“To-morrow morning.”
“To-night, if you like. Where am I to go to?”
“To AUSTRALIA!”
That single word suspended the glass going to Crawley's lips, and the chuckle coming from them. A dead silence on both sides followed it. And now two colorless faces looked into one another's eyes across the table.
THREE days the gold-finders worked alone upon the pre-Adamite river's bed. At evening on the third day they looked up and saw a figure perched watching them with a pipe in its mouth. It disappeared in silence. Next day there were men on their knees beside them, digging, scraping, washing and worshipping gold. Soon they were the center of a group—soon after of a humming mob. As if the birds had really carried the secret north, south, east and west, men swarmed and buzzed and settled like locusts on the gold-bearing tract. They came in panting, gleaming, dusty and travel-stained and flung off their fatigue at sight, and, running up, dived into the gullies and plied spade and pickax with clinched teeth and throbbing hearts. They seamed the face of Nature for miles; turned the streams to get at their beds; pounded and crushed the solid rock to squeeze out the subtle stain of gold it held in its veins; hacked through the crops as through any other idle impediment; pecked and hewed and fought and wrestled with Nature for the treasure that lay so near yet in so tight a grip.
We take off our clothes to sleep and put them on to play at work, but these put on their clothes to sleep in, and tore them off at peep of day, and labor was red-hot till night came and cooled it; and in this fight lives fell as quickly as in actual war, and by the same enemy—Disease. Small wonder, when hundreds and hundreds wrought the livelong day one half in icy water, the other half dripping with sweat.
Men rotted like sheep, and died at the feet of that Gold whom they stormed here in his fortress; and some alas met a worse fate. For that befell which the world has seen in every age and land where gold has come to light upon a soil; men wrestling fiercely with Nature jostled each other; cupidity inflamed hate to madness, and human blood flowed like water over that yellow dirt. And now from this one burning spot gold fever struck inward to the heart of the land; burned its veins and maddened its brain. The workman sold his tools, bought a spade and a pickax, and fled to the gold; the lawyer flung down his parchment and off to the gold; the penny-a-liner his brass pen and off to a greater wonder than he had ever fabricated; the schoolmaster to whom little boys were puzzling out
made the meaning perfectly clear; he dropped ferrule and book and ran with the national hunt for gold. Shops were closed for want of buyers and sellers; the grass crept up between the paving-stones in great thoroughfares; outward-bound ships lay deserted and helpless in the roads; the wilderness was peopled and the cities desolate; commerce was paralyzed, industry contracted. The wise and good trembled for the destiny of the people, the government trembled for itself—idle fear. That which shook this colony for a moment settled it as firm as a granite mountain and made it great with a rapidity that would have astounded the puny ages cant appeals to as the days of wonders.
The sacra fames was not Australian, but human; and so at the first whisper of gold the old nations poured the wealth they valued—their food and clothes and silk and coin—and the prime treasure they valued not, their men—into that favored land.
Then did great Labor, insulted and cheated so many years in narrow, overcrowded corners of the huge unpeopled globe, lift his bare arm and cry, “Who bids for this?” and a dozen gloved hands jumped and clutched at the prize. And in bargains where a man went on one side and money on the other, the money had to say, “Thank you,” over it instead of the man.
But still, though the average value of labor was now full as high in the cities as in the mine, men flowed to the desert and the gold, tempted by the enormous prizes there, that lay close to all and came to fortune's favorites.
Hence a new wonder, a great moral phenomenon the world had never seen before on such a wide scale. At a period of unparalleled civilization and refinement, society, with its artificial habits and its jealous class distinctions on its back, took a sudden unprepared leap from the heights it had been centuries constructing—into a gold mine; it emerged, its delicate fabric crushed out of all recognizable shape, its petty prides annihilated, and even its just distinctions turned topsy-turvey. For mind is really more honorable than muscle, yet when these two met in a gold mine it fared ill with mind. Classical and mathematical scholars joined their forces with navvies to dig gold; and nearly always the scholars were found after a while cooking, shoe cleaning, and doing generally menial offices for the navvies.
