WAYS AND MEANS.
It would be difficult to imagine anything more painful than the boys'
feelings at that moment; the disappointment was almost more than they
could bear. It is true they had built their hopes upon very slight
foundations, but their disappointment was none the less keen on that
account. They had thought about the gold so much, hoped for it so
ardently, and undergone such dangers to reach the spot where they
expected to discover it, that to find all their sanguine anticipations
blighted was very bitter to them. The dream of gold had been so bright
a one, and the chances of their dream coming true had seemed so
probable, that they almost felt they had a right to its
fulfilment--older people often feel the same about the achievement of
their desires, and with as little reason.
"Well," said Alec, after a moment or two of silent contemplation of the
pool and cascade which had frustrated all their plans, "well, we have
been living in a fool's paradise, and this is what comes of it."
"Beastly, isn't it?" said George. "But look here Alec, old man, perhaps
after all there is no gold at the bottom of that pool, so don't let us
fret about it."
"I'm not going to fret about it," said Alec, as he got off his horse,
"but I am convinced that the gold _is_ there. Nuggets are never found
alone. That pool is a natural 'pocket,' as diggers call that sort of
place."
"And we may not put our hands in it! Never mind, we have only lost what
we never had."
"You jolly Irishman! Well, we may as well turn back. It is no use
staying here."
"I beg to differ," said Geordie, who had thrown one leg over his
horse's head, and was sitting sideways on his saddle in an idle sort of
manner, and he slipped to the ground as he spoke. "At any rate let us
stay here to-day, and give the horses a rest before we turn homewards."
His busy brain had already begun to think out several schemes for
getting at the bottom of the pool, but he would not mention them to
Alec for fear of again raising hopes that might prove false. His active
mind was generally the one to devise methods and plans, which he would
often have been quite unable to execute without Alec's steady-going
co-operation. But these two fellows always worked so well together, and
were so completely one at heart, that neither thought for one moment of
taking special credit to himself for any one part that he might have
originated or executed.
Taking the horses some little way down the stream, where there seemed
to be more and better food for them than close to the waterfall, the
boys and Murri unloaded them, and hobbling them, as usual, turned them
loose. Alec suggested that if they were going to stay one night in the
gully--"And the rest," thought George--they had better pitch their camp
somewhere thereabouts, as they would be near the fall and yet out of
reach of its deafening noise. So they arranged their goods and chattels
close to one side of the gully where the steep cliff cast a grateful
shade.
When this little business was satisfactorily settled--it took but a
very few minutes to arrange matters--Murri, who as usual was dreaming
of something to eat, and thought this an opportunity not to be
neglected, asked if he might go down the valley and try to catch
something. It did not matter what, for all is fish that comes to an
Australian aboriginal's net. The boys did not want him for anything, so
he started off with his _boomerang_ and spears and throwing stick
towards the clump of tall _quandang_ trees they had passed when coming
up the valley.
Directly that George saw Alec engaged upon making some alteration in
the stuffing of one of the pack saddles, which had begun to chafe the
back of the horse that carried it, he started off by himself to make a
more careful survey of the pool and the waterfall. He wished to go
alone, so he walked off without saying anything to his brother. Alec,
although he had said that he should be quite cheerful if he knew the
worst, seemed very much depressed at the failure of all his hopes, and
sat rather gloomily over his work. He was paying close attention to
what he was doing, for he hated careless work of any kind, and did not
see Geordie leave the camp.
The place certainly did not present a very hopeful appearance when
George came to examine it. The waterfall poured in one straight column
from the top of the perpendicular cliff, and dashed itself into the
pool beneath, which again overflowed to the stream below in a little
cascade, from the narrow lip of rock which formed the front edge of the
basin. George thought that the scene was a very beautiful and grand one
now that he could look at it with calmer eyes. The ravine, at the far
end of which the cascade fell, was very narrow, so that the lofty
cliffs on either side shut out the direct sunshine, except at mid-day,
when the sun was just overhead. The whole place was dim and full of
shadow, and the sound of the falling water and the coolness of the air,
moistened by the drifting showers of misty spray, made it a pleasant
retreat from the glare and tropical heat of the ardent day beyond its
limits. The rocks for the most part were bare of vegetation, but in one
or two places near the fall itself masses of tall grasses and ferns
grew with luxuriant greenness, and along the top of the cliff from
which the cascade fell a line of bushes grew, and creeping plants,
which hung far down the rock, swayed by the current of air made by the
great mass of falling water.
The water looked cool and inviting, and George thought he would have a
dip into it before he began his exploration. He thought that by so
doing he might discover how deep the pool was. The basin into which the
waterfall plunged was some five or six feet above the level of the
stream, into which the water flowed by a second and much smaller
cascade. Undressing--a work that did not take him very long--on the
bank of the stream, George scrambled up by the side of the little
waterfall, and stood on the narrow wall of rock that confined the
waters of the basin, his well-made muscular body and legs looking
strangely fair when compared with his red and sun-browned face and neck
and arms. He stood for one moment with one foot in the water--how hot
the sun was on his naked body--and then plunged into the pool.
