and the mine is run on a business
+basis, I should say at least that. Possibly more!"
+
+There was a burst of excited exclamations from all sides.
+
+Every one turned to Jim, who was looking out across the sea toward
+Alaska.
+
+"Bull, old pardner," he said softly, "I reckon I've made good for your
+little gal!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A SIBERIAN FILIBUSTER
+
+
+By July, Chukalook Bank was humming with noise. The clank of
+machinery, the pounding of stamp mills, and the grinding smash of
+giant jets of water driven from hydraulic nozzles, set vibrating the
+tiny islands on the borders of the Arctic Ocean.
+
+The terns and gulls, driven from their century-old refuge, circled
+over the little spot of land with shrill cries and fled to nest on
+Ingalook; polar bears, who, in other seasons, had found a dinner of
+fat seal on Chukalook, swam toward the island from floating cakes of
+ice, and then retreated hurriedly; the sea otter, shyest of all the
+fur-bearing creatures of the world, sped to more isolated haunts.
+
+The island itself was melting like a snowbank beneath a summer sun. A
+three-inch jet of water, immeasurably more powerful than the forceful
+spout that hisses from a fire-engine hose, roared vengefully night
+and day against the gravel bank, and ate away the hill.
+
+The never-ceasing torrent of gravel and boulders, mingled with the
+water, rattled and rumbled downwards with the force of the current
+into a massive sluice. The bottom of this sluice was constructed of
+paving blocks, crossed with copper-plated riffles of tremendous
+strength, on which not less than two tons of mercury had been placed.
+
+Thus considered, the installation of the Bull Mine--as Jim insisted
+that it should be called--was but a simple miners' sluice on an
+enormous scale. It was the same device as that which Jim's father and
+his partners were working on the Carson River when the Comstock Lode
+was discovered, save that the hydraulic jet performed all the work of
+digging and shoveling the pay dirt into the sluice.
+
+Shortly before reaching the sea, however, the works became more
+complicated. The "Wizard" and Owens--one with Arctic and the other
+with Australian and South African experience--had arranged a system of
+separating the gold bearing gravel from the bowlders, and, later, the
+unproductive material from that which contained the precious metal.
+The smaller, gold-bearing part was washed into the stamp-mills, which
+worked incessantly, and which reduced pebbles and grit and sand and
+gold to a pasty slime. This, in turn, was led to cyanide tanks. Thus
+every particle of the gold was extracted.
+
+Hydraulicking was not altogether new to Jim. He had seen it done on a
+giant scale, as in California during the seventies, when huge
+reservoirs and mile-long canals were built at a cost of many millions.
+Vast works these, belonging to a short and strange era of mining,
+immense constructions, now lying ruined and abandoned in the deserts
+of their own making.
+
+That was before the farmers and fruit-growers of California had
+succeeded, in 1884, in securing the passage of a law to prevent
+"slicking," as hydraulicking was termed. It was time! Vast stretches
+of territory were being reduced to chaos by the appalling havoc which
+follows hydraulic operations on a large scale.
+
+Many rivers were entirely choked by debris from the crumbled mountains
+and spread their waters in destructive floods. On one small stream
+alone, the Lower Yuba, over 16,000 acres of high-grade farm lands were
+reduced to a condition which an official investigator for the state
+declared "could not have been surpassed by tornado, flood, earthquake,
+and volcano combined."
+
+
+[Illustration: HYDRAULICKING IN COLORADO.
+
+The "Snowstorm Placer," a typical modern pay-gravel plant.
+
+_From "The Business of Mining," by A. J. Hoskins. J. B. Lippincott &
+Co._]
+
+
+[Illustration: AMERICA'S "GOLD-SHIP" AT WORK.
+
+Dredge operating in Yuba Consolidated Gold Fields, California.
