CHAPTER XIII.

WAYS AND MEANS.

It would be difficult to imagine anything more painful than the boys' feelings at that moment; the disappointment was almost more than they could bear. It is true they had built their hopes upon very slight foundations, but their disappointment was none the less keen on that account. They had thought about the gold so much, hoped for it so ardently, and undergone such dangers to reach the spot where they expected to discover it, that to find all their sanguine anticipations blighted was very bitter to them. The dream of gold had been so bright a one, and the chances of their dream coming true had seemed so probable, that they almost felt they had a right to its fulfilment--older people often feel the same about the achievement of their desires, and with as little reason.

"Well," said Alec, after a moment or two of silent contemplation of the pool and cascade which had frustrated all their plans, "well, we have been living in a fool's paradise, and this is what comes of it."

"Beastly, isn't it?" said George. "But look here Alec, old man, perhaps after all there is no gold at the bottom of that pool, so don't let us fret about it."

"I'm not going to fret about it," said Alec, as he got off his horse, "but I am convinced that the gold _is_ there. Nuggets are never found alone. That pool is a natural 'pocket,' as diggers call that sort of place."

"And we may not put our hands in it! Never mind, we have only lost what we never had."

"You jolly Irishman! Well, we may as well turn back. It is no use staying here."

"I beg to differ," said Geordie, who had thrown one leg over his horse's head, and was sitting sideways on his saddle in an idle sort of manner, and he slipped to the ground as he spoke. "At any rate let us stay here to-day, and give the horses a rest before we turn homewards."

His busy brain had already begun to think out several schemes for getting at the bottom of the pool, but he would not mention them to Alec for fear of again raising hopes that might prove false. His active mind was generally the one to devise methods and plans, which he would often have been quite unable to execute without Alec's steady-going co-operation. But these two fellows always worked so well together, and were so completely one at heart, that neither thought for one moment of taking special credit to himself for any one part that he might have originated or executed.

Taking the horses some little way down the stream, where there seemed to be more and better food for them than close to the waterfall, the boys and Murri unloaded them, and hobbling them, as usual, turned them loose. Alec suggested that if they were going to stay one night in the gully--"And the rest," thought George--they had better pitch their camp somewhere thereabouts, as they would be near the fall and yet out of reach of its deafening noise. So they arranged their goods and chattels close to one side of the gully where the steep cliff cast a grateful shade.

When this little business was satisfactorily settled--it took but a very few minutes to arrange matters--Murri, who as usual was dreaming of something to eat, and thought this an opportunity not to be neglected, asked if he might go down the valley and try to catch something. It did not matter what, for all is fish that comes to an Australian aboriginal's net. The boys did not want him for anything, so he started off with his _boomerang_ and spears and throwing stick towards the clump of tall _quandang_ trees they had passed when coming up the valley.

Directly that George saw Alec engaged upon making some alteration in the stuffing of one of the pack saddles, which had begun to chafe the back of the horse that carried it, he started off by himself to make a more careful survey of the pool and the waterfall. He wished to go alone, so he walked off without saying anything to his brother. Alec, although he had said that he should be quite cheerful if he knew the worst, seemed very much depressed at the failure of all his hopes, and sat rather gloomily over his work. He was paying close attention to what he was doing, for he hated careless work of any kind, and did not see Geordie leave the camp.

The place certainly did not present a very hopeful appearance when George came to examine it. The waterfall poured in one straight column from the top of the perpendicular cliff, and dashed itself into the pool beneath, which again overflowed to the stream below in a little cascade, from the narrow lip of rock which formed the front edge of the basin. George thought that the scene was a very beautiful and grand one now that he could look at it with calmer eyes. The ravine, at the far end of which the cascade fell, was very narrow, so that the lofty cliffs on either side shut out the direct sunshine, except at mid-day, when the sun was just overhead. The whole place was dim and full of shadow, and the sound of the falling water and the coolness of the air, moistened by the drifting showers of misty spray, made it a pleasant retreat from the glare and tropical heat of the ardent day beyond its limits. The rocks for the most part were bare of vegetation, but in one or two places near the fall itself masses of tall grasses and ferns grew with luxuriant greenness, and along the top of the cliff from which the cascade fell a line of bushes grew, and creeping plants, which hung far down the rock, swayed by the current of air made by the great mass of falling water.