He found that he could just touch bottom near the place where the water
flowed out, but that nearer the middle of the pool it was beyond his
depth. He did not go under the fall, though he went close to it, for
the volume of water was so great and fell in so heavy a stream.
Standing, a few minutes afterwards, in the sunshine to dry himself
before he dressed again, he made a rough mental calculation, and found
that the parts of the pool he had been able to bottom were about on a
level with the stream. With a pleased little nod he sprang lightly down
the rocks, which were hot to his naked feet, and scrambled into his
clothes.
As soon as he was dressed he walked to the face of the great cliff over
which the water plunged, and began to examine it to find a place where
he might climb up. The rock near the fall was quite too steep for any
one to ascend, but a little way from it, where the ravine curved,
George found a place up which he thought he could manage to scramble.
As he was strong and a quite fearless rock climber, he was often able
to conquer difficulties that most people would have found insuperable.
Jamming tightly on to his head the cap he had extemporised the night
after he lost his felt hat at the precipice, two days before, George
began to climb. It was a work for arms as well as legs, for the cliff
was so steep in places that he had actually to haul himself up by his
hands; but Geordie was at home in this sort of climbing, and nimbly
scaled up places that from below looked absolutely perpendicular.
It took even Geordie some time to get to the top, for the cliff was
higher than it appeared to be from the ravine, but at last he was able
to grasp the stout stem of a ti-bush that grew on the edge of the crag,
and holding this and throwing his chest on to the flat ground at the
top he was able to haul himself up. He sprang to his feet at once, for
he was in such perfect condition that even the violent exertion he had
just made had not put him out of breath. He found himself on a little
piece of comparatively level ground which rose, at first gradually, and
then by a steeper incline, till it joined the great bulk of Tooingoora,
which towered, majestic and grim, before him. The ground, just where he
was, was covered with a thick and tangled growth of scrub, through
which he could hear the sound of the swiftly running stream, which
poured itself with a roar over the edge of the height.
George made his way between the bushes with some little difficulty, for
they were so matted together with a strong wiry sort of creeper, and in
a moment or two he reached the edge of the stream. He found that it was
flowing very rapidly, as though preparing for the leap it was about to
make, along a rocky watercourse, which at present was a great deal too
wide for its requirements, but the whole of which in flood times it
would probably occupy.
George examined the bed of the stream very carefully, walking up it
some little way and then back again to the place where the water
plunged over the edge of the rock in one great smooth sweep. He seemed
to observe one part more than any; it was where a dried-up arm of the
watercourse branched out from the side of the running stream; it would
evidently be converted into a stream itself if only a very little more
water came down from the mountain, for its sandy bed was only just
above the level of the one that was then flowing. After examining the
nature of the ground just there, George gave a little satisfied laugh,
and said, in a deeply mysterious manner--
"Yes, I believe this will do."
By the way he poked about among the loose rocks and stones, and
scratched in the sand with a short stick he had cut in the scrub, it
looked as though he were doing a little prospecting for gold on his own
account. But the thought that there was gold above the fall as well as
below it had not entered his head. Had he been a practical gold digger
he would have recognised at once, from the nature of the stones about
him, that he was amongst the gold-bearing rocks, or rather that the
stones were fragments, brought down from the mountain, of auriferous
quartz.
Having satisfied himself of the practicability of his plan by this
personal survey, he leaped across the stream, and keeping along the
edge of the cliff he soon stood above the place in the main ravine
where they had camped. He saw his brother below him putting the
finishing stitches to his work, and taking up a little pebble he threw
it so that it almost dropped on the hat of the unconscious Alec.
Geordie greeted him with a stave of a song as Alec leaped to his feet
and looked around, and danced a little _corroborree_, all of his own
invention, so near to the edge of the cliff that Alec was almost
frightened out of his senses.
"Come down, you young ape!" he yelled.
"Ape yourself," replied Geordie; but he instantly swung himself over
the edge and began descending at a break-neck pace, and in a moment he
stood by the side of his brother.
"You'll break your neck as sure as fate if you fling yourself about
like that. I never saw such a fellow as you are; you are just like a
cat on your feet. Where have you been?"
"In the waterfall, up the waterfall, and over the waterfall, and I have
come to the conclusion that the waterfall is but a poor creature, and
that we can manage it after all."
"Manage it! What do you mean?"
"I mean what I say, and I think you will agree with me when you hear my
plan, and have examined the stream before it falls from the cliff."
"Plan! what plan?"
