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Project Gutenberg Australia
Title: Below and on Top and Other Stories
Author: Edward Dyson
eBook No.: 0501011h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: October 2005
Most recent update: January 2023
This eBook was produced by: Peter O'Connell and Colin Choat
by
Edward Dyson
MANY of the stories contained in this book were originallypublished in the columns ofThe Bulletin, Sydney; othersfirst saw light in the pages of MelbourneArgus,Punch, andThe Antipodean andCosmos. To theproprietors of these publications I am grateful for permission torepublish the stories. The initial story, "Below and On Top," isnow printed for the first time.
For the privilege of using Mr. Phil May's illustrations I amindebted to the kindness of the proprietors ofThe Bulletin.These drawings were made as far back as 1888, and have beenreproduced from prints.
EDWARD DYSON.
HAPPY he in whom the honest love of fair endeavour lingers,
Who has strength to do his labour, and has pride to do it well,
Carve he gems of purest water with an artist's cunning fingers,
Hew the granite, forge the beam, or make a simple tale to tell.
His to feel a glow ecstatic of the mighty exultation
That arose when out of chaos all the wheeling planets stood.
Since when God beheld the wonder, saw the stir of His creation
In the busy scheme of heaven, and He said that it was good,
Never man has made with willing hands some thing of trueintention—
Cut in bone a strange, rude picture to inspire the nakedhordes,
Or contrived a subtle engine with laborious invention—
But has entered straight and freely to the joy that was theLord's.
Those so blessed have with them solace, balm, to still the ache ofsorrow,
One companion who will cleave when friends and kindred turnaway;
But a jealous mistress is she, and be sure again to-morrow
She will draw you back repentant if ye wander far to-day.
Few there are that know the ardour. Some are weaving songs ofbeauty,
Some have harped the living music, some have built with noblestskill,
Some are simple men exulting in the moiler's primal duty,
When they swing their axes high or ring the hammer on thedrill.
Not to all that love is given art, the clear, unfailing vision,
Not power to carve the perfect form, the bravest lances hurled,
But the humblest hand sincere desire has quickened to decision
Beats a line of grace eternal in the metal of the world.
Men have prayed for many blessings, for the boon of ease haveever
Plagued the God that drave out Adam to the tilling of the soil--
Speak a prayer of honest effort to the God of Vast Endeavour:
Give for each his toil, O Lord—for each the pride and joy oftoil!
1. Below and onTop
2. A Sabbath Morn at Waddy
3. The Trucker's Dream
4. The Fossickers
5. At the Yards
6. A Visit to Scrubby Gully
7. A Golden Shanty
8. Hebe of Grasstree
9. A Zealot in Labour
10. The Washerwoman of Jacker's Flat
11. Dead Man's Load
12. After the Accident
13. Mr. And Mrs. Sin Fat
14 An Incident at the Old Pioneer
15 A Vain Sacrifice
16 Glover's Little Joke
17. A Child of Nature
18. The Whim Boy
19. Spicer's Courtship
20. The Conquering Bush.
21. The Elopement of Mrs. Peters
22. One Night
23. His Bad Luck
THE Peep-o'-Day had been shut down for a long time now. Thegrand machinery rusted in the imposing brick engine-house, desertedby all saving the swallows and Dick, who could just squeeze inthrough the slit in the wall where the beam rode, and who did notshare the superstitious fear inspired in his schoolmates by its dimlight and silence and loneliness. The rabbits burrowed and bredunder the black boilers and about the foundations of the toweringstack, and a subduing influence hung around the old mine andtouched with reverence the stranger loitering curiously about itsmany buildings and piled-up tips.
Over young Dick Haddon the mine exerted a peculiar fascination.Most of his spare time after school hours and on Saturdayafternoons he spent running at large about the place, washinginnumerable prospects in his old fryingpan at the big dam. He foundhis way into the locked offices, and rummaged the blacksmith'sshop, the engine-room and boiler-houses; climbed the lightning-rodon the dizzy, rocking smoke-stack, to the imminent risk of hisprecious neck; scrambled over every part of poppet-legs, brace, andpuddling plat, doing monkey on the tie-beams, with sheer falls of ahundred or two hundred feet inviting him to the scattered, cleanwhite boulders below; or taking the air up on the poppet-heads, tothe scandal of Brother Bear or Brother Petric or any other piousbrother of the little Waddytown Wesleyan chapel, for all believedsuch devilment to be a certain evidence of evil possession.
The mine had always filled the greater part of the boy's life.He remembered since memory began with him a mighty, smoking,whistling entity, vomiting unending water, and clatteringtruck-loads of gravel and slate, and curious streams of whitemullock, fed with big four-horse waggon-loads of wood that came upthe muddy Springs road to the accompaniment of volleyingwhip-cracks and gorgeous profanity that seemed grand and inspiringand filled him with the same large emotions as a tale of "ArabianNights" read aloud by his mother before the winter eveningfires.
He remembered, too, that night when he was five yearsold—ages ago it seemed to him now—when he crawled fromhis bed and found his mother, her white nightdress all dabbled withblood, wailing over his father, lying silent and motionless uponthe kitchen floor, whilst in the grey shadowy background stoodthree or four miners, ashen-faced and still, hiding their mouthsbehind their smirched felt hats. He knew that the mine had killedhis father, and thought of it as a living thing taking vengeance.Even now, when he was eleven and almost a man, the illusion was notdispelled, and sometimes took complete possession of him,especially when none other was near and the wind played upon themany vast props and legs of the mine as if they were the strings ofa gigantic harp, and crooned mournful songs amongst the timbers, orwhen he called through the openings between the slabs over the pumpshaft, and started the voices whispering in the black, bottomlessdepths, and the moans and sobs vibrating faintly in the miles ofdripping, dark drives, far below there in the centre of theworld.
Other children came over the common occasionally during thedinner hour, or on bright afternoons, from the weatherbeaten woodenschool in the lazy town-ship, to slide down the tips or ride on thelong arms of the capstans, breaking their limbs and their headsindiscriminately, and Dickie resented it as an intrusion. TinkerSmith he didn't mind; the little dry old fossicker was silent andpipeclayed, and seemed to be part of the mine and imbued with itsspirit. He had always been there, Dick thought, pottering aboutamongst the tips, sluicing, puddling, and cradling, or crooningover his pan at the water's edge.
The mine had another familiar whom Dickie respected—one,indeed, whom he regarded with a profound reverence as a creaturesuperior to the ordinary run of mortals, gentler and more angelicthan mere, women were, and one having some wondrous affinity withthose sorrowful souls lost in the long drives, in whose existencehe so implicitly believed. This was Sim's Idiot, the mad woman whocame from the bush beyond the township, and visited the mine bynight only—a tall woman, with long, silver-white hair and apale young face in which her dark eyes shone with lustre that livedin no other eyes the boy had ever seen or dreamed of. Knowing noother form of madness than this, which was ineffably beautiful andmournful and tender, Dick's mind assimilated the term with hishighest ideas of beauty, purity, and love, and Agnes Brett becamean ideal of his boyish fancy.
Agnes's father, a fairly well-to-do farmer, owned the paddockswhere the youngsters of Waddy went to gather sticks and bark, andwhere they ran wild half their time—nesting or hunting meek'possums or malicious native cats. She was a widow. Three yearsago, twelve months after their marriage, her husband Simon Brett,was killed with three others in a drive of the Peep-o'-Day, almostunder the house where his wife lay peacefully sleeping. Ablundering, screaming fool took the news to her, and came near tokilling her on the instant. A baby was born, and for long days themother was despaired of; but she lived—lived bereft of reasonand possessed with many quaint beliefs about the old mine and thespirit of her murdered lover; and this girl, who was handsome andruddy and commonplace in health and happiness, went home to herparents again a slim, eerie creature wondrously transformed, with aface superhuman in its spirituality. Her hair whitened rapidly, andshe was silent save when she spoke of Sim and of the mine that hadkilled him.
They called her Sim's Idiot, and in the minds of those who hadknown her from her infancy and had grown up with her Sim's Idiotsoon ceased to be connected with Agnes Brett; it seemed as if thelatter had died, and a stranger had come amongst them between whomand the woman they had known there was not a passing resemblance oranything in common.
The name was absurdly inappropriate; but Waddy lackedimagination; in common with most bush town-ships it had alamentable poverty of ideas. Nothing in Agnes's afflictionsuggested idiocy—indeed, a celestial intellectuality seemedto sit upon her serene countenance. But Waddy did not draw finedistinctions, and the name stuck.
One night, shortly after her return to her father's house, Agneswas missed, and was found an hour or so later standing in themoonlight by the post and rail fence surrounding the Peep-o'-Day,gazing upon the mine and calling her husband's name. They led heraway, but she came again on other nights, a statuesque figure,waiting and calling in a penetrating voice that carried above theclangour of the engines and the churning roar of the puddlers.
Sometimes she addressed the mine in sweet, plaintiveunintelligible speech, and it was a pathetic yet a thrilling sightto see her thus, when the furnace yawned and the rollingsteam-clouds caught the ruddy glow and lept like flame, and theradiance fell upon her for a moment, glorifying her tall figure,picking it out of the darkness.
At first she was a wonder in Waddytown, and people, when theyheard that Sim's Idiot was out, would walk across from thetownship, about a quarter of a mile off, and, gathered in small,nervous groups amongst the scattered trees, would watch hercuriously as long as she remained, offering abject opinions withthe gravity of sages, the women frequently discerning Sim's spiritbeckoning amongst the fleeing steam rack, to their deliciousterror. Waddy presently lost interest, seeing that nothinghappened, and the comings and goings of Sim's Idiot were notconsidered worthy of remark. Even her father, who was devoted toher, ceased to follow her, knowing that no harm would befall, andthe brace-men, hearing her voice, were not thrilled, as at first,with irritating fears, or induced to take unworkman-likeprecautions when moving about the shaft, for the sake of their ownwives, who might, some day, be brought to this.
Whilst the Peep-o'-Day continued working the mad woman venturedno nearer than the rail fence, but at length, long after the minewas shut down, and when rust and decay had taken full advantage ofthe law's delay, Dickie saw her, one bright night, sitting alone bythe pump shaft. Over the mouth of each of the two winding shaftsstood a heavy cage, and the pump shaft was covered with slabssecurely spiked, so that she was in no danger of falling intoeither.
The old mine in its most mysterious humours had no terrors foryoung Dick. His superstitious beliefs were many, but withoutterror. Of late he came often at night, with his horsehair nooses,trapping the rabbits that bred miraculously about the top workingsand fattened on the profuse milk thistles and the wild corn, and sothe sight of Agnes Brett was no unusual thing to him. But to himshe never lost interest; a wonderful pity for her grew in hisheart, and touched his life with a melancholy utterly at variancewith his healthy boyhood and his natural heartiness—amelancholy that for many weeks gave his brave, busy little mothermuch concern about his digestion and othex matters, and led to hisbeing afflicted with superfluous flannels, and plied withhome-brewed medicines with a camomile basis, all equally atrociousto taste and smell.
Dick would follow Agnes to the mine, and, creeping near her inthe darkness, would crouch in one of the cages, watching her andlistening as she called the one name down the echoing shaft, andspoke strange mad words to the mysteries that whispered and flittedbelow, in a voice so soft, so piteous in its pleading, that,without comprehending, he found himself sobbing aloud, and filledwith a passionate longing to do something to help this poor whitewoman with the starlike eyes, who was always waiting and prayingfor the thing that never came. He tried to understand her, to knowwhat it was she sought, and he grew to believe that it was in herpoor ruined mind that her husband's spirit was imprisoned with therest, deep, deep down in the black shaft or the blacker drives, andthat some night he would answer her—perhaps escape from thepowers of darkness again and come up to her and be free and happy.To Dick it was a rational belief, and he wondered that it evoked noresponse.
One night, listening to her supplicating tones, thrilled bytheir magical tenderness, he conceived a bright idea. For days andnights it haunted him, and then resolution came. He would do thething he had thought upon, and see if it were not possible to givepeace to this fairy woman.
AFTER school, on the day on which Dick determined upon takingaction, he sauntered into Tinker Smith's vicinity, at thePeep-o'-Day, with his hands in his pockets, his hat set on the backof his head, and whistling affectedly. Tinker was somewhat anidentity of Waddy, and Dick wanted information; but there was amatter of a broken shovel to be settled between him and the oldfossicker, and he had to proceed warily. He selected a strategicalposition that offered facilities for a hurried retreat andcommenced insinuatingly:
"Any luck t'day, Tink'?"
The old man grunted without looking up from his tub, and Dickieedged off a bit. He had little faith in Tinker Smith, a little oldpipeclayed man with a ferrety face and ferrety hair and thin drywhiskers. He was full of surprises, and had a way of falling upon avictim when least expected, and taking summary vengeance in themost convenient manner that offered itself, preserving all the timean expressionless face and a calmness quite contrary to nature. Hehad clipped Dick with a pick handle, tipped him head over heelsinto the dam, and had bitten his ear till it bled, and the boy hadlearned the value of eternal vigilance.
"Sim's Idiot was here again lars night," ventured Dickie, aftera strained silence.
Tinker was indifferent.
"Say, Tinker, them Finny kids come here yes'dee. Teddy brokeyour shovel, diggin' out a bunny, an' I licked him."
The fossicker turned his dull little eyes doubtingly on the boy,but continued puddling.
Dickie tried another tack.
"I can lay you onter a bit o' pay dirt if you want it."
Tinker knew the boy sometimes hit upon decent patches of dirt,and had profited by several of his discoveries. This interestedhim.
"Where to?" he asked.
"Where to's tellin's," responded Dick.
Tinker churned in his tub with an air of utter obliviousness toanything beyond, and Dick, suspicious of the symptoms, edged away afew paces.
"See here," he said presently, "you tell me about Sim—herhusban', you know—an' I'll show you the stuff. Got ten grainsin two han'fuls Satterdee."
"S'welp yer bob?"
"True's death."
Tinker was convinced. He ceased puddling, leaned on his shovel,and commenced awkwardly, and with great labour—conversationwas difficult to him, coherent narrative impossible:
"Well, this here Simon Brett, he was the feller what foughtHoppy Hoffman up on the pound, eighteen rounds, and licked him, gotkilled in a fall in Number 3—him, an' Ryan, an' Bowden, an'Kit Stevens—Collard's shift. I was platman. Strappin' chap,Sim; alwiz smilin'; he'd work smilin', an' fight smilin'. Happysorter man. She was his missus, this idjit."
Dickie wanted further particulars, and, as Tinker had evidentlyagreed to an armistice, he abandoned his defences and approachedthe fossicker.
"But you knew him an' his wife; you went ter their housesometimes, didn't you? What 'id he call her? How'd he talk when hewas bein' lovin' like? Was they sweethearts long, an' did they walkin the wattle paddocks, an' sit on the rocks on Bullock Hill?"
Dick had a riotous fancy, and Tinker was as unimaginative as awombat, but by dint of close questioning he managed to get out ofthe old man much of the information he needed, and after that hewaited his opportunity.
Agnes did not visit the mine for nearly two weeks, and when Dicksaw her again it was too late to effect his purpose; she wasalready crouched at the mouth of the shaft. Her face was pressed toone of the narrow openings, and she wept with a low moaning sound.Dick touched her thin, pale hand, and spoke to her.
"Who's there, please?" His heartbeat heavily and erratically,and he trembled, although he did not fear the mad woman in theleast.
She arose, and stood regarding him for a moment. The boy pointedto the shaft.
"Won't he come?" he asked eagerly, but she moved away withoutappearing to have heard him, and he followed her slowly, and fromthe top of the big gates watched her dark figure across the moonlitflat.
After that he waited for her, and when she came again he wasready. He hastened to the shaft and pulled away one end of the sideslab, having found some days previously that the spike was loose.Then he squeezed his body through the opening, and stood in thepump shaft on the topmost rung of the ladder that ran straight downthe wall of the shaft. Grasping the ladder with his left hand, withthe other he dragged the slab—still secured with onespike—into its place again, and, clinging to the rungs in thetomb-like silence, he waited.
The mighty black depths seemed to drag at the boy as he stood,drawing and drawing him down into the abyss at his feet, and, as ifirritated at his bold intrusion, the mysteries muttered and moanedand eddied impatiently, and an ominous threatening seemed to murmurin the hollow workings. But the boy was too full of his purpose togive any heed to these when Agnes came, and he saw the light of hereyes as she bent her face to the crevice just above his head. Hefelt her breath upon his cheek as she called the name of her deadlover, repeating the word again and again in the mournful chant sofamiliar to him. There was no coherency in the words that followed.They sounded like an inarticulate prayer, instinct with intensestemotion, but softly spoken.
Dick listened for a time, absorbed, and presently, when sheseemed awaiting a reply, he brought his lips close to her face, andwhispered a few words:
"Aggie, dear wife!"
The boy had not anticipated the full effect of his action. Awild cry of joy rang out upon the night and awakened eddying echoesin the deep shaft, and the woman flung herself upon the slabs,beating them with her thin hands, plucking at their edges withlong, white fingers, sobbing, laughing, and calling upon the deadin an ecstasy of madness that appalled him, and he clung to theladder, trembling in every limb.
Dick had never before succeeded in winning a reply from thewoman. When he met her at the mine or wandering in the bush, andspoke to her, feeling that she pleaded for something in thatstrange language of hers, and hoping that he might be able to helpher, since none of the men and women of Waddy gave heed to hersorrow, she regarded him with great unmeaning eyes that did notsee; in their gaze he seemed to have no existence; and if she spokeit was only in the tangled speech of madness. He expected she wouldhear and understand the voice in the shaft, and believe her husbandhad answered her at last.
It was long ere Dick found courage to speak again, but whenAgnes was silent, save for the faint sobbing that escaped her, heleant back his head and whispered close to her face, and her hottears fell upon his cheek. She did not shriek this time, butbabbled a few words, and finished laughing softly.
Dickie addressed her with expressions of endearment and petnames learned from the old fossicker, and finding her calm andrapt, he wove quaint fancies from fairy tales into his talk, as hehad planned it, and at times his words were almost as mad as herown, but he remembered always to dwell upon visions of joy andbeauty. He had escaped from the desolation of the old mine, and wasgoing up out of the darkness to light and beatitude, to dwell withthe angels in a boyish paradise. The talk was jumbled; it wasspoken in the quaint diction peculiar to bush boys; but there was aflavour of inspiration in it, and the mad woman clinging to theslabs above was awakened to some understanding, and laughed a soft,low laugh, and murmured like a happy child.
At length Dickie was recalled to himself by the numbness of hisextended arms, and the pain throbbing in his neck.
"I'm goin' now," he whispered. "Good-bye, dear wife."
Pressing his face to the slabs where her white face shonefaintly, he kissed her mouth.
She cried out again at the contact—a cry ofexultation.
Dick, standing on the ladder, waited till she should leavebefore climbing out of the shaft. She remained prone upon theslabs, silent, for a long time, but at length she talked, talkedalmost inaudibly, but with no trace of the anguish that was wont tomake her voice like the moaning of a dumb beast in pain. The boy'slimbs ached, and fear began to creep into his heart. Still he wastrue to his purpose, and after twenty minutes, that seemed half anight to him, Agnes arose and moved slowly away. Dick waited for afew minutes, and then with a great effort, painful to his stiffenedlimbs, he shifted the slab aside and drew himself out of the shaft.He was replacing the long spike, when, looking up, he saw the madwoman standing erect within a few yards of the shaft, regarding himfixedly. When he faced her she took a step forward, threw out herhands, and with a cry that seemed to the boy to echo among theclouds overhead and in every hollow of the earth, she fell forwardupon the stones and lay still. Dick ran to her, and turned her faceto the moonlight; it was rigid, the half-closed eyes were glazed.He believed her dead, and fled like'a hunted hare.
Houten and Winter returned with Dick to the mine, and foundAgnes as he had left her. They took her up and carried her to herfather's home, the boy going after, with a quaking heart. Thenfollowed a long illness for Agnes and a troublous time for littleMrs. Haddon, who became more and more precautious in the matter offlannel, and doubled the doses of camomile tea, without effectingany visible improvement in Dick's condition. The boy had becomestrangely morbid; he grew pale and thin, and whilst his motherfretted, imagining him to be the victim of some wasting disease, hewas beset with a fear that Agnes Brett was going to die, and thathe would be her murderer. He kept his secret religiously within hisown breast, and in his spare time he haunted her father's farm,sometimes venturing to ask after the sick woman, but usuallyskulking about as if dreading observation.
At length, to Dick's immeasurable relief, Agnes was reported outof danger, and Waddy was electrified by the news that Sim's Idiothad recovered her reason. With the restoration of her health hermind had been restored, and she was now as she had been before thenews of her husband's death struck her down. Happiness returned tothe breast of Dickie Haddon, but he still kept to himself the storyof his escapade at the mine, waiting for a chance to see Agnes,wondering if she remembered. When at length he saw her face to facehe was sadly disillusioned. She sat in an easy chair under theverandah at the farmhouse; the beautiful white hair was done up ina hard, ungainly knot. She looked ordinary—not at all thegentle, spiritual creature he had known. Dick was vaguely troubled.He felt that the responsibility of this deplorable change restedupon his shoulders, and was surprised that no-body seemed to regretthe alteration in Mrs. Brett.
DICK was as mischievous an imp as the township was afflictedwith—and the boys of Waddy were even more prone than boys ofother places to the evil that is dear to the young hearteverywhere; but the other boys did not take their pranks seriously,as he did. His exuberant fancy invested his absurdest escapadeswith a high purpose and a most tremendous dignity. If he led amoonlight raid upon Jock Summer's pear trees it was in thecharacter of a mediaeval knight of spotless honour and god-likebeauty, and the purpose was to rescue from an ungainly, gross, andremorseless baron some fair, distressful damsel. He stole the pearsall the same, and was careful to secure his share of the loot, butfor the time being imagination held sway. To his mates it was allentertaining make-believe—to Dick Haddon it was all actual,and, as the knight of old, Thunderbolt the bushranger, or JackyJacky, the chief of a bloodthirsty band of blacks, the boy'sromanticism helped largely to keep the lives of the housewives andhousefathers of Waddy from sinking into an enervating monotony ofpeaceful dulness.
But Dick had not enlisted the co-operation of the mates whousually shared in his boyish pranks in this, his most wonderfuladventure. For some time now he had deserted the haunts of hisyouthful companions, and there was comparative calm in Waddy. Theboys were very well as subordinate blacks or inferior banditti, butin a matter of pure sentiment Dick felt instinctively that he couldexpect no sympathy from them—they would not understand. Theradiant unearthliness of the mad woman had never appealed to them;they were indifferent to her white beauty, like that of the shiningangels pictured in the Haddon family bible. They were just plainboys, and the plain boy is perilously near to the brute at times inthe entire absence of motive and thought that characterizes hiscruelties. Dick's fiercest battle was fought with Fod Carroll, wholed an attack with sods on Agnes Brett on the Back Flat, and Fod,bewildered by the impetuosity of his small enemy, collapsedmiserably in the third round. That fight was long remembered inWaddy; it created a new respect for Dickie among the boys, andfixed his status as the natural leader in any matter of commoninterest in which he chose to interfere.
There was one boy, indeed, in whom he might haveconfided—Dolf Belman, a youngster of about his own age, whoprovided most of his books and was his lieutenant in manyadventures; but Dick, in his sick unrest, wanted no companionship.The more he saw of Mrs. Brett—and she rapidly grew plump andruddy—the more bitterly he lamented the act of his that hadso altered her. He who had been most anxious to serve her had beenthe one to bring about this deplorable change, this transformationof an ethereal creature into a giggling dairymaid.
One evening Dick Haddon saw Agnes Brett walking with Peter Kileyin the wattle paddock, and Peter—the long, ungainly son of along, ungainly dairyman up the creek—was making awkward andbashful love to Mrs. Brett, whilst the buxom widow made a greatpretence of resisting his elephantine blandishments, with shrilllaughter and coy protestations.
Dickie fled from the sight, filled with bitterness and, seekingthe seclusion of the Peep-o'-Day, blubbered miserably on the slabsover the pump shaft for twenty minutes.
How would Sim bear it? was a question that now presented itselfto his active mind. Agnes had not been seen near the mine since herrecovery—she never seemed to think of it or of her deadhusband now. Did the spirit imprisoned in the old mine miss her?Was it waiting to hear her calling again in the early eveninghours? The boy's faith was absolute; he knew that the drives werepeopled with the spirits of the mine's victims, and that hisfather's ghost, and the chosts of Brett, and Bowden, and Ryan, andthe rest walked the drives, and talked in strange, low, monotonousvoices. He had heard them talking, had distinguished words, hethought, when all was still. How could he doubt? But he thoughtonly of Brett, the forsaken husband, the neglected lover, the poorspirit whom his act had deprived of its only companionship andconsolation, and he spent much time peering down through the cracksand harassing his young soul with most extravagant conjecture.
The morbid condition induced by these truly preposterousproblems was the occasion of many more doses of camomile tea, extrastrong, and Mrs. Haddon, in her perplexity, called in elderlyfemale experts, who, having reared large families in spite of allthe ills that are the heritage of youth, believed themselves to be,and were generally believed to be, capable of diagnosing everyailment and prescribing innumerable infallible cures. These oldwomen gravely considered Dickie's symptoms, and suggested manyremedies, with most of which he was duly afflicted at one time oranother; but the boy refused to brighten up and resume his old,healthy, careless, impish courses under the influence of eitherpill, potion, plaster, or unction, or the lot together.
Meanwhile, however, Dick had resolved to speak to Mrs. Brett atthe first opportunity. He was curious to know her thoughts on thematter uppermost in his mind. He had the idea that her presentcondition of mind and body was abnormal, and that she might bebrought back to her former romantic state if she were made tounderstand that the spirit of her dead husband wandered in thePeep-o'-Day workings and yearned to hear her voice again.
Later the boy saw Mrs. Brett at the Sunday-school anniversarypicnic. She was now ruddy-cheeked and full-breasted. Clad in atight town-made dress, and with her wonderful hair dyed a commonbrown, she was romping with a shrieking crowd playingkiss-in-the-ring, and a sense of hopelessness took possession ofDickie as he watched; but presently, when she had taken a seat on alog apart from the rest, and was fanning herself after herexertions, he approached her, and straddling the same butt,commenced, with a boy's abruptness:
"Ain't you never goin' ter the Peep-o'-Day no more?"
Agnes Brett turned upon him, astonished and indignant. Herfather had told her of her doings during the time of heraffliction, and she hated any allusion to that time from the lipsof others.
"If you're cheeky, little boy, I'll box your ears for you," shesaid, with a threatening gesture.
Dicky did not wince, but sat looking up at her, like a small,red-headed cherub in rather indifferent health, and Agnes, who wasas soft of heart as any breathing creature, was touched by the wanexpression of the ailing imp.
"Ain't meanin' it fer cheek," said Dick, picking nervously atthe bark; "I jes wanter know."
"Well, I am not going—I am well now—an' you mus'never talk about it."
"Why?" Dick moved nearer. "I say, d' you know me?"
"The boy Haddon."
"Yes, but d' you remember me before you was like this"—hesuggested everything in a gesture—"when you was tall, an'white, an' beautiful?"
"No," she said, "I do not, an'you mus'n't talk about it, don't Itell you?"
"Say, it was me what did this!"—again he indicated thechange with a motion of the hands, as if it were a deplorablething.
"Whatever is the boy meanin'?"
"'Twas me what did it. You useter go to the shaft of nights, an'once I frightened you, an'—an' then it happened."
"What happened?" There was none other within earshot, and Agneswas curious.
"Everythin' happened. You wanted him to come up outer the mine,an' went callin', callin' fer him. So once I got into the shaft,and when you called I spoke like him, and kissed you, an' you criedout. An' then, when I climbed up again, you saw me, and fell downon the stones. An' when you was well you was 'like this, an' it wasall my fault."
Dick looked utterly woebegone. It had occurred to him that hisconfession might provoke trouble, but he was quite unprepared forthe demonstration that followed. Agnes Brett took him unawares, andhe found himself caught up in her strong arms and half smothered ina long, pillowy embrace, whilst rapturous kisses were rained uponthe top of his head. When at length he escaped, and stood offregarding Agnes resentfully, he was quite bedewed with her gratefultears.
"Oh! Dickie Haddon!" she gasped. "Oh! Dickie Haddon!" and shecould gasp nothing else but "Oh! Dickie Haddon!" for quite aminute, during which time her ample bosom was disturbed by moststrenuous emotions, and Dickie stood at a distance ready for flightshould she betray any desire to repeat that overwhelming hug.
"You—you—you dear boy!" stammered Mrs. Brett, whenshe gained a little control over her feelings. "It was you whosaved me, an' I'll love you all my life."
Dick fled to the other side of the log to escape a threatenedadvance.
"Ain't you comin' t' the mine again some o' these nights?" heasked, doggedly. He could not appreciate her raptures—theywere quite uncalled for, it seemed to him.
"No," she said, "I wouldn't dare. Don't you see I am quite wellnow. I only went because I didn't know what I was doin'."
"But Sim! He is down in the drive where he died. He will wantyou sometimes. Come an' talk to him, won't you?" he went on,eagerly. "Come to-night—Just for a little while. I don'tthink he hears me, an' it mus' be dreadful lonely below, don't youthink, with no one t' talk to ever?"
Agnes regarded the boy curiously for a few moments.
"Come here, an' sit near me," she said. "I want to talk to youabout him. Do you think he is down in the mine—alwaysthere?"
"Not himself, jest his ghost."
"You think so because you heard me talkin' to him. Well, thatwas all wrong; I went because somethin' was the matter with myhead, an' I fancied strange things. There is no ghost in the mine,an' you must never say so any more, or you will make me verywretched, an' remind people of the time when I was"—shedropped her voice to an impressive whisper—"when I wasmad."
"But heis there, I've heard him myself," said Dick, to whomMrs. Brett's confessions were only further proof of thecompleteness of her pitiful fall from grace, and sweetness, andtruth.
A terrified light crept into the woman's eyes, and her cheekpaled. She was intensely superstitious, and the boy's earnestnessimpressed her; but at this stage Peter Kiley shambled up andcaptured Mrs. Brett for his partner in one of the osculatory gamesalways popular at Waddy picnics, and Dickie retired into thesapling scrub to indulge in rueful cogitation and contemplate hisgreat hatred for long Pete Kiley.
"It was a rotten picnic!" was Dick's opinion, as imparted toDolf next day.
TIME served to soften young Haddon's great regret, but Sim wasremembered still, and the boy's compassion for the poor lonelyspirit was a genuine grief, and, with a dim notion of making allthe reparation in his power, he continued to visit the shaft afternightfall, and would call down the reverberating mine, or whistleor sing. If he neglected this duty for three nights runningself-reproach attacked him in his bed, and on one occasion impelledhim to get up and dress, while his mother slept, and creep out ofthe house to steal away in the moonlight and do his duty by thewronged ghost.
Then came the news of the approaching marriage of Peter Kileyand Agnes Brett, and that revived the boy's keenest regrets. Hisgoddess had parted with her last shred of divinity; and was becomethe commonest of clay, and now she betrayed a callousness that washardly human. It had come to this: Sim had no one who cared tothink of him now but Richard Haddon; his wife had deserted him, hisfriends had forgotten him, and amongst all the ghosts below and ontop there was not one so wretched as the ghost of Agnes's faithfuland devoted lover and husband, poor Brett.
One night about a week after the announcement of the betrothalof Pete and Agnes, Dick and his mate, Dolf Belman, were sitting onthe slabs over the pump shaft at the Peep-o'-Day. Dolf had beenartfully inveigled to the mine under the pretence of assisting Dickto spread traps for the exceedingly circumspect rabbits thatinfested the tips, but Dickie had an ulterior motive, and hadcunningly shaped the conversation with that motive in view. He hadtalked of the old mine and its murders, and Dolf was worked up; hecrept very close to his mate, and his face glowed palely in theshadow of the cage.
"Say, Dickie," he murmured, "d'you believe in—you know?"He pointed down into the shaft.
"Ghosts?" said Dick. "No—o—o! D' you?"
Dolf compressed his lips, and nodded his head slowly.
"Yah, that's rot!" said Dick.
"But don't they say that some of the men what was killed movesabout down there sometimes? An' what's that we hear when we listenvery quiet?"
"Dunno, but it ain't no ghosts. Think I ought to know?"
"Why, Dick?"
"Oh," said Dick in a careless tone, "bin down, that's all."
Dolf regarded him with wide-open, wondering eyes.
"What," he murmured, "right down inter the dark?"
Dick nodded.
"All by yerself?"
Again Dick nodded his head. It will be seen that Richard Haddonwas not absolutely truthful. The decalogue was not made fordiplomatists.
"Gum!" said Dolf admiringly, "I wouldn't 've."
"Course you wouldn't"—this very casually—"you ain'tgame."
This was an unfriendly aspersion; Dolf reddened under it.
"Game's you any day!"
"Talk's easy stuff."
"Climbed the smoke stack ez high ez you, Ginger, see!"
"Ginger" was an epithet that usually provoked battle, but justnow Dick was too busy to think of his private honour.
"Pooh! what's climbin' a lightnin' rod. Y'ain't game t' go downthe ladders t' the second level."
"Neither 'r you; don' b'lieve you went down far."
"Don't you? Well if you're so plucky come down with me. I'm on;an' I'll get the candles an' I'll go first. Now who's game?"
"I am!" said Dolf defiantly.
So it was all arranged for the following night, and Dolf wassworn to secrecy with the magical rite of the wet and dry fingerand the usual dread incantation, and Dick had secured his object.He wished to go down into the mine, but although he had not Dolfsfear of the ghosts, a strange awe, not altogether painful,possessed him at the thought of meeting Sim alone below in the longdrive. With human companionship he felt that he could dare all, andthe longing to investigate was strong upon him. Even if Sim was notto be seen, the adventure had attractions apart from his interestin the forlorn ghost. For one thing, boys were forbidden to go nearan open shaft, and to the youthful mind, inquisitive andacquisitive, what is forbidden is never wholly forbidding. Theweakness of Mother Eve is visited upon her sons, even unto thepresent generation.
"What's it like below?" asked Dolf, when the arrangements hadbeen agreed upon.
"Spiffen!" said Dick with enthusiasm. "It ain't dark, y'know,when the candles is burnin', an' the drives is just like a pirate'slair."
"My word!" murmured Dick. "An' no spirits ner nothin'!"
"No—o—o! D'yer think spirits 'd be sich fools ez t'stay down there. Look here, Dolf, we might find some nuggets. We'llbe miners, an' I'll be underground boss, an' this is our mine.That'll be all right."
"My word!" said the other, brightening up, "an' if we get apound's wo'th we can join the lib'ry."
Dickie nodded cheerfully, and the boys left the mine, forgettingrabbits and everything else in the new venture.
On the following evening at about eight o'clock Dick and Dolfcrossed the common together to the mine, and Dick, who wasdetermined that his companion should have no time for repentance,hastily removed the loose slab, and let himself down on to theladder.
"I'll go down a bit, an' then light my candle. Then you comedown an' light yours. We mus'n't let no one see us."
Each boy had half a candle fixed to the front of his hat with alump of clay, and Dick had other pieces in his pocket in case ofaccident. Both were dressed as nearly like grown miners as theycould contrive, and Dick assumed the authoritative tone and mannerof the boss of the shift.
"Now," he said, when Dolf had followed him, and the two stoodupon the iron-runged ladder running perpendicularly down the sideof the shaft, "cling tight to the ladder whatever you do, an' keepyer body close to it. Come on."
So they started the perilous journey down into the bowels of theearth. To go up or down three hundred feet of ladders is awearisome task for a grown man. To a strong boy, accustomed toclimbing, and trusting much to his sturdy limbs, it is not a matterof great difficulty, and the lads made good progress. Below themwas densest darkness, about them the faint glow of the candles,above, a pale streak of moonlight, shone the opening they had made.At occasional intervals there were scanty stagings fixed across theshaft to facilitate work in connection with the "lifts"—thepipes up through which water is pumped from a mine—and onthese Dickie and his mate rested. Dick talked to keep his mate'sspirits from ebbing, and his words rang strangely and lingered inthe walled shaft.
At length the boys came upon a wide staging filling half theshaft, and here several of the centres and strong timbers dividingthe pump shaft from the working shaft had been knocked away, andthe staging was continued through to where the mouth of the driveloomed in the feeble light.
"That's the drive," said Dick. "I don' know what level we're at,but we mus' be a awful way down. What yer doin?"
Dolf was clinging to his arm, and pointing downwards, toohorrified to speak. Dick peered over the edge of the staging, andsaw two white, ghostly faces glaring up at them out of theblackness, and above the foreheads of these two faces burned yellowstars. For an instant Dick was stricken with pulseless fear, thenhe remembered.
"Water!" he said.
They were looking at their own reflections in the black watersthat filled the rest of the shaft and flooded the lower levels.Dick dropped some bits of reef and the faces were drawn intogruesome distortions and bobbed about fantastically in theripples.
"I say, y' ain't frightened, Dolf, are you?" murmured Dick.
Dolf shook his head, but his face was white, and his teethchattered painfully as Dick led the way through the opening in thecentres and into the great drive.
"There ain't no sense in being scared by a feller's own face inthe water, is there, Dolf?" said Dickie.
"N—n—no," said Dolf.
The two small boys stood on the plat peering into the maindrive, but their candles illumined only a few yards before them,and beyond that was black night.
"Heaps of gold along there, I bet," said Dick.
"My oath!" said Dolf, falteringly.
Dickie took the other's hand.
"Come on," he said, "let's go 'n see. Ain't this grand? Wouldn'tthe other fellows be mad if they knew they was out of this?"
Holding hands, the boys pushed forward. The drive was high andwide, and almost dry, and in a little while Dolf recoveredsufficiently to feel quite an interest in Dickie's exuberantfiction. Their feet made no sound upon the soft floor of the drive,and gradually Dickie drifted into silence. He was thinking of Sim,and a great excitement possessed him as they advanced along theapparently interminable tunnel.
Then, as they turned a curve, with the suddenness of alime-light picture flashed upon a screen the two boys saw theapparition of a man start out of the darkness. The figure stood bythe left-hand side of the drive, in a pale light, the origin ofwhich Dick could not discover. It was dressed like a miner, and wastall and thin, and the pallid face was thrust forward in alistening attitude, the mouth open, the eyes staring.
Dolf uttered a choking cry, and fell upon his knees, clingingwildly to his companion, watching the vision with round, unblinkingeyes. Dick had expected something like this. He was disappointed indetails; his idea of a ghost was quite conventional, and heparticularly admired white flowing draperies; but he was preparedfor a spectre of some kind, and as he had never for a momentthought of the disembodied inhabitants of the old mine as evilspirits, or anything but sorrowing, suffering victims, the emotionthat now thrilled him had nothing in common with the sickeningterror that prostrated his mate. Besides, the ghost was evidentlyvery much more afraid of him than he of it; its whole attitude andexpression indicated fear, and it was partly with the hope ofreassuring the poor spirit that Dickie spoke:
"Please, 're you Sim's ghost?"
The ghost did not answer, but maintained its terrified,listening attitude. Dickie's mouth was parched, but he made anothereffort, and adopted a more respectful manner of address.
"Please, are you the ghost of Simon Brett?"
The ghost thought for a moment, and then nodded a slowaffirmative; thought again, and nodded twice.
"Oh, please! oh, please!" whispered Dolf in piteous appeal.
"Who're you, an' what d' yer want?" The ghost seemed to bedisguising its voice.
"I'm Dickie—Richard Haddon." Dick approached a step, butthe ghost threw out its hand with a commanding gesture.
"Don't come no nearer," it said.
Richard Haddon's idea of a ghost was undergoing a process ofrapid reconstruction. He knew that "Don't come no nearer" was amost ungrammatical expression, and he understood that whateverlatitude might be given mere mortals, ghosts were always expectedto be absolutely correct in speech.
"Are there any more of you?" asked the ghost.
"On'y me an' Alfred Belman," said Dick.
"Oh! ghost, let us go, won't you?" moaned Dolf. "Let us go, an'we'll never come again—never, never, never!"
"I ain't goin' t' hurt you." said the ghost. "Why d' yer comehere?"
"Jist to see," answered Dick.
The ghost seemed very much astonished, and looked at them forsome time as if confronted with a difficult problem. Meanwhile,Dick was thirsting for information.
"Why d' you stay down here alwiz?" he asked.
"Gotter!" answered the ghost briefly.
"But why?" persisted the mortal.
This was another problem for the ghost, and he gave it dueconsideration. Evidently Sim's ghost was a spirit of very limitedmental resource. The explanation was a long time coming. At lengthhe said:
"It's like this, yer see: I mus' stay till someone dies whatcares for me, an' then the spirit of the one what's dead will comean' take me away."
This was an inspiration. Dickie nodded approvingly; it quitecoincided with his cherished convictions. He knew who the someonemust be, and a thought of the impending marriage flitted across hismind.
"But there ain't nobody t' know, 'r else I'll have t' stay onhere fer ever," continued the ghost in a mournful voice. "P'rapsyouse two won't count, 'cause yer sich little fellers, but yer mus'swear solemn never t' say a word to a livin' soul, 'r I'll lock yerboth up in a shoot an' keep yer fer ever an' ever. Amen."
"We swear! we swear!" moaned Dolf. "Never a word—never ablessed word, true 's death!"
"I take me oath I'll never speak," said Dick firmly.
"Wha's a good oath t' swear with?" asked the ghost.
Manifestly a satisfactory ghost should have been well up in suchthings, but Dick was not disposed to be hypercritical, rememberingthat at the best Sim's ghost could have had few opportunities downthere of acquiring experience and enlarging its mind. He readilysuggested the familiar formula much venerated by the boys of Waddy,and the ghost made the two boys kneel down in the drive, andadministered the oath to them very solemnly and with greatdeliberation.
"Now," he said, when the ceremony was ended, "d' yer knowwhat'll happen to the boy what breaks a hoath like that?"
The boys shook their heads dumbly, and Dolf, who had regainedhis feet, began to quake.
"Well, I'll tell yer. He'll be haunted. Day an' night he'll behaunted. Little fiends'll stick forks in him all day, an' a bigfiend'll chase him o' nights. He'll—"
Dolf's shaking limbs refused to support him, and Dick had tohold him up. He uttered half-stifled cries of terror, and the ghostbroke off suddenly, and regarded the boy anxiously for a fewmoments.
"That'll on'y happen if yer split, yer know," he said,relenting. "'Cause if yer split I'll be changed into a badghost—a reg'lar out-an'-out bad un'; an' I'll jest delight inscarin' boys a'most t' death. But you fellers ain't goin' t' tellanyone," he continued, hastily. "You don' wanter ruin a poor ghost,I know. You'll be true t' me, won't yer?"
"Fer ever an' ever," said Dick, solemnly.
"That's all right. Then ye'll alwiz have good luck. An' nowain't yer best be goin'?"
He had been regarding Dolf critically, anxiously, all the time,and he spoke again as if for his benefit.
"Mind, there ain't no cause to be funky if yer don't blab. 'Slong as yer straight an' square ye've got a ghost what's yer bes'friend, recollec' that."
Sim's ghost had not moved from the spot on which he stood whenthey first saw him, and it seemed to Dick that the lightsurrounding him shone from an excavation in the side of the drive.The ghost raised his hand awkwardly as if asking a blessing, andsaid:
"So long! Time's up."
Dolf tugged at Dick's arm, and the boys turned away, andhastened down the drive towards the shaft.
"Remember!" the ghost called after them. "No reason t' be afraidso long ez yer don't split. Bes' friend!"
The ghost did more: when they had gone a little distance hestarted after them, walking gingerly to make no noise, fearing thatthe knowledge that he was following would add to the terror thatafflicted young Belman. When he reached the plat the boys werealready far up the shaft, and Dickie's voice could be faintly heardadvising and encouraging his mate.
Dolf went first, and he climbed with blind haste. Dick had tohold him to force him to rest upon the staging.
"Grip hard, an' go slow an' careful, Dolf," was his constantwarning. He had heard that advice given by old miners. "Keep closeto the ladder. There's lots o' time, Dolf. Nothin' t' be afraid of,you know. He's a jolly good sort, that ghost. Eh—don't youthink?"
But Dolf spoke never a word; his face was white and set; whenthey stood on the staging his eyes turned up to the light above,and he never ceased to tremble. It was now that Dick experiencedreal, cold terror. He feared that his mate would fall, and if hefell death was certain.
Dolf did not fall. He reached the top safely, and Dick almostlifted him through the opening, and dragged himself through after,quite exhausted, and down below the ghost mopped his cold, dampforehead with his sleeve, and murmured fervently—"Thank God!thank God!"
Dolf Belman remained for a couple of minutes prostrate on theground, and then he scrambled to his feet, and started towardshome, Dickie walking by his side, doing all he could to reassurehim. At the Belmans' gate Dickie held his mate for a moment:
"No tellin's, Dolf," he said, anxiously.
Dolf shook his head.
"Not even t' yer mother!"
"No, no, not a word. So help me!—never, never, never!"
NEXT morning whilst Dick was having breakfast he was startled tosee Mrs. Belman enter the kitchen. She was seeking sympathy andadvice. Her boy had been ill all night, and was "queer" thismorning, feverish and wild. Mrs. Haddon, a round, motherly littlewoman, had sympathy to spare for all the troubled in mind andafflicted in body. She advised the use of camomile tea. Camomilegrew everywhere about Waddy, and Mrs. Haddon recommended it invarying shapes for all ailments. Dickie left the mothers discussingphysics and diseases, and stole away. He was much concerned abouthis mate, and a guilty conscience advanced distressing accusationsall day. There was another thing to trouble him—Agnes Brett'swedding was to be solemnized on the following Tuesday; and in themeantime Dickie developed a curiosity about marriages and forms ofmarriage that taxed his mother's knowledge and patience severely.On Tuesday Dolf was still very ill, but that fact did not restrainDick from creating a most unseemly sensation at the Kiley-Brettwedding. His act provoked much talk and satisfied the wise-acres ofWaddy that all their former suspicions as to the complete sanity of"that boy Haddon" were fully justified.
