About noon
They stretched themselves lazily , spat upon their hands , and set to . Our friend of the day before nodded at us cheerfully , and hopped down into his hole . We removed what seemed to us tons of rock . About noon , just as we were thinking rather dispiritedly of knocking off work for a lunch -- which in our early morning eagerness we had forgotten to bring -- Johnny turned up a shovelful whose lower third consisted of the pulverized bluish clay . We promptly forgot both lunch and our own weariness . `` Hey ! '' shouted our friend , scrambling from his own claim .