MR. HART SEARCHES FOR A GOLDEN REEF.
Gold was first discovered in the alluvial soil in the gullies, a few
feet beneath the surface. In some cases the metal was picked up on the
surface, and tracked into the bowels of the earth. Sometimes the gold
gutter ran across great plains, which soon were riddled with holes,
and covered with hillocks of pipe-clay soil; sometimes it ran into
hillsides, where the miners tracked it, until the sinking became too
deep for profitable labour, or until the "lead," as it is called, was
lost. Some of the richest patches of gold that had been found in the
colony were found here and there in Silver Creek. In Sailors' Gully,
for instance, there was a famous claim, where one gold lead crossed
another; the fortunate men who happened to light on this rare junction
were runaway sailors, and they made no secret of the fact that they
washed fourteen hundred ounces of gold out of twelve buckets of earth
in one day. In the same week, the man who was working at the windlass
(there were only two partners in this concern) began to turn the
handle, and found that the weight at the other end of the rope was
greater than he anticipated. He knew that it was only a bucket of
earth he was winding up, for he heard it bump against the sides of the
shaft. When he caught sight of the bucket he almost let the handle of
the windlass slip from him in his excitement. It was not earth he was
hauling up, it was gold; and it proved to be the richest bucket of
earth that was ever found in Silver Creek. It yielded thirteen hundred
ounces of the precious metal; no less. The fortunate sailors
celebrated the occasion, decorated the shaft with as many flags as
they could get together, fired off their revolvers for an hour as
rapidly as they could load them, bought up all the grog in the gully,
and invited all the diggers round about to join them in drinking it.
That bucket of gold and dirt was almost the death of them, for the
carouse was a wild one; but they recovered themselves in a day or two,
and set to work again soberly and sensibly, and retired, after ten
weeks' labour, with a fortune of seventeen thousand pounds between
them.
After a time men began to look for gold in the hills. It was settled
years ago by the miners that all the gold that was found in the
gullies was washed down from the ranges. Before many days had passed,
quartz reefs were found with great lumps of gold in the stone; and one
Saturday the principal gold-broker in Silver Creek displayed in his
window a mass of quartz which could not have weighed less than two
hundred pounds, and which was literally studded and veined with gold.
It was labelled "From Pegleg Reef," so named because it was discovered
by a man with a wooden leg. Then commenced a craze, and everybody went
mad on quartz. This brings us to a day when Mr. Hart, who, with his
company, had now been in Silver Creek for three weeks, winning money
and laurels, was walking over the ranges, at some distance from the
township, with a short-handled pick over his shoulder, a hammer in his
hand, and a "fossicking" knife in his belt. The craze for discovering
a quartz reef had infected him, and he was looking for a trail.
If you can love this man as you proceed with the story, I shall be
glad; for he was a large-souled man, who had never been guilty of a
meanness. That he was always poor came from the generosity of his
nature, which frequent disappointments had not been able to sour; he
could never stoop to trickery for money. In his younger days he had
frequently been heard to despise money; but I think, now that he was
old, his views were beginning to experience change. Else why should he
be toiling over the hills on this hot sultry day, with his eyes
eagerly bent to the earth, in search of gold?
He came to the ridge of a range, and he paused for a few moments to
look back on the township. The air was still; the heavens were full of
beautiful colour; the white tents of the diggers shone in the sun. A
world in miniature was before him. Gold had lately been discovered in
a large plain which with its busy life was stretched beneath him.
Although he was at a great distance from it, he could see it clearly
from the height on which he stood. At the farthermost edge of this
plain were a dozen puddling machines at work, and two or three dams
filled with clear water which had not been polluted. The water gleamed
and glittered like sheets of burnished silver; the tiny horses walked
round and round, yoked to their wheels; the tiny men flitted here and
there across the plain, and bent over heaps of auriferous soil, and
worked at toy windlasses, with ropes no thicker than thread; thin
wreaths of smoke curled from the rear of the tents, where the smallest
women in the world were washing and cooking; lilliputians were cutting
down trees for firewood with bright sharp axes which were indicated by
thin keen flashing edges of light as they were flourished in the air.
Mr. Hart turned his back upon these signs of busy life, and descended
the range on the other side. On and on he walked, without discovering
any indications of gold, although he paused to crack many a score
pieces of the quartz which studded the hills. He smiled curiously at
his ill-success. "Well," he mused, as if arguing with himself, "but I
should like to find a golden reef! Let me see. A golden reef, yielding
say twenty, thirty ounces to the ton. Ah, Gerald, Gerald! don't be
greedy. Say fifteen ounces and be satisfied. A hundred tons--fifteen
hundred ounces; six thousand pounds. And then, Home! Home! Home! Ah,
my darling, how my heart yearns to you! But you are happy, thank God,
and if I never look upon your sweet face, if I never hold you in my
arms!----" He paused suddenly, with an aching feeling in his breast.
"I must see her--I must see her!" he murmured; and stretching forth
his arms, cried half seriously, "Come, Fortune, and take me to her!"