The chapel was crowded for the occasion. The rosy bride wassmiling gaily, and perfectly composed in her abundant orangeblossoms and a shiny silk dress, and the groom, in all theunaccustomed glory of a long-tailed coat, new lavender trousers,and gloves, faced her, looking confused and ungainly, and bearinghimself like an ill-designed automaton.
Suddenly, at a most impressive point in the service, Dickiemoved from his place, and, taking a prominent position in theaisle, cried in a loud, clear voice:
"I forbid this marriage!"
A peculiar hush fell upon the chapel, the minister was silenced,and all eyes turned wonderingly upon the amazing small boy in theaisle. Dick's recent inquiries and his literary knowledge, gleanedfrom cheap fiction, satisfied him that to stop a marriage it wasonly necessary for somebody to stand up in the church and forbidthe ceremony, and he stood there, prepared to take all theresponsibility.
Dick forbids the marriage.
A little girlish giggling was heard from the back seat, and thena voice of authority called:
"Put that boy out!"
Brother Spence captured Dickie from the rear, and led him away.Outside the good brother was strongly moved to administer paternalchastisement, but, recollecting the character and temper of hiscaptive, delivered only a stern admonition in choice Cornish, andlet him go.
The marriage ceremony was finished, and the couple departed fora brief honeymoon; and Dick Haddon spent two moody days, with thepoor consolation of knowing that he had done his best for Sim'sghost. Now the spirit's only chance of rescue lay in thepossibility of there being somebody else in the world who cared forhim. Dolf, they told him, was getting stronger, but he was notallowed to visit his mate, and there were hints of a mystery thatfilled him with suspicion. Could Dolf have proved false? Would hedare to risk the anger of the spirits by telling what he knew?
On the Friday night, shortly after dark, Dick encountered quitea crowd on the common, and his heart sank within him. The peoplewere making for the Peep-o'-Day, and Brother Tresize, who led theway, carried a long line and some candles. Dickie was seized by oneof the women.
"Here's they boy Haddon!" she cried, dragging her prizealong.
Brother Tresize took him by the ear. Mr. Tresize was paid by thecompany to look after the mine while it was shut down, and he wasconscious of having neglected his duty, but now he was full ofzeal.
"Wha's all this here sinfulness 'bout ghosts in the ole mine,you?" he asked.
"You le' go 'r I'll kick!" muttered Dick, sullenly.
Brother Tresize shifted his grip to the boy's collar.
"Hows'ever, you're found out, boy, an' I do suppose they p'licewill be lookin' for 'ee. So come along, you."
Dick went willingly enough. He wondered what was known, andwondered even more what was going to happen. At the mine other menwere standing about—Pearce, and Minahan, and Houten, andSpence, and Tinker Smith. The cover was off, and the rope from oneof the capstans was rigged over the pulley-wheel, and hung in thepump shaft.
"He's down beyant all right," said Minahan. "Sure, he ain'tshown out since."
Without further talk, Tresize, Houten, and Minalian equippedthemselves with candles and started down the ladders, Tresizecarrying the line in a coil about his neck. At the same time otherscommenced paying out the capstan rope, which travelled slowly downthe shaft.
During the long wait that followed the chatter of the womennever ceased, and Dickie gathered that Dolf had told the wholetruth about their journey into the mine. Mrs. Belman carried theinformation to Brother Tresize, who set a watch, and to-night astranger had been seen to come through the bush and make his waydown the ladders. These men had gone below to take the mysteriousintruder red-handed in whatever iniquity he might be engaged upon,and on top there was much speculation. Some thought the man must bea criminal escaped from justice—a murderer, no less—theartistic verities demanded that; others concluded he was mad.Dickie was questioned, and threatened, and abused, but he shut hislips tight, and said never a word. He stood there as stubborn,unamiable, and aggravating a little imp as the women had knowledgeof.
At length there was a call from Minahan, half-way up theladders:
"Hello, on top! Someone ride like blazes fer a docthor!"
The people stared blankly into each other's faces for a moment,a woman screamed, and then a young man broke away from the crowd,and fled across the common. There was another call:
"Heave up—man on!"
The men rushed the capstan, and the long arms swept round, butit was necessarily slow work, and the rope came creeping up out ofthe black depths, whilst the crowd, standing about the shaft,watched it in silence, with grey, expectant faces. There was a goodmoon, but a lantern was set at the mouth of the shaft, shedding itsfeeble light upon the tardy rope. The demand for a doctor meantsomething serious, perhaps a tragedy, and stout, voluble, assertiveMrs. Tresize was subdued, crushed into meekness. Maybe brotherTresize was the victim.
"Easy there!" a warning call to the men on the capstan, and thenthe figure of a man stole up out of the shadows, and the light ofthe lantern fell upon it, hanging limply from the rope, to which itwas securely bound. One side of the face was deathly white, theother showed black in the dim light. About the head was a roughbandage, and from under that and through the thick hair crept asluggish flow of blood, dyeing the whole cheek.
"Phil Houten!" screamed Mrs. Tresize, and then the buildings andthe timbers and tips of the big mine echoed and re-echoed the eerielaughter of a woman. Two others seized Mrs. Tresize, and patted,and petted and cajoled her, but she kept up that wild, irrelevantlaughter for several minutes. Meantime they had set the unconsciousHouten upon the long grass near the office, and the other womenwere gathered about him, each eager to assist in the work ofwashing and bandaging. Woman has the keenest sympathies, and sheloves to indulge them.
"Down wid the rope once more!" cried Minahan from the depths,and the great wooden capstan was reversed, and again the men ran itat their best speed. Running a capstan is exhausting work, andfinds your weak spot sooner than a whole council of doctors,consequently the best speed was a slow trot; but the crowd had adiversion in Houten, who continued in an unconscious condition, andwhose head showed several bad wounds. Evidently the stranger belowhad made a good fight for it.
Dickie's mind was in volcanic condition, throwing up manytheories, but he clung to his faith in Sim's ghost, and awaiteddevelopments. These people were flying in the face of thesupernatural; Houten was there to teach them what they mightexpect—no one would heed him.
"Ease her!" cried Tinker Smith, and again a face came up out ofthe darkness of the mine, and Dickie started forward. This time theface was that of the ghost—its eyes fixed on Dick menacingly;and Dick met them bravely, and he shook his head in answer to theaccusation he saw there.
Sim's ghost was also bound and tied to the rope.
"Keep a tight grip av him," said Minahan, who appeared on thesurface a moment later; "he's a tearin', howlin' divil t'fight."
Minahan bore corroborative detail in the shape of a cutforehead, a black eye, and a shirt torn to rags; and Tresize, whonext appeared, had not escaped without proofs of the prisoner'sprowess in combat.
The ghost was bound hand and foot, and strong hands held him,whilst curious eyes turned upon Tresize.
"Gold stealin'!" said Tresize, with the gratified air of a manwho has big news.
This loosened tongues. It was something to have discoveredanything worth stealing in the old mine.
"Where?" "How?" "Where 'bouts?" Each man had a question.
"Sthruck a dacent patch this side the incline in Number 2," saidMinahan. "Must have known the place. Opened out off the maindroive, an' he's bin workin' there fer weeks. He have a puddlin'tub an' a cradle down there, an' carried water from the shaft.There's manny a week's work done. Be me sowl, I believe he havebeen livin' there!"
Brother Tresize held up a pickle bottle, in which there was muchcoarse gold.
"They man have more'n this somewhere for sure."
"Who is he, anyhow?" and the light was thrown upon the scowlingface of the stranger. "What's yer name, mate?"
The ghost replied with vigorous profanity.
"I know him, I reekerlect!" and Tinker Smith thrust a crooked,accusing finger in the man's face—
"Bill Masters—useter work here 'bout seven year ago. Howare yer, Billy?"
Bill Masters cursed the little fossicker with great spirit, andrelapsed into sullen silence. Then the party took up its woundedand its prisoner, and carried them to the township, and Dickiefollowed after, disgusted. He had forgiven much in this ghost, buta ghost cannot be bound with cords and carried into captivity bymere mortals. Whatever spirits might haunt the drives and shoots ofthe Peep-o'-Day, it was certain that the ghost he and Dolf hadinterviewed was a shocking impostor. Dick's latest romanticillusion fell from him like a garment, and his faith in Simperished with the rest. Next day he was back with the boys of Waddyagain, fresh and hungry for devilment.
But there followed the trial of Bill Masters, at which Dick wasa witness, and throughout which everybody had a very great deal tosay, excepting only the man most concerned, and he said nothing. Itwas shown that Masters had worked in the Peep-o'-Day, and it wasconcluded that he had discovered a patch in the main drive, whichfollowed the gutter. The patch was hardly more than a suddenwidening of the gutter carrying the gold. He had clayed this overand left it, probably with the connivance of his mate, and with theidea that some day he might have the opportunity of working it. Theshutting down of the mine gave him that opportunity. What BillMasters left of the patch was rich in coarse gold. What he took outof it was known only to him self; but the miners of Waddy weresatisfied it was enough to recompense him for the five years' hardlabour imposed upon him by the solemn judge.
SUNDAY-SCROOL was "in" at Waddy. The classes were all in place,and of the teachers only Brother Spence was absent, strange to say.This was the first Sunday of the new superintendent's term, alwaysan evil time for grace, and a season of sulkiness, and bickering,and bad blood. Each beloved brother coveted the dignity of theoffice, and those who failed to get it were consumed with envy andall uncharitableness for many Sabbaths after. Some deserted thelittle wooden chapel on the hill till the natural emotions ofprayerful men pent in their bosoms could no longer be borne, andthen they stole back, one by one, and condoned in hurricanes ofexhortation with rain and thunder.
Brother Nehemiah Best occupied the seat of office behind a dealtable on the small platform, under faded floral decorations leftsince last anniversary. Rumour declared that Brother Best wasunable to write his own name, and whispered that he spent laboriousnights learning the hymns by heart before he could give them out onSunday, as witness the fact that he "read" with equal facilitywhether the book was straight, or end-ways, or upside down. BrotherBest was thin-voiced, weak in wind, and resourceless andunconvincing in prayer. No wonder Brother Spence was disgusted.Brother Spence could write his own name with scarcely more effortthan it cost him to swing the trucks at the Phoenix; his voiceraised in prayer set the loose shingles fairly dancing on the oldroof; and his recitation of "The Drunkard's Doom" had been thechief attraction on Band of Hope nights for years past. ErnestSpence had not hesitated to express himself freely at Fridayevening's meeting:
"Ay, they Brother Best, he no more fit for pourin' out thespirit, you, than a blin' kitten. Look at the chest of en!"
"True for en, Ernie!" cried Brother Tresize.
"They old devil, you, he laugh at Best's prayin', sureli.Brother Spence some tuss, you."
But Brother Spence had left the meeting in a state of righteousindignation. Yet here were Brothers Tresize, and Tregaskis, andPrator, and Pearce, and Eddy. True, they all looked grim andunchastened, and there was an uneasy, shifty feeling in the chapelthat inspired boys and girls, young men and young women, teachersand choir, with great expectations. Brother Best, in his favouriteattitude, with one arm behind him under his coat tails, his righthand holding the book a yard from his eyes, his right foot thrustwell out, the toe touching the floor daintily, made his firstofficial announcement:
"We will open they service this mornin' by singing hymn won,nought, won."
Then, in a nasal sing-song, swinging with a long sweep from toeto heel and heel to toe, he gave out the first verse and thechorus, ending unctuously with a smack of the lips at the line:
Thou beautiful, beautiful Poley Star!
Nehemiah was a dairyman, and had a fixed conviction that thepoley star and a poley cow had much in common.
The hymn being sung, the superintendent engaged in prayer,speaking weakly, with a wearisome repetition of stock phrases, ekedout with laboured groans and random cries.
Brother Tresize could not disguise his cynical disgust, andremained mute. A prayer to be successful amongst the Wesleans ofWaddy must make the hearers squirm and wriggle upon their knees,and cry aloud. Brothers and sisters were all happy when moved towild sobbing, to the utterance of moans, and groans, and hystericalappeals to heaven, and when impelled to sustain a sonorous volleyby the vigorous use of pocket handkerchiefs; but that was aspiritual treat that came only once in a while, with the visit of aspecialist, or when the spirit moved Brother Spence or BrotherTresize to unusual fervor.
The superintendent's prayer did not raise a single qualm; andthe boys of Class II. straggled openly over the forms, pinched eachother, and passed such rubbish as they could collect to DickyHaddon, the pale, saintly, ginger-headed boy at the top of theclass, who was in honour bound to drop everything so sent him inamongst the mysteries of the old, yellow, guttural harmonium,through a convenient crack in the back.
Throughout the service Brother Best, proud of his new office,watched the scholars diligently, visiting little boys and girlswith sudden sharp raps or twitches of the ear if they dared even tosneeze, but judiciously overlooking much that was injurious andunbecoming in the bigger boys of Class II., who had a vicious habitof sullenly kicking elderly shins when cuffed or wigged for theirmisdeeds.
The Bible reading, with wonderful, original expositions of theobscure passages by horny-handed miners, occupied about half anhour, and then the superintendent stilled the racket and clatter ofstowing away the tattered books with an authoritative hand, andinvited Brother Tresize to pray. If he was great he could bemerciful.
Brother Tresize made his preparations with great deliberation,spreading a handkerchief large enough for a bed-cover to save theknees of his sacred black-cloth trousers, hitching up the latter toprevent bagging, and finally loosening his paper collar from thebutton in front to give free vent to his emotions—andpreserve the collar. Then, the rattling of feet, the pushing andshoving, the coughing and whispering and sniffing having subsided,and all being on their knees, Brother Tresize began his prayer in asoft, low, reverent voice that speedily rose to a reverberantroar.
"Oh, Gwad, ah! look down upon we here, ah; let the light of Thycountenance ahluminate, ah, this little corner of Thy vineyard, ah.Oh, Gwad, ah! be merciful to they sinners what be assembled here,ah; pour down Thy speerit upon they, ah, make they whole, ah. Oh,Gwad, ah! Thoo knowest they be some here, ah, that be wallerin' insin, ah, some that be hippycrits, ah, some that be cheats, ah, somethat be scoffers, an' misbelievers, an' heathens, oh, Gwad, ah!Have mercy on they people, oh, Gwad, ah! Show they Thy fires, ah,an' turn they from the wrath, oh, Loord Gwad, ah!"
Brother Tresize was evidently in fine form this morning; alreadythe windows were vibrating before the concussions of his tremendousvoice, and the floor bounded under the great blows that punctuatedhis sentences. As he went on, the air became electrical, and thespirit moved amongst the flock. The women felt it first.
"Oh, Gwad, ah!" interjected Mrs. Eddy from her corner.
"Throw up the windies, an' let the speerit in!" sobbed Mrs.Eddy.
Brother Prator blew his nose with a loud report, a touching andhelpful manifestation.
Brother Tresize prayed with every atom of energy he possessed.His opinion was on record:
"A good prayer Sunday mornin', you, takes it out of en more'n ahard shift in a hot drive, you."
When his proper momentum was attained he oscillated to and frobetween the floor and the form, swaying back over his heels tillhis head almost touched the boards—a gymnastic feat that wasthe envy of all the brethren—he shook his clenched fist atthe rafters and reached his highest note. The plunge forward wasaccompanied by falling tones, and ended with a blow on the formthat made every article of furniture in the building jump. Theperspiration ran in streams down his face and neck; dry sobs brokefrom his labouring chest; long strands of his moist, well-oiled,red hair separated themselves from the flattened mass and stood outlike feelers, to the wild, ungodly delight of Class II.; and whilsthe prayed the brethren and "sistern" kept up a continuous fire ofinterjections and heartrending groans.
"They be people here, ah! what is careless of Thy grace; chasten'em with fire an' brimstone—chasten 'em, oh, Lord, ah! Theybe those of uz what go to be Thy servants, oh, Gwad, ah! an' to doThy work here below, ah, what is tried an' found wantin',ah—some do water they milk, oh, Gwad, ah! an' some do bemisleadin' they neighbors' hens to lay away. Smite they people forThy glory, oh, Loord, ah!"
A great moaning filled the chapel, and all heads turned towardsBrother Nehemiah Best, kneeling at his chair, with his face buriedin his hands, trembling violently. Nehemiah, two years earlier, hadbeen fined for watering the milk sold to his town customers; quiterecently he had been thrown into the Phoenix slurry by anunregenerate trucker, who accused him of beguiling his hens to layfrom home. Brother Tresize was wrestling with the superintendent inprayer, and the excitement rose instantly to fever heat.
"They what do not as they wad be done by, pursue 'em, ah; smitethey with Thy right hand, oh, Lord Gwad, ah! so they may be turnedfrom they wickedness, ah. They what have better food to they tablefor theyselves than for they children or they wives, ah, they whatbe filled with vanity, ah, they what havin' no book-learnin' dodeceive Thy people, an' fill the seats o' the learned, ah, dealwith such, oh, Gwad, ah!"
Brother Tresize was now almost frantic with the ecstasy of hiszeal. His exhortation was continued in this strain, and every wordwas a lance to prick the cowering superintendent. The women sniffedand sobbed, the men groaned and cried "Ahmen, ah!" It was a greattime for grace.
But suddenly a new voice broke in—a shrill, thin voice,splitting into that of Brother Tresize like a steam-whistle.Brother Best had assumed the defensive.
"Oh, Lord, ah!" he cried, "give no ear to they what bears falsewitness against they neighbors, to they what backbite, ah, an'slander, ah, an' bear malice, ah; heed they not, oh, Lord, ah!"
Abel Tresize rose to the occasion. It was a battle. His voiceswelled till it rivalled the roar of the ravening lion; he nolonger selected his words or cared to make himself understood ofthe people; it was necessary only to smother Brother Best, to prayhim down, and Abel prayed as no man had ever prayed before atWaddy. A curious crowd—the Irish children, Dan the Drover, anold shepherd, and a few cattlemen from the Red Cow—attractedby the great commotion, had assembled in the porch, and were gazingin open-mouthed, delighted.
Tresize persevered, but Best's shrill, penetrating voice rangout distinctly above all. Brother Best was transformed, inspired;under the influence of his great wrath he had waxed eloquent; hesmote his enemy hip and thigh, he heaped coals of fire upon hishead, and marshalled St. Peter and all the angels against him.
The severity of his exertions was telling heavily upon AbelTresize; he was dreadfully hoarse, his great hands fell upon theform without emphasis, he was almost winded, and his legs wobbledunder him. He pulled himself together for another effort, and thecry that he uttered thrilled every heart, but it quite exhaustedhim, and he went over backwards, striking his head upon the floor,and lay in the aisle convulsed in a fit.
Instantly the chapel became a babel. The teachers ran to BrotherTresize, and bore him into the open air, the wondering childrencrowding after, and left the new superintendent sobbing on histable like a broken-hearted boy.
"I HAD a divil of a drame last night," said Bart O'Brien, as hecrowded his usual two-pound "plaster" of cold fried bacon and breadinto his crib-bag.
"'Drame,' d'ye call it?" muttered Brown from his bunk. "Ithouoht you had the buckin' fantods; you howled like a madman."
"Be Hiven, I don't wonder thin. I thought I was pumpin' away inthe place below there, whin thim two sets at the bottom av theincline came away, an' I saw Lane crushed under thim. His dead facewas starin' out av the heap at me, all battered an' bloody, an'ghost-like in the candle-light. Faith, an' I ain't much amused widthese lone shifts!"
The boys grinned at O'Brien's fears, but Gleeson mutteredsomething about the manager being "d—d well hanged" for notgiving an eye to that timber, and Gleeson was considered anauthority.
Bartholomew O'Brien was a Bungaree native. In Bungaree thenatives are more Milesian than the Irish. Bart had for FatherCassidy a great, childlike veneration that the ribald stories toldof His Reverence by Bart's sceptical hut-mates could not shake; andhis belief in the wonders and mysteries of his religion and thefolklore of his mother's country was profound. Bartholomew had alsoruddy cheeks, and an unreliable heart.
It was Sunday evening at Waddy, hot and thirst-provoking. Hismates were lounging about in their trousers on the tumbled bunks,but O'Brien was due on the plat at nine o'clock, and was dressed inhis working clothes. He was a trucker at the Hand-in-Hand, and itwas his turn to go below into the mine and pump the water over theincline at the head of the main drive on the lower level. EverySunday night, after the long shift off, this work had to be done byone of the truckers, so that the face might be dry for the firstnight-shift, coming on at one a.m. None of the boys liked thejob—O'Brien hated it. In the presence of a tangible danger hewas as game a fellow as any in the district, but hissuperstition—an ineradicable inheritance intensified by earlyinfluences that bring the emotional side of the unlettered believerto an unhealthy development, and leave to the man the reasoningfaculties of the child—made him little more than anirresponsible idiot when his imagination ran riot amongst thespooks and wraiths. He had an extraordinary stock of mottoes,religious and legendary, for warding off the spirits, and possessedall the portable charms obtainable; but his faith was not aspowerful as his fears, and, in spite of these spiritual arms andarmour, he dreaded to be alone in the murderous old mine with theghosts of its many dead.
On going to the bottom level that night, and threading thecourse of the long, tortuous main drive, the trucker found thewater below the incline higher than usual. The heavy iron pumpstood over a slab-covered well in a small chamber about ten feet bysix, dug in the side of the drive. It was worked with aback-racking up-and-down stroke, and lifted the water into pipes,which carried it to the higher ground, whence it drained to theshaft. The face was quite a thousand yards from the plat; and thesound from the air-pipe, like the laborious breathing of somegigantic animal afar off, offered no relief from the oppressivestillness and the deathly atmosphere of the drive.
It is a trying thing to a man afflicted with the accumulatedsuperstitions of a hundred generations to be left alone for anytime in the deep, extensive workings of an old mine, every drive,and winze, and shoot in which has its tale of blood and suffering.Bart O'Brien stuck his candle to the side of the chamber, andpaused to listen. The terror was already strong upon him: his mouthwas dry, and his heart beat like a plunger, catching his breath atevery pulsation. The chamber was deep enough down and hot enough tosuggest its proximity to the flaming home of all the damned devilsin whose existence Bartholomew implicitly believed. He had donesolitary duty several times at the pump, but never before had hishorror of it been so great as to-night. His dream recurred to him,and he glanced uneasily towards the suspicious sets. He was abeliever in the portents of dreams—he expected something tocome of this one.
Catching at the long handle, Bart began to pump, almost indesperation. Up and down, up and down—there was relief inaction, and he worked fiercely. The pump had been oiled recently,and ran smoothly and noiselessly. This irritated him—hewanted hard work, something material to fight with. And then the"click, clack," would have gone well to the rhythm of an ancientIrish rhyme which his old mother held to be infallible in keepingthe elves from cows, and which he was wont to mutter all the timewhen beset by supernatural enemies.
So hard was the mental battle O'Brien was fighting that bodilypain or weariness never obtruded. With bent head and tightly-closedeyes he toiled at the big pump, whilst the perspiration streamedfrom him and ran through the folds of his scant clothing. Sometimesthe face of Geordie Lane, corpse-white and bloodstained, as he hadseen it in his dream, thrust itself upon him; then his brows met incords, his hands gripped the iron with a force that split hiscallous fingers, the handle took a quicker, longer sweep, and thewater boiled and foamed into the wooden gutter in the drive.
Bart worked in this manner till about half-past eleven; then hewas startled by a gurgling, choking sound in the well beneath hisfeet, and fell back into one corner of the chamber with anexclamation, his eyes staring, full of fear.
The pump was drawing air! He had done four hours' hard work inlittle over half the time. The drive was dry.
The young man's left arm was rubbed raw from the elbow to thewrist, and his indurated hands were bleeding profusely from severaldeep cracks. Bart gazed at the blood stupidly, and presently foundhimself listening again—listening in the profound silence,out of which he heard at length the distinct patter of footsteps.Small flakes of clay were falling from the roof of the drive on tothe muddy floor, but what little reasoning power Bart had was lostby this time in a passion of superstitious fear. He clutched thepump-handle once more, but it rose and fell loosely, with aclatter, and drew no water.
With nothing for his hands to do, O'Brien was no longer able tocontrol his thoughts; they ran over the history of themine—its list of killed. He recalled the story of Martin'sghost haunting the old balance-shaft, whilst the spirit of hiswife, who died of grief, sought for him after every shift in thenext level. He remembered with startling vividness Rooke, thebraceman, as he looked spread upon the plat-sheets after fallingdown five hundred feet of shaft-battered into a horrible mass, outof which the face stood forth, ghastly white, and unmarked, thoughthe brain was laid bare as cleanly as by surgeon's saw. Then passedbefore his eyes in grisly procession, showing their fearfulwounds—Bill the trucker, killed at No. 5 by a fall; Carter,brained in the shaft; Praer and Hopkins, smashed in the runawaycage; Moore and German Harry, blown up in the well when sinking;and Lane, pinched under the shattered timber right before his eyesthere in the drive.
O'Brien was crouching in the corner. No longer understandingthat it was only in a dream he had seen Lane killed, he expected aghost to start up before his eyes—a ghost with mangled limbsand a pale, blood-stained face. He remained thus for some time,fighting the dread as it grew upon him. At length he started up,and his fear found vent in a yell that echoed shrilly through theworkings. He meant to rush into the drive and make his way to theshaft, but struck his head against the pump-handle at the firststride, and was hurled back into the water, which had risen againto the height of several inches.
The blow and the drenching steadied Bart a little, and hestarted pumping once more, with nervous energy. Whilst he worked,the candle fell from the wall and hissed out in the wet clay. Hehad no matches. In a few minutes the pump was drawing wind again,and now O'Brien's greatest trial began.
The darkness was solid, substantial—the young man felt itweighing upon him with a pressure as of deep water, and his senseof solitude and awe was such as might be known by the last, loneman in a waste, sunless world. At times he crushed his ears withhis hands to shut out the dreadful silence, and then he heard thepassing of spirit feet, the muffled beat of wings, sobbing sounds,and long moans dying away beyond the distant curves. Histreacherous eyes saw fleeting forms and tense, inhuman faces tracedin faint, phosphorescent lines on the dense, black wall that stoodup before him. His agonized fears had now obtained complete masteryof him, his mind ran in a frenzy from horror to horror, and anintolerable dread filled his soul with hellish expectations.
He stood transfixed at the back of the chamber, his armsoutspread, his fingers dug knuckle-deep in the sodden reef. Hiseyes stared as in death, and his mouth was open wide, the fallenlower jaw jerking spasmodically. His greatest terror was of thething he had seen at the chamber-door—the corpse—faceunder the splintered timbers. He saw it now, white as quartz, withclots of blood hiding the eyes; he felt its presence—itmouthed at him—threatened him.
Out of the darkness and the silence of death came a faintrumbling sound, like far-off thunder. It swelled and drew nearer.It roared in the drive, and from the inky blackness, in a paleyellow light, Lane rose up with a bloody face, and caught atO'Brien.
A minute or two later the men of the night-shift were shocked tomeet Lane rushing back from the face like a maniac, with a dead manin his truck.
* * * * *
"Thoo's got a bad cut i' tha head thasel,' lad," said the bossof the shift to Lane, half an hour later.
"Yes," he answered, "I slipped into that crab-hole at the secondcurve going up, and knocked my forehead on the truck."
THE boy carried under his arm an old, rusty fryingpan, minus thehandle. He was a small, sober-looking boy of about twelve years,with red hair and plenteous freckles; his big felt hat was tuckedin in the approved style, and dusted with pipe-clay—he hadcarefully dusted it for the sake of verisimilitude; his shirtsagged artfully over the top of his moleskin trousers, which weretied under the knees with the customary "bowyangs." No detail wasmissing; the boots were covered with moist yellow clay, and thetrousers were stained with mud from the dam and rust from the ironpuddlers. Dickie was quite a realistic fossicker, a man ofexperience, invested with the dignity of labour.
The pan was full of greyish dust, in which were bits of grittyrope-yarn and many splinters. He sank it in the water of the dam,where stones were set for a footing, and began puddling the dirt,working with great care and a due sense of importance. He wouldhave given much to have had a pipe and real tobacco—a bit ofdry root, he felt, would not be equal to the occasion, he having"struck it"—his last dish realized quite ten grains.
Dickie puddled slowly, working his hands with the machine-likemovement he had copied so accurately from the men at Pig Creek. Heunravelled the bits of rope, and washed all the grit from thembefore they were thrown aside. No spot of clay that could hide acolour was left upon the chips, and when at length the dirt wascompletely puddled, he began the more interesting work of panningoff.
Only about half a pint of material was left in thepan—sand and pebbles and rusty nails. The boy handled thisdeftly, pawing the stones and nails and throwing them out betweenhis legs with the skill of an old hand; and then, shaking anddipping, he washed away the sand, until the yellow gold began toshow through. Taking a little water in the dish he swirled thecontents, and his heart bounded again. A streak of fine gold, withhere and there a coarse speck, ran along the edge of black sand,and every lap widened the yellow band.
"Gimminy! Sonny, that's good ernuff!"
A little, grizzled, hard-looking old man, splashed with wetclay, was leaning over Dick, peering excitedly into the dish.
"Must be ten weights there, boy. Where'd yer get the stuff?"
"Find out!" said Dick, sulkily.
It is contrary to strict etiquette and accepted professionalusage for one fossicker to go sneaking around another fossickerwhen the latter is panning off; it suggests an encroachment. Dickiefilled with resentment. He shook the gold down, and moved away fromthe old man.
"Clear rout, can't you?" he growled.
"Only thot I'd show yer 'ow ter pan 'er off," piped the other,with a poor show of disinterestedness. This was a grievous insultto Dick, who flattered himself that he could always get a decentprospect out of Tinker's tailings, and who had been complimented onhis art by an expert. Dickie felt it keenly.
"You jes'scoot—go on!" he said, resentfully. "You want terfind out where I got this, so's you can collar the stuff, don'tyou? You sneaked that patch what I found by the office door, didn'tyou? 'n got thirty-bob's worth outer it. I know you!"
"But no one else ain't 'lowed ter fossick roun' this mine butme," said Tinker. "The right was given ter me by the board uvdirectors, see!"
"Ger out!" cried the boy, dubiously.
"Didn't they, but? See here!"
The old man drew a piece of crumpled paper from hisbreast—the piece he had had his tobacco wrapped in.
"See here, here's the blessed deed all draw'd up, an' with theQueen's signitur in 'er own 'andwritin'."
"Le's see."
The boy reached for the paper, but Tinker restored it hastily tohis breast.
"'Somever," he said, "if you'll lay me on where yer got thatdirt I don' mind lettin' yer wash a few dishes now 'n again. 'R yeron?"
"No, I ain't. My father was killed in this mine, an' I got ezgood er right ez you."
"Oh, very well, young feller me lad! When the mounted p'licecomes along, I jes' fixes yer up for ten years' 'ard labour, withthree floggin's, fer gold-stealin'."
Dickie looked consternated for a moment, but soon recoveredhimself after recollecting that Tinker was always particularly andpeculiarly anxious to avoid the police, and arguing inwardly thatthose great, proud men on the polished horses, who pranced throughthe township once a month or so, would certainly have nothing to dowith a mean, dirty little hatter like Tinker Smith.
"If you don't gib out I'll climb up ter the wheels an' paste youwith grease," he said, "an' drop rocks in yer puddlin' tub."
Tinker stood, eyeing the boy dispassionately, and clawing hisscrubby beard. "Ten years' 'ard labour, an' three floggin's," herepeated, musingly.
Dickie had armed himself with a stone, and struck an offensiveattitude. "'R you goin', once?" he said.
"A dirty, dark gaol!" said Tinker, apparently to himself.
"'R you goin', twice?"
"No tucker, no bed, nothin' but lickin's an' leg-irons!"
"'R you goin', fer the third an' last time?"
Tinker moved off slowly, reciting as he went:
"Ten years an' three floggin's! Floggin's with thecat-o'-nine-tails—cat-o'-nine-tails with bits o' lead on'em!"
But Dickie was not in the least impressed, and when Tinker hadreturned to his tub up the race, set eagerly to work to finish hisprospect. About half an ounce of clean gold was the result, and thesight of it added to the feverish elation that was in the boy'sblood. He had never washed such a rich dish before. Hundreds andhundreds of dishes he had taken from all sorts of holes and cornersabout the old mine, but hitherto the best result had been apennyweight or so from a shovelful of surface dirt dug out justnear the office door, where the sweepings were scattered, andTinker had promptly confiscated a large area, and robbed him of hisright as discoverer. An unconscionable fossicker was Tinker, withno respect for the nice observances of the craft and the unwrittencode which forbids one man to take advantaoe of another'sdiscoveries, to poach his preserves, or encroach upon his"dirt."
But since then Dick had learned to assert himself he had foundthat Tinker was not invulnerable, and now he knew that, whenperched up by the great black twin wheels, on the swimming heightat the top of the poppet-legs, he was master of the situation, andcommanded the field. They were by far the highest legs in thecountry, and the old man never dared venture further than thebrace, not half-way up; so that from his proud eminence Dick couldbombard his foe with lumps of the congealed tar and grease thatflaked the wonderful pulleys, until Tinker was glad to signal atruce.
Dick washed the gold from his pan into the up-turned bottom of abroken beer bottle, along with the few grains earned during theafternoon, and, after hiding it in a rabbit burrow under the bank,hastened up the wide wooden stair leading to the high brace of thedeserted mine. Along by the machines he set to work on the floor ofthe puddling plat with an improvised broom and a scraper,collecting the dust that lay between the boards into his dish,gathering it with as much care as if it had been pure gold. Nearhere had stood one of the sluice-boxes—long since torn awayand burnt for the sake of the gold secreted in itscrevices—and Dick, noticing that the floor was doubleboarded, was inspired to pull up the top planks and wash the dustcollected underneath and in the cracks. Fine gold is as insinuatingas quicksilver; about an old alluvial mine you find it in the mostunexpected places. Tinker once put in a good day's work washing thedust from above the Peep-o'-Day boilers, where the "knock-off" menhad hung their clay-covered working clothes to dry, shift aftershift, for many years; and anywhere within a hundred yards of themine the colour could be got for the trying.
Tinker had followed Dick to the brace, and stood greedilyoverlooking the boy, who was digging dirt out of the cracks with along, pointed nail, and deeply absorbed in his work. Tinker drewnearer, his little red eyes gleaming amongst their wrinkles. He hadthe reputation of a miser in Waddy, and certainly gold-dust hadfascinations for him that did not arise wholly from its intrinsicvalue; but Dickie commanded respect—his power for mischiefwas great. Enthroned above, he had often taken summary and completevengeance for injustices done him. It was an occasion fordiplomacy.
"Ho, ho, young feller! I've cot yer, have I?" cried the old man."This is burglary an' house-breakin'."
Dick Haddon armed himself in defence of his property, and facedhis enemy, glaring defiance.
"Yer in fer it this time right ernough, Mister Haddon. Le'ssee," continued Tinker, eyeing the boy's stick dubiously, "Ib'lieve they hangs fer robbery with vi'lence."
"Don' care!" snorted Dick. "You come near me an' I'll break yerhead."
"Look here, Dickie, you don' split on me, an' I won't split onyou. We'll go harves. I works at this end, an' you at that. That'sa fair do."
"No, you don't!" answered Dick, sturdily. "I found this patch,an' I ain't goin' t'give it up t'no-body."
It was a bad place for a scuffle. All the boards had beenstripped from the plat at the far end, and between the big pinebeams supporting the puddlers, and on which the floor had beenlaid, was a clear fall of about eighty feet to the clean whiteboulders below. But Tinker's cupidity was aroused; he believed thatif the whole of the plat were stripped as the boy was doing it thedust would yield five or six ounces, and he was furious at havingover-looked the job so long. He edged towards Dickie cunningly.
"I don't wanter get yer inter quod, 'cause o' yer pore widdermother," he said, "but the board o' directors said I wasn't t'allowno one 'round this mine, an' if yer don't clear I'll have ter got'town an' 'ave yer took at once. Dooty's dooty!"
"Who cares?" shouted Dick, valiantly.
"Ger out, blast yer!"
Tinker closed with the lad, and there was a struggle. Dickstruck out blindly with his stick, and it cracked on his enemy'shead, and Tinker went tottering back, with out-thrown arms, overthe edge of the floor, and fell among the beams, clutching wildlyat their smooth sides. Dick saw his blanched face, horrified eyes,and his gaping, toothless mouth for one moment, and then hedisappeared between the beams with a shrill and terrible cry,echoed by one yet shriller from the lips of the boy.
But Tinker had not fallen. A long nail in the side of one of thebeams had caught in the slack of his capacious trousers at theback, and the old fossicker hung, head downwards, above theenormous stones, clawing like a suspended cat, and screaming like afrightened child. His trousers were far from new, and the nail wasold and rust-eaten.
"Tinker, don't wriggle!" cried Dick. "Yourtrousers!—they'll tear—they'll tear!"
Instantly Tinker became as rigid as a dead man, but the awfulconsciousness that he was slowly slipping out of his clothesredoubled his terror, and he never ceased to yell.
"Tinker, don't wriggle!"
The boy, lying face downwards on a beam, made an attempt to pullhim up by the shirt, but desisted instantly on perceiving that theeffort only served to jeopardize Tinker's one poor hold. Then Dickwas inspired with a great idea. He ran for the long nail which hehad been using, seized an old tooth from a puddling harrow, andreturning to the pendulous fossicker, drove the spike through theold man's trousers into the beam, taking in as much material aspossible. A shriek of extraordinary vigor convinced him that he hadskewered Tinker's leg to some extent, but it was no time for nicedistinctions.
"Don't wriggle, Tink'!" gasped the boy. "Don't stir a wink 'ryou'll fall outer yer pants. I'm off for help."
Tinker, head downwards and transfixed, with starting eyesglaring upon the stones far beneath him, where already inimagination he saw his mangled corpse, answered only with a groan,and Dickie fled along the puddling plat, across the brace, and downthe wooden steps, missing the last six and landing in a heap with ablinding shock. When he quite recovered his senses again he foundhimself tearing across the paddocks towards the cattle-yards, witha strange feeling in his head and one arm hanging at his side likea piece of old rope. Over two fences and through a blackberryhedge, and Dick, white as a sheet, streaked with blood, ragged, andgasping, burst upon Michael Minahan at the yards.
"Tinker!" panted the boy. "Quick! Quick! Tinker! He's hanging!hanging! hanging!"
Michael was a man slow of comprehension under ordinarycircumstances; but a glance at Dick and a glance in the directionof his outstretched finger sent him racing towards the mine, withpoor maimed, winded Dickie toiling gamely in the rear.
Meanwhile Tinker was slipping, slipping through his clothes. Hisvoice had failed him, and he could only cry with a hoarse, thintreble, breaking into a poor squeal of mortal fear when a decidedslip set him clutching frantically at the thin air, and convincedhim that his end had come.
When Minahan reached the steps, the fossicker had slippedthrough his moleskins, and hung by the feet, moaning piteously. Thecords tied below his knees delayed the great catastrophe. There wasstill hope. Minahan mounted the stairs with a rush, three at abound, and Dickie, prostrate upon the dam bank, completelyexhausted, watched the inverted figure of Tinker Smith with wide,terrified eyes. Presently a large hand shot down and grasped oneleg, and then to Dickie's mind the world seemed to go out like acandle. When he knew anything again he was in a white hospitalward, with his arm in splints and his head in many bandages; andlong before he could use that arm again Tinker had scraped thepuddling plat as clean as a dining table, and, although he told noone, it yielded seven ounces.
WADDY, in its decadence, lived through two days of every week.The awakening began late on Sunday night, or in the gloom of Mondaymorning, with the sound of phlegmatic cursing—softened andchastened by distance and the enfolding darkness—the yappingof busy dogs, the pathetic lowing of weary beasts, the marching ofmany hoofs, the slow movements of big flocks and herds on theironstone road.
On Sunday evening Waddy was a mile-long township facing anapparently interminable post-and-rail fence and a wide stretch oftreeless country dotted with poppet-legs—a township of somefifty houses, a Sunday-school and a chapel; grey, weatherboard,rain-washed houses, and an old, bleached, wooden day-school shoredup on either side with stays, but lurching forward and peeringstupidly out of its painted windows with a ludicrous suggestion ofabject drunkenness. On Sunday evening Waddy was still, silent, andapparently deserted, oppressed by the weight of a Cousin-JackSabbath, but on Monday morning tents and covered carts linked thescattered houses, camp-fires smoked everywhere, and beardedcattle-men, making their scant toilet under the decent cover of acart-wheel or a rail-fence, enlivened the place with light-heartedblasphemy and careless snatches of song, whilst flocks of sheepdrifted on the common, fraternizing with the local goats, and mobsof cattle came slowly down the old toll-road, sniffing at the bare,brown track; the dust-coloured, sleepy drovers, with sunken heads,nodding on their limp horses.
Tuesday was sale-day. Monday afternoon was devoted to theyarding of cattle and the yarding and drafting of innumerablesheep—the former a comparatively easy and decorousundertaking; the latter a clamorous and arduous businessprovocative of disgust, dust, and madness, and inducing a thirstthat afflicts the toiler like a visible disease, making him anobject of pity to all humane beholders. The average bullock is ofincalculable mental density, but he has the virtue of faith, and ifyou wish him to go through a gateway he goes in blind confidence;but you may pack a mob of five or fifty thousand sheep hard againsta 10 ft. opening in a fence, and you may yap yourself hoarse, andbeat your trousers to rags, and your dogs may bark their lungs up,without inducing a single monumental idiot of the whole flock toventure through.
It is a hot afternoon—it always was a hot afternoon, itseems to me at this distance—and scores of thousands of sheepare being hauled, and bullied, and cursed, and cajoled into theyards, and from pen to pen. There is a decided substratum ofsound—the ceaseless, senseless bleating of sheep, low andunvarying; above this the "yap, yap, yap" of the men and boys, thesharp barking of the dogs, and the lowing of the cattle in the highyards beyond. Over all, the dust and the sun—a burning,yellow sun, and a rolling cloud of powdery dust—andeverywhere in the air the taint of sheep, the pungent smell of thebeasts, and the taste of them if you open your lips to breathe. Itis a great time for several of the boys of Waddy; it means half aday from school and the opportunity of earning a shilling or twoplaying at work. Every healthy boy in the township is ambitious tobe a drover, and have a black pipe, a wonderful horse, and afabulous dog. Working at the yards is an approach to the ideal, andconfers a dignity obtainable in no other way. To the boys penned inthe stuffy little drunken schoolhouse the others who have a job atthe yards are kings, and objects of an envy unspeakable. Theycommand humble service, and awe, and admiration always.
With treasured whips, home-made of many fragments, the boys arebusy helping with the drafting and penning of the cattle, or,coated half an inch deep with yellow dust, they are rushing thesheep up and down, bleary black patches indicating where their eyesmay be, and muddy circles the probable situation of their mouths.It is hot, hard work, but, oh! the glory of it, and the pride ofwalking home with money in one's pockets, and covered withheaped-up, honourable dirt!
On sale-day the Drovers' Arms is hemmed in with conveyances ofall sorts and sizes, each with a sober horse or two tethered to awheel, dreaming with drooped heads under the scorching sun, orpatiently foraging for the last oat in the corner of the feed-box.The heat is the same, so are the dust and the smells, but thenoises of yesterday are supplemented by the continuous rattle ofthe auctioneers' voices. Over the simmering stew sound the voiceslike the crackling of gum-twigs in an open fire:—
"Fo'rteen fi! fo'rteen fi! fo'rteen fi!
All done eighteen, done eighteen, done eighteen!
Fo'r pounds, I'm bid. Fo'r two six! fo'r two six!
Fo'r two six! Goin'for—two—six!"
There are a few "drunks" sleeping in attitudes of absurd abandonalong M'Mahon's fence, coated with flies; and out on the common,with the whole waste to themselves, two men, stripped to the buff,are engaging in a dull, boozy, interminable fight. They have beenfighting ineptly for many hours, and their punctilious observanceof the rules of the ring is the wildest farce; but the comedy iswasted on Waddy, and the drovers are too busy to give heed.
In the afternoon the cattle begin to move out again and off bythe roads they came, but the babel continues, and thebuyers—stout, red, bibulous men of one pronouncedtype—follow the auctioneers in knots along the platforms overthe yards. The cattle are not the meek, weary animals of yesterday;they have been hustled from one yard to another, rushed around,whipped and prodded, packed into small pens, and cursed and oratedover to the complete loss of their few poor wits, and there is nowa decided note of revolt in the lowing that rises up from the yardslike a lingering curse. In every lot turned out there are one ortwo beasts filled with blind, blundering hate; they swing up theroad, leading the mobs, red-eyed and possessed of devils; cords ofsaliva hang from their muzzles, and their moaning is ominous,suggesting the vacuous complaining of a maniac.
The youngsters coming from school keep close to the rail-fence,but they delight to run deadly risks, and fill the air with theprofane shrieks of the drovers. Often a goaded, homicidal bullockbolts, and then young hearts are glad. It is wonderful sport tobehold that frantic race for the distant timber—the long,rolling plunge of the bullock, with the good horse working on hisshoulder, and the volleying whip kicking up dust and hair from hishollow ribs.
The clatter of the auctioneers grows fainter and hoarser, andthe perishing beasts in the pens below toss up their heads like thebranches of wind-blown trees, and push hither and thitherceaselessly with a pitiful "mooing."
