By this time the boys were excessively tired. Climbing down over bluffs is weary work. So after dinner they stretched themselves out for a nap with their bundles under their heads in lieu of pillows.
An hour later they roused themselves and set out again upon their toilsome journey, carrying their packs as best they could, and scrambling through underbrush and over fragments of rock that had fallen from the cliffs and hills above and now seriously obstructed the passage.
At last they came to the shelving rock, mentioned in a preceding chapter. This was a perfectly bare stretch of rock, extending down the hill for nearly a quarter of a mile, at an angle which made walking upon it impracticable.
"Now, fellows," said Tom, "get your parcels together and slide them down the hill. The thick woods and bush tangle at the bottom of this rocky incline will bring them to a halt. Then I'll go down alone and find out if the way is practicable. If I get down in safety the rest of you can follow, doing precisely as you've seen me do."
"But, Tom, I protest," said the Doctor. "You mustn't take all the risk."
"Oh, you'll have risk enough for your own share," answered Tom, "after I've done the trick. It's only that I've done this sort of thing before, and can show you fellows how. In the meantime, send the parcels down."
Then one after another, the shoulder packs were started and went speedily down the rocky incline and into the woodlands at its foot. The guns, of course, were not risked in this fashion, but were securely strapped upon the shoulders of those who were to carry them.
When all the luggage had been sent down, Tom began his descent, calling to the others:
"Now watch me carefully, boys, and see just how I do it."
He went down, face to the ground, and feet first, sliding, with legs and arms spread out, to offer all possible resistance to gravity, and with his toes clinging close to the rock to catch every little inequality and thus check his speed. Now and then he would encounter an obstruction that brought him to a full stop. When that happened, he rested awhile, and then resumed his slide. It was hard work, accompanied by no little peril, and the boys did not breathe freely till Tom reached the bottom, stood up and waved his hat in token of his victory over the difficulty.
Then one by one—for Tom had forbidden any two of them to start down at the same time—they all made the descent in the same way, "without giving the Doctor a single job to do," said Tom, when all was over. But their clothing was very badly damaged in the descent, and the hands and knees of some of them were considerably torn.
They were now in a very thick woodland, crowning a gently declining hillside, and, after gathering their properties together, they marched forward for an hour, descended another bluff, and decided to encamp there for the night. The distance to the foot of the mountain was now comparatively small, but the surface was badly broken and precipitous, and as darkness was not far off, it was deemed better to wait until morning before completing the journey.
On the way through the woodlands, the Doctor had surprised and shot a turkey, and it must of course be roasted, so the first thing to do was to cut some wood and build a fire. For that a spot was selected just under a slate rock bank that formed a cliff near where they had decided to camp. The water which oozed out at the bottom of this slate rock bank on its western border, and formed a convenient pool there, did not prove to be good. It tasted of various minerals, iron and sulphur among them, and was distinctly unpalatable. Fortunately, Jim discovered a spring at a little distance, however, which was found to be good. Springs were everywhere on this steep face of the mountain, bearing to the surface the water from the snows that fell in the higher lands above, sank into the ground, and percolating through rock fissures, found its way to daylight again wherever a crack or seam in the rock permitted.
So the coffee pot was soon ready for the fire where the turkey was already roasting, and by the time that night fell, the supper of roast turkey, hot biscuit and steaming coffee, was ready, and the weary boys were looking rather eagerly forward to the time when the meal should be so far past as to permit them to lie down again to sleep.
As they ate they chatted, of course. The home-going had begun, and indeed its most serious difficulties had already been overcome. Their enthusiasm was again aroused and they again felt interest in whatever subject might come up for discussion. But first of all, they made Jack figure up their winter's earnings—exclusive, of course, of Tom's skins—and they were very well satisfied indeed with the results of his figuring. Their outfit in the autumn had cost them very little, and since then they had been at no expense whatever except that they owed the Doctor their several small shares of the money he had given to Bill Jones and of the two dollars he had advanced to Tom for the purchase of meal on the mountain; for, of course, they all insisted upon sharing that expense, and Tom had no reasonable ground for refusing.
An hour after supper all lay down to sleep, after replenishing the fire under the slate rock bank, for there was no danger from moonshiners down here so near the foot of the mountain.
It was nearly morning when the boys, wrapped in their blankets, began to stir uneasily and kick at their coverings. Every one of them was oppressed with heat, but for a time, weary as they were, they did not fully come to a consciousness of what it was that disturbed them.
After awhile Jim sat up, stripping off his blanket and giving vent to his feeling in the half word, half whistle, "Whew!" He looked about him for an instant, and then hastily jumping up, called to his half-awake companions:
"I say, fellows, wake up, quick. The slate rock bank is afire!"
It was true enough. As the boys shook off the cobwebs of their dreams, they discovered what it was that had been overheating them in their sleep. The whole bank under which they had built their fire was ablaze and throwing out an intense heat.
The Doctor was the first to grasp the situation.
"Drag the fire away from the bank as quickly as you can, boys!" he cried. "Fortunately the wood is nearly burned out."
That done, the cliff continued to blaze and sputter and the Doctor, who had seized authority and taken control of affairs, called for water.
"Bring it in your hats, boys, or anything else that will hold water, but bring it quick!"
The boys obeyed with alacrity, and when the water came, the Doctor made them cast it only upon the lower parts of the burning cliff.
"We get a double advantage that way," he explained. "We put out the source of the fire, which originates at the bottom, and the steam that rises from water thrown there helps to dampen the fire above."
But the burning had made such progress that it required quite two hours to put it out. When that was done, daylight having completely come, the boys addressed themselves to the work of getting breakfast, by a new fire kindled at some distance from the lately burning bank. The Doctor, meanwhile, was pottering around the bank, breaking off bits of the formation with his little geological hammer, and seriously burning his fingers in efforts to examine them critically.
Finally he seized his axe and with an entirely reckless disregard of its edge, he began chopping into the bank. Even when breakfast was announced, he would not quit his exploration for a time.
"The Doctor seems interested in that cliff," said one of the boys.
"Yes, and he's ruining the edge of his axe upon it," said another. "I suppose he has found something of geologic interest there."
