Chapter 7

'You put Long Aleck down on his chin in short order, an' he fancied his mutton, I can tell you. Know how to turn a fist to the best advantage, too, don't you? That Geordie's an old sailor who's been through the mill. I know the breed. You stopped him like a stone wall. I'm satisfied I struck it lucky when we met.'

'Glad you think I'll be useful. I don't seem to have been of much account up to now.

'Useful! A man's got to fight 'r knuckle under. The rushes ain't peopled with penny saints. You've got to punch a few to get yourself respected.'

Done was not long learning the truth of this. He found in time that the feats of arms he had mastered with the idea of impressing his enemies in Chisley were his most valuable accomplishments in Australia.

Next day the mates carted their belongings to their claim, and the morning was spent in erecting the tent, rigging bunks, and making things shipshape. They got to work in the shaft again after dinner, Done taking his first lesson in sinking. Within two hours they came upon the wash dirt, the sinking at Diamond Gully being very shallow. While they were busy Jack Thorn, the Geordie, came up from the creek and approached them, grinning broadly, and hiding something under his hat.

'Hope yer eyesight's good, mates,' he said. 'I've got a bit of a dazzler here to spring on you. What d'yer think o' that?' He removed his hat, and exposed a pint pannikin filled to the brim with clean, coarse nuggets.

'Whew!' whistled Jim. 'You've hit it thick.'

'Yes,' he said. 'That's from three buckets off the bottom. I s'pose you'll get her just ez good. My mate's got a few ounces o' finer stuff. We're mightily obliged to you boys for puttin' us in this hole.'

'You're welcome,' said Mike, grinning. 'We did it for your own good.'

'What weight is there in that?' asked Done.

'Over two hundred ounces. Eight hundred pounds' worth, perhaps.'

Jim gasped and turned to his work again, digging rapidly. Later, Burton took a sample of the gravel in the dish, and carried it away to the creek. He returned in ten minutes with a little water in the pan. Jim could see only a few specks of gold in the bottom of the pan, and his face fell.

'A shicer?' he said.

'Not a bit of it. That's a good enough prospect. Let me have a cut at her.'

The hole was now too deep for Done to throw the dirt to the surface, inexperienced as he was in the use of a shovel in so narrow a space. Burton continued the work till sundown, and then washed a prospect that made his eyes glisten. Next morning they bottomed. Jim was at the mouth of the shaft when Burton called from below:

'Look out on top! Catch, old man

Jim caught the object thrown up to him. It was coated with clay, but the gold shone through, and Done handled his first nugget--a plump one of about ten ounces. A little later they set to work, puddling the best of the wash dug out in the course of sinking; and then the debris was put through the cradle, and Jim awoke at last to the full zest of the digger's lust. Pawing among the gravel in the hopper of the cradle, he picked out the gold too coarse to pass through the holes, and the gleaming yellow metal fired him with a passion that had in it all the frenzy the winning gambler feels, with an added sense of triumph and success. When Mike lifted the slides out and sluiced water over them, showing the gold lying thick and deep, he felt a miser's rapture, and yet had no great desire for wealth. He did not fear work, and had no love of luxury, so that the hunger for riches never possessed him; but this joy was something apart from avarice. The yearnings of untold generations after the precious gold have filtered the love of it into our blood, made the desire for it an instinct. Jim went to bed that night richer by over one hundred pounds than he had been when he rose in the morning.

Done and Burton logged up their shaft and rigged the windlass, and set about the methodical working of the claim. The second day's cleaning up was not as good as the first, but it was highly satisfactory. It was not usual for the miners to keep the gold about them for any length of time. If it was not carried to the storekeepers at Forest Creek, there were gold-buyers--buying for the Melbourne banks, as a rule--who called regularly, eager to exchange bank-notes for the virgin gold. On the afternoon of their third working day, Jim and his mate were leaning on the windlass, talking to two or three men who had gathered about, waiting for one of the gold-buyers then riding along the lead, when they were joined by a tall, fine-looking digger, with a remark ably handsome brown beard and bushy brows.

'Good-day, mates! Got a good thing here?' he said, seating himself on one of the logs.

'Oh, not so bad!'

