THE old attachment was revived. Robinson had always a great regard for
George, and after nursing and bringing him through a dangerous illness
this feeling doubled. And as for George, the man who had brought him a
letter from Susan one hundred and sixty miles became such a benefactor
in his eyes that he thought nothing good enough for him.
In a very few days George was about again and on his pony, and he and
Robinson and Carlo went a shepherding. One or two bullocks had gone to
Jericho while George lay ill, and the poor fellow's heart was sore when
he looked at his diminished substance and lost time. Robinson threw
himself heart and soul into the business, and was of great service to
George; but after a bit he found it a dull life.
George saw this, and said to him: “You would do better in a town. I
should be sorry to lose you, but if you take my advice you will turn
your back on unlucky George, and try the paint-brush in Bathurst.”
For Robinson had told him all about it--and painted his front door.
“Can't afford to part from Honesty,” was the firm reply.
George breathed again. Robinson was a great comfort to the weak,
solitary, and now desponding man. One day for a change they had a
thirty-mile walk, to see a farmer that had some beasts to sell a great
bargain; he was going to boil them down if he could not find a customer.
They found them all just sold. “Just my luck,” said George.
They came home another way. Returning home, George was silent and
depressed.
Robinson was silent, but appeared to be swelling with some grand idea.
Every now and then he shot ahead under its influence. When they got home
and were seated at supper, he suddenly put this question to George, “Did
you ever hear of any gold being found in these parts?”
“No! never!”
“What, not in any part of the country?”
“No! never!”
“Well, that is odd!”
“I am afraid it is a very bad country for that.”
“Ay to make it in, but not to find it in.”
“What do you mean?”
“George,” said the other, lowering his voice mysteriously, “in our walk
to-day we passed places that brought my heart into my mouth; for if this
was only California those places would be pockets of gold.”
“But you see it is not California, but Australia, where all the world
knows there is nothing of what your mind is running on.”
“Don't say 'knows,' say 'thinks.' Has it ever been searched for gold?”
“I'll be bound it has; or, if not, with so many eyes constantly looking
on every foot of soil a speck or two would have come to light.”
“One would think so; but it is astonishing how blind folks are, till
they are taught how to look, and where to look. 'Tis the mind that sees
things, George, not the eye.”
“Ah!” said George with a sigh, “this chat puts me in mind of 'The
Grove.' Do you mind how you used to pester everybody to go out to
California?”
“Yes! and I wish we were there now.”
“And all your talk used to be gold--gold--gold.”
“As well say it as think it.”
“That is true. Well, we shall be very busy all day to-morrow, but in the
afternoon dig for gold an hour or two--then you will be satisfied.”
“But it is no use digging here; it was full five-and-twenty miles from
here the likely-looking place.”
“Then why didn't you stop me at the place?”
“Why?” replied Robinson, sourly, “because his reverence did so snub me
whenever I got upon that favorite topic, that I really had got out of
the habit. I was ashamed to say, 'George, let us stop on the road and
try for gold with our finger-nails.' I knew I should only get laughed
at.”
“Well,” said George sarcastically, “since the gold mine is twenty-five
miles off, and our work is round about the door, suppose we pen sheep
to-morrow--and dig for gold when there is nothing better to be done.”
Robinson sighed. Unbucolical to the last degree was the spirit in which
our Bohemian tended the flocks next morning.
His thoughts were deeper than the soil. And every evening up came the
old topic. Oh! how sick George got of it. At last one night he said:
“My lad, I should like to tell you a story--but I suppose I shall make a
bungle of it; shan't cut the furrow clean I am doubtful.”
“Never mind; try!”
“Well, then. Once upon a time there was an old chap that had heard or
read about treasures being found in odd places, a pot full of guineas
or something; and it took root in his heart till nothing would serve him
but he must find a pot of guineas, too; he used to poke about all the
old ruins, grubbing away, and would have taken up the floor of the
church, but the churchwardens would not have it. One morning he comes
down and says to his wife, 'It is all right, old woman, I've found the
treasure.'
“'No! have you, though?' says she.
“'Yes!' says he; 'leastways, it is as good as found; it is only waiting
till I've had my breakfast, and then I'll go out and fetch it in.'
“'La, John, but how did you find it?'
“'It was revealed to me in a dream,' says he, as grave as a judge.
“'And where is it?' asks the old woman.
“'Under a tree in our own orchard--no farther,' says he.
“'Oh, John! how long you are at breakfast to-day!' Up they both got and
into the orchard. 'Now, which tree is it under?'
“John, he scratches his head, 'Blest if I know.'
“'Why, you old ninny,' says the mistress, 'didn't you take the trouble
to notice?'
“'That I did,' said he; 'I saw plain enough which tree it was in my
dream, but now they muddle it all, there are so many of 'em.'
“'Drat your stupid old head,' says she, 'why didn't you put a nick on
the right one at the time?'”
Robinson burst out laughing. George chuckled. “Oh!” said he, “there were
a pair of them for wisdom, you may take your oath of that. 'Well,' says
he, 'I must dig till I find the right one.' The wife she loses heart
at this; for there was eighty apple-trees, and a score of cherry-trees.
'Mind you don't cut the roots,' says she, and she heaves a sigh. John he
gives them bad language, root and branch. 'What signifies cut or no cut;
the old faggots--they don't bear me a bushel of fruit the whole lot.
They used to bear two sacks apiece in father's time. Drat 'em.'
“'Well, John,' says the old woman, smoothing him down; 'father used to
give them a deal of attention.'--' 'Tain't that! 'tain't that!' says he
quick and spiteful-like; 'they have got old like ourselves, and good for
fire-wood.' Out pickax and spade and digs three foot deep round one,
and finding nothing but mould goes at another, makes a little mound all
round him, too--no guinea-pot. Well, the village let him dig three or
four quiet enough; but after that curiosity was awakened, and while
John was digging, and that was all day, there was mostly seven or eight
watching through the fence and passing jests. After a bit a fashion came
up of flinging a stone or two at John; then John he brought out his gun
loaded with dust-shot along with his pick and spade, and the first stone
came he fired sharp in that direction and then loaded again. So
they took that hint, and John dug on in peace--till about the fourth
Sunday--and then the parson had a slap at him in church. 'Folks were not
to heap up to themselves treasures on earth,' was all his discourse.”
