Explore "The Golden Spider" by Francis Lynde on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Consternation was about the only word that fitted when Purdick had told the tale of the lost book. What he had said was perfectly true. Though they were all three taking engineering courses in college, no one of them knew enough about mineralogy as a science to do any practical prospecting for metals without a text-book. Besides, there were the Government maps; lacking them, they could never locate a claim, so as to be able to tell where it was situated, even if they should be lucky enough to find one.
At the moment, none of them thought much of the loss of James Brock's little sketch map of the Golden Spider. Uncle Billy Starbuck's evident conviction that the lost mine would never be found unless it was by pure accident had its effect; and, anyway, the real business of the summer was to be a search for the baser, though not less valuable, metals. And unless they could determine the presence of these――as they couldn't hope to without the help of the "Dana," there was no use in going on.