Those who had no learning, but had good birth, genteel manners and kid gloves and feeble loins, sunk lower and became the dregs of gold-digging society ere a week's digging had passed over their backs. Not that all wit yielded to muscle. Low cunning often held its own; hundreds of lazy leeches settled on labor's bare arm and bled it. Such as could minister to the diggers' physical needs, appetites, vices, had no need to dig; they made the diggers work for them, and took toll of the precious dust as it fell into their hands.
One brute that could not spell chicory to save himself from the gallows cleared two thousand pounds a month by selling it and hot water at a pinch a cup. Thus ran his announcement, “Cofy allus rady.”
Meantime Trigonometry was frying steaks and on Sunday blacking boots.
After a while lucky diggers returned to the towns clogged with gold, and lusting and panting for pleasure.
They hired carriages and sweethearts, and paraded the streets all day, crying, “We be the hairy-stocracy, now!!”
The shopkeepers bowed down and did them homage.
Even here Nature had her say. The sexes came out—the men sat in the carriages in their dirty fustian and their checkered shirts and no jacket; their inamoritas beside them glittered in silk and satin. And some fiend told these poor women it was genteel to be short-sighted; so they all bought gold spy-glasses, and spied without intermission.
Then the old colonial aristocracy, who had been born in broadcloth and silk, and unlike the new had not been transported, but only their papas and mammas, were driven to despair; but at last they hit upon a remedy. They would be distinguished by hook or by crook, and the only way left now was always to go on foot. So they walked the pavement—wet or dry, nothing could induce them to enter the door of a carriage. Item: they gave up being shortsighted; the few who for reasons distinct from fashion could not resign the habit concealed it, as if it was a defect instead of a beauty.
This struggle of classes in the towns, with its hundred and one incidents, was an excellent theme for satire of the highest class. How has it escaped? is it that even Satire, low and easy art, is not so low and easy as Detraction? But these are the outskirts of a great theme. The theme itself belonged, not to little satire, but to great epic.
In the sudden return of a society far more complex, artificial and conventional than Pericles ever dreamed of, to elements more primitive than Homer had to deal with; in this, with its novelty, and nature, and strange contrasts,
In the old barbaric force and native color of the passions, as they burst out undisguised around the gold,
In the hundred and one personal combats and trials of cunning,
In a desert peopled, and cities thinned by the magic of cupidity,
In a huge army collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore by one man's constraining will, but each human unit spurred into the crowd by his own heart,
In “the siege of Gold,” defended stoutly by Rock and Disease,
In the world-wide effect of the discovery, the peopling of the earth at last according to Heaven's long-published and resisted design,
Fate offered poetry a theme broad and high, yet piquant, and various as the dolphin and the rainbow.
I cannot sing this song, because I am neither Lamartine, nor Hugo, nor Walter Scott. I cannot hum this song, because the severe conditions of my story forbid me even to make the adventurous attempt. I am here to tell, not the great tale of gold, but the little story of how Susan Merton was affected thereby. Yet it shall never be said that my pen passed close to a great man or a great thing without a word of homage and sympathy to set against the sneers of groveling criticasters, the blindness of self-singing poetasters, and the national itch for detraction of all great things and men that live, and deification of dead dwarfs.
God has been bountiful to the human race in this age. Most bountiful to Poets; most bountiful to all of us who have a spark of nobleness in ourselves, and so can see and revere at sight the truly grand and noble (any snob can do this after it has been settled two hundred years by other minds that he is to do it). He has given us warlike heroes more than we can count—far less honor as they deserve; and valor as full of variety as courage in the Iliad is monotonous—except when it takes to its heels.
