AVOCA.
Having earned a few pounds, I left Bullock creek, and returned to
Bendigo, but found my old comrades gone. Meeting however with an
acquaintance whose mate was about to leave for town, we agreed to go
together, and hearing Tarrangower well spoken of, we proceeded thither.
We met with varying success, that barely covered our expenditure. My
companion became anxious, his wife, left behind in Melbourne, being
in great measure dependent on what he might send from time to time.
One day, in speaking grudgingly of the cost of a quarter of mutton,
it suddenly occurs to him that selling mutton is more profitable than
buying it; he puts it to me, and I cannot see but that he is right, and
make no opposition to his proposal to try the selling business. The
arrangements necessary were of the simplest nature. We purchased a small
frame tent, a dead bargain, from a butcher leaving for other diggings.
Being already furnished with window board, table, block, and hooks, the
place required only a few yards of chintz to make it in our eyes quite
a trap for customers. A red and yellow pocket handkerchief nailed to
the top of a light pole, would enable folks to find their way to us.
We purchase half-a-dozen sheep from a passing dealer, and for want of
another place pen them in a corner of the shop, and nervously prepare
for our first job with them. He does the knife work while I hold the
feet; but never having examined the neck of a sheep unboiled, he misses
his way, and only ultimately gets the vital spark to take its leave. We
hang the body to the branch of the tree, and he proceeds to flay it, my
attention being wholly taken up with the leakage of the animal’s late
dinner from its neck. Much water is needed, and when we hang the carcase
up inside, we confess it has rather a washed appearance, and fear we may
have the eating of it to do ourselves. We were busy with the second when
a digger on his way home drew near and stopped to look. We thought we
were doing rather better than last time; not quite so much water needed.
Hopes of a customer made us wink at his presence till he asked leave to
try. The victim’s groans lay heavy on my conscience, and I humbly hinted
to my mate that there was murder enough upon our hands for one day, we
had better give him the doing of the third, but for my answer I got a
foot to hold straight out, and after the man’s departure, his services
having been civilly declined, I was brought to task for compromising the
business by my unbutcherlike compliance with his offer. I was not sure
but that my frequent application of the wet clout was a confession of
weakness to the stranger quite as much as my acknowledged willingness
to be instructed, but as logic failed somehow to acquit me, I ceased to
argue and hardened my heart for the third demonstration of our doubted
skill. Before we turned into bed, we had transacted business to the
extent of sixpence, for a paunch, which a lean dog that accompanied the
purchaser by the eager interest he exhibited informed us was for him.
Early rising profited us nothing. Dull sales all day begat in us a doubt
whether mutton was so much an article of food as formerly. To induce
trade we patronised a home-brewed beer business that was carried on close
by and got the woman to promise us her custom. My partner happened to be
absent on the first visit that she made. The legs and head and tail of
a sheep I knew, but whereabouts the piece she asked for lay I could not
think, but making an attempt at sharpening a knife, I smilingly asked
her to point out precisely where she would like the cuts made, and as
this shift to save myself had occurred like a new idea, I thought it
well to acquaint my partner with it, that the one idea might serve us
both. Custom continuing shy, and fly blows appearing on the increase,
we hold much private consultation, and reflecting on the weary sameness
of mutton, roast and boiled, we resolve to try the effect of mincing
it, and purchasing mint and spices, set to work within the hour—for we
find there is no time to be lost. A new-killed sheep supplies us with
skins, which we wash and dress to the best of our ability, and with a
tin bottle filler to assist us, we have soon some ten or twelve yards of
sausages, all nicely coiled in a large tin dish that has recently been
washing bottom stuff. Certain inequalities in the filling detract from
their appearance—corpulent bits, and spindly bits, with occasionally a
windy looking vacancy—but we think the people will not be too fastidious
about appearances, so far from town, and as they seem slow to come to us,
we think it well to go in search of them, taking the sausages along with
us. But here a difficulty arises, as to which of us should undertake the
mission. I talk him over, and prevail on him to go, he being the elder,
and the better able of the two to give an account of himself if asked.