"Let me get something to eat first, and then I'll tell you all about
it. I had no breakfast this morning, and I want to 'patter um bittee
damper,' as Murri would say. Come and sit down on this rock, it is a
particularly soft and comfortable one, and well in the shade. Well,
sir, this is my idea," said he, throwing off his cap and giving his
still damp hair a little impetuous shake that was very characteristic
of him. "We must get to the bottom of that pool. It is too idiotic to
have come all this way on purpose, and then to go back without doing
it."
"And how are you going to do it--dive?"
"Be quiet, don't interrupt," said George, putting down by the side of
him the food which in his earnestness he had forgotten to touch. "I
will tell you what I believe we can do. It will take some time, and a
lot of hard work, but of course that doesn't matter."
"No, of course not."
"We must divert the stream from its present channel and send it pouring
over the cliff in another place. I have been up on to the top and have
found a branch of the watercourse which we can use if we can manage to
dam up the present channel."
Alec had sat listening, perfectly silent up till now, but at this point
his admiration broke out.
"What a splendid idea! When did you think of it?" And then, as the
thought struck him that diverting the stream would not solve their
difficulty, he suddenly added, "But that won't empty the pool for us,
that will be as full as ever."
"You jolly old muff, do you think I had not thought of that?"
"Well, and how do you propose to empty it?"
"Drink it all, I suppose," said Geordie, with a bright laugh at the
sudden change from hope to doubt that took place in Alec's face. But,
seeing how anxious he looked, he laid one hand on his brother's knee to
give emphasis to what he said. The novelty and boldness of his own idea
had greatly excited him, though he tried to carry it off lightly; and
when he spoke his voice was lowered, as though there were any one
within some hundreds of miles who could overhear him.
"No," he said, "the pool is no great difficulty after all if we can
only carry out my scheme. The bottom of it is on a level with the
stream, except just in the middle, where it is deeper, and the wall of
rock over which the second little waterfall flows is but a thin one. If
we can break through that all the water in the pool, or nearly all of
it, will rush out into the stream."
"It will be slow work, but we ought to be able to do it."
"We will do it, and not so particularly slowly after all, for I mean to
drill a hole into the rock and blast it up with gunpowder. Margaret
little thought when she told us, before we left, to be sure to take
plenty of powder, to what a purpose we should put it."
"But how much have we?"
"Plenty. We have used very little since we started."
"Geordie," said Alec, as he rose from the stone, "in my opinion you are
a regular genius. Yes, you are; don't deny it."
"Oh, very well," laughed George, "I will be one if you like. It is easy
enough to be a genius if that is all that is wanted. I've only just
thought of a sort of plan, and, mind you, I shall leave all the details
to you, for you always do things so much better than I do."
"Not I; but I am ready to begin at once."
"It is too hot yet, there is not a bit of shade up there on the top of
the cliff. We had better wait till a little later in the afternoon."
"Let's go and examine the pool at any rate. It is not too hot for that,
and I want to have a look at that wall of rock. So come on."
When they had returned to the camp after their visit to the waterfall,
they found that Murri had got back. All that he brought was one
kangaroo rat and a parrot. A very poor result for so long a morning's
hunting.
"This all you get along um gully?" asked George, pointing to the black
fellow's very scanty spoils.
Murri shook his head, and said, "Mine kill pigeums, two pigeums, along
o' _quandangs_. Murri plenty much hunglee. Mine go make fire, cook um
pigeums, and mine _patter_" (eat) "um bofe."
This speech was so characteristic of the Australian black that neither
of the boys was at all surprised at it. Although Murri was in many ways
an exceptional specimen of the aboriginal race, it was not to be
supposed that he should be free from all their faults and failings.
Generosity can hardly be expected to be found among the virtues of a
man who, like his ancestors for countless generations, has always
thought of himself first, and of supplying his own requirements to the
full before he gives away of his superfluity. Murri had killed the
birds by his own skill and with his own strength, and who had so good a
right as he to cook and eat them? That was what he himself would have
said had he been asked, and he felt no shame in owning to George that
he had cooked and eaten them himself. It was as useless to talk to him
of generosity or self-sacrifice as it would be to try to make a man
blind from his birth understand the meaning of colours.
Later in the afternoon, about two hours before sunset, the boys again
walked towards the waterfall. Alec, who was not nearly so good a
climber as George, utterly refused to climb up the cliff at the place
Geordie had first ascended it. He said that he had some respect for his
bones if Geordie had not, and climb up that cliff, which was no better
than a stone wall, he would not. It was with some little difficulty
that they found any less steep place, but they did at last discover
one, some little way to the right hand side of the fall.
As soon as Alec had been shown the channel that George thought best for
their purpose, he began to work. He was never one to spare himself when
there was a difficult task on hand, and he flung himself into this new
labour with all his usual ardour. George found his energy contagious,
and they worked to such purpose that when they left off, some little
time before sunset, they had collected a great pile of rocks at the
edge of the stream with which they intended to begin their dam next
day.
