Nevermore

It was literally, and in many respects a revival of the golden age, a truly Arcadian time. A truce seemed to have been proclaimed to the world's sad-faced task-workers, to the slavery of desk and plough and loom. Save the exciting labour of the mine – when, perhaps, each stroke of the pick brought down stone heavy with the precious metal, or dislodged ingots and gold dust – work was there none. So, at last, a strong, light box-cart, with a staunch and active draught horse, having been purchased at a reasonable price, – their new-found friend arranged that part of the business, – a start was made one fine morning for Ballarat – the El Dorado of the South. All their worldly goods were packed safely and snugly. There was a canvas tilt, under which Mrs. Polwarth and Tottie would be sheltered from sun and storm, and could sleep at night. There was a small tent in which the men could dispose themselves. The bay horse, led by Jack, stepped off cheerfully and briskly, and then, with the blessings, metaphorically speaking, of their landlord and Mr. Waters, the little expedition set forth. The latter gentleman accompanied them for a short distance, until fairly past the outskirts of the town, and on the broad highway marked by a thousand wheels which led to Ballarat. He volunteered a modicum of advice, limited in quantity, but valuable.

'There's plenty of gold there, never fear, and new finds every day. You may go home with a fortune next year, and in the Red Jacket too, if she keeps lucky and don't get run down. You and that "Cousin Jack" are both workers, I can see it in all your ways. Stick together, you can trust each other, and don't make more friends than you can help. You'll find men by the score there that would cut your throat for a ten-pound note, and chuck Mrs. Polwarth and Tottie down a shaft for the same price. Keep a good look-out at night. Don't drink or play cards with strangers. If you fall across a streak of luck, follow it up to the end, but don't keep gold in your tent. If you don't hit it just at first, persevere all the same. It's bound to come. And now I'll say good-bye, and good fortune to you. Look up Burnett when you come back; if I'm not with him, he'll know my address.'

So their friend – a good and true one in every sense – shook hands with Jack and his wife, kissed Tottie, with whom he left a large parcel of sugar-plums, and departed. It was strange that he and the boarding-house keeper should have taken such a fancy to the party; but such was the fact, and in new countries and wild places outside the pale of ordinary society, sudden and chance-made friendships spring up and blossom into full fruition much more frequently than people in old countries would believe. They had nothing to gain from these emigrants. They only accepted the bare amount due for services rendered. They prevented them from being over-reached in the purchase of that vitally necessary equipment in goldfield days – the horse and cart. They saw, too, that unlike the hero in that exciting Anglo-Colonial romance 'It's Never too late to Mend,' they were put in possession of a horse that would pull down hill as well as up. In fact they acted with simple good faith, generosity, and gratuitous courtesy, all through.

This was not the conduct to be expected from perfect strangers in a 'lawless community' like Melbourne, vide the fiction of the day. But it happened to be true nevertheless.

CHAPTER IV

It is unnecessary to accompany the little party along the somewhat tedious and decidedly muddy road which led the adventurers of the day to the spot 'where the root of all evil grew wild up the country.' O dear old friend, who used to quote this, and make merry over Governor Tarbox, where art thou now? They saw the Royal Mail dash by, drawn by six horses in an American coach, the leather-brace springs of which, and the plank road, were a constant wonder to Jack and Mrs. Polwarth. Now trotted along a dozen well-mounted police troopers, their boots and steel scabbards shining in the sun, conveying 50,000 ounces of gold in a four-horse drag. Anon, a drove of staring, long-horned fat cattle, engineered by a dog of high educational attainments, a black boy, and a couple of bearded, wild-looking stock-riders. Then, again, the bullock team of the period – fourteen bullocks drawing a laden canvas-covered waggon, with a tall Australian driver, the whip of him at times raising hair, at times volleying like musketry – was another unequivocal surprise. A flock of 2000 fat sheep, a drove of unbroken horses, a train of a dozen pack-mules, all these were fascinating novelties and wild surprises to the newly-arrived Britishers.