The newcomer had dropped his revolver, apparently by accident. He stooped and picked it up, but instead of returning it to his belt, toyed with it absently as he made inquiries about the lead and the yields on the field. All eyes were attracted by the peculiar manner in which he handled the weapon, tossing it to and fro carelessly, and twirling it through his fingers with remarkable rapidity.

'That's a pretty clever trick,' said Thorn.

'This is no great shakes.' The owner of the beautiful beard twirled his revolver more rapidly. 'Lend me another.'

Thorn threw his, and the stranger caught it smartly, and juggled with the two.

Brigalow Dick, the gold-buyer, rode up. A particularly bright ex-trooper from Sydney, Brigalow Dick had a reputation as a safe man, and the horse he rode was one of the finest on the field. On one side of the front of his saddle was strapped the stout leather case carrying the gold, on the other was a bag containing money.

'Any gold to sell to-day, Burton?' asked Dick.

'Yes, in half a minute, old man,' replied Mike, deeply interested in the tricks of the juggler.

Brigalow Dick drew his horse up closer and watched the performance.

'Bet you're Californian, Whiskers,' he said.

The stranger nodded. 'Let me have another shooter,' he said.

A third was thrown to him, and he twirled the three in the air, discharging each into the tip as it reached his hand.

'Bravo! bravo!' The performance was growing quite exciting.

'That's simply nothing,' said the amateur prestidigitateur modestly. 'Throw me another, and I'll show what I call a damn good trick.' He cast his eye around the group. It lit upon the gold-buyer casually.

'Here you are.' Brigalow drew his revolver from his belt, and threw it.

'Very good, and many thanks,' said the stranger. He coolly placed the other revolver in his shirt, turned the gold-buyer's long six-shooter on its owner, and said: 'Come down off that horse, Richard, my boy!' Brigalow laughed uneasily, but did not stir. 'Comedown, curse you!' cried the other with sudden ferocity; and, springing to his feet, he seized Dick, and brought him heavily to the ground over his horse's rump. 'Lie there, or, by God, I'll scatter your brains on the grass!' said the juggler. 'The first man that moves will peg out a claim in hell to-night,' he continued, leading the horse away, and walking backwards himself, with the revolver pointed. No man doubted his word. Dick crouched on the ground, staring after him, furious, but quite beaten. Suddenly the robber sprang to the horse's back with a clean jump. 'Now, that is what I call damn good sleight of hand, Brigalow!' he cried; and, producing a short, heavy green-hide whip from his shirt, he lashed the horse mercilessly, and went riding at a breakneck pace down the gully, heading for the distant timber.

'Tricked!' cried the ex-trooper, jumping to his feet--' tricked by the great Blue Bunyip! Tricked like a kid!' He turned and ran for the troopers.

'I surmise Mr. Solo was lurkin' behind them there whiskers,' said a tall, thin Californian, when the party had somewhat recovered the surprise.

Jim started, recalling the encounter with Long Aleck in the Melbourne bar.

'Was that Solo, do you think?' he asked.

'Dead cert' replied the Californian. 'Them's his playful ways.'

'If you guessed it, why didn't you give a hint?'

'Not knowin', can't say; but it's just pawsible I ain't pushin' myself forward as a target this spring.'

Done found this indisposition to interfere in 'other people's business' very marked amongst the diggers; and their toleration of notorious evildoers was a pronounced feature of their easy-going character, encouraged, no doubt, by their contempt for the law, which appealed to them only as an instrument of oppression.

'This means a gallop for the troopers,' said Mike.

'They'll run him down!' ejaculated Jim at a venture.

'The man occupyin' my socks is bettin' ten ounces agin all the feathers off a wart-hog that they don't,' answered the Californian.

'But look at the weight he carries!'

'You're a bright boy--a most remarkably bright boy!' drawled the American, 'an' I guess you'll pick up a heap o' knowledge afore you die out, but up to now you don't know much about Solo. He kin ride like the devil, an' fight like the hosts of hell, an' he's ez full o' tricks ez a pum'kin's full o' pips. I tell you, Amurka's proud of her son.'

'Who sez he's American?' asked a digger, resenting the appropriation.

'Well, sir, if he ain't he's that good an imitation he might's well be the real thing.'