He has given us one hero, a better man than Hector or Achilles. For Hector ran away from a single man; this hero was never known to run away at all. Achilles was a better egotist than soldier; wounded in his personal vanity, he revenged himself, not on the man who had wronged him—Prudence forbade—but on the army, and on his country. This antique hero sulked; my hero, deprived of the highest command, retained a higher still—the command that places the great of heart above all petty personal feeling. He was a soldier, and could not look from his tent on battle and not plunge into it. What true soldier ever could? He was not a Greek but a Frenchman—and could not love himself better than his country. Above all, he was not Achilles, but Canrobert.
He has given us to see Nineveh disinterred by an English hero.
He has given us to see the northwest passage forced, and winter bearded on his everlasting throne, by another. (Is it the hero's fault if self and snowdrop-singing poetasters cannot see this feat with the eyes of Camoens?)
He has given us to see Titans enslaved by man; Steam harnessed to our carriages and ships; Galvanism tamed into an alphabet—a Gamut, and its metal harp-strings stretched across the earth malgre'' mountains and the sea, and so men's minds defying the twin monsters Time and Space; and now, gold revealed in the East and West at once, and so mankind now first in earnest peopling the enormous globe. Yet old women and children of the pen say, this is a bad, a small, a lifeless, an unpoetic age—and they are not mistaken. For they lie.
As only tooth-stoppers, retailers of conventional phrases, links in the great cuckoo-chain, universal pill-venders, Satan, and ancient booksellers' ancient nameless hacks can lie, they lie.
It is they who are small-eyed. Now, as heretofore, weaklings cannot rise high enough to take a bird's-eye view of their own age, and calculate its dimensions.
The age, smaller than epochs to come, is a giant compared with the past, and full of mighty materials for any great pen in prose or verse.
My little friends aged nineteen and downward—fourscore and upward—who have been lending your ears to the stale little cant of every age, as chanted in this one by Buffo-Bombastes and other foaming-at-the-pen old women of both sexes—take by way of antidote to all that poisonous, soul-withering drivel, ten honest words.
I say before heaven and earth that the man who could grasp the facts of this day and do an immortal writer's duty by them, i.e., so paint them as a later age will be content to engrave them, would be the greatest writer ever lived. Such is the force, weight and number of the grand topics that lie this day on the world's face. I say that he who has eyes to see may now see greater and far more poetic things than human eyes have seen since our Lord and his Apostles and his miracles left the earth.
It is very hard to write a good book or a good play, or to invent a good picture, and having invented paint it. But it always was hard, except to those—to whom it was impossible. Bunglers will not mend matters by blackening the great canvases they can't paint on, nor the impotent become males by detraction.
“Justice!”
When we write a story or sing a poem of the great nineteenth century, there is but one fear—not that our theme will be beneath us, but we miles below it; that we shall lack the comprehensive vision a man must have from heaven to catch the historical, the poetic, the lasting features of the Titan events that stride so swiftly past IN THIS GIGANTIC AGE.
THE life of George Fielding and Thomas Robinson for months could be composed in a few words: tremendous work from sunrise to sundown, and on Sunday welcome rest, a quiet pipe, and a book.
At night they slept in a good tent, with Carlo at their feet and a little bag between them; this bag never left their sight; it went out to their work and in to sleep.
It is dinner-time; George and Tom are snatching a mouthful, and a few words over it.
“How much do you think we are, Tom?”
“Hush! don't speak so loud, for Heaven's sake;” he added in a whisper, “not a penny under seven hundred pounds' worth.”
George sighed.
“It is slower work than I thought; but it is my fault, I am so unlucky.”
“Unlucky! and we have not been eight months at it.”
“But one party near us cleared four thousand pounds at a haul; one thousand pounds apiece—ah!”
“And hundreds have only just been able to keep themselves. Come, you must not grumble, we are high above the average.”
George persisted.