Marks is selling a pen of Bellman's stock in No. 26. The buyerscluster about him on top of the fence, and bidding is brisk. Onebullock, a fine red beast, has knocked himself about badly; histail has been torn clean away, one horn is cracked close to thehead, and the thick red blood oozes out, and blackens rollingsluggishly down the white blaze of his face. It is a large yard,and there is plenty of room for the brute to charge, which he doesseveral times, now and then driving blindly into another bullock,but generally cracking his skull sharply on the great posts of thefence. Suddenly a portly, helmeted buyer, leaning over to get abetter view, misses his centre of gravity and goes after it, thewhole 16 st. plumping solidly into the slush of the yard below. Thered bullock is at him instantly. The good horn takes Langley in theback of the trousers, and the drive rips him bare to the collar,leaving him unmarked, but prone, in a condition of unseemlynudity.
The beast backs away for another drive, shaking his head anduttering his low, tigerish bellow, the expression of allmalevolence; but at the same moment a figure drops smartly from theplatform, and a ragged, smudgy, red-headed small boy is ridingastride the animal's neck, diverting his attention by battering himover the eyes with an old felt hat. Dicky Haddon has performed thisfeat often for his own amusement, to the amazement of staid andmatronly cows, but this is a beast of another colour, and the trickis done in response to an involuntary heroic impulse.
The bullock backs about the yard, tossing his head in an effortto be rid of his mysterious burden, and many hands clutch stout oldLangley from the other pen, and tow him along through the mire tothe gate, the bottom rail of which is high enough from the groundto enable them to pull him out of danger. Then he is borne away,unnerved and invertebrate. The boy seizes his opportunity, dropsfrom the bullock and slips under the gate like a cat. Then hefollows Langley, and stands in eager expectance whilst the damagedgrazier is being bundled into his buggy. Really Langley suffersfrom nothing more serious than blue funk, but is oblivious ofeverything excepting a great craving for neat brandy, and is drivenoff without bestowing even a glance on his small preserver.
This base ingratitude inspires the youth with a loathing thatcan only be expressed in the choice idiom of the yards, and thedisappointed hero, dancing in the road with his thumb to his nose,yells bitter and profane insults after Jabez Langley, moneyed manand M.L.A.
THE men at the mine were anxious to have me visit ourmagnificent property. The battery and water-wheel were erected,there were 50 tons of stone in the hopper, and we only needed waterand the blessing of Providence to start crushing out big weeklydividends. I know now that there has never been a time within thememory of man when Scrubby Gully did not want water, and thatScrubby Gully is the one place on earth to which a discriminatingman would betake himself if he wished to avoid all the blessings ofProvidence for ever. But that is beside the matter.
I was carefully instructed by letter to take the train to Kanan,coach it to the Rabbit Trap, take horse from Whalan's to the CrossRoads, ask someone at Old Poley's on the hill to direct me toSheep's Eye; from there strike west on foot, keeping Bugle Point onmy right, and "Chin Whiskers" would meet me at The Crossing. Therewas no accommodation at the mine for city visitors, but I was givento understand Mr. Larry Jeans would be happy to accommodate me athis homestead over the spur.
Casual references to Mr. Jeans in the correspondence gave me theimpression that Jeans was an affluent gentleman of luxurious tastesand a hospitable disposition, and that a harmless eccentricity ledhim to follow agricultural and pastoral pursuits in the vicinity ofScrubby Gully instead of wasting his time in voluptuous ease in thecity.
"Chin Whiskers" met me at The Crossing. "Chin Whiskers" was ameditative giant who exhausted his mental and physical energieschewing tobacco, and who bore about his person interesting andobvious evidence of the length and the severity of the localdrought—he was, in fact, the drought incarnate. The Crossingwas a mere indication of a track across a yellow, rock-strewnindentation between two hills, which indentation, "Chin Whiskers"informed me, was "The Creek." That did not surprise me, because Iknew that every second country township and district in Australiahas a somewhat similar indentation which it always calls "TheCreek." Sometimes "The Creek" has moist places in it, sometimes itis quite damp for almost a dozen miles, but more often it is ashard and dry as a brick-kiln. When the indentation is really wetalong its whole length it is invariably called "The River."
I found the mine; it was a simple horizontal hole bored in ahill. The battery was there, and the water-wheel. The water-wheelstood disconsolate beside the dust-strewn creek, and looked as muchat home as a water-wheel might be expected to look in the centre ofthe sandy wastes of Sahara. The working shareholders wereunaffectedly glad to see me. They were sapless anddrought-stricken, but they assured me, with great enthusiasm, thatthey lived in momentary expectation of a tremendous downfall. Leenhad been mending the roof of his hut, he said, in readiness for theheavy rains which were due before morning. He examined the skycritically, and expressed a belief that I would be detained onScrubby Gully a couple of weeks or so in consequence of thefloods.
This spirit of unreasonable hopefulness and trust seemed to beshared by Cody, and Ellis, and MacMahon. I alone was dubious. Thejourney up had worn me out; the dry desolation all around and theflagrant unprofitableness of our spec. sickened me; but Jeans stillremained—the prodigal Jeans, with his spacious homestead andprofuse hospitality. I was heartfully grateful for Jeans. We met indue course. As I talked with Leen, a man came wearily down thehill, towing a meagre horse, which in turn was towing a log. Thisman delivered his log, unslung his animal, and approached us,heroically lugging behind him the miserable apology for ahorse—a morbid brute manifestly without a hope or ambitionleft in life, and conveying mysteriously to the observer aknowledge of its fixed and unshakable determination to lie down anddie the moment its owner's attention was otherwise directed. Butthe proprietor seemed fully alive to the situation, and neverallowed his thoughts to stray entirely from the horse, but wascontinually jerking its head up, and addressing towards itreproaches, expostulations, and curses—curses that had lostall their vigour and dignity. This man was Jeans, and if I had notseen his horse I would have said that Jeans was the most hopelesslyheart-broken and utterly used-up animal breathing on the face ofthe earth. He was about 40, grey, hollow-cheeked, hollow-chested,bent, and apathetic with the dreadful apathy that comes of wastedeffort, vain toil, and blasted hopes. Jeans had a face that hadforgotten how to smile and never scowled—a face that took noexercise, but remained set in the one wooden expression of joyless,passionless indifference to whatever fate could offer henceforthand forever. My last hopes exploded at the sight of him.
Mr. Larry Jeans said I was welcome to camp in the spare room "upto" his place, and added dully that "proberly" his missus couldscrape up grub enough for me "fer a day'r two." "Proberly" did notsound very encouraging, but I had no option, and, being dead-beat,accepted the hospitality offered, and followed Mr. Jeans. Larrylaboriously hauled his melancholy horse over a couple of low stonyrises, and then we tackled the scrag end of the range, across whichled a vague track that wound in and out amongst a forest of greatrocks, and presented all the difficulties and dangers ofmountaineering without its compensations. Jeans struggled on withdull patience, and in silence, saving when it was necessary todivert the old horse from his morbid thoughts, and when he brieflyanswered my questions. I gathered from him that the men at the minehad been expecting rain for four months.
"And what do you think of the chances?" I asked.
"Oh, me, I never expect nothin'. Sometimes things happen. Idon't expect 'em, though."
"Things happen—what, for instance?"
"Well, dry spells."
I elicited that pleuro happened, and rabbits, and fires, and"this here new-fangled fever." But whatever happened Jeans neverfluctuated; he had struck an average of misery, and was bogged inthe moral slough. It seemed as if his sensibilities above a certaincapacity had been worn out by over-work, and refused to feel morethan a fixed degree of trouble, so that whatever might come on topof his present woes, be it fever, or fire, or death, the manremained in his normal condition of grim apathy and spiritlessobedience to fate.
The "homestead" stood upon the flat timbered country beyond therise. It was just what Jeans's homestead might have been expectedto be—a low structure of bark and slabs, with a slab chimneyat one end, and a door in the middle between two canvas "windows."It stood in a small clearing; just beyond the house stood theskeleton of a shed, upon which, it being sundown, roosted a fewgaunt fowls; a lank cow with one horn was deeply meditating by thefront door. There were signs of bold raids upon the stubborn bush,pathetic ventures; and great butts lay about in evidence of muchweary but unprofitable work. A dog-leg fence, starting at noparticular point, straddled along in front of the house, andfinished nowhere about a hundred yards off. Not a new fence either,but an old one, with much dry grass matted amongst thelogs—that was the pathos of it. There had been a braveattempt at a garden, too; but the few fruit trees that stood hadbeen stripped of the bark, and the hens had made dust-baths in allthe beds. In this dust an army of children werewallowing—half-clad, bare-footed, dirt-encrusted children,but all hale and boisterous.
At the door we were met by Mrs. Larry Jeans, and afterintroducing me as "him from the city," the master laboured away,dragging his shuffling horse, and leaving me in the centre of awondering circle of youngsters of all sorts and sizes, from twodusty mites not yet properly balanced on their crooked little legsup to a shock-headed lubberly boy of thirteen, curiously embossedwith large tan freckles, and a tall, gawky girl of the same age inpreposterously short skirts, whom my presence afflicted with a mostpainful bashfulness. A peculiarity about Jeans's children thatstruck me was the fact that they seemed to run in sets: there was apair even for the sticky baby deftly hooked under its mother's leftarm, judging by the petulant wailing to be heard within.
The Jeans's homestead consisted of two compartments. I lookedabout in vain for the "spare room," and concluded it must be eitherthe capacious fire-place or the skeleton shed on which the henswere roosting. The principal article of kitchen furniture was along plank table built into the floor; between it and the wall wasa bush-made form, also a fixture. A few crazy three-legged stools,a safe manufactured from a zinc-lined case, and an odd assortmentof crockery and tin cups, saucers, and plates piled on slab shelvesin one corner, completed the list of "fixings."
Mrs. Larry Jeans was a short, bony, homely woman, very like herhusband—strangely, pathetically like in face and demeanour;similarly bowed with labour, and with the same air of hopelessnessand of accepting the toils and privations of their miserableexistence as an inevitable lot. She was always working, and alwayshad worked; her hands were hard and contorted in evidence of it,and her cheek was as brown and as dry as husks from labouring inthe sun.
We had tea and bread and boiled onions and corned beef for teathat evening—a minimum of beef and a maximum of onions. Thelast onion crop had been a comparative success somewhere withinhalf a day's journey of Scrubby Gully. Tea served to introduce morechildren; they dangled over the arms of the unhappy mother, hung toher skirts, sprawled about her feet, squabbled in the corners, andoverran the house. Jeans helped to feed the brood in his slow,patient way, and after tea he helped to pack away the younger inlittle bundles—here, there, and everywhere—where theyslept peacefully, but in great apparent peril, whilst the biggerkids charged about the room and roared, and fought, and raised avery pandemonium of their own. Every now and again Mrs. Jeans wouldlift her tired head from her sewing or her insatiable twins, andsay weakly, "Now, you Jinny, behave." Or Larry would remarkdispassionately, "Hi, you, Billy!" But otherwise the youngstersraged unchecked, their broken-spirited parents seeming to regardthe noise and worry of them as the lightest trial in a world ofstruggling and trouble.
I asked Jeans how many children he thought he had. He didn'tseem certain, but after due deliberation said there might bethirteen in all. He had probably lost count, for I am certain Itallied fifteen—seven sets and one odd one.
When the washing-up was done, and half of the family were beddeddown, Larry dragged a tangle of old harness from the other room,and sat for two hours painfully piecing it up with cord, and hiswife sat opposite him, silent and blank of face, mending one set ofrags with another—I perched upon a stool watching the pair,studying one face after the other, irritated at length by thesheeplike immobility of both, thinking it would be a relief ifJeans would suddenly break out and do something desperate,something to show that he had not, in spite of appearances, gotbeyond the possibility of sanguinary revolt; but he worked onsteadily, uncomplainingly, till the boy with the unique frecklescame hurrying in with the intelligence that the old horse was"havin' a fit'r somethin'." Jeans did not swear. He said "Is hebut?" and put aside his harness, and went out, like a man for whomlife has no surprises.
The selector was over an hour struggling with his hypochondriachorse, whilst I exchanged fragments of conversation with Mrs.Jeans, and went upon various mental excursions after that spareroom. It appeared that the Jeanses had neighbours. There wasanother family settled seven miles up the gully, but Mrs. Jeansinformed me that the Dicksons, being quiet and sort ofdown-hearted, were not very good company, consequently she andJeans rarely visited them. I was indulging in a mental prospect ofthe jubilation at a reunion of the down-hearted Dicksons and thegay and frivolous Jeanses when Larry returned from his strugglewith the horse. He resumed his work upon the harness without anycomplaint. His remark that "Them skewball horses is alwisonreasonable" was not spoken in a carping spirit; it was given asconveying valuable information to a stranger.
At 11 o'clock my host "s'posed that p'r'aps maybe" I was readyto turn in. I was, and we went forth together in quest of the spareroom. The room in question proved to be a hastily-constructedlean-to on the far corner of the house, at the back. Inside, onewall was six feet high and the other was merely a tree-butt. Mybunk was built against the butt, and between the bunk and the roofthere were about eighteen inches of space. That bunk had not beenrun up for a fat man. After establishing me in the spare room Jeansturned to go.
"Best bar the door with a log, case o' the cow," he said. "Ifshe comes bumpin' round in the night, don't mind. She walks in hersleep moonlight nights."
It only needed this to convince me that I was usurping thecustomary domicile of the meditative cow. The room had beencarefully furbished up and deeply carpeted with scrub ferns. Butthe cow was not to be denied.
Weary as I was, I got little sleep that night. I had fallen offcomfortably about half an hour after turning in, when I wasawakened again by some commotion in the house. Half a dozen of thechildren were blubbering, and I could hear the heavy tread ofLarry, and the equally heavy tread of his wife, moving about thehouse. Presently both passed by the lean-to, and away in thedirection of the range. For another half-hour or so there wassilence, and then the one-horned cow came along and tried my door.Failing to open it, she tried the walls and the roof, but could notbreak her way in, so she camped under the lee of the structure, andlowed dismally at intervals till day-break.
When I arose a scantily-attired small boy generously provided mewith a pint pannikin three-parts full of water. The water was formy morning bath, and the small boy was careful to warn me not tothrow it away when I was through with it. This youngster told methat "Dad, an' mum, an' Jimmy" had been out all night huntingSteve. Steve, I gathered, was the one enterprising child in thehousehold, and was in the habit of going alone upon voyages ofexploration along the range, where, being a very little fellow, heusually lost himself, and provided his parents with a night'sentertainment searching for him in the barren gorges and about theboulder-strewn spurs of the range. How it happened that he was notmissed till nearly midnight on this occasion I cannot say, unlessthe father and mother were really as ignorant of the extent andcharacter of their family as they appeared to be.
Mrs. Jeans was the first to return, and she brought Steve withher. The dear child had not been lost, after all. Incensed by someindignity that had been put upon him during the afternoon, he had"run away from home," he said, and slept all night in a wombat'shole about 200 yards from the house. There his mother found him,returning from her long, weary search. The incident did not appearto have affected her in any way; she looked as tired and asheart-sick as on the previous evening, but not more so.
"You know we lost one little one there"—she extended herhand towards the low, rambling repellent hills—"an' found himdead a week after."
Larry returned half an hour later, and his apathy under thecircumstances was simply appalling.
We had fried onions and bread and tea for breakfast, andimmediately the meal was over Larry, who I imagined would be goingto bed for a few hours, appeared in front of the house leading hisdeplorable horse. He was bound for the mine, he said. I put in thatday exploring the tunnel, examining the immovable mill, hunting forspecimens in the quartz-tip, and listening to Leen's cheerfulweather prophesies; and Jeans and his soured quadruped dragged logsto the mine from a patch of timber about a mile off, which patchthe men alluded to largely as The Gum Forest.
Returning to the homestead at sundown we found the childrenfighting in the dust and the one-horned cow meditating at the dooras on the previous evening. I fancied I detected in the eye of thecow a look of pathetic reproach as I passed her. Tea that eveningconsisted mainly of roast onions. Jeans felt called upon toapologize because the boys had been unable to trap a rabbit for mybenefit.
"Now'n agen, after a rainy spell, we're 'most afraid the rabbitsis a-goin' to eat us, an' then when we'd like a rabbit-stoo thereain't a rabbit to be found within twenty mile," said the settlerimpassively. "When there is rabbits, there ain't onions," he addedas a further contribution to the curiosities of naturalhistory.
The second night at Scrubby Gully was painfully like the first:Mrs. Jeans stitched, Mr. Jeans laboured over his tangle of harness,and the brood rolled and tumbled about the room, raising much dustand creating a deafening noise, to which Larry and Mary his wifegave little heed. When a section of the family had been parcelledup and put to sleep, I was tempted to ask Jeans why he continued tolive in that unhallowed, out-of-the-way corner, and to waste hisenergies upon a parched and blasted holding instead of settlingsomewhere within reach of a market and beyond the blight oftangible and visible despair that hung over Scrubby Gully and itsvicinity.
"Dunno," said Jeans, without interest, "'pears t'me t'be prettymuch as bad in other places. Evans is the same, so's Calder."
I did not know either Evans or Calder, but I pitied both fromthe bottom of my heart. Jeans admitted that he had given up hope ofgetting the timber off his land, though he "suspected" he might beable to handle it somehow "when the boys grew up." He furtheradmitted that he didn't know "as the land was good for anythin'much" when it was cleared but his pessimism was proof against allmy arguments, and I went sadly to bunk, leaving the man and hiswife working with slow, animal perseverance, apparently unconsciousof the fact that they had not slept a wink for over thirtyhours.
The cow raided my room shortly after midnight. She managed tobreak down the door this time, but as her intentions were peaceful,and as it was preferable rather to have her for a room-mate than tobe kept awake by her pathetic complaints, I made no attempt toevict her, and we both passed an easy night.
I was up early next morning, but Mr. and Mrs. Jeans were beforeme. They were standing together down by the aimless dog-leg fence,and the hypochondriacal horse lay between them. I walked across,suspecting further "unreasonableness" on the part of the horse. Theanimal was dead.
"Old man, how'll you manage to haul those logs in now?" As Mrs.Jeans said this I fancied I saw flicker in her face for a moment alook of spiritual agony, a hint of revolt that might manifestitself in tears and bitter complainings, but it passed in theinstant.
Jeans merely shook his head, and answered something indicativeof the complete destruction of his faith in "them skewbaldhorses."
We had bread and onions for breakfast.
When I last saw Jeans, as I was leaving Scrubby Gully that day,he was coming down the hill from the direction of the gum forest,struggling in the blinding heat, with a rope over his shoulder,towing a nine-foot sluice leg.
We had a letter from Leen yesterday; he says the workingshareholders are hurrying to get the sluice fixed over the wheel,and he (Leen) anticipates a heavy downfall of rain during thenight.
ABOUT ten years ago, not a day's tramp from Ballarat, set wellback from a dusty track that started nowhere in particular and hadno destination worth mentioning, stood the Shamrock Hotel. It was alow, rambling, disjointed structure, and bore strong evidence ofhaving been designed by an amateur artist in a moment of vinousfrenzy. It reached out in several well-defined angles, and had alean-to building stuck on here and there; numerous outhouses weredropped down about it promiscuously; its walls were propped up inplaces with logs, and its moss-covered shingle roof, bowed downwith the weight of years and a great accumulation of stones,hoop-iron, jam-tins, broken glassware, and dried 'possum skins,bulged threateningly, on the verge of utter collapse. The Shamrockwas built of sun-dried bricks, of an unhealthy, bilious tint. Itsdirty, shattered windows were plugged in places with old hats anddiscarded female apparel, and draped with green blinds, many ofwhich had broken their moorings, and hung despondently by onecorner. Groups of ungainly fowls coursed the succulent grasshopperbefore the bar door; a moody, distempered goat rubbed her ribsagainst a shattered trough roughly hewn from the butt of a tree,and a matronly old sow of spare proportions wallowed complacentlyin the dust of the road, surrounded by her squealing brood.
A battered sign hung out over the door of the Shamrock,informing people that Michael Doyle was licensed to sell fermentedand spirituous liquors, and that good accommodation could beafforded to both man and beast at the lowest current rates. Butthat sign was most unreliable; the man who applied to beaccommodated with anything beyond ardent beverages—liquors sofiery that they "bit all the way down"—evoked theastonishment of the proprietor. Bed and board were quite out of theprovince of the Shamrock. There was, in fact, only one couchprofessedly at the disposal of the weary wayfarer, and this,according to the statement of the few persons who had ever venturedto try it, seemed stuffed with old boots and stubble; it waslocated immediately beneath a hen-roost, which was theresting-place of a maternal fowl, addicted on occasion to nursingher chickens upon the tired sleeper's chest. The "turnover" at theShamrock was not at all extensive, for, saving an occasionalagricultural labourer who came from "beyant"—which was theversatile host's way of designating any part within a radius offive miles—to revel in an occasional "spree," the trade wasconfined to the passing "cockatoo" farmer, who invariably arrivedon a bony, drooping prad, took a drink, and shuffled away amidclouds of dust.
The only other dwellings within sight of the Shamrock were acluster of frail, ramshackle huts, compiled of slabs, scraps ofmatting, zinc, and gunny-bag. These were the habitations of acolony of squalid, gibbering Chinese fossickers, who herdedtogether like hogs in a crowded pen, as if they had been restrictedto that spot on pain of death, or its equivalent, a washing.
About a quarter of a mile behind the Shamrock ran, or rathercrawled, the sluggish waters of the Yellow Creek. Once upon a time,when the Shamrock was first built, the creek was a beautiful limpidrivulet, running between verdant banks; but an enterprisingprospector wandering that way, and liking the indications, put downa shaft, and bottomed on "the wash" at twenty feet, getting half anounce to the dish. A rush set in, and within twelve months thebanks of the creek, for a distance of two miles, were denuded oftheir timber, torn up, and covered with unsightly heaps. The creekhad been diverted from its natural course half a dozen times, andhundreds of diggers, like busy ants, delved into the earth andcovered its surface with red, white, and yellow tips. Then theminers left almost as suddenly as they had come; the Shamrock,which had resounded with wild revelry, became as silent as amorgue, and desolation brooded on the face of the country. When Mr.Michael Doyle, whose greatest ambition in life had been to becomelord of a "pub.," invested in that lucrative country property,saplings were growing between the deserted holes of the diggings,and agriculture had superseded the mining industry in thoseparts.
Landlord Doyle was of Irish extraction; his stock was so oldthat everybody had forgotten where and when it originated, butMickey was not proud—he assumed no unnecessary style, and hispersonal appearance would not have led you to infer that there hadbeen a king in his family, and that his paternal progenitor hadkilled a landlord "wanst." Mickey was a small, scraggy man, with amop of grizzled hair and a little red, humorous face, everbristling with auburn stubble. His trousers were the most strikingthings about him; they were built on the premises, and alwayscontained enough stuff to make him a full suit and a winterovercoat. Mrs. Doyle manufactured those pants after plans andspecifications of her own designing, and was mighty proud whenMichael would yank them up into his armpits, and amble round,peering about discontentedly over the waistband. "They wus th'great savin in weskits," she said.
Of late years it had taken all Mr. Doyle's ingenuity to makeends meet. The tribe of dirty, unkempt urchins who swarmed aboutthe place "took a power of feedin'," and Mrs. D. herself was "th'big ater." "Ye do be atin' twinty-four hours a day," her lord waswont to remark, "and thin yez must get up av noights for more. Whinye'r not atin' ye'r munchin' a schnack, bad cess t'ye."
In order to provide the provender for his unreasonably hungryfamily, Mickey had been compelled to supplement his takings as aBoniface by acting alternately as fossicker, charcoal-burner, and"wood-jamber;" but it came "terrible hard" on the little man, whowaxed thinner and thinner, and sank deeper into his trousers everyyear. Then, to augment his troubles, came that pestiferous heathen,the teetotal Chinee. One hot summer's day he arrived in numbers,like a plague, armed with picks, shovels, dishes, cradles, andtubs, and with a clatter of tools and a babble of grotesquegibberish, camped by the creek and refused to go away again. Theawesome solitude of the abandoned diggings was ruthlessly broken.The deserted field, with its white mounds and decayingwindlass-stands fallen aslant, which had lain like along-for-gotten cemetery buried in primeval forest, was nowdesecrated by the hand of the Mongol, and the sound of his weird,Oriental oaths. The Chows swarmed over the spot, tearing open oldsores, shovelling old tips, sluicing old tailings, digging,cradling, puddling, ferreting, into every nook and cranny.
Mr. Doyle observed the foreign invasion with mingled feelings ofrighteous anger and pained solicitude. He had found fossicking bythe creek very handy to fall back upon when the wood-jambing tradewas not brisk; but now that industry was ruined by Chinesecompetition, and Michael could only find relief in deep and earnestprofanity.
With the pagan influx began the mysterious disappearance ofsmall valuables from the premises of Michael Doyle, licensedvictualler. Sedate, fluffy old hens, hitherto noted for theirstrict propriety and regular hours, would leave the place at deadof night, and return from their nocturnal rambles never more;stay-at-home sucking-pigs, which had erstwhile absolutely refusedto be driven from the door, corrupted by the new evil, absentedthemselves suddenly from the precincts of the Shamrock, taking withthem cooking utensils and various other articles of small value,and ever afterwards their fate became a matter for speculation. Atlast a favourite young porker went, whereupon its lord and master,resolved to prosecute inquiries, bounced into the Mongolian camp,and, without any unnecessary preamble, opened the debate.
"Look here, now," he observed, shaking his fist at the group,and bristling fiercely, "which av ye dhirty haythen furriners cumup to me house lasht noight and shtole me pig Nancy? Which av ye isit, so't I kin bate him! ye thavin' hathins?"
The placid Orientals surveyed Mr. Doyle coolly, and innocentlysmiling, said, "No savee;" then bandied jests at his expense intheir native tongue, and laughed the little man to scorn. Incensedby the evident ridicule of the "haythen furriners," and goaded onby the smothered squeal of a hidden pig, Michael "went for" thenearest Asiatic, and proceeded to "put a head on him as big as atank," amid a storm of kicks and digs from the other Chows.Presently the battle began to go against the Irish cause; but Mrs.Mickey, making a timely appearance, warded off the surplus Chinamenby chipping at their skulls with an axe-handle. The riot was soonquelled, and the two Doyles departed triumphantly, bearing away acorpulent young pig, and leaving several broken, discouragedChinamen to be doctored at the common expense.
After this gladsome little episode the Chinamen held off for afew weeks. Then they suddenly changed their tactics, and proceededto cultivate the friendship of Michael Doyle and his able-bodiedwife. They liberally patronized the Shamrock, and beguiled thelicensee with soft but cheerful conversation; they flattered Mrs.Doyle in seductive pigeon-English, and endeavoured to ensare thechildren's young affections with preserved ginger. Michael regardedthese advances with misgiving; he suspected the Mongolians'intentions were not honourable, but he was not a man to spoiltrade—to drop the substance for the shadow.
This state of affairs had continued for some time before thelandlord of the Shamrock noticed that his new customers made apoint of carrying off a brick every time they visited hiscaravansary. When leaving, the bland heathen would cast hisdiscriminating eye around the place, seize upon one of thesun-dried bricks with which the ground was littered, and steal awaywith a nonchalant air—as though it had just occurred to himthat the brick would be a handy thing to keep by him.
The matter puzzled Mr. Doyle sorely; he ruminated over it, buthe could only arrive at the conclusion that it was not advisable tolose custom for the sake of a few bricks; so the Chinese continuedto walk off with his building material. When asked what theyintended to do with the bricks, they assumed an expression of themost deplorably hopeless idiocy, and suddenly lost theiracquaintance with the "Inglisiman" tongue. If bricks were mentionedthey became as devoid of sense as wombats, although they seemedextremely intelligent on most other points. Mickey noticed thatthere was no building in progress at their camp, also that therewere no bricks to be seen about the domiciles of the pagans, and hetried to figure out the mystery on a slate, but, on account of hislamentable ignorance of mathematics, failed to reach the unknownquantity and elucidate the enigma. He watched the invaders marchoff with all the loose bricks that were scattered around, and neveronce complained; but when they began to abstract one end of hislicensed premises, he felt himself called upon, as a husband andfather, to arise and enter a protest, which he did, pointing out tothe Yellow Agony, in graphic and forcible language, the grosswickedness of robbing a struggling man of his house and home, andpromising faithfully to "bate" the next lop-eared Child of the Sunwhom he "cot shiftin' a'er a brick."
"Ye dogs! Wud yez shtale me hotel, so't whin me family goinsoide they'll be out in the rain?" he queried, looking hurt andindignant.
The Chinaman said, "No savee." Yet, after this warning,doubtless out of consideration for the feelings of Mr. Doyle, theywent to great pains and displayed much ingenuity in abstractingbricks without his cognizance. But Mickey was active; he watchedthem closely, and whenever he caught a Chow in the act, a brief andone-sided conflict raged, and a dismantled Chinaman crawled homewith much difficulty.
This violent conduct on the part of the landlord served in timeto entirely alienate the Mongolian custom from the Shamrock, andonce more Mickey and the Chows spake not when they met. Once more,too, promising young pullets, and other portable valuables, beganto go astray, and still the hole in the wall grew till theafter-part of the Shamrock looked as if it had suffered recentbombardment. The Chinamen came while Michael slept, and filched hishotel inch by inch. They lost their natural rest, and ran thegauntlet of Mr. Doyle's stick and his curse—for the sake of afew bricks. At all hours of the night they crept through the gloom,and warily stole a bat or two, getting away unnoticed perhaps, or,mayhap, only disturbing the slumbers of Mrs. Doyle, who was a verylight sleeper for a woman of her size. In the latter case the ladywould awaken her lord by holding his nose—a very effectiveplan of her own—and, filled to overflowing with the ragewhich comes of a midnight awakening, Mickey would turn out of doorsin his shirt to cope with the marauders, and course them over thepaddocks. If he caught a heathen he laid himself out for fiveminutes' energetic entertainment, which fully repaid him for lostrest and missing hens, and left a Chinaman too heart-sick and soreto steal anything for at least a week. But the Chinaman's friendswould come as usual, and the pillage went on.
Michael Doyle puzzled himself to prostration over thisinsatiable and unreasonable hunger for bricks; such an infatuationon the part of men for cold and unresponsive clay had never beforecome within the pale of his experience. Times out of mind hethreatened to "have the law on the yalla blaggards;" but the lawwas a long way off, and the Celestial housebreakers continued toelope with scraps of the Shamrock, taking the proprietor's assaultshumbly and as a matter of course.
"Why do ye be shtealing me house?" fiercely queried Mr. Doyle ofa submissive Chow, whom he had taken one night in the act ofambling off with a brick in either hand.
"Me no steal 'em, no feah—odder feller, him steal em,"replied the quaking pagan.
Mickey was dumb-stricken for the moment by this awfulprevarication; but that did not impair the velocity of hiskick—this to his great subsequent regret, for the Chinamanhad stowed a third brick away in his pants for convenience oftransit, and the landlord struck that brick; then he sat down andrepeated aloud all the profanity he knew.
The Chinaman escaped, and had presence of mind enough to retainhis burden of clay.
Month after month the work of devastation went on. Mr. Doylefixed ingenious mechanical contrivances about his house, and turnedout at early dawn to see how many Chinamen he had"nailed"—only to find his spring-traps stolen and his hotelyawning more desperately than ever. Then Michael could but lift uphis voice and swear—nothing else afforded him any relief.
At last he hit upon a brilliant idea. He commissioned a "cocky"who was journeying into Ballarat to buy him a dog—thelargest, fiercest, ugliest, hungriest animal the town afforded; andnext day a powerful, ill-tempered canine, almost as big as a pony,and quite as ugly as any nightmare, was duly installed as guardianand night-watch at the Shamrock. Right well the good dog performedhis duty. On the following morning he had trophies to show in theshape of a boot, a scrap of blue dungaree trousers, half apig-tail, a yellow ear, and a large part of a partially-shavedscalp; and just then the nocturnal visits ceased. The Chows spent aweek skirmishing round, endeavouring to call the dog off, but hewas neither to be begged, borrowed, nor stolen; he was tooold-fashioned to eat poisoned meat, and he prevented the smallestapproach to familiarity on the part of a Chinaman by snapping offthe most serviceable portions of his vestments, and always fetchinga scrap of heathen along with them.
This, in time, sorely discouraged the patient Children of theSun, who drew off to hold congress and give the matter weightyconsideration. After deliberating for some days, the yellowsettlement appointed a deputation to wait upon Mr. Doyle. Mickeysaw them coming, and armed himself with a log and unchained hisdog. Mrs. Doyle ranged up alongside, brandishing her axe-handle,but by humble gestures and a deferential bearing the Celestialdeputation signified a truce. So Michael held his dog down, andrested on his arms to await developments. The Chinamen advanced,smiling blandly; they gave Mr. and Mrs. Doyle fraternal greeting,and squirmed with that wheedling obsequiousness peculiar to "John"when he has something to gain by it. A pock-marked leper placedhimself in the van as spokesman.
"Nicee day, Missa Doyle," said the moon-faced gentleman,sweetly. Then, with a sudden expression of great interest, andnodding towards Mrs. Doyle, "How you sissetah?"
"Foindout! Fwhat yer wantin'?" replied the host of the Shamrock,gruffly; "t' shtale more bricks, ye crawlin' blaggards?"
"No, no. Me not steal 'em blick—odder feller; he hide 'em;build big house byem-bye."
"Ye loi, ye screw-faced nayger! I seed ye do it, and if yezdon't cut and run I'll lave the dog loose to feed on yer dhirtycarcasses."
The dog tried to reach for his favourite hold, Mickey brandishedhis log, and Mrs. Doyle took a fresh grip of her weapon. Thisdemonstration gave the Chows a cold shiver, and brought thempromptly down to business.
"We buy 'em hotel; what for you sell'em—eh?"
"Fwhat! yez buy me hotel? D'ye mane it? Purchis th' primisis andyez can shtale ivery brick at yer laysure. But ye're joakin'.Whoop! Look ye here! I'll have th' lot av yez aten up in two minitsif yez play yer Choinase thricks on Michael Doyle."
The Chinamen eagerly protested that they were in earnest, andMickey gave them a judicial hearing. For two years he had been inwant of a customer for the Shamrock, and he now hailed the offer ofhis visitors with secret delight. After haggling for an hour,during which time the ignorant Hi Yup of the contorted countenancedisplayed his usual business tact, a bargain was struck. The yellowmen agreed to give fifty pounds cash for the Shamrock and allbuildings appertaining thereto, and the following Monday was theday fixed for Michael to journey into Ballarat with a couple ofrepresentative heathens to sign the transfer papers and receive thecash.
The deputation departed smiling, and when it gave the news ofits triumph to the other denizens of the camp there was a perfectbabel of congratulations in the quaint dialogue of the Mongol. TheChinamen proceeded to make a night of it in their own outlandishway, indulging freely in the seductive opium, and holding highcarouse over an extemporized fantan table, proceedings which madeit evident that they thought they were getting to windward ofMichael Doyle, licensed victualler.
Michael, too, was rejoicing with exceeding great joy, andfelicitating himself on being the shrewdest little man who everleft the "ould sod." He had not hoped to get more than atwenty-pound note for the dilapidated old humpy, erected on Crownland, and unlikely to stand the wear and tear of another year. Asfor the business, it had fallen to zero, and would not have kept aChinaman in soap. So Mr. Doyle plumed himself on his bargain, andexpanded till he nearly filled his capacious garments. Still, hewas harassed to know what could possibly have attached the Chineseso strongly to the Shamrock. They had taken samples from every partof the establishment, and fully satisfied themselves as to thequality of the bricks, and now they wanted to buy. It was mostpeculiar. Michael "had never seen anything so quare before, savin'wanst whin his grandfather was a boy."
After the agreement arrived at between the publican and theChinese, one or two of the latter hung about the hotel nearly alltheir time, in sentinel fashion. The dog was kept on the chain, andlay in the sun in a state of moody melancholy, narrowlyscrutinizing the Mongolians. He was a strongly anti-Chinese dog,and had been educated to regard the almond-eyed invader withmistrust and hate; it was repugnant to his principles to lie lowwhen the heathen was around, and he evinced his resentment bygrowling ceaselessly. Sunday dawned. It was a magnificent morning;but the rattle of the Chinamen's cradles and toms sounded from thecreek as usual. Three or four suave and civil Asiatics, however,still lingered around the Shamrock, and kept an eye on it in theinterests of all, for the purchase of the hotel was to be ajoint-stock affair. These "Johns" seemed to imagine they hadalready taken lawful possession; they sat in the bar most of thetime, drinking little, but always affable and genial. Michaelsuffered them to stay, for he feared that any fractiousness on hispart might upset the agreement, and that was a consummation to beavoided above all things. They had told him, with many tendersmiles and much gesticulation, that they intended to live in thehouse when it became theirs; but Mr. Doyle was notinterested—his fifty pounds was all he thought of.
Michael was in high spirits that morning; he beamed complacentlyon all and sundry, appointed the day as a time of family rejoicing,and in the excess of his emotion actually slew for dinner a primeyoung sucking pig, an extravagant luxury indulged in by the Doylesonly on state occasions. On this particular Sunday the youngermembers of the Doyle household gathered round the festive board andwaited impatiently for the lifting of the lid of the camp-oven.There were nine children in all, ranging in years from fourteendownwards—"foine, shtrappin' childer, wid th' clear brain,"said the prejudiced Michael. The round, juicy sticker was at lastplaced upon the table. Mrs. Doyle stood prepared to administer herdepartment—serving the vegetables to her hungrybrood—and, armed with a formidable knife and fork, Michael,enveloped in savoury steam, hovered over the pig.
But there was one function yet to be performed—a functionwhich came as regularly as Sunday's dinner itself. Never, foryears, had the housefather failed to touch up a certain prodigiousknife on one particular hard yellow brick in the wall by the door,preparatory to carving the Sunday's meat. Mickey examined the edgeof his weapon critically, and found it unsatisfactory. The knifewas nearly ground through to the backbone; another "touch-up" andit must surely collapse, but, in view of his changed circumstances,Mr. Doyle felt that he might take the risk. The brick, too, wasworn an inch deep. A few sharp strokes from Mickey's vigorous rightarm were all that was required; but, alas! the knife snappedwhereupon Mr. Doyle swore at the brick, as if holding itimmediately responsible for the mishap, and stabbed at it fiercelywith the broken carver.
"Howly Moses! Fwhats that?"
The brick fell to pieces, and there, embedded in the wall,gleaming in the sunbeam, was a nugget of yellow gold. With feverishhaste Mickey tore the brick from its bedding, and smashed thegold-bearing fragment on the hearth. The nugget was a littlebeauty, smooth, round, and four ounces to a grain.
The sucking pig froze and stiffened in its fat, the "taters" andthe cabbage stood neglected on the dishes. The truth had dawnedupon Michael, and, whilst the sound of a spirited debate in musicalChinese echoed from the bar, his family were gathered around him,open-mouthed, and Mickey was industriously, but quietly, poundingthe sun-dried brick in a digger's mortar. Two bricks, one fromeither end of the Shamrock, were pulverized, and Michael panned offthe dirt in a tub of water which stood in the kitchen. Result:seven grains of waterworn gold. Until now Michael had workeddumbly, in a fit of nervous excitement; now he started up,bristling like a hedgehog.
"Let loose th' dog, Mary Melinda Doyle!" he howled, and,uttering a mighty whoop, he bounded into the bar to dust thoseChinamen off his premises. "Gerrout!" he screamed—"Gerrout avme primises, ye thavin' crawlers!" And he frolicked with theastounded Mongolians like a tornado in full blast, thumping at ashaven occiput whenever one showed out of the struggling crowd. TheChinamen left; they found the dog waiting for them outside, and heencouraged them to greater haste. Like startled fawns the heathensfled, and Mr. Doyle followed them, howling:
"Buy the Shamrock, wud yez! Robbers! Thaves! Fitch back th'soide o' me house, or Oi'll have th' law onto yez all."
The damaged escapees communicated the intelligence of theiroverthrow to their brethren on the creek, and the news carriedconsternation, and deep, dark woe to the pagans, who clusteredtogether and ruefully discussed the situation. Mr. Doyle was wildlyjubilant. His joy was only tinctured with a spice of bitterness,the result of knowing that the "haythens" had got away with a fewhundreds of his precious bricks. He tried to figure out the amountof gold his hotel must contain, but again his ignorance ofarithmetic tripped him up, and already in imagination MichaelDoyle, licensed victualler, was a millionaire and a J.P.
The Shamrock was really a treasure-house. The dirt of which thebricks were composed had been taken from the banks of the YellowCreek, years before the outbreak of the rush, by an eccentricGerman who had settled on that sylvan spot. The German died, andhis grotesque structure passed into other hands. Time went on, andthen came the rush. The banks of the creek were found to be chargedwith gold for miles, but never for a moment did it occur to anybodythat the clumsy old building by the track, now converted into ahotel, was composed of the same rich dirt; never till years after,when by accident one of the Mongolian fossickers discovered grainsof gold in a few bats he had taken to use as hobs. The intelligencewas conveyed to his fellows; they got more bricks and moregold—hence the robbery of Mr. Doyle's building material andthe anxiety of the Mongolians to buy the Shamrock. Before nightfallMichael summoned half-a-dozen men from "beyant," to help him inprotecting his hotel from a possible Chinese invasion. Other brickswere crushed and yielded splendid prospects. The Shamrock's smallstock of liquor was drunk, and everybody became hilarious. On theSunday night, under cover of the darkness, the Chows made a suddensally on the Shamrock, hoping to get away with plunder. They wereviolently received, however; they got no bricks, and returned totheir camp broken and disconsolate.
Next day the work of demolition was begun. Drays were backed upagainst the Shamrock, and load by load the precious bricks werecarted away to a neighbouring battery. The Chinamen slouched about,watching greedily, but their now half-hearted attempts atinterference met with painful reprisal. Mr. Doyle sent his familyand furniture to Ballarat, and in a week there was not a vestigeleft to mark the spot where once the Shamrock flourished. Everyscrap of its walls went through the mill, and the sum of onethousand nine hundred and eighty-three pounds sterling was clearedout of the ruins of the hostelry. Mr. Doyle is now a man of somestanding in Victoria, and as a highly respected J.P. has often beenpleased to inform a Chinaman that it was "foive pound or amonth."
A CHANGE had come over the spirit of Grasstree; there was afalse note in the gaiety of the men up from Ramrod Flat, and theyoung fellows in the pastoral interest around on the BlackCockatoo, when they foregathered in Cleever's bar, discovered anun-accustomed awkwardness and restraint in their attitudes towardseach other. With miners and bushmen alike confidence had givenplace to suspicion, and good-fellowship to an all-roundsurliness.
For a time the men could not account even to themselves for thisstrange alteration; an attempt was made to make the climateresponsible, and a few insisted that it was something in the drink,but certainly all had become "sudden and quick inquarrel"—hats went down and hands went up on the slightestprovocation. Men whose ordinary work-a-day friendship hadpreviously heightened to brotherly love under the warming influenceof alcohol now became profane and bitter in drink, and shortarguments terminated with a rush and a collision in the bar. Littledifferences that might previously have been settled by mutualconcessions were now nursed and coddled till they grew into hotenmities, and even Foster and Brierly, once the best of mates, werecamping apart and each working a lone hand at Goat Creek.
Eventually Hefty Maconochie was generally recognized as thedisturbing element at the Grasstree, but, by tacit agreement, thatfact was not publicly admitted. Possibly a delicate and chivalrousconsideration for "Miss Mack's" sensibilities inspired this politereticence, but perhaps it chiefly arose from the shamefacedness ofher worshippers. The man out-back, secretive in most thingspersonal, will admit any weakness or wickedness ere confessing tothe pangs of unrequited passion. Hence when Hetty was particularlyaffable to Stacey on Monday evening in the bar, and allowedRiverton to monopolize her smiles on Tuesday evening, Riverton andStacey fought a desperate and bloody battle on the Wednesdayafternoon to decide the ownership of a one-eyed dog which was thelocal head depot for fleas, and which really belonged to a thirdman, who, being public-spirited, waived his claim rather than spoilsport. Riverton won the dog.
Of course Miss Maconochie was quite conscious that she hadintroduced a new element into the relationship of things at theGrasstree, but, although exultant in the knowledge that the menwere contending with animal ferocity for her favour, she appearedalways quite oblivious, and was genial or distant with thediscrimination of a conscientious barmaid.
Miss Mack had been sent to the Travellers' Rest from a Melbournelabour office in response to Cleever's order, which specified "astrapping girl, not more than 26, to work and assist in bar." Hettywas "strapping," and certainly not more than 26; five feet seven,straight as a lath, strong, ruddy-cheeked, and possessing amarvellous efflorescence of glorious red hair as fine as spun silk,coruscant, throwing little subtle tendrils down about her ears, hertemples, and her long white neck. There are many female Samsons.But Hetty's power was not wholly in her hair; her strength waspeculiarly attractive to the men; her every action suggestedstrength—strength underlying a womanly softness androundness. She often served in the bar on warm evenings with hersleeves rolled well above her shapely elbows, and then Cleever'spatrons felt it was worth the price of the drink to see "Mack"reach up for the bottle. She draped lightly for comfort, andblushed to find it fame. The average woman who puts on much to makeherself attractive does not realize that half the art is in takingoff. Hetty was innocent of coquetry when she divested herself ofsuperfluous drapery, but she could not remain long ignorant of theadvantages she enjoyed from her emancipation. Then her laugh helpedto ensure success—it was a generous laugh, full of suggestivemusic, and discovered new attractions in her large, handsome mouth.Such a laugh is honeyed flattery for the man who provokes it, and,as Hetty was proud of her fine white teeth, no man's joke wasaltogether a failure in Cleever's bar.
There were other young women in and about theGrasstree—two or three in the township, and settlers' andfarmers' daughters judiciously distributed over the district; but,although these had been courted, it was in a temperate andbloodless manner. These girls were not slow in concluding that MissMaconochie was a person of extraordinary deceit and peculiarmorals. But Hetty was by no means a designing woman. Saving a yearspent in domestic service in an extremely Methodist household inMelbourne, her knowledge of men and manners had been gathered inthe bush township where she was born and bred. Her morals wereparticularly healthy; it was soon understood by Cleever's customersthat "Mack" knew how to take care of herself—an understandingthat detracted not from the zest of the pursuit.