In less than an hour he returns in great glee with empty dish, having
sold all the stock. Great hopes now arise; mincing with the knife too
slow a process, and filling with the bottle funnel sore upon the thumbs
after the first few yards have been rammed. Wish we had a machine. We sit
up till far in the morning preparing a supply for customers’ breakfast.
Wonder if we could not add pies to our stock in trade; think they would
sell well, with nice crimped edges, and a paste button or something
neatly clipped out of dough upon the top; think people would not grudge
sixpence for them. Put lots of seasoning into the sausage meat, lest
any change should happen to it while we slept. In the morning, after an
absence of less than an half an hour, he returned perspiring and excited,
without his cap, and with the dish full as when he left with it. He never
told the tale of what had happened to him, but having heard a great
clamour among the dogs in the direction he had come from, and seeing him
put his nose to the dish as if in the act of smelling, I for the present
forbore to question him, and made haste to cook a supply for our own use
before it would be too late. We gave up business and separated after
disposing of our effects for a mere trifle. He returned to Melbourne, and
I, lonely and with only a shilling in my pocket, set out again in search
of work upon some sheep station. Late in the afternoon of the third day I
got from a drayman the direction to a station, known as M’Gregor’s.
Feeling far from well, and looking forward rather anxiously to the
expected shelter, I reached the neighbourhood just as the sun was
setting. The buildings were in sight for some time before I reached them,
and I wondered at the broken condition of the fences, and the silence:
not a living thing was to be seen. Twilight was deeping into darkness in
the surrounding wood when I drew near, and found the place deserted and
in ruins, the doors and windows hanging loose, and rank weeds in masses
overgrowing what had been the public yard. My heart sank at the sight, I
shivered as if struck with sudden chill, and felt for the moment as if
the blankets across my shoulders were bearing me to the ground. Sitting
down on a heap of moss-grown stones, I tried to think, but there came to
me only thoughts of home, of changes there, of deaths, of the young ones
whom I had left crying on the door steps when I came away, and of all the
expressions of affection that had been sent after me in the few letters
that had reached my hand. For the first time for many a day I found
myself crying, for it seemed as if I had been sent here to die, and that
no word would ever reach home of the when and where. A white mist began
to gather along the marshy flat, making me very cold, yet my head was
burning hot. I rose and with weary effort, regained the road near where
some grass grown water troughs were, and, seeing some draymen encamped,
went forward and asked leave to sit down by them. Their tea billy was
simmering by the fire, and they were busy kneading damper for their
supper. I felt like one drunk and may have so appeared to them for they
answered me that there was room enough in the bush for those who wished.
I was not wanting in resignation, and moved away a few hundred yards, and
managed to get a fire kindled, but had not strength to gather wood to
keep it burning. Drawing a few withered branches together to save me from
contact with the ground, I lay down upon them with my blankets.
The morning dawned, but I could not rise, and could hardly turn my head
to look at the draymen as they yoked and slowly drove away. My lowly
bed was at too great a distance from the road to be seen by passers
by. Twice I heard the jolt of passing carts, but the sounds fell on a
listless ear, for there was no hope of any one caring to be burdened
with a sick man. As the sun got higher however, I began to take better
heart. Having eaten but little since leaving Tarrangower, three days
before, there was therefore but little grossness for the fever to work
on, and it was sensibly abating. I rose to my feet, giddy and tottering,
gathered my things together anyhow they would come, and after walking
doggedly for a while broke out into a sweat, which made me feel quite
clever on my legs, but more supple than strong. In about an hour I came
upon a man reclining wearily on the limb of a fallen tree, weary looking
and rather meditative. Hailing me to come to him, he handed me a bottle
of brandy from his pocket, saying as his eye wandered over me “have a
glass old fellow, you look as if you would be none the worse of it.”
