“Jem.”

“Jem, we take you on trial.”

Jem’s late companions, who perfectly comprehended what was passing, turned and hooted the deserter; Jem, whose ideas of repartee were primitive, turned and hooted them in reply.

While the men were retreating Robinson walked thoughtfully with his hands behind him, backward and forward, like a great admiral on his quarter deck—­enemy to leeward.  Every eye was upon him and watched him in respectful, inquiring silence.  “Knowledge is power;” this was the man now, the rest children.

“What tools have you?”

“There is a spade and trowel in that bush, captain.”

“Fetch them, George.  Hadn’t you a pan?”

“No, captain; we used a calabash.  He will find it lower down.”

George, after a little search, found all these objects, and brought them back.  “Now,” cried Robinson, “these greenhorns have been washing in a stream that runs now, but perhaps in the days of Noah was not a river at all; but you look at the old bed of a stream down out there.  That was a much stronger stream than this in its day, and it ran for more than a hundred thousand years before it dried up.”

“How can you tell that?” said George, resuming some of his incredulity.

“Look at those monstrous stones in it here, there and everywhere.  It has been a powerful stream to carry such masses with it as that, and it has been running many thousand years, for see how deep it has eaten into its rocky sides here and there.  That was a river, my lads, and washed gold down for hundreds of thousands of years before ever Adam stood on the earth.”

The men gave a hurrah, and George and Jacky prepared to run and find the treasure.  “Stop,” cried Robinson, “you are not at the gold yet.  Can you tell in what parts of the channel it lies thick and where there isn’t enough to pay the labor of washing it?  Well, I can—­look at that bend where the round pebbles are collected so; there was a strong eddy there.  Well, under the ridge of that eddy is ten times as much gold lying as in the level parts.  Stop a bit again.  Do you know how deep or how shallow it lies—­do you think you can find it by the eye?  Do you know what clays it sinks through, as if they were a sieve, and what stops it like an iron door?  Your quickest way is to take Captain Robinson’s time—­and that is now.”

He snatched the spade, and giving full vent to the ardor he had so long suppressed with difficulty, plunged down a little declivity that led to the ancient stream, and drove his spade into its shingle, the debris of centuries of centuries.  George sprang after him, his eyes gleaming with hope and agitation; the black followed in wonder and excitement, and the wounded Jem limped last, and, unable through weakness to work, seated himself with glowing eyes upon that ancient river’s bank.

“Away with all this gravel and shingle—­these are all newcomers—­the real bed of the stream is below all this, and we must go down to that.”