“The reason we don't get on is we try for nothing better than dust. You know what you told me, that the gold was never created in dust, but in masses, like all metals; the dust is only a trifle that has been washed off the bulk. Then you said we ought to track the gold-dust coarser and coarser till we traced the metal to its home in the great rocks.”
“Ay! ay! I believe I used to talk so; but I am wiser now. Look here, George, no doubt the gold was all in block when the world started, but how many million years ago was that? This is my notion, George; at the beginning of the world the gold was all solid, at the end it is all to be dust; now which are we nearer, the end or the beginning?”
“Not knowing, can't say, Tom.”
“Then I can, for his reverence told me. We are fifty times nearer the end than the beginning, follows there is fifty times as much gold-dust in nature as solid gold.”
“What a head you ha' got, Tom! but I can't take it up so. Seems to me this dust is like the grain that is shed from a ripe crop before it comes to the sickle. Now if we could trace—”
“How can you trace syrup to the lump when the lump is all turned to syrup?”
George held his peace—shut up, but not convinced.
“Hallo! you two lucky ones,” cried a voice distant about thirty yards. “Will you buy our hole, it is breaking our heart here.”
Robinson went up and found a large hole excavated to a great depth; it was yielding literally nothing, and this determined that paradoxical personage to buy it if it was cheap. “What there is must be somewhere all in a lump.”
He offered ten pounds for it, which was eagerly snapped at.
“Well done, Gardiner,” said one of the band. “We would have taken ten shillings for it,” explained he to Robinson.
Robinson paid the money, and let himself down into the hole with his spade. He drove his spade into the clay, and the bottom of it just reached the rock; he looked up. “I would have gone just one foot deeper before I gave in,” said he; he called George. “Come, George, we can know our fate in ten minutes.”
They shoveled the clay away down to about one inch above the rock, and there in the white clay they found a little bit of gold as big as a pin's head.
“We have done it this time,” cried Robinson, “shave a little more off, not too deep, and save the clay.” This time a score of little nuggets came to view sticking in the clay; no need for washing, they picked them out with their knives.
The news soon spread, and a multitude buzzed round the hole and looked down on the men picking out peas and beans of pure gold with their knives.
Presently a voice cried, “Shame, give the men back their hole!”
“Gammon,” cried others, “they paid for a chance, and it turned out well; a bargain is a bargain.” Gardiner and his mates looked sorrowfully down. Robinson saw their faces and came out of the hole a moment. He took Gardiner aside and whispered, “Jump into our hole like lightning, it is worth four pound a day.”
“God bless you!” said Gardiner. He ran and jumped into the hole just as another man was going to take possession. By digger's law no party is allowed to occupy two holes.
All that afternoon there was a mob looking down at George and Robinson picking out peas and beans of gold, and envy's satanic fire burned many a heart. These two were picking up at least a hundred pounds an hour.
Now it happened late in the afternoon that a man of shabby figure, evidently not a digger, observing that there was always more or less crowd in one place, shambled up and looked down with the rest; as he looked down, George happened to look up; the newcomer drew back hastily. After that his proceedings were singular; he remained in the crowd more than two hours, not stationary, but winding in and out. He listened to everything that was said, especially if it was muttered and not spoken out; and he peered into every face, and peering into every face it befell that at last his eye lighted on one that seemed to fascinate him; it belonged to a fellow with a great bull neck, and hair and beard flowing all into one—a man more like the black-maned lion of North Africa than anything else. But it was not his appearance that fascinated the serpentine one, it was the look he cast down upon those two lucky diggers; a scowl of tremendous hatred—hatred unto death. Instinct told the serpent there must be more in this than extempore envy. He waited and watched, and, when the black-maned one moved away, he followed him about everywhere till at last he got him alone.
Then he sidled up, and in a cringing way said:
“What luck some men have, don't they?”
The man answered by a fierce grunt.
The serpent was half afraid of him, but he went on.
“There will be a good lump of gold in their tent to-night.”
The other seemed struck with these words.
