with him. Weeks went by, and I had forgotten all about it. I thought "Dago" had, too, but he hadn't, and this is what happened.
We had sunk on the reef about a hundred feet when we came on water, which made so fast that we couldn't work at the bottom of the shaft at all. There was nothing for it but to build a floor about thirty feet up from the bottom and work at that level until the shaft below us was filled up. So we got on.
This floor was simply made of young saplings with the bark left on, laid loosely on a couple of cross-pieces, one at each end of the shaft, which measured the usual six feet by three. The country we were going through was as hard as iron, and we could do nothing with it with the gads and hammers, so started blasting.
It is necessary in order to understand properly what follows for me to describe our work and the way we did it. At the top of the shaft was a windlass, by which one of us hauled up iron buckets from below whilst the other two filled them with stone and mullock as it was broken out. The buckets simply hooked onto an iron hook, which in turn was spliced onto the end of a manila rope working round the windlass-barrel. It was our custom when the bucket was full and hooked on to shake the rope. Then, whoever was at the windlass immediately wound up, and when the bucket reached the top emptied the contents into a paddock and then sent it down below again.
In the shaft we were obliged to blast, as I said before. This was done by drilling holes in the rock, which were then loaded with the blasting powder, the fuse inserted, and then the hole tamped down hard and fired. The firing was done by lighting a bit of candle over the flame of which we bent the fuse. While the easing of the fuse was burning through whoever fired the shot would have plenty of time to put his foot in the hook, shake the rope and be hoisted up out