A few days, however, sufficed to inure the little party to the toils and difficulties of the journey, such as they were, and to teach them to make light of them. The road – as before stated – nearly a mile wide in places, and marked in black mud on the green turf, was visible to the naked eye night or day. Mrs. Polwarth learned to fry chops and steaks and make cakes as if she had been to the manner born, while the men pitched their tents and made their nightly camp as if they had done nothing else all their lives. Tottie, even, used to run about and pick great bunches of yellow flowers, which were so like buttercups, together with daisies and fringed violets, and was the merriest of the party.

'This is going gipsying with a vengeance,' said Lance one day. 'I never expected to find myself driving a cart and hobbling out an old horse, like a tinker on a common; but as it's the regular thing to do, and as this Tom Tidler's ground can't be so very far off now, I suppose one mustn't grumble.'

'It's main cheap travelling,' Jack would reply to these occasional repinings. 'It don't cost much, that's one thing, and the weather seems like taking up, so the little one can play about same as if she was at home.'

Ballarat – at length! The far-famed! – the wonder-town! – the capital of the kingdom of gold! A confused array of huts, tents, weatherboard houses, and stores huddled together, as if rained down from the sky, on the side of a hill partly covered with the iron-stemmed, sombre Eucalyptus. A brook, with yellow waters hurrying down between green and grassy banks. Crowds of silent, preoccupied looking men anxiously engaged in what, to the new-comers, seemed mysterious mining operations. Some were standing mid-leg deep in the creek, protected by thigh boots, rocking curious wooden cases, which looked like children's cradles, and which they afterwards found were called by that name. Policemen and mounted troopers went to and fro among them, or issued from an encampment higher on the hill – which was evidently the headquarters of the executive department. Mud-stained, bearded, and roughly dressed were the greater part of the population; Lance thought he had never seen so many ruffianly-looking fellows before. A marsh, filled with waving reeds, lay on a plateau a short distance to the westward of the field. The green banks looked pleasant to the eye, shaded, as they were, by wide-spreading trees – thicker of foliage than the others.

'If you think well, sir, we might just as well pitch our camp here,' said Jack. 'It's away from the crowd like, and I'll manage to make it snug and home-like in a week or two. We can leave the Missis here while you and I look out for a claim, as they call it.'

So they made their temporary home by the side of Lake Wendouree, as it came afterwards to be called, little dreaming that the day would come when the marsh would be dammed and deepened, when, steamers would ply upon its surface, and boat races and regattas take place thereon, with a thousand school-children holding high festival on its banks.

However, these developments were in the future. Nothing was to be seen now but the waving reeds, the green grass, and a great black log lying on the ground, by the side of which they pitched the tent, as being a species of shelter and handy for purposes of cookery. Then the men wandered through the diggings, talking to the miners, as opportunity offered, and trying to learn something about the recognised method of making a commencement to dig gold.

Chance favoured them the day after they arrived, by the occurrence of a dramatic incident, instructive in its way, as it turned out.

They were walking along the side of the creek, looking at a curiously-silent toiling crowd of 20,000 men, who, working in very small and shallow claims, 16 feet square, on the celebrated 'Jewellers' Point,' were turning up gold in handfuls, panfuls, and, in some instances, nearly bucketfuls.

Suddenly every man raised his head and shouted 'Joe.' Jack and Lance thought the whole crowd had gone mad, as they hasted to join in the chorus. They noticed, however, a dozen or more individuals leave their work and depart unobtrusively. A moment after, a man came running desperately down a gully which led to the creek, hotly pursued by two troopers. He wormed his way among the holes, where the horsemen could not well follow him, and seemed in a fair way of escaping, when he ran nearly into the arms of a constable on foot, whom, coming from another direction, he had not seen. This official, a wily and active person, promptly secured him. He was then handcuffed and led off to the camp, where, to the great astonishment of the Englishmen, who followed to see the end of the affair, he was chained to a log by the leg; evidently a desperate criminal, they decided.

Lance interrogated one of the troopers who remained by the prisoner. 'I suppose he's a hardened offender. Is it for murder or robbery? or only horse-stealing?'

The trooper laughed. 'Well, he ain't what you might call a desprit bad 'un, though he's broke the law. He's been diggin' without a license.'

'What's that?'

'Well, you'll soon find out, young man. If you don't get one, you'll get tethered like this chap here. It's a permit to dig gold, and you have to pay thirty bob a month to the Crown. You didn't think you were going to be let dig up a fortune on Crown land for nothing, did you?'