About half an hour later three troopers came cantering through Diamond Gully, looking very smart in their Bedford cords and shining top-boots, and the diggers yelled derisive orders, and greeted them with cries of contempt, jeering them from every hole along the lead. 'Jo!' was the favourite epithet hurled at the troopers and all representatives of constituted authority. Done never discovered the origin of the term, but into it the diggers compressed all the hatred they felt for unjust laws, domineering officials, and flagrant maladministration.

'I thought you knew this Solo,' said Jim to his mate that evening.

'Well,' replied Mike, 'I reckoned I did; but he changes his disguises pretty smartly, 'r else that was another party in the same line o' business.'

IX

IN the four days and a half of their first week on the field Burton and Done cleared close upon seven hundred pounds. By the end of the second week they had worked out their first mine, and Jim possessed eight hundred pounds. They tried another claim, and bottomed on the pipeclay. The hole was a duffer. They tried a third, and cut the wash once more. This claim was not nearly so rich as their first, but rich enough to pay handsomely, and Mike, young as he was, was too old a miner to abandon a good claim on the chance of finding a better. By this time Jim was feeling himself quite an experienced digger; he could sink a straight shaft, knock down wash-dirt with the best, and pan off a prospect as neatly and with as workmanlike a flourish as any man on the field. He was rapidly coming into close touch with the life about him, adopting the manners of his associates, and slowly wearing down that diffidence which still clung to him in the society of strangers. He was reticent, but there remained no suspicion, no animosity towards his kind. Looking back a year, he could hardly recognise himself; the Jim Done of Chisley seemed an old man by comparison. Already Jim of Forest Creek could laugh at Jim o' Mill End, but the consciousness of an escape from a horror remained. How serious he had been in those days! How he had permitted himself to suffer! Thank God, it was all gone!

Going into the tent on the afternoon of the second Sunday, Jim found his mate asleep on one of the bunks. In the hollow of his out-thrown hand lay a cheap lacquered frame containing a daguerreotype of a girl's face. A sudden contrition smote Jim; he turned anxiously to his bunk, throwing the clothes left and right. The vest he had worn when he left the Francis Cadman lay under the pillow. He dived his finger into the watch-pocket, and heaved a sigh of relief. Yes, it was there, safe and sound. He held Lucy Woodrow's miniature, gazing on it, suffused with chastened emotions. Heavens! how beautiful she was, and so gentle and generous! What an ass he had been! He kissed the picture very tenderly, and with a bit of twine secured it in the pocket of his jumper in dangerous proximity to his heart.

Jim Done had now seen much of the fanciful night life of the camps. A populous lead presented a picturesque appearance by night. The illuminated tents and the flaring camp-fires dotted the field thickly, and where the tents of the business people were drawn in line and something like a main street formed, slush lights and kerosene torches flamed and swinging oil-lamps lit up the scene. Here the wilder spirits assembled and drank square gin, and gambled in the canvas shanty bars, or danced with fine frenzy to music provided by some enterprising German Fräulein stolidly grinding a hurdy-gurdy. There were numerous sly grog-shops amongst the tents, and most of the storekeepers sold illicit drink with open impudence. These places were often centres of roaring, ribald life after nightfall; but the majority of the diggers lay in groups about their camp-fires, chatting quietly or reading the most recent papers available, and were peaceably inclined, easy-going citizens.

It was the fiercer side of existence on the fields that appealed most directly to Jim; he loved the strong colour, the exultant animation, the devil-may-care character, that marked the gatherings in the bars and the gambling-saloons. He took little active part in the playing and the drinking, but the feverish energy of the men and the stirring scenes provided such vivid contrast to what he had hitherto known and seen of life that his soul was greedy for it all. To Mike these scenes were all familiar; his attitude towards them was one of quiet indifference, and he regarded Jim's rapture with the amused tolerance a sedate, elderly gentleman feels for the enthusiasm of a little boy.