+
+_From "The Business of Mining," by A. J. Hoskins. J. B. Lippincott &
+Co._]
+
+
+Before the farmers had succeeded in stopping the hydraulic miners, a
+stretch of land, larger than all the territory devastated by the World
+War, was rendered a hideous desolation forever incapable of
+settlement. Ten years of hydraulicking had brought more than
+$150,000,000 in gold dust to the mining interests, but had caused a
+perpetual damage that ten times that sum could not repay.
+
+In every civilized country, to-day, hydraulicking is forbidden, except
+on a small scale. It is only permitted in such cases and under such
+conditions that the mining company can dispose of the tailings without
+injury to property holders further down the stream.
+
+The "gold ship" has taken the place of the hydraulic jet and the
+sluice. It is a weird device! It is nothing more or less than a
+dredge, floating in a lake of water--maybe in the middle of a
+desert--which, as it moves along, moves its own lake with it. It
+dredges, washes, and separates hundreds of tons of sand or gravel with
+the same water in which it floats, using the water over and over
+again. By law, the tailings which it leaves behind must be leveled,
+soil placed thereon and either grass or trees planted. Thus the gold
+ship advances over dry land, chewing its own way forward, and remaking
+the land it leaves behind.
+
+On Chukalook Bank, however, hydraulicking was permissible. There were
+no farm lands to be spoiled. There were no rivers to be choked up. The
+tailings and the refuse could do no harm. On the contrary, by
+employing the forces of the current descending in the sluice, the
+"Wizard" operated a narrow-gauge tramway on an endless chain, and the
+tailings were emptied into cars which ran out to sea, making their own
+land as they went. The cars had a dumping device, and needed but one
+man to tip them. Thus little by little, a natural breakwater crept out
+seawards, forming a harbor in which ships could ride in safety.
+
+As the "Wizard" had anticipated, Owens had become as enthusiastic
+after the value of the mine had been demonstrated as he had been
+coldly critical before. The lure of gold caught him anew, and he
+invested capital freely. He was an excellent business man and a good
+judge of men. Besides paying Juneau a large salary as superintendent
+and mine engineer, he had shrewdly put several shares of stock in the
+"Wizard's" name, thus ensuring his most hearty support.
+
+Moreover, Owens had learned to appreciate Jameine. He had found out
+that the girl had taken courses in the business side of mine
+management as well as in the technical branches, and though her
+knowledge was theoretical only, it was sound. With her he could
+discuss detailed questions of book-keeping and the like, which only
+annoyed the mining expert. Accordingly, Owens appointed Jameine his
+personal representative, thus securing Jim's loyalty forever. This
+done, he returned to his coal mine in Ohio, leaving the "Wizard" in
+charge.
+
+Otto had been made foreman, and, though he constantly related to the
+men under him how different were the ways of coal-mines, he was
+inordinately proud of his position. He was able to do that most
+important of all things in mine labor--to keep the workmen satisfied
+at their work without raising wages to the point where profit ceases.
+
+Anton, despite his first objection to the country, had become a
+hero-worshipper of Jim. He had a new ambition. He desired, above all
+things, to reach the sublime height of being regarded as a
+"sour-dough." The boy had shown a certain natural quickness for
+mechanics, and, while on the yacht, had chummed up with the wireless
+operator of the _Bunting_. Capt. Robertson, on his second trip, had
+brought with him a small wireless outfit, which the operator installed
+on the highest point of Chukalook and taught Anton to handle.
+
+Clem took the place of assistant to the "Wizard." His small knowledge
+of geology--though it was mainly of coal seams--was of service, and
+the young fellow was quick to learn. But the principal attraction to
+him, on the island, was "Bull's little gal."
+
+Jim was the life and soul of the mine. He was here, there, and
+everywhere. The workmen, especially those who were "sour-doughs"
+themselves, found a keen pleasure in the thought that a man like
+themselves had thus made good. It fed the fuel of hope which flames so
+brilliantly in the Frozen North.
+
+A typical gold prospector, all the complicated machinery of his own
+mine meant little to him. Jameine understood it all and did her best
+to explain it to him, but Jim could not be persuaded to take an
+interest in it.