'Oh, I understand. Well, where can we get one?'

'D'ye see that big outside tent at the camp? Well, that's the Mining Registrar's. He'll give you one apiece, if you've got the cash, and then you can dig gold by the hundredweight, if so be as you can find it.'

'All right. Can I have a word with the prisoner?'

'Oh yes; while I'm here.'

Lance went up to the manacled one and accosted him. 'What's your name, my man?'

'I'm not "my man," or your man or any one else's. Though I'm not a free man, certainly, if it comes to that. Isn't it an infernal shame that a free-born Englishman should be chained up like a dog because he hasn't thirty shillings in his pocket?'

'It doesn't seem right,' said Lance. 'The money's not much, but, of course, a man may be out of luck and not have it. The reason I asked you your name was that I was just going to the Registrar to get a couple of licenses for my mate and myself, and I could get you one at the same time.'

'Didn't I tell you I had no money?' said the man, rather savagely.

'What does it matter about such a trifle? Of course, I will pay for you, and you can give it to me when convenient.'

'Thanks, very much,' said the stranger, with a softened voice and an accent which spoke of different surroundings. 'My name is Hastings. Edward Charles are my Christian names. You must make allowance for my being out of temper. This sort of thing is enough to gall any man, and there will be trouble out of it yet.'

'Now,' said Lance to the trooper, 'if I get a license, as you call it, for our friend here, will you let him go?'

'By rights,' said the trooper, who had a good-natured face, 'he ought to be brought up to-morrow before the Commissioner for not producing his license when called upon so to do by any authorised person. But they're all away, and I can square it – say he had got one that day, or something.'

'That will do,' said Lance, with a smile, as he handed the man a half-sovereign. 'I'll soon have his paper and my own. I can't leave a man – a gentleman, too – like this. That's the tent, isn't it?'

'He's a gentleman, that chap,' said the trooper to himself. 'Any one can see that; just out from home, too. But he's too soft. His money won't last long if he goes and pays up for every chap here that hasn't got a license.'

As it turned out, it was money well invested.

Trevanion went to the tent, where he found a busy gentleman sitting before a table covered with notes and gold and silver, official papers and books, etc., all in rather a state of confusion. He cut short his explanation by asking 'What names?' in a gruff voice.

These being supplied, he filled up three forms printed on parchment, which he cut out of a long narrow book like a cheque book, and, holding them in his hand, said, 'Four pounds ten you have to pay.'

Lance handed over five sovereigns and received ten shillings change. He then glanced at the licenses, consecutively numbered and dated, which gave permission to John Polwarth, Launcelot Trevanion, and Edward Charles Hastings 'to dig and search for gold upon Her Majesty's Crown lands in the colony of Victoria for the space of one month from date.' These documents had been signed in blank – 'Evelyn P. S. Sturt, Commissioner.'

CHAPTER V

The trooper came back to the log with the two 'new chums,' as he, a native-born Australian, would have called them, and turned his back while Trevanion handed Hastings his digging license. He then faced round. 'You've been arrested according to law for digging in Growlers' Gully without a license. Do you now produce one?' Hastings handed him the parchment slip before referred to. 'You hand me this license all correct and regular. I now discharge you from custody, and,' continued the trooper, evidently thinking he ought to say something magisterial and impressive, 'I hope it will be a warning to you.' He then unlocked the padlock, which was passed through a chain which held the handcuff which was round the man's ankle, and released him.

Hastings laughed as he stood up and stretched himself. 'I expected a few strange experiences when I started to dig gold in this extraordinary country, but I never thought to be chained up to a log by the leg. However, it's all in the day's work. You've only done your duty, Doolan, and indeed you've stretched it a bit in letting me off. I'll perhaps be able to do you a good turn some day. Good-bye.'

'Now Mr. – , – I really don't know your name, – Trevanion, thanks, I see you and your friend are just off the ship and therefore not up to the wicked ways of digging life. I may say now that I hold myself deeply indebted to you. In requital, if you'll come to Growlers' Gully, where I'm hanging out, I can lay you on to a "show," as we miners call it, that may turn out something good.'

'We know nothing as yet,' said Lance. 'We're quite raw and inexperienced, therefore shall be very glad to go to Growlers' Gully or any other place, if there's a chance of setting to work in good earnest.'