“Well, but,” said Robinson, “this one was only heaping up mould.”
“So it seemed when he had dug the five-score holes, for no pot of gold
didn't come to light. Then the neighbors called the orchard 'Jacobs'
Folly;' his name was Jacobs--John Jacobs. 'Now then, wife,' says he,
'suppose you and I look out for another village to live in, for their
gibes are more than I can bear.' Old woman begins to cry. 'Been here so
long--brought me home here, John--when we were first married, John--and
I was a comely lass, and you the smartest young man I ever saw, to my
fancy any way; couldn't sleep or eat my victuals in any house but this.'
“'Oh! couldn't ye? Well, then, we must stay; perhaps it will blow
over.'--'Like everything else, John; but, dear John, do ye fill in those
holes; the young folk come far and wide on Sundays to see them.'
“'Wife, I haven't the heart,' says he. 'You see, when I was digging for
the treasure I was always a-going to find, it kept my heart up; but take
out shovel and fill them in--I'd as lieve dine off white of egg on a
Sunday.' So for six blessed months the heaps were out in the heat and
frost till the end of February, and then when the weather broke the old
man takes heart and fills them in, and the village soon forgot 'Jacobs'
Folly' because it was out of sight. Comes April, and out burst the
trees. 'Wife,' says he, 'our bloom is richer than I have known it this
many a year, it is richer than our neighbors'.' Bloom dies, and then out
come about a million little green things quite hard.”
“Ay! ay!” said Robinson; “I see.”
“Michaelmas-day the old trees were staggering and the branches down
to the ground with the crop; thirty shillings on every tree one with
another; and so on for the next year, and the next; sometimes more,
sometimes less, according to the year. Trees were old and wanted a
change. His letting in the air to them, and turning the subsoil up to
the frost and sun, had renewed their youth. So by that he learned that
tillage is the way to get treasure from the earth. Men are ungrateful
at times, but the soil is never ungrateful, it always makes a return for
the pains we give it.”
“Well, George,” said Robinson, “thank you for your story; it is a very
good one, and after it I'll never dig for gold in a garden. But now
suppose a bare rock or an old river's bed, or a mass of shingles or
pipe-clay, would you dig or manure them for crops?”
“Why, of course not.”
“Well, those are the sort of places in which nature has planted a
yellower crop and a richer crop than tillage ever produced. And I
believe there are plums of gold not thirty miles from here in such spots
waiting only to be dug out.”
“Well, Tom, I have wasted a parable, that is all. Good-night; I hope to
sleep and be ready for a good day's work to-morrow. You shall dream of
digging up gold here--if you like.”
“I'll never speak of it again,” said Robinson doggedly.
If you want to make a man a bad companion, interdict altogether the
topic that happens to interest him. Robinson ceased to vent his chimera.
So it swelled and swelled in his heart, and he became silent, absorbed,
absent and out of spirits. “Ah!” thought George, “poor fellow, he is
very dull. He won't stay beside me much longer.”
This conviction was so strong that he hesitated to close with an
advantageous offer that came to him from his friend, Mr. Winchester.
That gentleman had taken a lease of a fine run some thirty miles from
George. He had written George that he was to go and look at it, and if
he liked it better than his own he was to take it. Mr. Winchester could
make no considerable use of either for some time to come.
George hesitated. He felt himself so weak-handed with only Robinson, who
might leave him, and a shepherd lad he had just hired. However his hands
were unexpectedly strengthened.
One day as the two friends were washing a sheep an armed savage suddenly
stood before them. Robinson dropped the sheep and stood on his defense,
but George cried out, “No! no! it is Jacky! Why, Jacky, where on earth
have you been?” And he came warmly toward him. Jacky fled to a small
eminence and made warlike preparations. “You stop you a good while and I
speak. Who you?”
“Who am I? stupid. Why, who should I be but George Fielding?”
“I see you one George Fielding, but I not know you dis George Fielding.
George die. I see him die. You alive. You please you call dog Carlo!
Carlo wise dog.”
“Well, I never! Hie, Carlo! Carlo!”
Up came Carlo full pelt. George patted him, and Carlo wagged his tail
and pranced about in the shape of a reaping-hook. Jacky came instantly
down, showed his ivories, and admitted his friend's existence on the
word of the dog. “Jacky a good deal glad because you not dead now. When
black fellow die he never live any more. Black fellow stupid fellow.
I tink I like white fellow a good deal bigger than black fellow. Now I
stay with you a good while.”
George's hands thus strengthened he wrote and told Mr. Winchester he
would go to the new ground, which, as far as he could remember, was very
good, and would inspect it, and probably make the exchange with thanks.
It was arranged that in two days' time the three friends should go
together, inspect the new ground and build a temporary hut there.
Meantime Robinson and Jacky make great friends. Robinson showed him one
or two sleight-of-hand tricks that stamped him at once a superior being
in Jacky's eyes, and Jacky showed Robinson a thing or two He threw his
boomerang and made it travel a couple of hundred yards, and return and
hover over his head like a bird and settle at his feet; but he was shy
of throwing his spear. “Keep spear for when um angry, not throw him
straight now.
“Don't you believe that, Tom,” said George. “Fact is the little varmint
can't hit anything with 'em. Now look at that piece of bark leaning
against that tree. You don't hit it. Come, try, Jacky.” Jacky yawned and
threw a spear carelessly. It went close by but did not hit it.