Feeling rather in want of a tonic, I was not slow in accepting, but gaped
somewhat after the draught like a fish brought to the air, and for a
reason somewhat similar, want of water, but recovered sufficiently bye
and bye to recollect something about half a loaf which ought by rights
to be somewhere among my blankets—my stomach had resumed its work again.
My friend had that morning left the “Burn Bank” public house, where in a
week he had squandered fifty pounds, his earnings for the previous six
months at rail splitting. The bottle that he carried had been presented
to him by the landlady on leaving, and was all that he had left to show
for the money which he had sacrificed to a thirst for popularity amongst
the idlers about the place, who on getting wind of him, had crowded to
his levees, till on his resources failing, he had unfortunately gone a
borrowing among them. Though I had inadvertently lain on the loaf all
night, and it looked as if something of the kind had happened, he gladly
accepted half of it, and went his way.
At sundown I camped about four miles from the Avoca diggings, and in the
morning entered on them with the intention of passing through for the
bush on the other side, should no friendly face meet me on the way. I
had barely reached the inner circle of tents, when I observed a little
man apparently eyeing me with rather more than ordinary interest. My
breakfast had been anything but stimulating, and my gait in consequence
was perhaps a little pensive, but I quickly mended that on drawing near
him. His face somehow did not invite me to seek close acquaintance with
him, yet I was glad when he asked if I wanted work, and soon engaged
myself to serve him with stones and mortar in the building of an oven,
for fourteen shillings a day and my rations. Taking me to his tent, he
introduced me to his wife and child. The place looked clean and tidy,
and wore an air of comfort I had long been a stranger to. My employer
told me his name was Watty Scott, and that I would find him a good man
and true if dealt fairly with. After much talk about the perfidy of
former mates, he said that on the completion of the oven, he would take
me for a partner and go digging; that meantime he thought he had read me
sufficiently well to know me; I might consider the partnership already
entered into, and might look upon all he possessed as half my own, all
except—here he drew his wife tenderly to his side, and looked prayerfully
in my face. I knew not what to say to this, and was perplexed about what
might be coming next, so rapidly had events developed within two hours,
but as he sat between me and the door I could only ask how he could think
it of me, and look reproaches at him. Meanwhile the wife never spoke,
but disengaging herself from him, went outside. He laughed, and, laying
his hand upon my shoulder, said, “its all right, Jamie”—he had already
familiarised my name—“I was only trying you, come let’s take a walk.” He
does not care about beginning work that day, but next, meantime I can
take a look about me.
Evening comes, and Watty is not sober. I try to guess his age, but
fail to satisfy myself; he has no whiskers, seems never to have needed
shaving, and has a crop of jet black curly hair. He seems to be between
thirty and forty-five. His wife seldom speaks, seldom looks at either
of us, and appears very sad. Watty regrets that I have no tent with me,
but thinks an arrangement can be made for my accommodation. The night
being too chilly and damp for camping outside under a bush cover, I was
only too glad at the offer of a strip of bark upon the floor of their
tent to make my bed on. The wife made up a pillow for me, spread a spare
quilt upon the bare hollow of the bark, and then my own blankets over
all, in so quiet and kindly a manner, that I felt moved with respectful
gratitude, while somewhat ashamed of my intrusion on her privacy. On
making some remarks to that effect, Watty poohed and bade me never
mention it. I was to consider myself one of the family now. When bed
time came, he and I discreetly went outside to the fire. A drunk man’s
talk is none of the most edifying, and I had become weary of his during
the long evening, but had borne with it so patiently, and so followed
up his humours as at least to delay his very evident desire to quarrel
with his wife. To this fact I in part attributed her motherly interest in
the comfort of my bed. The little while we remained outside, he talked
more rationally, but as the topic was mainly of the weather, with which
the passions have but small concern, little positive conclusion could be
drawn from the circumstance regarding the man.