“They have been lucky a long time,” explained the other, “and now this added—”
“Well, what about it?”
“Nothing! only I wish somebody else had it instead.”
“Why?”
“That is a secret for the present. I only tell you because I think somehow they are no friends of yours either.”
“Perhaps not! what then.”
“Then we might perhaps do business together; it will strike you singular, but I have a friend who would give money to any one that would take a little from those two.”
“Say that again.”
“Would give money to any one that would take it from those two.”
“And you won't ask for any share of the swag?”
“Me? I have nothing to do with it.”
“Gammon! well, your friend! will he?”
“Not a farthing!”
“And what will he give, suppose I have a friend that will do the trick?”
“According to the risk!”
The man gave a whistle. A fellow with forehead villainously low came from behind some tents.
“What is it, Will?” asked the newcomer.
“A plant.”
“This one in it?”
“Yes! This is too public, come to Bevan's store.”
“What for?”
“To buy some things.”
“What things?”
“First of all, a revolver; there were fellows about our tent last night, creeping and prowling.”
“I never heard them.”
“No more you would an earthquake—but I heard them, and got up and pointed my revolver at them; so then they cut—all the better for them. We must mind our eye, George; a good many tents are robbed every week, and we are known to have a good swag.”
“Well, I must start this moment if I am to be back.”
“And take a pound of dust and buy things that we can sell here to a profit.”
George came back at night looking rather sheep-faced.
“Tom,” said he, “I am afraid I have done wrong. You see there was a confounded auction, and what with the hammer, and the folk bidding, and his palaver, I could not help it.”
“But what is it you have bought?”
“A bit o' land, Tom.”
Robinson groaned; but, recovering himself, he said gayly:
“Well, have you brought it with you?”
“No, it is not so small as all that; as nice a bit of grass as ever you saw, Tom, and just outside the town of Bathurat; only I didn't ought to have spent your money as well as my own.”
“Stuff and nonsense—I accept the investment. Let me load your new revolver. Now look at my day's work. I wouldn't take a hundred pound for these little fellows.”
George gloated over the little nuggets, for he saw Susan's eyes in them. To-night she seemed so near. The little bag was placed between them, the day's spoils added to it, and the tired friends were soon asleep.
“HELP! help! murder! help! murder!” Such were the cries that invaded the sleepers' ears in the middle of the night, to which horrible sounds was added the furious barking of Carlo.
The men seized their revolvers and rushed out of the tent. At about sixty yards distant they saw a man on the ground struggling under two fellows, and still crying, though more faintly, “murder” and “help.”
“They are killing him!” cried George; and Robinson and he cocked their revolvers and ran furiously toward the men. But these did not wait the attack. They started up and off like the wind, followed by two shots from Robinson that whistled unpleasantly near them.
“Have they hurt you, my poor fellow?” said Robinson.
The man only groaned for answer.
Robinson turned his face up in the moonlight, and recognized a man to whom he had never spoken, but whom his watchful eye had noticed more than once in the mine—it was, in fact, the peddler Walker.
“Stop, George, I have seen this face in bad company. Oh! back to our tent for your life, and kill any man you see near it!”
They ran back. They saw two dark figures melting into the night on the other side the tent. They darted in—they felt for the bag. Gone! They felt convulsively all round the tent. Gone! With trembling hands Robinson struck a light. Gone—the work of months in a moment—-the hope of a life snatched out of a lover's very hand, and held out a mile off again!
The poor fellows rushed wildly out into the night. They saw nothing but the wretched decoy vanishing behind the nearest tents. They came into the tent again. They sat down and bowed to the blow in silence, and looked at one another, and their lips quivered, and they feared to speak lest they should break into unmanly rage or sorrow. So they sat like stone till daybreak.
And when the first streak of twilight came in, George said in a firm whisper:
“Take my hand, Tom, before we go to work.”
