The pumps take a few minutes to pressurize Golgotha with a highly combustible mixture of air and fuel oil, and then Doug hits another switch that sets off a small detonation down below. Then the world shudders and rumbles before settling down into a kind of suppressed throbbing howl. A jet of white-hot flame shoots out of the drain hole down below, digs itself into the river very close to where Andrew Loeb came to rest, and throws up a cloud of steam that forces all of the choppers to gain altitude. Randy crawls down under the cover of that steam-cloud, sensing it’s the last privacy he’ll ever have, and sits down by the edge of the river to watch. After half an hour the jet of hot gas is joined by a rivulet of incandescent fluid that sinks to the bottom of the stream as soon as it emerges, clothed in a fuzz of wildly boiling water. For a long time there is really nothing to be seen except steam; but after Golgotha’s been burning for an hour or two, it becomes possible to see that underneath the shallow water, spreading down the valley floor, indeed right around the isolated boulder where Randy’s perched, is a bright, thick river of gold.