+
+One day he turned his back on the works. With pick, shovel, and pan,
+he set off to the other side of the island, where the little creek
+ran, and where he had first panned gold on Chukalook, before he began
+prospecting the gravel. Once more, from early morning to late evening,
+he dug and panned as of old. Each night he returned triumphantly with
+half a handful of gold dust as the fruit of his day's toil.
+
+Jameine did not have the heart to point out to him that, with the Bull
+Mine running at full blast, his share of the profits brought him more
+wealth in an hour than did a week's laborious panning of the sands of
+the little creek. She knew that Jim could have no greater happiness
+than, at the end of the day's work, to add a few more grains of gold
+dust to the growing heap that rested, in a bowl, openly exposed, on a
+rough table in her tiny sitting room.
+
+But this peaceful exploitation of Chukalook was not to continue
+uninterruptedly.
+
+One morning, the smoke of a good-sized steamer was seen on the
+horizon. She came, not from the direction of Ingalook, as the
+_Bunting_ and the supply steamers came, but from the Russian island to
+the south-west.
+
+Jim, busily panning on the creek, was the first to see her. He dropped
+his tools and hurried to the power house.
+
+"There's trouble coming, 'Wizard'!" he said briefly, and pointed to
+the steamer.
+
+"You mean she's Russian? It's likely enough, then," was the grave
+reply. "Though I don't know that they can do much."
+
+"They chucked me off here, once!" the old prospector remarked,
+revengefully.
+
+"They'll have their hands full doing it a second time! Counting all
+the workmen, we've a pretty strong gang here, Jim. And most of the men
+would fight."
+
+The steamer drew nearer, and the mining expert went into the house for
+his field-glasses.
+
+Presently she was close enough for the glass to reveal an unusually
+large number of men on her deck. There was a more sinister omen
+still--a six-inch gun in her bow!
+
+"A converted cruiser! H'm, this looks serious, Jim! Send Anton here,
+on the run."
+
+The boy came instantly.
+
+The "Wizard" shot out his orders.
+
+"Get to the mess-tent as quick as you know how and grab some food. Get
+a gun and some ammunition. Then climb up to the wireless station right
+away. If I blow one blast on the engine-house whistle, don't pay any
+attention. If there are two long blasts, you can come back. But if you
+hear a succession of short, sharp blasts, be sure you start sending,
+and keep on sending!"
+
+Anton, keenly at attention, answered,
+
+"What shall I send?"
+
+"The S.O.S., first. Then the code signal for the Revenue Cutter
+_Bear_--you know it, don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then send--'Americans in peril, Chukalook' and give the latitude and
+longitude. You'll find that written down just inside the cover of the
+International Code Book. I put it there in case of need. Repeat the
+S.O.S., the code number and the message until you get a reply."
+
+"And if I don't get a reply?"
+
+"Keep on sending."
+
+"Until when?"
+
+"Until you're shot down, if necessary!"
+
+"Very well, Mr. Juneau. You can count on me."
+
+"I know I can, my boy. Now--hurry!"
+
+The suspicious steamer came nearer and turned the corner of the newly
+made breakwater. As she dropped her anchor, she displayed the flag of
+the Eastern Siberian Republic, at that time in the hands of the
+Bolsheviks.
+
+"We've some 'sour-doughs' in the plant," suggested Jim. "If there's
+goin' to be trouble, they'll be lookin' for front seats. Shall I get
+'em here?"
+
+"You might as well. They can bring their shooting-irons, too."
+
+Jim was not long gone. When he returned, he brought ten men at his
+heels, all of the Roaring North breed. Most of them held posts of
+trust in some part of the Bull Mine plant and all were ready to stand
+by Jim through thick and thin.
+
+The "Wizard's" address to the men was brief.
+
+"Russian 'claim-jumpers,' I reckon," he said, pointing to the steamer.
+"If they're looking for trouble, they'll get it. We'll parley first,
+and if necessary, shoot afterwards. No one touches his gun till Jim
+fires. That's orders. Do you get it?"