Just then the Doctor quitted his work on the bank, removed his hunting shirt, tied it up by the neck and filled it full of the blocks he had chopped out of the bank. It held about half a bushel. Going to the fire, he emptied the mass upon it, and watched for results with eagerness. The slate rock, as the boys had called it,—burned slowly and gave out a good deal of heat.
Then the Doctor addressed himself to his breakfast, but he ate in silence. After he had done, he said to Tom—for he and Tom had become special cronies—"Tom, I wish you would take two of the boys with you this morning, go down to the railroad camps and buy four or five picks and four or five shovels."
"Certainly, Doctor," answered Tom. "But what is it you want with the picks and shovels?"
"I want to dig into that bank. I want to find out whether what I suspect is true or not."
"What is it you suspect, Doctor?" asked Jack eagerly.
"I suspect that that slate rock bank is the outcrop of one of the very richest coal mines in America. I may be wrong, but if you'll go down and get the picks and shovels, we'll soon find out."
"But why not all go down and bring back some miners with us?"
"Because we don't want any miners and especially we don't want anybody to 'jump our claim'—that is to say, to come here and claim a royalty on the plea that he first discovered the mine. Boys, I don't think we'll any of us get home as soon as we expected. This is something worth staying for, and fortunately we are now within easy reach of supplies."
"But we haven't any money with which to pay for them," said Harry.
"I'll take care of that," said the Doctor. "Do you happen to remember that the contractor who is to pay you boys for your ties and cordwood and bridge timbers, is named Latrobe?"
"Why, yes, certainly," said Tom. "But I never thought of that. Is he a relative of yours?"
"Only my father," answered the Doctor. "I don't think we shall have any difficulty in purchasing any supplies we need while guarding this 'slate rock' mine."
After further conversation it was arranged that the Doctor should send a note by Tom to the elder Latrobe, asking him to send up tools and food supplies. He wrote the letter on a leaf or two torn from his note book and delivered it into Tom's hands.
"Now, Tom," he said, "as you go down, suppose you study the ground carefully and see if you can't pick out a route by which you can bring a wagon up. If so, my father will load it with provisions and it will carry much more than many pack mules could. On the whole, I think you'd better go alone. I suggested taking two others with you, to help carry the tools, but you'll bring them in a wagon, or if you can't find a wagon path, you'll bring them on pack mules. But find a wagon track if you can. Take your time going down. You can't get back much before to-morrow night, anyhow, and it is important to secure a wagon way if possible."
"All right," said Tom. "But, Doctor, why do you think this is good coal? It looks to me like very poor stuff, and certainly it doesn't burn like good coal."
"O, that's because it is outcrop, and outcrop coal is always poor stuff. It has been so long exposed to the weather that it has lost most of its combustible constituents. Sometimes it will not burn at all. But I think this the outcrop of a very fine vein of coal, because from its location and from what I can discover of its formation by examining pieces of it, I think I know the 'measure,' as they call it, to which it belongs. If I am right in this, we have here a vein of the very best and purest coal in the world for making steam, for direct furnace uses and for making coke. But come, we have no leisure now for talking about coal or anything else. We want picks and provisions the first thing. So pack your haversack, Tom, and hie you away."
"I will on one condition," said Tom.
"What is that?" asked the Doctor.
"That you won't talk about Old King Coal to the other fellows till I get back," answered Tom. "I have at least ten thousand questions to ask, and I simply won't go for provisions if you're going to answer any of them while I am gone."
"I promise, Tom," answered the Doctor, laughing. "I won't even mention His Majesty King Coal, till you return and I'll scalp any boy in the party who asks me a question on that subject while you are away. Now, be off. Take plenty of time. We'll kill a little game now and then, and we have enough flour to last us till you get back. The important thing is for you to get a wagon load of supplies up here, and you must do it if it takes a week."
"I'll do it," answered Tom. "Good by, fellows!" and the boy started off down the hill.
AS soon as Tom was gone, the Doctor turned to the others and said:
"Come, boys, we must get to work."
"What have we got to do?" asked Jack.
"Why build the new Camp Venture, to be sure. Don't you understand that we're to stay here perhaps for a month, and must protect ourselves against the spring rains? We must build a shelter before Tom gets back."
"But, Doctor," interrupted Harry, "why should we stay here for a month?"
"Why, don't you understand," said the Doctor, "that we have discovered, right here on your mother's land, a coal mine that will certainly make her comfortable all her life and probably make you boys rich. We've got to find out enough about it to enable us to exploit it, and that will take a month at least."
"But tell us about the coal," said Jack.
The Doctor replied by singing:
"Old King CoalWas a jolly old soul,And a jolly old soul was he;He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl,And he called for his fiddlers three.Every fiddler had a fine fiddleAnd a very fine fiddle had he,
"Old King CoalWas a jolly old soul,And a jolly old soul was he;He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl,And he called for his fiddlers three.Every fiddler had a fine fiddleAnd a very fine fiddle had he,
but," continued the Doctor, "not a man jack of them would tune up for Old King Coal till little Tom got back, because they had promised Tom not to set the fiddles going in his absence. That's a parable. It gives you fair warning that I'm going to keep my promise to our dearest comrade, Little Tom, and tell you nothing about this or any other coal till he comes back. But I tell you we shall have to stay here for a month at least, and that we need some sort of shelter against the heavy spring rains. So come, Jack, you are our architect. Tell us what sort of house to build."
Jack thought a few minutes, after which he said:
"We shan't need a house; at this time of year all we need is a shelter, closed in on three sides and open to the fire in front. We can build it of poles and cover it with a thatch of pine branches and other brush thick enough to shed the rain."
"But if we have only three sides to our house," said Jim, "how are we to keep the ends of the poles in place?"
"Oh, that's easy," said Jack. "We'll insert short bits of pole between them, with deep notches cut into them; and we needn't chink or daub at all. We ought to be able to build quite all the shelter we need, to-day and to-morrow, particularly as we are in a thick grove of young trees, just the size that we want for our poles. Get to work, every fellow of you, and cut poles with all your might."
Just then a thought occurred to Jack, and he took the Doctor aside for consultation.
"Doctor," he said, "It occurs to me that this coal mine, if it is a coal mine, is on my mother's land and that therefore it is worth my while and Harry's and Tom's to stay here and work up the possibilities of the case. It is also worth your while, because you are in fact the discoverer of it and my mother will naturally recognize your interest in it, especially as we shall look to you to find capitalists to work the thing."
