Chapter XVI Gathering Gold
Instantly they all set to work with a feverish intensity which almost surprised themselves. Poeskop was hunting about on the big spit of sand and shingle, quartering the surface very much as a pointer quarters its ground in search of game. In less than five minutes he had found what he expected, and, holding up between his right finger and thumb a flattish object, which shone perceptibly in the strong sunlight, exclaimed,—
“Here so, baas! Here is de gelt!”
One and all of the trio searching near him forsook their task and rushed up to him. Mr. Blakeney took the piece of metal from the Bushman’s outstretched hand. It was a flattish nugget, pale yellow in colour, smooth and rounded as to its edges, manifestly much water-worn, and measuring about three inches in length by one in breadth. He examined it very closely, weighed it in his open palm, and said quietly,—
“Yes, that’s gold, right enough. Where that came from there ought to be lots more. Guy, I congratulate you. We have accomplished our object, and I think the search is likely to be a very profitable one.” Then, glancing at Poeskop’s delighted expression, he added in Dutch, “Well done, Poeskop; you were quite right. The gold is here. We must now set to work and find all we can. I suppose there’s plenty of it?”
“Banje [plenty]!” replied the Bushman, his odd yellow face expanded into the widest grin of which it was capable. “Banje!”
“Well, now,” said Mr. Blakeney, “what we have to do is to explore this place carefully and systematically. To-day, and for the next week, we’ll go over the surface and work our way upstream towards the ravine at the head of the kloof. When we’ve gone over the surface, we’ll set to work with pick and shovel, and wash the gravel and soil. We shall have to knock up some kind of cradle, but I know how to do that. I was on the Lydenburg alluvial fields, in the Eastern Transvaal, in 1875, and saw a good deal of rough mining. I knew at once that this was a real gold nugget. We’ll have a test at the wagon to-night, but I haven’t the least doubt in the world that this nugget, which weighs about four ounces, is the genuine metal. That, at £3, 15s. per ounce, means £15—not by any means a bad result for about five minutes’ work.”
“Splendid, pater!” put in Tom enthusiastically. “Why, I feel like a millionaire already.” As he spoke, he was turning over some gravel with the tip of his boot. “Hullo!” he said, suddenly stooping and picking up something small and bright. “Here’s another!”
And so in truth it was. Tom’s nugget was smaller than that found by Poeskop, and was rounder in shape. But a nugget it was, of pure gold, free from any trace of quartz, and weighing about an ounce and a half; and the party were proportionately delighted. They now set to work, and, arming themselves with sticks, cut from the neighbouring bush, for the purpose of turning over the gravel, hunted with minute care over the big spit and in the clear shallows of the stream flowing by. By twelve o’clock, when they knocked off for half an hour’s rest, and ate some lunch under the grateful shade of an adjacent acacia tree, they had all been more or less lucky. Poeskop had gathered up nine nice nuggets of varying size. Next to him Guy had been most successful, having picked up seven; while Mr. Blakeney and Tom followed with five each.
“I’m going to keep my best nugget and give it to mother, to make a brooch or a bracelet of,” said Tom, as he dived into his pockets and examined his spoil.
“All right, Tom,” added Guy; “I’ll do the same by Ella. There’s a fine nugget, which ought to make her a real good necklet.”
“And I’ll provide for Marjory,” said Mr. Blakeney, laughing at the lads’ eagerness. “But where does Arthur come in?”
“Oh, I’ll look after Arthur,” said Tom. “I feel such a bloated capitalist that I can provide for anybody. There,” he went on, selecting a good nugget, “is Arthur’s dot or dowry, or whatever you like to call it.”
Lunch over, and Mr. Blakeney’s pipe finished, they went to work again. From half-past twelve till three o’clock they steadily pursued their investigations. At two o’clock the greatest and most amazing discovery of the day was made by Guy. While turning over some gravel, just at the edge of the stream, he came upon what he took to be a submerged, rounded stone, of which there were plenty scattered about the bed and edges of the rivulet. In trying to push this out of its cradle of sand and gravel he found it unexpectedly heavy. At last he shifted it from the soil in which it lay, and lifted it out. Its weight astonished him. Suddenly a thought flashed across his mind. He whipped his hunting-knife from the sheath, and scraped away a coating of what looked like rusty soil which covered it. Then, cutting into the stone, a streak of bright yellow showed instantly. The lump was solid gold. His shouts brought the rest of the party running up to him.
“Here’s something like a nugget!” said the lad, with flushed face. “Look, uncle, it’s gold right enough; and it weighs, I should think, at least ten pounds. It’s certainly the weight of a light pair of dumb-bells!”
Mr. Blakeney stooped and picked up the stone, and carefully examined it. Then, taking out his knife, he cut into it as Guy had done. Again there showed a streak of bright yellow.