'The best thing you can do, then,' said his new friend, 'is to walk out there and stay in our tent to-night. To-morrow you can get back and show your party the way. It's no good staying where you are.'

'Done with you,' said Lance. 'Jack, you can go back and tell your wife,' and away they went. After walking three or four miles, a kind of open ravine, which in Australia is called a gully, presented itself. The tents were thinner and the miners not quite so busy. 'That's our tent,' said Hastings, 'and there's my mate sitting on a log outside, smoking and wondering what's become of me. Hulloa! Bob, did you think I was lost or in chokee? This is Mr. Trevanion; he's stood my friend or else I should have spent the night on the chain, so we must lay him on to a show, if there's one in the gully.'

'It's a nice way to treat a Christian, chaining of him up like a dorg, ain't it, sir?' said the miner slowly. 'It'll raise trouble some day, I'll go bail. Proud to see you, sir. There's plenty of tea in the billy, it'll soon warm up. Luckily I baked last night and there's a goodish lump of corned silver-side of beef. You'll be ready for dinner, both on ye, I reckon.'

'This child is,' said Hastings, and 'Mr. Trevanion has had a goodish walk, which ought to sharpen his appetite. That's right, Bob.'

As he spoke, his companion, who, if slow of speech, was evidently a man of action, placed some tin plates on a small table in the tent, knives and forks, with a large loaf, half a round of cold corned beef, and a bottle of pickles. This done, he poured out two pint pannikins of tea, and sitting a little way off outside, filled his pipe and lit it afresh.

'Mind them Irishmen that took up number six claim above Jackson's?' inquired he.

'Think I do,' mumbled Hastings, whose mouth, like some people's hearts, was too full for utterance. 'Think I do; what about them?'

'What about 'em?' returned Bob. 'Why, they've jacked up and cut it. Said they wanted summut more certain. A dashed good show, I call it.'

'There's a chance for you, Trevanion,' said Hastings. 'Go and peg it out the moment you've finished this humble meal. You've got twenty-four hours to be at work in it. But the sooner you make a start the better. I shouldn't like to see you lose it. Bob will go with you.'

Lance made very good time over the corned beef, which he couldn't be induced to leave for a while. But he and Bob made a formal pegging out half an hour afterwards, thus taking legal possession of two men's ground.

The very next morning saw the party duly installed. Mrs. Polwarth and Tottie had arrived, the tent was pitched, a fireplace made, the windlass fitted with a new rope, and Lance and Jack working away as if they had been mining all their lives.

For nearly a fortnight the two men toiled and delved, one winding up and the other picking and shovelling away at the various strata which intervened between them and the precious ore they hoped to discover.

'We shan't get no gold here, I don't believe,' quoth Jack, mournfully, one day. 'I've heard of a grand diggings only fifty miles off. I'm warned they're a-pickin' of it up in handfuls.'

'It wants ten days to the end of the month,' replied Lance. 'I like to stick to things when I've begun. Suppose we make up our minds to keep at it till then. It isn't fair to Hastings to run away without a good trial.'

'All right, Mr. Lance, we'll give it till the thirty-first. If we don't hit it then, I'm off to Forest Creek for good. Until then we'll see who can work the hardest.'

As far as manual labour was concerned there had now come to be perfect equality between the man of birth and the son of toil. Stalwart and symmetrical always, the frame of Lance Trevanion had now acquired from daily labour and simple food the muscle and elasticity of an athlete in full training. Hour after hour could he swing the pick and lift the shovel weighted with clay and gravel, or wind up the heavy raw hide bucket, fully loaded, without the slightest sense of fatigue, with hardly a quickening of the breath. The healthful, yet abundant, food always procurable at a prosperous digging, amply sufficed for all their needs; the sound and dreamless sleep restored strength and tissue, and sent them forth ready, even eager for the morning's toil.

As Lance walked among the tents, or strolled up the busy lighted street on Saturday night, resplendent in clean flannels or a half-worn shooting-jacket of fashionable cut, many an admirer of form, even in that lanista of magnificent athletes, the flower of the adventurous manhood of many a clime, stopped to make favourable comment on the handsome young Englishman who had come to the gully with 'Callao' Hastings.

