The Golden Magnet Part 29

I had but to stoop and force in my fingers to feel the buried object; but moved by that spirit which induces people to examine so carefully the outside of a strange letter, when the interior is at their disposal, I feasted expectancy for a few minutes longer, telling myself that I would carefully clear out all the sand before I tried to ascertain what our treasure might be.

That was an exciting period, and I can picture it all even now: the great cave, with its vast arch protruding right over the barrier, so that we were toiling in the shadow of the huge vault, filled by day with an ever-deepening golden mellow gloom--a gloom deepening into blackness in the far depths; the trickling water, fresh from its mysterious source in the great amphitheatre; our splashed and stained figures, toiling together now in the pit we had dug; and the friendly scuffle which took place when, the sand being well cleared out, Tom stooped, but only to be arrested by my hand.

"No," I exclaimed, "let me, Tom!"

Then, with painfully throbbing heart I bent down, the blood seeming to flush to my head so as to nearly blind me.

The next moment my fingers were groping about amongst the sand and water.

"Be quick, Mas'r Harry, please, or I shall bust!" cried Tom, just as my fingers encountered something hard.

With a cry of joy I rose up, to exhibit to the staring eyes of Tom Bulk a glittering yellow stone.

"Gold, Tom--gold!" I exclaimed. "And here's more and more!"

I stooped down, to bring up two, three, four more lumps of the same glittering yellow stone.

"No, 'tain't, Mas'r Harry," said Tom, gruffly, as he turned over one of the fragments in his hand. "That ain't gold at all; that's what they calls mica. I allers reclect the name, cause it's the same as one of the prophets we used to read about at school. You might get plenty of that in the rocks, without much trouble. It's just the same stuff as some mates of mine once got out of a gravel pit at home, and they took it to the watchmaker in the town, and they says to him, 'What's that gold worth?' they says. 'Which gold?' he says. 'Why, that,' they says.

'That's no more gold than you are,' he says; 'that's mica.' And then he told them that they might allers tell gold in a moment, by pulling out a knife and trying to cut it, when if it was gold it would cut easy like, just the same as a piece of lead. Try that, Mas'r Harry."

s.n.a.t.c.hing out my knife, I cut at one of the pieces of yellow stone, to find it splinter under the keen edge of my blade.

"I'll swear, though, that the pynt of that rod hit something else besides them bits of stone, Mas'r Harry. Try again; or, no--let me try."

The disappointment was so keen, that for a few moments I was speechless, and offered no opposition to Tom, who began to grope about with both hands to bring up dozens more pieces of the micaceous rock, and then a piece of flint that seemed to have been chipped into shape, and then a long obsidian blade.

"We're a-coming to something after all, Mas'r Harry," said Tom. "Here's a cur'osity, and here--here--here's--pah! I don't like handling them."

As he spoke, Tom held out to my view three or four blackened bones, which he threw down again amongst the sand and water at the bottom.

"We shall come to the leaden coffin after all, Mas'r Harry," he said.

"This has been a berryin' place after a fight, p'r'aps; but is it worth while to disturb it?"

I did not answer, for my attention had been taken up by a slight sound towards the interior of the cave.

"Here, quick, Tom!" I exclaimed.

He leaped out in an instant, just as, with a fierce rush, the pent-up water conquered our little dam, took to its old bed, and swept down sand and soil, filling up our pit in a few minutes as it bore all before it, and then subsided quietly into its former course, the sand sucking up the moisture where it had levelled; and to a casual observer the cave seemed as if it had been untouched for ages.

"Well that's pleasant, certainly," said Tom coolly; "but 'taint so bad as it might have been. We haven't got wet. Never mind, Mas'r Harry, we'll have it out again by-and-by. There's more in that hole yet than we have seen. Them bits of yaller stuff weren't put in for nothing.

But let's go up again to the prog and have a good feed before we begin again; and, suppose you bring your spade?"

I followed Tom mechanically, spade in hand, to where, behind a ma.s.s of rock, we had made our storehouse, and seating ourselves in the gloomy shade I was busily opening my wallet, when Tom, who was getting some maize for the mules, suddenly pressed my shoulder and pointing in the direction of the cave's mouth, I heard him whisper the one word:

"Look!"