The mates had shifted their tent to a convenient position near the claim they were now working, and were camped within two hundred yards of the establishment of Mrs. Ben Kyley, laundress and baker. Mrs. Kyley was a big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field. Her voice was the loudest amid the clamouring tongues in her large tent at night, and her guffaw overbore everything; it was one of the wonders of Forest Creek. Many a time its echoes, rebounding from Boulder Hill, had set all Diamond Gully grinning in sympathy. It was not known whether Mrs. Kyley and Ben were married or merely mates, but popular opinion tended to the latter belief, legal unions being incompatible with a nice adjustment of forces at the rushes. The exigencies of life on the diggings made sudden changes of scene necessary to the men, and a woman like Mrs. Kyley couldn't be expected to abandon her business for the sake of a husband, seeing that it was so much easier to set up another husband than another establishment. But the most important branch of the business, that of sly grog-selling, made a man who could handle the riotous and evil-disposed quite essential. Ben Kyley's appearance, broad, thickly-set, solid as a gum-butt, broken-nosed and heavy-handed, and his reputation as the man who was beaten by Bendigo only after an hour's hard fighting, marked him as the fittest man on the field for the position he held. For the rest, Ben was a quiet, mild man, whose voice was seldom heard, and whose subjugation to Mrs. Ben was almost comical. Ben worked on his claim by day, and at night he officiated as 'chucker-out' in Mrs. Kyley's bar--for a bar it was, to all intents and purposes. Ben's duty was not to suppress disorder, but merely to see that the common disorder did not develop into licentiousness, to the danger of Mrs. Kyley's property or the detriment of her trade.

Mrs. Ben Kyley made bread because bread-baking at three shillings a loaf was an exceedingly profitable business. For the same reason she washed shirts at twelve shillings the half-dozen. But selling rum at a shilling a nobbler to 'flash' diggers who despised change was much more profitable still. The industrious woman, who washed and baked all day, was kept busy for the greater part of the night retailing rum to insatiable diggers, and the mystery was that, although nobody could see rum in the bottle or in bulk anywhere about the place, it was rare that the supply ran short.

Jim had visited the tent on one or two occasions, walking from the other side of the gully; he went again on the Saturday afternoon following their removal to buy bread. Mrs. Kyley's big camp-ovens were nestled in the fires outside the tent, three of them in a row; Mrs. Kyley herself, half smothered in suds, was washing with the rapidity and the indefatigability of a machine.

'Aurora will attend to you, my boy,' blared Mrs. Kyley, blowing a storm of suds out of her mop of hair.

Aurora! Jim entered the tent wondering, and found three or four men at the counter, conversing with a young woman, twenty-three perhaps, tall, black-haired, dark-eyed, flushed with colour, happy in temperament, free in manner, a striking representative of a not uncommon type of the time, meeting men on a mutual footing, asking no concessions and making none--Jim's 'Spaniard' of the Melbourne dance saloon. She recognised him immediately.

'Hello!' she cried. 'Look now! if it ain't the boy wid the blushes, an' there's the blush to prove it agin' him.'

Jim was blushing; his rebellious blood gave the lie to his assumption of easy indifference.

'How are you?' he said. 'I knew you at once.'

'To be sure. 'Twould be indacent to forgit, seem' it's my debtor ye are, for the price of a dance.'

'Which you gave me for natural love and affection.'

''Deed, then 'twas because you were poor an' motherless in a strange land, but now the gold's a worry to you, I doubt.'

Jim laughed and shook his head. 'I want a loaf,' he said. 'My mate is hungry and waiting.'

'Heigho!' sighed Aurora; 'devil a scrap of gallantry have these slips of boys, Quigley! You wouldn't leave me for all the mates on earth, would you, now?'

The big bearded digger banged his fist on the counter, and swore a firm, fluent oath that he would not.

'Worse luck,' added Aurora, with a twinkling eye. 'Here's yer bread, Teddy-was-me-darlin', an' ye'd have it fer love if 'twas me own to give.'

Aurora assumed and dropped the musical brogue according to her whim. Ordinarily her English was as pure as Mrs. Kyley's, and Mrs. Kyley had the reputation of being a lady of vast attainments.

'There's the money,' said Jim, 'and will you take this for the dance?' He offered her a nugget he had picked from the week's yield, a flat, heart-shaped slug, curiously embossed.

''Deed, an' it's mighty fine,' said the girl, 'but I'd rather have ye me debtor for life.'

'Take it for natural love and affection, then.'