“Yes, that’s gold right enough,” he said, in answer to Guy’s intense look; “and it must weigh well over ten pounds. I see there’s just a thin skin, apparently of quartz, on one side. Deduct, say, a couple of pounds for that and quartz further inside, and you have something like eight or nine pounds of virgin gold. A magnificent find, indeed! I congratulate you, Guy, with all my heart.”
Leaving the big nugget, they worked till three, and then knocked off for the day. The occupation was so exciting, so entrancing a one, that it was difficult to tear themselves away. But, as Mr. Blakeney pointed out, they had the climb out of the kloof before them, and an hour’s walk to camp, and they would scarcely reach the wagon much before sunset.
The valley, as they walked down it on their way to the ladder, looked marvellously fair. Flights of wild duck, geese, widgeon, and teal flew up and down stream. A big troop of guinea-fowl, at least fifty or sixty strong, was making its way to some favourite roosting-place; the sharp, metallic cry of the various members of the flock, calling to one another, sounded curiously resonant in this rock-engirdled kloof. Many birds of lovely plumage flitted hither and thither; occasionally a small steinbuck, duyker, or bushbuck would dart away in front of them. The flowers and flowering shrubs starring the green of the kloof and climbing the cliffsides added not a little to the beauty of the scene.
“What a lovely spot, uncle!” said Guy, as they marched steadily forward. “I feel almost as if I should like to throw up gold-digging, and settle for life in such a paradise.”
“I’m afraid, Guy,” replied his uncle, “you would soon grow tired of the place. It’s very beautiful, certainly; but it’s mighty lonely. And you would have a rare business to keep yourself supplied with even the bare necessaries of life. Think of the long trek from Mossamedes—six weeks’ travel before your tea and coffee, and sugar and other small luxuries, can reach you. Take my word for it. No one has enjoyed the life of the hunter and explorer more than I have done. I knocked about, as you know, for years in South Africa before I settled down. After a time, even the most inveterate wanderer begins to sigh for rest and some of the comforts of civilization. I speak of what I know. I dislike town life; and the huddling together of huge populations, with an immense deal of misery for two-thirds of the poorer folk, is to me absolutely hateful. I believe the system, for which machinery is largely answerable, is absolutely wrong, and will lead to untold misfortunes to the so-called civilized nations in the future, if persisted in. But on the other hand, fascinating as is the life of the wilderness for a time—say a year or two at a spell—you would become weary of it if you had to settle down in such a place as this, fair though it is, for the rest of your existence. The fact is, mankind is to a great extent gregarious, and you would want some kind of company as an occasional relief from the monotony of too much solitude.”
“Besides,” broke in Tom, who had been listening quietly to his father’s ideas, “I should say this kloof, jolly as it looks, would be pretty feverish—wouldn’t it, pater?—especially after the rains.”
“Yes, Tom; I think it would. This country is a good deal nearer the equator than British Bechuanaland, which I take to be the healthiest part of South Africa; and where you get the combination of moisture and heat you are bound to have fever. That reminds me, we shall have to look after our health on the homeward trek. The rains haven’t fairly set in yet, but they will soon, and I shall have to put you fellows on a course of quinine. I don’t want to take you home mere pallid spectres, like men who have been suffering from Zambesi fever.”
They reached the rope-ladder at length, and then began the upward climb. As Mr. Blakeney had warned them, the ascent was a very different matter from the journey down. For the first fifty feet or so, as the ladder swung and swayed in empty air, it was by no means pleasant progression; and by the time they had reached the top, all were out of breath and exhausted.
“My word, pater!” gasped Tom, as he threw himself on the ground and lay panting. “Shall we have to do this often? It’s a beast of a climb, and our gold will be jolly hardly won if we’re to have much of this sort of thing.”
Mr. Blakeney sat up. Evidently he was thinking hard.
“Well,” he said, “it is a terribly tough, as well as a very nasty, climb. I for one don’t want to attempt it very often. It’s worse than I bargained for. I think we’ll have to camp in the kloof till we’ve finished our gold search.”
Poeskop, who had stayed behind to make the ends of the ladder fast to two stout bushes which grew near the foot, and so prevent the unpleasant oscillation of the last fifty odd feet, now made his appearance. The sight of his queer little sharp-chinned face (now streaming from the toil of the climb), as it appeared over the edge of the cliff, sent Guy and Tom, and indeed Mr. Blakeney himself, into fits of laughter, to which the good-humoured Bushman freely responded.
“What ho! Poeskop!” cried Tom; adding in Dutch, “How do you like the climb?”
