Hope died hard and he tried to make himself believe that the lower boxes and the tables had caught it--that there was more in the mercury than there looked. But the tension as he took up riffle after rime with the one result was like watching a long-drawn-out race with all one's possessions staked on the losing horse.
He took up riffles until it was a physical impossibility to work longer in the numbing water, his fingers could not hold the scoop. Then he went to the pump-house and told Banule to telephone Smaltz to shut down.
"He wants to know if you'll be pumpin' again?"
"Yes, after awhile. Tell him to stay there. I'm going to squeeze out the 'quick' I've taken up, but I want to get as near finished to-day as I can. You come and help me."
As Bruce walked back to the sluice-boxes with bowed head he was thinking that the day was well suited to the ending of his roseate dreams. Failure is dull, drab, colorless, and in his heart he had little doubt that for some reason still to be explained, he had failed. Just how badly remained to be seen.
Bruce had scooped the mercury into a clean granite kettle and now, while he held the four corners of a square of chamois skin, Banule poured mercury from the kettle into the centre of the skin until told to stop.
"Looks like you ought to get several hundred dollars out of that," Banule said hopefully as Bruce gathered the four corners, twisted them and began to squeeze.
"Yes, looks like I ought to," Bruce replied ironically.
The quicksilver came through the pores of the skin in a shower of shining globules.
Banule's expression of lively interest in the process was gradually replaced by one of bewilderment as with every twist the contents kept squeezing through until it looked as though there would be no residue left. It was a shock even to Bruce, who was prepared for it, when he spread the chamois skin on a rock and looked at the ball of amalgam which it contained.
Banule stared at it, open-mouthed.
"What's the matter? Where's it gone? And out of all that dirt!"
Bruce shook his head; his voice was barely audible: "I don't know." The sagging clouds were not heavier than his heart--"I wish I did."
Banule stood a moment in silent sympathy.
"Guess you won't work any more to-day," he suggested.
"Yes; tell Smaltz to start," Bruce answered dully.
"I've got to save the mercury anyhow."
Banule lingered.
"Say," he hesitated--obviously he found the confession embarrassing or else he hated to lay the final straw upon the camel's back--"just before you told me to shut down, the motor on the small pump started sparkin' pretty bad."