Moseley had amused himself, in the absence of his mates, by pegging out a supposititious claim, twenty-four feet by eighteen, just to let them see what they might expect between them elsewhere. He was much astonished, and withal as elated as his easy nature would permit, at Denis's decision in the morning. Denis found the pegs almost in the shadow of the blue gum-tree, beneath which they had pitched their tent, and he declared that they could not possibly do better. The tall digger was duly quoted on the possibilities of Black Hill Flat. Its merits as a residential quarter were already obvious. The Tynesiders' camp was the nearest, and it was not within speaking distance. As for Moseley, it entirely suited him to settle down with the least trouble and delay, in the first peaceful spot; and the party spent a happy Sunday in re-pitching the tent and carefully arranging the whole encampment.
The day was an experience in itself. It was kept wonderfully holy, for that community, in those wilds. Dent and Doherty took a morning walk; it did not interest Moseley, who had also volunteeredto cook. But Denis was much struck and a little touched to meet the string of Sunday promenaders, all in their best and cleanest, as at home, and to realize that the average digger was a really law-abiding creature after all. Outside every tent the Sunday dinner smoked or hissed on fires all but invisible in the strong sunlight; one or two had been turned into canvas church or chapel, and a familiar hymn, heard in passing, was only the more moving for the gruff voices which groaned it forth. On one point Denis satisfied himself: not a hand was put to the cradle or the spade; and so peaceful was the impression left in his heart, that not even Moseley's cooking, which was very disappointing, could spoil an hour of that first auspicious Sabbath.
The gold license at that time cost thirty shillings; it had to be renewed monthly at the same tariff, and it carried with it as many vexatious restrictions as were ever put in print on document of the sort. But the three new diggers, who were the first to obtain theirs on the Monday morning, did not wait to read the regulations. Two of them rushed back through the heat to Black Hill Flat, where Doherty had turned the first sod, and Denis many more, before Moseley rejoined them at his leisure.
Rather more than a foot's depth of black soil was soon turned up, and then rather less than another foot of reddish-coloured clay, much harder to work upon; by the time he was through this layer, Denis perspired freely, and was inclined to be irritablewith Moseley, who was for "trying a tub" already, and seemed for once to have Jimmy with him.
"The wash-dirt's from six to twelve feet down," Denis objected. "Everybody says so; and we shall hardly get as far to-day. Besides, where's the cradle to try your tub in? I thought we would pick one up this evening."
"We might have tried some in a tin," said Moseley, who, like many a mild being, had no slight gift of opposition. "The way to paddock is to keep on trying it all the way down. That's what we used to do on Bendigo."
"What's paddocking?"
Moseley smiled, though with perfect amiability.
"Do you mean to say you don't know?"
"I wasn't on Bendigo."
"Well, it's the most superficial form of surfacing. But I'm not set on it," added Moseley, with obvious sincerity. "I only thought as it was cold tack for dinner, and three of us can't work at the hole, it would be something for me to do; but it really doesn't matter."
"My dear fellow, of course do as you like," urged Denis, as Moseley's tone made him critical of his own. "You're the experienced man, after all, and we're mates, not skipper and mate. Try a tinful by all means."
"No; on second thoughts, it's a long way to the water; but I'll tell you what I might do," said Moseley, brightening. "I might go and buy theLong Tom while you two work at the hole. That's a thing I could do, for it won't be the first I've bought."
Denis felt constrained to consent to this, but with misgivings, for his comrades' notions of economy were not his own. It was Moseley who had bought the pick and shovel, of their neighbours from Newcastle, with other articles of which the Tynesiders had duplicates, on the Saturday night, when, for all he knew, Denis might have returned with those very purchases; and the canny north-countrymen had found a customer after their own shrewd hearts. Now the fellow said he would not be gone an hour, which augured another incontinent bargain; and Denis dug on grimly into an eighteen-inch layer of stones and sand. He was not particularly pleased with Jimmy either; the little fool had looked so confoundedly eager at the prospect of a premature test, so ridiculously disappointed when Denis put his foot on it. However, he had not said a word, nor did he now that they were alone, which was more unusual. He merely looked on rather wistfully, because Denis would do all the work; but presently he began looking even more wistfully toward the tent; for a long hour had doubled itself, and still Moseley did not return, and still Denis wielded pick and shovel by untiring turns.
At last came Moseley, strolling with a huge cigar, and a box of them under one arm, but no cradle.
"I've got it," said he. "It'll be here directly; a couple of Chinamen are bringing it slung on a bamboo pole. I got it you for thirty bob. But look here what I have brought—a box of the best—but they're out of my private pocket, and better not ask the price."
That day they got down four or five feet, and tried two or three tubs toward evening, walking over half a mile with each, first and last, and extracting altogether one pennyweight of gold precisely, or about four shillings sterling. And the expenses of the party to this date were £18 10s.
The first week's record was bad enough to make them laugh and too bad to continue. Washing everything after the second day, they had exactly half an ounce of gold dust by next Saturday night, while their further expenses amounted to several pounds. Everything but meat was at a fancy price, and in the beginning some new appliance was wanted every day. Denis held out against the dearer items as long as he could in decency, but it did not grow easier to restrict the partner who had contributed the lion's share of capital. The second week realized three ounces (£12 1s. 6d.), and cost less, though Moseley insisted on laying in fifty pounds of flour as a bargain for £2 15s. Denis for one, however, refused to be comforted by the second week. It was not bad, but to him a total and immediate failure would have been more acceptable than theprospect of a run of such insignificant success. The second week raised neither high hopes nor a laugh; the third began better, with an ounce on the Monday, but dropped at once to three or four pennyweight a day. This was worse than Moseley had done on Bendigo, and he was soon advocating a new claim on some lead that held good to the water's edge; but Denis was not so readily deterred, much less since at the outset he had invented a contrivance which reduced to a minimum the natural disadvantages of the flat, in the shape of a hand-barrow to hold as much wash-dirt as half-a-dozen tubs, and so save as many journeys to and from the river. It was only a couple of saplings with a few feet of canvas nailed across, which it took two to carry when full, but nobody happened to have thought of it before, and it was a success when nothing else succeeded.