“Hard work, Baas Tom,” responded Poeskop cheerily, as he squatted on his hams to rest, and wiped the sweat from his face with his usual handkerchief, a jackal’s tail. “But I’ve seen harder jobs even than this. If you had lived the life of a wild Bushman, as I did till I was a grown man, you’d soon understand that a day like this is mere child’s play. Nowadays I know that I get two good meals every single day of my life, rain or shine. When I was a lad the great puzzle of my life was to find or catch food at all. When your skorf comes to you as easily as it does to me now, a day’s work is just nothing at all. Why, baas, as a lad of ten or twelve, I’ve travelled three days at a stretch, fifty miles a day, without food or water, and thought nothing much about it.”
“Yes,” said Tom reflectively; “I quite see your point. A hard day’s work to a well-fed, healthy man, who gets his breakfast and dinner ‘regular,’ is a mere healthy exercise canter. Still, Poeskop, it was a tough climb, eh?”
“Ja, baas,” responded the Bushman, grinning; “but think of what you have in your pockets.”
Tom looked down at his breeches pockets, bulging with nuggets, and roared with laughter.
“Quite so, Poeskop,” he said; “it’s worth it all.”
They now started with Seleti and September, who had spent a quiet and perfectly uneventful day at the cliff top, and made their way rapidly down to the wagon. There, after their supper, they turned to their treasure, which meanwhile reposed in a Kaffir blanket, and Mr. Blakeney, having got out his scales, began to estimate the value of the day’s find. Altogether, not counting Guy’s big nugget, which they christened “Poeskop’s Pride,” they had gathered forty-nine nuggets, giving a total weight of ninety-eight ounces. This amount of gold, at the value of £3, 15s. per ounce, would figure out therefore at a total of £367. These nuggets, varying in size and weight from a pea to more than five ounces, had scarcely any indication of quartz or other extraneous substance about them, and were manifestly nearly all pure and solid metal. Deducting £17 for wastage, Mr. Blakeney estimated their value at not less than £350.
Then came Guy’s monster nugget to be dealt with. It weighed exactly twelve pounds ten ounces. At a liberal estimate the thin coating of quartz running down one side, and other impurities with which it was coated, could not possibly exceed two pounds. This would leave a weight of gold of nine pounds ten ounces, or, reduced to ounces, one hundred and eighteen ounces. At £3, 15s. per ounce, then, “Poeskop’s Pride” was worth £442 at the least. Adding this sum to the £350, the value of the smaller nuggets, a total of £792 would represent the value of the day’s work.
“Not by any means a bad day’s work, even for four hard-working men like ourselves,” said Mr. Blakeney, with a smile, as he looked round at his audience—the two lads and Poeskop.
“I should think not, indeed,” added Guy.
Mr. Blakeney now went to the wagon, and produced a bottle of champagne which, with five others, he had brought for such high occasions as the present; and as medicine, if occasion needed. Opening the bottle—it was Giesler ‘eighty-nine, a first-rate brand—he poured out a tot all round in the kommetjes, or little earthenware basins, used by the Boers and most up-country trekkers for coffee. Then they pledged one another, and drank to the complete success of the expedition. Poeskop, as pioneer of the grand discovery, was served out with a drink of the same excellent liquor. He had never tasted or even seen champagne before, and the effervescing wine, getting into his broad nostrils, set him off in so violent a fit of sneezing that he upset the remainder of his tot.
“My baas,” he said presently, after he had somewhat recovered, “I don’t think I like this medicine. It is not so good as ‘pain-killer’ [a drug beloved of all African natives], and I would much rather have a soupje of Cango brandwein.”
The Bushman’s struggles with his champagne, and his plaintive speech after the mishap, were received with much laughter.
“All right, Poeskop,” said Mr. Blakeney, “you shall have the Cango.”
Going to the locker of the wagon, he brought out a bottle of the good Cape brandy of that name, and, pouring out a dram, handed it to the Bushman. Poeskop, smacking his broad lips over this liquor, was at once satisfied, and expressed himself as more than well pleased at the exchange. The rest of the men were, in honour of the evening, also each served out with a tot of the same spirit. At ten o’clock a merry evening beneath the stars came to an end, and all sought their resting places.
Next morning Mr. Blakeney announced his intention of trying to get the wagon up to the cliff, near where they had let down the rope-ladder. It would be a hard and difficult trek, and some trees and bush would have to be cut down. But he had carefully surveyed the ascent by which they reached the place, and he thought it could be accomplished. His chief reason for getting the wagon up was, that he disliked very greatly the idea of maintaining two separate camps at some distance apart from each other. He knew that it was by no means improbable that Karl Engelbrecht, and any allies he might get together, would make another attack on them. A strong camp might be formed near the ladder. There was a fountain in the hill close by; and it would be much more convenient to load the wagon there than to have to carry every ounce of gold they won each day down to their present camping ground.
