After an hour's digging, dragging, and rope-pulling, the
horse was standing on solid turf, a new pool had been added to the
Springs, and none of us had much hankering for riding over springy
country.
The hour's work among the pools awakened the latent geologist in all of
us, excepting Dan, and set us rooting at the bottom of one of the pools
for a piece of the terraced limestone.
It was difficult to dislodge, and our efforts reminded Dan of a night
spent in the camp of a geologist--a man with many letters after his name.
"Had the chaps heaving rocks round for him half his time," he said.
"Couldn't see much sense in it meself." Dan spoke of the geologist as
"one of them old Alphabets." "Never met a chap with so many letters in
his brand," he explained. "He was one of them taxydermy blokes, you
know, that's always messing round with stones and things."
Out of the water, the opal tints died out of the limestone, and the
geologist in us went to sleep again when we found that all we had for our
trouble was a piece of dirty-looking rock. Like Dan, we saw little sense
in "heaving rocks round," and went back to the camp and the business of
packing up for the homestead.
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