He was alone, and no one heard him. For an hour he had seen no
evidences of human life about him; Silver Creek township was entirely
shut out from view. On he walked, not stopping to chip now, for he
thought that he might have a better chance of finding a golden reef if
he went farther afield. He must have walked fully two miles farther,
when he saw before him at a distance of a few hundred yards a thick
clump of trees arranged by nature almost in a straight line, and
entirely obscuring the view that lay beyond it. He plunged into the
thicket--for it was no less--and through it, and found himself before
another thicket of trees similarly arranged. Between the two thickets
there were not more than two hundred feet of clear ground. The
intervening space was level and bare, and the trees between which he
stood were of a great height. The light came through the uppermost
branches in slanting devious lines, which, as he moved, darted hither
and thither, as though imbued with life. The ground was all in shadow,
and so solemn was the stillness and so dim the light in this place,
that it seemed like a page out of another existence.
Lost in admiration, Mr. Hart paused for awhile, and then plunged into
the second thicket, and found it denser than the first. In a quarter
of an hour he emerged into the open unobscured sunlight again.
Before him rose a vast range with masses of outcropping quartz. He
considered within himself whether it was worth his while to climb this
range; the quartz looked tempting. There were traces of iron pyrites
in it, and he had heard that the richest reefs were sometimes found on
such heights. Moreover, it seemed to him as though the hill had never
been prospected. He decided that he would mount the range.
It was a difficult task that he had set himself; the range was higher,
steeper, than he had imagined, and the day was very hot. He was
compelled to stop and rest. "Shall I go to the top or turn back?" he
asked of himself. He was inclined to retrace his steps, until he
thought of his darling at home; he took her picture from his pocket,
and kissed it many times. "I will go up," he said "to the very top. I
might hear one day that a golden reef had been found on the summit of
this hill, and then I should never forgive myself."
Little did he suspect how much hung upon that moment of hesitation.
Little did he suspect that simply by mounting this hill, the means of
bringing into his daughter's life its greatest joy and happiness were
to be put into his hands. But even had he suspected it, his wildest
dream would not have afforded a clue to the manner of its
accomplishment.
He mounted the hill; he reached its summit. Then he found that others
had been before him.
A shaft had been sunk; a windlass was erected. Mr. Hart judged, from
the great hillock of earth by the side of the claim, that the pit
could not be less than a hundred feet deep. A tree, split in two, was
on the ground close by, with its inner surfaces exposed.
Mr. Hart went to the windlass, thinking at first that the shaft was a
deserted one, for he saw no person on the hill. But the sound of metal
upon stone which came to his ears from the bottom of the pit was
sufficient to convince him that his idea was wrong, and that a miner
was working in the shaft.
A little heap of quartz lay within a yard or two of him. He examined
it, and found gold in it. He took up piece after piece, and in every
other piece there were traces of gold. He cast greedy glances, not at
the quartz he was examining, but along the brow of the hill, beyond
the boundary pegs which marked the area of the prospectors' claim.
Then turning, he jumped back with a loud cry, for a man whom he had
not before observed was lying on the ground at his feet, and he had
almost trodden on his upturned face. But another thing that he saw
held him for a moment motionless from fear.
The man was asleep, and in his hair was moving a long brown reptile,
with, as it seemed, numberless legs, which were all in motion,
stealthily and venomously. Two slender horns protruded from its head,
and behind its horns its eyes gleamed with spiteful fire. Mr. Hart
knew immediately that it was a centipede--a very large one of its
species--and that its sting might bring death to the sleeper. It had
crawled out of the centre of the split tree which lay near, and was
now crawling from the hair on to the face of the sleeping man. Taking
his handkerchief in his hand for protection, Mr. Hart, with a swift
and sudden movement, plucked the crawling reptile from the sleeper's
hair, and threw it and his handkerchief a dozen yards away.
"Holloa, mate!" cried the man, aroused by the action, and jumping to
his feet, "what are you up to?"
He was a young and handsome man, with a noble beard hanging on his
breast, and with his hair hanging almost to his shoulders. His eyes
were blue, his hair was brown. His skin was fair, as might be seen,
not on his face, nor on his neck where it was bared to the sun, but
just below the collar of his light-blue serge shirt, the top button of
which was unfastened. In age probably twenty-five or six. In height,
five feet ten inches, or thereabouts; a model of strength, beauty, and
symmetry. Such a form and figure as one of the old painters would have
loved to paint, and as might win the heart of any woman not in love
and that way inclined--as most women are, naturally.
Impetuous, fiery, aggressive, his first thought was that the stranger
had attacked him in his sleep. He did not wait for a second thought,
but pulled a revolver from his belt, where it was slung, covered by a
leathern sheath, and levelled it at Mr. Hart. In new goldfields these
weapons were necessary for self-defence; like vultures after carrion
(although the simile does not entirely hold good), the most desperate
characters flew to the new goldfields on the first scent of gold,
resolved to get it by hook or by crook.
Mr. Hart held up his hand and smiled deprecatingly.
"I think I have done you a service, young sir," he said. "I saw a
centipede crawling in your hair on to your face as you were lying
asleep, and I plucked it away. That is all. I was once stung in the
arm by such a reptile, and was disabled for three months. I fancied
you might not relish a like experience; your face is far too handsome
to be spoiled in that way. If you will lift my handkerchief gently and
carefully--I did not care to seize the beast with naked fingers--you
will see for yourself."
The young man had no need to lift the handkerchief. The long ugly
thing was wriggling out of it; half its body was exposed.
"By Jove!" exclaimed the young man, seizing a spade and cutting the
creature in a dozen pieces, all of which immediately began to crawl
away in different directions, north, south, east, and west, with the
intention of commencing independent existences.