The water looked cool and inviting, and George thought he would have a dip into it before he began his exploration. He thought that by so doing he might discover how deep the pool was. The basin into which the waterfall plunged was some five or six feet above the level of the stream, into which the water flowed by a second and much smaller cascade. Undressing--a work that did not take him very long--on the bank of the stream, George scrambled up by the side of the little waterfall, and stood on the narrow wall of rock that confined the waters of the basin, his well-made muscular body and legs looking strangely fair when compared with his red and sun-browned face and neck and arms. He stood for one moment with one foot in the water--how hot the sun was on his naked body--and then plunged into the pool.

He found that he could just touch bottom near the place where the water flowed out, but that nearer the middle of the pool it was beyond his depth. He did not go under the fall, though he went close to it, for the volume of water was so great and fell in so heavy a stream. Standing, a few minutes afterwards, in the sunshine to dry himself before he dressed again, he made a rough mental calculation, and found that the parts of the pool he had been able to bottom were about on a level with the stream. With a pleased little nod he sprang lightly down the rocks, which were hot to his naked feet, and scrambled into his clothes.

As soon as he was dressed he walked to the face of the great cliff over which the water plunged, and began to examine it to find a place where he might climb up. The rock near the fall was quite too steep for any one to ascend, but a little way from it, where the ravine curved, George found a place up which he thought he could manage to scramble. As he was strong and a quite fearless rock climber, he was often able to conquer difficulties that most people would have found insuperable. Jamming tightly on to his head the cap he had extemporised the night after he lost his felt hat at the precipice, two days before, George began to climb. It was a work for arms as well as legs, for the cliff was so steep in places that he had actually to haul himself up by his hands; but Geordie was at home in this sort of climbing, and nimbly scaled up places that from below looked absolutely perpendicular.

It took even Geordie some time to get to the top, for the cliff was higher than it appeared to be from the ravine, but at last he was able to grasp the stout stem of a ti-bush that grew on the edge of the crag, and holding this and throwing his chest on to the flat ground at the top he was able to haul himself up. He sprang to his feet at once, for he was in such perfect condition that even the violent exertion he had just made had not put him out of breath. He found himself on a little piece of comparatively level ground which rose, at first gradually, and then by a steeper incline, till it joined the great bulk of Tooingoora, which towered, majestic and grim, before him. The ground, just where he was, was covered with a thick and tangled growth of scrub, through which he could hear the sound of the swiftly running stream, which poured itself with a roar over the edge of the height.

George made his way between the bushes with some little difficulty, for they were so matted together with a strong wiry sort of creeper, and in a moment or two he reached the edge of the stream. He found that it was flowing very rapidly, as though preparing for the leap it was about to make, along a rocky watercourse, which at present was a great deal too wide for its requirements, but the whole of which in flood times it would probably occupy.

George examined the bed of the stream very carefully, walking up it some little way and then back again to the place where the water plunged over the edge of the rock in one great smooth sweep. He seemed to observe one part more than any; it was where a dried-up arm of the watercourse branched out from the side of the running stream; it would evidently be converted into a stream itself if only a very little more water came down from the mountain, for its sandy bed was only just above the level of the one that was then flowing. After examining the nature of the ground just there, George gave a little satisfied laugh, and said, in a deeply mysterious manner--

"Yes, I believe this will do."

By the way he poked about among the loose rocks and stones, and scratched in the sand with a short stick he had cut in the scrub, it looked as though he were doing a little prospecting for gold on his own account. But the thought that there was gold above the fall as well as below it had not entered his head. Had he been a practical gold digger he would have recognised at once, from the nature of the stones about him, that he was amongst the gold-bearing rocks, or rather that the stones were fragments, brought down from the mountain, of auriferous quartz.

Having satisfied himself of the practicability of his plan by this personal survey, he leaped across the stream, and keeping along the edge of the cliff he soon stood above the place in the main ravine where they had camped. He saw his brother below him putting the finishing stitches to his work, and taking up a little pebble he threw it so that it almost dropped on the hat of the unconscious Alec. Geordie greeted him with a stave of a song as Alec leaped to his feet and looked around, and danced a little _corroborree_, all of his own invention, so near to the edge of the cliff that Alec was almost frightened out of his senses.

"Come down, you young ape!" he yelled.

"Ape yourself," replied Geordie; but he instantly swung himself over the edge and began descending at a break-neck pace, and in a moment he stood by the side of his brother.

"You'll break your neck as sure as fate if you fling yourself about like that. I never saw such a fellow as you are; you are just like a cat on your feet. Where have you been?"

"In the waterfall, up the waterfall, and over the waterfall, and I have come to the conclusion that the waterfall is but a poor creature, and that we can manage it after all."

"Manage it! What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say, and I think you will agree with me when you hear my plan, and have examined the stream before it falls from the cliff."

"Plan! what plan?"

