Part 41 (1/2)
Tresco and the Prospector were eating their ”tucker” beneath the boughs of a spreading black-birch. In front of them burned brightly a fire of dead branches, suspended above which was the ”billy,” black and battered externally, but full of fragrant tea.
”I shall go home to England,” said Benjamin; his mouth half-filled with cold bacon. ”I shall visit my widowed mother, and be the comfort and support of her declining years. There must be over 200 ounces in the tent, and hundreds more in the claim.”
”I ain't got a widowed mother,” said the Prospector. ”_I_ shall go into Timber Town and make The Lucky Digger open house--come when you like, have what you like, at the expense of Mr. William Wurcott. That's my style. I like to see a man free with his dollars.”
They had pegged out their claim at a spot where the corrugations in the rocky bed of the creek stretched from bank to bank and a beach of soft sand spread itself along the water's edge.
The first ”prospect” that they had ”panned off” resulted in a return of a couple of ounces. Next they had ”fossicked” with sheath-knives in the crevices of the rocks, and had quickly got something more than half a cupful of gold, in shape and size like pumpkin seeds. The day following, they continued to ”pan off” the sands in front of their tent; each dish yielding a handsome return. But as Benjamin found this process difficult in his unskilful hands, he directed his attention to looking for new patches. Wading about in the shallows with a dish in one hand and a shovel in the other, he overturned loose bits of rock which he found lying on the sand. Sometimes he would find an ounce or two, sometimes nothing at all; but upon turning over a flat slab of rock, to raise which needed all his strength, he gave a whoop of delight, for a yellow ma.s.s lay glittering in the rippling waters. With a single scoop of his shovel he had won 80 ozs. of gold.
This rich spot was where the water was but two feet deep, and above it and below it gold could be seen s.h.i.+ning amongst the sand and gravel.
When the cream of the claim, so to speak, had been skimmed off with the tin dish, the men began to set up sluice boxes, by means of which they might work the whole of their ground systematically.
In constructing these boxes they received every help from Moonlight, who lent them tools, and aided them in cutting out the slabs. Left mateless during Scarlett's visit to Timber Town, the veteran miner frequently exchanged his lonely camp for the more congenial quarters of Tresco and the Prospector.
It was during one of the foregatherings round the camp-fire, when Night had spread her sable mantle over the sleeping earth, and only the wakeful wood-hen and the hoa.r.s.ely-hooting owl stirred the silence of the leafy solitude, that Moonlight was ”swapping” yarns with the Prospector. As the flames shot up lurid tongues which almost licked the overhanging boughs, and the men sat, smoking their black tobacco, and drinking from tin pannikins tea too strong for the urban stomach, Bill the Prospector expectorated into the flames, and said:
”The biggest streak o' luck I ever had--barring this present field, you understand--was at the Diamond Gully rush. There weren't no diamonds, but I got over 100 ounces in three days. Gold was more plentiful than flour, and in the police camp there was two safes full of gold belonging to the Bank, which was a twelve by eight tent, in charge of a young feller named Henery. A more trusting young man I never met. When I went to sell my little pile, he had over 12,000 ounces in a old leather boot-trunk in his tent, besides more in a sugar-bag. He'd even filled one of his top-boots with gold, and its feller stood waitin' to receive my contribution. 'Good morning,' I says. 'Are you the boss o' this show?' 'I'm in charge of the Bank,' he says, just as grand as if he was behind a mahog'ny counter with bra.s.s fixings. 'Then weigh my pile,' I says, handing over my gold. Then what d'you think he done? 'Just wait till I get my scales,' he says. 'I've lent 'em to the Police Sergeant.
Please have the goodness to look after the business while I'm gone.'
With that he leaves me in the company of close on 100,000, and never a soul'd have bin the wiser if I'd helped myself to a thousand or two. But the reel digger don't act so--it's the loafers on the diggings gets us a bad name. I've dreamed of it, I've had reg'lar nightmares about it when I've bin stone-broke and without a sixpence to buy a drink.”
”What?” said Tresco. ”Gold littered about like lumber, and you practically given the office to help yourself? It's wonderful, Bill, what restraint there is in an honest mind! You can't ever have been to Sunday School.”
”How d'you know?” asked the Prospector.
”Because, if you'd ha' bin regular to Sunday School when you were a boy, and bin told what a perfect horrible little devil you were, till you believed it, why, you'd ha' stole thousands of pounds from that calico Bank, just to prove such theories true. Now _I_ was brought up G.o.dly. I was learnt texts, strings of 'em a chain long; I had a red-headed, pimply teacher who just revelled in inbred sin and h.e.l.l-fire till he made me want to fry him on the school grate. I couldn't ha' withstood your temptation. I'd most certainly have felt justified in taking a few ounces of gold, as payment for keeping the rest intact.”
”You're talking nonsense, the two of you,” said Moonlight. ”To rob on a gold-field means to be shot or, at the very least, gaoled. And when a man's on good gold himself, he doesn't steal other people's. My best luck was on the Rifle River, at a bend called Felix Point. It had a sandy beach where the water was shallow, just like this one here. My mate and I fossicked with a knife and a pannikin, and before the day was over we had between 30 and 40 ounces. The gold lay on a bottom of black sand and gravel which looked like so many eggs. After we'd put up our sluice we got as much as 200 ounces a day, and thought the claim poor when we got no more than fifty.”
”I 'xpect you had a rare ole spree when you got to town,” said the Prospector. ”How much did you divide?”
”Between twenty and thirty thousand,” replied Moonlight. ”I handed my gold over to the Police escort, and went to town as comfortable as if I was on a turnpike road. I didn't go on the wine--I'm almost a teetotaler. A little red-headed girl got most of my pile--a red-headed girl can generally twist me round her thumb. That must have been ten years ago.”
”You've grown older and, perhaps, wiser,” interjected Benjamin.
”Wonderful thing, age.”
”This time I'm going to take a draft on Timbuctoo, or Hong-kong, or some place where red-headed girls are scarce, and see if I can't get away with a little cash.”
”Most probably you've got a widowed mother, like me,” said Benjamin.
”Go, and comfort her declining years. Do like me: wipe out the recollection of the good times you've had by acts of filial piety. A widowed mother is good, but if you can rake up a maiden aunt and keep her too, that'll be a work of supererogation.”
”Of how much?” asked Bill.
”It's a word I picked up in my College days--I'm afraid I've forgotten the precise meaning.” Benjamin's face lit up with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. He lifted his pannikin to his lips, nodded to his companions, said, ”Here's luck,” and drank the black tea as though it had been nectar. ”That's the beauty of turning digger,” he continued; ”the sobriety one acquires in the bush is phenomenal. If you asked me to name the most virtuous man on this planet, I should say a prospector in the bush--a bishop is nothing to him. But I own that when he goes to town the digger becomes a very devil let loose. Think of the surroundings here--innocent twittering birds, silent arboreous trees, clear pellucid streams, nothing to tempt, nothing to degrade.”
Tresco might have amplified his discourse as fully as a bishop, but that at this point there was a shouting and the noise of dry boughs cracking under advancing feet. In a moment the three men were standing, alert, astonished, in various att.i.tudes of defence.
Moonlight had armed himself with a pick, the Prospector had grasped a shovel, Tresco drew a revolver from inside his ”jumper.”
The shouting continued, though nothing could be seen. Then came out of the darkness, ”What-ho there, Moonlight! Can't you give us a hand to cross the river?”