“Didn't I tell you so?” said George. “I'd stand before him and his
spears all day with nothing but a cricket-stump in my hand, and never be
hit, and never brag, neither.” Jacky showed his ivories. “When I down
at Sydney white man put up a little wood and a bit of white money for
Jacky. Then Jacky throw straight a good deal.”
“Now hark to that! black skin or white skin 'tis all the same; we can't
do our best till we are paid for it. Don't you encourage him, Tom, I
won't have it.”
The two started early one fine morning for the new ground, distant full
thirty miles. At first starting Robinson was in high glee; his nature
delighted in change; but George was sad and silent. Three times he had
changed his ground and always for the better. But to what end. These
starts in early morning for fresh places used once to make him buoyant,
but not now. All that was over. He persisted doggedly, and did his best
like a man, but in his secret heart not one grain of hope was left.
Indeed it was but the other day he had written to Susan and told her it
was not possible he could make a thousand pounds. The difficulties were
too many, and then his losses had been too great. And he told her he
felt it was scarcely fair to keep her to her promise. “You would waste
all your youth, Susan, dear, waiting for me.” And he told her how he
loved her and never should love another; but left her free.
To add to his troubles he was scarcely well of the fever when he caught
a touch of rheumatism; and the stalwart young fellow limped along by
Robinson's side, and instead of his distancing Jacky as he used in
better days, Jacky rattled on ahead and having got on the trail of an
opossum announced his intention of hunting it down and then
following the human trail. “Me catch you before the sun go, and bring
opossum--then we eat a good deal.” And off glided Jacky after his
opossum.
The pair plodded and limped on in gloomy silence, for at a part of the
road where they emerged from green meadows on rocks and broken ground
Robinson's tongue had suddenly ceased.
They plodded on, one sad and stiff, the other thoughtful. Any one
meeting the pair would have pitied them. Ill-success was stamped on
them. Their features were so good, their fortunes so unkind. Their
clothes were sadly worn, their beards neglected, their looks thoughtful
and sad. The convert to honesty stole more than one look at the noble
figure that limped beside him and the handsome face in which gentle,
uncomplaining sorrow seemed to be a tenant for life; and to the credit
of our nature be it said that his eyes filled and his heart yearned.
“Oh, Honesty!” said he, “you are ill-paid here. I have been well paid
for my little bit of you, but here is a life of honesty and a life of
ill-luck and bitter disappointment. Poor George! poor, dear George!
Leave you? never while I have hands to work and a brain to devise!”
They now began slowly to mount a gentle slope that ended in a long black
snakelike hill. “When we get to that hill we shall see my new pasture,”
said George. “New or old, I doubt 'twill be all the same.”
And he sighed and relapsed into silence. Meantime Jacky had killed his
opossum and was now following their trail at an easy trot.
Leaving the two sad ones with worn clothes and heavy hearts plodding
slowly and stiffly up the long rough slope, our story runs on before and
gains the rocky platform they are making for and looks both ways--back
toward the sad ones and forward over a grand, long, sweeping valley.
This pasture is rich in proportion as it recedes from this huge backbone
of rock that comes from the stony mountains and pierces and divides the
meadows as a cape the sea. In the foreground the grass suffers from
its stern neighbor, is cut up here and there by the channels of defunct
torrents, and dotted with fragments of rock, some of which seem to have
pierced the bosom of the soil from below, others have been detached at
different epochs from the parent rock and rolled into the valley. But
these wounds are only discovered on inspection; at a general glance from
the rocky road into the dale the prospect is large, rich and laughing;
fairer pastures are to be found in that favored land, but this sparkles
at you like an emerald roughly set, and where the backbone of rock gives
a sudden twist bursts out all at once broad smiling in your face--a
land flowing with milk and every bush a thousand nosegays. At the angle
above-mentioned, which commanded a double view, a man was standing
watching some object or objects not visible to his three companions;
they were working some yards lower down by the side of a rivulet that
brawled and bounded down the hill. Every now and then an inquiry was
shouted up to that individual, who was evidently a sort of scout or
sentinel. At last one of the men in the ravine came up and bade the
scout go down.
“I'll soon tell you whether we shall have to knock off work.” And he
turned the corner and disappeared.
He shaded both his eyes with his hands, for the sun was glaring. About
a mile off he saw two men coming slowly up by a zig-zag path toward the
very point where he stood. Presently the men stopped and examined the
prospect, each in his own way. The taller one took a wide survey of the
low ground, and calling his companion to him appeared to point out to
him some beauty or peculiarity of the region. Our scout stepped back and
called down to his companions, “Shepherds!”
He then strolled back to his post with no particular anxiety. Arrived
there his uneasiness seemed to revive. The shorter of the two strangers
had lagged behind his comrade, and the watcher observed, that he was
carrying on a close and earnest inspection of the ground in detail.
He peered into the hollows and loitered in every ravine. This gave
singular offense to the keen eye that was now upon him. Presently he was
seen to stop and call his taller companion to him, and point with great
earnestness first to something at their feet, then to the backbone of
rocks; and it so happened by mere accident that his finger took nearly
the direction of the very spot where the observer of all his movements
stood. The man started back out of sight and called in a low voice to
his comrades,
“Come here.”
They came straggling up with troubled and lowering faces. “Lie down and
watch them,” said the leader. The men stooped and crawled forward to
some stunted bushes, behind which they lay down and watched in silence
the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant. The
shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected
the ground with particular interest. The leader of the band, who went by
the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness. The
others assented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed
as Jem. “Nonsense,” said Jem, “dozens pass this way and are none the
wiser.”
“Ay,” replied Black Will, “with their noses in the air. But that is a
notice-taking fellow. Look at him with his eyes forever on the rocks, or
in the gullies, or--there if he is not picking up a stone and breaking
it!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Jem incredulously, “how many thousand have picked up
stones and broke them and all, and never known what we know.”
“He has been in the same oven as we,” retorted the other.