These beginners had begun badly in every other way. There was really nothing romantic in the life as they found it. It was only fascinating to the spectator, or to the exceptionally successful performer. They had ceased to be spectators with the turning of their own first sod. There were many discomforts in the life. Moseley was quite an infamous cook, yet it was the one direction in which he exerted himself at all. He was still rather amusing, and would have been a capital companion in triumphant times, but Denis was no longer easily amused. Doherty was also disappointing; he hadnot been the same bright boy since Canvas Town. Denis himself was seen to have a temper, and not unknown to lose it; but they had drifted into a belt of unromantic experience not innocent of the actively abominable. One morning Denis woke itching; and in the leaden light he thought it was oatmeal on the rolled blanket which was his only pillow; but minute movements betrayed a nauseating form of life; in a word, the whole of his scanty bed-clothes were most thoroughly fly-blown. The day went in boiling them in salt and water, which carried the offense to heaven, and during this horrid task Denis did talk of pastures new, which Moseley at once went to seek. After a discreet interval he returned with glowing accounts of a disused hole near at hand on the Native Youth, and before sundown the three started off with ropes and spars to place across the top for a preliminary descent; luckily one of them threw down a log to stand on, the bottom being under water; for in another instant the pit was more alive than Denis's blankets, but with writhing bodies and red eyes enough to furnish forth a reptile house. Denis cut a slip from one of the spars, penciled the word SNAKES on both sides, and planted it like a rose-label as close as possible to the brink of this dreadful hole. Nor was the unfortunate day complete until they had tried a tub at the old place without getting a grain. It was the twelfth of November—in all fitness a Friday—and this is its candid record.
Moseley began to talk seriously of throwing the whole thing up. It was plain that he regretted his second innings on the gold-fields, yet he was not the man to desert his mates, and this soon became the greatest embarrassment of all. There was much that was lovable in Moseley. He was the cheeriest member of the party, and in happier circumstances might have been its life and soul. As it was, some ready conceit would often turn aside that wrath which indolence and inefficiency were peculiarly calculated to excite in Denis; yet Moseley was naturally indolent, and his inefficiency seemed nothing less than catholic. He might have been a genius, but if so it was at nothing that counted on the diggings. There he was unstable, indecisive, happy-go-lucky, a trifler, a procrastinator; hopelessly unpractical himself, and what was much more tiresome, a consistent caviller at the practical in others. His equally consistent good-humour was his saving merit; it also made him in a sense incorrigible, for one must be more of a brute than Denis could ever have been to blame with any bitterness a man who was at all times unaffectedly prepared to blame himself. There was, however, one occasion upon which even Denis felt inclined to say exactly what he felt and rather more. He had at last written a letter, and on returning from the creek with Doherty, had found it gone from the rack which a few stitches had made in the canvas over the place where he laid his head.
"Where's my letter?" he asked at once. His tanned face was pale as well as blank.
"It's gone," replied Moseley, with a reassuring nod.
"Gone! Who sent it?"
"I did, with one of my own. I say, I hope I haven't done wrong, Dent? It's English mail day, you know, and I thought you'd forgotten it."
"I knocked off early on purpose to take it myself."
"I'm awfully sorry, Dent, but I happened to see that it was already stamped."
"It's all right, Moseley," said Denis, conquering his displeasure, "and of course I'm really very much obliged to you, though I came back on purpose to post it myself. It was very good of you to trouble."
Moseley was beginning to look embarrassed, and not merely because he had meant well and done ill. He had not taken so very much trouble after all, and he was too good a fellow to retain more credit than his due.
"There was an old soldier came along," said Moseley, colouring: "not a bad old chap, but a bit of a gossip; he had a look down the hole, and asked how we were doing, and drank a pannikin of tea. As he was going to the post-office, and offered to post my letter for me, I let him take them both."
Denis could hardly believe his ears.
"You gave my letter to a strange digger?"
"And my own with it, Dent."
"A man you'd never set eyes on before?"
"I certainly never had; but we had quite a long chat first, and he seemed a decent soul enough. I saw no reason to distrust him, at any rate. I know what you're saying to yourself," added Moseley, as Denis smiled sardonically; "but I've been more careful since the lesson I had the night we met. Even if I'm still the worst judge of character in the world, what object could anybody have in tampering with simple letters like ours?"
The ingenuous question gave Denis an idea.
"What was the fellow like—to look at?" he asked in his turn.
"Oh, just a respectable elderly man, not much of the old soldier about him, but the diggings must be crawling with them, and how many look the part?"
"Then how do you know he was one?"
"He told me, of course."
"Had he a beard?"
"That goes without saying." Moseley and Denis were each growing one.
"But was his beard dyed?"
"No—gray."
"It should be gray," said Denis, grimly. "Did he tell you which diggings he came from?"
"Sailor's Gully."
Denis breathed again. He knew that Devenishand Jewson were at the Gravel Pits. He had really no reason to connect the man who had taken the letters with the man whom he had in mind; and further questioning finally relieved him of the idea, partly because Moseley was unconsciously anxious to make the best of his emissary. But the altercation had stirred the emotions of both young men; neither spoke in his natural voice; each resembled an unpleasing portrait of himself. So much had been said, however, that it was an opportunity for saying more.
"You know, Dent," Moseley went on, "I've had enough of the whole thing. I made a mistake when I turned back with you, instead of taking the first ship home as I had intended."
Denis said nothing. The sentiment expressed was too identical with his own. Doherty reduced the considerate distance to which he had withdrawn, and there was no doubt he was beginning to listen.