All parties, including Poeskop and the other native servants, heartily approved of the scheme; and the whole of that day, therefore, was spent in clearing a road up the long and steep mountain ascent, over the nek, and on to the plateau overlooking the Gold Kloof. Next day they inspanned the oxen, now much refreshed and recruited by their rest and good feeding, and ascended the long mountain slope. It was, as Mr. Blakeney had anticipated, a tough trek, but it was accomplished. They passed the nek, gained the plateau, and made a permanent camp within a hundred yards of the cliff edge overlooking the Gold Kloof. The position was an excellent one against attack. Their rear rested against the base of a mountain peak above them; they had a secure water supply; and any assault delivered against them must be made across the open plateau. There was plenty of good grazing for the cattle and horses among the long grass which here covered the plateau. Occasionally the oxen were taken down to the valley, where they had first outspanned, for change of diet. At night they were kraaled in a strong thorn scherm, which effectually protected them against the raids of leopards, lions, or other Carnivora.
This matter having been arranged satisfactorily, the gold-seekers turned their attention entirely to the work of denuding the kloof of as much of its treasure as they could find and make their own within a given time. For three days they descended the ladder at early morning, climbing up to their camp each night with loads of gold. But the labour entailed in this process seemed so great and so unnecessary, that Mr. Blakeney finally made up his mind to take down food and necessaries for a week, and camp in the kloof near the gold they sought. They found that this plan obviated much labour and saved much time. Jan Kokerboom was left in command of the main camp, with the strictest commands to keep the most vigilant watch and ward. Seleti, Mangwalaan, and September were each sent out during the week to take a glance round the country, to inspect the pass, and to ascertain whether any foes were approaching the kloof. Once in three days Poeskop was sent up the ladder to receive Jan Kokerboom’s report.
For six days on end the four diggers, now living in the Gold Kloof, stuck resolutely to their task. Each day they worked steadily up the stream, unearthing nuggets, plying pick and shovel, and washing soil in a rough cradle which Mr. Blakeney constructed. Their success was wonderful. Poeskop had spoken truly when he had affirmed that the kloof was full of gold. During the first six days’ work, after the day of the opening search, they gathered never less than four hundred ounces; on two of these, thanks to some large nuggets, their finds totalled close on six hundred and a little over eight hundred ounces respectively. Each night they camped under the shelter of some bush, close to the ladder. They slept in their blankets, with a good fire at their feet; and the weather remaining fine and open, with little dew, they were perfectly comfortable. They had with them a kettle in which to boil their coffee, a three-legged Kaffir pot, which served them for baking and stewing, and a saucepan. They had brought down a supply of meal and some baking powder, from which Tom or Guy each day made and baked sufficient bread for their wants. The kloof, a magnificent natural game preserve, provided them with as much game, furred or feathered, as they cared to shoot; and their stew-pot each night furnished them with a savoury meal of the flesh of buck or guinea-fowl, or wild pigeon or partridge. Sometimes they shot a couple or two of fat wild duck, mostly geelbek (yellow-bill), the best of all South African wildfowl, which, baked in the three-legged pot, with embers above and below, and basted with a little fat occasionally, afforded them a delicious banquet.
These were delightful days, which are likely to remain for ever marked in letters of red in the memories of the two young adventurers and of Mr. Blakeney. The toil was hard, but healthy; the kloof was wonderfully beautiful; the weather was magnificent; the gipsy-like existence was fascinating; the daily excitement and anticipation of seeking and unearthing great quantities of the most valuable mineral in the world kept them one and all at concert pitch.
The following Sunday, having climbed up their ladder on the Saturday night, they enjoyed as a day of rest in the main camp. After their work of the preceding six days, they were all glad enough to spend the day quietly about the wagon—resting, reading, writing up their diaries, and listening to the reports of Jan Kokerboom and his subordinates. Nothing had happened to disturb the quiet tenor of life in camp during the absence of the gold-seekers. Nothing had been seen or heard of Engelbrecht or his followers, although a vigilant watch had been maintained, and the neighbouring country occasionally patrolled. Jan Kokerboom had shot a leopard one night, close to the camp fire, as it clawed down the venison of a koodoo which had been recently slain. The brute, stretching itself up to the low branch of a tree on which the venison hung, within fifteen feet of the camp fire, had been observed by Jan. Snatching up his rifle he shot it in the throat, breaking its spine, and instantly ending its predatory career.
For three weeks the gold-diggers steadily pursued their search. Thoroughly exploring the river-side, they were occasionally delayed for several days together by the finding of some unexpectedly rich deposit in the banks of the stream, or some smooth spit of sand, left bare during the absence of the rains. The heap of gold which they were accumulating each day near the foot of the ladder was steadily assuming large proportions. In another week or two, Mr. Blakeney, who had carefully weighed their finds every evening, calculated that they would literally have made their pile, and be ready to trek for the coast and home.