So the two friends sat hand in hand a minute or two; and that hard grip of two workingmen's hands, though it was not gently eloquent like beauty's soft, expressive palm, did yet say many things good for the heart in this bitter hour.
It said: “A great calamity has fallen; but we do not blame each other, as some turn to directly and do. It is not your fault, George. It is not your fault, Tom.”
It said: “We were lucky together; now we are unlucky together—all the more friends. We wrought together; now we have been wronged together—all the more friends.” With this the sun rose, and for the first time they crept to their work instead of springing to it.
They still found gold in it, but not quite so abundant or so large. They had raised the cream of it for the thieves. Moreover, a rush had been made to the hole, claims measured off actually touching them; so they could not follow the gold-bearing strata horizontally—it belonged to their neighbors. They worked in silence, they ate their meal in silence. But as they rose to work again, Robinson said, very gravely, even solemnly:
“George, now I know what an honest man feels when he is robbed of the fruits of his work and his self-denial and his sobriety. If I had known it fifteen years ago, I should never have been a—what I have been.”
For two months the friends worked stoutly with leaden hearts, but did little more than pay their expenses. The bag lay between them light as a feather. One morning Tom said to George:
“George, this won't do. I am going prospecting. Moore will lend me his horse for a day.”
That day George worked alone. Robinson rode all over the country with a tin pan at his back, and tested all the places that seemed likely to his experienced eye. At night he returned to their tent. George was just lying down.
“No sleep to-night, George,” said he, instinctively lowering his voice to a whisper; “I have found surface gold ten miles to the southward.”
“Well, we will go to it to-morrow.”
“What, by daylight, watched as we are? We, the two lucky ones,” said Robinson bitterly. “No. Wait till the coast is clear—then strike tent and away.”
At midnight they stole out of the camp. By peep of day they were in a little dell with a brook running at the bottom of it.
“Now, George, listen to me. Here is ten thousand pounds if we could keep this gully and the creek a fortnight to ourselves.”
“Oh, Tom! and we will. Nobody will find us here, it is like a box.”
Robinson smiled sadly. The men drove their spades in close to the little hole which Robinson had made prospecting yesterday, and the very first cradleful yielded an ounce of gold-dust extremely small and pure. They found it diffused with wonderful regularity within a few inches of the surface. Here for the first time George saw gold-dust so plentiful as to be visible. When a spadeful of the clay was turned up it glittered all over. When they tore up the grass, which was green as an emerald, specks of bright gold came up clinging to the roots. They fell like spaded tigers on the prey.
“What are you doing, George?”
“Going to light a fire for dinner. We must eat, I suppose, though I do grudge the time.”
“We must eat, but not hot.”
“Why not?”
“Because, if you light a fire, the smoke will be seen miles off, and half the diggings will be down upon us. I have brought three days' cold meat—-here it is.”
“Will this be enough?” asked George, simply, his mouth full.
“Yes, it will be enough,” replied the other, bitterly. “Do you hear that bird, George? They call him a leather-head. What is he singing?”
George laughed. “Seems to me he is saying, 'Off we go!' 'Off we go!' 'Off we go!'”
“That is it. And look now, off he is gone; and, what is more, he has gone to tell all the world he saw two men pick up gold like beans.”
“Work!” cried George.
That night the little bag felt twice as heavy as last night, and Susan seemed nearer than for many a day. These two worked for their lives. They counted each minute, and George was a Goliath; the soil flew round him like the dust about a wmnnowing-machine. He was working for Susan. Robinson wasted two seconds admiring him.
“Well,” said he, “gold puts us all on our mettle, but you beat all I ever saw. You are a man.”
It was the morning of the third day, and the friends were filling the little bag fast; and at breakfast George quizzed Robinson's late fears.
“The leather-head didn't tell anybody, for here we are all alone.”
Robinson laughed.
“But we should not have been, if I had let you light a fire. However, I really begin to hope now they will let us alone till we have cleared out the gully. Hallo!”
“What is the matter?”