+
+The men nodded. Like most of their kind, they were chary of speech and
+the word "claim-jumper" means to a miner what the word "horse-thief"
+meant to the cowboy. There was no need to say more.
+
+The men had gathered none too soon. A boat had put out from the
+steamer and was drawing close to shore. There were a dozen sailors
+aboard in a nondescript imitation of the Russian naval uniform, but
+armed with modern rifles. An officer was in the stern.
+
+On reaching the landing-place, the officer leaped ashore, followed by
+the armed guard.
+
+"Who owns this mine?" he demanded in good English.
+
+"An American syndicate," the "Wizard" answered briefly.
+
+"And who is in charge here?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"In that case, I am instructed to notify you that you are occupying
+Siberian territory."
+
+"That," responded the "Wizard" curtly, "is either a geographical error
+or a deliberate lie."
+
+The officer made a gesture towards his hip, evidently forgetting the
+sword at his side, a movement which both Jim and the "Wizard" noted.
+
+"Sir!" he began.
+
+"This island," the "Wizard" continued, ignoring the interruption, "is
+a few seconds more than forty minutes of a degree east of the
+international boundary. Observations of the most precise character
+have been taken by Captain Robertson of the _Bunting_ and were duly
+recorded at Washington more than two months ago."
+
+The officer seemed taken aback at this definite declaration, but
+maintained his position firmly.
+
+"This is Siberian territory," he repeated. "I have orders to
+confiscate whatever gold may have been extracted, and to take
+possession of the plant, as it stands, in the name of my government."
+
+"If you try it, you'll get shot," was the terse reply.
+
+"You would fire on an officer of--"
+
+Jim cut in, dryly.
+
+"I'll fire on an American navy deserter, any time," he said, making a
+shrewd guess at the character of the intruder, "an' it won't worry my
+conscience none. What's more, I'll put a bullet through a
+claim-jumper, whenever I feel like it."
+
+The self-styled Siberian felt that he was getting the worse of the
+argument, and his temper rose.
+
+"Enough talk! I have received information that you are gold-mining on
+Eastern Siberian territory. You are hereby notified that the mine is
+confiscated. All those in authority will come aboard the cruiser _Mir_
+as prisoners. You will be taken to the mainland for trial. Perhaps you
+will have the opportunity to prove your observations as to longitude,
+there!" he sneered.
+
+"Is the Eastern Siberian Republic at war with the United States?"
+queried the "Wizard" with dangerous quietness.
+
+"That does not concern you! Deliver me, at once, the keys and working
+maps of the mine."
+
+"No!"
+
+Jim added a western retort that roused the deserter to a livid fury.
+He answered viciously,
+
+"We've a six-inch gun aboard that can blow your works to splinters!"
+
+"And then?"
+
+"We'll come ashore and take possession. It won't do you any good to
+ask for mercy, then!"
+
+The "Wizard" stepped forward, his giant frame towering above the
+intruder.
+
+"This parley is over!" he thundered. "I declare you pirates, and give
+you five minutes to get yourselves off this island!
+
+"Jim, get your watch out! If there's one of these scoundrels on shore
+at the end of that time, shoot! If any one of them makes a hostile
+move, shoot! And shoot to kill!"
+
+He turned to the supposed Siberian.
+
+"As for you, you'd better be the first one in the boat! Every one of
+these men is a two-gun man, and I reckon you know what that means!"
+
+The officer stood his ground, and entered upon an argument as to the
+rights of the case, but was cut short by Jim's crisp announcement,
+
+"One minute gone!"
+
+For a second or two the filibusterer hesitated, but the odds were
+even, twelve against twelve. Well he knew that the Americans could
+shoot quicker and straighter than his men, who were an undisciplined
+lot. He realized, also, that he would be the first to fall.
+
+Scowling, he gave the order to retreat, amid the open murmurs of his
+men, who, under Bolshevist rule, considered themselves the equals of
+their officers.
+
+The instant that they were embarked, the "Wizard" turned to Jim.