"Let me get something to eat first, and then I'll tell you all about it. I had no breakfast this morning, and I want to 'patter um bittee damper,' as Murri would say. Come and sit down on this rock, it is a particularly soft and comfortable one, and well in the shade. Well, sir, this is my idea," said he, throwing off his cap and giving his still damp hair a little impetuous shake that was very characteristic of him. "We must get to the bottom of that pool. It is too idiotic to have come all this way on purpose, and then to go back without doing it."

"And how are you going to do it--dive?"

"Be quiet, don't interrupt," said George, putting down by the side of him the food which in his earnestness he had forgotten to touch. "I will tell you what I believe we can do. It will take some time, and a lot of hard work, but of course that doesn't matter."

"No, of course not."

"We must divert the stream from its present channel and send it pouring over the cliff in another place. I have been up on to the top and have found a branch of the watercourse which we can use if we can manage to dam up the present channel."

Alec had sat listening, perfectly silent up till now, but at this point his admiration broke out.

"What a splendid idea! When did you think of it?" And then, as the thought struck him that diverting the stream would not solve their difficulty, he suddenly added, "But that won't empty the pool for us, that will be as full as ever."

"You jolly old muff, do you think I had not thought of that?"

"Well, and how do you propose to empty it?"

"Drink it all, I suppose," said Geordie, with a bright laugh at the sudden change from hope to doubt that took place in Alec's face. But, seeing how anxious he looked, he laid one hand on his brother's knee to give emphasis to what he said. The novelty and boldness of his own idea had greatly excited him, though he tried to carry it off lightly; and when he spoke his voice was lowered, as though there were any one within some hundreds of miles who could overhear him.

"No," he said, "the pool is no great difficulty after all if we can only carry out my scheme. The bottom of it is on a level with the stream, except just in the middle, where it is deeper, and the wall of rock over which the second little waterfall flows is but a thin one. If we can break through that all the water in the pool, or nearly all of it, will rush out into the stream."

"It will be slow work, but we ought to be able to do it."

"We will do it, and not so particularly slowly after all, for I mean to drill a hole into the rock and blast it up with gunpowder. Margaret little thought when she told us, before we left, to be sure to take plenty of powder, to what a purpose we should put it."

"But how much have we?"

"Plenty. We have used very little since we started."

"Geordie," said Alec, as he rose from the stone, "in my opinion you are a regular genius. Yes, you are; don't deny it."

"Oh, very well," laughed George, "I will be one if you like. It is easy enough to be a genius if that is all that is wanted. I've only just thought of a sort of plan, and, mind you, I shall leave all the details to you, for you always do things so much better than I do."

"Not I; but I am ready to begin at once."

"It is too hot yet, there is not a bit of shade up there on the top of the cliff. We had better wait till a little later in the afternoon."

"Let's go and examine the pool at any rate. It is not too hot for that, and I want to have a look at that wall of rock. So come on."

When they had returned to the camp after their visit to the waterfall, they found that Murri had got back. All that he brought was one kangaroo rat and a parrot. A very poor result for so long a morning's hunting.

"This all you get along um gully?" asked George, pointing to the black fellow's very scanty spoils.

Murri shook his head, and said, "Mine kill pigeums, two pigeums, along o' _quandangs_. Murri plenty much hunglee. Mine go make fire, cook um pigeums, and mine _patter_" (eat) "um bofe."

This speech was so characteristic of the Australian black that neither of the boys was at all surprised at it. Although Murri was in many ways an exceptional specimen of the aboriginal race, it was not to be supposed that he should be free from all their faults and failings. Generosity can hardly be expected to be found among the virtues of a man who, like his ancestors for countless generations, has always thought of himself first, and of supplying his own requirements to the full before he gives away of his superfluity. Murri had killed the birds by his own skill and with his own strength, and who had so good a right as he to cook and eat them? That was what he himself would have said had he been asked, and he felt no shame in owning to George that he had cooked and eaten them himself. It was as useless to talk to him of generosity or self-sacrifice as it would be to try to make a man blind from his birth understand the meaning of colours.

Later in the afternoon, about two hours before sunset, the boys again walked towards the waterfall. Alec, who was not nearly so good a climber as George, utterly refused to climb up the cliff at the place Geordie had first ascended it. He said that he had some respect for his bones if Geordie had not, and climb up that cliff, which was no better than a stone wall, he would not. It was with some little difficulty that they found any less steep place, but they did at last discover one, some little way to the right hand side of the fall.

