the storm to goodness knows where. Still,
the hardy adventurers would not be beaten; but fought the wind, as they
had fought the water.

Spreading buffalo skins over their unroofed cabin to keep out the wet,
they piled on them rocks and timber that they had kept in reserve for
service in the mine, weighing their ends down with some of the ponderous
rocks with which the flood had assailed them--so making a temporary
provision against the weather until they should be able to build their
log shanty afresh.

By these means the winds were conquered, stopping their onslaught
presently and making a truce, which in time was lengthened into a
treaty. But it was a mighty battle while it lasted; a fight of the
Titans with the gods; man opposed to nature; the material to the
immaterial--self-reliant, well-husbanded, carefully-applied strength
matched against purposeless force.

Man does not generally win in such contests, but did in this instance.
The powers of the water and air were powerless against a systematic
resistance, and were compelled to succumb. The miners suffered,
certainly--who comes out of a fray scathless? But they were victorious;
and being such, could at last laugh at their losses. Beyond, also, the
consciousness of having fought a successful fight, they were encouraged
by the certainty that they had met and encountered with success the
extremity of peril to which they would be subjected; and that
thenceforth Nature could only be a passive enemy to them, with no
terrors now to daunt them with, albeit she struggled against them still
in the bowels of the earth, that refused as yet to give up those hidden
riches which they were confident were there. Refuse? Ay, but only for
a time; they would, in the end, conquer that refusal, as they had met
and overcome nature's more active opposition!

Their house was in ruins; their provisions mostly spoilt by the elements
they had battled--fire had only been wanting to complete the sum of
their calamities; whilst the staging around their mine-shaft was broken
down and tons of water upon tons poured down the embouchure.

They reviewed their position, and grasped its salient points, not a
single faint heart among them:--hope, trust, energy, made them think and
act as one man.

There was the iron hut and shanty to rebuild, the mine-shaft and its
supports to repair, the dam to mend and remake in its weaker places, the
mine to pump out.

Thus they thought; and, what