"But I hadn't written to say I was going home," continued Moseley, "so I'm expecting my money at Christmas. It won't be much—thirty pounds—but it's sure. You see, my father wasn't so sanguine as I was when I came out, and he's allowing me sixty pounds a year."
Moseley smiled a little sadly. Doherty drew a few steps nearer. Denis had become a picturesque study in sympathy, framed in the opening of the tent.
"I wish I could persuade you to come homewith me after Christmas!" said Moseley, wistfully enough.
Doherty looked tragically at Denis, but could have flung up his wide-awake at the way Denis shook his head without a word.
"Then I'll be shot if I go either!" cried Moseley, with a noble tremor in his voice.
"My dear fellow!" urged Denis, while Doherty spun round on his heel.
"No," said Moseley, "you stood by me, and I'll stand by you as long as you stay on Ballarat. It's no use talking, because I won't listen to a word. You went through fire for me, Dent—you both did—and I'd go through fire and water for you! And look here, Dent, I'll never do another silly thing, and I'll work harder and cook better—you mark my words!"
They were such as neither listener had ever heard from him before; but, Doherty was no longer listening with any interest, and Denis was too much affected to perceive that the humourist of the party was surpassing himself when least intending it. All he could do was to drop his two hands on Moseley's shoulders, and shake him affectionately until the fellow smiled.
"But what about the thirty pounds, when it comes?" asked Denis, with presence of mind and some sudden eagerness.
Moseley's face lit up with the sacred flame of loyalty.
"It goes into the Company!" said he. "I'll back you with my last stiver as long as you stay on Ballarat!"
So the little Company continued its existence, and on Black Hill Flat, because Denis was more and more against sinking a second hole until there was no more gold to be got out of the first. It was like his thoroughness and tenacity of character, but was inconsistent with his original attitude as a digger. A moderate success was of no use to him; it must be a small fortune, or it might as well be nothing at all. So it had been in the beginning, and it was obviously still the case. Yet there was no shifting Denis while there was a pennyweight to the tub, and once there was nearly an ounce, and one day in November yielded two ounces four pennyweight. He was further fortified by the opinion of one whom he instinctively regarded as an expert. Passing with Moseley through Rotten Gully, on the Old Eureka Lead, to look at one of the many sites which his companion fancied in these days, Denis became much more interested in a very well-built hut in juxtaposition to an evidently deep hole with a capital windlass atop. A fellow with trim whiskers and an expression of splendid disgust was turning the handle, and asthey watched a very muddy digger came up standing in the pail, from which he stepped with as much daintiness as a lady with a dress to spoil. "Thank you," said this one in an off-hand way to the other, but Denis he favoured with a stare, followed by the shortest of nods, for it was the deep-sinker who had recommended Black Hill Flat.
"Did you try the Flat?" said he.
"I've been trying it ever since," returned Denis, and soon added with what result. He was furthermore able to answer one or two technical questions in such a way as to interest the deep-sinker, who seemed quite struck with the simple device of the hand-barrow.
"Well," said he, as the partners were taking their leave, "I can't help my opinion, and I've got it still. I believe there's gold on Black Hill Flat, and plenty of it; what's more, it's the sort of nice dry place where it should be pretty near the surface, if it's there at all. But, of course, you might prick about for a year without finding it. I'm sorry I said so much about the place the other day; if I hadn't I'd give you another piece of advice now, and that would be to take your time and go in for deep sinking. You're too good a man for surfacing. Good-afternoon to you, and better luck." And he ducked into his hut with a last least nod.
The upshot of this conversation, and of another between Denis and Moseley upon the obvious quality of the deep-sinker, was that Moseley went"pricking about" the flat while Denis persisted in the old hole, and Jim Doherty oscillated between the pair. Nothing more came of it. Moseley was a poor digger, who scarcely pricked skin-deep. He soon went back to his evil cooking, which, however, had been less evil since the little scene with Denis. His chops oftener hit a medium between the blue-raw and done-to-a-rag extremes; but his bread would still have murdered a dyspeptic, and the lean but hungry Doherty was laid up for forty-eight hours after one of Moseley's duffs. Denis himself little knew how many of his sleepless nights he owed to the same devastating cause; and on Black Hill Flat he slept the sleep of the lost.
Early to bed was the digger's natural law, but if Denis kept it he would be wide awake by the smallest hours, and so lie tossing till the Flat was astir. He found it a lesser evil to sit up late over a lonely camp-fire, and beguiled these vigils with congenial employment. He was making a new map of the diggings. This one was in ink on a clean piece of cardboard cut to fit the jacket pocket. It grew out of odd scraps marked in pencil on Denis's walks abroad; some of the latter were taken on purpose during these very sleepless nights. So the map was his own, correct or incorrect, and it was made on his own plan. It was largely geological. There were the depths of sinkings where Denis could ascertain them, and the various leads flowed in rivers of bold red ink, which made up for any lackof academic accuracy by a rather stimulating appeal to the imagination. But that was to come; as yet it was a spy's map, which even Jimmy had not seen.
And sometimes when it had been put away for the night, and there was enough fire still to kick into a redder glow, or a great white moon in the sky, then Denis would loosen the shirt that he buttoned higher than most, and there was the little ring his Nan had given him, the red-white-and-blue of its ruby, diamond, and sapphire, twinkling and glittering as it had in the light of day upon her finger; and there was the lanyard of her beloved hair; and it, too, shone as though still upon her sunny head: and so he thought she told him she was well. But what had he to tell her? He had stayed behind to do something that was not yet fairly begun, and already two months were up. There were times when Denis did not regret the letter which might never arrive. Its unredeemed tale had cost him much in the unvarnished telling on which his nature insisted; what if it were to cost him as much again in her sight? There could be, after all, but one excuse for his separate existence at Ballarat. And when he realized this, it was a hard, dark face that Denis turned to great white moon or little red fire; it was dark with disgust of self and circumstance; it was harder than ever with a determination which had never wavered.