On re-entering, we found as we expected the wife and child in bed. They
lay upon a rude bench raised some eighteen inches from the ground, and
which occupied at least one-half of the tent floor, which measured only
about ten feet by eight; a narrow space of some twelve inches wide
separated my humbler couch from theirs. I could not get to sleep for
Watty’s talking to or rather at his wife, who maintained a singular
silence, save once or twice when she ventured on a brief meekly-spoken
answer; somehow this meekness did not suit him, but only excited him
the more, until about three o’clock in the morning, his delirious abuse
became outrageous. Sense and reason, judgment and humanity forsook him
in the paroxysm he had wrought himself into, and I could only hear the
ravings of a madman. I tremble for the wife and child—by the sounds he
seems to be gathering himself together, and while I am still holding
my breath in doubt about what he means to do, they are pushed bodily
out of bed and fall heavily on me. The case was beyond my help, so I
lay still; the cries of the child made it a hard task to do so. The
madman’s delirium seemed to calm considerably on getting the whole bed
to himself, and it might be towards four o’clock he muttered himself to
sleep; the wife then taking courage rose from the floor, and ventured in
again beside him. On awaking at break of day, I found him up and dressed;
hearing me move he bade me good morning more heartily than I could answer
him just then. A habit he had of raising his eyebrows, and which seemed
to say “look within who may, there is nothing to conceal,” lent a certain
air of candour to his face, that at first shook my faith in what had
passed being more than a troubled dream. He got the fire lit, and the
kettle boiled, and addressed his wife Eliza in accents so subdued, that I
was almost inclined to doubt the evidence against him.
We commenced the building of the oven. I was not a weak man, but he
proved so good a workman, that my back was never off the bend keeping
him supplied. In an hour or so however, greatly to my relief, he became
thirsty, crossed the road to a grog tent for a drink, and came back no
more till dinner time. After dinner he said that this being now a broken
day, he would wait till next day, and then begin work in earnest. I
fetched water and firewood from a distance for the wife and began to
talk with her, and keep the infant in amusement, and when Watty came
home in the evening, continued to keep him in at least peaceable humour.
His prodigious self-esteem made this comparatively easy so long as I
continued feeding it, but I found it at times disposed to froth up into
arrogance, and, at intervals, my ready consent to all he said and did,
seemed likely to take a wrong direction. Taking my hand in his, and
falling away into a whining mood, he said he had been an unfortunate and
ill-used man all his days, that he ought to have been, and would have
been an independent gentleman long before now, had he not been deceived,
and robbed, and kept down among the dust by—here his eye glanced over to
his wife, as she bent her head over some piece of sewing for the baby,
and I felt uneasy at the glare of malice that reddened in his face. At
haphazard I broke in upon him with as lively a sally as I could muster at
the sudden call; for a moment he hung in the balance, I prepared myself
for some extremity, but happily the fell grimness of his look relaxed,
his overweening pride was recovering its seat. I had touched him rightly,
and to my intense relief he broke out into a laugh, and for the present
contented himself with merely blowing out the candle she was working by.
I felt it dreary work, but for the woman’s sake I persevered, and so
passed our second night together. I thought the drink that he had taken
would surely overpower him when he went to bed, but the warmth seemed
only to make him worse, and the frightful words that poured from him
made it like a night in a cell of hell. He appeared to have lost all
recollection of my presence, so that what I suffered I feared was but a
little of what the poor wife would call her daily life with him. It had
been taking place before I came to them; it could not go on so for ever,
but the end I never knew.
The oven was not progressing, and on the fourth day I found him in the
company of two slouching fellows in a beer shop. He introduced me with
due form, for he liked to do things respectably, then taking me to one
side, begged the loan of half-a-crown, but I could only promise him the
loan of one when I received the wages due to me, and took the opportunity
of calling his attention to the condition of my boots, the soles of which
had quite loosened from the uppers, requiring some little management
when walking to keep my toes within. My appeal was ill-timed, and he
seemed for the moment ashamed of my dilapidated appearance, the eyes of
his friends being at the time directed towards us. Having respect for my
feelings, however, he said no more there, but led me out to the road, and
reminded me of our partnership agreement, and that talking about wages
was as good as mistrusting him. The oven he said would be soon finished,
and then boots and whatever else was needed I would receive to my heart’s
content.