Here one of the others put in his word. “That is not likely, captain;
but if it is so there are no two ways. A secret is no secret if all the
world is to know it.”
“You remember our oath, Jem,” said the leader sternly.
“Why should I forget it more than another?” replied the other angrily.
“Have you all your knives?” asked the captain gloomily. The men nodded
assent.
“Cross them with me as we did when we took our oath first.”
The men stretched out each a brawny arm, and a long sharp knife, so that
all the points came together in a focus; and this action suited well
with their fierce and animal features, their long neglected beards,
their matted hair and their gleaming eyes. It looked the prologue to
some deed of blood. This done, at another word from their ruffianly
leader they turned away from the angle in the rock and plunged hastily
down the ravine; but they had scarcely taken thirty steps when they
suddenly disappeared.
In the neighborhood of the small stream I have mentioned was a cavern
of irregular shape that served these men for a habitation and place
of concealment. Nature had not done all. The stone was soft, and the
natural cavity had been enlarged and made a comfortable retreat enough
for the hardy men whose home it was. A few feet from the mouth of the
cave on one side grew a stout bush that added to the shelter and the
concealment, and on the other the men themselves had placed two or
three huge stones, which, from the attitude the rogues had given them,
appeared, like many others, to have rolled thither years ago from the
rock above.
In this retreat the whole band were now silently couched, two of them
in the mouth of the cave, Black Will and another lying flat on their
stomachs watching the angle of the road for the two men who must pass
that way, and listening for every sound. Black Will was carefully and
quietly sharpening his knife on one of the stones and casting back every
now and then a meaning glance to his companions. The pertinacity with
which he held to his idea began to tell on them, and they sat in an
attitude of sullen and terrible suspicion. But Jem wore a look of
contemptuous incredulity. However small a society may be, if it is a
human one jealousy shall creep in. Jem grudged Black Will his captaincy.
Jem was intellectually a bit of a brute. He was a stronger man than
Will, and therefore thought it hard that merely because Will was a
keener spirit, Will should be over him. Half an hour passed thus, and
the two travelers did not make their appearance.
“Not even coming this way at all,” said Jem.
“Hush!” replied Will sternly, “hold your tongue. They must come this
way, and they can't be far off. Jem, you can crawl out and see where
they are, if you are clever enough to keep that great body out of
sight.”
Jem resented this doubt cast upon his adroitness, and crawled out among
the bushes. He had scarcely got twenty yards when he halted and made a
signal that the men were in sight. Soon afterward he came back with less
precaution. “They are sitting eating their dinner close by, just on the
sunny side of the rock--shepherds, as I told you--got a dog. Go yourself
if you don't believe me.”
The leader went to the spot, and soon after returned and said quietly,
“Pals, I dare say he is right. Lie still till they have had their
dinner; they are going farther, no doubt.”
Soon after this he gave a hasty signal of silence, for George and
Robinson at that moment came round the corner of the rock and stood
on the road not fifty yards above them. Here they paused as the valley
burst on their view, and George pointed out its qualities to his
comrade. “It is not first-rate, Tom, but there is good grass in patches,
and plenty of water.”
Robinson, instead of replying or giving his mind to the prospect said to
George, “Why, where is he?”
“Who?”
“The man that I saw standing at this corner a while ago. He came round
this way I'll be sworn.”
“He is gone away, I suppose. I never saw any one, for my part.”
“I did, though. Gone away? How could he go away? The road is in sight
for miles, and not a creature on it. He is vanished.”
“I don't see him anyway, Tom.”
“Of course you don't, he is vanished into the bowels of the earth. I
don't like gentlemen that vanish into the bowels of the earth.”
“How suspicious you are! Bushrangers again, I suppose. They are always
running in your mind--them and gold.”
“You know the country, George. Here, take my stick.” And he handed
George a long stick with a heavy iron ferule. “If a man is safe here he
owes it to himself, not to his neighbor.”
“Then why do you give me your weapon?” said George with a smile.
“I haven't,” was the reply. “I carry my sting out of sight, like a
humble bee.” And Mr. Robinson winked mysteriously, and the process
seemed to relieve his mind and soothe his suspicions. He then fell to
inspecting the rocks; and when George pointed out to him the broad and
distant pasture he said, in an absent way, “Yes;” and turning round
George found him with his eyes glued to the ground at his feet, and
his mind in a deep reverie. George was vexed, and said somewhat warmly,
“Why, Tom, the place is worth looking at now we are come to it, surely.”
Robinson made no direct reply. “George,” said he thoughtfully, “how far
have you got toward your thousand pounds?”
“Oh, Tom! don't ask me, don't remind me! How can I ever make it? No
market within a thousand miles of any place in this confounded country!
Forced to boil down sheep into tallow and sell them for the price of a
wild duck! I have left my Susan, and I have lost her. Oh, why did you
remind me?”
“So much for the farming lay. Don't you be down-hearted, there's better
cards in the pack than the five of spades; and the farther I go and the
more I see of this country the surer I am. There is a good day coming
for you and me. Listen, George. When I shut my eyes for a moment now
where I stand, and then open them--I'm in California.”
“Dreaming?”
“No, wide awake--wider than you are now. George, look at these hills;
you could not tell them from the golden range of California.. But that
is not all; when you look into them you find they are made of the same
stuff, too--granite, mica and quartz. Now don't you be cross.”
“No! no! why should I? Show me,” said George, trying out of
kindheartedness to take an interest in this subject, which had so often
wearied him.
“Well, here are two of them. That great dark bit out there is mica, and
all this that runs in a vein like is quartz. Quartz and mica are the
natural home of gold; and some gold is to be found at home still, but
the main of it has been washed out and scattered like seed all over the
neighboring clays. You see, George, the world is a thousand times older
than most folks think, and water has been working upon gold thousands
and thousands of years before ever a man stood upon the earth, ay or a
dog either, Carlo, for as wise as you look squatting out there thinking
of nothing and pretending to be thinking of everything.”