After one such night in the middle of December,the beginning of the end came quite quietly and naturally at the following evening's meal. Moseley had received his remittance, days before it was due, and, as Denis said, it could not have come at a better time. At this the moneyed partner had looked up from his platter in somewhat anxious inquiry.
"Because I'm going to take your advice," explained Denis, "and give in—and clear out!"
"Home to England?" cried Moseley, while Doherty stayed the hand that held a loaded fork.
Denis shook his head, and Moseley's face fell a little; but Doherty sat munching with a satisfaction as solid as the morsel in his mouth.
"Eureka?" inquired Moseley, putting a brave face on it.
"No."
"Canadian Gully?"
"No."
"The Gravel Pits?"
"No, thank you."
"I know!" chimed in Doherty. "Sailor's Gully!"
"No, Jimmy."
"Little Bendigo, then?"
"No."
Jimmy said he gave it up. But Moseley had an idea.
"Not the other Bendigo, Dent?"
Denis smiled. "From what you've always said,"he went on, "it's the better diggings of the two."
"I believe it is," said Moseley, doubtfully.
"Not quite so over-run and overdone, you know."
"No; that is so, I'm sure; but—but, I say, Dent, I don't want to show my face there again, I don't really!" said Moseley, with a manifold anxiety more droll than he supposed. "You may laugh," he went on, smiling himself, "but I didn't commit a crime there, though you might think it. I didn't even tell a lie. But I did pretend that I had done pretty well. I let them think I was on the point of sailing, cock-a-hoop, for England home and beauty!"
"And so you are," said Denis at length. He spoke very quietly, but with a conviction that turned Moseley's blushes to an almost passionate glow. Yet in an instant the loyal creature was fighting his heart's desire.
"I don't want to desert you," he said. "I don't—and won't!"
"Then you keep us here."
"I don't want to do that either. Yet you see my position about Bendigo?" And his troubled glance included Doherty, whose brown face was also awry with mixed feeling.
"We see it perfectly, my dear fellow," Denis answered; "and if we ever have another mate" (Doherty looked up quickly), "may he be half asstaunch as you! We have done our best, but so far we've made a mess of it. You had had enough in October, and you've wasted these two months on our account out of the sheer goodness of your heart; my dear Moseley, you sha'n't waste another week. You've tried Bendigo, and we haven't; you go home with as good a conscience as you leave us, and in three or four months I shall follow you."
And they really parted in three or four days, and at a point not very much further than that from which they had first beheld the tents and mud-heaps of Ballarat; only Jimmy looked his last on them with a sigh, and even he had recovered his spirits when it came to clasping hands. But all three had light hearts at the end, and shoulders to match; for they had sold their entire kit at the very fair figure of £11 3s. They had also cash in hand to the tune of £2 11s. 6d., so that the Bendigonians had nearly £10 as their share, to take with them to the new field, but as Denis said, at least a hundred pounds' worth of experience to put to it. He it was who had kept the accounts, all through, and he who would not hear of Moseley's generous but unfair proposals at the end. It may be added that the Company's debt to the latter had been duly, if not forcibly, discharged; but after all, they had taken some thirteen ounces of gold out of the maligned hole on Black Hill Flat, and sold the same for over £50.
Denis and Jim stood without speaking while Moseley hurried away from them down the Melbourne road; but it may have been that their hands ached more from his than did their hearts. When he had waved his wideawake at the bend, and they theirs for the last time, it is certain that from that moment the original pair were more to each other than they had been for two wearisome months. They had almost as much to say as if they had been separated for the same period. But it was not Moseley that they discussed; it was their own new prospects, ways, and means. Nor had Denis long to wait for Mr. Doherty's earlier manner, which got up like a breeze in the free expression of his opinion that ten pounds was not enough to "see" them to Bendigo, "let alone starting of us when we gets there."
"Perhaps it isn't," said Denis, slackening a stride which had lacked something since the parting of the ways. "Let's sit down under that gum-tree and talk about it. If you are right," continued Denis, paring a slab of tobacco when they were duly seated, "it might be better to turn back to Ballarat instead of going on to Bendigo."
The matter-of-fact tone in which Denis made this startling suggestion betrayed him to Doherty without more ado. "You meant to do it all along!" said he.
"It was the only way to do it," returned Denis, rubbing his tobacco between both palms, "withouthurting anybody's feelings. Now he need never know. He had a heart of gold, Jimmy, but it was the only kind we should have got with him; and that's the last word about him now he's gone, poor chap! Back he goes to Silly Suffolk, and back we go to Ballarat with nine-pound-three between us! But no more nice dry games on Black Hill Flat, or anywhere else where the chances are big and the certainties next to nothing; we're going to sink deep and wet and dirty, Jimmy; and we're not going to sink on chance again."
Jimmy's eyes were wide open in all senses at once.
"Sink deep on nine-pound-three, mister? And you've been studyin' the 'ole game all this time?"
"There's this," said Denis, producing Bullocky's nugget. "I believe you still have its fellow."
"And many's the time I've thought of it," cried Jimmy; "but you said we was to keep them forever—for luck!"
"A lot of luck they've brought us," said Denis; "on the other hand, I've learned a lot since then, and even now I don't propose to part with them altogether. No, but since the devil drives we must raise our fresh capital on them, and so let them bring us luck after all. If they do we can soon redeem them; and I mean them to, Jimmy, this time. Come a bit nearer: I've something to show you," continued Denis, drawing out his new map. "I've made this at odd times, some of it when you andMoseley were fast asleep. I don't say it's accurate, but it's given me a better grasp of the diggings as a whole than ever I had before, and I should like it to do the same for you. You see the double lines straggling from top to bottom like a bit of loose tape?"
"Yes."
"That's the Yarrowee."
"And the little squares sprinkled all over?"