+
+"We haven't many minutes to lose! That hound will open up with the
+gun, as soon as he reports on board.
+
+"Get to the house as quick as you can. Rush Miss Evans and all the
+office crowd into No. 2 gravel pit, pronto! Shells can't reach them
+there."
+
+"I'll tell the engineer to whistle to Anton. Then I'll close down the
+works and get the men into shelter. But we've got to act lively!"
+
+Crisply he gave his orders to the waiting men, several of whom were
+grumbling because they had not been allowed to "clean up the gang" as
+one of them phrased it. They brightened up, however, at the prospect
+that there would be a fight.
+
+Half a minute later, the whistle sent out a succession of sharp
+blasts, and, almost simultaneously, there came the sharp crackle of
+wireless from the station on the hill.
+
+A volume of Russian curses was heard coming over the water at this
+sound, and the rowers redoubled their efforts.
+
+Presently, from all corners of the plant, the workers came hurrying.
+The last man was hardly down in the gravel pit when there came a
+detonation from the sea-front and a shell came whistling over.
+
+It was not directed at the works, but at the tiny cabin on the top of
+the hill which held the wireless outfit. Fortunately, the cabin was
+partly sheltered by a rock, and, moreover, it was but a small mark to
+try to hit. Some twenty shells passed over the island or exploded idly
+on the hill before one struck the sheltering rock. The pieces screamed
+over the cabin, one fragment tearing a hole in the roof but doing no
+harm to Anton.
+
+Truth to tell, the boy was thoroughly enjoying himself. He felt a
+hero. Never having seen a shot fired in earnest, he hardly realized
+what the effects of a shell-burst might be.
+
+The wireless crackled on.
+
+For two hours the bombardment continued, several pieces of shell
+having passed through the walls above his head. The rock protected the
+lower part of the cabin. Anton was crouched low over his instrument,
+and, as yet, the aerials were intact.
+
+Then, suddenly, a piece of bursting shell whizzed across the wires.
+
+Silence!
+
+The wireless was down.
+
+Chukalook Bank was absolutely cut off from all communication with the
+outside world. The men of Bull Mine must fight off the Siberian
+cruiser, alone.
+
+The six-inch gun now was turned on the works, a nearer and an easier
+target. The power-house, the stamp-mills and the cyanide vats suffered
+most. A six-inch shell at close range can do an appalling amount of
+destruction. At the end of an hour, most of the works were in ruins.
+Yet shells could not destroy the gravel bank, nor damage the great
+sluice beyond repair.
+
+The bombardment ceased for a few minutes.
+
+Then four boat-loads of men put off from the cruiser, and, at the same
+time, the six-inch gun began anew, covering their advance.
+
+"Let's get down to the shore an' keep 'em from landin'!" cried Jim.
+
+But the "Wizard" held him back.
+
+"And have our men killed for nothing? No, Jim, we've got a good
+trench here and can hold it. It'll cost them dear to attack."
+
+"But they'll get all the gold from our last clean-up!"
+
+"They won't, Uncle Jim," put in Jameine. "I opened the safe and we
+carried all the bags here."
+
+"And your own little pile?"
+
+The girl shook a little sewing-bag she was carrying, and laughed.
+
+"I was sewing when you called me, and I only had time to throw it in
+here. Gold dust is all mixed up with pins and needles and things."
+
+Jim nodded.
+
+"You're right, 'Wizard'," he said. "This is the place we've got to
+hold."
+
+"And we'd better fortify one end of it, solid, if the worst comes to
+the worst. Get some of the men to roll bowlders here to make a solid
+wall."
+
+The boats drew up to the landing-place.
+
+"Hand me one o' them rifles!" suggested one of the twelve men whom Jim
+had first chosen. "I'm good on the shoot. Them claim-jumpers is only
+about six hundred yards away. I can hit a runnin' rabbit, at that
+distance."
+
+"Good enough," agreed the "Wizard," "if you can pot them off, so much
+the better. They began the trouble and they fired first. Are there
+any more snipers here?"
