In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson (best classic books TXT) 📖

the ring, wasting energy in terrible blows that were rarely within a foot of their object, while Done, who scarcely seemed to be fighting at all, slipped in every now and again and battered Pete's body, chary of hitting his cut and swollen face. This was maintained for two rounds more, and three times Quigley went down. When time was called for the seventh round Jim said decisively:

'I'll fight the man no more! He's beaten!'

There was a yell from Quigley's corner, and Pete rushed Jim, forcing him back among the men. Again they clinched, but Jim broke away, and Quigley followed, almost blind, and scarcely able to stagger. Done put him off with the left, and drove in a right-hand blow that took Pete on the point of the chin, sending him to earth, helpless and hopelessly beaten.

'Jimmy Done's the winner,' said Kyley authoritatively, when a measure of quiet was restored, 'an' I don't mind sayin' I ain't seen a prettier bit o' fightin' this five year. You've got a lot o' Tom Sayers's dainty tricks, my lad!' he added, shaking Done by the hand.


XI

THE miners pressed about the victor, eager to shake hands with him, and invitations to drink were showered upon him. Aurora clamoured on the out skirts of this crowd, trying to fight her way through, still half delirious with excitement and exultation, calling Jim's name. Her rapture was uncouth, half savage; she had many of the instincts of the primitive woman. But Mike dragged Done's shirt over his head and led his mate away. Burton prepared a hot tub for Jim that night, and after nine hours' sleep the hero awakened on Sunday morning with only a bruise or two, a lump on his forehead, and a stiff and battered feeling about the ribs, to remind him of his fight with Quigley.

It was a pleasant morning, the winter was already well advanced; but only an improved water-supply, an occasional wetting at the windlass, and the need of a rug on the bunk, marked the change of season, so far as Jim could see. There was no place for verdure on Diamond Gully; the whole field turned upside down, littered with the debris of the mines, washed with yellow slurry, and strewn in places with white boulders and the gravel tailings sluiced clean by the gold-seekers. The creek, recently a limpid rivulet, was now a sluggish, muddy stream, winding about its tumbled bed; but a bright sky was over all, and a benignant sun smiled upon the gully, scintillating among the tailings and burnishing the muddy stream to silver. The tents looked white and clean, and the smoke from the camp-fires rose straight and high in the peaceful atmosphere. A strange quiet was upon the lead; it needed only the chastened clanging of a church-bell to complete the suggestion of an English Sabbath.

Jim was sitting on the foot of his bunk reading. Mike had gone up the creek on a prospecting expedition. Presently a magpie in a dead tree at a little distance burst into full-throated melody. Done dropped his book to listen. That clarion of jubilation always delighted him. It seemed to him that if the young Australian republic men were talking of ever came into being its anthem must ring with the wild, free notes of its bravest singing-bird.

'So the bold hayro was not kilt intoirely?' Aurora was smiling in at him, her eyes full of sunshine, her cheeks suffused with more than their wonted colour. 'Are ye axin' me in? Thank ye, kind sir.' She slipped into the tent, and, placing a hand upon each shoulder, examined him critically, while he smiled back into her face, and wondered why she brought with her suggestions of a bounteous rose-garden. 'Ah, Jimmy, I thought I'd hardly know ye!


'"Where are your eyes that looked so mild?
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild,
When my poor heart you first beguiled?"


She sang no more, but sank upon his knee, and her arms were about his neck. Her accent was mischievious, but there was the fire of rubies in her eyes.

'They're both there fast enough,' laughed Jim. 'An' niver a black one among them. The big fellow didn't spoil your picture, then? Ah, Jim, it was fine! fine! fine! It maddened me with delight to see you beating him. You--you sprig of a fighting devil, I love you for it!'

Jim's heart took fire at hers. He strained her to him, and his lips sank upon her handsome, eager mouth in a long kiss that transported him.

'Dearest, you have kissed my heart,' she whispered. 'You fought him for the love of me, didn't you?'

Only twice in his life had he kissed a woman, and as if greedy from long fasting he kissed her now, lips, cheeks, eyes, and neck. His lips searched the deep corners of her mouth.

'But you don't say you love me, ma bouchal!' Aurora murmured, and her arms tightened about his neck.

'You are beautiful! You are beautiful!' he said fiercely.

'But you don't say you love me!'

'I love you! I love you! I love you!' There was not now in the young man's mind any self-questioning; there was no probing for logical reasons, no doubting, no examining emotions in a suspicious, pessimistic spirit. Done abandon himself to the delicious intoxication of the moment, and Aurora was transfigured under his caresses her aggressiveness, her bonhomie, her bold independence of spirit, were all gone; she developed a clinging and almost infantile tenderness, and breathed about him a cloud of ecstasy.

When Burton returned in two hours' time, Done said nothing about Aurora's visit, but Mike did not fail to mark his mate's demeanour, which was unusually thoughtful.

