Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from
the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock
from the drives, Potch said:
"I'm going to sink another hole, Michael--higher up."
Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that
way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but
he was not disturbed by his doing so.
"Right," he said; "you sink another hole, Potch. I'll stick to this one
for a bit."
Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site
carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the
morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he
was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had
been three weeks on the job.
"Ought to be near bottoming, Potch," Roy remarked one day towards the
end of the three weeks.
"Be there to-day," Potch said.
Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his
impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.
Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a
certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make
considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well:
they had cut out a pocket worth L400 as a result of their sinking, and
it remained to be seen what Potch's new hole would bring. A good
prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.
Potch's prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value
when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of
promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the
coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.
They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains,
for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal
dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the
mine, uttered a low cry.
"Michael," he called.
Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that
joyous vibration in a man's voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went
to Potch.
Potch Was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had
clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red,
green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering
together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he
saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones
which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some
size was embedded in the wall of the mine.
"Looks a beaut, doesn't she, Michael?" he gasped.
Michael breathed hard.
"By God----" he murmured.
Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.
He screamed when he saw the stone.
"I knew!" he yelled. "I knew we'd strike it here."
"Well, stand back while I get her out," Potch cried.
Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth
about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away
with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with
wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.
When Potch had worked it out of its socket, the knobby was found to be
even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it
had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped
surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal.
Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous
and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with
excitement.
He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch's find to the men
who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and
Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They
gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and
admiration.
"You've struck it this time, Potch!" Roy O'Mara said.
Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped
surface, and held it to the sun again.
"It's the biggest knobby--ever I see," Archie Cross said.
"Same here," Bill Grant muttered.
"Wants polishin' up a bit," Michael said, "and then she'll show better."
As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul's hut and faced the stone
on Sophie's wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when
he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied
that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a
hen's egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they
agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever
seen.
Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and
excitement in his voice as he talked.
Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd
jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought
in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.
When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their
plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf
where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He
threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the
light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of
crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across
the table to read.
Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the
magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's
eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in
his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before
him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of
the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby
ever taken out of the fields.
Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and
rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered
book.
As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul's opals flashed before
him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious
of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud
Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him
again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or
explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.
Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like
that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch's
bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about
the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his
silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except
that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion
of unworthiness in the object of its belief.
But since--since he had made up his mind to give the opals to
Paul--since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her
any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not
given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had
seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to
himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer
in the mysterious no-man's land of his subconsciousness.
Paul's slow recovery from sun-stroke was a reason for deferring
explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the
first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals,
Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his
story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more
difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of
his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming
on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul's opals.
But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had
only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this
putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to
face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals
had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready
to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with
them.... He mocked his fears of himself.
Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection
with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own
consciousness and to be honest with himself.
As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision.
He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray
had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement
seized him. He had taken his own rectitude so for granted that he could
not believe he might be guilty of what the light had shown lurking in a
dark corner of his mind.
Had Paul's stones done that to him? Michael asked himself. Had their
witch fires eaten into his brain? He had heard it said men who were
misers, who hoarded opal, were mesmerised by the lights and colour of
the stuff; they did not want to part with it. Was that what Paul's
stones had done to him? Had they mesmerised him, so that he did not want
to part with them? Michael was aghast at the idea. He could not believe
he had become so besotted in his admiration of black opal that he was
ready to steal--steal from a mate. The opal had never been found, he
assured himself, which could put a spell over his brain to make him do
that. And yet, he realised, the stones themselves had had something to
do with his reluctance to talk of them to Potch, and with the deferring
of his resolution to give them to Paul and let the men know what he had
done. Whenever he had attempted to bring his resolution to talk of them
to the striking-point, he remembered, the opals had swarmed before his
dreaming eyes; his will had weakened as he gazed on them, and he had put
off going to Paul and to Watty and George.
Stung to action by realisation of what he had been on the brink of,
Michael went to the box of books in his room. He determined to take the
packet of opals to Paul immediately, and go on to tell George and Watty
its history. As he plunged an arm down among the books for the cigarette
tin the opals were packed in, he made up his mind not to look at them
for fear some reason or excuse might hinder the carrying out of his
project. His fingers groped eagerly for the package; he threw out a few
books.
He had put the tin in a corner of the box, under an old Statesman's
year-book and a couple of paper-covered novels. But it was not there; it
must have slipped, or he had piled books over it, at some time or
another, he thought. He threw out all the books in the box and raked
them over--but he could not find the tin with Paul's opals in.
He sat back on his haunches, his face lean and ghastly by the
candle-fight.
"They're gone," he told himself.
He wondered whether he could have imagined replacing the package in the
box--if there was anywhere else he could have put it, absent-mindedly;
but his eyes returned to the box. He knew he had put the opals there.
Who could have found them? Potch? His mind turned from the idea.
Nobody had known of them. Nobody knew just where to put a hand on
them--not even Potch. Who else could have come into the hut, or
suspected the opals were in that box. Paul? He would not have been able
to contain his joy if he had come into possession of any opal worth
speaking of. Who else might suspect him of hoarding opal of any value.
His mind hovered indecisively. Maud?
Michael remembered the night she had come for Potch and had seen that
gold-and-red-fired stone on the table. His imagination attached itself
to the idea. The more he thought of it, the surer he felt that Maud had
come for the stone she had offered to buy from him. There was nothing to
prevent her walking into the hut and looking for it, any time during the
day when he and Potch were away at the mine. And if she would rat,
Michael thought she would not object to taking stones from a man's hut
either. Of course, it might not be Maud; but he could think of no one
else who knew he had any stone worth having.
If Maud had taken the stones, Jun would recognise them, Michael knew. By
and by the story would get round, Jun would see to that. And when Jun
told where those opals of Paul's had been found, as he would some
day--Michael could not contemplate the prospect.
He might tell men of the Ridge his story now and forestall Jun; but it
would sound thin without the opals to verify it, and the opportunity to
restore them to Paul. Michael thought he had sufficient weight with men
of the Ridge to impress them with the truth of what he said; but
knowledge of a subtle undermining of his character, for which possession
of the opals was responsible, gave him such a consciousness of guilt
that he could not face the men without being able to give Paul the
stones and prove he was not as guilty as he felt.
Overwhelmed and unable to throw off a sense of shame and defeat, Michael
sat on the floor of his room, books thrown out of the box all round him.
He could not understand even now how those stones of Paul's had worked
him to the state of mind they had. He did not even know they had brought
him to the state of mind he imagined they had, or whether his fear of
that state of mind had precipitated it. He realised the effect of the
loss more than the thing itself, as he crouched beside the empty
book-box, foreseeing the consequences to his work and to the Ridge, of
the story Jun would tell--that he, Michael Brady, who had held such high
faiths, and whose allegiance to them had been taken as a matter of
course, was going to be known as a filcher of other men's stones, and
that he who had formulated and inspired the Ridge doctrine was going to
be judged by it.