Joe Wilson and His Mates [63]
`I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool down,
and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had
a long drink of water.
`"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and mighty thirsty.
Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"
`I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my bunk,
and had a good rest.'
The Loaded Dog.
Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek
in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist
in the vicinity. There is always a rich reef supposed to exist
in the vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds
beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck
some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling.
They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.
They'd make a sausage or cartridge of blasting-powder
in a skin of strong calico or canvas, the mouth sewn and bound
round the end of the fuse; they'd dip the cartridge in melted tallow
to make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible,
drop in the cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram
with stiff clay and broken brick. Then they'd light the fuse
and get out of the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole
in the bottom of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.
There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged
by a `nibble' or a `bite' now and then -- say once in twenty minutes.
The butcher was always willing to give meat in exchange for fish
when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter,
and these fish wouldn't bite. However, the creek was low,
just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it
to the sizable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet,
and they could get fish by baling out the smaller holes or muddying up
the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface.
There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head,
and if you got pricked you'd know it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots,
tucked up his trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud
with his feet, and he knew it. Dave scooped one out with his hand
and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed
up into his shoulder, and down into his stomach too, he said,
like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights --
only the toothache pain had a `burred edge', Dave said.
Dave got an idea.
`Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a cartridge?' he said.
`I'll try it.'
He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out.
Andy usually put Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable,
or bore the blame for the failure and the chaffing of his mates
if they weren't.
He made a cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock.
Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river.
The inner skin was of stout calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot
piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag
firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the cartridge in the water
with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface,
ready for lighting. Andy dipped the cartridge in melted bees'-wax
to make it water-tight. `We'll have to leave it some time
before we light it,' said Dave, `to give the fish time
to get over their scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again;
so we'll want it well water-tight.'
Round the cartridge Andy, at Dave's suggestion, bound a strip
of sail canvas -- that they used for making water-bags --
to increase the force of the explosion, and round that he pasted
layers of stiff brown paper -- on the plan of the sort of fireworks
we called `gun-crackers'. He let the paper dry in the sun,