After the morbid propriety of that Methodist household, Hettyrevelled in the unrestraint and comparative brilliancy of life atthe Travellers' Rest. Cleever was a widower, and not at allexacting, and in the bar of evenings the girl received at least aspecious show of respect sufficiently gratifying to a young womanof her intellectual limitations.
The first battle fell about between Stacey and one of theDevoys. Both had been dangling over the bar, chatting and larkingwith Hetty for an hour or so, when Stacey's glass was upset in abit of horse-play, and Stacey, receiving its contents over hisshirt-front, became a butt and an object of derision to all in thebar. "Mack" laughed aloud, and flashed her white teeth in thelamp-light, and Devoy laughed too, and Stacey's blood grew hot, andhe longed for slaughter. His opportunity came when the girl leftthe bar a minute later. He confronted Devoy:
"Damn you, Devoy, you did that on purpose!"
It was entirely an accident, but neither was in any humour forexplanations. Devoy felt it was beneath him to excuse or parley; heblurted much defiant profanity.
"What if I did! Why don't you drink up your liquor like aman!"
He was cut short by a swinging, open-hand blow. Then thud, thud,thud, thud—four quick blows, two and two, with a sound as ofa teamster banging the ribs of his bogged horses with ashovel—and Stacey and Devoy were fighting with the ferocityof tigers at mating-time.
Hetty returned to the bar to see the first blow struck, and now,leaning over the counter, with sparkling eyes, glowing cheeks, andheaving breast she watched the fight. There was none of theimpassivity of the lolling tigress in her attitude: she burned withexcitement; she clenched her own hands, and bruised her knuckles onthe boards; she followed each swift, cutting blow, and utteredinarticulate cries of wonder.
The men fought without science, fought with the brutality ofpowerful men, wounding with every blow, but feeling nothing intheir heat and fury. A ring of onlookers circled round them, andoutside this ring danced Cleever—"Fighting"Cleever—with his "peacemaker," a wicked-looking "waddy,"eager to get in a blow and stun one of the combatants, for thepeace of Devil's End and the credit of the house.
The fight was not settled in Cleever's bar. Two or three roundsserved to exhaust the blind fury of the combatants, and then mutualfriends interceded, and a formal meeting was arranged for next day.A two hours' struggle in Haddon's grass paddock on the followingafternoon ended in the defeat of Stacey, and that night Devoyappeared before Hetty Maconochie, bruised, bandaged, and badlyhacked about, but big with victory. The fight was not discussed,but the girl quite understood, and the conquering hero rejoiced inher luminous smile, and was sullenly given the pride of place byhis companions, who tacitly admitted this right to the victor forthe time being.
After that fistic battles were daily occurrences at Devil's End.Callaghan, the solitary constable of the district, made a gallantattempt to cope with the press of business, but after an exhaustingweek yielded to public opinion and was officially blind and deafwhen the battle-cries were heard at the Travellers' Rest. Presentlyevery second man in the district possessed black eyes, split lips,or a swollen ear, or all these things, and the local chemist did aroaring trade in court-plaster and Friar's balsam. The men foughton the slightest provocation, or with no obvious provocation atall; arguments on religion or politics invariably ended inbloodshed; mates in the drives below disagreed as to the properlocality for a "shot," and came blaspheming up the shafts to"settle it" in a "mill;" the boys at "Old Burgoo's" foughtviciously to maintain their superiority as horsemen and shearers,and always the victorious pugilist turned up at Cleever's, in allthe glory of his wounds and bruises, to invite the admiration ofthe creamy-skinned goddess with the brown eyes.
Grasstree had discovered Hetty Maconochie. Previously she hadreceived a reasonable amount of attention from the men with whomshe was thrown in contact, but Grasstree had made her asensation—a craze. She gloried and revelled in her success,and the sense of pride and power it gave her. Thinking over itthrough the day, she laughed with rapturous delight, and felt likea queen amongst her pans. Cleever did well these times: there wereno tee-totallers left in and about Grasstree, and the Travellers'Rest had absorbed all the business of the district. Being in lovewith Hetty himself, Cleever made an effort to dispense with herhelp in the bar, and excited an instantaneous revolt.
"Fetch out the girl," was the general demand. "You don't thinkwe've travelled down here to be served by a splay-mouthedDutchman!"
Cleever was a Swede; but Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Belgians,Germans, Austrians, and men of Holland are all Dutchmen out-back.Other foreigners are invariably Frenchmen. If Hetty was notproduced on demand there was no more drinking, but much disorderand many accidents, and the proprietor was always compelled toyield. Cleever fought with the rest. He fought without science ordiscrimination, and nobody took any satisfaction from an encounterwith the "Dutchman." He never knew when he was beaten, and had aridiculous and disconcerting way of resuming the battle, withoutword or warning, a day, a week, or a month after being egregiouslywhipped. Being a foreigner, he did not allow any absurd sentimentto interfere with his manner of fighting, and repudiated Britishprejudices and British reverence for rule and precedent, and foughtwith all his weapons—fists, nails, teeth, and feet. There wasno credit in beating Cleever; he couldn't fight, but he was alwayswilling to try, and, although he was considered wildly humorous inhis tantrums, his opponents rarely escaped an injury of some kindor another before the battle was ended.
After much indiscriminate fighting, in the course of a couple ofmonths it was understood and admitted without argument that thefinal must be contested by Riverton and Devoy. Both were unbeaten,and each would have done battle with a raging lion for the love ofHetty Maconochie. Cleever alone, of all the whipped candidates,refused to abandon his hopes of winning his handsome Hebe, and wasquite willing to "take on" the two last aspirants one after theother or both together. The other men of Grasstree, and RamrodFlat, and Grecian Bend admitted themselves "out of it," and it wasquite understood that the winner of the Riverton-Devoy contest hadonly to step up and take possession of the prize. This view hadnever been questioned; Hetty's keen interest in the many battles,and her evident delight in the knowledge that she was the prize inthe greatest competition that had ever shaken an Australian bushtownship out of its habitual quietude and lethargy, were taken asindicating her acquiescence. Certainly both Devoy and Riverton tookit for granted that the best man of the two was destined to marrythe belle of Grasstree.
The great fight came off on a beautiful pitch under Grecian Bendon a Tuesday morning, and half the male population of the districtwas there to see. Devoy and Riverton fought because the latter hadventured before witnesses to assert his disbelief in the story ofDevoy's great shooting exploit—a wonderful narrative, neverbefore questioned at Grasstree. The fight was long and stubborn.Both men were young, strong, hardened with toil, active, game aspeccaries, six-foot and a bit, and fighting for an issue thatseemed dear as dear life.
They fought bare-knuckled and stripped to the buff. There was nosparring and no vain display; every blow cut or bruised; and duringthe first half-dozen rounds the great toughened, knubbly fists weregoing like sledge-hammers about a busy forge. After that it was abrutal exhibition of butchery and endurance. Blood ran freely,dyeing the combatants and darkening the grass. The faces of thefighters became unrecognizable, and after the 13th round neithercould see. By this time half the spectators had sickened and turnedaway, and awaited the end at a distance. Devoy was knocked cleanout in the 19th round, and then Riverton was carried away acrossthree saplings, a bruised and battered champion, limp as a wetshirt, but triumphant, and feeling drunk—happily, jubilantlydrunk.
Riverton would have much liked to drag himself to theTravellers' Arms that night, but it was impossible. He was helplessnext night, and on the following morning his bunk still held himcaptive. But on Friday night, with the assistance of his mate, heconveyed his battered carcass into Cleever's bar. A woefulspectacle was the champion of Grasstree, but his wounds wereglorious. About a dozen men sat in the bar. Cleever was inattendance. The hero called for drinks all round.
"Where's Mack?" he asked authoritatively.
The publican had evaded this query from others for two days inorder to produce a good effect when the champion appeared to claimher. He lingered over the answer now as he served the drinks.
"She haf went by dot city for der honeymoons," he saidcomposedly.
"Wha-at!" Riverton sprawled upon the counter, and his bruisedface went livid.
"Vile you vos fight mit Devoy, she haf ride away in der coach tomarry anodder feller."
"Marry! marry! Who—who is he?"
"Tommy Haynes."
"Haynes!" Riverton stood upright, looking around upon hiscompanions, but saw only blank faces.
Tommy Haynes was the successful storekeeper of Grasstree, asmall boyish man of 24, slight and fair, with curls and acomplexion. He would easily have stood upright under Hetty'sextended arm. Whilst others fought and suffered Haynescourted—courted pluckily, with kisses and caresses and prettypresents—courted and conquered. "Haynes!" repeated Riverton,with a lingering, bitter imprecation, "that—that worm. By theLord! when they come back I'll put him over my knee and spank himbefore her face."
But they were two months coming, and long before their returnRiverton had thought better of it.
THE creek was hacked and mangled out of all semblance to asylvan rivulet.
The ruin effected looked like the work of many men. The muddy,yellow stream had been diverted from its course several timeswithin half a mile, and all along the banks were torn down, greatcuttings made, piles of gravel heaped up, dams built, and racesdug. But the ravisher was there—a lone man, gouging his wayinto a bank at the head of the flat where it met the hill, lookinga mere midge amongst the destruction he had wrought with his twogood hands.
"Humpy" Bannon was puny and weazened and old; he had a humpbetween his shoulders, and no intelligence to speak of, but he hadthe spirit of a little red ant, magnified to suit his size. Heloved labour, and he had chosen Grim Creek as his vineyard. From aminer's point of view Bannon was the discoverer of Grim Creek. Heit was who prospected it and found gold in it, and he wasexceedingly proud of his field, although it was a starvation holeat the best, and rewarded him for his tremendouslabours—digging, shovelling, puddling, cradling, wading inwater, and grubbing in sludge—with a few wretchedpennyweights where ounces would have been poor pay. But Humpy neverthought of leaving. Wet days and fine found him, smeared with claysof many colours, struggling in a wet shaft or delving at the banks,full of enthusiasm, without resource, without horse sense, but allgrit.
"Leave the creek?" he would say in answer to the advice ofcasual visitors. "Why, where'd I go ter?"
"Well, there's some good gold gettin' at Black Cap, an' I hearabout somethin' worth prospectin' ten miles out by Double-UHill."
"No fear! you don't catch me leavin' the creek. Why, some o'them minin' sharks from the city would be down here an'jump theclaim afore I'd bin gone a week."
"Jump this show, Humpy! Why, there is not gold enough in a mileof it to buy a peanut."
Bannon couldn't restrain his temper when the creek—hiscreek—was disparaged, and at this point always becameincoherent between extravagant predictions as to the fabulousrichness of the wash he was going to cut presently and insultingreflections upon the intelligence of the maligner, and he wouldfall to working again more fiercely than ever, jigging his old headthe while, and chummering bitterly.
How he did graft! Little, and skinny, and aged, and ill-fed ashe was, he cheerfully faced mountains of labour, and wore them downby sheer pertinacity—shifted them by faith and works. Whatwonders of toil can one determined man perform in a year! To knowyou must see the man struggling amongst the evidences of it, withthe work of his hands piled up about him, and the man's sole mastermust be a belief, sane or otherwise.
Humpy's faith in Grim Creek was transcendent. That the creekgave him no justification mattered not a scrap. He lived in alittle bark hut, comfortless as a mia-mia, on nothing inparticular; he dressed at work in a worn shirt, patchedextravagantly, and deplorable trousers and boots, and he woundlengths of sugee about his shins. His hat, a battered boxer, a giftfrom a sympathetic selector, had a big hole fore andaft—driven to extremes, he had once run a handle through it,and used it for a ladle when cradling—and the whole costumewas cemented and frescoed with the grit and clay of the unspeakablecreek.
The old man never had a mate—he never wanted one. Hedesigned all sorts of hare-brained, unworkable contrivances in theshape of dumb-waiters, and cranks, and feed-pipes, and sluices, toovercome the difficulties that hamper a lone hand, but throughdisappointments and dangers and endless tribulation he struggledon, and turned up regularly every Saturday afternoon at the logstore on the Piper road with his pathetic little packet of gold andhis long familiar story of the good day that was coming for GrimCreek and the surrounding district when he finally "got on toit."
A few of the farmers and selectors in the district, thinkingthat possibly, by reason of an unlooked-for contingency, Humpymight some day "get on to it" and boom the place a bit, helped withgifts of food and old clothes that to him were as good as new. Oneor two, from pure wooden-headed good nature, visited him at times,especially on Sundays, and sat with him in the sun or in his smokyhut, and let him talk to them by the hour about his creek. Next tografting in the creek like a tiger, nothing pleased Humpy betterthan to prattle about his work, and invent, and lie, and rhapsodizeto a sympathetic audience.
Tom Hughes was the old digger's best friend. He had secured aselection in the locality of Grim Creek within the last six months,built a hut upon it, and settled down to take life as easily as aselector can who observes the covenants. Hughes was ahatter—a big, hairy man, physically slow, mentally alert,with a golden faculty of extracting amusement out of anything andeverything, from the capers of his waddling terrier pup or thesolicitude of a motherly hen to the foibles of his fellows. Hughesenjoyed Humpy Bannon enormously. He cultivated him. He would sitand study him by the hour, ponderous and apparently as grave as afat frog between meals, but with a soul full of laughter. Humpyreminded him of an ant that he had once seen attempt to shift MountMacedon. The ant thought the mount obstructed its view, or feltthat it had a call; anyhow, Tom kept track of the insect for a weekand neglected his duties to watch progress, and when he left theant was still going strongly. Now, here was this other midgeripping up the face of nature and tearing at the bowels of theearth after something he didn't really want and wouldn't know howto appreciate. Wifeless, childless, without a taste superior tomutton and bread or an aspiration above the puddling tub, and withvery few years of life before him, he worked from daylight to dusk,moving mountains, and grew radiant describing the treasure he mustwin some day. Yet ten shillings a week would have satisfied hisneeds, twelve would have embarrassed him with riches.
Walking along the creek one day Hughes came upon the old manclambering out of a prospecting hole on a rise. He was drippingwet, and coated with mud; clay was in his hair and his ears, andthe dirty water ran from him as he stood. Humpy was too busy forconversation; he seized the windlass handle and began hauling withterrific energy. There were two buckets on the rope—one akerosene tin, the other an ordinary water bucket. Humpy landed andemptied these, and then, lowering the rope into the shaft again,began to fish about. Presently he hooked another bucket and broughtit to the surface. After fishing once more he landed a nail keg.Then he proceeded to let himself down again, sliding on therope.
"What's the little game, old man?" asked Hughes as the drippinghead disappeared.
"After a bit o' wash here. Tremenjis rich, I think," answeredBannon up the shaft.
"But it's too wet; you'll never be able to bottom, workin' heralone."
"Bet I will, though!"
Further comment was deferred by the pit-pit of the old man'spick in the wet hole. Tom Hughes hooked the nail keg, and put in anhour or so at the windlass, and was rewarded later with Humpy'sconfidence. As usual, the little man was on the eve of a discoverythat was going to revolutionize the district, and bring a big townhumming about their ears on Grim Creek in less than no time. Hugheswas a better miner than old Bannon, and thought the latter wasfighting after a vain thing, but he offered no advice,understanding that it would be wasted, and remembering that it wasHumpy's policy to go and find out for himself at whatever cost ofsweat and patience.
Humpy did bottom that hole, and scraped up a prospect thatpromised about ten "weights" to the load to a sanguine man, but thewater was up within three feet of the surface next morning, andeight hours' vigorous baling had no appreciable effect. The claimcould not be worked without a diving-suit and apparatus.
So Humpy went apart and thought. He wasted little time inspeculation, and presently took a bee-line from his shaft to thefoot of the rise, 250 yards off, and commenced an open cutting. Hisidea was to carry this narrow cutting into the hill on a level aslong as he could throw the dirt, and then, when the sides becametoo high, to tunnel to the shaft, and so drain the ground he wishedto work. This represented about a year's labour to an average manworking decent hours and in moderation. It was an utterly fatuousand foolhardy undertaking; as far as it was possible to judge, theground would not pay for the working, let alone compensate for thisgigantic "dead horse;" but Bannon did not calculate—heworked. On the occasion of Hughes's next visit he found Humpypegging away industriously in his cutting. He had covered a gooddistance in the shallow ground.
"Well, old party, what're you coursin' after now?" askedTom.
Humpy explained between blows.
"Gee-rusalem, but you do lick 'ell an' all!"
Tom proceeded to explain the difficulties of the job, and theridiculousness of it; but the digger's under-hand pick was goingbusily all the time, and at last Hughes seated himself upon a logand overlooked the toiler in silent enjoyment of his wonderfulcourage, his dunderheadedness, and the comical little ape-likefigure and quaint tricks and turns of the man. Humpy persisted, andin the weeks wore by his cutting extended and deepened, and atlength he was forced to take on another contract. It was necessaryto get the water away. He felled trees, and split palings, and laiddown a box drain all along the cutting—a wonderful drain,representing much time and trouble. He timbered his job wheretimber was needed, and continued as before eating his way into thehill, and as he progressed his pride in his work increased. Thecutting was trim and true; Humpy bestowed the most loving care uponit, and Tom Hughes brought all the strangers he came across toinspect and admire it as the one spectacle of Grim Creek, and togaze upon Humpy and wonder over him. And whilst Tom stood alofteulogizing the digger with something of the air of a showman, andamiably explaining his humours and eccentricities for the pleasureof these strangers, Humpy hammered away eagerly on the jobbelow.
"He ain't got common-sense about minin'," Hughes would say;"have you, old man?"
Humpy, with his pick driven to the eye in the wall before him,would turn up his puckered, tanned, hairy face with the aspect of avenerable mandril, and damn his friend—hide, bones, andsoul—as the selector went on:—
"But in a tunnel or a drive he'd work any man I ever knewstone-blind inside a week. Wouldn't you, Humpy?"
More profanity from below.
"See, he's built for it. Them shoulders was built fer pokin'round in low black drives an' muddy tunnels, but he's wasted ferwant of horse sense. He's a blessed steam-engine whirling away likeblazes, but doin' nothin' that matters a hang. Look at him! He'sthe only man in Australia that likes work—he'd rather beworkin' than drinkin'—an' he's only happy when he's clayed upto the ears and sweatin' quarts."
Sometimes a visitor dropped Humpy a half-crown or a shilling,and often a settler or farmer gave him help; but for all that hewas compelled to leave his cutting now and again and go fossickingin the creek for a pennyweight or two, and then he was given overto a great discontent. Whilst he was working in the cutting itpreserved its spick-and-span appearance; when he was away deadleaves accumulated in it, and Monaghan's sheep sometimes destroyedthe symmetry of its edges, and that affected Humpy as dirt andlitter about a room irritate a good housewife.
But as time passed the great work progressed, and at length thetunnel had been opened out, and was being driven towards the shaft.It was the most elegant of tunnels, with a beautiful entrance, andcarefully squared throughout, and it went in and in until atlength, when Humpy was within a week of his goal, there camejangling up the creek one day a mounted policeman. The officer ofthe law examined Bannon's hut carefully, and tossed things aboutand turned the place upside down with the placid insolence withwhich power endows most men; and then he rode to Humpy's cutting,called the little man into the light of day, handcuffed him, andled him off.
The charge was sheep-stealing. There was no doubt of Bannon'sguilt: one skin with the brand on it was found doing service as arug on his bunk another, quite fresh, was tacked up in his shed;and the best part of a fine lamb was rescued from his pickling-tub,and produced in court. The spirit of the early squatter stillsurvives in the particular and express abomination ofsheep-stealing manifested by our virtuous and humane judges. Thesentence was two years.
Tom Hughes tried hard to preserve Humpy's cutting fromdestruction, and kept a careful eye on his hut, but, walking downthe creek one day twenty months later, he came upon the little olddigger standing surveying the ruins of his great work. The sides ofthe cutting had tumbled in, the tunnel was down, and the drainedground was worked out. Humpy was smaller-looking and more shrunken,and ten years seemed to have been added to his age; he was bentnearly double, and was bleached a deadly dough-colour; his limbstrembled as he stood, and he snivelled miserably like a boy. Nogreeting passed between the two men.
"'Twas three fellers from Melbourne done it," said Hughes,indicating the cuttings.
"Damn 'em!" snapped Bannon.
"I tried hard to stop 'em," continued the selector. "I explainedit was your job; I argued, an' pleaded, an' preached, but 'twasn'tno good."
Tom had also fought the intruders, singly and in a bunch, andhad been severely manhandled for his kindness and consideration,but he did not explain this.
"Hows'mever, Wasn't worth a cuss," he added eagerly. "Theyskursly knocked out tucker, an' only hung on jest from purevillainy."
This was a lie: the young men had done fairly well out ofHumpy's claim, and had taken to town with them when they leftsufficient gold to run a month-long "bender" of the most virulentand dazzling description.
"Damn 'em!" said Humpy again.
"Better track up to yer hut, old man," Hughes said. "You'll findit in order. You can spell-oh till you pick up a bit, an' then youcan get down to graft. You'll be all right, you know."
"Yes, yes," grasped Bannon with a feeble return of his old fire,"there's somethin' above the fork I'm goin' after. I'll have toturn the creek. B'lieve there's some ten-ounce stuff there."
Hughes had to lead him to his hut, and attend to him for a fewdays, but presently Humpy was out and about again, with pick andshovel, pottering weakly here and there. Once Tom found himstruggling to clean out the old cutting. By-and-by he startedmaking great raids upon the hills, digging aimless holes, andthrowing up heaps of dirt anywhere. Two or three times he wasdiscovered lying helplessly by his work. At length the samepoliceman came trotting up the gully again, and once more HumpyBannon was led away. This time he did not come back. He finishedhis days performing extraordinary feats of labour with a littlewooden shovel at Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, destroyed in mind andbody by eighteen months of comparative peace and rest and comfortin Her Majesty's gaol.
THE extreme disparity in the number of male and female denizensof Jacker's Flat was a source of sore discontent to the former.That refining influence which fair women are said to exert overrude mankind was a long-felt want, as, out of a population oftwelve hundred and odd, only nine were of the feminine gender. Fourof the ladies were mated—a reverential regard for beautifultruth forbids us saying married—and stultified the glorifyingwomanly attribute to a great extent by persisting in a course ofintemperance, and rarely appearing abroad excepting under thestimulus of rum. Deduct from the five of the softer sex who remainunallied, so to speak, three under the age of six, and that themalcontent of the men was a rational grievance becomes patent tothe meanest understanding. It has been said that where women andchildren are few, men of affectionate natures lavish their surplussentiment on the lower animals. This characteristic did not prevailon the Flat—indeed, experience has taught us that there, aselsewhere, men so circumstanced invariably cleave to theintoxicating cup and abandon themselves to the seductive wiles ofeuchre, crib, and Yankee-grab.
The few dogs of the camp were loan and debilitated, of a furtivehabit, and noted for their agility in dodging missiles; the catswere unkempt and fearful, and much disposed to abandon civilizationfor the joys of a wild, free life on Mount Miamia; but there wasnot a pack of cards or a dice box on that flat that did not bearunmistakable traces of good handling and long attention, and"Monkey Bill," otherwise Mr. William Monk, the local publican, hadno just cause to complain that the worshippers at the shrine of thegod set up in his temple—"The Pick and Barrow"—werewanting in numbers or in religious zeal. However, these joys arevain and meagre substitutes for the companionship of lovely woman,and small wonder that the sign-board hung out before the new tentdown the creek should excite pleasurable anticipations in thesusceptible breasts of the local bachelors. The sign itself, apartfrom its terseness and the originality of its orthography, was notan object of the deepest interest—it was merely the bottom ofa candle-box, on which had been inscribed with a ball of blue, inlarge, irregular capitals that staggered across the board atindependent angles, two words—"WASHING DID." Nor was theeloquent message which this laconic advertisement was intended toconvey calculated to carry any great amount of satisfaction to themasculine soul, for, if truth must prevail, the negligent diggersseldom had any washing to be "did," as many of them, reckless inthe pride of big yields, simply abandoned a "rig-out" when once itsappearance called very loudly for soap and water. Othersacknowledged but one limit to the time an article might be retainedin wear without washing, and that was regulated by the durabilityof the garment in question. Economy commended this latter usage,and it was most popular. No, the sign had a deeper, a more sacredimport to the lone diggers; it announced a very welcome addition tothe one-sided population, and signified—A WOMAN. What styleand condition of woman she would prove was the subject of earnestspeculation in Monkey Bill's canvas bar on the evening followingthe first appearance of the placard.
"I hope t'goodness she ain't hitched," moodily remarked a long,angular man with a phenomenal growth of red hair and whiskers, whowas revelling in the luxury of twist tobacco and raw brandy—acombination which seemed to suit his taste, as the "quid" was neverremoved to make way for the liquor, each pull at the pannikin beingpreceded, however, by mechanical and voluminous expectoration. Theobservation was greeted with derisive laughter.
"Anyhow, you won't stand a show, Bender; I'll bet a cabbage-treeyou're the ugliest man from Home!" observed Dick Treen, withrefreshing candour.
"You've got no luck, old Frightful. Don't forget the time whenyou smiled at Martin's daughter on Bendigo and caused her horse tobolt."
"I don't, I don't, Dick," said Bender, as calmly as if he hadbeen paid a flowery compliment; "I ain't built to pleasehorses—and asses; but ladies is different—some of themtakes to ugliness!"
And the speaker resumed his mastication with an air of supremecomplacence, and passed his hand feelingly over his nose, whichorgan had been badly battered by a blow from a shovel in anencounter with a "jumper" at Deadman's Rush in '52, and afforded nocontrast to his natural facial deformities, which were many andvarious.
"For my part, I'd rather she were married," observed a tall,rather handsome young fellow, conspicuous by reason of hisimmaculate rig-out, who was sitting on a bush table. "Young, youknow, and married to a beautiful youth like Bender!"
"Well, supposin' her boss does happen t' be anythin' like JoeBender?" replied that gentleman, evidently nettled by the other'ssneer. "Supposin' he is; if he ever catches you sneakin' round histent he'll knock yer stiff for a condemned crawler! That's what JoeBender 'ud do, me Honourable John, an' you'd best make a note ofit, case y' forget!"
The Honourable John laughed lightly, and turning his back on thegroup, entered into conversation with a digger who was drinkingalone in the shadowy part of the tent. In common with every otherman on the Flat, he believed that it was not advisable to go toofar with Mr. Bender, who (like every other man with a broken nose)had quite a reputation as a "slogger." He was known to have knockedout Black Anderson after a tightly-contested battle of twenty-sevenrounds at Specimen Hill one Sunday afternoon, and was, althoughrather proud of his unique ugliness, prepared to instantly resentany derisive levity, especially if it emanated from a person likethe Honourable John, whose well-greased Wellingtons, careful shave,and neatly arranged curls earned the contempt of four-fifths of theminers.
John Blake could not have been more scrupulous about the set ofhis Crimean shirt, the arrangement of his silk sash and tie, or thecurl of his moustache had the township boasted a large assortmentof fair maids instead of being limited to so meagre a femalepopulation. With the few women at hand, however, he was on the verybest of terms. "I'm of good family, and a gentleman, by G—!"was his stock boast. The community accepted the statement in goodfaith, and dignified him with the title of "Honourable."
The man who was drinking alone in the dark corner was Mr.Stephen Bacon. It was a peculiarity of Mr. Bacon's that when he wasdrinking, in which agreeable recreation he passed most of his sparetime, he loved to sit in the shanty, as far out of sight aspossible, and drink alone—a particularly detestablecharacteristic in the eyes of the average digger. Mr. Bacon was awidower of three years' standing, and he drank, it was stated, todrown the grief occasioned by the loss of his wife. What terriblewoe gnawed at his vitals and gave rise to an insatiable thirst forbrandy previous to the demise of that lamented lady was neverknown, but that it was intense and irrevocable is proven by theknowledge that Stephen's unremitting but ineffectual endeavours todrown some secret sorrow in large quantities of ardent spirit hadbeen the main factor in bringing his still young but broken-heartedspouse to her grave. After that sad event Mr. Bacon was able tostart afresh and found his thirst on a tangible grievance. As anevidence of the enormous quantity of alcohol a settled sorrow canwithstand, it may be mentioned that Steve Bacon had not exhaled abreath untainted with brandy for many years. He and "Mite" Powerhad "struck it" in a hole below the bend, but Monkey Bill "cleanedhim out" pretty effectually before each sluicing-day came round.Every night saw him in the shanty, where he would sit and absorbgrog till his hair became moist and clung to his temples in clammyrings, and the perspiration oozed from his forehead in large beads.At this stage he was wont to weep great tears of fusel-oil, andcall upon his dead wife in lugubrious tones, or chummer over hissorrow with drunken dolorousness, till he was warned off by theforcible curses of the company, or unceremoniously ejected by adisgusted digger—whereupon he would stagger to his canvasresidence and reassert his manliness by knocking his only childdown and kicking her for falling.
Cecilia Bacon, known on the Flat as "Cis," was about seventeen,slight and pale, with very fair hair, and large, frightened eyes ofa light-blue tint. Her whole bearing was one of excessive timidity.Of a shrinking, retiring disposition, imagining herself a burden toher besotted sire, since the death of her mother her life had beena joyless one. She was not an interesting girl, never associatedwith the other females of the camp, and thought she had but onefriend in the world—the Honourable John. He was very kind; heovercame her bashfulness, walked and talked with her, and beinginterested in the daughter was gracious to the father. Often andagain had that sallow, fragile, awkward girl stolen into the shantyafter midnight to guide the eccentric footsteps of her drunkenparent to his tent, fearing he might stray into some abandoned holeand break his worthless neck if left to come home alone, and almostas often had she been heartily kicked for her pains.
The fair lady whose condescension in shedding the lustre of hercharms on Jacker's flat had awakened tender anticipations in thebreasts of the forlorn bachelors of that encampment by herpreliminary announcement made her first public appearance on thefollowing evening at Monk's hostelry. The usual brilliantassemblage was gathered together in the "bar" of that elegantestablishment, engaged in the usual convivial pursuits, whenuniversal attention was suddenly withdrawn from cards, dice, andbrandy by the entrance of a stranger.
An apparition would not have been more startling. A coarse skirtalone betokened the stranger's sex; she wore a man's black slouchhat, which bore palpable traces of having seen long service"below," and was trimmed with a narrow leather belt; she smoked ahighly-coloured meerschaum pipe, the bouquet of which eloquentlytestified its strength; she had on a short guernsey buttoned up thefront like a coat, whose sleeves, rolled to the elbow, betrayed anarm that might have graced a navvy; her hair was cropped short, andbristled almost six feet from the floor. Fleshy, broad-shouldered,and straight as a sapling, her hands thrust into the pockets oneither side of her skirt with an air of aggressive manliness, thenew washerwoman strolled into the room and up to the counter,coolly oblivious of the impression she had created. In a strong,masculine voice she ordered "stout." Mr. Monk could scarcelyexpress his sorrow—he had no stout—didn't keep it.
The lady calmly anathematized his eyes, cleverly lumped hissoul, shanty, and immediate relatives in a brief but comprehensivecurse, and "made it gin."
The gin was satisfactory. Then she replaced her pipe, afterthrowing off the "nobbler" with scientific abruptness, thrust herhands into her side pockets once more, and, lounging against thecounter in a devil-may-care, intensely mannish attitude, boldlysurveyed the company. Everything about the woman bespoke her manlysentiments. Those skirt-pockets were a brazen plagiarism of therefuges for idle hands in the nether habiliments of the lords ofcreation, and her upper lip bore unmistakable traces of an earnestendeavour to grow a moustache; even her distorted nose seemed tosuggest the pugnacious male.
Monkey Bill's patrons were astounded; they gazed at thewasherwoman and at each other in grave surprise, and continuedplaying their hands with unwonted solemnity. Bender alone seemedcapable of grasping the situation, and, after concluding the gamein which he was engaged, left his seat and advanced to thenew-comer with outstretched hand.
"Brummy Peters!"
"What! Bender?"
"That same."
"Well, I'm—!"
After a hearty, hail-fellow-well-met sort of greeting, Benderventured the query:
"Well, Brummy, how's things?"
To which the lady replied that things were very slow indeed,emphasizing the assertion with an ejaculation only admissible inthe pulpit, and informed Bender, in a casual way, that Peters wasno more. Mr. Bender did not seem to think himself called upon toexhibit very violent grief over this sad intelligence; he merelyremarked:
"You and Peters weren't spliced, were you?"
One might think the palpable indelicacy of this question wouldhave affected the lady to anger; but no, it touched only herpride.
"Spliced!" she ejaculated, and all the scorn she felt for thatfeminine weakness was apparent in her voice. "Devil a fear! We justchummed in."
Further conversation revealed the fact that the late Mr. Peters,whilst under the influence of blended liquors, had fallen into apuddling machine at Bendigo, a lamentable accident which was onlymade apparent some time later, when bones, buttons, boots, andother distinguishing features turned up in the sluice-boxes. Mr.Peters's chum, who had been accorded her mate's surname andsobriquet as a humble tribute to her superior manliness, was thenthrown upon her own resources—and here she was at MonkeyBill's bar.
Mr. Bender introduced the latest acquisition to the assembledgentlemen as "Brummy Peters," insinuating, with some judiciousprofanity, that she was a splendid fellow, and had vanquished areputable pugilist in her time. After which the lady took a hand atcrib, and succeeded in winning several pounds, and establishing herreputation as "a good sort of a chap" before the night wasspent.
Three months passed by, and Jacker's Flat still maintained itsnot over-numerous population. The yields, though good enough tokeep its pioneers hanging on, were not sufficiently exciting toattract strangers from a distance, and if few had departed less hadarrived. Amongst the former was the Honorable John—thatgentleman, "by G—," having furled his tent by night andsilently stolen away, without taking the trouble to afford hisnumerous creditors an opportunity of bidding him a fond farewell.Brummy Peters, by which inelegant appellation the Amazonianlaundress became generally known, was a frequent visitor at MonkeyBill's establishment where she placidly puffed at her meerschaum,dashed off an occasional brandy, called down dire eternal penaltieson the urbane host for omitting stout from his stock-in-trade, andengaged in various games of cards and Yankee-grab with so naturalan air of manly bravado that her chosen associates at length quiteovercame the diffidence that the presence of a woman hadoccasioned, and comported themselves with their accustomed easyfreedom, no longer pausing to select their oaths with an eye togentility or style, or being deterred by gallantry from raising arow when all didn't seem fair, square, and aboveboard a thecard-table. In fact, since Brummy acted as bottle-holder for Treen,when he and Barney Ryan settled their little difference in afifteen-round mill, and displayed her signal ability to fulfil thathonourable and responsible office, the men had quite disburdenedtheir minds of the impression that she was a woman, and now lookedupon her as one of themselves, a compliment for which she was dulygrateful. Certainly, Bender was frequently chaffed about hisintimacy with Brummy, between him and whom there existed afriendship; but the inferences of these jokes were so preposterous,and the jokers themselves were palpably so cognizant of theabsurdity, that Mr. Bender received the chaff with the best grace.Mrs. Peters did not consort with the others of her sex at the camp,but in the unwholesome-looking daughter of Mr. Stephen Bacon shedisplayed a sort of fraternal interest, which moved her to tow thatlugubrious inebriate from the shanty to his tent on diversoccasions in a manner at once unceremonious and emphatic.
The washerwoman had adorned the locality with her rather massivecharms for the space of about ten months, when one dark night,deterred by the rain from making her usual visit to the "Pick andBarrow," as she sat on an inverted tub in her cosy tent, her handsdeep in her side-pockets, her back against the bunk, her feetthrust out towards the fire that raged up the small sod chimney,and the inevitable meerschaum in her lips (manly even in hersolitude), a light, quick step was heard without, the flap of thetent was drawn aside, and Cecilia Bacon, whiter, more wretchedlywobegone and desolate-looking a thousand times than was herwont—and she was white and wobegone at herbest—staggered into the tent. Her head was bare, her thinflaxen hair, sopping wet, clung to her face and neck; and the raindripped from the poor skirt that was drawn up to shield a tinyobject feebly wailing at her breast.
Brummy started up, her beloved meerschaum, the object of ayear's tender solicitude, fell, unheeded, and was broken on theclay floor. She caught the reeling girl in her arms, and laid heron the bunk, tenderly took the babe from the wet skirt, wrapped drythings of her own about the feeble atom of humanity, and laid it ona possum rug by the fire. After which she turned her attention tothe young woman, and without a word commenced to divest her of hersoddened garments and dry her reeking hair. Brummy was a woman now,with all a good woman's gentleness, compassion, and quickperception. She showed neither surprise nor curiosity, butproceeded quietly and quickly with her work, and when the girl,revived by the warmth and the spirit that was forced between herlips, began to moan and cry, she soothed her with pitiful words ina soft, low voice that proved how vain had been the long years ofwild, rough life and harsh associations to embitter the soulwithin.
Cecilia's story was soon told. The Honourable John was thefather of her child. He had deserted her without a consideration,without a word. After the birth, fearful of meeting her father, shehad left her tent, intending to crawl to the creek and drownherself and her child; but when the black waters lay at her feetshe had not the courage to take the leap, and, after wanderingabout the bush in the wind and rain, distracted with misery andfear, she sought the washerwoman's tent. "Because," she said, "yousaved me from him when you could." And, starting up, she continuedwildly: "He will kill me! I am sure of it! My father will kill mewhen he knows!"
"No, no," murmured the woman, compassionately don't you fear. "Iwill watch you."
"You do not know him," hoarsely whispered the young mother. "Youdo not know how terrible he is at times. He has threatened me witha pick over and over. He will do it now. Hadn't I far better havegone into the creek with my baby? My blood would not have been onmy father's head then, but on his—its father's. Father isdrinking again, and he will kill me!"
"Hush! hush! and rest now. If you can, go back to your tentearly in the morning. Your father is drinking; he will noticenothing—tell him nothing. Leave your baby with me; I willcare for it. Nobody will kill me!" And Mrs. Peters squared hergreat shoulders, and thrust her hands into her pockets, with herold assumption of manliness. "No one will kill me, I think!"
The habitue's of the "Pick and Barrow" were astounded,mystified, amazed, and virtuously indignant when on the nightfollowing the incidents related above Dick Treen entered Monk's barwith the intelligence that "Brummy Peters had got a kid!"
The shock conveyed by the news was general, and confounded theminers. They gazed open-mouthed and dumb. A hurt and resentfulfeeling succeeded. They had been imposed upon—theirconfidence had been outraged. To think that Brummy Peters, who hadoverawed them with her muscle and manly assurance and hoodwinkedthem with side-pockets and a billycock hat, was as frail as thefrailest of her sex—a weak, wayward woman after all! It was aviolation of all their finest sentiments. "And she threw me,Cumberland and Durham style, best three out of five!" murmured asmall Geordie in a bated whisper, only now feeling the full forceof his degradation. Strangely enough, all eyes focussed on Mr.Joseph Bender, who blushed like a school-girl under the concertedgaze, and toyed uneasily with his dislocated nose.
Gradually the look of consternation on the faces of theassemblage gave place to a broad grin, which presently extended toa wild guffaw, and thirty accusing fingers were pointed at the nowfurious Bender.
"Here, look here, you fellers!" he roared, dashing his glassupon the floor and drawing his sleeves back from his great, knottedfist. "This is too thunderin' stiff, y' know! The first man ez saysI've anythin' t' do with that youngster 'll get smashed! Now,notice!"
Nobody spoke, but everybody laughed, and the accusing fingersstill pointed. Mr. Bender lingered for a moment on the point ofrunning amok and wreaking his vengeance on all and sundry, butthought better of it, pulled his hat over his eyes, and strode out,his soul a prey to angry passions and the pangs of injuredinnocence.
Mrs. Peters fed the child by artificial means; she procured acunningly-designed bottle and tubes, and went regularly to thestation homestead, at the foot of Miamia, for milk. The diggersregarded this conduct with an unfavourable eye; they supposed it tobe another display of anti-feminine sentiment, and nothing thatBrummy might do now could make them forget that she was awoman—she had forfeited all her rights as a man and a brotherirretrievably. She visited the shanty occasionally, and endeavouredto maintain her old footing, but the men preserved a studiedcoolness, and Curly Hunt even went so far as to suggest that she besummarily ejected, but that perky little individual was brought toa sudden repentance by being knocked over a bench and thrown bodilythrough the calico window by the ireful washerwoman.
Brummy appeared to be very fond of the child, but Bender wasfrequently accused of displaying a criminal lack of parentalaffection. Since the arrival of the little stranger the demeanourof this gentleman had undergone a painful change. He had grownmoody and furtive; the banter of his companions drove him furious;to be regarded as the father of Brummy's child was bitter gall.Given any other woman, and he might have accepted the imputationwith some complacency, but Brummy—Brummy Peters, with herside-pockets, ready fist, and strong meerschaum—it was toomuch. He determined to vindicate his character and clear his nameof the tender impeachment at any cost. With this object in view hedeveloped amateur-detective proclivities, and kept a zealous eye onthe laundry.
The baby was just a month old when one night the homely Mr.Bender burst into the "Pick and Barrow" (which, by the way, he hadavoided of late), his face radiant, and the ejaculation of anancient philosopher on his lips.
"Eureka! I've struck it, boys!" he cried triumphantly.
"What?—the reef?" exclaimed the men with onevoice—there having been some prospecting for a reef on thehigh ground.
"Reef be d——! No; proofs that you fellers 're a lotof blamed asses as 've been barkin' up th' wrong tree!" Therepresentation of a lot of asses barking up a tree was certainlynot a strikingly felicitous illustration, but Bender was tooexcited to be precise in small matters. He continued:
"See here, with all yer infernal cleverness, that kid ain'tBrummy's after all."
"Not Brummy's!"—and great excitement. "No, 'taint. It'shis daughter's!"
But, despite Bender's circumspection, Mr. Bacon had heard, andhe advanced into the light, the big tears stealing down his cheeksand his favourite look of unutterable woe overspreading his bloatedface.
"Whose child did you say, Mr. Bender, sir?" he queried, in tonesof deep bathos.
"Nobody's! Go to blazes, snufflebuster! This ain't no businessof yours."
Stephen Bacon retired again to his shades to indulge hislachrymose propensities and sorrow over his brandy, and Benderrelated in a low voice how by keeping an eye on Brummy'sestablishment, noting Cis's frequent visits, and putting this andthat together, he had arrived at the conclusion that was to provehim innocent of the delicate peccadillo insinuated against him.
Mr. Bacon's settled sorrow was very distressing that night, andhe was subsequently ejected amidst a shower of tears, dolefullycalling upon his late lamented wife to come back and comfort hisdeclining years; but that lady, doubtless retaining a livelyremembrance of the weight of his fist and the force of his foot,failed to respond.
Next morning being Sunday, an off day, quite a number of theminers, who were indulging in a game of quoits, and others who weresunning themselves and smoking on the grass, indolent anduninterested spectators, were disturbed by sounds of a row at thetent of their laundress, and as the public interest of the Flatcentred for the time in that domicile, the loungers leisurelyarose, the contestants dropped their quoits, and all strolledacross to the tent. Mrs. Peters was standing with her back to theentrance, her lips were tightly compressed, and there was an awed,sorrowful expression in her face that the men had never seen therebefore. She held the baby in her arms, in quite a matronly fashion,and calmly faced Mr. Stephen Bacon, who was bordering on sobriety,and whose settled sorrow was subordinated for the time tounreasoning rage.
"You've got my girl here!" he yelled, gracefully turning thesentence with several euphonious curses, and brandishing thepick-handle he held in his hand.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Peters, quietly; "she's in the tent."
"Well, I want her. D—n you! I want her. I've 'eard yourlittle game. Its all up! She got away from me last night, but I'llhave her now!"
"She got further away than you think, Steve Bacon; but you canhave her."
"You don't want t' see no girl with that in yer fist," saidBender, who had come up with the others, snatching the pick-handlefrom his grasp. "And you want t' be carm, y' know, 'cause if youhurt yer girl when I'm near I'll spread y' out quick."
"He can't hurt her," added Brummy. "Come in. Don't go away,boys; she'd like to see y' all. Jest come up and look in."
The men who had turned away, thinking the girl would doubly feelher shame if upbraided in their presence, startled by the tone inwhich the request was made, went back. Brummy held the flap of thetent aside, and they all looked in.
"Great God! Dead!"
Yes, the pale, slight, awkward girl, scarcely paler in death,her large, light-blue eyes fixed with the frightened expressionthat had characterized them in life, lay dead upon Brummy's bunk,and from the spare flaxen hair, and the long thin hand, and thepoints of her clothing, hanging over the side, pools of water haddripped to the floor.
"Yes, she's dead!" said Mrs. Peters, the tears on her lashesbelying her harsh tones. "Drowned! I found her body in the shallowwater near the bank when I went to the dam this morning. This isyour work, Joe Bender."
"No! No! For the Lord's sake don't say that!"
"You told her story at Monkey Bill's last night—he heardyou. That snivelling cur was a devil to her. She said he would killher if he ever knew—he intended to last night, but she gotaway and took the job off his hands."
Steve Bacon, shocked by the unexpected sight, had fallen into acrouching position in the corner. He straightened himself now.
"And her child?" he muttered, pointing towards the deadgirl.
"He is mine. She gave him to me, and I will keep him." And themuscular arms of the washerwoman folded the tiny mite closer to herbreast.
On the Monday evening following Brummy Peters was waited on by adeputation. A very respectful deputation it was, and wished "tosignerfy that the fellers all voted her a brick, an' hoped howshe'd pocket that trifle to help her with the youngster, an' saynothin'." That trifle was a roll of notes of all sorts and sizessurrounding a five-ounce nugget, the biggest ever found on therush, and the contribution of the Geordie. Mrs. Peters, inresponding, accepted the gift, and said she knew "the boys was realgrit," and promised to make a man of the little chap on her bosomif she could.