"Fancy tents."
"And the blots in between?"
"The holes belonging to them."
"And the centipedes, or whatever they are?"
"The Seven Hills of Ballarat, Jimmy! Bakery Hill, Specimen Hill, and all the rest."
"And the hanks of red ink in between the hills, twisting all over the place, under half the tents and holes; you must have put 'em in first, mister; they look like rivers of blood. I'm blessed if I know what else they do look like!"
"They're rivers of gold, Jimmy, and I did put them in first."
Jimmy looked up very quizzically, for, of course, he felt he was being quizzed, and made a scathing inquiry as to the green that was or was not in his piercing eye. But Denis swore to his golden rivers, and then admitted they were underground, which heightened Jimmy's interest while it restored his faith.
"They're the leads, of course," continued Denis; "and the leads are neither more nor less than riversof gold, flowing on the bed-rock at heights varying with its height, or, if you like, frozen where they flowed a million years ago. On the whole they flow thin, and you only get so much to the tub; but like other rivers they have their thicker backwaters, and here and there their absolutely stagnant pools; those are their 'pockets' and their 'jewelers' shops,' as they call them—and as we shall call ours one of these days. But it will take time, Jimmy, perhaps weeks and months, before we sink deep enough to begin driving right and left as all the deep sinkers do. If it wasn't for that I should have shown Moseley my hand. He never could have held out, and he would have hindered us who can and will. He was longing to go, and he may be back in Silly Suffolk before we get down deep enough to do much good."
Doherty began to feel consoled for a prospect which could not but chill his younger blood a little. He did not wish to be months in getting to the gold; at any rate he would have preferred not to know that they might be months; but still less did he want Moseley back. He was content therefore to inquire how Denis could know before he went to work that he was sinking in the right place. And in a moment their heads were together again over the map.
"You remember what the squares and blots are?"
"Tents and holes."
"Then don't you see how they follow and fill the red rivers?"
"There's nothing else from bank to bank."
"Well, we've only got to squeeze in between any of them, on the lead we decide on, say Eureka, or Sailor's Gully, wherever there's room to peg out a claim and pitch a tent. Now look up to the top of the map, and tell me if you see that square and blot all by themselves."
"I see them."
"High and dry on the banks of one red river, instead of on the river itself?"
"Yes."
"That was our old claim."
The pair had passed the place where they had waved farewell to Moseley, and were in sound but not quite in sight of all that one of them had never expected to see or to hear again, when a voice hailed them in the rear, and they found that a buggy and pair had crept upon them while they talked. Doherty was filled with apprehension. He had not been so happy for two months. But Denis was much interested in the driver of the buggy, who drove alone, and who looked as though he might have been got up in Bedford Row, what with his black silk stock, his high hat still shining through its layer of yellow dust, and his spectacled face clean-shaven to the lips.
"May I ask if you are Ballarat diggers," said he, "or new arrivals like myself?"
"We are diggers," replied Denis, "and Ballarat's just over that hill."
"So I should suppose," observed the gentleman from afar, and proceeded to weigh the couple with a calculating eye. "Been at it long?" he added as one who did not find them altogether wanting.
"A couple of months."
"H'mph! Not so long as I should have liked, but there's just a chance that you can help me, as I am sure you will, sir," nodding at Denis, who nodded back, "if you can. Perhaps the lad will be so kind as to hold my horse. Thanky. Not that it's mine at all," the incongruous gentleman went on, as he flung down the reins and addressed himself to the contents of a small black bag. "I couldn't afford twenty-four hours in Melbourne waiting for the coach, so I had to hire, with all sorts of arrangements for changing horses on the way. But my coachman was in liquor before midnight, and when I left him, appropriately enough at Bacchus Marsh, early this morning, I wasn't going to trust myself to another. If you have a tongue in your head, sir, you can find your own way from Lincoln's Inn to John o' Groats. Ah, now I have it!" and he produced a photograph, of the carte-de-visite size then alone in vogue, and shook it playfully at Denis before putting it into his outstretched hand. "There, sir!" he wound up. "If you happen to know that face, just say so; and if you do not know it, have the goodness not to pretend you do. The answer to the question is Yes or No."
Denis looked upon the full-length presentment of a very tall gentleman, in a frock-coat, a white waistcoat, and an attitude as stiff as the heart of early Victorian photographer could desire. An elbow rested on the pedestal of a draped pillar, and thethumb of that hand in the watch-pocket; but the handsome face looked contemptuously conscious of its own self-consciousness, only it was the very gentlest contempt, and Denis recognized the expression before the face. Strip off his muddy rags, re-apparel him thus, shave his chin and nick his beard into flowing whiskers, and there was their friend the deep-sinker, hardly a day younger than when Denis had last seen him on his claim in Rotten Gully.
"The answer is Yes," he said, returning the likeness.
"You are sure of that?"
"Quite."
"You don't want the lad to confirm your view?"
"As you like; but he has only seen him once, and I have twice. It's the deep-sinker, Jimmy," added Denis over his shoulder.
The shaven gentleman pulled a wry face.
"May I ask if that's the only name you know him by?"
"I have never heard his name; but that's what he is, and the most scientific one I've come across."
The wry face went into a dry smile.
"And do you know where to find him?"
"Well, I know his claim."
"Would you very much mind getting up beside me and directing me how to drive there?"
"I should be delighted to have the lift."
"Thanky. There'll be room for your young friend behind. This is one of those happy coincidences which almost give one back one's childish belief in luck!"
The diggings were in the state of suspended animation which was their normal condition from twelve to three. The latest pilgrim blinked about him through his spectacles, more interested than impressed with what he saw. Denis took the reins, turned off the road at once, found a ford in the northern bend of the Yarrowee, and drove straight into an outpost of windsails and windlasses hidden away behind the hill. In another minute the buggy drew up beside the deep-sinker's solid little hut, in whose shade his soured assistant sat asleep, with his eyebrows up and the corners of his mouth turned down, even in his dreams.
