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

they trembled only for their tails, and a few took to their claims like startled rabbits. The others stood watching the advance, jabbering excitedly, with the volubility of so many monkeys.

'Wha' for? wha' for?' cried the foremost, when confronted by the Europeans.

'This here's an eviction, I reckon,' drawled Long.

'Go!' said Burton, pointing threateningly.

'Away with the lepers!' yelled the men.

The Chows understood monosyllables, and began to expostulate in pigeon English.

'Charge!' cried Long, and the drive commenced in earnest.

Keeping a solid front, the whites drove the yellow men before them along the lead. Those below were dragged to the surface, and their movements were accelerated by prods from the pick and presently the whole mass was going at a run across the field, the Chinese in front, flying, as they thought, for their lives, the whites following, and the howls of the pursued and the yells of the pursuers united to make an uproar unprecedented on Simpson's Ranges.

'The troopers!' The warning voices came from the left, and the full strength of the force on Simpson's came riding gallantly from that direction, between white men and yellow.

'Pull 'em down!' cried Mike, 'but do no damage.'

'Halt there!' ordered the sergeant, rising in his stirrups, but the crowd took little account of him and his four gallant followers. It swarmed round them for a moment, plucked the five men from their saddles, and passed on, leaving the troopers sprawling on the ground, and driving their horses before them with the terrified Celestials.

The chase continued all the way to Carisbrook, and for a mile or so beyond; but at the river, where the main body of Chinese was overtaken, there was a brief but vigorous fight. The Chinese used their shovels and sticks and stones, and what other weapons presented themselves, in defence of their property, and for about five minutes the hand-to-hand conflict raged with a rattle of pick-handles, a thud, thud, thud of busy clubs, oaths in good round English, and a squeaking and yelling in shrill Chinese, and then the Chows, overborne by numbers, backed, broke, and fled, and the hunt was continued. In two hours' time there was not a Chinaman in sight, and virtuous Europeans were busy washing the golden gravel left near the river, satisfying their consciences when they pinched that only even handed justice had been done in robbing the robbers.

Five weeks passed before the Chinese went creeping back to Simpson's Ranges, and by this time the diggers were engrossed in more important affairs, and offered no serious opposition. It seemed that the trouble was rapidly coming to a head at Ballarat. Wearying of the effort to secure reform by peaceful agitation, the men were arming themselves as best they could. The lawful endeavours of the miners had resulted only in spurring their enemies to greater activity in oppression, and blundering and brutal officials had chosen the moment when the agitation was at its height to institute one of the most strenuous and tyrannical license-hunting expeditions that had been inflicted upon the miners of Ballarat. Diggers were brutally man-handled; in some cases their clothes were torn from their backs, in others they were insulted and beaten by the troopers. The hunt was manifestly an organized and deliberate effort to display the contempt officialdom felt for the men and their cause. Blood ran hotly; there were casual skirmishes between the people and the police, who, while serving as the zealous and willing instruments of oppression, offered the diggers absolutely no protection from the thieves and ruffians infesting the fields.

Arrangements had been made to convey the news of a general rising to the men at Simpson's Ranges in time to enable them to reach the disturbed centre before the outbreak of hostilities, and on a Friday morning, shortly after midnight, Jim Done, Mike Burton, and the three Peetrees set off together. They left their tents as they stood, and carrying only a blue blanket apiece and such arms as they possessed, started on their long tramp to Ballarat as gaily as if bent upon a pleasure excursion. They slept in the Bush on Friday night, and reached the Australian Eldorado on Saturday at about noon. Approaching the field from the north, they were bailed up on the edge of wide lagoon fringed with gum-trees and scrub by a party of men on horseback.

'Halt!' cried the leader.

'What's the matter now?' said Mike.

'I demand all arms and ammunition you may have about you.'

'Then I'm hanged if you'll get them!'

'For the use of the forces of the republic of Victoria,' continued the leader.

But we're goin' to join the rebels.'

'That's all right. You'll be given arms in the stockade. Peter Lalor has been elected chief of the insurgents. I have his warrant here for my action. Arms are badly needed. We can take no chances.'

The mates conferred, and after examining the warrant signed by the rebel leader, resolved to comply with the demand.

'Has there been any fighting?' asked Jim.

'A bit of a shindy with the swaddies in Warrenheip Gully, and an attack on the troopers at the Gravel Pits. Nothing really serious. The Imperial troops were drawn up under arms at our big meeting on Bakery Hill on the 29th. The flag has been floated, the men have taken the oath under it, and are now drilling within the stockade on Eureka.'

'We are none too soon.'

'Not a moment.'