Late in the afternoon I returned to the tent, and found the wife sitting
pale and trembling, her eyes fixed with evidently unobservant gaze,
and her lips twitching nervously apart. As I stood for a moment in the
doorway, looking in at her, there fled once and for ever from my mind
all doubt of the reality of broken hearts. For such distress I had no
consolation adequate, but mute though I was at first and disconcerted, it
seemed as if my coming had broken the rigour of her grief. I was sad with
very pity for her, and my manner may have revealed that much as I quietly
seated myself inside the door. I made an attempt to speak about something
I had seen on my way back, but was stopped short by an indescribable
working of her features, and while I was yet looking—my half-told story
fast dropping out of mind—the tears started to her eyes, and for a few
minutes I heard nothing but sobs, the like of which I had never before
known. When her grief had somewhat spent itself, she told me I had better
leave, or I would be getting into trouble, as Watty was after no good
with the men I had seen him with, one of them she knew to be a common
thief. After a fresh outburst of crying over her poor infant, she told me
further with many an outbreak of shame and sorrow between, that he had
brought this man to the tent for her specially to entertain, and had
menaced her with his eye, because she would not, and that she looked for
nothing short of death on his return. Her arms encircled her young child,
and her eyes were at times bent sadly on its small upturned face as it
lay innocently asleep upon her breast.
The day was already near its close, there was barely time to seek out
and prepare some sleeping place in the bush, even did I start at once,
and the weather was too wintry for an unsheltered bed upon the ground.
I had not yet determined what to do, when there came to the door one of
five rough looking men who had erected a couple of blankets for a tent
early in the day a few hundred yards from Watty’s. Being acquaintances of
Watty’s this was a friendly visit. After a little talk, making known to
him my intention of leaving, he kindly invited me to pass the night with
him and his mate. I gladly accepted, and left with him shortly after.
On getting among my new acquaintances, I found that one of them called
Bill, had only the day before returned, the victor in a prize fight at
Tarrangower. He was a short but strong and heavy-bodied man, with a dark
stolid-looking eye, and very deaf. He no sooner learnt that the little
mason was ill-using his wife than he swore he would have her from him
in the morning. He appeared to have no thought of her objecting to the
change; his faith had very likely grown to this assurance by considerable
practice in similar disinterested knight-errantry among the distressed
wives of the society he moved in. By their conversation I learnt that
they were all old convicts, that Watty was one also, and that they were
mostly natives of the town of Paisley. One of them had only half served
his sentence of seven years in Van Diemen’s Land, and had stolen away in
a passenger ship bound for Melbourne. On this account he was living as
quietly as circumstances would permit. There seemed no lack of money,
for liquor was in plenty, and they appeared fond of it. I was luckily
in time to hear how Bill had fought and won his battle, in which he had
received but little damage. His opponent, a “new chum” fresh from England
and conceited with excess of science, had looked on him as an unlearned
bumpkin upon whom his subtleties of art would be almost wasted. In part
this estimate was right, Bill was brute enough not to see the beauty
of the other’s fence, and being of the old barbaric school had at once
rushed to blows and buttocking; feints and manœuvres he snuffed at, and
going in straight at his man was ever quickly bringing him to grief. His
knuckles were his pride, he had before now driven nails up to the head
in pine boards with them, and cushioning one blow upon the new chum’s
stomach quickly brought to light what he had been eating last and all but
broke his back, a feat that he gleefully styled “doubling him up.”
