Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/231

Rh away again with drill and hammer. Once more the explosion came and a few more mummies fell from their roosts, but they were prepared for them this time and did not mind them. What troubled them most was the acrid stench of the gas. Coupled with the heat of the place and their labours, it gave them all dull headaches as they once more went to getting out their golden kernels. The second attack had slightly deepened the first fissures and excavations but there was no sign that the wall did not extend clear to the outer surface of the butte, veneered there by the granite.

"Begins to look as if it 'ud pay to tunnel in from outside with a pneumatic drill," said Harvey. "By gum, thar's a heap of it! We ain't done more 'n nibble at a corner of it, like a mouse would a whole cheese."

They went again at the gathering of their golden trove. It varied. Some of it seemed soft as the cheese that Harvey mentioned. It sliced off. Some chipped, some flaked, some they gouged out, and the piles, now turned in every little while to the common heap that Stone had parted, grew continually. They sat in puddles of their own perspiration, pegging away automatically, their fingers bruised and bleeding as they handled the sharp fragments, unmindful of time or tiring muscles, of thirst, of anything but the delight in seeing the gold pile up, in yellow kernels and bits of white quartz that were over-stubborn in releasing grip on their wealth, like a sublimated succotash.