“Well, drop gold,” said George, “and tell me what this is,” and he
handed Robinson a small fossil.
Robinson eyed it with wonder and interest. “Where on earth did you find
this?”
“Hard by; what is it?”
“Plenty of these in California. What is it? Why, I'll tell you; it is a
pale old Joey.”
“You don't say so; looks like a shell.”
“Sit down a moment, George, and let us look at it. He bids me drop
gold--and then goes and shows me a proof of gold that never deceived us
out there.”
“You are mad. How can this be a sign of gold? I tell you it is a shell.”
“And I tell you that where these things are found among mica, quartz and
granite, there gold is to be found if men have the wit, the patience and
the skill to look for it. I can't tell you why; the laws of gold puzzle
deeper heads than mine, but so it is. I seem to smell gold all round me
here.” And Robinson flushed all over, so powerfully did the great idea
of gold seated here on his native throne grapple and agitate his mind.
“Tom,” said the other doggedly, “if there is as much gold on the ground
of New South Wales as will make me a wedding-ring--I am a Dutchman;” and
he got up calmly and jerked the pale old Joey a tremendous way into the
valley.
This action put Robinson's blood up. “George,” cried he, springing up
like fire and bringing his foot down sharp upon the rocky floor, “IF I
DON'T STAND UPON GOLD--I'M D----D!”
And a wild but true inspiration seemed to be upon the man; a stranger
could hardly have helped believing him, but George had heard a good deal
of this, though the mania had never gone quite so far. He said quickly,
“Come, let us go down into the pasture.”
“Not I,” replied Robinson. “Come, George, prejudice is for babies,
experience for men. Here is an unknown country with all the signs of
gold thicker than ever. I have got a calabash--stay and try for gold in
this gully; it looks to me just like the mouth of a purse.”
“Not I.”
“I will, then.”
“Why not? I don't think you will find anything in it, but anyway you
will have a better chance when I am not by to spoil you. Luck is all
against me. If I want rain, comes drought; if I want sun, look for a
deluge, if there is money to be made by a thing I'm out of it; to be
lost, I'm in it; if I loved a vixen she'd drop into my arms like a
medlar; I love an angel and that is why I shall never have her, never.
From a game of marbles to the game of life I never had a grain of luck
like other people. Leave me, Tom, and try if you can find gold; you will
have a chance, my poor fellow, if unlucky George is not aside you.”
“Leave you, George! not if I know it.”
“You are to blame if you don't. Turn your back on me as I did on you in
England.”
“Never! I'd rather not find gold than part with honesty. There, I'm
coming--let us go--quick--come, let us leave here.” And the two men left
the road and turned their faces and their steps across the ravine.
During all this dialogue the men in the cave had strained both eyes and
ears to comprehend the speakers. The distance was too great for them to
catch all the words, but this much was clear from the first, that one of
the men wished to stay on the spot for some purpose, and the other to
go on; but presently, as the speakers warmed, a word traveled down the
breeze that made the four ruffians start and turn red with surprise, and
the next moment darken with anger and apprehension. The word came again
and again; they all heard it--its open vowel gave it a sonorous ring;
it seemed to fly farther than any other word the speaker uttered, or
perhaps when he came to it he spoke it louder than smaller words, or the
hearers' ears were watching for it.
The men interchanged terrible looks, and then they grasped their knives
and watched their leader's eye for some deadly signal. Again and again
the word “g-o-l-d” came like an Aeolian note into the secret cave, and
each time eye sought eye and read the unlucky speaker's death-warrant
there. But when George prevailed and the two men started for the valley,
the men in the cave cast uncertain looks on one another, and he we have
called Jem drew a long breath and said brutally, yet with something of
satisfaction, “You have saved your bacon this time.” The voices now drew
near and the men crouched close, for George and Robinson passed within
fifteen yards of them. They were talking now about matters connected
with George's business, for Robinson made a violent effort and dropped
his favorite theme to oblige his comrade. They passed near the cave, and
presently their backs were turned to it.
“Good-by, my lads,” whispered Jem. “And curse you for making us lose a
good half hour,” muttered another of the gang. The words were scarce out
of his mouth before a sudden rustle was heard and there was Carlo. He
had pulled up in mid career and stood transfixed with astonishment,
literally pointing the gang; it was but for a moment--he did not like
the looks of the men at all; he gave a sharp bark that made George and
Robinson turn quickly round, and then he went on hunting.
“A kangaroo!” shouted Robinson, “it must have got up near that bush;
come and look--if it is we will hunt it down.”
George turned back with him, but on reflection he said, “No! Tom, we
have a long road to go, let us keep on, if you please;” and they once
more turned their backs to the cave, whistled Carlo, and stepped briskly
out toward the valley. A few yards before them was the brook I have
already noticed--it was about three yards broad at this spot. However,
Robinson, who was determined not to make George lose any more time,
took the lead and giving himself the benefit of a run, cleared it like
a buck. But as he was in the air his eye caught some object on this side
the brook, and making a little circle on the other side, he came back
with ludicrous precipitancy, and jumping short, landed with one foot on
shore and one in the stream. George burst out laughing.
“Do you see this?” cried Robinson.
“Yes; somebody has been digging a hole here,” said George very coolly.
“Come higher up,” cried Robinson, all in a flutter--“do you see this?”
“Yes; it is another hole.”
“'It is. Do you see this wet, too?”
“I see there has been some water spilled by the brook side.”
“What kind of work has been done here? have they been digging potatoes,
farmer?”
“Don't be foolish, Tom.”
“Is it any kind of work you know? Here is another trench dug.”
“No! it is nothing in my way, that is the truth.”
“But it is work the signs of which I know as well as you know a plowed
field from a turnpike-road.”
“Why, what is it then?”
“It is gold washing.”
“You don't say so, Tom.”