"Where's your master?" demanded the visitor, causing Denis and Doherty to exchange glances; but the other merely opened a long-suffering eye, pointed indoors, and had closed it again before the gentleman descended.
At his request, the partners remained in the buggy, where they spent an interval of a few minutes in covetous admiration of the neat hut with its bark roof, the iron windlass, the stack of timber slabs for lining the shaft, and the suggestively solid opening of the shaft itself. They agreed to look down, if not to descend, with the deep-sinker's permission, before departure. Meanwhile his quiet voice was not to be heard outside, but the visitor's was, and eventually the pair emerged.
"But I'm just going to touch bottom," the tall digger expostulated. "After weeks and months I'm all but on it, and now you want to carry me off!"
The visitor whispered some smiling argument, which elicited a shrug of familiar and restrained contempt.
"It isn't the money," said the tall man. "It's the fun of the thing, don't you know."
The visitor took out his watch as though they could just catch a train.
"I've arranged for fresh horses all along the road," said he. "These have only done ten miles, and they can do the same ten back again. I hope I made it plain about the first ship. It may sail the day after to-morrow."
The digger sighed inevitable acquiescence. He looked rather sadly, yet with some quiet amusement, at his rude little home, at the good windlass on its staging stamped against the sky. His assistant had meanwhile risen from his slumbers, and was standing respectfully at hand.
"Charles," said the digger, "I've got to go home. Are you coming with me, or will you stay out here and make your fortune out of the hole? I'll make you a present of it if you will."
But the look of splendid disgust had vanished as if by magic from the assistant's face. "I'll go home with you, sir!" he said emphatically, and then looked from one gentleman to the other, asthough he might have committed a solecism. He was forthwith ordered into the hut to put his master's things together, with a grim smile on the master's part, who proceeded at last to notice Denis, or at any rate to record such notice with his fraction of a nod.
"So it's to you I owe my prompt discovery," said he. "'Pon my word I'm not as grateful to you as I ought to be! Doing any better on Black Hill Flat?"
"I've left it," said Denis, rather shortly.
"Where are you now?"
"Nowhere. We have sold up and are going to start again. Your friend has given us a lift, for which we're much obliged, but I think the horses would stand all right without us."
"Wouldyoulike to take over this claim and hole?"
"I have no money," said Denis. Behind him Doherty had given a gasp, followed by something like a sob of disappointment. But the deep-sinker wore the broadest smile they had ever seen upon his languid countenance.
"My dear good fellow, I don't want money for it!" cried he. "I want a worthy inheritor with energy and ideas, somebody a cut above the stupid average, and by Jove you're my very man! Come on: if you don't the whole thing will be jumped by the nearest ruffian. I don't say there's much in the hole; but it's a good, sound hole as far as itgoes, and it can't have to go much further. We've worked through the light clays and through the sand, and we're well in the red; when you get through that you can start washing, and I wish you the luck you deserve. Thank me? What for? If you don't come in some one else will. I am only too glad to leave the little place in such good hands. It was pretty carefully chosen, and if it isn't plumb over the gutter it ought to be."
So the reconstructed firm of Dent and Doherty became possessed of one of the deepest holes and best-appointed claims on the celebrated Eureka Lead, and all within a few minutes; for it took the man Charles no longer to collect such chattels as were worth his master's while to take away with him. Thus, ere the diggings were astir again for the afternoon, the new owners were alone in their unforeseen glory, and one of them at least was still capering and singing in his joy. But over Denis a cloud had already fallen; and there was a blacker cloud on Jimmy when he grasped the cause.
"It's Moseley," said Denis. "This is horribly unfair on him."
"Unfair! How?"
"Suppose we should have as good luck here as we had bad luck on the flat!"
"Well? Didn't he want to be out of it? Wasn't he longing to go home?"
"I don't like it," persisted Denis. "I played a trick on him, but I never thought it would turn outlike this. I thought we should spend months doing what we've after all had done for us." He raised his brooding eyes from the ground, and there was the buggy still in view, labouring in and out among the tents. "Jimmy, you stay on the claim!" he cried, and dashed after it on the spur of the moment.
"What's happened?" asked the late sinker, pleasantly. "We haven't forgotten anything, have we?"
"No, but I have," panted Denis, "and if you can help me I'll be as grateful again to you. There's a chum of ours who left us only this morning. He was sick of it; but he little knew the luck that was in store for us. His name's Moseley, and he was going home in the first ship, which will be your ship, but you will probably overtake him on the road to-night."
"What's he like?" asked the spectacled gentleman, who no longer drove; and when Denis told him he was sure he had met Moseley in the forenoon, and felt confident of recognizing him again.
"Then will you tell him exactly what has happened to us, and that he shall come in on the old shares if only he'll come back? Say we changed our mind about Bendigo; and say we must be two men and a boy, and we'd far rather he was the other man than some stranger, especially if there's a fortune in it. Tell him there probably is; and if you will tell it him all from his friend, Denis Dent,gentlemen, I can't say how grateful I shall be to you!"
Denis had an odd reward for his trouble and this outburst. The tall digger shook hands with him for the first and last time.
But the climax of the business was to come long before Moseley's answer. Denis had not been five minutes absent, yet on his return to the new claim it was surrounded by a fringe of diggers embellished by a posse of mounted men in spruce uniform.
"What on earth is it?" cried Denis, rushing up in alarm.
"The old story," answered a digger. "Joe! Joe! Joe!"
"Traps," added another; but Denis had not been on the diggings two months without learning the meaning of both words. Either was the diggers' danger signal, and signified a raid by the police in search of their licenses; in fact, that very sport whose praises Lieutenant Rackham had sung in the ear of his old crony Captain Devenish.
