Chapter 6

Done's admiration for his mate was growing rapidly. Mike looked like a model in new copper, kneeling by the fire, his face thrown back, reflecting the glow of the flame in the surrounding dusk. Jim realized what had gone to the making of that hard, lean frame, and, proud as he was of his own strength, envied the other his endurance. He knew that Burton had been making concessions to him throughout their journey, that he could have walked miles further in the time without fatigue, carrying his swag as jauntily as if it were a butterfly poised on his back. His boyish exuberance of manner when stirred was in direct contrast to the quiet assurance with which he went about ordinary affairs. He was never in difficulties, never at a loss; the Bush was his living-room, bedroom, and larder. He had already shown himself independent of what the stores could provide when a meal was wanted. Mike might have been a pink Adonis in another climate and under other conditions; his gray eyes and fair moustache were in almost ludicrous contrast with his tanned hide--he appeared to be bound in morocco.

After their meal Jim spread himself upon the ground, his head pillowed on the swag, stretching his tired limbs. Mike sat smoking, and there was silence over and about them. One of those brief hushes, when all the night voices are stilled and the trees merge into black, motionless masses, was upon the Bush, and it infected the men. All day they had marched with the throng; their tramp had never been lonely, thousands of men were moving upon Forest Creek, and every now and again they passed a toiling party burdened with tools and utensils, or were passed in turn by more enthusiastic spirits pushing on, eager for a share in the treasure of Red Gully, Diamond Gully, and Castlemaine. The shouts of the joyous travellers were still echoing in Done's ears.

He had seen diggers on the track under varying fortunes, cursing dreadfully by broken-down teams, urging on their dull bullocks--slow, but very sure--singing exuberantly as they paced by, carrying heavy swags with light hearts, shouting as they went, under the impulse of a common hope that begot friendliness in all; and yet each man was armed now--there was a revolver or a pistol in every belt. They came out of the Bush, and the Bush swallowed them again--strange groups. Two Jim passed he recognised as sailors off the Francis Cadman: one was in the shafts of a loaded wheel barrow, the other, with a rope over his shoulder, trudged ahead, towing manfully, both as merry as boys at play, despite the ten days' journey ahead of them.

'Good luck, mate!' 'Good luck!' The trees showered kindly wishes, and hearty compliments danced from lip to lip. A spirit of irrepressible jollity laughed in the land. Drays, waggons, buggies, cabs, vehicles of all kinds, were pressed into the service of the adventurers. Four diggers went roaring by in a dilapidated landau that had seen vice-regal service in Hobart Town, driven by a fifth blackguard dressed in an old livery, and they brandished champagne bottles, and scattered the liquid gold like emperors--lucky pioneers from Buninyong. A ragged, bare-footed, hatless urchin, a stowaway fresh from the streets of London, whipped behind, as he might have done a few weeks earlier on a Bishop's carriage in Rotten Row. The mates next encountered a band of Chinamen carrying their burdens on bamboos, covering the ground smartly with their springing trot and cackling gaily as they went; then a 'hatter,' drunk as a lord rolling heavily, his hands in his pockets, his hat jauntily set on the back of his head, bellowing the latest comic song, a lonely soul; then a dray, piled high with cradles, pans, picks, shovels, swags, and a miscellaneous cargo, on the top of which perched a bulky Irishwoman, going to the diggings to make her fortune as the proprietress of the Forest Creek Laundry. This and much more in the depths of a pathless forest, the grave solitude of which was disturbed only for the moment as each jocund company hastened on into the mysterious vastness ahead, or fell back into the dense Bush that lay behind. That anybody could have a definite idea whither he was going in this ocean of trees, that engulfed them all like stones dropped into the sea, Done found it hard to believe.

'You're a curious kind of devil, Jim,' said Mike, who had been watching Done closely during the last few minutes.

'How's that?'

'You don't talk. Worse still, you don't smoke.'

'No; in England I had neither mates nor friends, and smoking's a convivial disease--a kid catches it from his companions.'

'I might have guessed you were bred a "hatter"; you're as dumb as a mute.'