'Ah, if it's the heart you're givin' me, I'll be uncommon greedy, so I will.' She kissed the nugget, and slipped it into her breast.

Jim went away, glowing with the satisfaction a very young fellow feels in having provoked the admiration of a woman and the jealousy of a man. Aurora's of interest was open and unabashed. Quigley's jealous passion was just as artless and free from disguise. Done had intended to send that nugget as a natural curiosity to Lucy Woodrow. He put the shade of regret the recollection provoked hastily out of his mind. Mike had heard a good deal of talk about the new girl at Mrs. Kyley's, now Jim swelled the chorus of admiration. Both young men spent that evening at the washerwoman's tent.

The Kyley establishment consisted of a tent some fifty feet long, divided into two compartments with a canvas partition. This screen ran just behind the counter, and through it Mrs. Kyley dived to replenish her jug of rum; but that room at the back represented the sanctity of the Kyley home-life, and to it the diggers never penetrated. The public portion was furnished with two long deal tables, at which the men sat on the Bush stools and diced and drank, or played monotonous, if noisy, games of euchre and forty-fives.

That night Aurora--surnamed Australis by a facetious digger--was particularly attentive to Done. Jim was flattered by her open preference, dazzled by her bright eyes and glowing cheeks, and piqued by her bantering manner, for she still implied that he might be allowed indulgences because of his beardless, boyish face and his seeming ingenuousness. As a protest against this attitude, Done was impelled to drink rather more rum than was good for him, and under the influence of the fiery spirit he lost some thing of his habitual reserve, and a fight with Quigley was only averted by the tactful intervention of Burton.

'Didn't like interferin', Jim,' said Mike next morning, 'but Quigley's a hard nut and an ugly fighter. He'd have eaten you if you'd taken him on as you stood.'

'I'm much obliged, old man,' answered Done mournfully. 'I suppose I made an outrageous ass of myself.'

But he went back to Mrs. Kyley's bar again on the Monday evening, and there got good advice from Aurora.

'You don't like this rubbish, Jimmy,' she said, serving him with the drink he had asked for. The remark was made with an air of positive assurance. They were alone.

'Well, no, I don't particularly,' he admitted.

'Then, don't be a fool. Don't gammon you do. You need not drink it. I don't want you to. See here, Jimmy,' she continued gravely, 'Quigley doesn't like you; he is looking for a chance to do you a mischief, and he would have had his chance the other night if I hadn't overlooked you like a mothering hen, and sold you good creek water at a shilling the nip.'

'I did act the fool, I admit.'

'Never a bit; but don't give Quigley his chance by numbing your good sense with Mary Kyley's rum. Sure,' said Aurora, dropping into her honied brogue, 'it's fer the love of me ye're comin', not for the dthrop o' drink. Murther! would ye kill me wid denyin' it?' She was sitting on the counter; she pressed her fingers on his lips, and laughed in his face with happy impudence, her large handsome mouth full of pearls, her eyes flashing a challenge. Jim's arm stole to her waist of its own initiative.

Then Mrs. Ben Kyley came roaring into the tent. 'Inveigling my girl away!' she cried. 'Get out, you kidnapper! Where's your taste, anyhow, philandering with a slip of a girl when there's a fine woman about with a heart as empty as a big sieve?' And the bouncing washerwoman bore down upon him, and bombarded him out of the place with gusts of laughter.

As yet, Done had seen little of the trials and tribulations of the diggers. Diamond Gully was a prosperous rush, and the impositions under which the Victorian miners complained so bitterly had not come home to many on this field; but he had heard a great deal. The political and social wrongs of the diggers were the staples of conversation about the camp-fires. To Jim's great surprise, he found these men, surrounded with the exciting conditions of their peculiar life, allowing their minds to be occupied with aspirations after political freedom. The failure of Chartism in England had driven thousands of hot-blooded champions of popular rights to Australia, and these were the leaven that leavened the whole lump. They talked of people's parliaments, manhood suffrage, and payment of members in a country governed by a pack of British nominees who had no knowledge of the bulk of the people and no sympathy with their aspirations. The ideas stirred the miners; they found a lodgment in every breast, and already men spoke of an Australian Republic south of the Murray, governed on the liberal principles enunciated by Fergus O'Connor.