It was my general habit to be civil and conciliatory in strange company
and I felt no inclination to be otherwise now—whichever way my “fur” was
rubbed, I made that the right way, and so succeeded that when bed time
came there were two who claimed me to lie next them. Our sleeping place
was the floor on a litter of brushwood; each rolled his blanket round
about him, but the space was so limited, that one had scarce room to turn
without jostling his neighbours. On the one hand I had to fend my face
from the long greasy uncombed hair of the Vandiemonian, and on the other
from the sour beery breath of Bill’s brother.
Breakfast was scarcely over, when Watty came tumbling in amongst us with
an air of muddled defiance, and yet with an evident desire to put himself
on the best of terms with us. Slapping as many shoulders as he could well
get at, and ruffling one head of hair, by way of provoking the owner to
say something pleasant, and failing in his object, the situation was
becoming awkward for us all, when the dish of beef and bread from which
we had been eating caught his eye. With a “hie Joe reach that dish here,
the very thing I wanted,” he took it on his knee, and without uncovering
commenced with his knife upon the victuals. Regardless of the coolness
apparent in his hosts, he called on one of them for mustard, saying “that
beef was nothing without a relish,” then nudged another with his elbow
to see if there was any tea left in the billy. Wiping his lips when he
had at length taken his fill—and that was not a little—he replenished his
pipe with borrowed tobacco, and set himself to talk. He had a perfect
command of words, and a pointed manner of expressing himself that readily
attracted attention in his more earnest moods, so that the discussion
he now entered on soon found interested listeners. He began by drawing
a picture of their defenceless condition were misfortune or sickness to
come upon them. Pointing to the disordered brushwood of the beds, and the
damp dirty looking piles of blankets huddled together at the far end, he
painted them lying there through days and nights of sickness, dependent
on chance friendships for all those little attentions that a sick man
needs, and when he had apparently sobered them to think how it might be
thus, he shifted ground, and asked them to look at the men of Manchester
and Liverpool, placed in like circumstances with them, but banded
together in a common cause against bad times—relieving their needy, and
from their mutual sympathy and support, never knowing want, while they of
Paisley went their ways in solitary pairs or single tentfuls, stretching
no helping hand to save a brother in distress, but with close-fisted
narrow meanness, with a single eye to self, leaving fellow townsmen,
old schoolmates even, to fight with their troubles as they best could,
and drift away on their necessities if they could do no better. His
heart, he said, was pained at the estrangements and cold-shoulderings of
those whom a long life of misfortune such as theirs should rather have
drawn together in the fellow-feeling of fellow-sufferers—it led him at
times, through very shame, to disown being a native of the town that
had raised men possessed of so little generosity. The times in short
were so grievously hard upon the working man, that with the counsel of a
friend he advised the establishing of a fund, from which relief might be
given as need required, and contributions from the more successful among
the brethren might for this purpose be deposited in the hands of some
well known party. As his subject grew upon him, his manner became more
earnest, till at the close he bore the look of one ready to sacrifice
himself to any extent in the good enterprise; his pipe had gone out in
his enthusiasm, his eyes sought to gather the feeling of the company, but
a more stolid lot of faces I never before saw grouped together. Vexed by
their apathetic treatment of the scheme, he stretched out his hand to
them saying “Well now men how is it to be, for the honour of our town how
is it to be,” on which the Vandiemonian broke the spell by crying “to
blazes with the town, much reason have we to mind its honour.” The others
fell back in a roar of laughter. Watty in a fury dashed his pipe into
fragments in the beef dish, and cursing their stupidity hurried from the
tent in the direction of his own, the cries that shortly afterwards arose
from which made known to us that his gentle partner was expiating our
indifference, on which Bill, recollecting his vow of the previous night,
to see to her relief, abruptly rose and catching Watty as he was coming
out of his own door with the air of a conqueror, thrashed him well, but
only with his open hand, for “he never made his hand a fist,” he said,
“but when he had to do with men.” The wife cried bitterly when she saw
it. It was not likely to help her any, and I could not help thinking
that the sight of his suffering under the chastisement reanimated her
old abused affection for him into throbs of tender but timid compassion.