IT was bright and cosy within the pile-getters' hut; outside thenight was wet and stormy, and the wind piped a deep, mournful organtone in the gnarled and stunted gums on the hill-side. The threeyoung men had finished tea, and washed up and squared up—thatis to say, Dayton had stowed the bread and butter and the remainsof the salt beef in the kerosene box that served them as a larder,M'Gill had dipped the tin plates in hot water and wiped themcarefully on a superannuated white shirt, and Woodhead had raised atremendous dust under a pretence of sweeping out the hut with abroom extemporized from a bundle of scrub ferns; for it was thefirst principle of their association that every man should "do hiswhack" in the matter of attendance to domestic duties.
"Too thunderin' wet to go down to the camp, an' too blessedwindy to climb up to Scrubby's," said Dayton, who was curinghimself of an extraordinary habit of profanity for a wager, andfound the task of filling in the blanks rather a trial. "I s'posecut-throat's our little dart," he continued, producing anoverworked euchre pack.
M'Gill was fighting his way into a stubborn oil-skin coat thatcrackled like tin armour.
"Not cut-throat to-night, boys," he said; "I'm going up thegully a spell."
"Where bound, Mack?" queried Dayton, with quick suspicion. Theyoung men had discovered a pretty girl at Scrubby Scanlan'ssettlement, two miles off, and each thought he had an exclusiveright to the friendship and hospitality of Scanlan and the smilesof his handsome, hard-working, and very sensible eldestdaughter.
M'Gill smiled.
"Not there, old man," he said. "I promised 'The Identity' I'dgive him a look in to-night."
"Well, you ought!" with great derision. "What d'ye want foolin'after that evil old beast? If he was well to-morrer he'd bang youon the head for half a quid. That's my straight say-so. I'll besworn he shook our crosscut; an' here you are, dancin' attendancesame 's if he was clear white!"
"The poor devil is as harmless as a baby," said M'Gill. "Anyhow,I can't leave a sick man to take his chances in that miserable holeup there."
Joe M'Gill went out amidst a rush of wind and rain, and left hismates to their game and the comfort of their warm, watertighthut.
"Off his bloomin' chump!" commented Dayton emphatically,slapping down the cards.
The philosophical Woodhead, who was smoking placidly, looked upand cut.
"Joe's all right," he drawled. "Always had a weakness for sickthings. I've seen him take more trouble with a lame dog than mostmen would over a poor relation. Besides, the old man is real bad,and if Mack didn't give an eye to him I expect I would have to doit myself. I'm awfully soft-hearted that way, and I like to seeother fellows looking after the poor and the sick—it saves methe trouble."
Meanwhile M'Gill was boring his way through the storm towards apoint of light showing fitfully amongst the thick, supple saplingsthat rolled like a sea in a gale. "The Identity's" hut stood at thehead of the gully, in the centre of a small clearing. It wassheltered on one side by the abrupt rise of Emu Hill, and exposedon the other (saving for the intervention of the leafy youngpeppermints, the growth of recent years) to the fierce winds thatseemed to gather the rains into the narrow confines of the gully,and drive them pounding up its whole length, in eddying torrents,to be thrown back in tumbling yellow floods from the invulnerableside of Emu Hill.
Peter Shaw, variously known as "The Identity," "The Hermit,""Blue Peter," and "Old Shaw," was a veteran fossicker, a reticent,gruff man, whose almost complete isolation had recently been brokenby the appearance in the locality of Brown's Patch of a few partiesof sleeper-cutters and pile-getters, driven thitherward by theapproach of the railway to Bunyip.
Peter was living in the same chock-and-log hut at the head ofGrasshopper Gully when the first selector settled in the district,and when the reputation of Brown's Patch as an alluvial field hadalready faded and been forgotten, and when the fact that the creek,and the hill, and the gully had once rattled and rung with theclatter of cradle and puddling-tub, pick and shovel, andwindlass-barrel was unknown to all within the jurisdiction of theBunyip Shire Council, with the exception of old Shaw. Even nowPeter's settled neighbours were few and far between, and until thearrival of the timber-getters his beloved seclusion was but rarelydisturbed by man, woman, or child. He lived, according to thecommon belief, on the vegetables he grew, eked out with thesupplies he brought from Bunyip at long intervals—suppliesbought with the price of the few "weights" of gold won byfossicking patiently and laboriously up and down the creek and inthe many little blind gullies running into Emu Hill.
Of course "The Identity" was talked about. Whenever two or moreselectors were met together Peter's character and habits were sure,sooner or later, to come under discussion, and as he was one of thethe stock themes of the local fabulist, the history attached to himdid not lack romantic interest. He was generally credited withhaving stolen everything that went missing in the district, and,amongst the women at least, there was a profound belief that he and"the old devil" were on excellent terms and exchanged visitsfrequently; but for all the attention Shaw gave these people theymight have been merely stumps or stones by the way.
M'Gill pulled the catch of the old man's door, and enteredwithout knocking. The remains of a big log were smouldering in thewide sod chimney, and a slush lamp, manufactured from a sardinetin, guttered on the bush table, filling the hut with a villainoussmoke. On a narrow bunk, face downward, lay the half-clad figure ofa man. "The Identity" lifted himself upon his hands as the doorclanged to, and turned a haggard face, surrounded by a scrub ofiron-grey hair, towards the intruder. His eyes brightened as herecognized Joe.
"Good on you! Good on you!" he gasped, extending a shaky hand."I was hopin' you'd come."
Joe threw open his oilskin, and drew a couple of small parcelsfrom his shirt.
"Here you are, old party," he said; "I've brought you some stufffor beef tea, and a bottle of medicine." Shaw took the bottle inhis hand and examined it. It contained a patent medicine then verypopular with bushmen as an infallible remedy for all the physicalills that man is heir to, from cuts to consumption.
"It's too late, my boy," he said, "I'm a done man; but a dosemight ease me a bit if it's hot enough—gimme a dose."
Joe poured out a quantity of the medicine into a pannikin, andheld it towards him; but the sick man clutched his hand, and asudden excitement lit up his deathly face as he whispered:
"Did you do the other thing what I told you?"
M'Gill nodded.
"Put your pegs in an' make your application fer the lease allcorrect an' accordin' to law?"
"Yes, yes, just as you told me. Now drink!"
Shaw drained off his medicine, but retained his grip on Joe'sarm.
"Certain you didn't let on to no one?" he asked, with a lookhalf suspicious, half cunning in his eyes—"no p'lice, nodoctors—eh?"
"Not a soul; I always keep my word. But for all that I think youshould have a doctor."
"No, no, no!" cried the old man, with fierce energy; "nodoctors—no p'lice! I'm peggin' out—don't I knowit?—an' I won't have doctors, damn em! Can't you let a mandie his own way?"
"Right you are," said Joe, soothingly; "you'll buck up again,though, when you get outside a pint or two of this."
M'Gill threw the wood in the fireplace together, and set aboutpreparing the beef tea, and Shaw, who had relapsed into his formerposition, face downwards upon the bunk, watched every movement withone alert eye. Presently he spoke again.
"I said I'd tell you the whole yarn t'-night, Joe."
"Not to-night, Peter, you're not equal to it—wait till youare stronger."
"Stronger! stronger!" The fossicker had started up again, andwas glaring angrily. "Wait till I'm dead an' dumb, you mean. No, itmus' be t'-night. One of the chaps up at the camp'll be knockin'together a coffin fer me t'-morrer."
M'Gill admitted to himself, as he looked into the brilliant,deep-set eyes of the man, and saw the grisly configuration of theskull standing out under the stark yellow skin of his face, thatnothing was more probable. Shaw looked like a man face to face withdeath, sustained only by the feverish excitement that blazed in hisrestless eyes and manifested itself in the uneasy motions of hiswasted hands. The young man offered him a pannikin of the beef tea,but Peter put it aside after trying a couple of mouthfuls.
"No, I can't take it, boy," he said, "I can't take nothin', Idon't want nothin', only to tell you all before I cave in. Sit hereon the edge of the bunk. I'll hold you so you can't go till I'mthrough. Wait—go round the hut, see no one's listenin'."
M'Gill, to please him, did as he was directed, and then resumedhis position by the side of the bunk.
"Joe," said "The Identity," "you come here to help me, an'you've took a lot of trouble with me, 'cause you're a good sort,an' can't help it, like; but you don't like me. I could see youdidn't like me—you suspicioned me from the first,eh—didn't you?"
This was quite true, but the young man returned no answer. Therehad never been anything about Peter Shaw to invite affection; inhealth he was sullen, covert, and uncanny, and in sicknessevil-tempered and childish in his wants, and, more particularly, inhis fears.
"I knew it—I knew it!" he continued, "but because you area good sort, an' because I must out with this load here,here!"—he struck his breast feebly with his hand—"I'mgoin'to tell you somethin' that'll make a rich man of you, JosephM'Gill."
Clutching Joe's sleeve with his bony fingers, he went on withhis story, speaking in quick undertones, with a sort of insaneenergy that sustained him to the end.
"I came to this district twenty odd years ago, my lad. Brown hadjust struck the surfacin' down the gully by the creek, an' wecalled the rush Brown's Patch. Two days after campin' I picked upmy mate Harry Foote—Stumpy Foote we named him 'cause he wasbumble-footed. He was a dog, a mean hound, but he didn't look it,an' he was a good miner. We went to work on the alluvial, an' didfairly, but we both had a great idea about a good reef in thesehills. All the indications pointed to it, an' presently we slungthe wash an' started prospectin'. We trenched, an' travelled, an'trenched fer weeks without strikin' an ounce of quartz, an' Stumpygot full of it; but I grew more certain about that lode, an' hungon. So we agreed that he'd go back to the alluvial again, an' I'dkeep on peggin'away after the reef, an' we'd be mates whateverturned up. Well, we kep' this up fer a long time, me trustin'Stumpy all the time, an' intendin' t' do the square thing by himwhen I lobbed on the lode, as I was sure I would. I worked like afiend. I was mad fer gold then. I hadn't been out on'y a few years,an' strikin' it lucky meant everythin' t' me; meant—But nomatter, that ain't anythin' t' do with the story. You wouldn'tunderstand how I felt if I told you, an' I believe I don'tunderstand meself now. Stumpy did poorly, or told me as much. I gotbarely enough as my share to pay tucker bills, but he kep' workin'away, sluicin' the surfacin' down along the creek—a patch hehad hit on himself."
"One night I returned to the tent unexpected. Foote had told methe week afore that he was goin' to roll up his swag an' skip, an'I'd bin out on those hills beyond Scanlan's ever since. A light wasburnin' inside, an' Stumpy didn't hear me till I'd thrown back theflap of the tent. He was leanin' over the table, an' he looked upat me sudden, an' his face went milky white. Well it might—Icaught him in the act of sweepin' a pile of gold into a canvas bag.A pile—a heap—hundreds of ounces it looked t'me—hundreds of ounces in coarse nuggets an' rich specimens.The cur fumbled it in his hurry t' get it out of sight, an' spilledsome of the finer stuff on the floor."
"I went mad at the sight of all that gold, an' at the thought ofthe dirty trick he'd served me. I didn't speak, but jes' grabbedhim so, by the neck, an' dragged him outer the tent. I don't thinkI meant murder—I don't know what I meant, but there was apick handle leanin' agen the sod chimbley, an' I took it in myright hand. He opened his mouth to yell, an' I hit himonce—jes' once—an' he went over like a wet shirt. Iwaited fer him to get up, but he didn't move agen, an' when I comet' look at him he was dead. The paper-skulled, chicken-hearted cur,he was dead!
"I didn't funk—I didn't lose my head fer a second. I wasnever cooler in my life; my brain was clear, but I saw on'y onething at a time—on'y one thing, an' I acted on it. Afterdousin' the light in the tent, I took Stumpy up on my shoulder, an'carried him over the hill to the slope furthest from the camp.
"'Twas a clear, moonlight night, bright enough t' read Bibleprint by, but the sides of Emu Hill was well timbered, an' thesaplin's was thick as scrub, so I was not likely t' be seen. Idropped the body in a small clear space amongst a thick patch ofscrub on that spur above the soda spring. There was a good depth ofsoft vegetable soil there—a beautiful quiet place fer agrave.
"Then I went back t' the tent, careless like, case anyone shouldchance along; but the camp was a good step down the creek from ourtent, an' I never met a soul. Stumpy had his swag ready fer rollin'up—he meant to cut and leave me. I took up his things an' apick an' shovel, an' trudged back t' the body. It lay sprawlin' inthe shadder of the scrub, jest as I'd dropped it, one hand reachin'out into the light clawin'the grass; but I on'y thought of my job,an' I set t' work t'dig his grave at once.
"I worked quietly—the pick made no noise in that softground—but I worked hard. I meant t' bury him deep, an' buryhim well. A neat hole I made him, seven by two, an' as plumb as aprospectin' shaft. As I dug an' shovelled—quite cool in mymind, fer all the body was spread out there behind me in theshadder—my thoughts went wanderin' over my bad luck, an' theidea that Stumpy had been on good gold, an' meant to rob me of myfair half, made me vicious, an' I belted in hard an'fast.
"I had her down 'bout three foot, an' reckoned that'd nearly do.I was squarin' up the end when my pick struck agen somethin' thatmade it ring. I dug away a bit around that somethin', a suddenexcitement growin' in me, an' makin' me ferget I was diggin' agrave—a grave fer a murdered man. Down in the west corner ofthe hole I saw the white gleam of quartz. Stoopin', I lit a matchto examine it. By the Lord, Joe! I'd struck it—struck itthick an' rich!"
Old Peter's agitation became so intense at this stage that Joewas compelled to put his arms about his attenuated form, and holdhim on the bunk.
"See that fire, boy?" he gasped, pointing an uncertain hand, andglaring as if in a frenzy. "Well, it was like that—the liveembers, the glowin' red gold in it! Rich! It seemed all gold. I'dstruck the cap of the reef, an' I went a'most mad with joy at thesight of the beautiful, beautiful gold. I staggered back agen theother end of the hole, starin' at the reef. I was goin' t' yell an'dance, thinkin' of nothin' but my lovely luck, when I half turned,an' caught a glimpse of Stumpy's white, dead face glowerin' et mein the moonlight, an' I funked fer the first time. The shadder hadcrep' back, leavin' jest his face showin', an' there it was, with aspark in each of its big eyes, mouthin' at me—grinnin'horribly!
"I went dead cold, my legs broke under me. All of a sudden I wasdreadfully afraid. Then I thought: 'Pete, this is a hangin'match—Pete, they're after you. What's the good of a goldenreef to a hanged man?' I crawled out of the hole, wantin' t' run,but It's devilish eyes followed me. Oh! I crawled like a worm,crazy with fear—sick with it! The findin' the gold there inhis grave seemed a damned trick of his an' the devil's t'spiteme—t' make me mad. I seemed t' know then, while the horrorwas on me, what it all meant—thet I'd cursed meself ferever—thet, good luck or bad luck, fer the future 'twas allthe same t' me.
"But I was strong enough t' bury him. I turned his face down,an' dragged the body along, an' flung it into the hole on top ofthe reef; and when it was out of sight, under a foot or so of dirt,I began t' feel stronger an' braver, an' t' reason a bit. I wouldbury him beautifully there, I said to meself, an' wait, an' sometime I would dig him up again, and hide him far enough away, an'then I could work the reef, an' by-an' bye go hometo—to—go home a rich man!
"I did bury him, an' then crawled back t' the tent, an' tried t'sleep, but couldn't. At daylight I was back at the grave again,smoothin' it with my fingers, rakin' dry leaves, an' grass, an'bark over it t' hide every trace, shiverin' in my boots all thetime. They reckoned me a brave man once. I'd done some things thatmade men think me game. But I've been a cur ever since the night Ikilled my mate—a coward in the night an' in the day, beforemen and before devils.
"Durin' the day I managed to go down among the men an' makeinquiries 'bout Stumpy. None of the chaps seemed surprised t' hearhe was not around, an' one or two hinted pretty straight thet Iwasn't likely t' see him agen—thet he'd been doin' prettywell down the creek, an' had cleared with the gold to do me outermy share.
"Joe, I never dared t' touch Stumpy's grave from thet day t'this. Fer five years small parties was workin' about the creek offan' on, an' I kep' tellin' meself that when they'd all gone someday I'd shift Stumpy's bones. Then the Chows came fossickin', an'time went on, an' as it passed I grew more an' more of a coward.Once or twice there's bin prospectin' parties out here after thereef, an' I think I was stark crazy while they was about. The fearof them strikin' the lode used t' drive me wild, an' I grew t' hateevery man who come near Emu Hill, an' gradually to loathe the sightof human bein's. I shifted up here t' be further from the grave,an' 'cause I'd got luny notions that Stumpy was walkin' about o'nights.
"There was on'y a hundred ounces or so in my mate's bag, afterall. It'd looked five times ez much t' me. It's buried in theground jest under the head of my bunk. Onst I sold a few ounces ofit in et the township, but it was coarse stuff, an' the news got'round, an' the next thing I knew there was another small rushalong the creek, an' diggers was pokin' about everywhere. Thatfrightened me again. If the reef was struck Stumpy's bones would befound, an' they'd hang me, sure ez death. Half a dozen men lived atWombat who'd remember my mate's disappearance, an' there was thingsI'd buried with Stumpy that'd make his bones known. So I buried thegold, an' never tried t' sell another colour of it.
"Since then I've had scores of chances of shiftin' them bones,but I wasn't the man t' do it, an' then I begun t' find thet Ididn't want to—thet I didn't want the gold—thet Ididn't want any of the things thet I'd wanted like mad before. ButI didn't go away. I was chained here, an' I always thought thetsome day someone would find Stumpy, an' I would be wanted, an' allthese years I've dreaded it, an' waited fer it, an' hated, an'suffered, an' here I am, an' there, out on the hill, are Stumpy'sbones, an' the gold—the beautiful yellow gold! It's yours,Joe—all yours. I leave it to you! You know the spot. Iplanted that stunted bluegum, with the limb thet turns down to theground, right on the top of the grave the mornin' after I buriedhim. You'll find his bones in among its roots."
"The Identity" sank back on his bed, cold and exhausted.
"You'll bury them bones decent, Joe?" he murmured in a voicethat had suddenly grown faint.
"Yes, Peter," replied M'Gill, in whose mind the story hadcreated both amazement and doubt.
"An' you've got the lease, Joe, sure?"
"I've applied for it—the ground is secured."
"Yes, yes, an' you'll stick by me while I last, eh—youwon't go? An' no p'lice, mind—no p'lice!"
It was already daylight when Joe M'Gill awakened his matesstumbling into the hut.
"Old Shaw is dead," he explained to the indignant Dayton. "Youmight dress, Jack, and go and stay by him, for decency's sake,while I have a few hours' sleep. And, Woodhead, you must go toBunyip and bring the police. They will have to take charge of thebody."
M'Gill and his mates found the skeleton of Foote exactly asPeter Shaw had said they would, and the grinning skull rested uponthe cap of the golden reef that was eventually known as "Dead Man'sLode," and which, before twelve months went by, had enriched thethree young men, and had yielded small fortunes to many dozensbeside.
ONE man sat upon a heap of broken reef near the face, with hisbroad palms supporting his chin. His thin, hollow cheeks showed,between the out-spread fingers, a sickly yellow in thecandle-light. One candle in a spiked holder burned against the sideof the drive. Two billies and two full crib-bags hung near ondog-hooks driven in an upright leg, and at the man's feet lay acouple of picks and a shovel. Kyley sat with his back to the face,staring with glowing, vindictive eyes into the gathered gloom downthe drive, where the passage to the shaft was choked to the roofwith splintered timber and fallen mullock, and where the head of asecond man was dimly visible. Only the head and shoulders of thisother were free; the rest of his body was hidden under the debris.The second man was thrown face downwards; across his back, pinninghis arms, lay the great cap-piece, which alone seemed heavy enoughto have crushed the life out of him. Beyond this the tumbled reefand splintered slabs were piled to the roof.
But the buried miner was not dead. The tough red-gum log, forceddown by the mighty pressure, had ploughed its way diagonally downthe side of the drive, and pinched him to the floor, stopping whenthe pressure of another inch must have been followed by certain andspeedy death. A stout iron truck was jammed under the log besidehim, torn and doubled like a cardboard box. The young man couldlift his chin a few inches from the floor of the drive, and turnhis face from one side to the other, but was incapable of any othermovement.
Presently he spoke. His voice came with an effort, and soundedfeebly shrill, like that of a very old man.
"Dick, Dick! in the name o' God, speak, man! D'ye think there'sa chance fer us?"
Dick Kyley dropped his hands, and there was an expression ofgrim satisfaction in his gaunt face as he replieddeliberately—"There's a chance for me, William."
The buried man lifted his clay-smirched face, startled by theother's tone, and gazed eagerly at his mate, and continued gazingfor fully a minute, puzzled and frightened by the incongruouslevity in the face that confronted him. Then, the position becomingpainful, he dropped his cheek in the wet clay again.
"What d'ye mean?" he asked anxiously. "Why only fer you?"
"Because, William, I don't think you've got a dog's Show."
The reply was without a trace of sympathy; there was, in fact, atouch of malicious banter in the mincing tone of the "William."William Hether had never been anything but "Hether" or "Bill" tohis shift-mate before.
Again Hether looked anxiously into Kyley's face. Its cadaveroushollows were filled with dark shadows, and the high-lights broughtout the salient features in a grotesque caricature that struckHether as simply fiendish. He turned from the sight, with a newhorror in his heart.
"This ain't no time to fool a man, Dick," he said humbly. "Howcan there be any chance fer you if I ain't in it?"
Kyley arose, plucked the candle from the wall, and advancingclose to his mate held the flame low down and showed him a smallpool of water gathered upon the floor within 18 inches of hisface.
"That's why," he said.
Hether understood, and a cry broke from his lips.
"Keep it back, Dick!" he gasped.
"William," said Kyley, calmly replacing the candle and resuminghis former position on the reef, "you're a fool. That water'scoming in from the face, as usual. The fall has dammed the gutters,and it can't get away; consequently, in less'n five hours the poolwill be above your ears. And you know what that means."
"But you can build a dam around me. Get the shovel-quick! Make adam with that loose reef an' the clay off the floor. Dick, Dick!give us a chance, for God's sake, man!"
Hether stopped short, staring at the other, who sat calmlyregarding him. Presently he spoke again in a quavering whisper:
"You won't see a man drown without lendin' a hand t' helphim?"
"No, I won't see it," replied Kyley, "because I'm goin' to dousethis light. A candle burns up the air, an' I'll want all there ishere, I reckon, before the boys reach me."
Driven almost wild with terror, a terror occasioned no less bythe grim significance of Kyley's leering countenance and thebrutality of the words than by the horrors of his position, Hetherbegan to plead piteously, with tears and moanings. The pain ofbroken bones and the sickness of exhaustion had quite unmanned "BigBill Hether;" but his agony did not touch the heart of Kyley, whoseemed to have forgotten that death also threatened him in thedelight that the young man's sufferings awakened within hisbreast.
"Why've you rounded 'on me, Dick? What've I done—what 'veI ever done?" moaned the helpless man.
"I'm not goin' to lift a finger to keep you out of hell,"answered the other, "because of her, William—because ofHannah."
Bill turned his face to the light again, and once more he staredat Kyley, sharply, inquiringly, reading ever line of his fatefulcountenance. Then a groan of despair broke from him.
"I'll go away, Kyley," he said—"true's Christ, if we getout I'll go away, an' you'll never hear of me again. Only make adam. Quick, man, quick—it's comin'! God! this is worse thanmurder. Dick—"
The water, having filled the depression at the side of thedrive, was now running down and forming a pool in the hollow underHether's chin.
Kyley turned and blew out the candle. For a long time Hethercontinued to supplicate in the darkness, and Kyley, leaningcomfortably against the face, heard the thin voice, weakening to analmost inarticulate whisper, beseeching by all that is good onearth and holy in heaven for a little grace—another poorchance of life—and answered never a word. By a painful effortthe young man continued to keep his mouth above the gatheringwater, but gradually the torture that afflicted his extended neckbecame unendurable, and now in his last extremity he railed atKyley as a murderer, and abused him with curses in weak, childishtones that were nevertheless pregnant with passion, and soundeddistinctly and with terrifying emphasis in that black chamber ofdeath.
Suddenly there was silence. Dick Kyley listened, and presentlyheard a bubbling sound in the water. That ceased, and all wasstill. He felt now that his vengeance was complete—thatHether was dead, and at that moment the fierce emotions ofresentment and revenge—hunger that had possessed and upheldhim departed in a breath, and left him weak and cowed. His limbstrembled, and beads of perspiration gathered about the roots of hishair and rolled coldly upon his brow and cheeks. He was thinking,too, of his own wretched case. He heard, fitfully, a distantdrumming, the sound of timber being driven home, and knew that therescue parties were working as hard as men may work, but whethertheirs would be a job of hours or days he could not tell, andalready he fancied he detected some taint of vitiation in theair.
Dick Kyley, sitting alone in the blackness of his prison,waiting for salvation or death, was soon the victim of anungovernable fear, a supernatural terror entirely new to him, andthe more awful for its novelty. From the moment he believed Hetherdead he began to fear him. He strove with all the energy of hisstrong sense to drive him from his thoughts, but do what he mighthis mind would revert to the dread subject, and his eyes turn,staring intently into the darkness, where at times they seemed todetect a yet blacker form in the pitch-black night that filled thedrive—the shape of the dead man's head. The horror grew, andwith it an agonizing conviction that Hether's dead face was staringat him with dead but seeing eyes. Imagination had pictured thepallid cheeks stained with blood and clay, and the wide, accusingeyes, till the vision became a reality to him. Tortured beyondendurance, Kyley fumbled in his pocket and found a match, which hestruck upon the shovel blade. As the light filled the chamber agroan of relief broke from the miner's labouring breast. Only theback of Hether's head was visible; his face was sunk to the templein the water. Dick extinguished the match—his last—andsat down again, only to struggle with another relay of horrors thatpresently arose against him.
William Hether still lived. He had discovered that by taking adeep breath and sinking his face till the forehead rested upon theclay he was enabled to allay the pain in his neck and to continuethe struggle. He persisted in this course, noiselessly, for thesound of the rescuers at work had filled him with a glorious hope,and with that hope had come a fear that Kyley might be moved tomurder him if he thought his rescue possible.
So another hour fled. The water in the drive, which had nowfound a broad level, continued to rise slowly. Kyley had lost thepower of appreciating time, and sat huddled against the wall,distraught with fear and despair. Hether's face was haunting himagain, standing forth visibly, threatening and awful in thetomb-like darkness. His mad fancy stretched every hour of hisimprisonment into a long day, and he believed that it was his fateto be stifled by the foul gases from his mate's decomposing corpse.Even now the taint was in his nostrils. Although he was listeningall the time with agonized intensity, he no longer heard thehammering of the miners beyond; his mind was too full of itsunspeakable fear—he awaited the attack of the inhuman thingthat his irresponsible faculties had fashioned out of theimpenetrable gloom at the end of his narrow prison. At this crisisHether called again, in a piercing voice, full of the supremeterror:—
"Help! help! Kyley, you murderer! fiend devil—"
At the first sound of the voice, Kyley sprang back against theend of the drive, and shrieked, with all the power of his lungs,again and again; and there he remained, crouched down, pressing hisface into the gravel, clutching his ears, shivering andmoaning.
Three hours later the rescuers broke through, and found Hetherunder the fall, with his head in a pool of water, dead, and Kyleysquatting at the face, babbling of spectres and devils.
It is still Mr. Richard Kyley's quaint belief that he is aconspicuous figure in hell.
MR. Sin Fat arrived in Australia in the year of grace 1870, apoor and friendless man. He entered the great city of Melbourne, astranger in a strange country, possessed only of a blue dungareesuit that had served him long and faithfully in his distant home,ninepence in coppers, and as much of his fatherland spread over hissurface and deposited in the cracks and crannies of his gauntperson as he could conveniently carry.
"A stranger in a strange country."
Sin Fat was not tall and athletic, nor fair to lookupon—in truth, he was stunted, and as plain of face as thepottery gods that he had learned to revere at his good mother'sknee. His complexion was so distraught by an uncongenial climatethat it possessed less bloom and beauty than the inside of asun-dried lambskin; his features were turned and twisted and pulledawry till they resembled excrescences and indentations on apie-melon, and his lank, lean limbs were mute evidence of a life ofprivation and toil. In point of fact, Sin Fat was so ungainly andso sparing of personal attractions at this period of his existencethat his homely visage soon became the theme of popular comment,and "ugly as Sin" is an aphorism which will survive as long as theEnglish language is spoken.
The humble immigrant paid no poll-tax; he was a duly certifiedsubject of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, towards whosethrone and person he possessed an ardent and undying affection, ashe told the Customs officer in mutilated English and accentstremulous and low. For Sin was by nature bashful and conciliatory,his tones were unctuous, and his humble carriage excited thederision of a distempered and woe-worn dog which had its habitatamongst the lumber on the wharf—a vagrant, craven mongrel,that lived in a perpetual state of cringe, yet which assumedsomething of dignity in the presence of a still meaner creature,and boldly pursued Sin Fat as he ambled away, and assailed him inthe rearmost parts of his frame. But the lowly foreigner continuedon his road with downcast eyes and an expression of religiousmeekness, till, as if guided by instinct or the power of affinity,he slunk into that nest of pestilence between Little Bourke andLonsdale streets, and was lost amongst the hordes which there docongregate.
Fifteen years ago the Chinese Camp at Ballarat East was a largeand populous suburb. Thousands of prosperous, but unkempt andwasted, disciples of Confucius lodged in a nest of tottering,vermin-ravaged, smoke-begrimed hovels, of which no independent hogwould accept a protracted tenure. The area extending from the mainroad to back beyond the old Llanberris was almost covered with thebroken-backed tenements of squalid, immoral heathens, who followedvarious light and remunerative callings—peddling tea,gimcrack fancy goods, and moonstruck fish; fossicking on theYarrowee and Black Hill flats; or prowling round with a pair ofshabby baskets strung on a stick, collecting rags, bones, andbottles, or any movable items of intrinsic value which could bereached through the fence when the proprietor's attention wasotherwise engaged, and each and all supplementing their income bydeeply-planned nocturnal raids on distant poultry yards, fruitfarms, wood-heaps, or sluice-boxes. A couple of serpentine streets,inhabited by grimy pagans, still remain, but the majority of theChows have migrated to other diggings, some have returned to thehomes of their childhood, and some have gone to heaven. Thestaggering shanties which still remain are a good sample of thesties that littered the flat in '73—decrepid dens, reachingaway in all directions for something to lean against, indented onone side, bulged on the other—compiled of logs, stones,palings flattened tins and battered pans, and roofed withsugar-mats. The common Chinaman glories in these little snug cries.When by some chance he becomes possessed of a home with arespectable exterior he straightway hews a hole in the roof, boardsup the windows with borrowed planks, and disfigures the front withscraps of tin and old battens—whether in accordance with aperverted taste or out of a guileful desire to mislead thetax-assessor is beyond Caucasian comprehension.
It was evening, after a day hot enough to blister the ear of anelephant. Sin Fat's work was done, and he jogged homewards along alittle side-street in Ballarat East. He bore the orthodox Chinesebaskets, a pair which had evidently been in active business forsome considerable time, and, judging from the hooked stick in hishand and the grateful aroma of old bones and such things whichclung to him like a brother, Sin was following the calling of a"Rag John." S. Fat, as we now see him with the eye of faith, isphysically much improved since he landed in Australia; he does notappear to have missed meals so regularly of late, and his predatorysuccess has lent him an air of confidence and self-esteem, thoughhe smiles with his old deference and still clings withsuperstitious awe to the dirt of his fatherland, now cemented bygrit of Australian origin.
Our hero has disposed of his day's collection of rags androttenness, gleaned from the gutters and rubbish-heaps of the city,at a local marine-store, and he now hies him to his humble home andmerited repose. But he is not lost to a sense of duty; hisever-watchful eye is open to detect an opportunity, howevertrifling, of increasing his diurnal income, and when he espies agoose, obese and matronly, making frantic endeavours to squeeze herportly form through a small aperture in a fowl-house behind aprivate residence, his soul is instantly fired with a desire topossess her—to call her his own, if only for a few hours.
Sin is a man of action; dropping his baskets, and casting asideall reserve, he enters the yard, and in a moment thewell-conditioned bird is in his power. Tucking her under his arm,and stifling her noisy clamours, he turns to vacate the premises;but, alas for his circumspection, the door of the residence opens,and a fat woman, with a baby dangling over one arm, comes out toswear at a neighbour's boy who is throwing stones at a cat on herroof. She has not noticed the enterprising Mongol, but "he whohesitates is lost," and Sin's native wit serves him well. Advancingboldly to the stout female, smiling obsequiously the while, andcovering the brands and birth-marks of the goose with his jerkin,he blandly queries:
"Buy em goose, missee? Welly good, welly fat."
"Buy em goose, missee?"
"Naw!" snaps the woman, eyeing him suspiciously.
"Muchee fine goose, welly fat!" persists Sin, coyly smiling.
"Don't want it; go away!"
"All li; some odder day, eh?" So Sin retreats, still smiling,and as he trots on his way congratulates himself, gibbering aloudin his rapture.
Sin had a bijou villa, built in his spare time from plans andspecifications of his own making, and composed of old palingsgleaned from neighbouring fences on moonless nights, andmultitudinous other scraps and patches which were within the reachof a poor Chinee. The residence was a very comfortable one forsummer wear; it had openings to catch the breeze from every pointof the compass, and if the rain did come in at the roof—well,it ran out at the sides again. Standing at the front door onecommanded an excellent view of a creek, embedded in whose thickyellow clay lay the decomposing remains of many domestic fauna. Thehouse was within two minutes' walk of a fantan-table and aJoss-house; it abutted on a stagnant pool, and received the balmywesterly breeze as it bounced off a candle-factory. Our hero wascontent with these few advantages for the time being, but by steadyindustry and frugality he hoped one day to run a gambling-hell ofhis own, and move in the best Celestial society in imported woodenboots. Sin was ambitious.
Sin Fat parted with his feathered prize to an epicureanfellow-countryman at a high figure before he reached his humblehome. He knew that, had he not done so, Mrs. Sin Fat would haveseized the earliest opportunity of converting the bird into squaregin. Mrs. Fat was possessed of a deplorable habit of thustransmuting all kinds of personal property into liquor, inconsequence of which it was part of her industrious husband'spolicy to carefully place all articles readily saleable beyond herreach.
It was dark before Mr. Fat reached his own roof-tree. He gropedhis way into the parlour, which was also kitchen, bedroom,drawingroom, and outhouse, and lit a candle (candles were anotherof Mrs. Fat's extravagances). The glare awoke a woman who wassleeping, sprawling amongst a few filthy rags on a low bunk at oneend of the hut. She lifted herself on her hands, and gazed at theChinaman with stupid, drunken eyes. A great shock of unkempt blackhair fell about her sallow face, which, despite the ravages ofdrink, and that faint, strange Mongolian look which surely comes tothe woman who consorts with Chinamen, still possessed something ofbeauty. Under earlier and more favourable circumstances her eyeshad been full, dark, and luminous. Her features were well cut, thenose somewhat aquiline, the mouth large and sensual. A viragosurely, with the temper of fifty devils—a woman abandoned tothe filth and utter loathsomeness of a Chinese camp. Aboutthirty-four years of age, tall, round with the unnatural obesity ofa heavy drinker, intensely hating all about her—aye, andhating herself worse than all as she wallowed in the very dregs andslime of the social system—such was Mrs. Sin Fat.
"Home again, sweetheart!" she muttered, "home again to your truelove, my tall, beautiful—Bah, you ugly thief! Get out or I'llbrain you!" And a list of profane ejaculations was smothered as shefell with her face amongst the rags once more, clutching vacantlyfor the empty bottle wherewith to assault her submissivehusband.
This was Sin's only weakness—this she-fiend, from whosebursts of passion he had often to fly for his life. He had foundher one cold, wet night, stretched in the mud at the door of hishovel, and had taken her in. She was haggard, ragged, and sofearfully emaciated that the men turned from her with wryexpressions, and this seemed her last chance. She and Sin Fat "gotmarried." She was possessed of one husband already, a portlyMelbourne mechanic, but she had left him and her child yearsbefore—left him because he was a "fat old fool," an opinionbased on the fact that he did not kick her down and jump on herwith his working boots when she flew into a tantrum. Other men haddone this since, and she respected them. Sin fed her up, dressedher well, and then she left him, only to return again, worn withdebauchery, to be dressed and fed, and to "clear" once more. Sherepeated this course several times, and her dutiful lord alwaysreceived her with open arms; but at length an idea occurred to Sin:he refused to provide fine clothes, and then she stayed with him,and made merry by occasionally cracking his head with agin-bottle—an empty bottle, of course, for she would ratherthat her dear lord should escape correction altogether than waste a"nobbler" of her favourite nectar. Sin bore his cross patiently,but it was not affection entirely that restrained him from droppingsomething unhealthy into her gin. We have said that he wasambitious; he had many plans, and this woman could dress well andape the lady. He foresaw the time when she would be useful tohim.
Sin had no intention of remaining a toiler and moiler all hislife. He had done well in the rag-and-bone business, but it waslaborious, and our hero had gentlemanly instincts—he wantedto acquire riches and fatty tissue without expending any more ofthe sweat of his brow than was absolutely necessary, and he butwaited to increase his available capital before embarking inbusiness. By a dispensation of Providence, the fulfilment of hislaudable ambition was brought about earlier than he expected.
Midnight. The white moon floated low in the eastern sky, andthrust her sheeny beams like sword-blades through the crazy wallsof Sin Fat's home. A tall, willowy cat, with swan-like neck andattenuated frame, bestrode the ridge-pole, and stood black againstthe pallid orb of night, and lifting up her voice recited her woesto the listening spheres in accents wild and weird. All else wasstill. The camp lay like a cluster of islands in a lake of light.Sin's sleep was calm and childlike, and his wife had ceased to tossand breathe half-uttered curses in his deaf ear. The moon rosehigher and higher, and the long black shadows slowly folded towardstheir base. Suddenly and stealthily the ground opened like ayawning giant; Sin Fat's villa trembled, tottered, and sank quietlyinto the black abyss, and where it had stood gaped a deep, darkpit—and a dusty cat, with a broken tail and a coat of manycolours, tearing madly across the battery sands, seemed to be theonly creature that quite realized the extent of the catastrophe.The Chinese camp at Ballarat is situated chiefly over "old ground."The country has been worked so thoroughly that sections of theearth's crust often settle down abruptly into the caverns below,accompanied by sundry Mongolian residences, to the exceedingdiscomfort of their greasy inhabitants.
At break of day the squalid denizens of the camp gathered aboutthe chasm, at the bottom of which lay Mr. and Mrs. Sin Fat buriedin the ruins. The Chows appointed a chairman, and discussed thesituation with characteristic clamour and gesticulation, finallyresolving by a large majority to call in white men to undertake therescue. When there is work to be done which entails the probabilityof a broken head or the unearthing of a corpse, the heathen Chineeis sure to have a sore hand or an important engagement at somedistance. White men came, and Mr. and Mrs. Sin Fat were fossickedout of the debris, full of dust, old nails, and wooden splinters,but not much the worse for their premature interment. Mrs. Fatthanked her rescuers, as she was hauled up through the roof of thehut, with a few well-chosen objurgations, terminating with aheartfelt wish that they might be instantly consigned to a regionwhere frost and snow are unknown.
Sin stood on the brink of the aperture for some time after thethoughtless herd had dispersed, dolefully surveying the fragmentsof his late home. His mind was made up at last—he would notbuild again, he would go into business.
The year 1876 A.D. Little Bourke-street, Melbourne, Sundaymorning. On both sides of the narrow thoroughfare were groups ofsleek-looking Chinese, arrayed in imported clothes, their handsburied in their long sleeves, debating politics and theology, ormore likely cavilling at the absurdly low price of "cabbagee" and"gleen pea," the conversation occasionally eliciting a shrewdejaculation from a dun-coloured philosopher a hundred yards off, orfrom a hoary, half-dressed pagan at a third-story window. They werea fat, comfortable-looking lot, and they aired their Sunday best ona fine Sabbath "allee same Eulopean." In front of a smoky littleshop, possessed of only one window, in which a roast fowl,beautifully browned and highly polished, hung suspended by astring, and served as a roost for half the flies in the lane, wascongregated a particularly verbose and noisy crowd, attractedevidently by the brilliant conversational powers of one of theirnumber—a short but enormously fat "John," who leaned in thedoorway. His stoutness was phenomenal; it would not havediscredited the treatment of those wily men who prepare prize hogsfor agricultural shows. Layers of blubber bulged about his eyes,leaving only two conical slits for him to peer through; his cheekssagged below his great double chin, and his mighty neck rolledalmost on to his shoulders, and vibrated like jelly with everymovement. But his corporation was his greatest pride—it wasthe envy and admiration of all his friends; it jutted out, bold andprecipitous, and seemed to defy the world. This Celestialphenomenon was dressed in the very latest Chinese style; gorgeoussilks of many colours bedizened his capacious person; his feet wereencased in the richest stub-toed wooden shoes; his hat was abrilliant building direct from the Flowery Land, and his proud tailswept the floor. A dandy dude was he—a heavy swell fromhome—oily and clean, looking as if he had been well scrapedand polished with a greasy rag. He was jolly; his smiles went fromhis ears to his toes like ripples on a lake, and succeeded eachother like winking—in fact, he was brimful of a wild sort ofChinese humour. We have read that the Chinese delight in punning;this man must have been the king of Mongolian punsters, judgingfrom the merriment his every remark was wont to evoke. He wasbrimming with irony, sarcasm, and sparkling repartee. A white mancould never grasp his witticisms; after translation they soundedmuch like childish nonsense, but anyone who listened to him wouldfeel confident that he was a comical dog all the same.
"He was brimful of a wild sort of Chinesehumour."
In compliance with a suggestion from the portly host, the Chowsstreamed after him through the dark, dirty "shop" into a long, lowroom on the left, where were a number of tables covered withmatting. Seating himself at the head of one of these, and producingthe "tools," the fat man prepared to preside over the game, hissmall eyes twinkling keenly enough now from out of the depths ofhis head; and soon all were enthralled in the mysteries of fan-tan.The Chinaman, stoical under all other circumstances, gambles like afiend; these men were soon worked into a delirium of excitement,but the fat Mongolian was always cool, and whilst the sums of moneybefore the players fluctuated, his increased steadily, surely.
A sign over the door of the little smoky shop translated intoEnglish implied that Sin Fat, Chinese cook, lived and plied histrade within, and was prepared to fulfil all orders withpromptitude. That sign was a bold and brazen lie. Sin Fat was nocook, and the burnished fowl which hung in the window was only a"blind"—a window-blind, so to speak—intended to beguile"him foolee white feller." Sin Fat ran a gambling-hell andsomething worse. Sin had attained his ambition; while making fleshhe was also making money rapidly. Our hero, the poor broken Chowwho had landed in the city not many years before without a shillingor a change of raiment, had, by patient industry and steadfastnessof purpose, acquired an extensive business and a quantity ofcapital at interest. The colonial climate agreed with him, and hehad many friends. When Constable Mahoney, Sergeant Mulduckie, orPrivate O'Brien met him they greeted him like a brother; theywinked knowingly, dug him jocularly in the ribs, and insinuatedthat he was a sly dog. These zealous guardians of public propertyand morality had mastered the art which was necessary to every"mimber av the foorce" who would have his bank-book and littleterrace in the suburbs—the art of not seeing too much.
"They greeted him like a brother."
Beyond the little shop adorned with the pendant fowl, stretchedto the right and left till the back premises of the houses in theblock seemed to be absorbed, were numerous small rooms—cabinsreeking with the nauseating odour of opium and pollution andChinamen, and always clouded with smoke. There was no order, nodesign, in the building of these cribs; big rooms had beenportioned off and holes cut in partitions recklessly. You gropedthrough the place, and might find your way, to your great surprise,into two or three filthy lanes at the back, right or left. Thecurious European, on a voyage of discovery, saw in these rooms,through the clouds of choking, evil-smelling opium fumes,debilitated Chinamen, with animalized faces, floating to hell inthe midst of visions of heaven; lank, skinny coolies, Indians, andother vile Asiatics; and, worst of all, European girls, corruptbelow anything else in nature, excepting only the ghouls theyconsorted with. Girls of sixteen, decoyed in at the front door bythe sheen of silk and the jingle of gold, percolating through thatterrible den, to be finally cast out amongst the slime androttenness of the lanes—abject wrecks, with nothing ofhumanity left within them, and hardly the semblance without.
Mrs. Sin Fat was well and hearty; she had fine clothes galore,and no longer thought of deserting her dear lord—perhapsbecause she saw that he was not now so very anxious to prevent it.A great assistance in the business was the tall, dark woman, whocould "put on style;" she clung to her old love—thegin-bottle—and frequently worked up a small cyclone, anhysterical fit peculiarly her own, which militated against theprosperity of the house by suspending business for the time being.In these moments she called herself many vile and unladylike names,bit her arms, tore her hair, spat upon her lord, and spurned himwith something heavy and hard, even going to the extent of hurlingbottles and other dangerous projectiles at the shaven heads of thebest customers. This was unpleasant, but Sin condescended tooverlook it when she sallied forth in fine raiment, with a thickveil concealing half her face, to wander in the public parks andgardens, and enter into conversation with young girls who wereairing babies, or reading romances in the shade. She talked withthem so sweetly (one at a time always) about babies, birds, orflowers; but she was at her best when describing with poeticfervour gorgeous dresses, all bespangled and glittering, ordwelling upon hats that were dreams of loveliness. She was alwaysmaking appointments with these girls, and gradually, deftly leadingthem by a golden thread, she drew them into the shop of Sin Fat thecook, and the sign over the door might well haveread:—"Abandon all hope ye who enter here!" Mrs. Fat was notalways successful; but one success condoned for fifty failures. SinFat's trade was so extensive that he was enabled to give otherwomen commissions in this line; none of them, however, succeeded sowell as his wife.