And it was Rackham who led the present field; dismounted, he had run his man to earth in the bark-roofed hut; and his man was no more of a man than the unfortunate Doherty, who was clinging tooth and nail to the door-post, while Rackham himself, a full-blooded negro in his rage, tugged like a terrier at his ankles.
"Stick to it, little 'un!" cried one in good-humoured encouragement. "If you don't, the claim'll be jumped afore your mate gets back."
"Hold your row," growled another with an oath. "It's a fine deep hole, and I have a jolly good mind to jump it myself."
Denis burst through them at that moment.
"What's the matter?" he demanded of Rackham; but he had the sense not to lay a hand on the fellow's uniform, and the black devil let go one of Doherty's ankles.
"He's not got his license, and he's going to the Logs," says Rackham, showing his white teeth in the sun. "Who are you?"
"His mate," said Denis. "Do you mind letting go his other leg?"
"And where's your license?" added Rackham, turning on him as he complied.
Denis was feeling in his breast pocket with a smile; before quitting the flat Jimmy had proposed to destroy his Ballarat license as of no further use, but Denis knowing better had got it from him on some pretext.
"Here is my license and his, too," said he, and handed both to Rackham, who now stood livid and trembling with mortification, under a derisive cross-fire of "Joe! Joe! Joe!" from all sides of the claim. "If you will examine them," added Denis, with the politeness he could afford, "you will find that they both have about a week to run; and after this you may trust us to take out the new ones in very good time."
Nigger Rackham had the freedom of the tent on the Gravel Pits, where he would appear sometimes at dead of night, brandishing a bottle and demanding the Welsh rarebit or the savoury omelette at which Jewson had shown himself an adept. Many an impromptu carouse was thus initiated, and it was after one of them that Rackham distinguished himself by whistling for a hansom outside the tent. He was a man of violent appetites, whose every vein was swollen with sufficiently savage blood. But he had a crude vitality and a brutal gaiety very bracing on occasion, as when he told of Denis's fortunes in one breath, but undertook his ruin in the next. This was a night or two after their collision at the new claim; the bottle was getting low, and the lieutenant's eyes were like living coals.
"I'll take it out of him! I'll have him at the Logs yet, never fear," said he. "There are only two of them; some fine morning there'll be only one, and no license to show. Then away he goes, and if you like you shall jump the claim. But it won't be for another month."
"Another month!" echoed Devenish with a blank face.
"The brutes have taken out their new license a good two days before they need," explained the lieutenant. "That I happen to know, but they don't know I know it. They've had a fight, and we are ready for another raid; if we let them be they won't take such care when this next month's up. But we must wait till it is up, and we must chance your poor relation growing rich in the time."
Ralph Devenish sat up smoking for an hour when the bottle was empty and his companion gone. He was much the more temperate man of the two, but patience was not one of his virtues, though it had become a necessity of his protracted suit. That only left him with less than ever for the ordinary incidents of life, and his experience as a digger had not made Devenish more patient. He had been as lucky at the start as Dent had been unlucky. In these few weeks he had actually netted some three hundred pounds sterling, out of a chain of shallow workings whereby he and others had been tracing the Gravel Pits Lead down its course: only within the last day or two had the lead run into a drift of water which had flooded all the holes and completely damped Ralph's ardour. It was pronounced impossible to sink through this drift without the tiresome operation known as "puddling"; and that proved far too heroic a measure for RalphDevenish, who was only happy when washing his two or three ounces a day. So one morning he was counting on making his three hundred up to five at least, and by the following night he had found out when the next ship sailed from Melbourne. It was at this juncture that Rackham brought word of a contrary turn in the affairs of Denis. The untimely news checked all Ralph's plans. He was not at all inclined to leave his rival with the ball at his feet, and nothing to stop him but the capricious persecution of a corrupt constabulary.
Ralph might have blushed to put it so even to himself, but that was his actual attitude as he sat smoking into the small hours, and so Jewson stole in and found him in the end. Ralph was not startled; the steward was regularly the last abed; but now his boots were yellow with fresh dust, and the perspiration showered from his peaked cap as he took it off.
"Where have you been?" asked Ralph, raising a morose face to stare.
"I thought you might like an extra drop to-night," replied the steward, winking and grinning as he produced a bottle, "so I've been getting you another of these from where the lieutenant gets 'em. You don't do your fair share, Captain Devenish, sir, and you may want to when you've heard my little report."
"Report of what?" asked Devenish. But the steward would only chuckle and shake a wickedskull until the grog was served out and the pair seated, pannikin to pannikin, on either side of the packing-case that did duty for a table.
"I heard what you were talking about, you see," began Jewson, wiping the gray moustache from which the dye had almost disappeared.
"You generally do."
"And you generally know it, so where's the harm? But when I hear you talking about the second mate that was," continued the steward, showing a whole set of ill-fitting false teeth, "I do more than hear—I listen—and listen I will whenever I catch his cursed name!"
"Well?"
"Well, sir, it's right."
"What's right?"
"What the lieutenant was telling you. He's fallen on his feet this time. I've been to see."
"You've been to Mr. Dent's tent already?"
The prefix was a mark which it would have been against Ralph's instincts to overstep with an inferior. It was incongruous enough to curve the corners of the steward's mouth.
"It ain't a tent," said he, chuckling. "It's one of the best huts I've seen on the diggings."
"It is, is it?"
"Once I'd found Rotten Gully, which isn't so very far from this, it was easy enough to find the only claim it could be."
"So it's as good as all that!"
"To look at," said Jewson, "on a moonlight night. But they'd their own light burning inside; you hadn't to get very near to hear their voices. They were sitting up yarning, same as you and the lieutenant. Only on tea," added the steward, in the absence of further encouragement.
"Poor devils!" remarked Devenish, raising his pannikin.
"You can't call 'em poor now, sir," declared the steward. "All's fair in love and war, and I had a look in on 'em like a mouse: they've proper crockery left 'em by the outgoing tenant, and a proper table to set it on."