"Oh, I'll do that, of course. If I'm right about the mine, I'll have no difficulty in finding plenty of capital. The mine is at exactly the right place, and as to my interest, I'll take care of that when I come to negotiate with the capitalists. I'll see to it that they allow me a proper commission for 'bringing the property to their attention,' as they phrase it. So don't bother about me."
"No, but I'm bothering about Ed and Jim. If they are to stay here and help us for a month or so, they must be paid in some way."
"Of course," answered the Doctor. "I've been so long thinking of our party as a unit, whose constituent members 'shared and shared alike,' that I had not thought of them as persons not interested in this new Camp Venture. Let me think a little!"
He bowed his head upon his hands for a time in meditation. Then he said:
"Of course your mother cannot work this mine herself. It will need at least a hundred thousand dollars of capital to make it productive—perhaps twice that sum. I know enough of the situation to know that I can arrange that without going out of my own family. My father and my brothers will put in the entire sum necessary—for I tell you there is a vastly valuable property here,—and will allow your mother her proper share of the stock for the mine itself. I'll arrange all that to her perfect satisfaction before anything is concluded. Indeed, I must do that. Otherwise she would naturally make somebody else her agent."
"Oh, she'll trust you, Doctor," interrupted Jack.
"It isn't a matter of trust, it's business," answered the Doctor. "But on purely business principles we shall be able to arrange for your mother to put in the property and my friends to put in the money capital. I shall not ask your mother for a cent, for she has been like a mother to me ever since I came down here for my health and began boarding with her. My own people will allow me out of their share, a sufficient interest to compensate me. Now, I undertake also that they or I shall allow to Ed and Jim, half a share each in the mine, supposing it to be capitalized at a hundred thousand dollars, in return for their services while we have to stay here."
"No, Doctor," said Jack, "I will not hear of that. If you'll furnish one-half share, I engage that my mother shall furnish the other. That will divide the thing equally."
The Doctor, seeing the entire justice of this arrangement, assented to it, and the two called Jim and Ed into the conference. When they laid the proposition before the pair, it was joyfully accepted. Ed said:
"Even without that, we shouldn't have left the camp. We fellows have had so good a time together that I, for one, would have stayed and done my share of the work, with or without a financial interest in it."
"So should I," said Jim, enthusiastically. "Now that we are to be capitalists and stockholders and all that sort of thing, it will require all our self restraint not to grow cocky and refuse to work. Still there are a lot of poles to cut for the new shelter, and if you two fellows are going to stay here all day and talk, the rest of us must work all the harder."
"We're going to work at once, Jim," said the Doctor. "But I want you to understand that in my judgment this mine is going to be a great property, and that your share in it will go far to make you prosperous men."
Then Ed broke down. He had lived a hard life, trying to aid his widowed mother by such work as he could do, and this prospect opened to him, of a little income independent of his work, overcame him with emotion as he thought of the good mother released perhaps from the necessity of hard toil for the rest of her life. The simple fact is that as Ed turned away to hide his emotion, the tears rolled down his cheeks. But if he sobbed, it was not until he had gone down the hill well beyond the ledge of broken stones that marked the boundary of the camp.
When night came, the eager boys began again to question the Doctor about coal and coal mines. To every question, he replied by singing "Old King Coal," and declaring anew his resolute purpose not to talk at all on that subject till little Tom's return. But the Doctor was jubilant all the same, and he said presently, "His Majesty King Coal is a very generous monarch and he is going to make all of us well to do if not actually rich." Then he broke out again into the song:
"Old King CoalWas a jolly old soul,And a jolly old soul was he;He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl,And he called for his fiddlers three."
"Old King CoalWas a jolly old soul,And a jolly old soul was he;He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl,And he called for his fiddlers three."
Tom had not gone far on his journey before he discovered that the new Camp Venture was in fact situated very nearly at the base of the mountain. The headquarters of the railroad people lay a mile or so to the west, and perhaps two hundred feet or so lower. But along the foot of the hill was accumulated all the debris that had come tumbling down the steep for ages—great and small fragments of rock split off the cliffs above by the frosts of a multitude of winters and now piled haphazard wherever they could find a resting place.
In the midst of such a mass of rocky debris, now thickly overgrown with forest trees, Tom at first despaired of finding a practicable wagon path. But he toiled diligently at the task, retracing his steps many times and little by little tracing out a way, which he marked as he went by cutting branches of trees and setting them up as landmarks to show him the way when he should return with a wagon load of supplies.
All this occupied so much time that Tom did not reach his destination that night, but slept by a little fire on the mountain side.
In the morning there was a drenching, discouraging spring rain falling with pitiless persistence, and Tom's clothing and blanket were soaked through, and his limbs were stiff with cold. Fortunately his fire had not been entirely extinguished by the rain, and when he had replenished it with seasoned branches, and steamed himself in its glow for a time, his energy returned, and he cooked and ate a scant but refreshing breakfast which included the two drumsticks of the Doctor's turkey. These had been roasted the night before, but Tom threw them on the coals to broil a little. "I prefer a hot breakfast," he said, "particularly on a morning like this. How I wish I had a cup of coffee!"
Then gathering up the few things that he carried, he left his camp fire and continued his task of picking out a way by which a wagon might be dragged up and along the rocky hill. It was high noon when he reached the little railroad station where Dr. Latrobe's father had established his headquarters as a contractor. Tom was enthusiastically received by that gentleman, who was naturally pleased to hear news of his son's thoroughly restored health. There was a little tavern already established near the station and there Tom was made to dry and warm himself. Having assured Mr. Latrobe that he could conduct a loaded wagon up the hill to the new Camp Venture, Tom speedily left his occupation of warming himself and joined the older gentleman in choosing the materials that were to constitute the load. Mr. Latrobe had assigned for the purpose a heavy, stoutly built wagon, capable of enduring rough road service, and to Tom he said: "I've sent a little way down the line for four of the stoutest mules we have, to draw it, and for a driver who is used to mountain work. They will be here this evening and in the meantime we'll get the wagon loaded, so that you can make an early start in the morning." This suited Tom's plans exactly, and he set himself at work at once selecting from the contractor's stores, the things most desirable for his purpose.
