PHILIP IS CONVINCED OF THE EFFICACY OF MARGARET'S PRAYERS.
William Smith, the practical, the indefatigable, the restless, the
dauntless, the man of action, who seemingly could do without sleep,
and who had become a hero by contact with opportunity--(well,
that is my opinion, and I alone am responsible for what is here
written)--William Smith, I say, burst into the room, crying:
"Come, Philip, come! To the Margaret reef!"
Margaret darted out of Philip's arms; she would not let all the world
see. Smith knew how matters stood between Philip and Margaret, and he
winked at Mr. Hart, and did not look at the lovers--that is,
significantly.
"Ah!" said Philip, reluctantly coming back to earth--and water, I
might say; "the dam!"
"Yes," said William Smith, "the dam. I told you you might pray for
rain. Now pray for the dam."
"I know a prayer," thought Philip and prayed; "Margaret!"
"You get to bed, my girl," said William Smith to Margaret; "all the
danger's over now, and all the harm's done. The horses are outside."
"I shall want one," put in Mr. Hart.
"You!" exclaimed William Smith. "What interest have you in the dam?
See to your theatre."
"What interest!" said Philip. "Why, he happens to be a shareholder in
the Margaret Reef. Didn't you know?"
"No; but I'm glad to hear it. Good luck to the Margaret, and all
concerned in it. I'll have a horse ready for you in a jiffy." (A new
kind of conveyance for a horse to be harnessed to.)
Out he went again, and before he returned, Margaret had disappeared,
first telling Philip that she was going to pray for the dam. Philip
was satisfied that her praying was better than the best of puddling.
Before the men mounted, they had a look at the theatre; it was a mass
of ruins. The wind only had not only blown it down, but had blown
pieces of it miles away. In a gully, four miles from the spot, into
which a pick had not yet been stuck, the first thing that was found
some months afterwards by men who went to seek for gold was a scratch
wig belonging to the Low Comedian: which puzzled the prospectors. They
did not go to that gully to find scratch wigs. Some part of the
wardrobe belonging to the actors was buried beneath the ruins of the
theatre, but a great deal had been blown away. Most of it was brought
back, at odd times, by diggers and their wives, who had rare laughs
over the queer vestments. Some of them made a great commotion in the
township one day, by marching into High Street, dressed most absurdly.
Charles the Second, in a red wig and with Macbeth's shield on his arm,
was followed by Clown, with heavy eyebrows, moustaches, and Lord
Dundreary whiskers; behind him came one who was half Roman and half
Scotchman; and a perfect piece of patchwork brought up the rear. A
fine jollification followed, you may be sure, when they halted at the
Rose, Shamrock and Thistle.
As William Smith and his companions were gazing on the ruins of the
theatre, a dozen labourers came up, and under the direction of one
began to clear away the fallen timber. Mr. Hart and Philip looked to
William Smith for an explanation. He gave it them. While the storm was
raging, he had made a contract for a new theatre. It might almost be
thought that he slept with one eye open. Mr. Hart said as much.
William Smith laughed.
"It would be a useful thing to be able to do," he said. "But what are
you wondering at? William Smith never loses a day."
He was a kind of man to put heart into men when misfortune overtook
them. He would say, "If bad fortune gives me a slap in the face, I
don't lay down and whimper." (He was not particular as to his grammar,
although he had a proper respect for knowledge and education.) "I
don't lay down and whimper," said he; "I tuck up my sleeves, and set
to--with a will."
When they were in the saddle, and riding along towards the Margaret
Reef, they saw evidences of the same kind of spirit in other men.
Numbers of tents had been literally torn into shreds by the storm;
valuable shafts had fallen in; tools and windlasses and puddling
machines had been swept away by the flood, which in many places had
made hills of gullies and gullies of hills. All was confusion, but men
were working everywhere, with goodwill, to repair the damage. Very
different were the faces of these men and women from the faces of some
poor people I saw a short time since, in the crowded city in which
these words are written, after an extraordinary high tide in the
river, the waters of which had overflowed its banks, and washed into
the cellars where they lived and slept. In the new country the men and
women bustled about vigorously, with faces almost cheerful; in the
old, they stood, banging their heads dolefully, and with not spirit
enough amongst them to make one good worker out of a hundred. But the
cases are different.