'Same reason, Mike; but I'm getting over it. I'm getting over a good many things rather too suddenly. I'm sort of mentally breathless. A year ago I'd have sworn that friendship and good-fellowship were impossible to me.'

'Go on!'

'And just now I'm feeling things too keenly to talk much about them.'

''Nough said, Jimmy; I ain't complaining.' Mike knocked the ashes from his pipe on his boot. 'I s'pose I'd best get somethin' for breakfast,' he said, rising and stretching himself.

'What, here?' Jim looked about him into the darkness.

'Here or hereabouts. Keep an eye on the swags. I won't be gone more'n an hour at the outside.'

Micah Burton went off into the dense Bush, that to Jim looked grimly unpromising, and the latter lay back upon the grass again, with quite a luxurious sensation. The hard day's walking made this rest peculiarly agreeable: he had eaten well, his mind was at peace--he no longer concerned himself with psychological theories--he was content to live and feel.

Sharply out of the silence came a ringing report. Jim was jerked to a sitting posture, listening with all his ears. The report was repeated several times, a fusillade of shots, followed by faint echoes of a voice raised in anger. There was an interval of quiet, and when the sound broke in again Done sighed contentedly, and relapsed into his former position. He recognised the crack of a cattle-whip. In a minute or two he heard the voice of the bullocky admonishing Bally and Spot with a burst of alliterative invective, and presently the leaders came labouring out of the darkness, the great red bullocks, with bowed heads, moving slowly and with that suggestion of impassive invincibility that goes always with a big team of good working bullocks in action.

'Hello, mate!' cried someone beyond in the shadows.

'Hello, there!'

'Plenty o' water 'bout?'

'A creek down to the left.'

'Right-o! We'll camp here, Stony. Woa, Strawberry! Woa, there, Spot! Bally! Blackboy!'

The cattle came to a standstill, and while the others busied themselves unyoking the team, one man went off through the trees, and presently returned, carrying a billy he had just filled. He kicked the fire together, threw on a few pieces of wood, and began to prepare a meal, paying no attention to Jim, who lay watching him. It was not customary to say 'By your leave!' in little matters of this kind. On the track every man's company was supposed to be welcome. Following a habit of observation, Jim examined the man without curiosity. He was thin, sandy-haired, and wiry, about forty-five, with restless hands, and a cowed, half-sullen expression--a drinker of strong drinks of the kind manufactured at the shanties, corrosive liquids that ate the souls out of men in quick order.

Having disposed of the bullocks, the tinkling of whose bells was a foreign note in the night, two others came to the fire, carrying the tucker-box. They were brothers, long, bearded, brown-faced Australians of the runs, going up to the rush with stores for Coolan and Smith, or Aberdeen, the universal providers of the Roaring Fifties.

'Hurry up that blasted quart-pot, Stony!' ejaculated the elder of the two. 'I feel as if I'd done a three days' perish-me!'

The men ate hungrily, sitting about in the light of the fire, drinking the hot tea from pannikins and from the billy lid, and as they ate they talked. Done was beginning to find himself at home in the society of men. The humanities were finding place in his soul. Everything about these people interested him--their work, their pleasures, their ideas. They were so closely in touch with vital things, so tolerant. They cherished no political, social, and religious convictions to the exclusion of their fellow-men.

Burton returned, swinging four featherless birds. The invasion of their camp did not surprise him. He greeted the strangers cheerfully, and held the birds up for Jim's inspection.

'Our breakfast,' he said. 'Fat 'n young.'

'Where did they come from?'

'A lagoon half a mile up the creek. Four shots, four duck.' He touched his revolver.

'But Nature doesn't provide plucked birds for our benefit.'

'Skinned an' cleaned 'em at the water.'

The teamsters were not averse to boiled duck and broth for breakfast, and the two billies were soon steaming on the camp-fire, while the company yarned and smoked. It was nearly ten o'clock, and all hands were thinking of taking to their blankets for the night, when a sixth man came quietly through the trees, unobserved until his greeting disturbed them. Done had to turn on his side to look at the newcomer, a handsome, beardless man in the garb of a digger, but much more scrupulous in the matter of cleanliness and fit than the majority.

'I did not like the society at the Rest,' he said, 'and walked on, looking for quieter company.'