Two years rolled by, and Sin Fat's business increased andmultiplied in every branch. A polished fowl still hung in thelittle window, and the green and golden sign published the same oldlie. Sin was even jollier and more rotund; he was looked up to as aChow among Chows. His capital at interest had grown apace, and hefondly dreamed of selling out and returning home to the FloweryLand, there to buy a Celestial C.M.G-ship, and lord it as arepresentative Australian. His wife by this time was a source ofgrave uneasiness to him; her temper had intensified, she had grownhypochondriacal, and refused for months to tout for the business.Her bursts of passion were terrible to contemplate, and Sin Fat,Esq., had now attained a station so exalted that to be seen evadingthe wrath of a tall female armed with a poker or a bottlecompromised his dignity. He felt that it was time to assert hisauthority.
One day Sin, as head of the firm, was overjoyed at the advent ofa new victim. The decoy in this case was a loudly dressed youngwoman who shortly before had developed marvellous ability in thatline. The new girl was aged about seventeen, tall, dark, and thin,but handsome—the spoilt daughter of a weak parent. She hadbeen caught with the golden cord, and the hook had been baited withher own vanity. A few hours after her advent he was seated with herin the one room of the place which had any pretensions tocleanliness and attractions. It was draped and hung about with allkinds of ridiculous, highly-coloured Chinese gew-gaws, and fairlyfurnished. This was the bower into which all novices were firstintroduced; when they left it they had received their initiallesson in the hard course of misery just entered upon. Sin wasintroducing this girl to her first pipe of opium—that devil'sdrug and Chinaman's greatest ally. The obese Confucian prattled toher in tender tones, like the jolly old gallant he was, and thegirl, half-stretched upon a sort of settee, laughed and joked withthe boldness of an old hand.
Suddenly the door opened and Mrs. Sin Fat entered. She had cometo inspect the strange girl for the first time. She looked wild anduncanny enough as she stepped over the threshold, but when her eyesencountered the face of the new-comer her countenance becamehorrifying.
"The door opened, and Mrs. Sin Fat entered."
"Great ——!" she whispered, supporting her shiveringlimbs against the door. The exclamation was notblasphemous—for a wonder—it was half a prayer, half theexpression of strong inward agony. Then a fierce determinationseemed to strengthen every muscle and sinew in her tall frame; shestrode into the room, dashed the pipe from the girl's hands, and,seizing her by the arms with a force that made the bones crack, shesaid hoarsely:
"Who are you, my fine miss? Your name? What's your name? Youneed not scream, Jessie Hill. You see I know you. I have watchedyou from a distance for years. So your tender-hearted father haslet you drift this way, as he did me. He is too kind for devilslike us. You go out of this—back to your father! Do you hearme? You go now, and if you ever come here again I'll stab you todeath! Remember, I swear I will watch for you, and if you come hereagain I will kill you on the spot! They told you you would haverich dresses, handsome admirers, pockets full of gold, didn't they?They have lied, as they lied to the miserable wretches who havegone before you. There is no finery here—nothing but filthand misery and degradation. Come here again, and I will throw yourdead body into the gutter. Now, go!"
But the girl had fainted, and no wonder, for the woman grippedher like a vice, and her face was as frightful as a nightmare. Mrs.Sin Fat ran out for water; when she returned her husband had lockedthe outer door and placed the key in his pocket. She rushed at himin a fury, but checked herself with her hands in the air.
"That girl has got to go!" she hissed.
"No savee," muttered Sin, putting on a bolder front than ever hehad dared to do before.
"I tell you she shall go; she is my daughter, my child!"
"Nosavee! Stay here all a same." And he crossed into anotherroom. Sin had paid his agent a big commission on this girl, and wasdetermined not to lose her. Besides, he had taken a fancy to herhimself; he would rather have lost the mother than the daughter.Mrs. Sin Fat did not storm and rage, but turned away with acalmness that was unnatural, and presently followed Sin into theroom, and came close to him, concealing one hand in the folds ofher dress.
"That girl," she said, calmly; "is she to go?"
"No, no! Go yourself—"
These memorable words were the last ever spoken by the great,the prosperous Sin Fat. A knife flashed before his eyes, and wasdriven to the hilt in his side. He fell forward with only a groan,and the fall forced the heavy handle of the weapon still deeperbetween his ribs. Mrs. Sin Fat, coolly removing the keys from hispocket, went out, followed by a little stream of bright blood,which ran along the floor under the closed door, as if to keepwatch upon her, and entered the room where she had left the newgirl—her own daughter, as the fates would have it. The newgirl was sitting gazing about her, frightened and confused.
"Here, come with me," said the woman, seizing her roughly by thearm; "come with me, and see the delightful life you will have of itin this house!" She led the girl through the vile den, showed herall its abominations, and at last pushed her into one of the filthyalleys. "Here," she said, "you would be thrown out in a few months'time, a degraded wretch. A fine, gay life, eh? Now go, and be agood woman if you can. So help me Heaven, if you ever come back Iwill kill you. Remember that, night and day!"
The girl hurried away, full of horror and fear, but saved andher mother followed her at a distance. Sin Fat was found, and dulyinquested. A verdict of murder was returned, and a warrant issuedfor Mrs. Sin Fat, but she was never caught. Only one man ever casteyes on her again. A week after the murder a stoical old ferrymanwas working his lumbering craft across the river late one night,when something struck the prow, turned slowly round, and quietlydrifted with the dark waters. It was a body. It turned over afterthe contact with the boat, and the man saw a white, bleached facein the moonlight, surrounded by a mass of black hair, which formeda sombre halo. The ferryman looked after it curiously for a time,then resumed his rowing, muttering:
"Only a body! Well, I don't want t' be mixed up in noinkwests."
MANAGER M'Fie had seen the 12 o'clock shift below, and now,tired and disgusted, he kicked off his wet things, and "turned in."Manager M'Fie's hut was quite a salubrious summer residence, butthe rain had already picked holes in the bark roof. An iron bucketsuspended above the head of the bunk caught the tiny stream thatwould otherwise have dribbled upon his pillow, an oil-skin coatturned the drops that rained upon the foot of the bed into aminiature river meandering along the hard clay floor, and thedarkness was made musical by the tinkling sound of drops fallinginto tin dishes placed here and there about the hut to catch them.Mack curled down amongst the blankets under his great 'possum rug,swore a prayer or two, and endeavoured to give himself up to sweetforgetfulness of his "danged roomertism," the fact that she waspinching out—"she" being the reef—and his many othermanagerial troubles.
Outside the night was pitch dark, and the rain raced by insuccessive charges, driven by the howling wind that caught and torethe gusts of phosphorescent steam above the engine-house at themine, and sent the fragments streaming and curling away amongst thecomplaining trees like maddened wraiths. The driver in thewell-lighted, rain-tight engine-house whistled contentedly over hiswork, and the battery boys, under comfortable shelter, ratherdelighted in the storm, the howling of which could be heard evenabove the thunder of the stampers; but the unfortunate braceman,crouching in the lee of one of the poppet-legs beneath the mistyyellow glow of his lantern, cold, soddened, and more than halfafraid of the tempest, that shook the brace vigorously under itsbare poles, muffled the chattering of his teeth with a big quid,and heartily envied the facemen in the warm stopes and drivesbelow.
Sleep was long coming to the weary "skipper;" he lay awake forhours, feeling the rheumatism like rats gnawing in his old bones,and swearing quietly but with the emphasis of a devout "Geordie."At length, whilst listening intently for the four o'clock whistle,oblivion fell upon him, and a deep organ note mingled with thetinkling of the raindrops in the scattered tins.
Mack imagined he had not slept twenty minutes when he wasroughly awakened. He felt himself being energetically shaken, andheard a voice with a decided note of terror in it mixed up with themarch, march, march of the rain and the long shrill cries of thewind in the dead gums. A shower of water rained upon his face fromwet oilskins as he turned, and the voice of Tom White calledagain:—
"For God's sake, boss, tumble up! The 'big blow' has caved in,and the old shaft is choked with reef."
The manager was out on the sloppy floor in a moment, groping forhis clothes.
"An' Brierly, Brierly—D—n it all, man! what aboutBrierly?" he gasped.
"He is trapped like a rat."
"Lord, Lord!" groaned M'Fie, "an' there hasn't been a man nearthe cursed hole for months before to-night."
Mack discovered the matches, but they were like mush in hishand, and he was compelled to tear his way into his clothes in thedarkness. Presently he rushed after White towards the mine. Thewhistle was piping piteously against the storm, which stillthundered in the gully.
A hasty examination served to inform the manager of the extentof the disaster, which troubled him all the more for the fact thatit was not quite unforeseen and might have been avoided. Aboutforty yards from the working shaft of the Old Pioneer mine wasanother and a smaller shaft, one that had been sunk by thediscoverers of the reef. At the lower-most level of the latter holethe two shafts were connected by means of a drive for the purposeof improving the air in the workings. Within about fifty feet ofthe surface the original workers had opened out and struck a bigblow of quartz, the very richest of the lode, and in taking out thestone had excavated a great irregular chamber, reaching in placesto within twenty feet of the surface. This chamber they eventuallystowed full of loose reef from the lower workings, with the dualobject of saving hauling and holding up the ground. It was a badjob from a miner's point of view, but when a small independentparty is on rich stuff that is not expected to hold out the membersrarely waste time on fancy mining. Long since the surface over theexcavation had settled down, leaving a large hollow place. To-nightthe great pressure of the many tons of earth, combined with theforce exerted by the swelling of the reef, caused by the moisturethat percolated through, had crushed out the timbers that walled upthe mouth of the old drive, and sent the broken reef pouring intothe pit, like the waters of a cataract, filling eighty feet ofshaft in the winking of an eye.
If this were all the accident might not have been very serious,but at 12 o'clock M'Fie had sent Bill Brierly to put in a shift ina small drive leading from the air-shaft towards the Old Pioneer,and about thirty feet from the bottom of the former. Scarcely anywork had been done in this drive since it was opened out, and nowthe shaft was choked, and Brierly was penned in that tiny chamber,with air enough, Mack reckoned, to last a man five hours, providedhe had sense enough to put out his candles, and sit and wait fordeath in the dark—a hair-bleaching, marrow-freezingexperience men say who have so sat and waited.
"Stop the battery!" roared M'Fie, after his cursory inspection."Send the boys to knock up the men at the Piper an' up at MotherMurty's. They'll never hear that penny whistle agin this wind.White, you take Harry an' Bricky an' a couple of others when theycome, an' rig a win'las over the air-shaft, an' pull reef tillall's blue! Ben, go below—I expect Evans an' Castro arealready on the job. Chuck it down the winze, stow it anywhere, an'work—work like fiends. If we don't get at Brierly inside fivehours I'm a done man, an' so is he!"
The manager remained on top a few minutes longer, giving ordersto the brace-man and the engine-driver, and then went below with acouple of volunteers who had come out of the black bush,half-dressed and puffing like engines. In No. 3, which drive raninto the old shaft, three silent men, stripped to their flannels,reeking in the faint, ghostly light of the candles, workeddesperately upon the broken reef that had gushed into thedrive.
M'Fie and the others "took a hand," more men came down in thenext cage, and the next, and next, and presently wherever there wasroom for a man to plant a shovel or push a truck a man was toilingwith the magnificent energy with which the meanest miner is endowedwhen the life of a mate is at stake. On the brace three or four menhandled the trucks as the cages leapt to the landing. The enginethrobbed, groaned, and strained like a living thing, and the eagervolunteers, stoking vigorously, kept steam up to a dangerouspressure, while the safety-valve fairly shrieked under it. At themouth of the air-shaft a brawny contingent whirled the windlass,pulling dirt from the top of the heap below, where two men toiledlike heroes. Six or seven others, waiting to relieve exhaustedmates, gathered in the red glow before the boilers, and talked ofthe imprisoned man in low voices and with a newborn respect,telling all the best they knew of him; and two or three frightened,curious women, with shawls drawn over their heads, peered withwhite faces out of the surrounding darkness.
At daybreak the struggle was still going on with undiminishedzeal, and every handy place that would hold a truck of dirt waschoked with reef, and the cages sprang up with the full trucks orrattled down with the "empties" swiftly, and with scarcely apause.
Manager M'Fie worked with the best of them. Drenched withperspiration, bruised and cut by pieces of falling reef, he facedthe mass of dirt in the old shaft, careless of danger and ignorantof fatigue. As fast as the reef was shovelled away more rolled intothe drive out of the shaft, but at length Mack uttered a sharpexclamation of joy and pointed to a dark open space showing belowthe cap-piece of the first set. Enlarging this with a few strokesof the shovel, he seized a candle and examined the shaft beyond;then, staggering back in the drive, bellowed a cheer that wascaught up by the men and echoed on the brace.
The unexpected had happened. The choked pit was a ladder-shaft;a stout ladder, well stayed, ran up the side of the shaft, past thedrive in which Brierly was immured; between it and the slabs liningthe shaft was a space about 18 in. wide; large lumps of reef hadjammed between the rungs, and now, right up the side to the mouthof the drive, was a clear passage, large enough to admit of theescape of a slight man like Brierly.
"Steady lads—easy does it!" said Mack, as the men attackedthe reef again. "A wrong stroke might bring the stuff down again.Clear a way, an let's see what can be done."
Mack put his head into the shaft and called, but no answer cameback. He called louder, again and again. Still there was no reply,and the old manager turned away, and looked meaningly into theblank faces of the men, and his own cheeks were grey withdread.
"I'll chance it, boss!"
A young fellow stepped forward—a trucker, a boymerely—with a plain, strong face and glowing eyes, luminouswith resolution.
"No, no, lad! it might mean death."
But young Stevens pushed by the extended arm and seized theladder. Somebody stuck a lighted candle on his hat with a scrap ofmoist clay, and he went up the shaft on the under side of theladder, climbing gingerly, conscious that the least vibration mightbring the reef rushing in upon him. Mack watched him from below,and no man spoke a word. The boy reached the drive, paused only amoment, and started down again. Half a minute later he was draggedfrom the ladder by M'Fie's eager hands, and the same instant thereef rushed in, and filled up the place where he had been, andpoured into the drive with a vibrant roar like thunder.
Stevens stood with his back to one of the legs for a moment, asuperstitious fear transfiguring his face, his limbs tremblingpainfully.
"He is not there!" he gasped in a choked voice.
"Not there?"
The boy shook his head.
"Then," murmured M'Fie, "he is there;" and he pointed towardsthe filled-in shaft with a despairing gesture. "He must have made arush for the ladder when she started to run, and he's under thereef. It's all UP, boys!"
Something like a groan broke from the lips of the men, but theyseized their shovels and went to work again—all but one man.Graham turned away and walked towards the working shaft. He went upon the cage, and in less than five minutes returned and drew M'Fieaside. He whispered a few words in the manager's ear, and Mackfollowed him with an amazed look in his face. The two men got onthe cage, and Graham pulled the knocker, signalling to theengine-driver to drop them at No. 2.
Graham led the way along No. 2, in which drive no work had beendone for some months, and presently stopped and threw the light ofhis candle full upon the recumbent form of a man sleeping heavilyupon a few slabs, his head pillowed on his arm. Mack turned theface towards the light, and beheld Bill Brierly, the supposed deadman. Graham, and M'Fie stared at each other for a moment. Grahamgrinned feebly but Mack breathed a mighty oath. Brierly's tea-flasklay near. The manager picked it up and brought it to his nose.
"Drunk!" he ejaculated, kicking the sleeping miner.
"'Drunk!' He ejaculated."
"As a jackass," responded Graham, tersely.
Ten minutes later the brace-man called to the men below to knockoff and come up.
"We have got Brierly. He is alive!" he cried.
The men rushed the cages, cheering, and wondering. On top acircle of disgusted miners stood round Bill Brierly, who laysprawling on the floor before the boilers, grinning inanely in hisdrunken sleep. The truth was told in constrained whispers. Brierlywas probably "half-screwed" when he went on at 12; he had made hisway to No. 2, the driest and warmest drive in the mine, early inthe shift, taking his flask of rum with him, and intending, nodoubt, to "do a comfortable loaf" up there; and there he had lain,stupidly drunk, throughout those dreadful hours of anxiety andtoil. The men thought of their long struggle and their wastedsympathies, of the reef piled everywhere about the workings,yesterday so orderly and correct, and each man glanced into hisneighbour's face, but none spoke; no one even ventured to swear,and they could not laugh—the situation was too tremendous forany form of expression of which they were capable.
One by one the worn-out miners dragged themselves away towardstheir huts and houses, but M'Fie remained, sitting on a log,glowering at the drunken man, his mind full of the choked winzesand drives below, and of young Stevens cheek by jowl with death onthe buried ladder.
"Ain't you going to turn in, boss?" someone asked.
"No," he said, angrily. "No. I'm goin' to sit here till BillBrierly sobers up, an' then, by thunder, I'm goin' to kick him fromhere to the Piper, an' back again!"
"But, man, this is better than having to fish him from under thereef."
"I dunno, I dunno!" snarled Mack, striking his knee fiercelywith his great gnarled fist, "but I must kick that man or blowup!"
"A BIG fire down on the flat!"
It was after midnight. Petersen, Manly, Collier, and Grigg hadbeen playing euchre for the last five hours, and drinking Cody'shand-made, chain-lightning whisky. They were heavy-eyed andheavy-headed, and did not seem to realize the significance of theshout for a few moments. Then they placed their cards carefully onthe table, face downwards, and filed out, blundering along thepassage to the hotel verandah.
A fierce red glow burned against the western sky, and far downamongst the black gum-trees a tongue of flame danced in thedarkness.
Petersen, his tall form steadied against the verandah post,gazed for a moment, and the heaviness passed out of his eyes,succeeded by a keen interest, the flush in his handsome beardedface, induced by the heat of the room and the poisonous liquor hehad drunk, died out, and his cheeks became ashen-grey in the dimlight reflected from the bar window. Suddenly a cry burst from hislips:
"It is my house! Oh, God, my wife!"
He sprang off in the darkness, and rushed at full speed alongthe rough track leading down the hill in the direction of the fire,and his friends followed swiftly on his heels.
Petersen had only become even a moderately good customer toCupid Cody, the preternaturally ugly landlord of the Wallaby Arms,and patentee and sole proprietor of the Gehenna brand of whisky,within the last three months; but of late he had been a veryfrequent visitor at the hotel, and had developed an appetite forCupid's noxious liquors and a fondness for euchre which Mr. Codywas not slow to encourage.
Bert was a native of the Pea Creek district, and after living asober and industrious life to take suddenly to vitriolic whisky andcombative euchre parties two years after marriage was to excitecuriosity and comment. The comment was not complimentary to Mrs.Bert. His few scattered neighbours seemed to find a sneakingsatisfaction in the belief that Petersen was not happy in hismarried life. This, they contended, was only in accord with thefitness of things. In the first place young Petersen had gone totown for his wife, an action that was considered extremelyunneighbourly, and was accepted as a reflection upon themarriageable young maidens of Pea Creek and district. In the secondplace Mrs. Petersen had shown no disposition to "make up to" herneighbours' wives and daughters, and consequently had thereputation of being "stuck up," and that is a sin unpardonableamongst bush people, to whom sociability means so much.
Bert's married life had not been the happiest. The girl he lovedand the girl he married was quite unsuited to the life his wife wascalled upon to lead. She was a small, fair, town-bred girl, fond ofgaiety and admiration, and used to little work and much amusement.He had won her in his best clothes, in the course of occasionaltrips to the city, and he took her to his home out in the silentbush, where the nearest neighbour was a quarter of a mile off, andthen a big, plain, motherly person, with a great contempt for"Sunday clothes," and few ideas above the dairy.
Lately Mary's discontent had shown itself in petulant outbursts,in fits of the sulks, and a callous indifference to her husband'sfeelings, She grew to despise Petersen in his coloured moleskinsand heavy boots. Bert fought against it good-humouredly, strivingto make her life pleasant, and to retain her affection, butlatterly her temper had driven him almost to despair, and as hestill loved her he preferred the savage delights of Cody's barparlour to the childish querulousness of the disappointed woman andher eternal twitching at his heartstrings.
Petersen's house was quite two miles from the Wallaby Arms, andthroughout the long race the fear that had sprung into the man'ssoul never left him for a second. A conviction that his wife was inthe burning house possessed him, and endowed him with extraordinaryspeed and strength.
He had left his wife at five o'clock in the afternoon, sufferingfrom the headache that seemed to have become perpetual, and thatfilled his house with wailing, and called down upon his headtearful reproaches without reason and without end.
"What can I do?" he had asked, helplessly.
"At least you can go away," she answered, with fiercepetulance.
When Petersen reached his burning home two or three men wererunning about hopelessly with buckets of water, and two pale-facedwomen stood before the house, watching it burn, stupid with fear.To these Bert appealed:
"My wife! where is she?"
The women shook their heads dumbly, and one pointed a long,trembling hand towards the leaping flames.
"No, no, no!" the husband cried, and he called his wife's nameagain and again, running wildly from place to place. The men hadseen nothing of Mrs. Petersen—they believed she was in thehouse.
Distracted with fear and grief, Bert rushed once round the home,seeking amongst the saplings, crying his wife's name in a voicepregnant with pain and apprehension, and then the watchers saw himstop at the front and survey the burning house for a moment. Thefire had now seized upon every part of the building, and threw upgreat tongues of flame against the black sky. Only for a second hestood, and then they saw him dash at the door and drive it in withhis shoulder, and presently he disappeared amidst the flames andsmoke.
The people who had now collected about the burning house drewcloser and gazed into the flames, speechless and pale with terror.The moments dragged by, and they waited, the great fear growingupon them as the walls trembled, and the long, spiral flames wereflung higher and higher into the windless night. Still they waited,scarcely breathing. The suspense became intolerable. Men lookedinto each other's eyes with fearful meaning, and dry tongues passedover drier lips. At length an overwrought woman shrieked aloud, andsank upon her knees, hiding her face in the folds of her dress. Andthen the roof was seen to rise upwards and outwards, the wholebuilding vibrated, and, with a roaring and hissing of flames,collapsed into a glowing ruin, from which the sparks rose inclouds, and about which the flames ran and curled like greatserpents.
The watchers knew now that Bert Petersen would never come forthagain. The women sobbed, crouching on the ground. The men,white-faced and dumb, stood gazing stupidly into the fire,paralyzed by the sense of their impotence.
Not till Ragan, the mounted constable from Magpie, arrived didthey find tongue, and as the tale was told Ragan's face grew greyunder its accustomed bronze.
"Was burned trying to rescue his wife, you say?" hemurmured.
"It was a mad attempt," said the now sobered Collier.
"'Twas," continued the constable in a harsh voice; "for his wifewasn't there."
"Not there!"
"She's eloped with young Arthur Grey, the dude at thepost-office, damn her. They cleared out from Magpie together on theup train!"
"AIN'T she a dainty bit o' stuff?" The senior member of the firmof Slack and Samson, quartz-miners, Mount Moliagul, Victoria, saton the windlass-handle, with his elbows on his knees and his sharp,angular jaw in his palms, and gazed with a mournful regret afterthe trim little figure in cool and tasteful print sailing throughthe saplings under a great spread of straw hat that fanned the airlike the wings of a bird as she buoyantly stepped along. "She'simmense, don't you think, Bill?"
"Spiffin!" responded the junior partner, with gloomyenthusiasm.
"Got a fine eye," continued the senior member, envious andmeditative.
"Rippin' golden hair!"
"An' teeth. Say, Glover's luck's in."
"My oath!"
The senior partner got up, stretched his ridiculously longlimbs, sighed heavily, and incontinently slid below, using thepaid-out rope as a medium. The junior partner sighed with greaterintensity as he caught the last dove-like flutter between thetrees, and stationed himself at the windlass for an hour's pullingcombined with grave meditation.
Lucy Davis was nobody in particular to the firm of Slack andSamson. The emotions excited in the honest souls of the partnerswhen that charming young creature smiled up at them in passing,from out the grateful shade under the wide brim of her sun-hat,were felt in a like manner by the majority of the single men on thelead every time Miss Lucy's natty summer dresses came flittingthrough the bushes, and might be defined as a momentary discontentwith their own loneliness, and a vague hope that fate might someday bestow upon them just such another little mate as Lucy Davis.These emotions were, however, combined with a sense of personalill-treatment, for it was felt that the prize was not bestowed withdiscrimination in this instance.
Fate, however, has few like Miss Lucy in stock; the supply issmall and the demand unlimited. She was nineteen, below the averageheight, fair, with a glorious burden of bright chestnut hair,which, despite her impatient efforts to brush it down smooth, inaccordance with the prevailing style, would persist in running upin soft, regular ripples again almost immediately, to the greatsatisfaction of all beholders. She had large, shy blue eyes, withlong lashes, and arched brows two shades darker than her hair. Itis, perhaps, after all, a waste of effort to attempt to describe aface—we may say this feature is thus, and that is so and so,and every reader will picture a different countenance—butMiss Lucy's was perfection glorified. It had that light that seemsto invite protection, and which proud, arrogant man so appreciatesin the woman he loves. Her figure was slight but well rounded,there was a touch of native dignity in her walk, and her naturalgaiety was demurely restrained by a due appreciation of theenormous responsibilities of a young lady of nineteen who had tokeep house—no, tent—for father.
Miss Lucy wended her way along the brow of the hill towards thehead of the lead until she reached the claim of Messrs. Davis andGlover. Here she seated herself on the reef, under the shade of the"win'sa'l" that hung limply in the shaft, and, producing materialsfrom her basket, proceeded to knit a stocking to a merry tune, sungvery softly, whilst the strokes of picks drummed faintly in thebowels of the earth below, and the rosellas, swinging, headdownwards from the boughs of an adjacent white gum and buryingtheir heads in the abundant blossom, murmured an occasional twitterof gluttonous satisfaction. The belle of Mount Moliagul had notbeen knitting many minutes before a spasmodic jerking of thewindlass rope caused her to drive her needles at express speed andassume a deceitful air of pre-occupation. The oscillations of therope became shorter and quicker, and presently a hairy arm cameinto view; it was followed by a hairy face, and a small, bright manof about 45, with splashes of clay on his face and in his whiskers,and alternate patches of clay and candle-grease pretty well allover him, drew himself up quietly and seated himself on the edge ofthe shaft; he watched the young lady for a few moments, and markedwith apparent satisfaction the delicate briar-rose pink of hercheek, and the little moist curls upon her brow and about her smallears. Miss Lucy's preoccupation was now very intense indeed.
"'Ello, ugly!" said the small, bright man. "You here?"
"'Ello, dad! that you?" Lucy was surprised.
"That's me; s'pose you expected someone better, eh?"
"Someone better, dad! There's no one better on this lead. Goin't' pull dirt?"
"No; goin' over to Buckley's forge t' point these picks." Davishad now landed several used-up tools.
"There ain't much haulin' t' do, Loo. Th' durned reef's ez hardez iron; if she don't make fresh we'll have t' do some shootin'.When I come back I'll send George up t' get th' water out, though;I suspect that'll do you."
Miss Loo insisted that she was not particularly anxious to haveGeorge on the surface, but her loving parent was incredulous, andretreated, grinning in an old-fashioned way. It would have beendifficult for the young lady to explain exactly how she felttowards Mr. George Glover. She was going to marry him, shebelieved, and had never entertained any serious objection to thearrangement. He was a fine big fellow, good-looking enough, youngenough, steady enough, and suitable enough for a miner's daughter;he had been her father's mate for two years, and she liked him.They had associated a good deal during their acquaintance, hadtaken long walks together, and there was a tacit understanding thatthey were to be husband and wife "some day." George had never takenher in his arms, and said—"I love you—be my wife;" hewas not that kind of young man. He was a heavy sort of fellow,physically and intellectually; he thought that when a man visited agirl frequently and they strolled together and were civil to eachother for a certain length of time they naturally meant matrimony,and there was no necessity for any excitement about the matter. Hewas immensely pleased with the state of affairs, but he wasunworthy of his luck—it is ridiculous to waste champagne on aman who would be as well pleased with beer. Mr. Glover could notappreciate the pretty, piquant damsel whom fortune was about tolavish on him as she deserved.
"Halloa! on top there!"
"Be-e-low!"
"Er yer goin' t' send down that blessed pick, or must I stickhere an' freeze?"
This was Mr. Glover; he was in a bad temper evidently. Herfather had forgotten the pick, but she could send it down easilyenough. It was a simple matter to fasten the pick on the rope; shehad seen it done times out of mind, and knew how perfectlywell.
"Hi, hi" she responded in her father's voice.
There was a sharp pick by the windlass-stand—that must bethe one; in a few seconds it was on the rope.
"Look up, below!"
She gave the rope a pull and the windlass revolved rapidly, but,to the great horror of the girl, the pick had no sooner swung intothe shaft than it keeled right over and slipped out of the hitch.There was a whiz, followed by a cry and a splash, and then silence.In that second of time every vestige of colour had fled from Lucy'sface. She fell on her knees and peered wildly down into thedarkness below.
"George!" Something in her throat choked the cry, and it wasonly a harsh whisper.
"George! George!" Her voice had broken its bonds now and wasshrill and agonized.
"Speak, George! dear George, why don't you answer me?"
Not a whisper came back, and the girl arose to her feet againand gazed towards the other claims along the load with desperateeyes. Her face was strangely transformed by the agony of fear thatpossessed her—it looked old and drawn. The thought thatflashed upon her was that the pick had struck her lover as hewaited to receive it at the mouth of the drive; the well-boardswere off, and he would assuredly be driven into the water by theblow, so that if he were not already dead, he would drown beforeassistance came. Her mind was made up in an instant; there were nomen on the surface at the other mines, and there was no time tocall them up. She had a horror of the dark, echoing shafts, butthat was forgotten now. She paid out the rope with desperateenergy, and when that was done seized it with her small hands andstarted down as she had often seen the men do. Her feet slippedmechanically into the toe-holes on either side of the narrow shaft,and no touch of fear, no thought of her danger, entered her soul.There were rough sets of timber at various distances upon which shemight have rested, but she did not pause for an instant. Down,down, with a numbed body and a mind so confused that she scarcelyrealized what she was doing, and at length her feet struck upon aslab that had been thrown across the well, and she stood upright,her eyes yet blinded by the sudden transition from the brightsunlight.
"Jerusalem! Loo!"
She could now dimly discern a dark figure moving in the drivebefore her. The exclamation of amazement was followed by a roar oflaughter that lasted nearly a minute and shocked the girl terribly.She was leaning against the side of the shaft, trembling in everylimb, and from the tips of her lacerated fingers large drops ofblood fell into the water.
"You—you were not hurt, then?" she contrived towhisper.
"Hurt, no! I thought I'd scare you. But who'd a-thought you'dhave the pluck to come down! By thunder, it's rich!" And again helaughed immoderately.
She could comprehend at last. He was safe, he had played abrutal joke upon her, and that coarse merriment was the reward ofher action. She despised him for it. The revulsion of feeling lefther weak and sick.
"Be quick," she said; "you must pull me up. I can't breathehere!"
"I didn't reckon on you comin' down, you know," he saidapologetically, struck by the peculiar tone of her voice.
"I must go on top!"
He hooked the hide bag on the rope, showed her how to ride byplacing one foot in the bag and steadying herself with the other,and then hastened up the shaft.
"Look up, below!"
She felt the rope tighten, and was drawn up again towards thesurface. Her father returned whilst Glover was at the windlass, andhe was now kneeling at the mouth of the hole, peering anxiouslydown at the set white face slowly rising out of the subterraneangloom.
"Quicker, man!" gasped the father, something in that facestriking a thrill of horror through his frame.
"Quicker, for the love of heaven! Almighty God!" Davis clutchedmadly at the bleeding hands, but they slipped down the rope fromunder his fingers, the girl sank back, the windlass whizzed, andshe was gone.
She was still breathing when they brought her broken form to thesurface, but on the following afternoon she died.
A FEW years ago the peaceful solitude of a sequestered localitynear the north coast of Tasmania was abruptly violated by thesudden eruption of a small but extremely lively mining township. Acouple of enterprising youths pottering about the surface a fewmonths earlier in pursuit of nothing more valuable than wallabiesor "devils" became deeply interested in the unexpected discovery ofa very promising-looking outcrop of quartz. The direct result ofthis interesting circumstance was an immediate and enthusiastictrend of public feeling towards that retired locality, and a speedypressure of population along the line of reef. A startlingtransformation ensued; with wonderful alacrity "pubs." andpoppet-legs sprang upon the scene, the forest trees fell back, andhuts, and tents, and paling stores took their places; the rattle oftrucks, the clang of knockers, the heavy beat of batteries, and theunited clamour of a dozen whistles buried their echoes in thesurrounding bush; and beer, and rum, and politics, and policemenabounded, in conjunction with other enervating evidences ofcivilization.
Among the early arrivals on Lefroy was a long, bony,weather-beaten man with a large and varied experience ofgoldfields, culled in his wanderings hither and thither acrossAustralia from one diggings to another. Mr. Barney Brown, in commonwith most nomads of his class, was extremely resentful ofauthority, and much disliked managers and captains of shifts,preferring the freedom of action and liberty of speech that are theprivileges of the man who is his own boss. These independentsentiments led him to turn his attention to the shallow alluvialalong the creek, which hitherto had been little heeded. Havingprocured a miner's right, and chummed in with a congenial soul,Barney marked out a claim in a promising locality, and beforesundown had the pleasure of bottoming on wash 18 inches thick andgiving pennyweight prospects. The panning-off of the first dish waseagerly supervised by several unattached diggers, and the immediateresult was a rush on the postmaster for "rights," and a promiscuouspegging-out of claims. With a soft, pipe-clay "bottom," a foot anda half of rich stuff, easily shifted, and an unlimited supply ofCascade beer in an adjacent "pub.," the mates took things extremelyeasy, and cheerfully surveyed the certainty of a little pile whentheir holding should peg out.
Mr. Brown was thirty-eight years of age, and, as previouslyintimated, long and loose; he had pale ginger hair and whiskers,and a mild air of self-deprecation and pensive bashfulness, which,however, was very delusive, and tended to decoy facetious strangersto their own undoing, as he was prepared to maintain his standingagainst "anything that walked on end," and to resent aninfringement of his rights by the prompt and judicious applicationof a pair of fists of enormous size and fortified with hornyencrustations like horse-warts; and the placid urbanity with whichhe undertook to knock the incautious party out of his boots, andfulfilled the obligation, was a matter of the deepest interest tothe men of Lefroy. But Mr. Brown's most pronounced feature was hisimplacable distrust of unmarried women. A spiteful treatise on thegirl of the period, written by some acrimonious philosopher,combined with an extremely unpleasant legal experience with ared-haired young female who had become convinced that he ought tomarry, despite his belief to the contrary, and who established heropinion in a court of law, obtaining considerable of his savings asa recompense for the loss of his name, had served to inspire himwith a wholesome dread of the sex early in his career, andobservation and deduction only intensified his sense of themalignity of Woman. He entertained a hazy notion that every singlegirl with whom he came in contact had intentions the reverse ofhonourable, that she harboured a deep-laid scheme either toinveigle him into a state of bondage or rob him by legal process,so he regarded the sex with an eye of doubt, and held himselfseverely aloof.
Mr. Brown's hut-mates did not share his unseemly prejudice; theyappreciated the young woman as an admirable institution, and beheldher with adoration, and gave way to such weaknesses as white shirtsand hair-oil in pursuit of her. Barney strove eloquently to convertthem, and feelingly indicated the error of their ways, and foretoldbreach of promise cases and conjugal infelicity; but they heededhim not, and he held his way alone. He felt that in Lefroy he hadreasons to be especially watchful of the common enemy, his brightprospects and the abounding zeal of the local damsels necessitatingevery precaution in protection of the rights of man. Diverssusceptible young females cast large languishing eyes upon theunprepossessing Brown, and, remembering the rapidity with which hiscapital in the little wooden bank attached to a local grocery wasswelling, strove, by dint of gorgeous raiment and captivatingsmiles, to overcome his stoical reserve; but Barney gave them everydiscouragement, and always forsook them for the society of the baror the billiard-room at the earliest opportunity.
One Saturday afternoon, Barney and two chums, armed to the teethwith supplies, ammunition, and guns, departed into the bush,intending to travel a few miles back and spend the Sunday inkangaroo and duck shooting. They had excellent sport, and werehomeward bound, well laden with the spoil of the chase, late on theSunday afternoon, when Barney, who was in the lead, had hisattention attracted by a moving body that disappeared behind a treeimmediately after catching his eye. Supposing it to be a wallaby,and intent on having another shot, Mr. Brown dropped his load andadvanced warily to the encounter. When well within distance, hetook advantage of the first glimpse of the animal to shoot. Horror!a human being rolled into view, and immediately sprang to its feet.Barney was almost paralyzed with terror. The figure was that of agirl of about nineteen—the wildest-looking girl and thetallest he had seen. She was bare-headed and bare-footed, and cladin a rag of a jacket and an abbreviated skirt that was rapidlyyielding to the ravages of time. For a few moments the uncannycreature, wild-eyed and trembling, surveyed her assailant, thenturned and fled with the speed of a deer. About a hundred yards offshe stopped again and looked back like a curious animal, but, whenBarney moved to advance, she turned and rushed away, regardless ofhis cries. To follow would have been useless—she was soonlost to view amongst the saplings. On the tree and on the grasswhere the girl had stood there were traces of blood.
"I reckon I'll be jugged for this lot!" groaned Barney.
His mates had no opinion to offer, they had only capacity forintense amazement. They were eight miles from the township and hadnever heard of a dweller in those wilds. The only feasible solutionof the phenomenon that presented itself was embodied in thesupposition that the bush was haunted by a stray female who hadescaped in her early childhood and been missing ever since.
The story was received with derisive incredulity at Lefroy, buton the Monday afternoon following the strict veracity of Mr. Brownand his chums was established to the satisfaction of theinhabitants, and at the same time the mystery of their adventurewas much abated. Twice a week a large, hairy savage used to comecrawling out of the leafy solitudes, laboriously hauling on a ropeto which was attached a screwed and bony quadruped which had theconsummate audacity to pretend to be a horse, and to which in turnwas attached an antiquated shay. This bucolic curiosity used to towhis out-of-date animal round the town, peddling butter, eggs, andvegetables. He was big-boned, skinny, and of uncertain age, havingapparently been sun-dried at a late stage of his existence, orpreserved for immortality by the action of smoke or some othercurative process; he was solemnly taciturn and uninviting, andnobody troubled him with questions. Nobody seemed to know anythingabout him; when he had completed his circuit, he shuffled offamongst the trees and darkness enveloped him.
On the afternoon mentioned Mr. Brown was greatly concerned onobserving this strange specimen desert his conveyance on the trackand bear down upon him with every demonstration of excitement; heroared with bovine ferocity, and brandished a whip, which our herowas distressed to observe was loaded. He and the astonished diggerclashed and clinched at the mouth of the shaft, there was a briefstruggle, a wild upheaval of pipeclay, a dull thud, and when thedust rolled by, Mr. Brown was revealed astride his fallen foe, whostill foamed and roared in inarticulate rage.
Barney's first thought was to send for whisky, and when thepotent drug arrived, he, with the assistance of a couple offriends, administered a large dose to the intemperate hawker byforce of arms. This treatment was repeated several times, thepatient taking to his medicine very kindly when he caught itsflavour, and when it had calmed his angry passions he graciouslyexplained that he had heard Barney was the man who shot hisdaughter, and he had intended, in the heat of his feelings, toexact summary vengeance, but now he was prepared to acceptexplanations. Satisfactory explanations were forthcoming, and thepedlar, who introduced himself as Abram Tooey, under theexhilarating influence of the grateful liquor, developed a spiritof festive geniality little to be expected in one so ancient, anddeparted, after inviting the boys out to his farm, leading hisbeast of burden in a reckless and erratic manner, andenthusiastically carolling a bacchanalian ditty long out offavour.
Mr. Brown and his friends were filled with an exceeding greatcuriosity regarding the agricultural recluse and his wild,untutored daughter. A man from George Town was found who knew thatold Tooey had been settled on a few hundred acres somewhere downnear the sea for over fifteen years, and that before the outbreakof the diggings he used to journey into George Town at statedintervals for supplies; but as to his family, he knew nothing aboutany daughter—never heard or supposed he had any. This onlyfurther excited Barney's inquisitiveness, and he determined tovisit the eccentric Tooey and have another interview with the wildwoman. A desire to ascertain if the girl had been much hurt,Abram's invitation, and a bottle of whisky, he thought, would beexcuses enough. He had no apprehensions about visiting anunconventional young lady who ran bare-footed in such a skirt,showed manifest dread of his sex, and had been reared beyond thedegrading influence of fashion-plates and the ways and wiles ofcivilized woman.
True to his determination, Barney, with his mate, Croaker, setout in search of the Tooey homestead on the next Sunday. Theyfollowed the track of the old shay, and after a walk of about twohours and a half discerned the slab establishment they wereseeking. As they drew near they were attracted by the spectacle ofMiss Tooey sitting on a log fence, sunning herself, but that younglady no sooner caught sight of their advancing figures than sherolled promiscuously off her perch, and cut across the paddock,showing wonderful action and phenomenal speed; and they saw her afew minutes later surveying them with great curiosity from fanciedsecurity in the fork of a tree. Mr. Tooey did not manifest anygreat delight at the sight of his visitors, and asked them in witha look of sulky suspicion; but a glimpse of the whisky-bottleimproved his temper, and a few nips served to impart a genialconviviality and make him rather communicative.
The residence was a miserable hovel, furnished with a suitehand-made by an amateur and fashioned from saplings principally. Asmoked old woman of most uncouth appearance arose in speechlessamazement from a three-legged stool as they entered, and driftedfurtively from the room. This was Mrs. Tooey, as her lord indicatedwith a nod and a growl. When the whisky had paved the way, thediggers ventured a few interrogations. They were gratified to hearthat "Mur Jane wasn't hit bad"—merely a trifle ofhalf-a-dozen pellets through the fleshy part of the arm.
"Ain't she a sort of retirin' young woman?" venturedCroaker.
"D—d if I've noticed much," replied her interesting parentslowly. Then, with the air of a man imparting an important truth,he added: "She's a wonder t' eat."
"She skipped from us 's if we was goin' t'shoot agen 's we comealong," continued Croaker. "Seems to me she's bashful."
"Maybe, p'raps, she is a bit backard," said Mr. Tooey, rattlinghis pannikin as a delicate intimation that it was empty. "Shehasn't seen a young fellow since she was five year old, an' Isuppose she's got a notion they're given to shootin' that way."
Here Abram afforded his guests a sketch of his career, fromwhich they gathered that for 15 years his wife and daughter hadbeen drifting into savagery in that wretched hole, not having seenhalf-a-dozon strange faces in the whole of the time.
"Towns ain't no places for girls," said Mr. Tooey in conclusion,"where they're allus wantin' boots an' dimunds an' tooth-powders.Girls comes dear in towns."
This sentiment Barney seemed prepared to endorse, but Croakerdenounced it with great vigour, asserting that it was an injusticeto keep a girl from communion with her kind, and advising Abram tolet his daughter visit Lefroy and obtain some polish.
"I don't see as Mur Jane wants polish," observed Mr. Tooey, withsome paternal pride; "she'll cut scrub with the best of 'em, I bet,an' there ain't her equal at milkin'."
These things were all very well, said Croaker, but it wasagainst nature to see a girl running away from a young man as if hewas a cannibal with a large appetite. A girl in her natural stateshould display a proper leaning towards young men, and rejoice inthem.
Mr. Tooey was in a pliable frame of mind, and it required littleargument to induce him to bring his daughter in—just toconvince her that young men were not dangerous, or liable to shootat any moment, and to break her in to them, like. Abram went out,they heard him calling "Mur Jane!" and presently he returned,dragging his lank, awkward daughter after him, and he placed her,bashful and trembling, before her visitors, her long, unkempt redhair falling about a very uninteresting face, and her large eyesfull of guileless shyness. Barney ventured an apology and aninquiry after her wounded arm, but elicited no response, and MaryJane, as soon as released, darted behind the door, and surveyed thevisitors wonderingly through a crack for a short time, after whichshe watched her opportunity to escape again into the paddock, andwhen the young men were leaving she followed them for half a mileat a respectful distance, and then watched them out of sight fromthe boughs of a peppermint tree.
Mr. Brown was peculiarly interested in "Mur Jane." It was afascinating experience to him, this contact with a young woman whobeheld him with awe and fled from him in fear and trembling. Hevisited the Tooey homestead again. He went often, and in time thetimorous daughter of the house became somewhat reconciled to theinnovation, and no longer fled at his approach, but would sit inthe room, looking extremely ungainly on the low bush stool,surveying the visitor with steadfast attention, and giving way togiggling paroxysms of bashful confusion whenever he caught her eyeor addressed towards her the most trivial remark. The spectacle ofthe child of nature posed there in various acute angles,breathlessly regarding him as if he were something out of amenagerie, was a novel one, and the situation was extremelygratifying to his feelings as a man and a lord of creation.Hitherto he had found the female element demonstrative and inclinedto "boss the job;" pert little misses in short frocks alwaysoverawed him with their aggressive conceit and airy nonchalance; inthe presence of "young ladies," despite his six feet of muscularmanhood, he dwindled into insignificance, and felt meek andconstrained, whilst they prattled cheerfully and maintained asuperior mental calm. With "Mur Jane" the position was reversed;she plainly acknowledged him a greater being, and did humble homageto his majesty. Thus his dignity as a man was restored, and hefully appreciated the sense of authority he enjoyed in her company.Besides, Miss Tooey, being untutored in the deep deceits thatcommunion with her kind alone could engender, was not likely toattach undue importance to his visits or concoct matrimonialschemes or deep designs for damages for breach of promise. Truth totell, Barney—despite his innate bashfulness—harbouredmore than an average fondness for the other sex in the secretrecesses of his being, and his dread of connubial bondage was onlyapparently implacable. Meanwhile, his comparative ease in thepresence of Miss Tooey rested partly on his inability to acceptthat large, uncouth young lady, with her native timorousness,tanned face, wild hair, and palpable muscles, as of the same orderas those dainty, designing, self-sufficient damsels who flourish intowns and hamlets.