I looked, with my eyes seeming to be glued to the spot, as slowly there appeared above the rugged line formed by the top of the rocky barrier a human head, another, and another, with intervals of a dozen yards between each; and then they remained motionless, gazing straight forward into the great cavern.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

OUR WORK RENEWED.

Could they see us, or could they not?

It was a hard trial sitting there motionless, wondering whether those eager, searching eyes could penetrate as far through the gloom as where we sat. It seemed they could not, as, for full ten minutes, their owners rested there peering over the ma.s.sive rocks.

The least movement on our part, a whinny or a snort from the mules, would have been sufficient to have betrayed our whereabouts, and bloodshed would, perhaps, have followed; but all remained still, save once, when I heard Tom's gun-lock give a faint click just as first one and then another head was being withdrawn.

"There, Mas'r Harry," said Tom in a whisper. "What do you think of that? They're on the look-out for us you see. And we got grumbling about the little dam breaking, when what did it break to do? Why, to smooth over the rough work we had done, so as those copper-coloured gentlemen shouldn't see it and make a row. But, say Mas'r Harry, I a'most wonder they didn't see the water look thick. P'r'aps they will yet, so I wouldn't move."

Tom's advice was so good that we sat for quite a couple of hours, when I told him of the plans I had made.

"Tom," I said, "it was an act of folly for us to be working there without one of us watching. I tell you what we must do, we must rest till it begins to grow dusk, and then begin working in the dark. Do you see?"

"Well, I can see now, Mas'r Harry," said Tom grinning; "but I don't see how I'm going to see then. How so be: just as you like. I'm ready when you are."

The afternoon pa.s.sed, the sun disappeared behind the mountains, and the dark shadows began to fall, just as with a loud shriek bird after bird winged its way out of the cavern for its nightly quest of food. We stole to the barrier, looked long and cautiously down the valley, and then set to work in the dim and fast-fading light to dam the stream-- this time taking the precaution to lay lumps of rock and stalact.i.tes in the bed to support our embankment of sand and earth; when once more the stream took another course, the bed was dry, and in silence we stepped down to the site of our former labours.

I was not so sanguine now of the toil proving remunerative; but from the little knowledge I possessed of the Indian's superst.i.tious character I felt pretty sure that they would not venture by night to a cavern whose interior was clothed by them with endless mysterious terrors, though it possessed terrors enough, as we well knew, without the aid of superst.i.tion. But all the same, there was the chance of others having an object in watching us, so every spadeful was thrown out in silence, every word spoken in a whisper. The night came on impenetrably black and obscure, but we worked on, feeling our way lower and lower, taking turn and turn, till once more we stood in the pit we had dug, and commenced groping about with our hands, for the spades told us that we had come to whatever was buried.

"More of these yaller stones," said Tom.

We threw out as quietly as we could a couple of hundred rough lumps about the size of those fragments of granite used for macadamising a modern road.

"Tom," I said, after trying about with my spade, "there's something more here. I believe those pieces were put in to deceive whoever searched."

"Let me clear out a little more of the sand, Mas'r Harry."

He threw out a few more spadefuls, filling the spade each time with his hands so as to throw out nothing more than sand; and then once more we began to feel about.

"What's that, Tom?" I whispered hastily.

I knew by his exclamation that he had found something particular.

"Nothin' at all," said Tom sulkily.

"I insist upon knowing what it is," I cried angrily, as I caught him by the arm.

For--it must have been the influence of the gold--I again felt suspicious.

"There it is, then," said Tom gruffly, "ketch hold."

I eagerly took that which he had handed to me, and then with a shudder of disgust hurled it away, as the gravedigger scene in "Hamlet" flashed across my mind; and then we worked on in silence.

"Bones," said Tom, "flint-knife things, and, hallo! what's that you've got, Mas'r Harry?" he exclaimed in a sharp whisper.

In my turn I had uttered an exclamation as my hands came in contact with a flat heavy piece of metal, which, upon being balanced upon a finger and tapped, gave forth a sonorous ring.