'Make yourself at home,' answered Mike. 'There's tea in the pannikin, an' there's grub in the dilly-bag. You're not carryin' traps.'

'No. Sent everything ahead but this 'possum rug. Thanks for--'

He ceased speaking. His face had been composed, almost colourless; into it there sprang an expression of amazement, which deepened into an animal ferocity shocking to see. The mouth twitched spasmodically, the eyes caught the glare of the flame, and glowed with a catlike lustre. Surprised, Done turned in the direction of his glance, and discovered the man Stony crouching on the other side of the fire, his weak, tremulous hands stretched out before him, his face gray as ashes and convulsed with horror. Glaring at the stranger, he lifted his hands, thrusting the vision from him, and a cry of terror burst in his throat, as the man sprang at him, bearing him to the ground as a tiger might have done, groping fiercely at his throat with iron fingers. Stony lay on his back; his enemy, kneeling on his body, choking him, bent his face down, and cried fiercely:

'It is you, then? I am not mistaken! You know me, you dog, and you know that I mean to tear the heart out of you!'

Releasing his grip on the flesh, he wrenched at Stony's shirt, ripping it at the neck.

'Help!' gasped the prostrate wretch. 'For the love of God, help!'

'There's your brand--your brand, Peter!' He thrust his face into Stony's again, and all the hate that a face can carry and that a voice can convey was betrayed in his expression and his words. 'Do you know what I have endured, Peter? Do you know what I have suffered?'

Clutching at Stony's throat again, he bored his knee into the body under him, his arms became rigid with the power of his grip, and Stony lay choking, clawing feebly at the other's sleeves, his face distorted into a hideous caricature.

The other men stood about, watching, the Australians reluctant to interfere in a quarrel they did not understand. It was Done who seized the stranger, tearing him off his victim, and then Mike and a teamster laid hands upon him, while Stony was writhing and panting on the ground. The digger offered no resistance; he seemed unconscious of everything but his hatred and his vengeance, and his eyes never moved from Stony.

'We draw the line at cold-blooded murder, mate!' said Mike, but the other gave no answer.

Stony had picked himself up, and, casting one horrified look at his enemy, turned away, and plunged into the blackness of the Bush, running like a frightened animal.

'What's he been up to, anyhow?' asked one of the teamsters, as they released the stranger. The latter did not reply, but instantly darted after the runaway. The four men listened to the retreating footsteps, and presently the Bush echoed two pistol shots fired in rapid succession. The birds murmured and moved in the trees, a monkey-bear grunted disgustedly, and then all was still again.

VIII

FOR some little time the four men stood with their faces turned in the direction Stony and his pursuer had taken, listening breathlessly, and then they went to their blankets again. Done was greatly disturbed; the others took it more as a matter of course.

'You won't follow them?' said Jim.

'Well,' one of the brothers replied, 'I ain't particularly busy just now, but my hands are too full for that kind of foolishness.'

'He meant murder!'

'Somethin' too like it to please old Stony.'

'What do you think it was all about?'

'Can't say. Long grudge, evidently.'

'The clean-shaven man was a lag,' said Mike. 'Convict,' he added, seeing a question in Jim's eye. 'Maybe your friend lagged him.'

'Don't know him from a crow,' replied the teamster addressed. 'We're taking some traps and ware up to the Creek for him on our load, and he travelled along.'

'I think you're mistaken about that man being a convict, Burton,' said Done to Mike later, breaking a long silence.

'Sure I'm not. Saw the cuff-marks on his wrists as he was battling with Stony. Why?'

'He's the man who was in the trap with Macdougal of Boobyalla the other day in Swanston Street.'

'The swell in the choker and double-decker?'

'Yes. For some reason his face impressed me. I couldn't mistake it.'

'Didn't notice it; but if he's own brother to Governor Latrobe himself, I'll take my affie he's a lag.'