“Look there, George.”
“What is it? Smoke rising—down the valley?”
“We are done! Didn't I tell you?”
“Don't say so, Tom. Why, it is only smoke, and five miles off.”
“What signifies what it is or where it is? It is on the road to us.”
“I hope better.”
“What is the use of hoping nonsense? Was it there yesterday? Well, then.”
“Don't you be faint-hearted,” said George. “We are not caught yet. I wonder whether Susan would say it was a sin to try and mislead them?”
“A sin! I wish I knew how, I'd soon see. That was a good notion. This place is five hundred pound a day to us. We must keep it to-day by hook or by crook. Come with me, quick. Bring your tools and the bag.”
George followed Robinson in utter ignorance of his design; that worthy made his way as fast as he could toward the smoke. When they got within a mile of it the valley widened and the smoke was seen rising from the side of the stream. Concealing themselves, they saw two men beating the ground on each side like pointers. Robinson drew back. “They are hunting up the stream,” said he, “it is there we must put the stopper on them.”
They made eastward for the stream which they had left.
“Come,” said Robinson, “here is a spot that looks likely to a novice; dig and cut it up all you can.”
George was mystified but obeyed, and soon the place looked as if men had been at work on it some time. Then Robinson took out a handful of gold-dust and coolly scattered it over a large heap of mould.
“What are you at? Are you mad, Tom? Why, there goes five pounds. What a sin!”
“Did you never hear of the man that flung away a sprat to catch a whale? Now turn back to our hole. Stop, leave your pickax, then they will think we are coming back to work.”
In little more than half an hour they were in their little gully working like mad. They ate their dinner working. At five o'clock George pointed out to Robinson no less than seven distinct columns of smoke rising about a mile apart all down the valley.
“Ay!” said Robinson, “those six smokes are hunting the smoke that is hunting us! but we have screwed another day out.”
Just as the sun was setting, a man came into the gully with a pickax on his shoulder.
“Ah! how d'ye do?” said Robinson, in a mock friendly accent. “We have been expecting you. Thank you for bringing us our pickax.”
The man gave a sort of rueful laugh and came and delivered the pick and coolly watched the cradle.
“Why don't you ask what you want to know?” said Robinson.
The man sneered. “Is that the way to get the truth from a digger?” said he.
“It is from me, and the only one.”
“Oh! then what are you doing, mate?”
“About ten ounces of gold per hour.”
The man's mouth and eyes both opened. “Come, my lad,” said Robinson, good-naturedly, “of course I am not glad you have found us, but since you are come, call your pals, light fires, and work all night. To-morrow it will be too late.”
The man whistled. He was soon joined by two more and afterward by others. The whole party was eight. A hurried conference took place, and presently the captain, whose name was Ede, came up to Robinson with a small barrel of beer and begged him and his pal to drink as much as they liked. They were very glad of the draught and thanked the men warmly.
The newcomers took Robinson's advice, lighted large fires, divided their company, and groped for gold. Every now and then came a shout of joy, and, in the light of the fires, the wild figures showed red as blood against the black wall of night, and their excited eyes glowed like carbuncles as they clawed the sparkling dust. George and Robinson, fatigued already by a long day, broke down about three in the morning. They reeled into their tent, dug a hole, put in their gold bag, stamped it down, tumbled dead asleep down over it, and never woke till morn.
Gn l r-r-r! gn l r-r-r!
“What is the matter, Carlo?”
Gn l r-r-r.
Hum! hum! hum! Crash! crash!
At these sounds Robinson lifted up the corner of his tent. The gully was a digging. He ran out to see where he was to work, and found the whole soil one enormous tan-yard, the pits ten feet square, and so close there was hardly room to walk to your hole without tumbling into your neighbor's. You had to balance yourself like boys going along a beam in a timber-yard. In one of these he found Ede and his gang working. Mr. Ede had acquired a black eye, ditto one of his mates.