+
+Two more of the men professed themselves to be fair shots.
+
+Creeping out of the trench, the three snipers esconsced themselves in
+cover, leaving only a loophole for their rifles. Presently one, and
+then another rifle cracked.
+
+Two of the invaders fell.
+
+A volley followed. It pattered harmlessly against the bowlders where
+the snipers were hidden and passed high over the heads of the rest of
+the men, safe in the gravel-pit.
+
+"This," said the first sniper, as he took aim and fired a second time,
+"is tame sport. It's too easy."
+
+A third man fell.
+
+The Siberians scattered. It was clear that they had little taste for
+this kind of thing. They found cover, and, for half an hour or more,
+not one showed himself.
+
+Then a little group dashed across towards the house, evidently with
+the intention of pillage. The three snipers fired. One man fell, and
+two, evidently wounded, limped after their fellows.
+
+Then, for hours, not a sign!
+
+Evening drew down, a foggy evening, with a mist so dense that the
+faint gleam of what was almost the midnight sun failed to pierce it.
+By eleven o'clock, it was nearly dark.
+
+"They'll attack around midnight, likely," one of the men suggested.
+"Can't we make a big fire, 'Wizard'?"
+
+"There's no wood here, Bob," the expert replied. "As for the lignite,
+even if we could get enough of it here without exposing ourselves, it
+makes such a lot of smoke that it would help them more than it would
+us. No, we'll have to send out scouts, though it'll be dangerous for
+those who go. Who'll volunteer?"
+
+A chorus answered him, the three snipers claiming the preference.
+
+"No," said their leader, "I can't spare you. But I'll take old-timers,
+that's sure!" He chose them carefully. "Now," he said, when he sent
+them out, "keep your ears open. Don't shoot unless you have to. If you
+see or hear any one coming, get back as quick as you can. It's a risk,
+you know!"
+
+"Aw, 'Wizard'!" exclaimed one of them reproachfully, "you ain't
+talkin' to tenderfeet!"
+
+"If you were a tenderfoot I wouldn't have picked you for a man's job,"
+the leader answered, knowing well the pride of the "sour-dough." "Out
+with you, now, and quietly!"
+
+An hour passed, and then one of the scouts crawled back.
+
+"They're comin', 'Wizard'!"
+
+The other three scouts followed in short order. The Siberians were
+advancing in an extended line.
+
+"To your places, men! Jim, you and the three I named will hold the
+breastwork. The girl's there!"
+
+Jim looked longingly at the edge of the gravel pit, up which the men
+were creeping. He was torn between his desire to be in the forefront
+of the battle and his eagerness to be near enough to protect Jameine.
+But, like all men who have really known the life of the frontier, he
+obeyed a leader's orders unquestioningly.
+
+A few minutes later, out from the half-gloom and the wet fog, an
+irregular line of fire ran, as a hundred or more rifles cracked
+simultaneously. The miners responded with a scattering fire.
+
+The Siberians were on them!
+
+The fog gave the attackers an advantage. The Americans had only the
+time to fire a second volley when the Siberians leaped over the edge
+of the gravel pit. A furious hand-to-hand conflict began, but the
+miners were terribly out-numbered.
+
+Worse, infinitely worse, the attackers possessed those diabolical
+engines of destruction which were developed in the World War--hand
+grenades. These, thrown upon the frozen gravel, exploded in all
+directions. Into the disordered ranks of the miners, the Siberians
+charged with the bayonet.
+
+Armed only with their rifles, which were useless at close range, and
+with six-shooters, a weapon of but short usefulness, the Americans
+fought a losing fight.
+
+Yet they repulsed the first attack, but at a staggering loss. The
+"Wizard," seriously but not fatally wounded, was carried behind the
+breastwork, his last words before losing consciousness being an order
+to cover the shelter with flat slabs of slate, before the Siberians
+got near enough to throw their grenades into the little fortified
+space.
+
+Jim straightened up.