'Not feelin' too bright, old man?' asked Mike

'Nonsense, Mike; I'm all right.'

'Thought p'r'aps those rib-benders o' Quigley's were pullin' you up.'

'Not a bit of it. I haven't a thought to spare for Quigley.'

Burton understood better later in the evening, when he saw Jim and Aurora sitting together at Kyley's in the dim corner furthest from the wide fireplace, and the Geordie touched him on the arm and jerked his thumb in their direction.

'She was down to your tent to see after her champion this mornin',' he said.

'Spoils to the victor!' said the Prodigal.

Mike's eyes drifted towards Jim and Aurora several times during the evening, and he thumbed his chin in a troubled way. He had been thinking it was almost time to try fresh fields; but it was not going to be so easy a matter to shift as he had imagined.

A few nights later, seizing the opportunity when he was alone in the tent, Jim cut the stitches that secured the locket containing Lucy Woodrow's portrait in the breast pocket of his jumper, convenient to his heart; and drawing from under his pillow the tin box that held his mother's brooch and picture, and the few papers and heirlooms he cherished, he placed Lucy's gift somewhat reverently amongst his treasures, and hastily stowed the box away again. He had formulated no definite reason for doing this, and experienced some contrition in performing the act, and a sense of relief when it was done.

The young man's complete victory over Quigley made his reputation throughout Diamond Gully. Pete Quigley had two or three hard-won battles to his credit, and it was thought there was no man on the field so hard to handle, with the exception of Ben Kyley, whose showing against a professional of Bendigo's calibre set him on a plane above the mere amateur. Pete confessed himself beaten without equivocation.

'I ain't got any patience with this blanky new fangled style o' fightin',' he said. 'A man ought to toe the scratch an' take his gruel like a man. With those Johnnie-jump-ups it's all cut an' run, an' I admit it licks me. I ain't neither a foot-racer nor a acrobat, an' Done gave me as much as I cared about.'

Indeed, Quigley looked it. The fact was patent on the face of him, and he would not be in a condition to dispute the thoroughness of his trouncing for three weeks at least.

Jim was regarded as a celebrity. Strangers even went to him, and gravely asked to be permitted to shake hands with him as such. He was pointed out to newcomers, and observed on all hands with a serious respect that had all the comedy of piquant burlesque.

''Pon my soul, Mike!' said Jim, 'if your republic comes while my popularity lasts, I shall be first President.'

'Well,' answered Mike soberly, 'if you could talk as well as you fight, I'd like your chances.'

Done's opportunity of increasing his popularity came on the following Saturday. The Saturday afternoon off was strictly observed on the rushes. The miners were nearly all batchers--that is, bachelors keeping house for themselves--and the tidy men amongst them needed one half-day for washing and cleaning and putting their tents in order. Only the more prodigal spirits cared to pay Mrs. Kyley's exorbitant rates for laundry work, and for the others who cherished a respect for cleanliness--the nearest the ordinary digger came to Godliness--Saturday afternoon was washing day, and scores might have been seen after crib outside their tents performing the laundress's office, usually astride a log, on which 'the wash' was spread to be alternately splashed and soaped and rubbed. Saturday was the great 'settling day,' too. If there were any differences to be fought out, or any disputes requiring the nice adjustment of the prize-ring, they were almost in variably made fixtures for Saturday afternoon.

For a month past Aurora had forcibly taken over the mates' washing, and as they were well-disciplined batchers who performed their domestic duties effectually from day to day, for them Saturday afternoon was really a holiday; and on this particular afternoon they were sitting in the open, sunning themselves, and talking with the Prodigal of the latest news from Ballarat, where the leaders of the diggers' cause were agitating resolutely for alterations in the mining laws and reform of the Constitution, when a party of about twenty men approached them from the direction of Forest Creek. The party halted at a distance of about fifty yards, and after a short conference two of the men came on.

'Hello!' said Mike, 'here's trouble.'

'Five ounces to a bone button they are looking for fight, added the Prodigal.

'Good day, mates!' The foremost of the two strangers greeted them with marked civility, and the friends replied in kind. 'One of you is the man that beat Pete Quigley, we're told.'

'This is Jim Done,' said Mike, giving an informal introduction, indicating Jim with the toss of a pebble.

'Glad to know you,' the other said, with some show of deference. 'Fact is, we've got a man here who's willing to fight you for anything you care to mention up to fifty pounds.'

'What!' cried Done in amazement.

'Oh, quite friendly, and all that. He hasn't anything against you.'

'Confound his cheek! Does he--do you think I've nothing better to do than to offer myself to be thumped by every blackguardly bruiser who comes along?'

'Softly, mate; no need for hard names. We come here as sportsmen, making you a fair offer, thinking, perhaps, you'd be glad of a bit of a rough-up this fine