A friendship cemented by whisky grew up between Messrs. Tooeyand Brown. Abram's gloomy taciturnity almost faded away before thewarmth and congeniality of Barney's "Old Scotch," and Mr. Brown'sSunday afternoon visits came to be regarded as a welcome break inthe dull monotony of "tending" cows and going to bed, then gettingup and "tending" cows again. Very soon "Mur Jane" displayed aburning desire to appear to better advantage before the visitor.This intuitive weakness first took form in the shape of a large,battered brass locket which the unsophisticated creature hung abouther neck on a piece of braid; subsequently a monstrosity ofmillinery, a bonnet of fearful ugliness and great of antiquity, wasunearthed from the dust of ages; a moth-eaten skirt, which was arelic of Mr. Tooey's late lamented maternal grandparent, and mighthave had some pretension to style a century ago, was next turned toaccount; a faded ribbon, a large artificial flower of an unknownspecies, and a lot of other ancient finery followed, all of whichgrandeur Miss Tooey paraded with undisguised rapture and innocentartlessness, to the great distress of her parent, who upbraided herextravagance and warned her to be careful of "that 'ere hat,"which, he averred, her mother was married in, and cost four andeightpence—"besides the linin'." Barney beheld Mary Jane'sassumption of style with an unfavourable eye; he regarded theoutrageous bonnet particularly as a wicked frivolity, and as anevidence that Miss Tooey was animated by vanities entirelyunaccountable in a young lady reared in the wilderness beyond theinsidious influence of her sex. At about this time, too, Mary Jane,without abating her giggling and wriggling, and her timorousdiffidence, began to assume an air of having a vested interest inthe visitor, which assumption of proprietorship gave rise topainful conjecture in the mind of Mr. Brown, and caused him to haveserious doubts and misgivings about the advisability of continuinghis visits to the Tooey homestead. Whilst yet doubting he was oneSunday morning assisted to a decision by the conduct of hishut-mates. These facetious gentlemen had long amused themselveswith ironical conjectures regarding Brown's intentions in pursuingthe rude, untutored Tooey, and remarks more or less sarcastic anenthis pronounced antipathy to matrimony. On the Sunday morning inquestion, assuming unconsciousness of the subject of theirobservations, they indulged in sotto voce soliloquies andinteresting speculations regarding hypothetical nuptials in whichMr. Brown and Miss Mary Jane Tooey, eldest and only daughter ofAbram Tooey, Esq., of Piper, Tasmania, figured conspicuously inconjunction with an imaginary parson. The bride's trousseau wasminutely if inelegantly described, and Home and Victorian paperswere earnestly requested to "please copy." Croaker, in a deepmental abstraction, was heard to observe that it was understood thehappy man intended augmenting his collection with a three-leggedduck and a two-headed wombat and opening a menagerie of livingcuriosities. Barney could not stand much of this badinage; heuplifted himself in his bunk, swore at his mates collectively andin turn and visited Tooey's no more.
A few weeks went by and Abram passed no remarks; he made hisusually bi-weekly visits, dragging after him his bow-legged andcross-eyed horse and back-dated shay, remained as saturnine as ofyore, and gave no indications of having noticed Barney's neglect.One fine morning, however, the people of Lefroy were astonished tosee Mr. Tooey emerging from the trees hauling his horse moredesperately than was his wont, whilst the shay swayed dangerouslyunder the additional burden of a long, fantastically-dressed femaledisguised in a scoop-shaped bonnet. Near Brown's claim theapparition dismounted, and Barney, who was on top pulling wash, wasdistressed on recognising "Mur Jane" in the awful tile her motherhad handed down to posterity and the worm-eaten skirt that had beenin the family nearly a century, and displaying the battered brasslocket and the artificial flower to the best advantage. He was muchmore concerned to see her advance hesitatingly towards him, coylychewing the faded ribbon and grinning her old grin of shy distress.She mounted the tip and stood there, looking supremely absurd, andgiggling vacantly in response to his salutations, whilst he feltthat a sudden attack of something fatal would be a relief from thestrain he was undergoing. Old Tooey had gone on his round and left"Mur Jane" to keep Barney company, and all the men "on top" hadtaken up commanding positions to enjoy the interview, and the menfrom below were swarming to the surface like startled ants, inevident anticipation of entertainment. Barney maintained his standfor five minutes, then Miss Tooey's painful diffidence in a publicplace, her bonnet, and those dumb but appreciative spectators,became too many for him, and he deserted the windlass and fledignominiously off the field.
After that Miss Tooey often visited the township with herparched sire, and, while he pushed his business, she sought out Mr.Brown, and blighted him with her bonnet and her abashed giggle. Shedescended on him at unexpected moments, and stared aimlessly athim, and followed him purposelessly, till he was laughed andchaffed to the verge of insanity, and fought two men every day indesperate endeavours to relieve his feelings. Mary Jane looked himup two or three times during the week, and visited the hut onSundays. She would seek him in the bars and billiard-rooms andother public places, and afflict him with her pensive baby stareand her maidenly confusion, till the homage that had once been asource of gratification to him became the bane of hisexistence.
At length an expedient occurred to Mr. Brown. He decided toremain below, and would have slept below had "Mur Jane" renderedthat course necessary. On Sunday the sight of Miss Tooey'saggravating smile was the signal for him to bolt for the claim, andhe would sit away in a drive till sundown, playing Yankee-grab withhimself, or earnestly speculating on the outrageousness of women inevery walk of life. Of course this brought more ridicule on hisdevoted head, but it secured his object, and very soon after MissTooey's visits ceased.
A short time later Barney was looking quite cheerful once more,and resting placidly under the assurance that he had seen the lastof Mary Jane, and was not likely to be again haunted by herungainly person or troubled by obtrusive attentions, when one day,as he and his mates were sitting at dinner, a digger who had beenup to Launceston bounced in with an air of great importance and amission that would admit of no delay.
"Say, Brown," gasped the intruder, "hev you seen Tooey's girllately?"
Barney arose, sadly, slowly, but with a determined purpose; hecrossed over the hut, and running the knuckle end of his large fistalong the digger's jaw with a suggestive gesture he said:
"Now, Spooner, that game's stale—it's worked out and hungup, an' if there's anythin' more said I'm goin' to start afight."
"No larks, Barney; 'pon me soul I was jest askin' you. Ain't ye,though?" continued the excited Spooner in apologetic tones.
"Naw. Don't want to."
"I have."
"Don't care a hang."
"By thunder, you do though. She's up town—I saw her. Uptown in a big bustle and a fashionable hat that high, takin' outproceedin's fer a breach of promise."
Barney's fork stopped half-way to his lips (he had resumed hisseat), his mouth remained open for a moment, then he made adesperate gulp at the atmosphere, swallowed nothing with greatdifficulty, and whispered earnestly:
"Against who did you say, Spooner?"
"Agin you."
That was enough. Barney wanted no more dinner; he laid down hisknife and fork, took up his hat, and went out. Presently hereturned, and thrust his pale face in at the door.
"You're sure it's a breach of promise and agin me, Spooner, areye?" he queried.
Spooner was sure, and Barney retreated again. He went to thelocal bank and drew his money, then he sought the hut again androlled up his swag without a word. That done, he remarkedtersely:
"I'm off, boys, tip us yer fist."
"What! goin' right away?" gasped Croaker.
"My eye. Goin' to catch the boat at the Heads and get right outof this. So long!"
They tried to persuade him there was stuff enough in his claimto see him through the suit, and that "Mur Jane" had no case, buthe was determined. "I tried it once before," he said. "Breaches ofpromise is h——."
And he went.
SHE has sprung upon a corner of the rough table in thechock-and-log hut that is her new home, and sits swinging a small,bare, brown foot and pleading with a big sun-tanned womanindustriously churning at a wash-tub just without the door of thehut.
"Are you on, Aunt Jem?" she queries, eagerly pressing a matterthat has been long in debate. "I think it's spiffin'. I couldmanage that ole black horse what you talk about, King Billy, easyas winkin'. Usen't I drive et the Parker's Miners, anyhow, when theboys'd let me?"
"You could drive right enough; 'tain't that," answered Aunt Jemin a deep, manly voice, assumed, like most of her mannishattributes, for so long that at length it had become natural toher. "There's the night shifts"—Aunt Jem paused, grimacinginhumanly over the wringing of a crimean shirt—"an' besides,it's breakin' the law, I'm thinkin'."
"But the law won't know—nobody won't know, 'ceptin' youan' me. An', then, think uv the thirty-five bob a fortnight,seventeen an' six a week—what lux'ries we could buy fer dadwith that!"
This triumphant assertion of the advantages of the propositionwas not without its effect upon Aunt Jem. She ceased work to muse,and she pensively scratched her chin the while. Aunt Jem's chin wasnot innocent of a certain vagrant stubble, and Aunt Jem's breathwas suggestive of tobacco. Aunt Jem was large of limb and muscularand masculine. She had fought her own battle and taken excellentcare of herself in the "early days;" she had roughed it atBallarat, Bendigo, Blanket Flat, Eaglehawk, Fiery Creek—infact, on most of the Victorian diggings in the "fifties" and"sixties;" she had washed dirt as well as clothes, and stillboasted herself as expert on a sluice-box with the fork as any manliving. In short, this worthy woman had faced the world "like aman" for twenty odd years, and at fifty-four was little disposed toset up any sentimental bounds to woman's sphere.
"Are you quite certain no one knows you're here?" she asked,after a few moments' cogitation.
"Sure's death," replied the girl with enthusiasm. "Ain't beenaway from the hut further'n them saplin's there since I landed onthe mine. Ain't seen a soul, bar you."
"The people down et the township might 've noticed us comethrough in the coach, then agen they mightn't. Anyhow, there're notlikely to come pokin' round here. By thunder, we'll do it."
The girl bounced off the table, danced about the room in aparoxysm of delight, and performed an extraordinary feat oftumbling, finishing in a huddled heap on the bunk.
Kitty Bennet was the only child of Mat Bennet, a digger whoseluck was always out—a man who had dug and delved his waythrough Victoria—north, south, east, and west—withoutunearthing more gold than sufficed to provide the necessaries oflife from year's end to year's end. Mat married late, and his wifedied soon after Kitty's birth, leaving her child to theaffectionate but not very discriminating care of its nomadicfather. Aunt Jemima "lent a hand" in bringing up the girl, "fornatural love and affection," as the lawyers put it; but, as theaunt's ideas of conventional refinement had suffered much in thecourse of long familiarity with, and acquiescence in, the rough andready customs of society in the camps and about the diggings, itmay easily be understood that Kitty's exuberant character wasneither tamed nor toned by her fond maternal aunt, and the girl"had her fling," whether sharing her father's tents on somealluvial field, or living with Aunt Jem in whichever part of thewilderness that massive relation happened to be situated for thetime being.
A week or so previous to the opening of our story Bennet wasstricken down by the fossicker's bane, rheumatic fever, andcompelled to go into the hospital at Sale. His sister Jemima hadrecently accepted an honourable and responsible position on a minein a comparatively new reefing district, in the hills about twentymiles beyond Bruthen, where she officiated as housekeeper for themanager, in consideration of which service she received fifteenshillings a week and the use of a "furnished" hut standing on thecompany's lease, a wage she increased by washing for the menworking on the Old Identity. Here Kitty found herself on the thirdday following her father's, departure to the hospital.
Shortly after making the resolution recorded, Aunt Jem wrung outthe last article in her tub, and half an hour later she departedfor the township on the grocer's waggon. This meant a walk back ofeleven miles "by moonlight alone," but Jem was superior to allfeminine weaknesses, and too thorough a bush-woman to let a triflelike that trouble her. She returned in due time, bearing a bundleunder her arm—returned over Camel Hill, having left the trackand cut through the bush to save the long turn round.
Next morning Spence, the manager of the Old Identity, was bailedup at the dam by a bright-eyed, brown-faced boy, withclosely-cropped hair, an intelligent if not particularly cleancountenance, and an air of complete assurance.
"Say, boss, can you give us a job?"
The old miner looked down with surprise and amusement at hisdiminutive petitioner.
"Tendin' ducks?" he queried with a grin.
"Naw!" (with sublime contempt) "drivin' the whim."
"And who are you anyhow, cherub?"
"Name's Christopher Bennet, called Kit. That's my Aunt Jem overto the log hut, an' I want a job bad."
"Too small."
"You bet I ain't! I'll 'tend whim with any kid round here. Usedto drive onst. Give 's a show, will you, please?"
"Well," said Spence reflectively, "we do want a boy; the ladswe've got are workin' long shifts, and boys are scarce articleshere. What's yer age?"
"Sixteen," answered Kit without a blush (she looked fourteen)."Aunt Jem brought me up from Bairnsdale, knowin' you wanted a boy,an' if you don't put me on—well, you'll lose a ringer on awhim, that's all."
Spence grinned.
"Your cheek has outgrown you, sonny," he said, "but you're spry.Go on with the afternoon shift."
"With the old black horse, King Billy?"
"Yes; he's the quietest an' best edjikated. Take him."
"Oh, boss, you're a brick! What screw—seventeen an'six?"
"A quid a week."
"That's great. My colonial! I am erbliged."
The boy set his hat further back upon his handsome head, thrusthis hands deeply into the pockets of his new "moles," and swaggeredon to the brace. He presently engaged the braceman in conversationon mining matters generally, and the Old Identity in particular. Hedesired to know the depth of the mine, the nature, the extent, andthe "lay" of the lode, whether "she" was wet or dry, the quality ofthe air below, and the character of the explosives used. Thesequestions were asked with the freedom of an interested party andthe air of an expert, and with a quaint use of miners' slang thatpleased the braceman immensely.
With the ready faith of youth Kit conceived an immediate likingfor the braceman, who was a young man of about nineteen, tall,strongly built, and clean limbed, with the easy but decisivemovements of an athlete. His well-tanned face expressed a livelyintelligence and betrayed his kindly disposition and his genialityat a glance.
"What's your monicker, mate?" asked Kit after five minutes'aquaintance.
"Charley Coleman, alias 'Professor.'"
"Professor?"
"Yes," apologetically; "you see, I play the fiddle a bit."
This explanation appeared to be quite satisfactory.
"Wish I was on with you, 'Professor,'" continued Kit; "you'rejest my sort. What kinder bloke's on the brace my shift?"
"Faith, he's a sweet mahn; he'll be a father to you, so hewill." Coleman's whim boy, Tim Canty, offered this information. Timwas a large-headed, big-footed youth, with wonderfully wild hair,and great, obtrusive yellow freckles—a Bungaree-bred boy,blessed with the intense brogue of his father.
"Go on!" ejaculated Kit, who detected the sarcasm.
"Sure, yes," continued Tim, "he'll barrack the life out av yiz.He bosses the byes like he owned the bloomin' mine—makes 'emyank all the timber fer him, an' truck the mullock, an' shovel thequartz. We calls him 'The Bunyip.' Be the holy, he's ez ugly ezsin, an' he shwears an' curses loike fifty bullockies in abog."
Kit blew a long, melancholy whistle. "That is tough," hemurmured.
"You'll be all right," Coleman broke in consolingly. "Stick toyour whim, and be as deaf as a stump when he begins to rip out.There is more bellow than anything else in 'The Bunyip.'"
"S'pose I'll pull through," said the boy, brightening up.
The prospect of having an ill-tempered, lazy bully for a matedid not serve to dampen the youngster's enthusiasm, and after goingover the mine, scrutinizing the whim with the eye of an authority,and enlightening Tim on the points and merits of the big, sleepyroan horse trudging solemnly round and round the ring, he walkedacross to the hut to communicate his news to Aunt Jem, bearinghimself with a gravity that became a worker with a graveresponsibility and twenty shillings a week.
Kit found, when he went on with the 4 o'clock shift, that TimCanty had not over-coloured the unlovable characteristics of "TheBunyip." The man's name was Pope; he was large and unwieldly, andcommon report credited him with an uncompromising antipathy towater, whether applied externally or taken as a beverage—areport which was wholly substantiated by his general appearance,and the vinous flavour of the atmosphere in his vicinity. Mr. Popewalked with the attitude of a gorilla, which amiable animal he alsosomewhat resembled in his habitual expression. His long arms swungloosely from his narrow shoulders, his face was nearly covered withshort red hair, and his small eyes peered out through the slitswhere his puffed cheeks and bushy brows almost met. "The Bunyip"was said to possess great strength, but he never exerted hispowers. He was naturally a tired man, and loved to "doss" upon thereef, or to sit, propped against one of the poppet-legs, smokinglike a furnace, whilst the whim boy did his work. This, of course,during the night shifts or such times as the boss happened to beabsent from the mine. He also enjoyed a local reputation as apugilist of extraordinary staying powers and surprising science,till Welsh Harry, a man of little more than half his weight andwith none of his bluster, whipped him to a standstill in anine-round "mill" after he had been convicted of carryingsuperfluous cards in his shirt front one night in M'Cubbin'shumpy.
Pope's antipathy to exertion induced him to look with nofavourable eye upon Kit. He wanted a strong boy, and one big enoughto be trusted to land the bucket when bailing was going on, whilsthe dozed on the chaff bags by the fire through the long, coldnights.
Kit, radiant with pride, led King Billy on to the whim-ring at 4o'clock, relieved Tim, and harnessed the black horse in the ironbow, and "The Bunyip" scowled down upon him from the brace.
"Say, youngster," he said presently, "who sent you roundhere?"
"Boss," replied Kit shortly.
"An' ev I gotter nuss yer?"
"Let the boy down easy," interjected Charley Coleman, who wasforcing his crib-bag under the billy-lid, preparatory to leaving."He's a smart little chap, and will pull through all right if youdon't scare the heart out of him."
"Nice he'll look humpin' a cap-piece," growled Pope.
"I reckon you're paid to haul the timber," said Charley, with alaugh. "Anyhow, if you don't get along I'll be agreeable toexchange boys."
"Well," responded 'The Bunyip,' "I'll soon be shut of thisinfant; that's a comfort."
True to his character, Pope lost no opportunity of making thework unpleasant for the boy. He bullied, cursed, and complainedincessantly; but Kit affected to disregard his ill-humours, andwhistled or sang with provoking complacence throughout, attendingstrictly to his fair share of the work the while.
The whim is only used on the Australian gold mines after thewindlass and the "whip" have been abandoned, and before theproprietors feel justified in placing costly machinery upon aclaim. It is simply an elevated drum around which the rope thathauls the buckets—one on each end—up and down the shaftis wound. The whim is turned by a horse harnessed under acrossbeam, and travelling in a circle below. The horses soon becomeso accustomed to the work that they will go through all thenecessary evolutions when spoken to, and "back up," "turn," "payout," or "take up slack" as the order is given. Kit's charge, KingBilly, was, as Manager Spence expressed it, "edjikated;" he hadworked in a whim for years, and performed his task withmachine-like regularity. The "demnition grind" had become so muchpart of his nature that when turned out in the paddock 'tweenshifts or during his "long shift off"—from Saturday morningtill Monday afternoon—the old horse would doze at times, andsuddenly start off as if in a dream, ambling round and round on animaginary ring, till Kit rushed forth, and drove him back to hispasture by pelting him with sticks and clods of earth. King Billywas as intelligent and docile as he was industrious, and soonaccepted Kit as his best friend, came to know the boy's footstepand the sound of his voice, and would greet him with clumsy butunmistakable demonstrations of goodwill whenever he approached. Allof which was a pride and delight to Kit, and his work at the minewould have been a continual pleasure were it not for the unamiablequalities of "The Bunyip," complaints of whose behaviour were oftenmade in the chock-and-log hut, and received by Aunt Jem with manyexpressions of enmity, and such demonstrations of a craving forvengeance as might have made Mr. Pope a little more reasonable inhis conduct had he been there to see and hear. It was one of AuntJem's manly boasts that she could "use her hands" when occasionrequired, and strike a blow the weight of which she told in poundsand ounces with unwomanly pride; besides, she had something of "arecord," and stories of her pugilistic efforts in her own defencehad enlivened more than one mining camp in the past.
"I'll go along an' lay that man out one o' these fine days!"cried Aunt Jem after an unusually bitter complaint of Pope'scruelty, and she struck an attitude, and sparred at the hut doorwith her big, strong hands, looking really capable of fulfillingher threat.
"That 'd jest serve him right," said Kit, with thoughtfulgravity. "Only," and he squared his small shoulders, "it'd make melook a baby before the men, havin' a woman fightin' fer me. Bestlet's wear him out."
Matters remained in this unsatisfactory state for several weeks,when at length Pope's desire to be rid of the boy was satisfied,but not without a disagreeable experience on his own part. "TheBunyip" was suffering the results of loss of sleep and of money ata card party at M'Cubbin's sly-grog shanty on the previous night,and his native unpleasantness was much aggravated in consequence,and he naturally sought to relieve his feelings on his whim boy,Kit being the only person near who was forced to put up with hisnastiness. Throughout the morning he had vented all his choicestexpletives on Kit's devoted head, and had harassed him at his work,without, however, producing any apparent effect, and now, galledbeyond bearing by the boy's seeming cheerful imperturbability, hewas bent upon taking satisfaction "out of his hide." Kit was wellaware of the man's intention, and contrived to elude him for sometime, but was captured at last.
"I'll teach ye t' give yer elders lip!" said Pope, shaking himby the neck.
"Never guv no lip," protested Kit breathlessly.
"Oh, didn't you but. Take that."
"An' you take that, you great cur!"
Pope received a heavy blow on the jaw that sent him sprawlingoff the whim-ring.
"Hit someone yer size—hit me!"
It was Aunt Jem; she stood in a scientific position, her sleevesrolled back, her powerful brown arms steaming from thewash-tub.
"Hit me, why don't yer?"
Pope staggered to his feet, mad with rage, and made a rush athis assailant, but another arm interfered, and put him back.Charley Coleman, who happened to be on the mine, and who had seenthe rise of the quarrel, stepped in, and took Kit's cause upon hisown broad shoulders, rather to Aunt Jem's disgust.
"Stand back, Pope," said the young man. "You deserved all yougot. You have no right to knock the boy about."
Furious at the thought of being overthrown by a woman, andgalled out of bearing by the laughter of the surfaceman, Pope sworea great oath and plunged at Coleman like a wild beast.
Kit saw the men meet, saw blood flow, and heard the heavy thudsof their quick blows, and then shut out the dreadful sight in thefolds of his aunt's skirt. When he looked again, Pope lay on hisback in the dust, his face badly cut and bruised. Three men heldhim, but he did not seem anxious to get up on his feet again.Charley was standing near, waiting; he was not marked, but all theamiability had gone from his handsome face, which was fierce anddrawn with an ugly scowl.
The manager had now arrived upon the scene.
"What's all this?" he asked.
Half a dozen voices offered an explanation.
"You see, sir," said Charley when they had done, "Pope doesn'tlike the boy, and doesn't treat him fair. Suppose you change Kit onto my shift; I'd be glad to have him."
"Anythin' for a quiet life," growled Spence, scowling at "TheBunyip." "And see here, Pope, next time you feel like makin' adisturbance on this mine you'd best trot up to the office and drawyour money."
The braceman did not answer, but slouched up to his place,wiping the blood from his mouth.
"I'll mark you for this, Coleman," he said to Charley a fewminutes later, with a black frown. Charley laughed.
"Don't do anything foolish, old man," he said.
So Kit and Tim Canty changed shifts, much to the latter'sdisgust, and Kit worked for the future under "Professor," betweenhim and whom a warm friendship now existed. Kit was grateful toCharley for many kindnesses, and Coleman liked the boy, and foundpleasure in his characteristic whimsicalities and his joyousnature.
The Old Identity claim was situated between two precipitous andheavily-timbered hills. The magnificent white gums on the side ofMount Mooney towered away above the whim in evergreen luxuriance,and across Brandy Creek, whose peculiar red waters rippled in thewillow-like shade of the silver gums, Camel Hill arose in impassivegrandeur and shut out the southern sky. On a clearing at the footof Mount Mooney, about a quarter of a mile from the mine, stood thestringybark huts of the miners, and higher up the more pretentiousweatherboard skillion of the manager looked painfully out of placeand a sad blot on the primitive grandeur of the range.
In the beautiful summer days, when the gully was sweet with thefragrance of the gum blossom and the heavy perfume of the wildmusk; when the parrots, the "keets," and gorgeously-plumaged bluemountains and rosellas chattered and whistled amongst thehoney-laden bloom, Kit, like a true child of the bush, reflectedits spirit of light and joy, and darted hither and thither, withthe mercurial gaiety of health and youth, mimicking the calls andtunes of the birds with marvellous fidelity, or singing till thegorges echoed back his song in a bewildering chorus, But there weretimes during the long night shifts when the ghostly moonlightflooded the gully, and the mountain lowered above them dark andforbidding, with the black pall of bush upon it; when only thefaint rumble of the small battery up the creek, or the cry of alone mopoke far up the range, broke the solemn stillness, and thenthe whim boy sat by his mate on the brace, awed into reverence, andcalled softly to the shadowy horse moving noiselessly on thebark-strewn ring below.
Charley's conquest over "The Bunyip" served to intensify thegreat admiration Kit had for him, and the feeling increased withacquaintance. The young braceman had read a good deal of lighterliterature, and the stories he could tell and the knowledge he wasable to impart indicated to Kit, whose acquaintance with "the threeR's" was very superficial, an amount of learning that waspositively stupendous.
Kit asserted Charley's superiority over all other men wibh theplacid assurance of simple faith, and frequently expressed surprisethat he didn't go down to Melbourne and own a big hotel. To own abig hotel was, to Kit's mind, the pinnacle of greatness andmagnificence.
But there were times when the whim boy became strangelyreserved, even diffident, towards his mate, when he would sit forhours silently and dreamily upon the cross-beam, swinging his bare,sun-browned feet, regarding Charley occasionally with a shy glanceas he circled by. These fits of abstraction were so foreign to theboy's real nature that they puzzled the braceman not a little.
"What's the matter, Kit?" he asked one day, after an hour'ssilence. "Sick?"
"Naw," replied Kit, blushing a little. "I was jestthinkin'."
"About what?"
"Everythin' like. Say, 'Professor,' did you ever have asweetheart?" The question was asked with a timorous reluctance sopeculiar in Kit that Coleman laughed aloud.
"Well, I suppose I've had a dozen or so, all told."
"But I mean a reg'lar one—real M'Ginnis, you know!"
"No; I was never particularly serious!"
"Oh!" said Kit, and relapsed into meditation again.
"What a peculiar kid it is," was Charley Coleman's mentalcomment.
On Sunday nights it was necessary for the brace-man and whim boydue on the 12 o'clock shift for the coming week to be at work anhour or so earlier than the rest of the hands in order to bale thewater out of the drive in readiness for the men going below. TheOld Identity was a comparatively dry mine. Kit and Charley went onto do this duty one particular night for the third time since theirassociation as mates. It was a beautiful, bright night, and the boywas in excellent spirits, but, to his surprise, found his matelittle disposed to respond to his merriment. Coleman was lookingpale and depressed and feeling, as he told Kit, "a bit off." Theboy expressed his concern, and was silent in sympathy with hisfriend.
They had been at work about an hour; Kit was riding on the beam,directing his horse mechanically, and musing, with a thoughtfulface. He and Charley were as yet the only people on the mine; itbeing still Sunday, the battery by the creek had not startedcrushing, and the night was unusually still. Not a sound broke thesilence except the creaking of the king-post and the muffled trampof the old horse. The candle in the lantern dangling from thepoppet-legs over the brace burned with a pale, golden glow in theclear, white light of the moon, and the shadow of the whim castupon the pipeclay below looked to the meditative Kit like agreat-headed giant, tirelessly and vacuously throwing out his longarms and folding them again as the beam revolved. Suddenly thequiet was broken by the sound of angry voices near at hand. The boysprang from his seat, and turning saw "The Bunyip" on the brace.Pope had been drinking; his face was an angry red and stamped withmalignancy. He threatened Coleman, brandishing his gorilla-likearms, and cursing hoarsely.
"Keep off, madman!" cried Charley, "or one of us will be downthe shaft."
"What d' yer think I'm here for, damn you?" spluttered thedrunkard.
Pope struck at the young man, and they closed. They struggledfor a brief moment, and then Coleman's legs went from under him onthe wet surface, and the next instant he had disappeared, and Kitheard the splash as his body struck the water in the shaftbelow.
For a short time 'The Bunyip' stood staring, then he turned, andstaggered down the tip, and went blundering through the thickundergrowth along the toot of the mount.
Kit was at the mouth of the shaft in a second, peering into thedark depths. He called twice, but no answer came back to him. Thenan appreciation of the situation flashed upon him. If Charley werenot killed by the fall, without help he must drown in the well. Itremained for him to act. Whilst busying himself he called for help,but there was no man within hearing. The long, iron-rimmed canvasbucket lay empty in the shoot; Kit seized it, and threw it into theopen shaft.
"Back up!" he called in a firm voice, and the old horse backedtill the top of the bucket was level with the surface.
Snatching the lantern from its hook, the boy took his stand uponthe rim of the baling bucket, holding the rope with one arm, andcalling to the horse—
"Get up, Billy!"
The next instant Kit was travelling down the shaft, steadyinghimself in the descent by touching the dripping slabs and centreswith one foot every now and again. His idea was to save his mate ifpossible. He knew that King Billy would continue round the ringtill the up bucket appeared above the surface, and then would cometo a stand, and remain perfectly still—would go to sleepprobably. The whim boy thought that if he could get hold of Charleyin the water, by clinging to the rope, he might be able to supporthim until the night shift came on.
Down, down he went, the black slabs lining the shaft dancing uppast his eyes in a seemingly endless procession, and the waterraining upon him in great drops, stinging his cheeks and ears likestones. Splash! There came a rush of ill-smelling, brackish waterinto his ears and throat, and Kit was plunged into the well andcarried down into the black depths. Even now the boy retained hispresence of mind, and when he came to the surface again, gaspingand kicking, no thought of his own danger entered hishead—his object was still vividly before him. The rope wasnow stationary. He clutched it, and, drawing his head well out ofthe water, felt about the shaft with his feet, and, to his greatjoy, presently touched something that yielded to the lightpressure. Reaching out, he grasped an arm and drew it towards him,and presently held the head of the braceman upon his shoulder. Hewas surprised to find it so easy to bear up such a big fellow.
Now it occurred to the boy that perhaps his efforts were invain, and that in all probability Coleman had been battered todeath against the timbers of the shaft ere he struck the water. Heplaced his ear against the cold lips of the unconscious man andlistened, but could not detect the faintest respiration. He calledCharley's name, and screamed with a sudden terror, feelingsomething warm flowing on his hand. But the momentary fear wasfollowed by a feeling of childish contrition, and he touched thewet cheek near him with his lips.
Several times Kit cried out, thinking he heard foot-steps ontop, but no answer came down the black shaft. Looking upwards, far,far away he saw a large star glittering in the sky, and the sightof it gave him hope; there was a sense of companionship in it. Timeabides with us in our trouble. The men were a long time coming. Kitfelt that he had been in the cold water half an hour at least whenit really was not ten minutes since he was riding comfortably onthe whim-beam. The head upon his shoulder dragged heavier andheavier as the moments crept by, and the small hand clutching the5-in. rope ached with an intolerable pain.
In a flash, at the moment his candle was extinguished, Kit hadseen that the water was only about an inch above the flat sheet onthe plat in the drive. He knew that if he could only get on to theplat there would be a better chance of his holding out till the mencame. He acted upon the idea at once. Driving himself with his feetfrom the opposite side of the shaft, he suddenly let go the ropeand succeeded in clutching the sole-piece. He had some difficultyin dragging himself into the drive whilst still holding his mate,but he managed it. Once safe in the drive Kit made an effort topull his mate to the plat, but found himself too weak. Sitting withhis back against the frame and his legs hanging in the water, theboy clasped Coleman under the arms, clutching his jumper at theback, and held on with the determination of a hero.
The drive was filled with a dense darkness; strange, low soundsechoed along its length. The water chilled Kit's limbs, and painswere darting in his back and up and down his arms—pains thatpresently settled into an abiding torture; but he clung to Coleman,and waited. Burns and Harvey were the facemen on the night shift.It seemed as if they would never come. Two or three times the whimboy tried to cry out, but his voice was very weak and whistled inhis burning throat. A dread that perhaps the miners were off on thespree flashed upon his mind, and he muttered a little prayer, avery little prayer, disjointed and irrelevant in its wording, butpotent with Him to whom only the heart speaks.
The boy's strength was leaving him, the pains in his backincreased, and his arms felt as if being dragged from hisshoulders. He spoke to his mate in piteous whispers, implored ananswer, and wept; but his determination never failed nor flagged.At length he heard someone stirring on the brace, and his heartgave a great bound.
"Hello, below there!"
A hoarse gasp broke in Kit's throat—he could not answer.And now all his limbs were trembling violently, and the agony ofthe strain was intensified with every second. Why didn't they comedown? What were they doing?
A long time seemed to elapse before he heard the bucket surgeout of the well, and the water splashing down as it was bornequickly up the shaft. Kit made another effort, but his musclesfailed to respond, and he could only cling to Charley's form withfrozen, tortured hands as it slipped, inch by inch, down deeperinto the black waters.
Now came Kit's greatest trial, the last terrible moments ofwaiting. He knew when the bucket reached the surface and when itstarted down again by the plunging of the other bailer into thewater in the next compartment, which was not open to the drive, andthe splashing of the falling water as it drew out again. But whatlong, wearing moments those were. How slowly the old horse creptround the whim-ring. Charley was sinking, sinking all the time, andKit felt himself going down too, powerless to resist the weightthat drew him, but ready to die rather than release his hold.
There came a flash of light, and Harvey's candle showed him thedrawn face of the whim boy, chalk white against the blackness ofthe drive, with wide, gleaming eyes and tightly-set teeth.
Kit knew nothing after the apparition of the face-man until herecovered consciousness in his aunt's hut at midday. His limbs wereaching, and there was a strange bewilderment in his brain, but asthat passed away he recalled the incidents of the adventure in theshaft, and wondered how Coleman had fared. He was about to call forAunt Jem, when he heard the voice of Spence, the manager.
"Coleman's head's knocked about a bit, an' he's had a badsoakin', but he'll be round agen in a few days, right ez rain.How's the youngster, missus?"
"Sleepin' like a lamb," came the reply in Aunt Jem's strongvoice. "He ain't none the worse that I can see." A happy smileplayed about Kit's lips when he heard the good news of "TheProfessor's" escape, and he turned his face to the wall, and soonslept again.
During Monday and the whole of the next day the miners from theOld Identity, and men working at the New Chum and other minesfurther up and down the gully, who had heard of the lad'sextraordinary action, called to inquire after him, and to expresstheir admiration to Aunt Jem. Most of them asked to be allowed tohave a peep at Kit as he lay upon his bunk, looking very small forso great a hero, and rather white and shamefaced.
The trooper from the township and a party of miners were outscouring the bush in pursuit of "The Bunyip," who had not been seensince the Sunday night.
On Wednesday morning Charley Coleman limped to the door of thehut, where Aunt Jem was up to her elbows in the foaming suds, asusual. Charley's head was swathed in an unnecessarily large andvery unworkmanlike bandage, the handiwork of an amateur surgeon,and he was still pale and weak.
"Feelin' O.K. agen, ole man?" cried Aunt Jem, in a hail-fellowtone of voice.
"Shickery here," answered Charley, touching his legs, "and I'vegot a head on me, but otherwise pretty correct, thanks. S'pose Ican see the boy?"
Aunt Jem's head went down over the tub, and she churned up thewater with unwonted energy.
"Yes," she said, "I reckon you can; he's there waitin'." Shepointed within.
Charley entered the hut, and saw only a little girl sitting on acamp-stool by the wide fireplace. She stood up to meet him. She wasdecidedly a handsome little girl of about sixteen, he thought;rather pale, with short hair that curled crisply over her smallhead, and with large, shy eyes. The braceman gazed at herwonderingly, and not without some youthful diffidence. It seemedthat he should have known the girl, and yet he did not rememberhaving seen her before.
"Beg pardon, miss," said the braceman; "I've called to seeKit."
The extraordinary little girl clasped her hands over her face,and then buried both hands and face in the pillow on Aunt Jem'sbunk. Presently she peeped out with one eye at Charley standingawkwardly in the middle of the hut.
"I'm Kit," said a smothered voice from the depths of thepillow.
"What!" Charley strode to the side of the bunk, half-guessingthe truth, and wild with astonishment. "What is the meaning ofthis, then?" He touched her skirt.
"Oh! 'Professor,' I was a girl all the time!"
"Kit a girl! Jerusalem!" Coleman dropped his hat. "My whim boy agirl!" He collapsed, overcome with amazement, and sat on the stool,dumbfounded, glaring at the back of Kitty's head, which alone wasvisible above the pillow.
After a minute or so Charley arose and turned the girl's facetowards him.
"Let me see you, Kit."
But Kitty covered her burning cheeks and her eyes with herhands, and tears oozed through her fingers.
"I can't, Charley; I'm ashamed."
"Kit a girl!" repeated the young man in a low voice. "You areKit, and you did all the men have told me—you went down theshaft, and rescued me from death? How was it possible?"
"I just went down and caught hold of you," murmured Kittyvaguely.
"I don't understand it all, Kit," Charley continued, taking herhand in his, "but you have saved my life, and you must be thebravest girl that ever lived. I can't say anything, but 'Thanks,thanks!' and that seems mean and little. I feel a fool, but I'mjust full of gratitude, Kit."
"I'm glad I done it—so glad!"
Kitty was transformed; a few weeks earlier the idea of assumingboys' clothes and taking a job on the whim afforded her onlydelight; now she could not think of what she had done without ablush, and mention of it covered her with confusion. She had asuddenly-developed sense of propriety, of which the neat shoes andthe stockings she now wore were an eloquent confession. There wascoquetry, too, in the pretty ribbons at her throat and the flowerin her hair. Nothing would ever again induce Kitty Bennet to apethe boy.
Aunt Jem was proud in her manly way of Kitty's bravery, butcould not understand that the fact of her proving to be a girlshould cause anything more than a passing surprise. No harm hadbeen done by the masquerade; it was a good joke, played out, thatwas all. This sense of the matter induced her to leave Coleman todiscover the truth for himself; to have prepared him for it wouldhave been to spoil a humorous situation, and Aunt Jem was a bigotedhumorist.
Pope was found, four days after Coleman's fall, lying at thefoot of some high, precipitous rocks on the side of Camel Hill. Hewas quite dead, and this was held to be very considerate of him bythe men of the Old Identity.
Charley and Kit have since married, but of late years Mrs.Charley has developed so keen a sense of propriety that the affairof the Old Identity is strictly tabooed in her family circle.
SPICER was a selector. Why he chose to be a selector rather thanenjoy comparative ease and affluence as a corporation day laboureror a wharf-hand or navvy is inexplicable. He had taken to thewilderness, built his smart bark hut in the centre of an apparentlyimpenetrable forest, and was now actively engaged eating his wayout again. Along the bank of the trickling creek he had cleared anacre or so where a few fruit trees flourished and a methodicallittle vegetable garden looked green and encouraging. Dick Spicerwas a methodical man; what he did he did well, and he was alwaysdoing. Dick was small, and he looked puny lifting his pigmy axe tothose mighty gums, and patiently hewing splinters out of thecompact bush. Having little or nothing to say to his scatteredneighbours, he exchanged small talk with his hens, and favouredGriffin, the low-comedy dog-of-all-work, with his opinion ofthings.
Mr. Spicer was a bachelor, approaching 50, wiry, leathery,deliberative, and very diffident in company. But, despite hisapparent uneasiness when chance threw him into the society offemales, Dick was looking about for a wife. The stillness of thelong evenings and the solitary Sundays implanted a great yearningfor the companionship of a good wife in his lonely heart. Inlooking about the selector's view was very limited. There was notan unmarried woman of suitable years within a radius of twelvemiles. Of all the approachable females, he admired Mrs. Clinton themost, and his only hope lay in the fact that Clinton was in feeblehealth and reported to be sustaining life precariously with onelung.
Clinton held a block about a mile up the creek, and Spicer paidhim occasional abrupt and unceremonious visits there. Sometimes hewould lean against a door-jamb, with not more than his head inside,and pass a few remarks relative to nothing in particular, in anirresponsible sort of way; but more frequently he just stood aboutoutside, and criticised the poultry in audible soliloquy, orreflected aloud upon Clinton's ridiculous notions about dairy workand vegetable-growing. However, he always displayed a properneighbourly concern in inquiring after Clinton's health beforeleaving.
"Y'ain't feelin' no better, I s'pose?" he would ask, with anappearance of anxious interest that quite touched the sick man.
Clinton was always feeling "pretty bad." He said as much in hisdull, heavy manner, and Dick would go off to indulge incontemplation, and consult his dog.
Spicer did not wish Clinton to die, he did not want to hurry himup; he was a patient, dispassionate man, and the possibility of hisneighbour's early demise entered into his calculations merely as aprobable circumstance which, however regrettable, could notreasonably be overlooked.
Clinton substantiated predictions, and obligingly died within areasonable time, and Dick rode solemnly in the funeral cortege,behind the drays, on a lame cart-horse borrowed from Canty for theoccasion.
After the funeral he looked in upon the widow and, feelinginspired to say something consolatory and encouraging, expressedhis belief that she wouldn't mourn much about Peter.
"'Tain't worth while," he said.
Dick's command of language was only sufficient to enable him tosay the thing he meant once in a dozen tries, and on this occasionhe was conscious the moment he had spoken that the sentimentexpressed was hardly appropriate to the occasion. Before he couldframe an apology the disconsolate widow attacked him with aspear-grass broom and stormed him out of the house. He walked homethoughtfully, afflicted with a nettle-rash and a vague idea thatperhaps he had not made an altogether satisfactory beginning.
But Spicer was not cast down. He had resolved upon a plan ofcourtship, and the object of his first manoeuvre was to break hisintentions gently to the widow. This he thought to accomplish byhanging round the house a good deal. He would haunt her selectionin the cool of the evening, or, in his more audacious moments,perch himself on the chock-and-log fence running by the side of thehouse, and whistle an unmelodious and windy jig, which was intendedto convey some idea of his airy nonchalance and peace of mind.
It was a long time before Dick progressed from the fence to thewood-heap, and meanwhile the widow had not seemed to pay anyparticular attention to his movements. He sometimes addressed herwith a portentous truth bearing upon the dieting of laying hens, orthe proper handling of cows, or the medical treatment of ailingchickens; but usually satisfied himself with a significant grin anda queer twist of the head that was his idea of sheer playfulnessand waggery. The neighbours came to notice him over-looking theselection or perched on the fence supervising the weather andthings generally, and predicted that there would be "a marryin'" upthe creek presently.
Presently! Spicer did nothing hastily, nothing to lead anybodyto believe that he had not all eternity to come and go on. He neverconsidered the flight of time, and had made many calculations thatcarried him on to the end of the next century without discoveringany incongruity.
He did arrive at the wood-heap eventually, though. Mrs.Clinton's boy John was too young to wield an axe with any effect,and one afternoon Dick lounged over to the logs, took up the axe,and examined it with an air of abstraction. He weighed it carefullyin his hand, and satisfied his curiosity by trying it on a log.When he had chopped about half a ton of wood he appeared satisfiedthat it was a pretty good axe. That evening he chuckled all the wayup the creek, and all the time it took to prepare his tea, andtowards bed-time confided to Griffin, with more chuckles, hisopinion that it was "'bout's good's done."
"She can't go back on that," he said with assurance.
But Spicer lingered at this stage for a long time; he cut allthe wood the widow needed, and did other little things about theselection, and often sat on the fence, as usual, and gradually grewto be quite at home there. The widow accepted his services now as amatter of course, and though she was often betrayed intoexpressions of great impatience, Dick remained oblivious, andworked out his courtship in his own ponderous way.
His next step towards strengthening his position was when hetook it upon himself to put several palings on the roof of Mrs.Clinton's house. This was a decided advance, and when the buxomlittle woman thanked him, his odd screw of the face and sidelongnod clearly conveyed the impression that he was beginning to regardhimself as a "perfect devil amongst the women." There was morechuckling that evening, and further confidences for the dog. Afterthis Spicer ceased working seriously on his own selection, andslowly extended his sphere at the widow's. He did some gardening,and repaired the fences, and dictated improvements, but it was nottill eighteen months after Clinton's death that he made his greatstroke. It was on Sunday afternoon that Dick discovered Mrs.Clinton in hot pursuit of the boy John, with one shoe in her handand one on her foot. John was in active rebellion, and yelling hiscontempt for the maternal authority. Spicer rose to the occasion.He secured boy John, took off his belt, and proceeded to strap theunfilial youth—to give him a grave, judicious, and fatherlylarruping—under the eye of his mother. Then the selector drewoff to consider and weigh the important step he had taken, with theresult that, half an hour after, he hung his head in at the kitchendoor, and said abruptly:
"Treaser, when's it to be?"
"Meanin' which?" asked the unconscious widow.
"Meanin' marryin'."
The widow thought for a moment, and said, just as if she werecontemplating the sale of a few eggs:
"This day month'll suit me."
"Done," said Spicer.
Then he felt called upon to make some kind of a demonstration,and edged up to Mrs. Clinton in a fidgeting sort of way, and whennear enough made as if to kiss her, paused half-way in doubt, andthen didn't.