"Anything else?" inquired Ralph, sarcastically.
Jewson leaned forward and lowered his voice as though they were being spied upon in their turn.
"Half a saucerful of gold-dust out of the hole!"
"Already!" exclaimed Devenish, dropping reserve in his astonishment.
"In the very first day's washing! They never began until to-day. That's what's keeping them up all night," added Jewson. "They've started looking ahead, you see. Let me fill up your pannikin, Captain Devenish. You don't get half a chance with Mr. Rackham, sir!"
Ralph Devenish was one who carried his liquor in a manner worthy of his blood. His worst friend had seldom seen him fuddled. He was so much the less proof against the deeper and more damningeffects. His tongue did not slur a syllable that followed, but it ran away with him all the faster for that. It muttered degrading confidences; it snarled unscrupulous revenge; it revealed a man so different from the Ralph Devenish known of other men that it was as though the drink had gone to his heart instead of to his head.
"I will marry her! I swear I will! We were all but engaged before, and I'll marry her yet. He never shall. I'll see him in hell first—I'll send him there myself! An infernal snob out of the merchant service, and his infernal father's son all over! What's the matter with you, Jewson? What are you grinning at?"
"Only at the idea of you committing a crime, sir. A captain in the Grenadier Guards! Ho, ho, ho!" And the steward showed his horrible teeth again; but there was no mirth in the little black penetrating eyes that were fast to Ralph's.
"But I would!" he swore. "I mean to marry her, by hook or crook."
"You really do?" said Jewson, turning grave.
"Fair or foul!" cried Ralph, recklessly.
"It's all one in love and war," repeated the steward, with a shrug. "But if you mean what you say I'll tell you what to do."
"You will, will you? Well, let's have it."
"I should do as you were thinking of doing earlier in the evening. I should go home by the first ship, and marry her quick!"
"What! Leave him digging his fortune and writing her all about it every mail?"
Devenish had already vowed that he would never do that. He repeated the vow with an oath.
"But you don't know that she's getting any letters," remarked Jewson, calmly.
Ralph gave him a sharp look. "What do you mean by that?"
"Only that he may not be writing to her; he didn't in the beginning, you see; that letter I posted was his first."
"How do you know?"
"His mate told me so."
"You did post it, Jewson?"
The steward chuckled as he shook his head.
"That's tellings," said he, slyly. "You can think I didn't, or you can think I did. He deserved to have it posted, didn't he? He deserves so well of me and you, don't he? All's fair in them two things, you know; if it's the one thing with you, it's the other with me; it's bloody war between me and the second mate, and will be whether you stay or not!"
Devenish was revolted in spite of his worst self. But he was also relieved, and his conscience deadened as quickly as it had come to life again. If the letter had not been posted, it was through no fault of his, and even now he knew nothing about it. And if Jewson, for his own reasons, chose to stay behind on the diggings, in order to thwart theman who so richly deserved thwarting, neither had he, Ralph, anything on earth to do with that. Yet his nature shrank from such an ally, even as he began to appreciate the creature's value, and he frowned as he filled the Turk's head for the twentieth time that night. His hand was as steady as his speech. It was his better nature that was under eclipse. Meanwhile, the steward took the opportunity of surreptitiously replenishing Ralph's pannikin, and still more surreptitiously emptying his own upon the ground.
"So you propose to hold a watching brief on my behalf?" said Ralph at last, and forced a smile at the idea.
"I propose to keep an eye on him for you, if that's what you mean," replied the steward.
"But Sergeant Rackham's going to do that as it is. He says he'll be level with our friend in a month."
"A month!" echoed Jewson, scornfully. "He'll be a made man in a month, if he goes on as he's begun. He's tumbled on a jeweler's shop, or I'm much mistaken."
"Well, you can't take it from him, can you?"
"Perhaps not."
"You mean you can!" exclaimed Devenish, irritated by the confident subtlety of the man's manner.
"Oh, no, I don't."
Devenish tilted the pannikin and set it down with a clatter.
"Then what do you mean? Out with it, Jewson. I'm sick of beating about the bush!"
"So am I," said the steward, dryly.
"If you can't turn a man out of his hole, and prevent him getting all that's to be got out of it, what on earth can you do that's any good to me?"
"If you went home," said Jewson, slowly, "I could keep him here till it was no use his following you—till you were married!"
"Oh, so you think you could do all that?"
"I know I could, Captain Devenish."
"You know it, do you?"
"Of course, you would make it worth my while."
Ralph laughed harshly as he raised the pannikin once more.
"I was waiting for that, you old villain! I was waiting for that!"
But it did not disgust him. He did not even pretend to be disgusted. There were no scruples left in those reckless, heated eyes.
"You give me your promissory note for a thousand pounds, payable on your wedding day, or on demand thereafter, and you'll be married the month after you get back."
Ralph laughed more harshly than before.
"Go on, Jewson! You aren't drunk, are you? Then how do you think you're going to manage it?"
"Ah, that I sha'n't tell you; but manage it I can and will. You leave it to me. If you sail at theNew Year—and there's two or three ships advertised—it'll be your own fault if you aren't married by midsummer. And if that isn't worth a thousand pounds I don't know what is."
"It's worth two!" whispered Devenish, hoarsely; "and you shall have two if—if——"
"If what?"
"If he—if he lives to see the day."
Jewson chuckled aloud.
"Of course he will!" he cried. "Where would be the fun if he didn't? Where would be my fun—that's been due to me ever since he had me disrated?"
"Then it's a bargain."
"What? Are you going to give me your hand on it, Captain Devenish?"
"My hand and word, and if I break the one may the other wither!"
"But you'll put it on paper, sir, won't you?"
"Whenever you like."
"One thousand or two?"
"Two if he lives to see it—nothing if he doesn't."
"A bargain it is."