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.
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