Just one day before the last one of the month, when the partners were already inquiring the distance of the first stage to Forest Creek, Lance broke into a stratum of decomposed rock mingled with quartz gravel. This was from a foot to eighteen inches in depth, and extended across the shaft. They did not know – ignorant as they were of the humblest mining lore – what had happened till they consulted their guide, philosopher, and friend, Hastings.

'Why, you've bottomed,' he made answer, with a look of profound wisdom, 'I'll go down and have a look at the "wash."'

They lowered him down. Ten minutes after he sent up the bucket, half-full; then, after the rope was lowered, came up himself. 'Get a tin dish and carry it down to the creek till I wash the "prospect,"' quoth he.

He filled the dish with the 'wash-dirt,' as he called it, dipped it again and again in the yellow waters of the creek, sending out the clay-stained water with a circular twist of his wrist, in a way incomprehensible to Lance and Jack. Lastly, when bit by bit all the clay and gravel had disappeared, leaving but a narrow ring of black and gray sand around the bottom of the dish, he spoke again —

'Look there,' he said meaningly.

They looked, and saw dull red and yellow streaks on the upper edge of close-lying grains, with an occasional pea-like pebble of the same colour.

'Is that – is that – ?' asked Lance in a husky voice.

'Gold!' shouted Hastings, 'yes, that's what it is. I call it an ounce to the dish, with eighteen inches of wash-dirt for the whole width of the claim; your fortune's made. It's a golden hole, nothing less, and one of the richest on the field.'

So it was… Day after day the partners cradled the precious gravel; day after day they returned to their tent with a tin pannikin or camp kettle containing enough of the precious metal to cause the most pleasurable excitement in the owners, and to occasion exaggerated reports of their wealth and the inexhaustible richness of the claim to pervade the field.

'You'll have to look out now,' said Hastings, impressively, one day. 'You've got a most dangerous and unenviable reputation. You've supposed to have gold untold in your tent. Do you know what that means here?'

'But we take our gold to the Commissioner every day,' said Lance, 'and we see it sealed up and labelled and put in a safe before we leave.'

'That's all very well, and the most sensible thing you could do, but nothing will persuade some of those fellows, with which the gully is getting too full to please me, that you don't keep gold or cash in your tent.'

'Well, what of that?'

'What of that among some of the greatest scoundrels unhung? Fellows that for a ten-pound note would chop Mrs. Polwarth up for sausages and fry Tottie with bread sauce, after knocking both of you on the head? You don't know what a real bad digging crowd is, and when you do it may be too late.'

Now the reign of Plutus had set in, as far as Lance and his companion were concerned. A few short weeks and how had their prospects changed. What was now their position? – shovelling in gold at the rate of five hundred pounds a week per man. It seemed like a dream, a fairy tale to Lance. A year or so at most of this kind of work and he would be able to return to England in the triumphant position of a man who had seen the world, who had been, as the phrase runs, the architect of his own fortune, who had boldly accepted the alternative rather than own himself in the wrong, and who now had carried out what he had vowed to do in spite of the incredulity of disapproving friends.

And his cousin, his beloved Estelle, what would be her feelings? He wrote to her at once, telling her to abandon all doubt and fear on his account. Where were her prophecies now? He should always bless the day on which he sailed for Australia. He might even go the length of thanking his father for his stern reproof, his unjust severities. After all it had been for the best. It had made a man of him. Instead of lounging about at home, or idling on the continent (for he would never have taken his degree if he had stayed at Oxford till he was gray), he had seen what a new country was like, met numbers of the most interesting people, learned how to carry himself among all sorts of queer characters, learned to work with his hands and to show himself a man among men. To crown all, he was making eight or ten thousand a year. With a little judicious speculation he was very likely to double or quadruple this. And in three years from the day he left she would see him back again, he had almost said dead or alive. What talks they would have over his adventures and wonderful, really wonderful, experience! loving each other as of old and rejoicing in one another's society. The life agreed with him splendidly. He was in famous condition, and except that he was sunburned and a little browner, there was no change to speak of. She would be able to judge if he had altered for the worse in manner or lost form. Perhaps he had roughened a little by associating with all sorts and conditions of men, but it would soon come back again when once more he found himself among his own people and near his heart's darling, Estelle.