The weather was stormy and wet, which made me glad to accept my friends’
hospitality for at least twenty-four hours longer. I repaid their
kindness by becoming hewer of wood and drawer of water to them.
Towards sundown the Vandiemonian and another who was a barber to trade
quarrelled about some trifle. They were both the worse of liquor, but the
barber having apparently a little more mind than the other for the liquor
to work upon, was the more demonstrative of the two. The others soon
interfered to see justice done, but so managed that the disputants saw no
other way to get their rights than fighting for them. They set themselves
and footed the ground unsteadily for awhile watching for what was called
an opening, but the Vandiemonian being evidently deficient in strategy,
went straight to business at once, by lowering his head and rushing with
it full tilt upon the barber’s stomach, lifting him off his feet, and,
as it so happened, sending him sprawling with his back across the great
log fire that was blazing opposite the door. He was quickly laid hold of
and lifted off, loudly protesting against that manner of fighting, but
one of his hands being apparently necessary now for the rubbing of his
back parts, he was content with argument for the rest of the battle, and
became quite companionable again, on the Vandiemonian informing him that
on account of a rupture he could fight no other way.
About two hours after sundown we were all inside, playing at cards by the
light of a slim candle, when Watty appeared at the door in company with
a tall, robust, rough-bearded and unwashed man, rather past the prime of
life, whom he introduced in rather a stiff manner as his friend “Scottie
Stratton.” They seemed both the worse of liquor, but as regards that,
the others were fairly on equal terms with them. My impression was that
the mental habits of the company tended little to reflection, and that
the things of the passing moment were generally sufficient for their
attention, but I detected an air of wariness in Bill, attributing it to
his small transaction with Watty in the morning, and to his deafness,
which called for the more active use of his eyes. However that may be,
room was made for the new comers, and the cards were reshuffled that
a new game might be begun to include them. All went well enough for a
while, and the bottle passed freely from hand to hand, the absence of a
glass obliging them to measure their takings in their mouths. At length a
hitch occurred, Watty declared that Stratton was being imposed upon, on
which Stratton knocked the candle out, and in the darkness all struggled
to their feet. I was farthest from the door, and for a moment thought
from the shaking of the tent pole that a fight had commenced upon the
spot, and was glad on hearing Bill in the midst of the stumbling and
confusion say with steady voice “O, if that’s your little game I’m ready
for you, come, get outside.” A couple of candles were got and lighted.
The two men, Bill and Stratton stripped, Bill shorter by a head than the
other. The candles glared in the damp breeze, as they were held high
above the level of our eyes. The places were taken, the word “all ready”
was given, and I heard a rush and the dull sound of blows upon a face,
then a lumbering fall upon the ground. Again and again was this repeated,
till I began to wonder how much beating it took to kill a man. Stratton’s
height and length of arm were of no avail against the determined energy
of his opponent. I saw the bustling and the rushing leaps; I heard the
deep muttered curses of the losing man, and the shouts and imprecations
of the others, and felt as if accessory to a mad revel of damned spirits.
Could I have got my blankets out unseen, the dark bush that night would
have been my bed. When becoming faint with compassion for the man whose
flesh was being so bruised, I heard another fall, followed by a third,
and an “ugh” exclamation, that plainly told me the uppermost man had
fallen with his knees upon the body of the other, but before I had time
to think, there came a succession of mashing sounds that needed no
interpretation. Stratton was being beaten on the ground, Bill’s blood was
up, and had not his fellows rushed in and taken him off, there would have
been murder done. Bill was forced into the tent, Watty with difficulty
getting his man raised to his feet, staggered off with him, and I saw him
no more.
When, after a time, I ventured in among them, the bottle had resumed its
work. Bill was singing ballads, and the others were so elated with his
fighting merits, that daylight was close at hand before they went to
bed—possibly they would not have lain down at all had the liquor lasted.