There were ten large sides of bacon; half a barrel of sugar; half a barrel of molasses; half a barrel of corned beef; several hundred pounds of corn meal and a like quantity of flour in bags; a bushel or two of salt, and a good supply of potatoes, turnips, cabbages, canned vegetables and fruits with which to break the long monotony of the camp diet. Mr. Latrobe insisted upon adding some prunes, dried peaches, dried apples, and some other things that he thought the boys would enjoy. Finally a large box of coffee already ground and put up in damp-proof packages, was placed in the wagon, together with ten pounds of tea.
"You see I've done a great deal of camping, my boy," said the genial gentleman, "and I know how much of comfort there is in tea and coffee when you're rain soaked."
All these things were packed into the wagon by some of Mr. Latrobe's men, and securely lashed into immovability with stout hemp ropes. Over them a tarpaulin was spread to protect them from the rain and on top of that the picks and shovels were lashed into place.
The wagon was ready and that night Tom slept in a real bed for the first time in nearly half a year. But he was up at daybreak and off on his journey before the sun's appointed time for rising. Whether or not that luminary left his couch when he should, Tom had no means of finding out, for it was still heavily raining.
It was a toilsome journey that lay before him and Tom foresaw that it could not be accomplished much before nightfall, even should no delaying mishap occur, and therefore he disregarded the rain and insisted upon the earliest possible start.
It was Tom's function to walk ahead of the wagon, look out for the landmarks he had set up, and point the way to the driver who, armed with a long black snake whip, rode upon the "near," or left hand, wheel mule. But the driver was his own sufficient adviser as to how to overcome such obstacles as were met, and Tom was greatly interested to observe the skill and good judgment with which the man did this.
"There is science," he said, "in everything, even in driving a wagon over a rough mountain where there is no road."
But Tom got no response from the driver, who seemed a taciturn fellow, and who in fact never once spoke during the journey except to scold his mules with shocking profanity. Even when he decided to halt about noon to feed the animals, he said not one word to Tom, but simply stopped the wagon, unhitched the mules and gave them their food, hitching them up again when he thought it proper to do so and resuming his journey.
"Obviously," thought Tom, "that fellow has been used to driving alone. I wonder if he has forgotten how to talk? Or is it that he never thinks? Even the weather doesn't inspire him to make a remark, for he hasn't once asked my attention to the fact that the rain has ceased and that the sun is breaking through the clouds. He certainly can't be classified as a companionable personage, but at any rate he knows how to manage mules and get a wagon over difficulties, and after all that's what he is employed to do. He gets on wonderfully, too, considering the difficulties of the road. I suppose it is like the case of the man who tied his cravats so beautifully because, as he said, he 'gave his whole mind to it.'"
So, silently they proceeded on their way and just before sunset the wagon was stopped on the outskirts of the new Camp Venture.
The boys all rushed out to greet Tom and compliment him on his skill and success in bringing the supplies over so difficult a route. Tom greeted them all in turn, and then said:
"Try your hands, boys, and see if any of you can extract a single unnecessary word from that driver. I haven't been able to get anything out of him except vituperation for his mules."
The driver meanwhile was stripping his mules of their harness and arranging to give them the oats and fodder that he had brought with him for their use.
The Doctor filled a tin cup with coffee—for the boys had heard Tom coming and made supper ready against his arrival—and carried the steaming liquid out to the driver whose clothes were still sopping wet, and offered it to him, saying:
"You are very wet and it must have been a hard struggle to get your wagon up here. Drink this to warm you and when you get your mules fed, come to our fire and have some supper. You must be hungry."
The man took the cup, drank its contents, handed it back to the Doctor and muttered the single abbreviated word, "'Bleeged," by which the Doctor understood that he meant, "I am obliged to you."
Finally the man having disposed of his mules for the night, came to the camp fire for his supper. He received it in silence and proceeded to devour it like the hungry man that he was. Still he uttered not a word. At last Jim Chenowith tried his hand at drawing him into conversation.
"It must have been pretty tough work to get a wagon up here," he said, tentatively. The man said not a word in reply. This exasperated Jim and presently he stood up before the wagoner and angrily demanded:
"What's the matter with you? Why don't you answer a civil question?"
To this the man answered, "Hey?" at the same time putting his hand to his ear in a futile effort to understand.
"The man is almost stone deaf," said the Doctor. "That is the explanation of his silence."
Tom laughed at himself for not having made this discovery, and then crept into the bunk prepared for him in the new camp house.
The Doctor was an advocate of leisurely eating, but he impatiently hurried the boys through their breakfast the next morning and set them at work upon the bank with picks and shovels. He explained to them as he had before explained to Tom, that "outcrop" coal—that is to say, the edge of a coal seam exposed by any circumstance and left long exposed, deteriorates in quality and value.
"All the combustible parts of this exposed coal have been evaporated," he said, "until now the stuff is worth scarcely more than so much shale. But unless my knowledge of geology fails me, there lies behind this stuff, some of the very richest coal in Virginia. Our task is to dig in here and find out whether we have here a valuable coal mine or nothing at all."
"Suppose it is the kind of coal you think, Doctor," said Jack, "what is such a mine worth?"
"Nothing and everything. It all depends upon circumstances. A year or two ago the finest coal deposit in the world, located where this is would have been worth no more than the detritus from the hill that is piled up all around here. Such a mine at this place now, is incalculably valuable."
"But what makes so vast a difference?" asked Ed.
"The railroad," answered the Doctor. "A year ago this coal would have been worthless, simply because there was no market for it anywhere within reach. Now the railroad brings the market to the mouth of the mine, as it were. But come, let's get to work. If you want me to talk about King Coal, I'll do it to-night after supper. Just now we must dig for his majesty." Then he grabbed a pick and broke out again singing—
"Old King CoalWas a jolly old soul," etc.
"Old King CoalWas a jolly old soul," etc.
The boys dug with a will and by nightfall they had dug away three or four feet of the face of the cliff. Every now and then the Doctor would take a bit of the exposed coal and examine it critically under a strong magnifying glass. Every time he did so, he broke out again into the song about "Old King Coal." The boys had never seen him so jubilant.