The mates overtook the carter with their tent and stores and tools within a day's journey of the rush, and pushed on to secure a claim. Done's first sight of a busy goldfield was gained on a clear, sunny morning, when, after passing through Sawpit Gully, they came upon the beginning of the long lead that comprised many rushes, known as Forest Creek. The impression Jim retained was a semi-humorous one of humans reduced to the proportions and the dignity of ants, engaged upon the business of ants wrought to a pitch of excitement by some grand windfall at their doors. Little figures bustled about, carrying burdens; pigmies swarmed along the lead. The holes, with their white and yellow tips, were clustered as close together as the cells in a great honeycomb, and into the shafts and out of them bobbed hurrying, eager creatures. The whirring of windlasses, the clatter of nail-keg buckets, the incessant calls, 'Look up below!' and the distinct ringing of hammer on anvil, blended into a quaint symphony of labour. The swish, swish, swish, of the wet dirt in the cradle-hoppers and the rattling of the tailings thrown from the shovels providing an unvarying substratum of sound. There were tents everywhere, large and small, dotting the distance, but clustering into a township of canvas to the right of the Creek, and over the scene floated a faint mirage, so that the whole field and all in it quivered in the warm ascending air, the gauzy effect aiding the idea of stagy unreality.

At the first sight of the lead Mike threw his hat into the air and cheered wildly. Another party coming in were beating their jaded horses to a run, the men jumping beside the team mad with joy, shouting like maniacs. On all hands were the waggons and drays unloading by tents not yet fully erected. The men who were not busy at their claims or puddling, cradling or panning-off dishes by the creek, were breathlessly engaged upon the work of getting their canvas houses into order and be stowing their goods; newcomers passed unheeded, however boisterous.

'Before tea we'll have our pegs in here, Jim,' said Mike joyfully.

They had been walking since two hours before daybreak, but elation possessed them to the exclusion of all thought of fatigue. The sight of the field of action set Jim's sinews twitching; he longed for the strife, and found some difficulty in restraining himself from running with the preceding party pell-mell on to the creek. But he had nothing of the gold-seeker's fever in his blood; the thought of amassing a fortune had merely occurred to him: it was the free, strong, exhilarating life that stirred him most deeply.

Burton discovered an old acquaintance in a sooty blacksmith perspiring copiously over an open-air forge, and the mates left their swags in his tent and hastened to the high-walled, square tent occupied by the warden of the field to secure their licenses. Here Jim had his first taste of officialdom in Australia, and he did not like it. The tent was thronged with miners eager to secure their papers; they were met with cold-blooded intolerance by a class of officials often bred to their business in the infamous convict system, and now incapable of putting off their tyrannous insolence in the faces of free men. Several foot police--Vandemonians from the convict settlements--were stationed in the tent to enforce the mandate of Commissioner McPhee, or any understrapper who might resent the impatience of a digger, and order him to be propelled into the open on the toe of a regulation boot. The new hands bore the indignities carelessly, but the experienced diggers came up to the rough counter grimly and silently, conveying in their attitude Some suggestion of a reckoning almost due. They under stood all the injustice and flagrant abuse the licenses implied, the new chums did not.

'Take care o' that, Done,' said Mike, flipping his own license with his thumb; 'they're important. I've heard em called tickets of admission to the new republic.'

'What do they stand for, Mike?'

'One month. For one month James Done is entitled to burrow for gold in Her Majesty's mud hereabout, an' for that time he's reckoned to have a right to be alive. At the end of the month he trots up to renew, and the price is thirty bob every time.'

'But if James Done doesn't happen to have thirty bob?'

'Then his right to be alive is null and void, and if he's caught so much as scraping dirt to bury a pup he's dealt with according to law. If in his month's work he doesn't earn enough to buy grease for his windlass, he must take out his miner's right or run the chance of being scragged.'

'That seems strangely out of place here. And the men stand it?'

'And heaps more. This license qualifies a miner to be dragged out of his hole at any moment, like a blasted wombat, by the scruff, to be bully-damned from Geelong to breakfast by some lag-punching, lop-eared ex-warder with a string of troopers at his heels!' Jim saw his mate in a bitter mood, for the first time.

'But why the license, if it confers no benefit?'