As William Smith and his companions rode along, looking this way and
that, Philip suddenly cried "O!" as though he was shot, and turned his
horse's head to the west, whereas the Margaret Reef lay to the north
of them. Away he galloped, as though for dear life, with no thought of
the Margaret Reef in his mind, and William Smith and Mr. Hart followed
him. They went only some five hundred yards, but the horses had to
make some big leaps over new watercourses in that short distance.
Philip jumped off his horse, and tying the animal to a fallen tree,
set to work helping some men to dig the earth away from a tent which
had been nearly buried by the caving in of a hill. Seeing what was the
matter, William Smith, who was at first disposed to grumble, jumped
off _his_ horse, and in another minute he and Mr. Hart were by the
side of Philip, with their sleeves tucked up. Philip worked like a
young Hercules, and when sufficient of the earth was cleared away, he
cut a great gash in the canvas roof, and, stooping over with a rope
tied round his waist, tenderly lifted two children from the chasm, and
handed them to the gold-diggers. He was like a steam hammer, that can
come down one minute with an awful thump and beat ten tons of metal
into shape, and the next can come down with a tap gentle enough to
fashion a thin leaf into the likeness of a delicate flower. After the
two children came a woman, whom he raised in his arms as though she
weighed about an ounce, and at sight of whom the gold-diggers, seeing
that she was alive and comparatively unhurt, raised a great shout. And
one, her husband, who was lying on the ground, crippled, burst into a
passion of grateful tears. I should like to tell you the story of this
family, but I have not time just now. Philip and his companions could
scarcely escape from the persons they had helped to rescue, but they
had other work to look to, and having ascertained that there was no
more human life to be saved, they mounted their horses, and resumed
their course. At the foot of the range, on the other side of which the
dam lay, Philip paused for a moment to breathe the spell of Margaret's
name, but William Smith dashed straight on. The first things that met
their sight were wrecks of canvas tents and broken tent-poles lying
about. William Smith bit his nether lip, but said not a word. He was
already calculating the cost of another and a stronger dam; what he
chiefly regretted was the waste of time and water. The panting horses
reached the brow of the range, and the men leaped off. William Smith
did not stop to ask questions of his workmen, but ran swiftly onward,
to see with his own eyes. He was an older and a weaker man than
Philip, who raced at his heels, but he was the first to reach the dam.
"Hurrah!" he screamed. "Hurrah! hurrah!" And Philip followed suit, and
made the hills resound again with his joyous shouts.
A fair sheet of water lay before them, winking in the eyes of the sun.
The head man--I cannot call him master; there was no such thing, in
the sense that we in England understand it--met William Smith with a
smiling face, and they shook hands. But both of them sobered down
within a minute.
"A tolerable piece of work this of yours," observed William Smith, in
an off-hand way.
"Middlingish," was the reply, in an indifferent tone.
This implied that making such a dam as this was nothing to him. Give
him a real difficult job to accomplish, such as joining two seas, or
levelling a mountain a few thousands of feet in height, or making a
new river within a week or so, and then you might be able to see what
he could do. To construct such a dam as this, however, was really no
joke. It was a masterly piece of work, and it was executed in a
masterly manner; there was not a flaw in not it, a crack in its sides.
They examined it carefully, critically.
"If it will stand such a storm as last night," said William Smith, "it
will stand anything."
Philip, as you may guess, was overjoyed; but he was unjust. He gave
all the credit to Margaret. He complimented the responsible man in a
cool way, which implied, "It is capitally done; but you have Margaret
to thank for it, you know."
Philip's faint praise did not affect the contractor. He was not
vain-glorious; he had undertaken a piece of work, and had done it
well, and was satisfied, having been well paid for it.