In the morning, after breakfast, I bade them good-bye, and wandered
forth, not caring whither. I had now tasted of both frying-pan and
fire, and felt truly thankful on finding myself once more breathing the
air of solitude among the ranges. The low-toned sighing of the breeze
among the branches overhead had a peculiar tranquillizing effect upon
my mind, and set me adreaming of things old and new, of home and gold,
of my ill-clad feet, and the number of days I could do without food, in
the event of falling in with none. I was in the gold country, on the
lower ranges of the Pyrenees, from the heights of which it was thought
by many the gold found on the flats had been washed down. I had often
heard the unlucky joke with one another about the pots of precious stuff
yet to be discovered up there on the mountains, their jest savouring
of just so much sincerity that I thought want of means alone prevented
them from venturing up to seek for those real pots of the molten stuff,
of which that found in the valleys was but the boilings over, the mere
tricklings from the lips. But what about the quarrying of such blocks?
I had no tools; and what about the carrying when thus quarried? While
yet discussing these matters, I had almost without knowing it begun the
ascent. The extreme summits appeared so near that I thought to reach
them in time to return to the plain, if necessary, before sundown. I was
charmed with the scenery. The romantic glens and shady recesses among
wood and rock, with floor of bright green grass, made me at times linger
on the way with what would have been a feeling of true enjoyment had I
been less eager about what might be found further on. Now and again I got
sight of the plain spread out below, with tents peeping out among the
trees in the neighbourhood of the diggings, and with light blue smoke
curling up in many places from fires that, judging by the position of
the sun, would soon be engaged with pots and frying pans for dinner. My
heart softened at the sight. I felt myself in for a little hardship,
but tightening my belt, I resumed my toil, and arguing with as much
philosophy as the circumstances allowed, saw no reason to suppose that
hunger was different on the hills from what it was on the flats. Upward
and onward I sped, not neglectful the while to eye the ground in hopes
of seeing something to my advantage. Much rain had fallen previously,
and the surface stones and broken quartz were clean and bright, as would
also be the case with the projecting knobs of the surface nuggets when
I came upon them. After some hours’ fatigue, the upper summits appeared
but little nearer than at first. I had still hope enough and to spare,
however, until brought to a pause on the spur of a high ridge by finding
myself separated from them by a deep valley about a mile in width; and
I abandoned the attempt on observing that between that valley and the
summits lay many another hollow, whose extent I could guess at only
from the hazy atmosphere that filled them. I felt as a very atom in the
scene. When the sun went down, I made a fire and prepared to pass the
night, impressed with a notion that it would be well for me to retrace
my steps at daybreak. When I rose with the first light of the dawn, I
felt like one who has been in a night-mare, and is unable at first to
assure himself it has been all a dream. Recollection coming, I got up
and started to regain the beaten road, and falling in with an “old hand”
also in search of work, gladly put myself under his guidance. He appeared
like one just recovering from a fit of drunkenness, out of patience with
himself and everything else. He was very clean, however, and his chin
looked as if newly shaved with a dull razor, his nose as if he had been
blowing it overmuch, though I could see no handkerchief that he used and
his eyes as if he had been recklessly smoking a pipe too short to carry
the smoke clear of them. Hunger and fatigue were beginning to distress
me, and I felt quite of his humour to talk none but to make the best
use of our legs in the hope of reaching the next station before dark. I
was the more content to remain silent from observing the irritation the
slightest hindrances raised in his mind, on which my air of composure
had by no means a soothing effect. I was glad when we reached “The
Amphitheatre” sheep station, so called on account of its situation
among surrounding hills. A hutkeeper and cook being wanted for a new
slaughter-yard at the Avoca diggings, which lay about twelve miles off,
I was engaged, and, passing the night in the men’s hut, started in the
morning to make my appearance on old ground in a new character.