“This is gold washing as beginners practice it in California and Mexico
and Peru, and wherever gold-dust is found. They have been working with
a pan, they haven't got such a thing as a cradle in this country. Come
lower down; this was yesterday's work, let us find to-day's.”
The two men now ran down the stream busy as dogs hunting an otter. A
little lower down they found both banks of the stream pitted with holes
about two feet deep and the sides drenched with water from it.
“Well, if it is so, you need not look so pale; why, dear me, how pale
you are, Tom!”
“You would be pale,” gasped Tom, “if you could see what a day this
is for you and me, ay! and for all the world, old England especially.
George, in a month there will be five thousand men working round this
little spot. Ay! come,” cried he, shouting wildly at the top of his
voice, “there is plenty for all. GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! I have found it. I,
Tom Robinson, I've found it, and I grudge it to no man. I, a thief that
was, make a present of it to its rightful owner, and that is all the
world. Here GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!”
Though George hardly understood his companion's words, he was carried
away by the torrent of his enthusiasm, and even as Robinson spoke his
cheeks in turn flushed and his eyes flashed, and he grasped his friend's
hands warmly, and cried, “GOLD! GOLD! blessings on it if it takes me to
Susan; GOLD! GOLD!”
The poor fellows' triumph and friendly exultation lasted but a moment;
the words were scarce out of Robinson's mouth when to his surprise
George started from him, turned very pale, but at the same time
lifted his iron-shod stick high in the air and clinched his teeth with
desperate resolution. Four men with shaggy beards and wild faces and
murderous eyes were literally upon them, each with a long glittering
knife raised in the air.
At that fearful moment George learned the value of a friend that had
seen adventure and crime; rapid and fierce and unexpected as the attack
was, Robinson was not caught off his guard. His hand went like lightning
into his bosom, and the assailants, in the very act of striking, were
met in the face by the long glistening barrels of a rifle revolver,
while the cool, wicked eye behind it showed them nothing was to be hoped
in that quarter from flurry, or haste, or indecision.
The two men nearest the revolver started back, the other two neither
recoiled nor advanced, but merely hung fire. George made a movement to
throw himself upon them; but Robinson seized him fiercely by the arm--he
said steadily but sternly, “Keep cool, young man--no running among their
knives while they are four. Strike across me and I shall guard you till
we have thinned.”
“Will you?” said Black Will, “here, pals!” The four assailants came
together like a fan for a moment and took a whisper from their leader.
They then spread out like a fan and began to encircle their antagonists,
so as to attack on both sides at once.
“Back to the water, George,” cried Robinson quickly, “to the broad part
here.” Robinson calculated that the stream would protect his rear, and
that safe he was content to wait and profit by the slightest error
of his numerous assailants; this, however, was to a certain degree a
miscalculation, for the huge ruffian we have called Jem sprang boldly
across the stream higher up and prepared to attack the men behind, the
moment they should be engaged with his comrades. The others no sooner
saw him in position than they rushed desperately upon George and
Robinson in the form of a crescent, and as they came on Jem came flying
knife in hand to plunge it into Robinson's back. As the front assailants
neared them, true to his promise, Robinson fired across George, and the
outside man received a bullet in his shoulder-blade, and turning round
like a top fell upon his knees. Unluckily George wasted a blow at this
man which sung idly over him, he dropping his head and losing his knife
and his powers at the very moment. By this means Robinson, the moment
he had fired his pistol, had no less than three assailants; one of these
George struck behind the neck so furiously with a back-handed stroke
of his iron-shod stick that he fell senseless at Robinson's feet. The
other, met in front by the revolver, recoiled, but kept Robinson at
bay while Jem sprang on him from the rear. This attack was the most
dangerous of all; in fact, neither Robinson nor George had time to
defend themselves against him even if they had seen him, which they did
not. Now as Jem was in the very act of making his spring from the other
side of the brook, a spear glanced like a streak of light past the
principal combatants and pierced Jem through and through the fleshy part
of the thigh, and there stood Jacky at forty yards' distance, with the
hand still raised from which the spear had flown, and his emu-like eye
glittering with the light of battle.
Jem, instead of bounding clear over the stream, fell heavily into the
middle of it and lay writhing and floundering at George's mercy, who
turning in alarm at the sound stood over him with his long deadly staff
whirling and swinging round his head in the air, while Robinson placed
one foot firmly on the stunned man's right arm and threatened the leader
Black Will with his pistol, and at the same moment with a wild and
piercing yell Jacky came down in leaps like a kangaroo, his tomahawk
flourished over his head, his features entirely changed, and the thirst
of blood written upon every inch of him. Black Will was preparing to run
away and leave his wounded companions, but at sight of the fleet savage
he stood still and roared out for mercy. “Quarter! quarter!” cried Black
Will.
“Down on your knees!” cried Robinson in a terrible voice.
The man fell on his knees, and in that posture Jacky would certainly
have knocked out his brains but that Robinson pointed the pistol at his
head and forbade him; and Carlo, who had arrived hastily at the sound of
battle, in great excitement but not with clear ideas, seeing Jacky, whom
he always looked on as a wild animal, opposed in some way to Robinson,
seized him directly by the leg from behind and held him howling in a
vise. “Hold your cursed noise, all of you,” roared Robinson. “D'ye ask
quarter?”
“Quarter!” cried Black Will.
“Quarter!” gurgled Jem.
“Quarter!” echoed more faintly the wounded man. The other was
insensible.
“Then throw me your knives.”
The men hesitated.
“Throw me them this instant, or--”
They threw down their knives.
“George, take them and tie them up in your wipe.” George took the knives
and tied them up.
“Now pull that big brute out of the water or he'll drown himself.”
George and Jacky pulled Jem out of the water with the spear sticking in
him; the water was discolored with his blood.
“Pull the spear out of him!” George pulled and Jem roared with pain, but
the spear-head would not come back through the wound; then Jacky came up
and broke the light shaft off close to the skin, and grasping the head
drew the remainder through the wound forward, and grinned with a sense
of superior wisdom.
