DEATH'S DOOR
Chip, chip, chip, rang the driving-pick along the top of the drive, as
it pricked its way from left to right, leaving a chain of holes in the
rude right-angle under the arch; and chip, chip, back the other way,
between the holes, till they united in one curved crevice, wherein the
fingers could be passed from wall to wall, and the continued stability
of the roof felt with the knuckles. Then a spell of harder and less
cautious hitting, an interval of falling chunk and showering gravel, a
period of irritation to throat and eyes. Presently a downward stroke,
with more power behind it the lower one got; and in the end an advance
from top to bottom of as many inches as the introductory crevice had
been deep. So slaved Denis in his drive; so was he slaving when Jewson
just heard him from above, on the 7th of February, 1854.
It meant lying prone in the earth by the hour together, an elbow
pillowed in the morning's debris, the body aching in every inch. It
meant a complete skin of the mud of dust and dirt and copious
perspiration. It meant an atmosphere heated and poisoned by the flame
of a single candle, a tickling throat, a trickling eye, an intermittent
rigour of the lower limbs, a daily foretaste of paralysis. But it also
meant a continuous excitement and an enduring satisfaction which to
Denis were worth all these evils at once and at their worst. The drift
was as rich as ever; and now it needed neither pan nor cradle to tell
him so. He knew it at a glance, knew it by the light of his solitary
candle. So far the wash-dirt had yielded a little more or a little less
to the tub; its outward characteristics had not altered; but they always
might. At any moment, after the next blow with the driving-pick, or the
next--or the next--a change might be observable. It could hardly be a
change for the better; thus each unchanged handful was to the good, and
the uncertainty of every minute its fascination. Leads and gutters were
notoriously capricious, and Denis was prepared for any caprice but the
one that he encountered this very morning.
He had prolonged the roof a few more inches; the new chain of holes had
resolved itself into another semicircular crevice, and to the knuckles
the fresh roof was as firm as the old. Denis was dealing the random
blows which were always a relief to him after this niggling work, when
suddenly nothing fell, but the pick-handle dragged at his hand. The
point of the pick had stuck; he gave it a gentle unavailing tug, but it
was high up under the arch, and he had to alter his position before he
could pull with any power. By this time he was trembling like a leaf;
and still the pick stuck fast.
He drew his legs up under him, left the pick embedded, and began
prodding near it with his knife. Presently the knife stuck too; this was
some inches under the pick, and he had to work the blade backward and
forward to release the point.
Denis could hardly breathe.
It must be a nugget--it must--it must--and if a nugget then the largest
found on Ballarat for a twelvemonth.
It might even rival the two giant nuggets, worth thousands apiece, got
from Canadian Gully at the beginning of the previous year; the nuggets
of which Doherty had spoken after the wreck; the nuggets which first
inflamed them both!
With fingers and knife he scraped down to it, then felt it with his
fingers, then scraped it with his knife; and the point of the knife,
held close to the candle, showed a filament of virgin gold upon the
steel.
Denis closed his eyes and breathed thanksgiving; then to the handle of
the pick once more, to prize the great mass loose in its gravelly bed. A
shower from the roof at once deterred him. There was no guessing the
size of a nugget like this. Its incontinent removal might cause such a
subsidence as to bury him alive in the moment of his triumph; cautious
even then, Denis blew out the light, screwed himself round on his own
acrobatic principle, and began a trip to the top for props.
What time was it? Had Doherty returned? Could he trust Jewson to raise
him in the bucket? He was looking pathetically far ahead; but there was
the mouth of the drive glimmering within a few feet of him, and as yet
Denis had not noticed any novelty in the intervening ground.
Now he noticed it; there was a lump of something, and the lump was
moving. Then it lay still, but strangely extended. And two glittering
little eyes were gazing into his at not more than eighteen inches'
range.
Denis knew them on the instant for the eyes of an enormous snake. The
tapering tail ran back into the light at the tunnel's mouth, as a river
reappears beyond its woods; it was beautifully marked to its gracefully
writhing tip; its glossy scales, where the daylight caught them, were as
a suit of silver mail. All this Denis noted without taking his eyes from
the small malignant pair in the zone of darkness between him and the
light. And he thought of everything; that he was stripped to the waist,
and utterly unarmed; that he had left his very knife behind him, and why
he had taken it out, and what else he was leaving for men to find beyond
his body. What a death to die! What an inglorious end! Its bitter and
gratuitous irony was a redeeming point rather than an aggravation to a
mind already distorted by such a strain in such an hour.