'To rob the diggers mercilessly, and to provide swine like those in there with a chance of riding the high horse over better men!' Mike was mixing his metaphors in his wrath. 'But you'll know all about it in time. If you're in the habit of using your hands, keep 'em tight in your pockets when the traps are out man-hunting. It's worse than manslaughter to punch a trooper. They'd have you in the logs in ten ticks less 'n no time.'

Done refused to be depressed by the prospect. He understood that with his right in his pocket a miner was safe, and the charge did not seem to him a serious grievance in this land of plenteous gold.

The mates had a crib with Duffy, the blacksmith; and after the meal, armed with wooden pegs, a pick, and a shovel, they set out to secure a claim. Acting on the urgent advice of Duffy, they headed for Diamond Gully, nearly two miles off; and here Mike loitered about amongst the claims, chatting with the men on top, keeping his eyes wide open, and gathering information as he went. The majority of the miners were quite enthusiastic; they were doing well, and had no desire to conceal the fact. One showed a prospect in the tin dish that wrung a wondering oath from Mike, and yet he moved on. Done could not understand. There was plenty of free land on either side, extending for miles.

'Why not here, Burton?' he asked, indicating a pleasant spot.

'Off the lead, probably,' answered Mike. 'We don't want to waste time bottoming shicers--sinking duffers,' he added in explanation. Done was still unenlightened. 'Putting down shafts where there isn't a colour,' continued Burton. 'We'll get right on the lead, or I'm a spud-miner from Donegal.'

In due course they came to a claim that interested Burton deeply, but the man at the windlass was gloomy, almost despairing. He didn't believe he'd got a tucker show, and sadly advised Mike to shepherd a hole down to the left.

'We ain't in sight of her here,' he said.

Burton took a pinch of dirt from the side of the bucket at his feet, rubbed it between his finger and thumb, and grinned at the digger.

'Take me for a Johnny Raw, don't you?' he said. 'This is good enough for me. Quick, Jim, the pegs!'

The exclamation was drawn from him by the sight of three men running along the lead in their direction.

As Burton hammered in his first peg, the newcomers started hammering a peg for the same holding. Mike paced the twenty-four feet, and kicked the stranger's peg out of the ground. Not a word was spoken. The intruding digger, a stoutly-built, cheerful-looking Geordie, promptly struck at Mike, and they fought. Done stood aside, nonplussed by the suddenness of all this, and for a minute a hard give-and-take battle raged on the claim. Jim discovered the Geordie's mate busying himself driving in a peg. Seizing the man by the back of the neck, he dragged him to his feet, and sent him spinning with a long swing. After which he gripped Mike's opponent in the same way, and bowled him over and over.

'Now you get the pegs in, Mike,' said Jim. 'I'll attend to these.'

The Geordie arose and rushed at Jim with the vehemence of an old fighter, but Done stopped him with a straight left, closed, and threw him. Mike ceased hammering the peg to applaud.

'Neat and nice!' he cried. 'Would any other gentleman like a sample?'

'I'm quite satisfied,' said the Geordie, without a trace of ill-feeling.

'Then peg out the next,' continued Mike. 'It should be quite as good a spec as this if your friend's on anything like a gutter.'

'Ay, ay, lad!' responded the Tynesider, who had a mouse on his cheek as big as his thumb, and he set cheerfully to work to peg out two men's ground further on. His bluff having failed, he cherished not the slightest resentment, and two minutes later, to Jim's great amusement, all concerned were indulging in affable conversation. The newcomers were friends of the party in the working mine, where the lead had been cut, a prospect from the headings promising so well that the holders had hastened to acquaint the Geordie with the fact. The latter arrived too late, however--first come, first served, being the law of the diggings, and first peg in meant legal possession.

Two men's ground measured twelve feet by twenty-four feet. Mike had taken the twenty-four feet in the direction in which the lead seemed to be running, and now he lined out a shaft about four feet by two feet, and commenced sinking. He dug down to the depth of his waist, and at sunset the mates returned to Forest Creek. That night the teamster arrived with their goods, and Done and Burton slept under canvas, the tent having been hastily thrown across a hurdle to provide a screen from the glowing moonlight, the trees here being stunted and widely scattered.

'So you're a wrestler, Jim said Mike, when they had turned in for the night.

'I know a fall or two,' answered Done.