elves meanwhile in passing from party
to party and sorting out the rubies from the worthless stones upturned.
In this way considerable progress was made, and by midday a very
handsome pile of rubies had been accumulated, consisting, however, for
the most part of relatively small stones.

It was not, however, until late in the afternoon that their real good
luck came to them, and then it came all in a moment. A party of the
natives who had for some time been left to themselves had excavated
quite a little cavern in the side of the pit, and, as might have been
expected, this mode of working ultimately resulted in a "cave-in".
Fortunately for them, the workers who were responsible for it detected
the signs of the approaching fall in time to avoid being buried by it;
and when the dust-cloud occasioned by it presently subsided, and the new
face thus laid bare came to be examined, it was discovered that a
veritable "pocket" of rubies had been exposed, the stones--every one of
them of large size and especially fine fire and colour--being so
numerous that almost every shovelful of earth turned over contained one
or more! They were all, without exception, so very much finer than the
finest that had hitherto been found that the latter were there and then
incontinently discarded, and a fresh collection was at once begun, the
whole body of natives being concentrated upon this one spot. So
enormously rich did this "pocket" prove to be that when at length the
declining sun gave warning that the moment to cease work had arrived,
Dick and Grosvenor were fain to acknowledge to each other that, eager as
the former was to make his fortune, they had now collected sufficient
rubies to constitute not one but two exceedingly handsome fortunes, and
that in any case the quantity acquired was as great as it would be at
all prudent to cumber themselves with in view of the long and arduous
journey that still lay before them.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

LIFE IN THE WILD.

Dawn of the following morning, which in that latitude preceded the
rising of the sun by but a bare quarter of an hour, witnessed the
awakening of the white men's camp to a scene of brisk activity; for the
after-dinner conversation of the previous evening between Dick and
Grosvenor had resulted in their arrival at a decision to make an
immediate start on the long trek which they hoped would end in their
discovery of the mysterious white race, which rumour persistently
asserted to