His eyes still gazing into the eyes of death, he thought of the two
pioneer prospectors of California who wandered finding nothing until one
died by the way; the other had just strength to dig his grave; and in so
doing his pick stuck into such a nugget as Denis himself had found, only
to lose it with his life. He was not a very egotistical man. Yet it was
a certain satisfaction to him to feel that he would pass into history
with the other poor devil who changed places with the other nugget.
Whether minutes or only moments flew in such thoughts, Denis never knew;
but at last the other eyes rose suddenly, as the serpent arched its neck
to spring. Instinctively Denis followed suit, was felled to his face by
the roof of the tunnel, and lay stunned as mercifully as beast for
slaughter.
Much more mercifully; for the snake recoiled, first in fright, finally
in disgust. The snake must kill its own. Denis owed his respite to that
law of reptile nature; he seemed dead enough already.
But he was sufficiently alive long before he dared betray sign of life.
Luckily he remembered everything in a flash; and so lay waiting for the
last. One thing seemed certain: he had not been bitten yet. There was no
sense of pain or swelling; no heavy coil oppressed his flesh; no jets of
baleful breath played upon his skin; and in his near neighbourhood
nothing stirred. But far away he fancied he could hear the slightest of
sibilant sounds, and by degrees he opened his eyes. In his position he
could not see many inches in front of him, but they were inches of bare
ground. He raised his head imperceptibly: the snake was circling round
the patch of daylight at the bottom of the shaft, gliding half its
length up its slippery sides, darting its forked tongue out and in, and
slowly moving its head as if seeking for some hole.
Denis considered without moving a muscle. If he were armed he would
creep on his belly like the snake itself and trust to his dexterity to
strike the first blow. But he was not armed. He had no weapon of any
sort; the one good weapon in the drive was fast in the nugget--ah! The
nugget! He had forgotten it; the remembrance was like a glass of spirit.
There behind him, within reach almost of his feet, was the only weapon
worth thinking about--worth an effort--worth a risk.
Very slowly, very laboriously, he crawled backward until his foot did
touch the wooden haft of the driving-pick. The snake was still circling
at the bottom of the shaft. Turning suddenly, seizing the haft with one
hand, and the unburied end of the pick with the other, Denis twisted it
as a gimlet, and had it out at one wrench. Simple though the expedient,
it had only occurred to him as he crawled backward for his life.
Now he was crawling forward again, feeling his way with the pick, his
open knife between his teeth; and he crawled with less caution,
savouring the fight. The pick rang against a stone. The snake was
aroused. Its body writhed in angry knots and circles, still in the
square of daylight, but now with tongue darting and eyes piercing into
the mouth of the tunnel at each contortion. Denis felt its body was
about to follow, made the rush himself on hands and knees, frightened
the enemy by so doing, and next instant had its neck nailed to the
ground at one lucky blow; but as he scrambled out its folds flew round
his leg, crushing it horribly and irresistibly drawing it towards its
head. The blood ran down Denis's chin as he plucked the open knife from
his teeth. Then the strong blade sawed through the slimy body a foot
below the head. But for long the headless coils wrung the slayer's leg,
while the forked tongue played in and out of the bleeding remnant on the
ground.
At last he leaned lame but unencumbered against the side of the shaft.
The sun was in the zenith; it lit the slabs on two sides half-way down.
Denis knew the sunlight was there, though he could not lift his head to
look on it again. He was sick, dizzy, and in pain; with more space or a
less loathsome litter he would have stretched himself out where he was.
As it was he hugged the slabs in a standing swoon until a voice came
down to him from the mouth of the shaft.
"Mister! Mister! Dent! Denis!"
He reeled and raised a ghastly face.
"What's the matter down there?"
"Nothing; only I was nearly killed by a snake."
"A snake!"
"A carpet snake; but I killed it, thank God."
"A carpet snake!"
"Nearly eight feet long."
"Why, there's one up here about the same size, must be its mate. That
one must have fallen down. I've killed this one!"
But the raised voice quavered; the lad was whimpering, shivering against
the sky. Denis became himself.
"Let down the bucket, Jimmy."
"Oh! Oh! I haven't got the strength to draw you up, I know!"
"What's happened--what else?"
"It's Jewson," the boy's voice came blubbering down.
"What's happened to him?"
"The other snake was round him--and he doesn't move!"