“Good-morning, Captain Robinson,” said this personage, with a general gayety of countenance that contrasted most drolly with the mourning an expressive organ had gone into.
“Well, was I right?” asked Robinson, looking ruefully round the crowded digging.
“You were, Captain Robinson, and thank you for last night.”
“Well, you have picked up my name somehow. Now just tell me how you picked up something else. How did you suspect us in this retired spot?”
“We were working just clear of the great digging by the side of the creek, and doing no good, when your cork came down.”
“My cork?”
“Cork out of your bottle.”
“I had no bottle. Oh, yes! my pal had a bottle of small beer.”
“Ay, he must have thrown it into the creek, for a cork came down to us. Then I looked at it, and I said, 'Here is a cork from Moore's store; there is a party working up stream by this cork.'”
Robinson gave a little groan. “We are never to be at the bottom of gold digging,” said he.
“So we came up the stream and tried several places as we came, but found nothing; at last we came to your pickax and signs of work, so my lads would stay and work there, and I let them an hour or two, and then I said, 'Come now, lads, the party we are after is higher up.'”
“Now how could you pretend to know that?” inquired Robinson, with curiosity.
“Easy enough. The water came down to us thick and muddyish, so I knew you were washing up stream.”
“Confound my stupid head,” cried Robinson, “I deserve to have it cut off after all my experience.”
And he actually capered with vexation.
“The best may make a mistake,” said the other soothingly. “Well, captain, you did us a good turn last night, so here is your claim. We put your pal's pick in it—here close to us. Oh! there was a lot that made difficulties, but we over-persuaded them.”
“Indeed! How?”
“Gave them a hiding, and promised to knock out any one's brains that went into it. Oh! kindness begets kindness, even in a gold mine.”
“It does,” cried Robinson, “and the proof is—that I give you the claim. Here come this way and seem to buy it of me. All their eyes are upon us. Now split your gang, and four take my claim.”
“Well, that is good of you. But what will you do, captain? Where shall you go?” And his eyes betrayed his curiosity.
“Humph! Well, I will tell you on condition that you don't bring two thousand after me again. You should look behind you as well as before, stupid.”
These terms agreed to, Robinson let Ede know that he was going this moment back to the old digging. The other was greatly surprised. Robinson then explained that in the old digging gold lay at various depths and was inexhaustible; that this afternoon there would be a rush made from it to Robinson's Gully (so the spot where they stood was already called); that thousands of good claims would thus by diggers' law be vacated; and that he should take the best before the rush came back, which would be immediately, since Robinson's Gully would be emptied of its gold in four hours.
“So clear out your two claims,” said he. “It won't take you two hours. All the gold lies in one streak four inches deep. Then back after me; I'll give you the office. I'll mark you down a good claim.”
Mr. Ede, who was not used to this sort of thing since he fought for gold, wore a ludicrous expression of surprise and gratitude. Robinson read it and grinned superior, but the look rendered words needless, so he turned the conversation.
“How did you get your black eye?”
“Oh! didn't I tell you? Fighting with the blackguards for your claim.”
It was now Robinson's turn to be touched.
“You are a good fellow. You and I must be friends. Ah! if I could but get together about forty decent men like you, and that had got gold to lose.”
“Well,” said Ede, “why not? Here are eight that have got gold to lose, thanks to you, and your own lot—that makes ten. We could easy make up forty for any good lay; there is my hand for one. What is it?”
Robinson took Ede's hand with a haste and an energy that almost startled him, and his features darkened with an expression unusual now to his good-natured face. “To put down thieving in the camp,” said he, sternly.
“Ah!” said the other, half sadly (the desirableness of this had occurred to him before now); “but how are we to do that?” asked he, incredulously. “The camp is choke-full of them.”
Robinson looked blacker, uglier and more in earnest. So was his answer when it came.
“Make stealing death by the law.”
“The law! What law?”
“Lynch!”