+
+"Good-bye, little gal, if I don't see you again!" he called. "My place
+is at the front, now!"
+
+He assumed the lead.
+
+A second attack, even more vicious than the first, followed. The
+miners had reloaded. Most of them had two guns, hastily snatched from
+dead or wounded comrades. But for the grenades, they could have more
+than held their own. It was not to be. When the second rush subsided,
+the Siberians held one end of the gravel pit. The farther end, where
+were Jameine and the wounded men, held firm.
+
+There came a lull, and, from where they lurked, the defenders saw
+suddenly some flashes of light from around the wireless house.
+
+"They're after Anton!" said Clem. "He's all alone, up there. We can't
+leave the kid!"
+
+"Right!" agreed a couple of the men. "Let's go!"
+
+But Jim stopped them.
+
+"We're too few, as it is," he ordered. "Anton must take his chance.
+We've the girl here, the wounded, and the gold."
+
+"He's my partner!" declared Clem, who knew the magic of the word on
+Jim.
+
+"Me, too; I go!" declared Otto, in his most stubborn voice.
+
+Jim hesitated. A partner's right was sacred.
+
+"Go ahead, then," he said, "an' quick, afore the fog lifts. She's
+gettin' lighter, now!"
+
+The odds were more even now. Between the barricade that the Siberians
+had thrown up hastily and the breastwork held by the miners, there was
+an open space, too wide for the throwing of the grenades. The
+six-shooters held it clear.
+
+Again the Siberians rushed. Claim-jumpers they might be, but they were
+worthy fighters. They reached almost to the breastwork, and one man
+had his arm poised to throw a grenade within, when Jim leaped forward
+and brained him with the butt end of a pistol. For full ten minutes,
+it was a death-grapple, but the attackers were beaten back.
+
+The case of the Americans was desperate. Ammunition was growing short.
+
+Another such attack might finish them.
+
+The Siberians, however, had suffered heavily, and, all unknowing that
+their foes were almost out of cartridges, refused to charge again.
+
+The faint light strengthened. The mist began to rise. Soon it would be
+full daylight. The miners braced themselves for what they feared might
+be the last shock.
+
+Jim, bleeding from two slight wounds, held his men well together.
+
+There came a babble of voices and then a movement behind the
+barricade.
+
+The Americans stiffened.
+
+Suddenly, a sharp shot resounded across the water, followed by a
+second report, evidently from a gun of different calibre.
+
+The Siberians clambered from behind their barricade and fled.
+
+At almost the same instant, Otto, Clem, and Anton were seen to emerge
+from the wireless cabin, running down the hill and shouting. The boy
+had his arm in a bloody sling. So far as could be seen, the others
+were not hurt.
+
+Jim scrambled to the edge of the gravel-pit and looked to sea.
+
+There, her guns trained on the filibustering cruiser _Mir_, the Stars
+and Stripes flying at her stern, lay the U. S. Revenue Cutter _Bear_,
+summoned by the wireless messages of Anton, sent while the roof over
+his head was being rent by shell.
+
+Jim's strike was not to go for nought. The gold of "Bull's little gal"
+had welded the partnership that a coal-mine disaster had begun.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+U. S. SERVICE SERIES
+
+By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
+
+Illustrations from photographs taken in work for U. S. Government
+
+Large 12mo Cloth $1.75 each, net
+
+     "There are no better books for boys than Francis
+     Rolt-Wheeler's 'U. S. Service Series.'"--_Chicago
+     Record-Herald._
+
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U. S. SURVEY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This story describes the thrilling adventures of members of the U. S.
+Geological Survey, graphically woven into a stirring narrative that
+both pleases and instructs. The author enjoys an intimate acquaintance
+with the chiefs of the various bureaus in Washington, and is able to
+obtain at first hand the material for his books.
