He had spread a long sampling sheet of canvas on the floor of the drive and drove the pick at random into the quartz that stood up well, although it was shattered in all directions.
We had sampled the drive in sections of ten feet, had then roughly quartered each sample, packed it in its bag – numbered for identification – and sealed it.
When he had finished every section of the level Billy walked back into one of the crosscuts and measured the width of the lode.
'She's a beauty for size,' he said. 'Thirty feet if it's an inch… Let's go down the winze… Wait a minute. What about a sample from the floor?'
'But you didn't knock it down. All you knocked down fell on the sapling sheet.'
'Never mind that. We'll see what it's worth.' He scraped away half an inch of the surface and smiled as he saw moisture in the debris below.
‘Who would have expected water? Eh! hold the bag, Harry. That’ll do… Now to No. 2.’
I climbed down the hundred feet of crazy Jacob’s ladder and Billy Pagan lowered the tools and sample bags, threw down the sampling sheet, and followed slowly – holding the candle to the white walls around him, scanning each point and crevice of the rock.
‘Won’t you sample the winze?’
‘Yes,’ he said loudly – and then whispered, ‘S-s-sh, this place carries sound like a railway tunnel… No. It’s not worth the smell of gold to the acre.’
‘But it’s the same stone as in the level.’
‘S-s-sh – what if it is? We’ll sample number two now, and then we’ll get away.’
The reef at the lower level showed the same characteristics as the upper stone, but with fewer of the laminated veinings that had distinguished the reef at shallower depths. He sampled it quickly, and then he took a sample of the floor, which the sampling sheet had hidden, bagged it and sealed the bag, enclosed the samples in two gunny bags and sealed them. We carried them along the drive and to the shaft, and as he prepared to ascend by the ladders he handed me the last half inch of his candle – guttering tallow and sealing wax and nigh extinction.
‘I’ll climb quickly and lower the rope for the samples. Don’t take your eyes off the bags, Harry – not for a moment.’
‘Why – there’s no one here?’
‘There’s always somebody everywhere… keep one eye on each bag. I won’t be long.’
He climbed out of the circle of candlelight and into the half gloom of the shaft.
I looked at the bags as he had bidden, but the eye wearied of them, and I must have been looking at the candleflame for some minutes when I was conscious of the nearness of a man. There is a sensation something approaching horror at the sudden consciousness of the espionage of an enemy; and at the moment I must confess I was at least disagreeably startled.
I turned swiftly, and there, in the entrance to the drive, stood the sullen Hercules – his black beard and piercing eyes more commandingly sinister than usual, his left foot arrested suddenly in the act of taking another step towards me.
‘Hallo!’ said I, astounded at finding him behind me. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Same way as you. Down the ladders to the hundred foot and then down the winze, and along this level.’
‘But in the dark?’ For I saw he had no candle.
‘Yes. I know every stone in this show… You finished sampling pretty slick.’
I did not immediately reply – I felt a new dislike to him. This man who went wandering through a mine and down crazy Jacob’s ladders in the dark and then showed that he wished me to believe that he had taken the risks carelessly, motivelessly and merely to pass the time, was not at all to my taste or understanding.
‘You got through the sampling in quick time,’ he said again.
‘Yes,’ I replied, then, ‘Mr Pagan is a quick worker.’
‘It isn’t fair to a mine to jump through it like that,’ he replied, plainly showing that the rapid sampling had not been anticipated by him and had disarranged his plans.
‘Mr Pagan doesn’t scamp his work,’ I replied with some warmth.
‘More haste – less speed, I think,’ he said doggedly, and then his eye suddenly flamed as he saw the sampling sheet folded up, with all Billy Pagan’s finnicky orderliness, on the bags. I saw the glance, shifted the candle to my left hand, and prepared for war.
‘Under below,’ called the voice of Billy Pagan cheerily, and with feelings of relief I heard the hook on the windlass rope strike metallically against the walls of the shaft. There were two slings on the hook. I slung the two bags of samples, called to the men on top to ‘haul away,’ and as soon as the samples were out of reach took the sampling sheet over my shoulder, put the prospecting hammer in my belt, blew out the candle and started for the surface.
I expected Hercules, maddened by his black and silent rage, to wrench me from the ladder, and I climbed through the half gloom with only one sensation, and that, the instinct to reach the good earth’s surface quickly; but I had no need for fear. Hercules warred in no such open ways. I could hear him muttering curses in the blackness of the drive, but I was on the last ladder before he began to climb.
Billy Pagan stood on guard over the bags. At the mouth of the shaft Swainger, looking furtively depressed and making his anxiety more apparent by affecting an air of good fellowship, deprecated an immediate departure.
‘Give the show a chance, Mr Pagan,’ he said. ‘There’s another reef further over there.’
‘But no work done on it?’
‘Not as much as on this one – just potholes.’
‘Well, I don’t trouble to see them,’ replied Billy Pagan. ‘My instructions were to sample a mine not potholes.’
‘But you’d better wait and drive back in the cool. Your horses are getting a bit of green feed, too.’
Billy Pagan smiled – he knew how much ‘green feed’ there was in that drought-stricken wilderness, and then he suddenly snapped rather than said, ‘Green feed! Much more likely poison plant… Hallo! What’s that fellow doing with my horses?’
I looked in the direction of his gaze and saw one of the over-tall youths stoning Pagan’s two greys. They had halted to browse on the ridge three hundred yards from us, and the lanky youth attempted to drive them on. Another minute and they would have been driven down the ridge and out of our sight in the gullies.
‘Hey, you! Leave those horses alone,’ Billy shouted, and at the sound of his voice the lanky youth dropped behind a boulder and disappeared, and the horses resumed feeding on the scanty salt-bush.
Billy Pagan’s eyes glittered, but he said no word to betray the fact that his suspicions were aroused to their highest pitch.
‘Will you bring my horses back here, Harry,’ he said quietly, and I threw the sampling sheet on the bags. At sight of it Swainger’s eyes were filled with murder.
As I turned to go the sullen face of Hercules appeared at the mouth of the shaft.
When I returned with the horses the group of three at the shaft mouth were waiting in silence; Hercules, with his strong, sullen head bent, relieving his passion by pulling fragments of stout chip with fingers that seemed to be made of steel – so hard and irresistible seemed their grip upon the wood. Swainger, in doubt, glaring at the sampling sheet; Billy Pagan, cool, calmly smiling his superiority in the struggle.
As I came up he said, ‘Will you put the horses in, Harry? The harness is in the buggy’, and as I nodded acquiescence, his tone became stern as he hailed the second lanky youth who hovered round the buggy with an axle-nut wrench.
‘Hey, you! What are you doing?’
‘Goin’ to put a drop o’ neatsfoot in the axleboxes,’ replied the youth sulkily.
‘Well, why don’t you?’ I, who knew him, detected irony in the question – irony that was sure of the weakness of its opponent.
‘Our wrench won’t fit,’ said the youth, even more sulkily than before.