When they quitted the work and began to prepare supper, the Doctor went into the shaft they had started, broke out a bushel or two of the deepest coal yet reached, and placed it on the fire. He watched it intently as it burned, and just as supper was ready he said:
"We've got it, boys, and no mistake. This is a great mine of the very best coal in the world for making gas, steam and coke, and as these hills are full of iron ore, the mine is precisely where it ought to be. When we dig a little further into that bank we shall come to coal that can be shovelled into a furnace with iron ore on top of it, and used to smelt iron without the trouble or expense of coking. Or we can make as good coke of it as there is in the world, and the vein is eight or nine feet thick, which means a lot, and it has a perfect rock roof, which means a lot more, and the volcanic upheaval which shoved it up here has kindly so placed it that it trends upward, so that in mining it we shall not have to do any pumping. All we've got to do is to dig trenches on each side of our coal car tracks and let the water run out by force of gravitation. I tell you boys, we've discovered the most valuable coal mine in all this region, and as if to make matters still better, it lies just high enough up the mountain to enable us to chute its product down to the railroad without any expense whatever for hauling."
"Well now," said Jack, "all that is good news. But we boys don't understand the thing the least bit. So you are to explain it to us after supper. You are to stop singing 'Old King Coal' and explain to us upon what grounds his majesty's authority rests."
"All right," said the Doctor, with truly boyish enthusiasm. "After supper I'll tell you all about my liege lord Old King Coal. Meantime won't somebody give me another cup of coffee and about a dozen more rashers of that paper-thin bacon? I'm hungry."
Jack replenished the Doctor's cup, and Ed cut for him a dozen or twenty very thin slices of bacon, leaving him to broil them for himself on the end of a stick and devour them as fast as they were broiled. Tom divided a pone of corn bread with him and the supper proceeded to its conclusion.
"Now then," called Tom, when the tin plates and tin cups had been washed and set up on the wall shelf which the Doctor had made for them, "we're ready to hear all about 'Old King Coal' and his claims upon our allegiance."
"Oh, no you're not," said the Doctor. "It would take me weeks to tell you the little I know on that subject and something like a lifetime for anybody who knows more to tell you 'all about' King Coal. But I'll tell you a little any how."
"First of all tell us why you call it 'King Coal,'" said Ed.
"Because in our age it is king," quickly answered the Doctor. "Without it every one of our industries would come to an end; every factory would stop; every steamship would be laid up forever; every electric light would go out; every railroad would become 'two streaks of rust and a right of way'; in short the whole fabric of modern civilization would tumble to the ground. You see every age has its key note. When men had no better implements than rough stones those people who had most stones were the easy conquerors of the rest. When they began to fashion stones into arrowheads, axes and the like, the people who lived in stony countries had a still greater advantage. When men learned to work metals—well you see the way it went. In the pastoral ages the man whose land produced most grass was the 'king pin' of his community and owned more cattle than anybody else. In the military ages the people who fought best were the supreme ones, and the rest were their dependants. In ecclesiastical ages the great prelates dominated, and so on through a long catalogue. Now ours is an industrial age and coal lies at the very root of productive industry. Without it we can't make steam or get power enough for any of the vast enterprises of modern civilization. It smelts iron out of rocks that would not give it up without King Coal's command. It enables us to make steel and to fashion metals to answer our requirements in a thousand ways. It runs our steamships, our factories, our railroads and pretty much everything else that we depend upon to make life easy, to enable us to interchange our products with people at a distance and generally to make ourselves comfortable. In short our whole civilization depends upon coal. That's why I call coal 'king.' If there ever was a monarch in this world whose authority could not be questioned without destruction to those revolting against it, that monarch is 'Old King Coal.'"
"But if we had no coal, why couldn't we do all these things with wood?" asked Jim.
"First, because we haven't enough wood," answered the Doctor. "We are using up our supply of wood much too rapidly already, and there coal is rendering us another important service. It is enabling us to use iron and steel for building materials, and a thousand other purposes for which we once used wood, and thus to spare our wood."
"What is your 'secondly,' Doctor?" asked Ed.
"Why secondly, wood cannot do the work."
"Why not?"
"Because it hasn't enough sunshine in it."
"How do you mean?"
"Why you know, don't you, that all the heat we get out of burning fuel of any kind, is simply so much sunshine stored up for us and released by burning?"
"I confess I didn't know that," said Tom. "Or at any rate I never thought of it. Now that I do think of it, I see how it is with wood. But what has sunshine to do with coal, buried as it is deep under rocks and earth?"
"Then you don't know what coal is, and where it comes from?" asked the Doctor. "Let me explain. There was a period in the world's remote history when the earth was much warmer than it is now—almost hot in fact. The atmosphere was filled with the gases of carbon, and the rains were an almost continuous cataclysm. Human life was impossible in these conditions. No man could have breathed such an atmosphere and lived. But the conditions were peculiarly favorable to abundant vegetable life. There were forests such as we do not dream of now even in tropical swamps. Ferns grew to the height of great trees, vines and cane and grass and air plants filled up every available inch of space, and they all grew in that carbonized atmosphere with a rapidity and luxuriance quite impossible now. All this vegetation died of course and fell to the ground as all vegetation does and has done from the beginning of time. Wherever it fell into water and was thus shielded from the air, and wherever it managed to get itself covered with earth or rock, as in that highly disturbed volcanic age often happened, it was converted into coal by pressure and by losing certain of its volatile elements, just as charcoal is made by expelling the volatile parts from wood. So, without going any further into details, you see that the coal is preserved vegetation which grew many thousands of years ago, and that the heat we get from it is simply the sunshine it stored up at a period before ever human life existed. What a pity it is that we have to waste so much of it!"
"How do you mean, Doctor?" asked Jack.
"Why you see we waste almost all the heat that coal gives us. If we could make effective use of it all, the burning of a single pound of coal would give us force enough to lift more than eleven and a half millions of pounds a foot from the earth; but the most that we actually get out of it is force enough to lift one and a half million pounds."
"What? All that from one pound of coal?" asked Jim.
"Yes, all that, and it all means so much sunshine which fell upon the earth thousands of years ago. Curious, isn't it?"
"It's simply astounding," said Jack. "But why do we burn coal so wastefully, Doctor? Why can't we utilize more of its heat? And what becomes of the waste heat?"