+
+     "There as abundant charm and vigor in the narrative
+     which is sure to please the boy readers and will do
+     much toward stimulating their patriotism by making them
+     alive to the needs of conservation of the vast
+     resources of their country."--_Chicago News._
+
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS
+
+The life of a typical boy is followed in all its adventurous
+detail--the mighty representative of our country's government, though
+young in years--a youthful monarch in a vast domain of forest. Replete
+with information, alive with adventure, and inciting patriotism at
+every step, this handsome book is one to be instantly appreciated.
+
+     "It is a fascinating romance of real life in our
+     country, and will prove a great pleasure and
+     inspiration to the boys who read it."--_The Continent,
+     Chicago._
+
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U. S. CENSUS
+
+Through the experiences of a bright American boy, the author shows how
+the necessary information is gathered. The securing of this often
+involves hardship and peril, requiring journeys by dog-team in the
+frozen North and by launch in the alligator-filled Everglades of
+Florida, while the enumerator whose work lies among the dangerous
+criminal classes of the greater cities must take his life in his own
+hands.
+
+     "Every young man should read this story from cover to
+     cover, thereby getting a clear conception of conditions
+     as they exist to-day, for such knowledge will have a
+     clean, invigorating and healthy influence on the young
+     growing and thinking mind."--_Boston Globe._
+
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+With a bright, active American youth as a hero, is told the story of
+the Fisheries, which in their actual importance dwarf every other
+human industry. The book does not lack thrilling scenes. The far
+Aleutian Islands have witnessed more desperate sea-fighting than has
+occurred elsewhere since the days of the Spanish buccaneers, and
+pirate craft, which the U. S. Fisheries must watch, rifle in hand, are
+prowling in the Behring Sea to-day. The fish-farms of the United
+States are as interesting as they are immense in their scope.
+
+     "One of the best books for boys of all ages, so
+     attractively written and illustrated as to fascinate
+     the reader into staying up until all hours to finish
+     it."--_Philadelphia Despatch._
+
+
+THE BOY WITH THE U. S. INDIANS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This book tells all about the Indian as he really was and is; the
+Menominee in his birch-bark canoe; the Iroquois in his wigwam in the
+forest; the Sioux of the plains upon his war-pony; the Apache, cruel
+and unyielding as his arid desert; the Pueblo Indians, with remains of
+ancient Spanish civilization lurking in the fastnesses of their massed
+communal dwellings; the Tlingit of the Pacific Coast, with his
+totem-poles. With a typical bright American youth as a central figure,
+a good idea of a great field of national activity is given, and made
+thrilling in its human side by the heroism demanded by the
+little-known adventures of those who do the work of "Uncle Sam."
+
+     "An exceedingly interesting Indian story, because it is
+     true, and not merely a dramatic and picturesque
+     incident of Indian life."--_N. Y. Times._
+
+     "It tells the Indian's story in a way that will
+     fascinate the youngster."--_Rochester Herald._
+
+
+_For sale by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price by
+the publishers_
+
+LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors present in the
+original text have been corrected for this electronic edition.
+
+In Chapter I, a missing period was added after "knock a man down", and
+"the he mightn't recover" was changed to "that he mightn't recover".
+
+In Chapter V, "The Lousiana Purchase" was changed to "The Louisiana
+Purchase". Also, there was no footnote marker in the main body of the
+text for the second footnote. The footnote has been placed after what
+appears to be the most appropriate paragraph.
+
+In Chapter VI, "wealth and properity" was changed to "wealth and
+prosperity".
+
+In Chapter VII, "a place where the is gold" was changed to "a place
+where there is gold", a comma was changed to a period after "blue,
+green, or grey", and "Six Mile Canon" was changed to Six Mile Cañon".
+
+In Chapter VIII, a comma was added after "You can't blame Jim for not
+knowing why, Clem".
+
+In Chapter IX, a quotation mark was added after "other types of
+veins", and "left from the Cassier" was changed to "left from the
+Cassiar".
+
+In Chapter X, quotation marks were added after "there ain't no use to
+play" and before "Very pretty, gents."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy With the U.S. Miners, by 
+Francis Rolt-Wheeler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH THE U.S. MINERS ***
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