As it was evident, from the amount of work they had before them, that
their stay in the valley would be of some duration, the boys determined
to make more extensive preparations for camping than they usually did.
It was almost too late that night to do anything, but they devoted the
next day to building themselves a sort of little hut, which would not
only shelter them from the heat by day and from the heavy dews of
night, but would serve as some sort of protection if they were again
attacked by _myalls_.
The one great danger in travelling in the wild parts of Queensland is
the probability of being attacked by the fierce black natives, and
every traveller in that little known country should be constantly on
his guard. It is only natural that the native black races should
retaliate upon the white intruders, at whose hands they have suffered
so much; and as they have not the courage, or indeed the weapons, to
enable them to attack a well-peopled station, they wait until they have
a chance of murdering a solitary shepherd, or surrounding and
surprising a small party when travelling away from civilised parts.
It was the thought of their exposed situation in case of an attack that
guided Alec in his choice of a position for their camp. After examining
the gully on both sides, he found a place that he thought admirably
suited to his purpose. On the opposite side of the stream from that on
which they had first encamped, there was a little opening in the side
of the ravine. It was only a sort of wide crack in the rock, down which
perhaps in times of heavy rain a little waterfall might flow. The width
of it across the opening was about ten feet, and it was about the same,
or a little more, in depth, at which distance the two walls of rock met
at an angle.
Alec, who was a practical fellow, saw that this would give him two
sides to his house, and, that if he built a wall of some sort across
the front of it, he would have the shell of a comfortable, although
triangular, shelter. Without waste of further time he and George set to
work to collect a number of the large stones that were scattered
thickly along all the edge of the stream and in it. With these they
slowly (for the work was none of the easiest beneath a blazing tropical
sun) built a wall about four feet high across the front of the little
opening. They knew, from the previous day's experience, that they could
not expect much of that sort of work from Murri, so they set him to
chop down a good big pile of brushwood from the scrub that grew a
little way down the gully. To this kind of labour Murri was much more
accustomed, as the natives build their _gunyahs_ of boughs of trees and
brushwood. He could use a hatchet quite as expertly as the boys, and in
a short time had cut quite as much as they would want for their
purpose.
It took them the best part of the day to get their house finished, for
the stones of their wall would often slip when the boughs were being
forced in between them, and the covering in of the roof took some
little time, as they had great difficulty in fixing the thick ends of
the branches they used for that purpose in the rocky sides of their
house. But by working well they managed to get it done, and had
installed themselves and all their possessions, saddles, guns,
provisions, and stores of every sort--not a great quantity,
by-the-by--in their new camp before the sun had set. It certainly was
more comfortable than sleeping without any shelter, for the nights felt
cold after the great heat of the days, and the dews that fell were
quite heavy enough to wet their blankets and clothes right through.
The floor of the "humpie," as the boys called it, using the word that
in Australia means hut or house or hovel, indiscriminately, was quite
dry, and the roof looked thick enough to keep out all wet, so that they
were in no small degree satisfied with their work when at last it was
finished.
"I say, Geordie," said Alec to his brother, who was busy in front of
their newly-finished home making some Johnny cakes for their supper,
"I've been thinking that it would be foolish for us to announce the
fact of our presence here by firing our guns off. The noise would very
probably be heard by some wretched tribe of _myalls_, and they would be
bouncing here in no time to see what the row was all about; and I think
we have had enough of them for one journey."
"I quite agree with you, most learned sir," said George, lifting up one
floury hand and pushing his cap back that he might see his brother the
better; "I don't want any more _myalls_ just yet. But why do you make
these wise remarks?"
"Because I should like something more for my supper than Johnny cakes
and part of a tinned salmon. I was going to try to get a shot at
something, but I think we had better send Murri, whose shooting isn't
quite so noisy as ours. Hullo, Murri," he added, turning round to that
worthy person, who was hugging his knees by the side of the fire, "you
go kill something. Mine want pigeon, bandicoot, cockatoo, anything.
_Burrima_" (quickly), "you bail go _patter_ him all along yourself this
time." (Don't you eat him by yourself this time.) "If you do," he
added, dropping into his own vernacular, "I'll jolly well punch your
head."
"You had better go with him. I won't put the Johnny cakes in till you
come back."
"Yes, that will be the safest way, and I can have a look at the horses
and see that they have not strayed."
Murri was willing enough to go. A new spirit seemed to possess him when
he was engaged in hunting or work of that kind, and his expressionless
face would light up, and a new fire would shine in his eyes. He seized
his _boomerang_ and other weapons, which were lying by the side of him,
and sprang to his feet to accompany Alec down the ravine.