"This man say him berrah poor; him no can buy charms. Evil spirit plenty too much strong, him burn up black man in big fire; hot mud drown black man; smoke choke black man. Sah no afraid, no, no; him white man, big medicine; black man him no medicine, afraid too much too much."
Remembering the proverbial pill to cure the earthquake, Tom solemnly handed to each of his followers an empty cartridge-case, which he explained was the strongest magic he possessed against the spirit of the mountain. The device gave him some qualms; but he remembered that Dr. Arbuthnot himself, the great eighteenth-century physician, had practised similar innocent deceptions on noble lords, and he felt that in this case the end justified the means.
The road for nearly half the distance was fairly easy, but it then became very rugged, and progress was slow and laborious. Tom found many traces of game, and in one place, approaching down wind, the party disturbed a large herd of elephants. Tom resisted the impulse to pursue them, although it cost him an effort, and pressed forward towards the peak, which was visible as a truncated cone of no great height, for the most part bare, but showing here and there patches of scrub and belts of forest growth. The party had started early in the day, but it was nearing sunset when they arrived within climbing distance of the peak, and Tom decided to camp for the night and begin prospecting next morning. Making an early start, he was on the slopes of the mountain not long after dawn, and then began a toilsome search for traces of sulphur in workable form. He felt sure that thousands of tons of the desired substance lay around him, but unless he could find it in the free state, or at least mechanically mixed with earth, with the rough-and-ready appliances he could devise on the spot it would be quite beyond his reach.
His first step was to build a fire on the slopes of the mountain, and place two men in charge of it, with instructions to pile on a plentiful supply of fuel. Then, dividing his men into squads of four, he made a series of excavations in various spots simultaneously, going from one to another to examine the earth that was dug up. Several times he thought he had discovered the object of his quest, and a number of basketfuls of earth were carried to the improvised furnace. There the ore was heaped into a pile and ignited from the top, in the hope that the heat above would melt any sulphur that might be contained in the lower part of the mass, and cause it to run down into the specially-prepared cavity at the bottom. This process was a wasteful one, but it had the merit of simplicity, and Tom knew that if only a sufficient quantity of sulphur-bearing earth could be obtained it would serve his purpose.