"Our methods are imperfect," answered the Doctor. "In a big manufacturing city thousands of tons of coal, or what is essentially the same thing, go off into the air every day in the shape of black smoke. You see the blackness of smoke is nothing but pure carbon or in other words coal. Then again think of the heat that goes up every smoke stack and is wasted in the air. It would run hundreds of great engines if it could be turned to account. And there is all the heat that makes an engine room so horribly torrid. Every bit of that is wasted power. Little by little, however, we are learning to save the power that coal gives us. A high pressure engine, like an ordinary locomotive, besides wasting coal, wastes greatly more than half the expansive force of its steam. It uses the steam only once and that very imperfectly, and then lets it escape into the open air and go to waste. But the big steamships and many factories have what they call triple or quadruple expansion engines which use the same steam three or four times in propelling the machinery, and then condense it into hot water and send it back into the boiler, thus saving a vast deal of the heat that would otherwise be wasted. Still even they waste most of the heat that their coal produces."
"By the way, Doctor," interrupted Tom, "how much coal does it take to drive one of the big steamers across the Atlantic?"
"From fifteen hundred to three thousand tons," answered the Doctor, "and think what a waste that is when a few hundred tons give force enough to do the work if only the force developed could all be used."
"But how do they manage to carry any freight when they must carry such an enormous load of coal?" asked Ed.
"That is another serious waste," answered the Doctor. "For every ton of coal carried means one ton less of freight. And then, too, think of the expense incurred in putting all that coal aboard. And think too of the cost of feeding and paying wages to a large company of men to handle it after it is on board! For you know besides the stokers who shovel the coal into the furnaces, there are the 'coal trimmers' as they are called, whose duty it is to keep the coal heap properly distributed in the ship. You see a ship is not stiff and rigid like a coal pocket. It would never do to begin at one end of a coal heap and use it as it comes. That would presently leave one part of the ship with no coal load at all, while thousands of tons would burden other parts. No ship that ever was built could stand that. It would twist her out of shape, warp her seams open and send her to Davy Jones in a very little time. So from the moment the stokers begin to shovel coal into the furnaces under a steamship's boilers the coal trimmers and coal carriers must busy themselves with the night and day work of so shifting the coal as to keep its weight properly distributed. But now to come back to what I was saying. Little by little we are learning to save some small part of the enormous waste in the burning of coal. One example will illustrate. In smelting iron—that is melting it out of the ore and separating it from the rock stuff,—the waste twenty-five years ago was simply appalling. The furnaces were mere pots built of fire clay brick, and filled with coal or coke beneath and iron ore on top. A blast of steam or hot air was sent into them from below to make the fire burn as hotly as possible. Sometimes this blast was strong enough to blow bushels of unburned coal or coke out at the top. That however was a mere trifle as compared with the other waste. For great flames, nearly hot enough to melt iron, poured out of every furnace top and were lost in the air. Every bit of that heat represented power that was literally cast to the winds. All that has been greatly improved since. The flames and heat that escape from the blast furnaces are now very generally harnessed and made to do further work. They are used to heat great steam boilers and thus create the power that operates rolling mills and gigantic forges, and vast machine shops. But we still waste very much more than half the heat that coal gives us—often more than nine-tenths of it."
"But, Doctor," said Tom, "If we go on wasting our coal at such a rate, won't we use it all up presently? And will not civilization have to stop then?"
"There are three answers to that," replied the Doctor: "1st. That we shall more and more learn to economize in this matter of heat wasting;
"2nd. That our coal supply in this country seems to be sufficient to last for millions of years yet; and
"3rd. That long before it is exhausted the ingenuity of man will probably discover means of securing power from some other source than coal."
"What, for example?"
"Well, perhaps we shall learn how to utilize terrestrial magnetism directly. You know this earth of ours is a gigantic magnet, and magnetism is the raw material of electricity, if I may so express it. At present we get all the electricity we use out of the earth, but we have to do it by burning coal to run dynamos. Perhaps we shall find ways to save that expense by drawing the electricity directly from the earth. We have already done something closely resembling that, with the result of a great saving."
"How was that?"
"Why when the telegraph was first invented it was necessary to double the wire lines, putting up two wires every time by way of completing the circuit. You know electrical energy will not manifest itself, or as we say, the electric current will not flow, unless there is a circuit established. Well at first they established the circuit by running two parallel wires, one to carry the current one way and the other to bring it back. That's a clumsy way to put it, but it will answer my purpose in explanation. After a while somebody found out that the earth is a better conductor of electricity than any wire could be, and so the circuit was established simply by running each end of a single wire into the ground, making the earth do the work formerly done by the other wire. That simple discovery saved exactly one half the expense of telegraph companies for wires."
By this time it was growing late and as the boys had a hard morrow's work before them the Doctor ceased talking and all went to their bunks.
Very early the next morning the boys, who had caught the Doctor's enthusiasm, began again their task of digging through the "out crop" coal, which began now to grow softer and more workable, while the coal itself grew steadily better in quality.
But about noon, when they had pushed their little shaft about a dozen feet into the hill, the Doctor ordered a cessation of the digging.
"We must put in some supports for our roof," he said, "or we shall presently be caught in a cave in."
"How are we to do it?" asked Jack.
"Well, I am not a mining engineer," answered the Doctor, "but I've seen enough of the work to know how to protect a little shaft like this, anyhow. The engineers, when they come, will of course tear out all that we do, because they must drive a big shaft into the hill, while all we want to do is to push a little gallery three or four feet wide far enough in to find the best of the coal. But even in doing that we must securely support the roof of our mine. So we'll cut some timber and put it in place. Jack, I wish you would choose the trees to be cut."
"All right!" said Jack. "What dimensions are required?"
"First of all," answered the Doctor, "we want from six to ten pieces of oak, say four feet six inches long and fully twelve inches in diameter. They will serve for roof timbers, and will be enough to carry us thirty or forty feet further. Then for perpendicular supports—one at each end of each timber—we shall need just twice as many perfectly straight oaken sticks eight or nine inches in diameter."
"But why do you want big sticks to go crossways and comparatively little ones for the perpendicular supports?" asked Ed. "The perpendicular timbers must after all bear the weight."
"Oh, that's simple enough," said Tom, whose perceptive faculties were always alert. "You see a stick set up on end, if it is perfectly straight and set true, will bear vastly more weight than a stick of twice or three times its thickness, if laid crossways. In fact a straight eight-inch stick nine feet long, if set on end will support nearly as much as another stick nine feet thick—if there were any sticks that thick—laid lengthwise."
