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

of anyone coming this way, you'll send a message, Jim?'

They were interrupted by three or four diggers, and in the course of half an hour the tent filled. Aurora was very charming that night, very gracious, very like the Aurora who supervised their open-air tea the night of Lambert's big speech, but less buoyant. Jim felt her soft touch upon him many times, and watched her with curiosity. She had retained this peculiar quality of provoking faint wonder. He felt that he had not known her thoroughly, and drifted into the building of the suitable future for her with many 'ifs' and 'buts.'

'I am going, Joy,' he whispered later.

'Not here,' she said, taking his arm. 'Outside.'

They passed out together, and stood by the big tree in which Mrs. Ben's stock was hidden.

'Good-bye!' he said.

'It's hard!' She put her hands upon his shoulders, and her voice trembled. 'I've been pretty badly in love, Jimmy. Remember that in kindness, Won't you? It seems to excuse a good deal. It might even excuse a poor colleen makin' the fool an' all iv herself.' The brogue sounded deeply pathetic. 'A kiss,' she whispered quickly. 'One of the old kisses, dear.'

As he bent down to her his cheek crushed a tear on hers, and he was touched deeply. The kiss was long and tender; as the kiss of a man for whom there was only one woman in the world, and she not the one being kissed, it was emphatically successful. It drew a deep sigh from poor Aurora, and thrilled Jim with not a little of the old rapture.

'Good-bye!' she said; but her fingers clung to him.

'Good-bye!' he repeated, taking her hands in his.

'Have you the little heart of gold?' she asked.

'It's here.' He drew it from his pocket.

'Give it back to me.'

He pressed it into her hand, kissed her cheek, and hurried away. Aurora stood for some minutes turning the nugget over and over in her fingers; then she moved to the shanty door and looked in, but turned away with a muttered exclamation, and went to the entrance of the back tent.

'You'll have to attend to those brutes in there,' she said to Mary Kyley. 'I've had as much as I can stand for one night.' She threw herself upon her bed, and hid her face in the pillow.

'Has he gone, dear?' asked Mrs. Kyley, laying a big but gentle hand upon the girl.

Aurora nodded her bead in the pillow, and after looking at her in silence for a moment, Mary went in to attend to her customers, shaking her head sadly as she went. When she peeped into the back tent again an hour later Aurora still lay face downwards upon the bed.

'Are you asleep, Aurora?' whispered Mrs. Ben. 'No!' answered the girl fiercely. 'For God's sake, don't bother me!'

Mrs. Ben went away again, sadder than before.

'Oh, the men, the men!' murmured the wise woman. 'To think of the good women wasted on them, and the chits they're often wasted on!'

Jim Done enjoyed the tramp to Simpson's Ranges. The weather was fine, the country was picturesque, and the company highly congenial. He liked the Peetrees better in his present mood, and his interest in the popular movement that was to culminate at Eureka was deepening daily. He had even addressed a small meeting of miners on the subject of the rights of the people, and he was no pusillanimous reformer. He declared the diggers had reached that point at which toleration meant meanness of spirit. The thought of civil war was appalling, but not so much so as the degradation of a nation in which the manhood plodded meekly under the whip, like driven cattle yoked to their load.

The men carried small swags, having entrusted their tools and tents to teamsters, and, travelled quietly, taking four days to accomplish the journey. The route lay through trackless country. As yet few parties from Forest Creek had set out for Simpson's Ranges, and Jim and his friends encountered no other travellers until they were approaching the new rush, and then the road assumed the familiar characteristics, and the noisy, boisterous troops went gaily by. These might have been the identical men who tramped to Diamond Gully through the Black Forest, so much did they resemble the former in their joyousness and their wild exuberance of word and action, and in their manner of conveying their belongings too, and in their frank good-fellowship. But by this time Jim was an experienced Antipodean, and knew that in such circumstances men always behave much in the same way, and that dignity is the first oppressive observance to be abandoned immediately man breaks loose from the restraints of society. The novelty had gone from the rushes, but not the charm. The sight of the courageous, healthy, happy gold-seekers swinging by struck sympathetic chords in his own heart. He had kindred impulses, and was by far the most jubilant of his party, the Bush-bred Australians being the least demonstrative of all the men on the track.

On the morning of the fourth day Jim encountered a face he knew amongst a party of five travelling with a waggon.

'Hullo, Phil Ryan!' he said.

Phil advanced with a puzzled expression on his face, that presently gave way to a broad grin.

'The Hermit!' he cried, and, seizing Jim's hand, he shook it with effusive heartiness. One might think he had occasion to remember Done for many kindnesses, whereas the ignominious beating the Hermit had given him on the Francis Cadman was all he had to be grateful for.

'I've given up trying to be a hermit,' said Jim. 'There was nothing in it.'

