Hammer was standing beside a rock of about the height of his shoulder. It was, in a general way, not unlike the rocks through which we had passed, but it had the difference that it was not altogether smooth of surface and that here and there upon it obtruded lumps and points. One of these points Hammer had smitten in his testing and now it glittered in the sun, a spike of purest copper! There could be no mistake about it. We had found what we were seeking. In that one rock, could we but in any way break it apart, were hundreds of the new and amazing weapons which were such prizes. We attacked the most obtruding and slender and most promising of the outstanding parts with our great hammers, working most feverishly until we sweated like the wild boar at the end of the long hunt. I won in the race, and very proud I was. The spikelike mass upon which I hammered, beating it back and forth and this way and that, parted at last from the mass and fell to the ground only a moment before that upon which Hammer had been spending his mighty blows. We had what would make a spear-head apiece, enough in themselves to have made our journey worth while! All day we laboured, beating off some half-score of the red protuberances, and then, to breathe ourselves, went farther up the somewhat narrowing valley to learn whether or not there were other rocks of the kind which meant so much to us. One other we found, to our great delight, but one only, though we followed the defile until it lost itself in what was little more than a crevice in the now close looming mountainside.