第48章

Meantime the work in the shaft progressed slowly but regularly.Even when the novelty had worn off and the excitement of anticipation grew fainter, I am afraid that we clung to this new form of occupation as an apology for remaining there; for the fascinations of our vagabond and unconventional life were more potent than we dreamed of.We were slowly fettered by our very freedom; there was a strange spell in this very boundlessness of our license that kept us from even the desire of change; in the wild and lawless arms of nature herself we found an embrace as clinging, as hopeless and restraining, as the civilization from which we had fled.We were quite content after a few hours' work in the shaft to lie on our backs on the hillside staring at the unwinking sky, or to wander with a gun through the virgin forest in search of game scarcely less vagabond than ourselves.We indulged in the most extravagant anddreamy speculations of the fortune we should eventually discover in the shaft, and believed that we were practical.We broke our "saleratus bread" with appetites unimpaired by restlessness or anxiety; we went to sleep under the grave and sedate stars with a serene consciousness of having fairly earned our rest; we awoke the next morning with unabated trustfulness, and a sweet obliviousness of even the hypothetical fortunes we had perhaps won or lost at cards overnight.We paid no heed to the fact that our little capital was slowly sinking with the shaft, and that the rainy season--wherein not only "no man could work," but even such play as ours was impossible--was momentarily impending.

In the midst of this, one day Lacy Bassett suddenly emerged from the shaft before his "shift" of labor was over with every sign of disgust and rage in his face and inarticulate with apparent passion.In vain we gathered round him in concern; in vain Captain Jim regarded him with almost feminine sympathy, as he flung away his pick and dashed his hat to the ground.

"What's up, Lacy, old pard? What's gone o' you?" said Captain Jim tenderly.

"Look!" gasped Lacy at last, when every eye was on him, holding up a small fragment of rock before us and the next moment grinding it under his heel in rage."Look! To think that I've been fooled agin by this blanked fossiliferous trap--blank it! To think that after me and Professor Parker was once caught jist in this way up on the Stanislaus at the bottom of a hundred-foot shaft by this rotten trap--that yer I am--bluffed agin!"There was a dead silence; we looked at each other blankly.

"But, Bassett," said Walker, picking up a part of the fragment, "we've been finding this kind of stuff for the last two weeks.""But how?" returned Lacy, turning upon him almost fiercely."Did ye find it superposed on quartz, or did you find it NOT superposed on quartz? Did you find it in volcanic drift, or did ye find it in old red-sandstone or coarse illuvion? Tell me that, and then ye kin talk.But this yer blank fossiliferous trap, instead o' being superposed on top, is superposed on the bottom. And that means"--"What?" we all asked eagerly.

"Why--blank it all--that this yer convulsion of nature, this prehistoric volcanic earthquake, instead of acting laterally and chuckin' the stream to one side, has been revolutionary and turned the old river-bed bottom-side up, and yer d--d cement hez got half the globe atop of it! Ye might strike it from China, but nowhere else."We continued to look at one another, the older members with darkening faces, the younger with a strong inclination to laugh.Captain Jim, who had been concerned only in his friend's emotion, and who was hanging with undisguised satisfaction on these final convincing proofs of his superior geological knowledge, murmured approvingly and confidingly, "He's right, boys! Thar ain't another man livin' ez could give you the law and gospil like that! Ye can tie to what he says.That's Lacy all over."Two weeks passed.We had gathered, damp and disconsolate, in the only available shelter of the camp.For the long summer had ended unexpectedly to us; we had one day found ourselves caught like the improvident insect of the child's fable with gauzy and unseasonable wings wet and bedraggled in the first rains, homeless and hopeless.The scientific Lacy, who lately spent most of his time as a bar- room oracle in the settlement, was away, and from our dripping canvas we could see Captain Jim returning from a visit to him, slowly plodding along the trail towards us.