As soon as Alec had been shown the channel that George thought best for their purpose, he began to work. He was never one to spare himself when there was a difficult task on hand, and he flung himself into this new labour with all his usual ardour. George found his energy contagious, and they worked to such purpose that when they left off, some little time before sunset, they had collected a great pile of rocks at the edge of the stream with which they intended to begin their dam next day.

As it was evident, from the amount of work they had before them, that their stay in the valley would be of some duration, the boys determined to make more extensive preparations for camping than they usually did. It was almost too late that night to do anything, but they devoted the next day to building themselves a sort of little hut, which would not only shelter them from the heat by day and from the heavy dews of night, but would serve as some sort of protection if they were again attacked by _myalls_.

The one great danger in travelling in the wild parts of Queensland is the probability of being attacked by the fierce black natives, and every traveller in that little known country should be constantly on his guard. It is only natural that the native black races should retaliate upon the white intruders, at whose hands they have suffered so much; and as they have not the courage, or indeed the weapons, to enable them to attack a well-peopled station, they wait until they have a chance of murdering a solitary shepherd, or surrounding and surprising a small party when travelling away from civilised parts.

It was the thought of their exposed situation in case of an attack that guided Alec in his choice of a position for their camp. After examining the gully on both sides, he found a place that he thought admirably suited to his purpose. On the opposite side of the stream from that on which they had first encamped, there was a little opening in the side of the ravine. It was only a sort of wide crack in the rock, down which perhaps in times of heavy rain a little waterfall might flow. The width of it across the opening was about ten feet, and it was about the same, or a little more, in depth, at which distance the two walls of rock met at an angle.

Alec, who was a practical fellow, saw that this would give him two sides to his house, and, that if he built a wall of some sort across the front of it, he would have the shell of a comfortable, although triangular, shelter. Without waste of further time he and George set to work to collect a number of the large stones that were scattered thickly along all the edge of the stream and in it. With these they slowly (for the work was none of the easiest beneath a blazing tropical sun) built a wall about four feet high across the front of the little opening. They knew, from the previous day's experience, that they could not expect much of that sort of work from Murri, so they set him to chop down a good big pile of brushwood from the scrub that grew a little way down the gully. To this kind of labour Murri was much more accustomed, as the natives build their _gunyahs_ of boughs of trees and brushwood. He could use a hatchet quite as expertly as the boys, and in a short time had cut quite as much as they would want for their purpose.

It took them the best part of the day to get their house finished, for the stones of their wall would often slip when the boughs were being forced in between them, and the covering in of the roof took some little time, as they had great difficulty in fixing the thick ends of the branches they used for that purpose in the rocky sides of their house. But by working well they managed to get it done, and had installed themselves and all their possessions, saddles, guns, provisions, and stores of every sort--not a great quantity, by-the-by--in their new camp before the sun had set. It certainly was more comfortable than sleeping without any shelter, for the nights felt cold after the great heat of the days, and the dews that fell were quite heavy enough to wet their blankets and clothes right through.

The floor of the "humpie," as the boys called it, using the word that in Australia means hut or house or hovel, indiscriminately, was quite dry, and the roof looked thick enough to keep out all wet, so that they were in no small degree satisfied with their work when at last it was finished.

"I say, Geordie," said Alec to his brother, who was busy in front of their newly-finished home making some Johnny cakes for their supper, "I've been thinking that it would be foolish for us to announce the fact of our presence here by firing our guns off. The noise would very probably be heard by some wretched tribe of _myalls_, and they would be bouncing here in no time to see what the row was all about; and I think we have had enough of them for one journey."

"I quite agree with you, most learned sir," said George, lifting up one floury hand and pushing his cap back that he might see his brother the better; "I don't want any more _myalls_ just yet. But why do you make these wise remarks?"

"Because I should like something more for my supper than Johnny cakes and part of a tinned salmon. I was going to try to get a shot at something, but I think we had better send Murri, whose shooting isn't quite so noisy as ours. Hullo, Murri," he added, turning round to that worthy person, who was hugging his knees by the side of the fire, "you go kill something. Mine want pigeon, bandicoot, cockatoo, anything. _Burrima_" (quickly), "you bail go _patter_ him all along yourself this time." (Don't you eat him by yourself this time.) "If you do," he added, dropping into his own vernacular, "I'll jolly well punch your head."

"You had better go with him. I won't put the Johnny cakes in till you come back."

"Yes, that will be the safest way, and I can have a look at the horses and see that they have not strayed."

Murri was willing enough to go. A new spirit seemed to possess him when he was engaged in hunting or work of that kind, and his expressionless face would light up, and a new fire would shine in his eyes. He seized his _boomerang_ and other weapons, which were lying by the side of him, and sprang to his feet to accompany Alec down the ravine.