"That's it," said the Doctor. "We want heavy timbers across the top, supported by stout eight- or nine-inch sticks set endwise under them. Now, Jack, select the best trees and we'll all get to work as soon as dinner is over. We'll get the dinner ready while you choose the timber to be cut."
The cutting of the timber was a small task to expert young wood choppers; but it was a very difficult task for the six boys to bring the timbers to the mine and set them in place. True, only two frames had to be set up for the present, but the cross pieces, short as they were, were enormously heavy, and it required all the ingenuity as well as all the strength the boys could command, to get these two frames up, each consisting of one cross piece under the roof and two uprights supporting it.
When night came only one of the two frames was in place, and it was obvious, as Jack said, that "another half day must be wasted on such work" before they could begin mining again. But that evening the Doctor dug two bushels of coal out of the farthest end of the shaft, built a special fire, placed the coal on it, and carefully covered it with earth.
"What are you doing, Doctor?" asked his crony, Tom.
"I'm making a coke oven, Tom," he replied. "I want to see how our coal will coke."
"But I don't understand about coke," answered Tom. "Why is it that when you burn most of the substance out of coal it will make a hotter fire than with all its combustible materials in it?"
"That isn't quite the case, Tom," answered the Doctor. "What we do in making coke is chiefly to expel the gas from the coal and to roast out the sulphur, which seriously interferes with the making of sufficient heat to smelt iron. Some coal gets burnt up in the process; some makes an indifferent and nearly worthless coke; while some makes a coke that would melt the heart of a miser. Now, as I told you the other night, I am convinced as a geologist, that a little further in our mine we shall come to coal so free from sulphur that we can smelt iron with it without making coke of it at all. But it is always preferable to make coke of it, and so I'm trying to see what sort of coke our coal will make. Of course we haven't come to the real coal yet, but I can tell a good deal by what we have now. We'll let my little coke oven roast all night and in the morning I'll know a great deal more than I do now. But if you have any question in your mind as to the gas making capacity of this coal, I'll remove it at once."
With that he went to the camp fire, seized a blazing brand and applied it to the little mound of earth under which he had buried his coal. Instantly the whole outside of the mound was aflame.
"That's the gas," said the Doctor. "You see there's plenty of it, even in the imperfect coal that we've reached. It will burn out presently and meantime its heat will help roast my coal into coke."
After supper the boys again plied the Doctor with questions concerning coal. Tom began it by saying:
"You told us the other evening, Doctor, that the value of a bed of coal depends upon many things besides its location and its accessibility to market. What are those things?"
"Thickness, for one thing," answered the Doctor, "and that is a point in which our mine excels. You see coal seams are of every thickness, from that of a knife blade to beds 100 feet through. Those last are very rare, however. In this country the seams vary from knife blade thickness to about nine or ten feet. Now, in working a coal mine the men, of course, must have room to stand up in the shaft, so that wherever the vein is less than six feet thick a good deal of rock or earth must be removed so as to give sufficient height to the mine. It costs as much to remove the rock or earth as to handle a like amount of coal, and the stuff is worthless. So you see it is greatly more profitable to work a thick than a thin vein. Indeed there are very few veins under three or four feet thick that it pays to work at all. Our deposit here appears to be about nine feet thick, and that means much to us.
"Another condition of value in a coal mine is a good roof. There are many rich veins of coal that have only earth or soft shale above them, and they are practically worthless because they are unworkable. We fortunately have a superb rock roof over our mine."
"But, Doctor," said Tom, "you told us the other night that coal is at the basis of modern industrial civilization. Then I suppose that those nations which have coal must be the foremost ones in industry and consequently in civilization."
"Certainly they are," said the Doctor, as the other boys gathered about to hear the talk; "and they will be more and more so as time goes on. England has more coal than any other country in Europe and so England is by all odds the foremost industrial nation in Europe, though other nations there have the advantage of buying English coal in an open market. Ever since our modern age of industry and machinery set in—that is to say ever since Old King Coal came to his throne—England has grown greater and richer, till now she is by all odds the richest country in Europe."
"Haven't the other countries there any coal?" asked Ed.
"Yes, but comparatively little. Let me see if I can remember the figures approximately. Great Britain's coal fields cover nearly 12,000 square miles; France has only 2,000 square miles, Prussia about the same, Belgium has only 500 square miles, Austria less than 2,000; Italy none at all to speak of, and as for Spain, the Spanish indolence, which puts off everything till 'to-morrow' has prevented that country from even finding out what coal she has. Russia has vast fields and bids fair to take her place ultimately among the great coal producing and industrial nations of the earth. But as yet her coal fields are imperfectly developed and her coal production is only about one-thirty-fifth as great as that of Great Britain."
"What about the United States, Doctor?" asked Tom, who was an aggressive patriot.
"Well, we have many times more coal than all Europe combined," answered the Doctor. "Great Britain's 12,000 square miles of coal lands sink into insignificance in comparison with our 214,000 square miles of measured coal fields, our 200,000 or 300,000 square miles in the Rocky Mountain states, and our totally unguessed-at coal fields in Oregon and Washington. As four or five hundred thousand and probably more, is to twelve thousand, so is our known coal area to that which has made Great Britain the greatest industrial nation on earth next to our own. And some of the British mines are pretty nearly worked out, while we have scarcely scratched the surface of ours."
"Then this is likely to become the greatest industrial nation on earth?" said Jack.
"It is already that," answered the Doctor. "We are selling our manufactured goods—even iron and steel products—in England to-day, almost as freely as we are selling our grain and our meat. I tell you, boys, there is nothing in this world that can happen to a man that is so good as being born an American citizen."
"Amen!" said Tom. "To employ the dialect of my friends among the mountaineers, 'them's my sentiments every time all over and clear through.'"
"All right," said Jack, "now let's get to bed."
"I suppose there's a lot more you could tell us about coal, Doctor," said Jim, "if there was time."
"Of course there is," the Doctor responded; "but you'll learn it all practically. For we've a great mine here, and you boys will have first choice of places in its management."
With that they all went to bed.