By this time the man whom George had felled sat up on his beam ends
winking and blinking and confused, like a great owl at sunrise.
Then Robinson, who had never lost his presence of mind, and had now
recovered his sang-froid, made all four captives sit around together on
the ground in one little lot, “While I show you the error of your ways,”
said he. “I could forgive a rascal but I hate a fool. You thought to
keep such a secret as this all to yourselves--you dunces--the very birds
in the air would carry it; it never was kept secret in any land and
never will. And you would spill blood sooner than your betters should
know it--ye ninny-cumpoops! What the worse are you for our knowing it?
If a thousand knew it to-day would that lower the price of gold a penny
an ounce? No! All the harm they could do you would be this, that some of
them would show you where it lies thickest, and then you'd profit by it.
You had better tie that leg of yours up; you have lost blood enough
I should say by the look of you; haven't you got a wipe? here, take
mine--you deserve it, don't you? No man's luck hurts his neighbor at
this work; how clever you were, you have just pitched on the unlikeliest
place in the whole gulley, and you wanted to kill the man that would
have taught you which are the likelier ones. I shall find ten times as
much gold before the sun sets as you will find in a week by the side of
that stream; why, it hasn't been running above a thousand years or
two, I should say, by the look of it; you have got plenty to learn,
you bloody-minded greenhorns! Now I'll tell you what it is,” continued
Robinson, getting angry about it, “since you are for keeping dark what
little you know, I'll keep you dark; and in ten minutes my pal here and
the very nigger shall know more about gold-finding than you know, so be
off, for I'm going to work. Come, march!”
“Where are we to go, mate?” said the leader sullenly.
“Do you see that ridge about three miles west? well, if we catch you on
this side of it we will hang you like wild cats. On the other side of
it do what you like, and try all you know; but this gully belongs to
us now; you wanted to take something from us that did not belong to
you--our blood--so now we take something from you that didn't belong to
us a minute or two ago. Come, mizzle, and no more words, or--” and he
pointed the tail of his discourse with his revolver.
The men rose, and with sullen, rueful, downcast looks moved off in the
direction of the boundary; but one remained behind, the man was Jem.
“Well!”
“Captain, I wish you would let me join in with you!”
“What for?”
“Well, captain, you've lent me your wipe, and I think a deal of it, for
it's what I did not deserve; but that is not all. You are the best man,
and I like to be under the best man if I must be under anybody.”
Robinson hesitated a moment. “Come here,” said he. The man came and
fronted him. “Look me in the face! now give me your hand--quick, no
thinking about how.” The man gave him his hand readily. Robinson looked
into his eyes. “What is your name?”
“Jem.”
“Jem, we take you on trial.”
Jem's late companions, who perfectly comprehended what was passing,
turned and hooted the deserter; Jem, whose ideas of repartee were
primitive, turned and hooted them in reply.
While the men were retreating Robinson walked thoughtfully with his
hands behind him, backward and forward, like a great admiral on his
quarter deck--enemy to leeward. Every eye was upon him and watched him
in respectful, inquiring silence. “Knowledge is power;” this was the man
now, the rest children.
“What tools have you?”
“There is a spade and trowel in that bush, captain.”
“Fetch them, George. Hadn't you a pan?”
“No, captain; we used a calabash. He will find it lower down.”
George, after a little search, found all these objects, and brought them
back. “Now,” cried Robinson, “these greenhorns have been washing in a
stream that runs now, but perhaps in the days of Noah was not a river at
all; but you look at the old bed of a stream down out there. That was
a much stronger stream than this in its day, and it ran for more than a
hundred thousand years before it dried up.”
“How can you tell that?” said George, resuming some of his incredulity.
“Look at those monstrous stones in it here, there and everywhere. It has
been a powerful stream to carry such masses with it as that, and it has
been running many thousand years, for see how deep it has eaten into its
rocky sides here and there. That was a river, my lads, and washed gold
down for hundreds of thousands of years before ever Adam stood on the
earth.”
The men gave a hurrah, and George and Jacky prepared to run and find the
treasure. “Stop,” cried Robinson, “you are not at the gold yet. Can you
tell in what parts of the channel it lies thick and where there isn't
enough to pay the labor of washing it? Well, I can--look at that bend
where the round pebbles are collected so; there was a strong eddy there.
Well, under the ridge of that eddy is ten times as much gold lying as in
the level parts. Stop a bit again. Do you know how deep or how shallow
it lies--do you think you can find it by the eye? Do you know what clays
it sinks through, as if they were a sieve, and what stops it like an
iron door? Your quickest way is to take Captain Robinson's time--and
that is now.”
He snatched the spade, and giving full vent to the ardor he had so long
suppressed with difficulty, plunged down a little declivity that led to
the ancient stream, and drove his spade into its shingle, the debris of
centuries of centuries. George sprang after him, his eyes gleaming with
hope and agitation; the black followed in wonder and excitement, and the
wounded Jem limped last, and, unable through weakness to work, seated
himself with glowing eyes upon that ancient river's bank.
“Away with all this gravel and shingle--these are all newcomers--the
real bed of the stream is below all this, and we must go down to that.”
Trowel and spade and tomahawk went furiously to work, and soon cleared
away the gravel from a surface of three or four feet.
Beneath this they found a bed of gray clay.
“Let us wash that, captain,” said Jem eagerly.
“No! Jem,” was the reply; “that is the way novices waste their time.
This gray clay is porous, too porous to hold gold--we must go deeper.”
Tomahawk, spade and trowel went furiously to work again.
“Give me the spade,” said George, and he dug and shoveled out with
herculean strength and amazing ardor; his rheumatism was gone and nerves
came back from that very hour. “Here is a white clay.”
“Let me see it. Pipe-clay! go no deeper, George; if you were to dig a
hundred feet you would not find an ounce of gold below that.”