The five men had only their revolvers and a stock of cartridges; these they handed over to the emissary of the 'republican forces,' and continued their journey with eager feet, greatly elated. Ballarat was at this time the centre of the feverish interest the Victorian gold discoveries had excited throughout the world. Men were digging fortunes out of the prodigal earth with a turn of the hand. The Gravel Pits, Golden Point, Bakery Hill, Specimen Hill, Canadian Hill, White Hills, White Flat, and half a dozen other local rushes, were in the height of their amazing prosperity; economists were gravely considering the possibility of this tremendous output reducing gold to the status of a base metal, and Main Road seethed with life.

Done's experiences on Forest Creek and at Jim Crow and Simpson's Ranges had not prepared him for the stormy exuberance of Ballarat. This was the largest, most populous, and most prosperous of all the fields. In a little over two years' time the population of a large town had overrun the Bush, swept the trees from the face of the earth, and had dug at and torn and tortured the wide fields till the landscape resembled a great cemetery where thousands of open graves yawned in advance of a mighty sacrifice. The work of devastation climbed up the hills, overthrowing them piece by piece, and through the debacle the sloven creeks, filled with yellow slurry, and thrown out of their natural courses a score of times by the ravishers, wound their painful way. Tents, glowing whitely under the bright sun, dotted the flats, and gathered into villages of canvas on the sides of the hills. Here and there a flag fluttered in the breeze, and men were everywhere--men remarkably alike in type, strong, bearded, sun burnt, their digger's garb as monotonous as a uniform, but picturesque and easy. Evidently little work was going forward. The excitement of the revolt was at its height, a sense of the imminent climax was in the air, and the men were gathered in knots and meetings discussing the position.

As Jim and his friends came in by Specimen Hill, they saw bodies of troopers being moved as if in drill at the camp on their left. These operations were watched by hundreds of diggers. Further on they saw the massed red coats of swaddies, and heard the faint rattle of kettle-drums. The British flag floated over the camp. A mounted officer in crimson and gold passed them, riding at a gallop, and the sound of a gunshot struck upon their ears, a sharp note of war.

Main Road and Plank Road were well-defined streets of tents and stores. The great majority of the dwellings and places of business were of canvas still, but here and there a pretentious weatherboard hotel, iron-roofed, stood proudly eminent, luring the diggers with a flaring topical sign. Here again the way was crowded with blue-shirted men, smoking, talking, gesticulating, never a coat nor a petticoat amongst them. There were a good many women in Ballarat in '54, but nearly all miners' wives, little was seen of them where the men assembled. Jim noted yet again juvenile levity of the diggers.

The situation was serious enough in all conscience, but the great majority of the miners refused to see it in that light. They had endured much; they felt that it was necessary to assert their rights as men, but the consciousness of their wrongs was borne down in a measure by the light-heartedness that follows great good fortune. Under the influence of a digger-drive or the stimulus of an impassioned speech they could feel keenly; but the sun shone upon them, the virgin gold glowed in their hands, the riot of devil-me-care existence, unchecked by social restraints, called them, and bitterness could not live in their hearts. They danced, and sang, and roared, and were glad, who two or three hours earlier might have offered their lives freely to avenge a slight or to mark their sense of a gross injustice.

Jim and his friends were served with a rough dinner at one of the hotels. The waiter, an old Frenchman, told them that bands sent out by the insurgent leader were taking levies on all hands.

'Some gather at Eureka. Ze fight mus' be soon,' he said; 'but ze crowd--ah, zey laugh, zey drink, zey dance wis ze fiddle, zey will not believe! Et ces a great pity, but zey haff not ze--what, ah?--ze experience.'

'Are many coming in from the other fields?' asked Jim.

The Frenchman shook his head. 'Et ees expect zey will come; but the men say always, "Oh, et will go over!" Ze soldier say not so: they are ver' bitter. My friend, the blow come soon; I go to the army of the republic this to-night.'

'The men are rolling up all right,' said a digger at another table. 'They're rallying them at Creswick again, and on the other fields. We'll have an army of thousands in a week.'

'A week!' cried the waiter. 'My soul! in two day more et will all be up wiss ze republic, suppose zey are not here!'

'That Frenchman's an all-fired skite,' said the digger disgustedly. 'The swaddies don't like the job: they won't strike. We'll have the making of the fight, and we'll call time when it suits us.'

'All the same,' commented Mike later, 'the Frenchman's got the safest grip o' things, it seems to me.'

In the streets the watchword of the most serious of the diggers was 'Roll up!' and the friends heard it passing from lip to lip. They did not lack company on their way to Eureka, but Done experienced a keen disappointment in the absence of deep and genuine emotion amongst the main body of the men. The popular impression was that there would be no fighting; it was thought that the demonstration Lalor and his men were making would have the effect of bringing the powers to reason, and this opinion was held in spite of past bitter experience of the stupid immobility of the Legislative Council in Melbourne.

The five friends were challenged at the stockade, and on expressing their wish to be enlisted were marched before an