The next morning the Doctor "drew" his coke oven, which was quite cool by that time. He minutely examined the coke and called Tom to look at it. "You see," he said, "how perfectly it is fused. You see how free it is from any sort of admixture of sand or anything else. I tell you, Tom, we've got a great mine here, and it is going to make all of us comfortable for the rest of our lives. Your good mother is especially to be congratulated. This find will make her not only independent, but really rich. Now I want you to understand me, Tom. If your mother prefers to have anybody else manage this affair for her, I will instantly withdraw. At present I have no interest whatever here, and I can have none except by her consent. This mine is absolutely hers, to do with as she pleases. I want to serve her in the matter, by finding among my friends the capitalists who can make the thing 'go.' If she prefers to put the matter into other hands, I hope, Tom, you'll urge her to do so."
Tom arose, took the Doctor's hand, pressed it warmly, and said simply:
"I'm not quite an idiot, Doctor. Go on with your plans."
Somehow, although Jack was Tom's elder brother, the Doctor and indeed the whole company had learned to think of Tom as essentially the head of his family. Curiously enough his mother and the other boys themselves had learned to regard Tom in precisely the same way.
"But Doctor," said Tom, eager to divert the conversation, "why were you in such a hurry to put out the fire here that night when we first discovered the coal? Would it have burned any considerable way into the vein?"
"I can best answer you, Tom, by telling you that about fifteen or twenty miles back of Mauch Chunk, in Pennsylvania, there is a bed of coal that has been burning for about half a century. Everything that human ingenuity could do to put it out has been done, but all to no avail. The whole mountain is slowly burning away, and when one walks about on the crust he is liable at any moment to have a foot sink into the fire below. So you see why I didn't want our mine to begin its career by getting afire."
The next thing on the day's program was work upon the second truss for supporting the mine roof, and this was got into place before midday, so that the afternoon was given to vigorous digging into the coal bank. About five o'clock the Doctor called out:
"You needn't dig any further, boys, we've got it safe enough!" Then he began singing "Old King Coal," as he hugged some specimens of the coal he had dug out of the extreme end of their little shaft to his bosom.
"Got what?" asked Tom, who watched the Doctor's antics with eager interest.
"Why, we've got what we've been looking for, coal equal to the very best that was ever mined in Virginia or West Virginia. I was sure I could not be mistaken. Now I know." And with that the Doctor danced and sang again.
"Now," he said, "you boys come here. I want to talk with you. I'm going down to the station to-morrow to see my father. I propose, if you approve the plan, to have him come up here to inspect our find. Then I'm going to get him and my brothers and their financial associates to make a plan for capitalizing and working the mine. When their plan is made, you, Tom, and I will go to your mother and see what she thinks of it. You see the mine belongs to her absolutely, and any interest that any of the rest of us get in it we must buy from her. But, by way of preparing for such a purchase, I'm going down to the contractor's camp to-morrow, to get my father to come up here with a mining expert and an engineer, to look at the property and make up their minds about it."
The suggestion was welcomed by the three boys concerned, and so the Doctor made his preparations for an early departure in the morning.
The distance was not over two or three miles, and, as the Doctor had no wagon road to look out for, it took him less than an hour and a half to reach his father's headquarters. Early in the afternoon a cavalcade reached the camp. It consisted of the Doctor, his father, one of his brothers, a mining expert and two engineers.
They went at once to work to inspect the mine and its roof and every thing else connected with it or in any way affecting its practical working. Finally they made their reports quietly to the elder Latrobe, and that gentleman bade them mount their mules and return to the contractor's camp.
Then he asked the Doctor to bring the Ridsdale boys into conference with him. Seated on a log, he explained the situation thus:
"Your mother has a very valuable coal mine here, in a most favorable locality. It will need capital, of course, for its development, and that I am prepared to furnish, as the representative of myself, my sons, and my other financial associates. My proposal is this: that we capitalize the mine at $400,000; that is to say, that we organize a company with that amount of stock; that your mother shall put in the mine as $200,000, and receive stock to that amount; that I and my associates—I will take care of that—shall put in $200,000 in cash and take the remaining stock in payment for our contribution."
"I don't see," said Tom, "but that your proposal is a just and generous one. As I understand it, my mother is to put the mine into the company, as $200,000 capital, and you gentlemen are to put in $200,000 in money to be used as working capital, in operating the mine; my mother is to own one half the shares and you gentlemen the other half."
"That is quite correct," said the elder Latrobe.
"Then I am perfectly satisfied," answered Tom. "What do you say, Jack? What's your view, Harry?"
The two other boys had no objection to offer. Indeed the easy rolling of large figures as sweet morsels under the tongues of the financiers completely appalled them, and so the whole matter was left to Tom to settle.
That evening he went down the mountain with the elder Latrobe, leaving the Doctor and the boys to guard the mine. The next day Mr. Latrobe and Tom set off on mules for the town, fifteen miles distant, where Tom's mother lived. They arrived about noon, and Tom was eager to broach the business at once. But Mr. Latrobe objected.
"I don't want to talk to you about this business, Madam, without the presence of some legal adviser or man of business, whose advice will prevent you from making mistakes."
"Oh," answered the widow, "my Tom is here and he has a clear head."
"All the same I wish you would send for a lawyer," answered the gentleman.
"But I cannot afford it," said the lady.
"You can, Madam. Your coal property is rich enough to afford many lawyers. And besides, Tom here has money enough to his credit on our books to pay a lawyer's fee ten times over. You have no idea what a winter's work your boys have put in on the mountain. Sincerely, I do not wish to lay my proposals before you without the presence of some disinterested, professional person, who can wisely advise you as to their acceptance or rejection. I have asked Tom to come with me in order that he may tell you how rich a property you have in this coal deposit, and warn your professional adviser against concluding any arrangement with me and my associates which does not give you an adequate recompense for the property that we ask you to put into this venture."
So the lady sent for a wise old lawyer, who, after hearing Tom's statement, earnestly advised the widow to accept the terms offered. Then Mr. Latrobe said:
"Madam, I am going to employ this gentleman, as a trusted friend of yours, to draw up our articles of incorporation and complete the legal formalities necessary to our mining company's existence. Meantime Tom and I will go back to the mine and set men at work in its development."
"What name will you give to your company?" asked the old lawyer.
"Why, the 'Camp Venture Mining Company,'" quickly responded Tom, "and we'll call the mine itself the 'Camp Venture Mine.' It all came out of Camp Venture."