George rested on his spade. “What are we to do, then? try somewhere
else?”
“Not till we have tried here first.”
“But you say there is nothing below this pipe-clay.”
“No more there is.”
“Well, then.”
“But I don't say there is nothing above it!!!”
“Well, but there is nothing much above it except the gray, without 'tis
this small streak of brownish clay; but that is not an inch thick.”
“George! in that inch lies all the gold we are likely to find; if it is
not there we have only to go elsewhere. Now while I get water you stick
your spade in and cut the brown clay away from the white it lies on.
Don't leave a spot of the brown sticking to the white--the lower part of
the brown clay is the likeliest.”
A shower having fallen the day before, Robinson found water in a hole
not far distant. He filled his calabash and returned; meantime George
and Jacky had got together nearly a barrowful of the brown or rather
chocolate-colored clay, mixed slightly with the upper and lower strata,
the gray and white.
“I want yon calabash and George's as well.” Robinson filled George's
calabash two-thirds full of the stuff, and pouring some water upon it,
said good-naturedly to Jem, “There--you may do the first washing, if you
like.”
“Thank you, captain,” said Jem, who proceeded instantly to stir and
dissolve the clay and pour it carefully away as it dissolved. Jacky was
sent for more water, and this, when used as described, had left the clay
reduced to about one-sixth of its original bulk.
“Now, captain,” cried Jem in great excitement.
“No, it's not now, captain, yet,” said Robinson; “is that the way you do
pan-washing?”
He then took the calabash from Jem, and gave him Jacky's calabash
two-thirds full of clay to treat like the other, and this being done he
emptied the dry remains of one calabash into the other, and gave Jem a
third lot to treat likewise. This done, you will observe he had in one
calabash the results of three first washings. But now he trusted Jem no
longer. He took the calabash and said, “You look faint, you are not fit
to work; besides you have not got the right twist of the hand yet, my
lad. Pour for me, George.” Robinson stirred and began to dissolve the
three remainders, and every now and then with an artful turn of the hand
he sent a portion of the muddy liquid out of the vessel. At the end of
this washing there remained scarce more than a good handful of clay at
the bottom. More water was poured on this. “Now,” said Robinson, “we
shall know this time, and if you see but one spot of yellow among it, we
are all gentlemen and men of fortune.”
He dissolved the clay, and twisted and turned the vessel with great
dexterity, and presently the whole of the clay was liquefied.
“Now,” said Robinson, “all your eyes upon it, and if I spill anything I
ought to keep--you tell me.” He said this conceitedly but with evident
agitation. He was now pouring away the dirty water with the utmost care,
so that anything, however small, that might be heavier than clay should
remain behind. Presently he paused and drew a long breath. He feared to
decide so great a question. It was but for a moment; he began again
to pour the dirty water away very slowly and carefully. Every eye was
diving into the vessel. There was a dead silence!
Robinson poured with great care. There was now little more than a
wine-glassful left.
DEAD SILENCE!
Suddenly a tremendous cry broke from all these silent figures at the
same instant. A cry! it was a yell. I don't know what to compare it to.
But imagine that a score of wolves had hunted a horse for two centuries
up and down, round and round, sometimes losing a yard, sometimes gaining
one on him, and at last, after a thousand disappointments and fierce
alternations of hope and despair, the horse had suddenly stumbled and
the wild gluttons had pounced on him at last. Such a fierce yell of
triumph burst from four human bosoms now.
“Hurrah! we are the greatest men above ground. If a hundred emperors and
kings died to-day, their places could be filled to-morrow; but the
world could not do without us and our find. We are gentlemen--we are
noblemen--we are whatever we like to be. Hurrah!” cried Robinson.
“Hurrah!” cried George, “I see my Susan's eyes in you, you beauty.”
“Hurrah!” whined Jem feebly, “let me see how much there is,” and
clutching the calabash he fainted at that moment from loss of blood and
fell forward insensible, his face in the vessel that held the gold,
and his hands grasping it so tight that great force had to be used to
separate them.
They lifted Jem and set him up again, and sprinkled water in his face.
The man's thick lip was cut by the side of the vessel, and more than
one drop of blood had trickled down its sides and mingled with the
gold-dust.
No comment was made on this at the time. They were so busy.
“There, he's coming to, and we've no time to waste in nursing the sick.
Work!” and they sprang up on to the work again.
It was not what you have seen pass for work in Europe, it was men
working themselves for once as they make horses work forever. Work? It
was battle; it was humanity fighting and struggling with Nature for
her prime treasure--(so esteemed). How they dug and scraped, and fought
tooth, and spade, and nail, and trowel, and tomahawk for gold! Their
shirts were wet through with sweat, yet they felt no fatigue. Their
trousers were sheets of clay, yet they suffered no sense of dirt. The
wounded man recovered a portion of his strength, and, thirsting for
gold, brought feeble hands but indomitable ardor to the great cause.
They dug, they scraped, they bowed their backs, and wrought with fury
and inspiration unparalleled; and when the sun began to decline behind
the hills these four human mutes felt injured. They lifted their eyes a
moment from the ground, and cast a fretful look at the great, tranquil
luminary.
“Are you really going to set this afternoon the same as usual, when we
need your services so?”
Would you know why that wolfish yell of triumph? Would you see what
sight so electrified those gloating eyes and panting bosoms? Would you
realize that discovery, which in six months peopled that barren spot
with thousands of men from all the civilized tribes upon earth, and in
a few years must and will make despised Australia a queen among the
nations--nations who must and will come with the best thing they have,
wealth, talent, cunning, song, pencil, pen, tongue, arm, and lay them
all at her feet for this one thing?
Would you behold this great discovery the same in appearance and
magnitude as it met the eyes of the first discoverers, picked with a
knife from the bottom of a calabash, separated at last by human art and
gravity's great law from the meaner dust it had lurked in for a million
years--Then turn your eyes hither, for here it is:
[Knife handle drawing]