"The man's a fool," said the stout little widow composedly.
They were married though, under conditions of great secrecy, atthe parson's house in the township, with the blinds down. It waswith great difficulty Dick was convinced of the necessity ofwitnesses.
NED "picked up" his wife in Sydney. He had come down for a spellin town, and to relieve himself of the distress of riches—tomelt the cheque accumulated slowly in toil and loneliness on a bigstation in the North. He was a stockrider, a slow, still mannaturally, but easily moved by drink. When he first reached town heseemed to have with him some of the atmosphere of silence anddesolation that surrounded him during the long months back there onthe run. Ned was about thirty-four, and looked forty. He was talland raw-boned, and that air of settled melancholy, which is thecertain result of a solitary bush life, suggested some romanticsorrow to Mrs. Black's sentimental daughter.
Darton, taught wisdom by experience, had on this occasion takenlodgings in a suburban private house. Mrs. Black's home was verysmall, but her daughter was her only child, and they found room fora "gentleman boarder."
Janet Black was a pleasant-faced, happy-hearted girl of twenty.She liked the new boarder from the start, she acknowledged toherself afterwards, but when by some fortunate chance he happenedto be on hand to drag a half-blind and half-witted old woman frombeneath the very hoofs of a runaway horse, somewhat at the risk ofhis own neck, she was enraptured, and in the enthusiasm of themoment she kissed the hand of the abashed hero, and left a tearglittering on the hard brown knuckles.
This was a week after Ned Darton's arrival in Sydney.
Ned went straight to his room and sat perfectly still, and witheven more than his usual gravity watched the tear fade away fromthe back of his hand. Either Janet's little demonstration ofartless feeling had awakened suggestions of some gloriouspossibility in Ned's heart, or he desired to exercise economy for achange; he suddenly became very judicious in the selection of hisdrinks, and only took enough whisky to dispel his native moodinessand taciturnity and make him rather a pleasant acquisition to Mrs.Black's limited family circle.
When Ned Darton returned to his pastoral duties in the murmuringwilds, he took Janet Black with him as his wife. That was theirhoneymoon.
Darton did not pause to consider the possible results of thechange he was introducing into the life of his bride—few menwould. Janet was vivacious, and her heart yearned towards humanity.She was bright, cheerful, and impressionable. The bush is sad,heavy, despairing; delightful for a month, perhaps, but terriblefor a year.
As she travelled towards her new home the young wife waseffervescent with joy, aglow with health, childishly jubilant overnumberless plans and projects; she returned to Sydney before theexpiration of a year, a stranger to her mother in appearance and inspirit. She seemed taller now, her cheeks were thin, and her facehad a new expression. She brought with her some of the broodingdesolation of the bush—even in the turmoil of the city sheseemed lost in the immensity of the wilderness. She answered hermother's every question without a smile. She had nothing tocomplain of: Ned was a very good husband and very kind. She foundthe bush lonesome at first, but soon got used to it, and she didn'tmind now. She was quite sure she was used to it, and she neverobjected to returning.
A baby was born, and Mrs. Darton went back with her husband totheir hut by the creek on the great run, to the companionship ofbears, birds, 'possums, kangaroos, and the eternal trees. Shehugged her baby on her breast, and rejoiced that the little mitewould give her something more to do and something to think of thatwould keep the awful ring of the myriad locusts out of herears.
Man and wife settled down to their choking existence again asbefore, without comment. Ned was used to the bush—he hadlived in it all his life—and though its influence waspowerful upon him he knew it not. He was necessarily away from homea good deal, and when at home he was not companionable, in thesense that city dwellers know. Two bushmen will sit together by thefire for hours, smoking and mute, enjoying each other's society;"in mute discourse" two bushmen will ride for twenty miles throughthe most desolate or the most fruitful region. People who havelived in crowds want talk, laughter, and song. Ned loved his wife,but he neither talked, laughed, nor sang.
Summer came. The babe at Mrs. Darton's breast looked out on theworld of trees with wide, unblinking, solemn eyes, and neversmiled.
"Ned," said Janet, one bright, moonlight night, "do you knowthat that 'possum in the big blue gum is crazy? She has two joeys,and she has gone mad."
Janet spent a lot of her time sitting in the shade of the hut ona candle-box, gazing into her baby's large, still eyes, listeningto the noises of the bush, and the babe too seemed to listen, andthe mother fancied that their senses blended, and they both wouldsome day hear something awful above the crooning of the insects andthe chattering of the parrots. Sometimes she would start out ofthese humours with a shriek, feeling that the relentless treeswhich had been bending over and pressing down so long were crushingher at last beneath their weight.
Presently she became satisfied that the laughing jackasses weremad. She had long suspected it. Why else should they flock togetherin the dim evening and fill the bush with their crazy laughter? Whyelse should they sit so grave and still at other times, thinkingand grieving?
Yes, she was soon quite convinced that the animals and birds,even the insects that surrounded her, were mad, hopelessly mad, allof them. The country was now burnt brown, and the hills ached inthe great heat, and the ghostly mirage floated in the hollows. Inthe day-time the birds and beasts merely chummered and mutteredquerulously from the deepest shades, but in the dusk of eveningthey raved and shrieked, and filled the ominous bush with madlaughter and fantastic wailings.
It was at this time that Darton became impressed by the peculiarmanner of his wife, and a great awe stole over him as he watchedher gazing into her baby's eyes with that strange look offrightened conjecture. He suddenly became very communicative; hetalked a lot, and laughed, and strove to be merry, with anindefinable chill at his heart. He failed to interest his wife; shewas absorbed in a terrible thought. The bush was peopled with madthings—the wide wilderness of trees, and the dull, deadgrass, and the cowering hills instilled into every living thingthat came under the influence of their ineffable gloom a madness ofmelancholy. The bears were mad, the 'possums, the shriekingcockatoos, the dull grey laughing jackasses with their devilishcackling, and the ugly yellow-throated lizards that panted at herfrom the rocks—all were mad. How, then, could her babe hopeto escape the influence of the mighty bush and the great whiteplains beyond, with their heavy atmosphere of despair pressing downupon his defenceless head? Would he not presently escape from herarms, and turn and hiss at her from the grass like a vicious snake;or climb the trees, and, like a bear, cling in day-long torpor froma limb; or, worst of all, join the grey birds on the big dead gum,and mock at her sorrow with empty, joyless laughter?
These were the fears that oppressed Janet as she watched hersad, silent baby at her breast. They grew upon her and strengthenedday by day, and one afternoon they became an agonizing conviction.She had been alone with the dumb child for two days, and she satbeside the hut door and watched the evening shadows thicken, with ashadow in her eyes that was more terrible than blackest night, andwhen a solitary mopoke began calling from the Bald Hill, and thejackasses set up a weird chorus of laughter, she rose, and claspingher baby tighter to her breast, and leaning over it to shield itfrom the surrounding evils, she hurried towards the creek.
Janet was not in the hut when Ned returned home half an hourlater. Attracted by the howling of his dog, he hastened to thewaterhole under the great rock, and there in the shallow water hefound the bodies of his wife and child and the dull grey birds werelaughing insanely overhead.
SIMON PETERS, irreverently called "The Apostle," returned to therailway camp late on Sunday night, and found his tent topsy-turvyand his "missus" gone. On the paling table, weighted with a pieceof cheese, was a scrap of sugar-paper, on which was written inFan's dog-leg hand:
"I'm sik. I'm goin' to cleer."
Sim swore a muffled oath under his abundant moustache, andlooked around upon the unwonted disorder. The blue blanket and therug had been stripped from their bunk; the spare, rough furnitureof the big tent lay about in confusion; and amongst the grey ashesin the wide sod fireplace was a bunch of reddish hair. Petersfished this out, and examined it with as much astonishment as thephlegmatic, even-tempered navvy was capable of feeling. It was hiswife's hair, and had evidently been hacked off in a hurry,regardless of effect. Piled on the bush stool against the wall wereMrs. Peters's clothes. Nothing of hers that Peters could recall wasmissing; even the big quondong ear-rings, of which she was soproud, were thrown upon the floor. Her hat was on the bed, and herboots were under the table.
Still clutching the mop of hair in his hand, Sim backed solemnlyand soberly on to a seat, and sat for a few minutes gravelyweighing the evidence. Obviously Fanny had gone off clad only in ablue blanket or a 'possum rug. This was most extraordinary, evenfor Fanny, but there was some satisfaction in it, since it shouldnot be difficult to trace a white woman so attired.
Presently Peters arose and went forth to prosecute inquiries. OnSaturday, before departing for Dunolly, he had asked Rolley's wifeto keep an eye on the missus. As he approached the gaffer's tent,however, he heard a woman's voice raised in shrill vituperation,and recognised Mrs. Rolley's strident contralto.
"My poor mother that's in heaven knew you, you—. Shealways said you was a—."
And poor Rolley was inundated with a torrent of his own choiceblasphemies. Simon Peters knew by experience that when Mrs. Rolleydragged her sainted mother into little domestic differences, shewas at least two days gone in drink, and quite incapable ofrecollecting anything beyond Rolley's shortcomings, so he turnedaway with a sigh, and carried his quest into the camp. Half an hourlater he returned to his tent and resumed his thoughtful attitudeon the stool. He had secured one piece of evidence that seemed tothrow a good deal of light on the situation. Late on Saturday nightsomeone had broken into Curly Hunter's tent and stolen therefrom agrey tweed suit, a black felt hat, and a pair of light blucherboots. Peters, putting this and that together slowly and with greatmental effort, concluded that Curly Hunter and Fanny were about thesame height. He recollected, too, the explanation his wife offeredwhen he discovered her back to be seamed and lined with scars.
"Dad done it," said Fanny. "Poor old dad, he was always lickin'me."
"But," gasped Peters, filled with a sudden itch to beat thethroat of his deceased father-in-law, "you don't mean to say thecowardly brute lashed you like that!"
"Didn't he?" replied she, laughing lightly. "He used to rope meup to the cow-bail an' hammer me with a horsewhip. Once when I setthe grass on fire, an' burned the stable an' the dairy; anothertime when I broke Grasshopper's neck, ridin' him over Coleman'schock-an'-log fence; an' agen when I dressed up in Tom's clothes,took a swag, and got a job pickin'-up in M'Kinley's shed."
Early on Monday morning Peters had an interview with CurlyHunter. Hunter was sympathetic, and readily sold Sim the stolenthings at a modest valuation, promising at the same time to observea friendly reticence in the matter; but, for all that, two hourslater everybody in the camp knew that Mrs. Peters had run off, andthat "The Apostle" was away hunting for her. The general opinion,freely and profanely expressed, was that Simon Peters was asuperlative idiot. It was agreed that Peters would have exhibitedcommon-sense by sitting still under the bereavement, and casuallythanking Providence for the "let off." Since Mrs. Peters started acouple of ramshackle waggons down the gradient, and nearly smashedup Ryan's gang, the camp had suddenly grown weary of her "monkeytricks."
Mrs. Simon Peters was a woman of twenty-six, ten or twelve yearsyounger than her husband, more comely, more decent, and morepresentable in every way than the other wives of the camp. She didnot get drunk in the bedroom end of Wingy Lee's shanty on paynights, did not use the picturesque idiom of the gangers inordinary conversation, and in some respects had been a good mate toPeters. But it must be admitted that the camp had furtherjustification in doubting the complete sanity of Simon Peters'swife. She had an eerie expression that was quaintly accented bykeen, twinkling, black eyes in combination with light red hair andrather pale brows; and she was possessed of a spirit of mischiefthat led her into the wildest extravagances. Her devilment was thatof an ungovernable school-boy, without his preposterous sense ofhumour. An uncontrollable yearning for excitement impelled her tothe strangest actions. She had another peculiar characteristic, notunknown to the camp, in her apparent insensibility to physicalpain. Peters had been astounded by the fact that a burn, a cut, ascald, or a blow provoked no complainings from his wife andscarcely any regard. This indifference extended to the sufferingsof others. After the blasting accident in the North cutting, Fanny,of all the women in the camp, was the only one who had the nerve toapproach the mangled body of poor M'Intyre, and she placidly workedover the shocking mass, still instinct with life, when thestrongest men turned sick at the sight of it.
Sim made no effort to understand his wife, which was well, as hewas only an average man, and she was past finding out. He concludedthat her extraordinary conduct was just the naturalunreasonableness and contrariness of women "coming out strong," andmade the best of the situation in which he found himself. Being anaverage man, Sim was a superior navvy; he only got drunk on bigoccasions, and, drunk or sober, treated his wife with indulgentfondness, and occasionally Fanny seemed fond of him in return; butthen she had been very warmly attached to that father who used tobail her up in the cowshed and lash her with a horsewhip in thehope of converting her to sweet reasonableness.
On the Monday morning Peters first went up the road, seeking hiswife, but no one at White's had seen a slim young fellow in a greysuit pass that way, so he tried down the road, with better success.Clark, at the Travellers' Rest, had seen "just sich a feller" asSim described.
"They had a drink here Sunday, an' left, making for Moliagul, itseemed t' me," said Clark.
"They?" queried Peters.
"Yes. There was two of 'em. The big feller shouted. Abrown-faced chap, with a black moustache, an' a deep cut in hischin, here."
Simon's grip made a dent in the pewter he held, and a grey huecrept over his cheeks and into his lips. Never before had hedoubted his wife in this way; never through all her mad escapadeshad he had reason to question her fealty as a wife till now. Petersremembered the man distinctly; he had seen him about the camp,looking for work. The peculiar cleft chin would serve to identifyhim amongst ten thousand. Striding along the road the fugitives hadtaken, the navvy recollected hearing Fanny speakingenthusiastically of the tall, brown stranger as a fine man, and thegrey in his cheek deepened to the colour of ashes, and his jawhardened meaningly. His quest had suddenly assumed a terriblesignificance, and that fierce pallor and grim rigidity of the jawnever left him until its end.
Peters heard of them again in the afternoon, but got off thetrail towards evening, and it was not till late on the followingday that he picked up the scent. Then he talked with a farmer whohad seen them.
"They slep' in an old hut up in my grass paddock las' night,"said the man, "an' went up the road at about seven thismornin'."
"Did both men sleep in the hut?" asked Peters.
"To be sure!"
Sim continued his journey, steadily, and with apparentunconcern, but cherishing an immovable determination to kill thebrown-faced man the moment they met.
Early on the Wednesday morning Peters came up with the runaway.An old man watering a horse at a small creek told him, in answer tohis inquiries:
"A tall chap, with a divided chin—name of Sandler, ain'tit? He's here. I let him a bit of ringin'. That's his axe you hearup the paddock."
Following the ring of the axe, Peters soon came upon his man.Sandler stopped working as he approached, and turned towards him,resting on the handle of his axe. Sim walked to within a couple ofyards of the stranger, and threw off the light swag he carried.
"You infernal hound!" he said; "where is my wife?"
Sandler started up in extreme amazement. "Keep off!" he cried."What the devil do I know about your wife?"
Peters rushed at him with the fury of a brute, and the two menexchanged heavy blows. Then they closed, and wrestled for a moment,but Simon's rage lent him a strength that was irresistible, andpresently the other man was sent down with stunning force. As heattempted to rise, shaken and almost breathless, Peters, who hadseized the axe, struck him once with the head of it, and Sandlerfell back again and lay perfectly still, with a long, gaping woundover his left eye, from which the blood poured through his hairupon the new chips and the yellow grass. When Peters looked up hiswife stood facing him. She wore blucher boots, a pair of greytrousers, and a man's shirt, and carried an axe. She gazedcomposedly at the fallen man.
"What have you done, Sim?" she asked.
"You ran away with that man?" He pointed at Sandler.
She nodded her head.
"He did not know I was a woman," she said.
THE bush a few minutes since turbulent with the calls of amyriad antic birds and the raucous cries of 'possums andmonkey-bears, homing in the great gums, was suddenly seized with agrave-like stillness and the silence of a desert—a silencethat rang in the ears with monotonous reverberations, and saddenedand awed the spirit with a sense of loneliness and isolation. Thesolitary swagman, camped in a small clearing overhung high above bythe clustering boughs of the giant trees, to shake off the awe thatcame creeping into his heart, roused himself from his reverie andbroke out into the refrain of a familiar diggers' song, with afeeling almost of defiance. The unwonted sound provoked gutturalmurmurs and whispers of protestation from the creatures in thetree-tops, and caused mysterious shufflings in the undergrowth. Afar-off dingo answered back with a long, low, mournful cry, and thechorus returned to the singer in such startling echoes that hepresently ceased his song and fell to smoking again and gazing atthe flames curling about the blackened billy on the fire at hisfeet.
The camper's face, ruddy in the glow of the fire, was evenlyfeatured and attractive, impressed with a thoughtful gravity inplace of the good-humoured bravado which was so common acharacteristic in the faces of diggers in the days of Fiery Creek,Dunolly, Jim Crow, Adelaide Lead, Tarrangower, and Ballarat, whengold was plentiful and no man despaired of fortune. Lying near washis unrolled swag. A damper baked in the white ash before the fire.Fred Cadden's luck as a miner had been good on the whole. Althoughhe had never "struck it rich" as richness was understood in thoseauriferous times, he had followed the rushes for three years, eversince his arrival in Australia, without once losing credit at thestores or finding himself short of an ounce or two to go and comeon, and an occasional patch of wash good for several ounces to thetub had enabled him to mail large sums to his patient little motherat Home.
A vision of the wistful face of that mother peered into his eyesout of the glowing logs as his thoughts reverted to England and toher. She was the only parent he had known; he was her only child,and his affection for her had much of a daughter's tenderness. Theyhad lived an exclusive life together. As a boy he had oftenwondered at this; but he understood later, and the story his mothertold him on his twenty-first birthday was quite as influential indetermining him to visit Australia as the thrilling rumours thatcame around the world of virgin gold glittering in the runningstreams and yellow nuggets glowing on the hill-sides in the far-offland. He went, hoping to win fortune from the creeks and gravelbeds, but also on a mission—a mission his mother could notoppose, although in parting with him she parted with all that wasdear to her in life.
"Go, my boy," she said, "but if you fail you must come homeagain in three years. If you succeed I will come to you."
He promised faithfully, and now the three years had expired, andhis mission was a failure, and he was returning. He and PaulLahffe, his mate, had done well at Clunes, and had parted there,Paul turning his face toward a new field in the north, and Fredtravelling south towards Geelong, where he intended taking passageon the next homeward-bound vessel. The belt about his waist was soloaded with gold that it had proved a trying burden throughout hislong day's tramp, but the fact that his quest had never since hisarrival in Australia seemed to have the remotest chance of beingrealised filled him with discontent.
The lugubrious cry of a mopoke near at hand, breaking suddenlyin upon the silence, recalled the young man to a sense of hisposition, and the fact that the billy was boiling. He lifted theutensil from the fire, threw a handful of tea into the water, andset it to brew. Then he seated himself upon the log again andlooked around him into the heavy shadows gathered about the bigboles of the gums, and up at their towering, plume-like tops, andshrugged his shoulders, with a muttered exclamation ofdissatisfaction. Fred was by this time familiar with the bush bynight, and knew all its uncanny voices and its more uncanny moodsof silence, but he had never been alone in the mighty heart of itas he was now. His thoughts turned instinctively to the manystories he had heard of shepherds out back on immense runs beingdriven to madness by the solitude and the weird mystery of thebush; of prospectors on the desolate ranges losing all their desirefor human fellowship, and becoming taciturn recluses, powerless toshake off the influence of the funereal and desolate forest.
Cadden turned with an effort from these unpleasant thoughts, andgave his attention to his meal again. He had walked fifteen milessince noon, and was uncommonly hungry. Drawing the nicely browneddamper from among the ashes, Fred was about to turn to his swag forthe other materials for his tea, when he uttered an exclamation ofsurprise and sprang back a step, dropping the steaming bread in hisamazement. A stranger stood facing him within the circle of lightcast by the camp fire—a tall, sinewy man of about fifty,dressed in a cabbage-tree hat, a blue Crimean shirt, cord trousers,and Wellington boots. The stranger stood with his right hand thrustlightly in his pocket, and his left toying with the point of hislong iron-grey beard, and he smiled broadly under the profusion ofhair on his weather-tanned face at the young man'sconsternation.
"Night, mate!" he said.
"Good-night," responded Fred, recovering himself.
"You jumped up like a ghost."
"Don't grow ghosts in Australia, my boy," said the other, stillsmiling. "Reckon you're something of a new chum."
"If three years' hard digging from Buninyong to Bendigo countfor anything, I am not a new chum. But where have you sprung from,mate?" Fred felt somewhat uneasy under the other's close scrutiny,and regretted that his revolver was out of reach, in the folds ofhis swag.
"Name's Coburn," answered the man who had the curtness andassurance of an old hand—"makin' for Ballarat."
"Your swag?" queried Fred, suspiciously.
"Got none. Thought to strike old Copper-top Egan's shantyto-night, but my horse fell lame. He's hung up down by the creek.Saw your fire, and suspected you would be good enough for a smoke,a pannikin of tea, and a feed—eh?"
"Of course," said Fred, drawing forth his plug, and tossing ittowards the stranger. To refuse the hospitalities of the camp to atraveller would be to outrage an honoured tradition of the country.Besides, the young man was quite reassured by the smilingcountenance and easy demeanour of his guest, and was secretly gladof company.
"I was just going to have tea myself," he continued, "and tosuch as there is you are welcome."
Coburn nodded his thanks, and young Cadden resumed hispreparations for the meal. A gridiron extemporized from a scrap offencing wire was brought into requisition, and presently the minerwas busy grilling chops, with a facility born of experience; andwhilst he busied himself in this manner his companion stoodopposite, leisurely chipping at the tobacco, and keenlyscrutinising him from under the wide brim of the well-seasoned hathe wore.
"Bought them up at Pablo's at noon and hawked them along in mybilly, but they are as fresh as paint," said Fred, indicating thechops.
The young man looked up as he spoke, and encountered the sixblack pips of a long revolver pointing at him across the fire, andtwo stern eyes beyond, burning with a feline lustre.
"Bail up," commanded Coburn.
Fred's impulse was to spring for his swag, but at the firststride a bullet clipped through the shoulder of his jumper,bruising the flesh and bringing him up standing.
"Stir a peg and I'll drop the next six inches lower," thestranger said, coolly, but with convincing emphasis. "Now that'ssensible, and to convince you of the wisdom of standing just so, Idon't mind mentioning that I am Jack Hogan—the notoriousHogan, you know, alias Peetree, alias Lone Hand, alias Coburn, etcetera, et cetera."
Fred Cadden started and flushed, and his eyes turnedinvoluntarily towards the spot where his revolver lay. Coburnnoticed the glance, and smiled.
"Heard of Hogan, I see," he said. "Met some of my cripples,perhaps."
Fred had heard of Hogan, notorious as Lone Hand, a bushranger ofgreat audacity, whose exploits with the revolver were told of in ahundred stories by more or less appreciative diggers; a cool,cunning scoundrel who prided himself on never taking life, but who,when necessity arose, disabled an enemy with a bullet as expertlyas a surgeon might with a lancet. This sobriquet had been given himby reason of the fact that he had neither mates nor confidants,which also to a great extent accounted for his success in havingeluded the mounted police for over five years. An exaggeratedcourtesy towards women, and occasional acts of liberality towardshard-up diggers, combined with an avowed and demonstratedvindictiveness towards the "lordly squatter" and all officialdom,served to win Lone Hand the admiration and respect of the majorityof the rough diggers—honourable men, most of them, in theirown dealings, but bitterly hating law that was made manifest tothem only in license hunting and extortion. Cadden faced Hogan'srevolver, firm lipped, and with kindling eyes. He had no admirationfor the gold robber, and the mention of his name only fired theyoung man with a resolve to sell his life dearly and warily, but,if it must be, to lose it rather than to be the meek victim of thedesperado of Murdering Flat and Fryer's Creek.
"Any shootin' irons?" queried Hogan.
Cadden gave no answer, and the outlaw, holding his revolverready for instantaneous service, walked towards the swag. He shookout the rug, and discovered a revolver, which he thrust in hisbelt.
"Now," he said, "hand over that gold-belt under the slack ofyour jumper."
The blood burned in Fred's cheeks, and his eyes flashed, but hemade no movement, and as he gazed a devilish vindictiveness grew inthe eyes opposing his, and the finger on the revolver that gleamedbetween them moved with vital significance.
"I don't like your damned airs, mate," Hogan continued. "I willhave to maim you before I can take that belt myself. Will you handit over, or be left here with a bullet in your carcase to run yourchances with the bull-ants?"
It would have been madness to have defied Hogan further underthe circumstances. Fred unbuckled the belt, and threw it towardshim. Lone Hand picked it from the ground, and weighed it in hishand, and laughed grimly.
"Devilish heavy, my boy," he said. "You ought to be thankful tobe rid of it."
Hogan buckled the belt about his own waist; but during theoperation never lifted his keen eye from the alert figure of theyoung man.
"Now," he said, blandly, "S'pose we have tea? Hang it all, mate,those chops are burning."
He seized the gridiron and assumed the duties of cook, turningthe chops with the muzzle of his revolver, and keeping the firebetween himself and his victim, whom he continued watching closelyall the time.
"Come," he went on, "don't be so cursed unsociable! Hand out theplates. Take the pannikin yourself, I can drink from the billy lid.I'll pay for my tea—there's nothing dirty mean about LoneHand."
He opened the mouth of the belt, and drew forth a couple ofcoarse pieces of gold, and threw them towards Cadden.
"There," he said, "that's liberal pay for a little mutton anddamper."
Hogan, confident in his great strength, and in the fact thatFred was unarmed, rejoiced in this bravado, and Fred, perceivingthat his only chance lay in humouring him, picked the gold from theground, and brought forward a couple of tin plates.
"Very good—you have the whip hand to-night," he said;"some day the positions may be reversed."
"If they ever are, mate, and you are the man to do it, skin melike a bandicoot, and I won't whine a whimper."
Hogan divided the chops, and for a time the men ate withoutexchanging a word, both seated upon the ground, Fred watchful, andeager for his opportunity, Hogan, apparently indifferent, but wideawake, and alive in every nerve with the instinctive alertness andcaution of a long-hunted man.
"Going to Melbourne for a spree, eh?" he asked presently.
"No, I intended shipping for England."
"Then I've done you a good turn. Go back on your tracks, youngman; take Cobb and Co. for Eaglehawk or Castlemaine—they'repanning out thousands of ounces there daily. Or rob fat oldMacarthur, of Black Boy, of one of those blood colts of his, havegrit, and go prospecting in other men's pockets. I invitecompetition."
"It's a madman's trade," said Fred. "Anxiety till the end, andthen—a hempen comforter."
"It is glorious," cried Hogan fierely—"avindication—a sweet and lasting vengeance!" Fred wassurprised at the quick change in the man; his sardonic humor hadpassed, and his face twitched and his eyes burned with a suddenmalevolence. This was the opportunity for which the digger had beenwaiting. Whilst still sitting upon the ground he had drawn his legsinto the best position for a spring. Leaning forward upon hishands, with a pretence of lifting a burning twig for his pipe, Fredbounded with a tremendous effort right over the fire. Hogan fumbledhis revolver in the attempt to discharge it, and the next instantthe two men were writhing upon the grass, with interlocked limbsand set, stern faces, fighting for life.
The miner was young and athletic, possessing all the reservepower of a vigorous constitution unimpaired by any excesses. He hadworked just hard enough of late years to toughen the sinews anddevelop his muscles to their greatest capacity. But the older manwas bigger, his strength was talked of as something extraordinary,his frame was of iron, and he had learned many cunning tricks in adreadful school. Fred clung desperately to his pistol hand, and so,panting and straining every thew, the men fought like tigers, butnoiselessly, under the brooding trees. Several times their legsscattered the embers of the fire, and once Hogan's hair flamed andsinged his cheek, but they wrestled on, regardless of everythingbesides. At length a slip, a turn of luck, gave Cadden a briefascendancy. His right hand grasped his enemy's throat, with hisleft he pinned his pistol hand to the ground; fighting still, hestrove to plant his knee upon the outlaw's breast; but at thatinstant a shot was heard. Fred's grip relaxed and he pitchedforward on his face by Hogan's side, and his extended hands dug atthe yielding turf.
The bushranger's first action when he felt himself free was todart for the cover of the nearest tree. The shot had not been firedby him. Presently he heard another shot, followed by four more inrapid succession. And then he understood. The revolver he had takenfrom Fred's swag and thrust in his belt, had in the course of thestruggle been jerked into the fire, and the heat had discharged thecartridges. It was a bullet from one of these that had struckCadden. Hogan knelt by the side of the young man, and turned hisface to the light, and an exclamation broke from his lips.
"My God! man, is it as bad as that?"
He had witnessed the approach of dissolution too often to bemistaken now, and the sight of the handsome boyish face drawn withagony, and already ashen from the touch of death, and the dim eyesgazing into his own with dreadful fixity, flooded his soul with agreat compassion.—"I didn't shoot, mate!" he cried, "so helpme heaven, 'twasn't." He stopped short, and with a face as ghastlyas that of the dying man, glared for a moment at a photograph thathad fallen from the inside pocket of Cadden's jumper. He took upthe card with a trembling hand, and gazed upon the pictured face,that of a young man. Under the picture were written the words, "ToMary, from Paul." Hogan was now beset by an uncontrollable emotion.He drew the likeness before Fred's face.
"Where did you get this? What is he to you? For the love of God,answer me—answer me!"
During Hogan's examination of the picture a strange, eager lighthad grown in Fred's eyes, overcoming for a moment the filmy dulnessof death, and the bushranger's agitation seemed to awaken a kindredfeeling in his own breast.
"Speak, speak, man!" gasped Lone Hand.
Cadden's lips moved, he raised his body a little from thesustaining arm, a few broken, whispered words fell from his lips,and then his head dropped heavily back, every muscle relaxed, hebreathed a sigh, and was dead. One distinct word only reachedRogan's ear:
"Father!"
Dazed and astounded, the bushranger knelt beside the dead man,gazing upon the grey face, and through his tense lips issued thenames of God and Christ with incoherent reiteration, instinct withspiritual agony. Presently, moved by a kind of frenzy, he arose anddarted towards Cadden's swag, and bent over it, throwing itscontents right and left till he discovered a small packet ofpapers. Crouching by the fire, he tore open the packet, andreferred to the signatures in the letters it contained. "Yourloving mother, Mary Cadden," was signed to each missive, and eachsignature wrung from Hogan's heart the same low, moaning cry:
"My wife! my wife!"
A paragraph of one letter he started to read:
"Oh! my boy, I too have heard dreadful stories of what men havebecome who escaped from those horrible, horrible prisons. It is adifficult task, but if it should yet succeed, and you find him,whatever he may be, my darling, remember he was an innocent man,unjustly sentenced. Only the undying conviction of your mother, whoknew him best, and loved him, can be offered in proof of this; butthat will suffice for you. I have read with such pain as I maynever tell of strong, true, proud-spirited men being converted intofiends, fired only with a raging hate against society, and a thirstfor vengeance upon their oppressors by the inhuman cruelties andthe nameless degradations of the convict system; and, I confess,when, after hearing of his escape, the long years went by withoutbringing me word of him, that I feared the worst. A consciousnessof his own degradation alone would have kept him silent so long ifhe still lives. But if you find him in evil ways, do not forgetwhat turned him to evil, and be kind to him—love him for mysake. Nothing could make him so bad but that we could reclaim him,dear, you and I."
Hogan (for we will still give him that name) ceased reading, andpressed the paper to his lips, and falling upon his face in thegrass, grovelled there in a passion of remorse and despair. In afew moments he crept to the side of the dead man, and gazed longand earnestly upon the rigid features, gazed till his eyes filledwith unaccustomed tears, and then the fierce, revengeful man, whosehand for years had been against his fellows, and whose heart hadacknowledged no tender sentiment, but had nurtured a devilishcynicism and a religion of hate, wept, and sobbed, and pleaded, andprotested over the body, with the hysterical and unreasoninganguish of a weak woman.
The storm of feeling passed, and Hogan arose. He unbuckled thegold-belt from his waist and fastened it about Fred Cadden's body.Then he placed the letters and the likeness in the pocket of Fred'sjumper, turned without allowing himself another glance and rushedfrom the spot, and a minute later he swept by, riding his big,spirited horse with mad recklessness along the ill-defined track,where the trees reached out their treacherous limbs to dash theunwary rider from his saddle.
The moon rose and passed, the camp-fire flickered to a few redembers, and Fred Cadden lay, cold and stark, staring with unseeing,glassy eyes, up at the grey heavens as the day broke, and the bushrang with the chattering, the shrieks and whistlings ofnewly-awakened beasts and birds. Then the outlaw came again,limping painfully, dragging himself from tree to tree. There wasblood upon his hands, and his pallid cheeks were streaked withblood, and blood dripped from the point of his long beard.
An immense 'guana hung its hideous head over a log and eyed thebody curiously. Hogan scared it away with a fierce oath, and fellon his knees by the side of the dead man. All night he had riddenaimlessly, furiously, inviting death at every stride, his soul atumult of fragmentary thoughts and memories that scourged him withhell's torments. Two hours before dawn he had left his horse,huddled in a heap under the butt of a fallen tree, with a brokenneck, and, mangled and torn himself, he had tottered and crawledback to the camp, inspired with a wild hope. Perhaps a spark oflife remained—perchance in his amazement and horror he hadmistaken a fainting fit for death. That hope fled with his firsttouch upon Fred's rigid cheek, and Hogan raised himself upon hisknees, clinging to the dead hand, and drew his revolver from hisbelt.
"Not my bullet, my boy," he murmured. "Thank God for that!"
He placed his revolver to his breast and fired. He remainedrigid for a moment, and then his body was flung forward across thebody of his son, and a thin line of smoke from the smouldering spoton his shirt directly over his heart, rose up between them andcircled in the still air.
THE lovers were not animated by any romantic appreciation of thepicturesque in selecting the western slope of Magpie Hill for theirmeeting place. The trysting spot possessed one advantage—itwas secluded. Since the Macdougals had given up their search forthe reef, believed to exist in the locality, as a bad job, theywere never led in that direction by inclination, and rarely byduty. The coarse grass growing sparingly in the hard, hungry soilseldom enticed the cattle from the flats near the river. On thehill-side the gums grew straggling and strangely contorted, andonly a few clumps of drooping, stunted saplings relieved the dullbrown expanse of surface with a touch of bright green, and offeredanything like shelter from the penetrating rays of the fiercesummer sun now glinting upon the motionless leaves and weaving anebullient mirage far down in the dry bed of Spooner's Creek.
Harry Grey waited at the foot of the hill, evidently in no verygracious humour; with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets, andhis back set against a tree, he gazed gloomily at his feet, proppedout before him, seeking a satisfactory solution of the difficultyhe had in hand, and which for the last nineteen hours, sleeping andwaking, had defied his not particularly ingenious mind. His bootssuggested nothing, and time was pressing. The girl might come atany moment, and his diplomacy was equal to no better line of actionthan the bald and brutal truth. Any fool can tell the simple truth.What the young man wanted was a lie that would "fill the bill" andat the same time save him the indignity of a confession of his ownweakness. Open confession is good for the soul, but when one'sconfessor is a pretty young woman, with a reserve of nativedignity, to whom a fellow has sworn eternal constancy a thousandtimes, and undying devotion as often again, and the confession is acruel renunciation of her affection and her fealty, one is so farlost to the teachings of his youth as to be willing to give all hismoral copybook maxims for a really serviceable deceit.
Harry groaned dismally, and vented his feelings on his horse,but Eaglehawk, accustomed to these impassioned addresses, and stungout of all patience by the voracious flies, continued to paw up thedirt and lash out viciously with his heels, regardless of hisowner's ill-humour and his objurgations.
When the young man heard the rattle of a horse's hoofs above onthe ridge he abandoned all thoughts of subterfuge, and resolved tomake a virtue of necessity. He would be candid—he would givea plain statement of the case. They must separate and endeavour toforget each other; family reasons, &c., rendered it imperative.An air of melancholy, tempered with firmness, was necessary to theexplanation. Harry assumed such an air, and awaited the ordeal, butas the sound of the hoof-beats drew nearer his firmness melted intotrepidation and his melancholy dwindled into a pitifulshamefacedness, for beneath the veneer of sophistry with which hehad tried to delude his better self there was a consciousness ofthe paltry nature of the part he was playing, and a still smallvoice told him that selfishness and not filial affection promptedhis action.
Comet came over the hill at a rattling gallop, clearing the logsand stumps and clumps of scrub in his long, swinging stride, andhis mistress sat him with the ease of a bush-bred girl, to whom agood horse is one of the necessities of life, and with a gracerarely seen in bush or town.
"Whoa, boy!"
Vic brought the nag up standing within a few feet of her lover,and dropped lightly to the ground before he could offerassistance.
No wonder the young man shrank from the idea of offendingVictoria Macdougal. The distressing nature of his task came home tohim with an increase of bitterness as she stood there, smilingcoyly, and curtseying with mock dignity. She looked prettier thanever to-day; her cheeks glowed like newly-blown brier roses afterrain, and her beautiful hair clung in exquisite little curls abouther white brow and her dainty pink ears. He noted, with a greatregret at his heart, the elegance of her slim figure in the light,well-fitting habit she wore. Her lips were even more tempting thanusual, too, and he thought, sighing, that her fine eyes had assumeda brighter blue, but were gentler withal. She was sweet andinviting, but he did not kiss her. He leaned against the tree moredeterminedly, and ruefully congratulated himself upon his strengthof mind.
Victoria missed the customary salutation, and noted Harry'sreticence, and her manner changed at once. She also could be coldand careless.
"Good afternoon, Mister Grey." They might have met for the firsttime at the show ball last week.
"Good afternoon, Vic."
Harry felt supremely uncomfortable, and tugged at Eaglehawk'srein and bullied the horse in a poor endeavour to hide hisdiscomposure, and to avoid looking into her beautiful, inquisitiveeyes. Harry is a tall, strong fellow, spoken of by most of his malefriends as a good fellow (usually with a superfluous adjective, beit regretfully recorded) with an ordinarily well-developed sense ofhonour, but lacking the moral stamina to act up to it in all cases.He is the first son of old "Jock" Grey, of Wombat. Grey, of Wombat,is a successful farmer and breeder in so large a way as almost tomerit the dignity of being included amongst Victoria's"squatocracy."
Vic is the daughter of George Macdougal, a farmer in a smallerway, and not a good farmer at that. He and his big athletic sonsare imbued with the digger's passion, and devote more time toprospecting up and down the creek and trenching for the reef thanto the prosaic work of cutting scrub, ring-barking, fencing, andputting down crops. A Jew from the city has been seen wanderingover their land, and there is much talk amongst the widelyscattered neighbours of mortgages and liens on stock.
After kicking at a tuft of grass, with a brave show ofunconcern, for a few awkward moments, and trying hard to controlhis nerves and his ideas, Harry became desperate.
"Vic," he blurted, "I'm going to make you hate me!"
"Hate you, Harry?" There is much concern in her face now. "Youfrighten me. You look serious enough to have all the mounted policein the colony on your track," she continued, with a patheticassumption of raillery. "Have you been bank-breaking orcattle-stealing? Well, sir, don't you see how impatient I am?"
He hung Eaglehawk up to the tree, and, pointing to a log by aclump of saplings, said:
"Hadn't you better sit in the shade?"
He made this arrangement cunningly, that he might stand behindher whilst telling his story. He was afraid of the sudden unveilingof that deeper light in her eyes, which had flashed forth at timesto his great discomfort.
Vic turned to obey him, and, sitting upon the log, with a stickshe had picked from the ground she played nervously amongst thestony soil at her feet, and Harry Grey stood behind her andfaltered through his explanation.
"Vic, I have to give you up. We must meet no more, but justforget all this—this foolishness that has been between us.You know that our fathers are bad friends. Dad expects me to marryMary Lalor up at Gumleaf, and he has heard of my meetings with you.Sandy Martin dropped to it and reported it to the boss, who tackledme about it yesterday, and I up and told him we were sweethearts,and that I had asked you to marry me. Then dad tore round and wenton like a dingo in a snap-trap; said I must drop fooling, or go andpunch cattle for my tucker for the rest of my days. He swore thatif I did not cut this—this—you know, I could give upall thoughts of working in with him, or of ever owning a shillingof his or an acre of Wombat land. And he means it. I didn't reckonon the old man cutting up rusty about it, but he is real mad, andas he's got the whip-hand of me I had to cry small, and promise himI'd ride across for the last time to-day and square matters uplike. We must part for good and all, Vic."
The young woman's face paled, and her head bent lower, but shedid not speak; she still played nervously amongst the dead leavesand stones with her stick, and struggled bravely to stifle the sobsthat rose in her throat.
"It isn't that dad has any objection to you, Vic—MissMacdougal," added the young man, clumsily, "or doesn't think yougood enough for me, or anything like that; but Wombat needs morecash than he can command to work it properly, and your people aretoo poor, you know."
The girl started as the last words fell from his lips, but gaveno answer for a minute or more. Drawing the dirt and dead leavesback over the small hole she had made in the ground, she droppedthe stick, and then, turning her white face towards him,repeated—
"Too poor?"
Harry flushed a deeper red, and looked fixedly from the eyesthat turned upon him full of bitter reproach.
"Yes," he muttered, "too poor. I hope you won't feel cut up, andthat you'll soon forget."
"I may not soon forget, but I shall not feel our parting much. Inever knew you till now, Harry."
He was going on to explain or excuse his conduct in a feebleway, but she gave him no attention.
Comet, who, throughout the interview, had been fighting theflies at a little distance, came in answer to the call of hismistress, and she sprang lightly to the saddle from the log,disdaining Harry's proffered assistance.
"Have you nothing to say?" he asked miserably, as she gatheredup the reins.
"What need I say? Your father has settled the matter."
The young man winced, and he gazed gloomily after her as she puther horse at the brush fence, and rode at a dangerous pace alongthe foot of the hill, till her figure was lost to his view beyondthe bend. Then he mounted Eaglehawk, and that game little animalbroke his record for seven miles in the run to Wombat.
Miss Victoria did not ride straight home; she pulled up anddismounted by a patch of young wattles, about a mile and a halffrom the trysting-place, and in a familiar shaded nook indulged ina long reverie, ending in tears, and then took herself severely totask, and scolded herself into a proper state of dignity andself-respect.
Two days later the whole of the district was in a fever ofexcitement over the intelligence that the Macdougals had struck agolden lode at the foot of Magpie Hill, on their sister'sselection. The news reached Wombat, and Harry and his father rodeacross to inspect "the find." Intelligence of gold discoveriestravels through mysterious agencies, and flies to every point ofthe compass as if a staff of a'rial Mercuries were always inwaiting to carry the electrifying news from ear to ear. When theGreys cached the paddock there was a great crowd about the cuttingin which the Macdougals, father and sons, were at work. Miners andprospectors had gathered from miles around, and scores of enviousagriculturists swelled the excited throng.
One glance at the cap of the reef convinced all with theslightest knowledge of mining that the Macdougals had struck itrich and were "in for a big thing." The outcrop showed almost asmuch gold as stone, and the pure yellow metal shone with dazzlinglustre in the bright rays of the midday sun. The men had alreadylaid bare a great quantity of the quartz, showing that the reefwidened as "she" dipped, and to the astonished onlookers it seemedthat there must be a fortune now in sight.
Harry Grey stood, speechless, staring at the reef. He had somelittle knowledge of quartz-mining, and had seen golden stonebefore, but never anything like this. Yet it was not the gold alonethat amazed him; he remembered how, only a few hours before, he hadstood upon this very spot, within a foot or two of the greattreasure glowing before his eyes, telling Victoria Macdougal thatshe was too poor ever to be the wife of the son of Grey ofWombat.
The young man plucked at his father's sleeve, and backed out ofthe crowd. His eyes danced with excitement, and the hand on hisfather's arm shook like that of an old man.
"Great Scott!" he gasped, when beyond earshot of the peoplestanding about. "Dad, listen. I stood on top of that golden pilewhen I broke with Vic on Monday. My boots must have touched thegold. She sat upon that log which they have been forced to rollaside to get at the reef, while I babbled about her poverty like aninspired jackass!"
Mr. Grey held his chin, and seemed to pull his naturally longvisage down to an extraordinary length as he heard this, and aludicrous expression of intense solicitude grew in his pawkyface.
"Couldna ye mack it up again, boy?"
"Good-day, Mr. Grey. How do you do, Master Harry?" It was Vicwho had obtruded into their conversation. She looked at Harry witha peculiar little smile that made him flush to the eyes. She worethe dove-coloured riding-dress he had so often admired, and herabundant bright hair rippled from under her hat. The young mannoticed with selfish satisfaction that her face was unusually pale,and, despite the faint smile upon her lips, she did not look ashappy and radiant as might have been expected of one who hadexperienced great and sudden good fortune.
"They have struck it at last, Vic," said the young man,indicating the cutting with a toss of his hand.
"I have struck it," she answered with emphasis. "At about nineminutes past 2 on Monday afternoon I was sitting on a log over thespot where my brothers are working, playing amongst the dirt with astick and listening to your story—you'll remember,Harry—when I turned up this golden key to wealth." She heldout for their inspection a fine nugget, on which a quaint patternwas wrought in white quartz.
"You see," she said, "it is almost the shape of a brokenanchor."
She turned away, but paused after walking a few yards, andlooking back, said, with an artfully ingenuous air:
"By the way, Mr. Grey, have you heard of my brother Dick'sengagement to Mary Lalor, of Gumleaf? They have been in love witheach other for some time, it appears, but said nothing about ittill yesterday."
When she had gone father and son stood in thoughtful attitudesfor a few moments, and then turned, and each looked into theother's blank face and breathed a great sigh.
"Just my infernal bad luck!" muttered Harry, cutting fiercely ata dandelion with his riding whip.
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