'Begor, I'm that glad!' said Phil, and he certainly looked radiant. 'But you're th' changed man, Done. I hardly knew you wid th' amiable shmile. Have things been goin' rare an' good?'

'They have, Ryan. I'm a made man.' Jim meant the expression to be taken in a spiritual rather than a pecuniary sense.

It's hearin',' said Phil. 'My soul, but it's th' great land, man! I've had more gold through me hands these twelve munts than I iver dramed iv before. But it don't shtick,' he added ruefully, glancing at his horny palms.

'And the others--have you heard of them?'

'We broke up into twos an' twos whin we come near Geelong, fer fear iv being nailed by th' police fer disertion. Jorgensen's made his pile over be Buniyong; an' Tommy th' Tit--him what seconded me in th' bit iv a contention we had aboard--have been rootin' out nuggets be th' tubful at Ballarat, an' talkin' fight and devilment t' th' min iv nights in th' intherests iv peace an' humanity an' good gover'mint. Be th' same token, there's goin' t' be no ind iv sin an' throuble down there, an' I'd be sorry to be missin' it.'

'He's no true digger who'll stand out when the time comes, Ryan.'

'Thrue fer you, man. Och! it's a lovely land fer a gravyince, an' I'll niver lave it.' He looked Jim up and down again. 'It's put th' good heart in you, Done.' Jim nodded smilingly. 'D'ye be hearin' iv th' little lady from off the ship?' continued Phil, as if following a natural sequence.

'Yes,' answered Jim, his cheeks warming a little. 'She is with Mrs. Macdougal at Boobyalla, just beyond Jim Crow, and is well and cheerful.'

'Good agin!' Ryan sighed heavily as he resumed his swag. 'It's th' on'y thing I'm lamentin' here, th' mighty scarcity iv fine wimmin,' he said.

'They'll be bringing them out by the ship-load presently, old man.'

'Th' sooner th' quicker. Manewhoile I haven't seen th' taste iv one fer sivin munts. So long to you! We'll be meetin' on the new rush?'

'Yes. So long and good luck!'

Phil hastened on to overtake his mates, and Jim, looking after him, wondered that he had ever been anything but good friends with this man, whose lovable, ugly face radiated geniality as a diamond reflects light.

Simpson's Ranges at first sight was a repetition of the other fields Jim had seen. The scene was one of intense excitement. No experience prepared the ordinary miner to take the possibilities of a new field in a philosophical spirit. The impetuosity, the bustling hurry, and the clamour that had so impressed him at Forest Creek were repeated here. Everywhere over a space of some fifty acres tents were being unfurled and carts and waggons unloaded in the midst of chaotic disorder. The feverish eagerness of new arrivals to peg out their claims on a rich lead accounted for much of the tumult. Those already in possession of golden holes were working like fiends to exhaust their present claims, and secure others before the land was pegged out all along the lead and the whizzing of windlasses and the monotonous cries of the workers added the usual character to the prevailing clamour.

Storekeepers who had dumped their stocks down in the open air were desperately busy, serving profane customers, or running up hasty structures over their goods. Newcomers were pouring in like visitors to a fair, shouting as they came, and of all the people Jim could see, Mike Burton and the Peetrees alone were prepared to take things calmly. For his own part, he had again proof of his susceptibility to the humours of the crowd; the excitement of the scene communicated itself to him; he wanted to add to the noise and the movement without acknowledging any sensible reason for doing so.

'Me an' Mike 'll get up the lead an' spike a claim while you boys rig the tent,' said Josh.

The mates had brought one tent to serve them, pending the arrival of their other belongings. It had been resolved that the five men should work on shares during their stay at Simpson's Ranges, and Mike and Peetree senior secured the land to which the party was entitled under its licenses.

'She's well in on the lead all right,' said Josh, commenting on their claim that evening after tea, 'an' if we don't hit it rich I'm a Dutchman.'

Josh's opinion proved correct in the main. Mike cut the wash-dirt on the following evening, and after sinking in it to the depth of two feet, washed a prospect that promised the party an excellent return for their labour. So far Jim Done had every reason to be grateful for his luck; and the diggers were nearly all implicit believers in luck; a faith they held to be justified by the scores of instances recited of good fortune following individuals through extraordinary conditions, when less favoured men all around them were not earning enough to satisfy the storekeepers.

Although the various Victorian rushes were much alike in general character, some peculiarity attached to each of them. Jim Crow was famous for its vigorous and varied rascality; Simpson's Ranges became notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand. Jim did not doubt that hands so slick in the manipulation of cards were worth all the care Mr. Levi Long devoted to them. Jim became rather interested in Long. The man was an amusing blackguard, and took the 'gruellings' that occasional manual lapses