The Ghost Camp

“‘It was a strange day and a strange sight I saw when I picked up this slug,’ he said. ‘I was never nearer losing my life! – but I’ll tell you all about it another day. You’d better get back to the station now, or you’ll get wet through, and maybe catch cold, and then the master won’t let you come here again.’

“So I was obliged to leave the telling of the story to another day. I forgot all about the silver ore, and, chiefly remembering the strange part of the story, was determined to hear about it from the old man another day.

“It was the late spring-time when we had this talk, old Chesterton and I; but a month or so afterwards I got a holiday, and as the weather was warm and fine I cleared out to his out station, and never rested till I bailed up the old man for another yarn. It is sometimes hot in the island, though you mightn’t think so.”

“Don’t believe him,” growled Mr. Clarke; “it’s a popular error. The seasons have changed. Listen to that!” The rain was certainly falling with a sustained volume, which discredited any references to warmth and sunshine.

“However,” continued Herbert, paying not the slightest attention, “remember, it was at the end of the Christmas holidays, and the rocks felt red hot; there had been bush fires, but the young feed, such as it was, was lovely and green. The air was clear, the sky for once hadn’t a cloud on it, and the old man was in a wonderful good humour for a shepherd.

“‘Well, Master Charles,’ he said, ‘if ye must have it, ye must. I don’t know that it can do you any harm, though it kept me awake for weeks afterwards, and every time the dog barked I felt my heart beat like, and would wake me up all of a tremble. Well, to come to the story, I was sitting on a log half asleep with the sheep camped quiet and comfortable under a big pine, when I heard my old dog growl. He never did that for nothing, so I looked up, and the blood nearly froze in my veins at what I saw. It wasn’t much to scare the seven senses out of me, but I knew how I stood.

“‘A man and a woman were coming down a gully from the direction of the mountain; they were near enough to see me, and it was no use making a bolt of it. I should only lose my life. Anyhow, I couldn’t leave the flock. I should get flogged for that. No excuse was taken for anything of that sort in those days. Following the man was a young gin with a lot of things on her back as if they had been shifting camp. She was much like any other black girl of her age, sixteen or thereabouts, maybe less; they grow up fast and get old fast, too, specially when they are worked hard, beaten, and brutally treated, as most of them are, and this one certainly was. Poor Mary! The man had no boots, and his trousers were ragged, he was mostly dressed in kangaroo skins, and had a fur cap on.

“‘He had a long beard down to his chest; his black hair fell in a mat over his shoulders. He carried a double-barrelled gun, and had a belt with a pouch in it round his waist. He looked like the pictures of Robinson Crusoe, but I didn’t feel inclined to laugh when he came close up and stared me in the face. I had seen, ay, lived with criminals of all sorts since I first came to Tasmania, but such a savage, blood-thirsty-looking brute as the man before me, I had never come across before. He saw that I was afraid; well I might be – if he had shot me there and then, it was only what he had done to others. With a fiendish grin that made him, if possible, more beast-like in appearance, he said: “Did ye ever see Mick Brady afore? No! Well, ye see him now. Maybe ye won’t live long enough to forget him!”

“‘“I’ve heard of you,” I said, “of course.” I tried to look cool, but my teeth chattered, for all the day was so hot. “I’m a Government man, like yourself. I’ve never done you any harm that I know of.”

“‘“No harm!” he shouted, “no harm! Aren’t ye one of old Herbert’s shepherds – a lot of mean crawlers that work for a bloody tyrant, and inform on poor starving brutes like me that’s been driven to take to the bush by cruelty and injustice of every kind. I came here to shoot you, and shoot you I will, and your dog too; the dingos and the tigers may work their will on the flock afterwards. He’ll feel that a d – d sight more than the loss of a shepherd. I know him, the hard-hearted old slave-driver!” God forgive him for miscalling a good man and a kind master.

“‘“Don’t shoot the dog,” I said, “he’s the best I ever had – a prisoner’s life’s not much in this country, but a dog like him you don’t see every day.”

“‘“Kneel down,” he said, “and don’t waste time; ye can say a short prayer to God Almighty, or the devil, whichever ye favour most. Old Nick’s given me a lift, many a time.”

“‘He stood there, with the death-light in his red-rimmed, wolfish eyes, and no more mercy in them than a tiger’s, lapping the blood of a Hindoo letter-carrier. When I was a soldier I’d seen the poor things brought in from the jungle, with their throats torn out, and mangled beyond knowing. Surely man was never in a worse case or nearer death. Strangely, I felt none of the fear which I did when I saw him first. I had no hope, but I prayed earnestly to God, believing that a very few moments would suffice to place me beyond mortal terrors.

“‘The girl meanwhile had crept closer to us and stood with her large eyes wide open, half in surprise, half in terror – as she leaned her laden back against one of the rock pillars which stood around. She murmured a few words in her own language – I knew it slightly – against bloodshed, and for mercy. But he turned on her with a savage oath, and made as though he would add her murder to the long list of his crimes.

CHAPTER VII

“‘At that moment, the last I ever expected to see on earth, the black girl uttered a sudden cry. The report of a gun was heard, as a bullet passed between me and Brady, flattening itself against the rock where I had been leaning just before. At the same time four men dashed across the gully and made for him. He looked at me with devilish malignity for a moment, but I suppose, wanting the charge in his gun for his own defence, turned and fled with extraordinary speed towards the forest, the police – for such they were – with a soldier and the informer, firing at him as he went. Their guns were the old-fashioned tower muskets; they were bad shots at best – so the girl and he disappeared in the thick wood, unhurt as far as I could see. I fell on my face, I know, and thanked God before I rose – the God of our fathers, who had answered my prayer and delivered me out of the hand of the “bloody and deceitful man,” in the words of the Psalmist. I took my sheep home early, and put them in the paling yard – dog proof it was – and needed to be, in that part of the country. Just as it was getting dark, the men came back, regularly knocked up, with their clothes torn to rags and half off their backs. They hadn’t caught Brady. I didn’t expect they would – he was in hard condition, and could run like a kangaroo. He got clean out of sight of them in a mile or two after they left us. What astonished me was, that they brought back the black girl, with a bullet through her shoulder, poor thing!

“‘“I suppose that was a mistake,” said I, “you didn’t fire at the poor thing, surely?”

“‘“We didn’t,” said the soldier, “but who d’ye think did?”

“‘“You don’t say?” said I.

“‘“But I do. It was that infernal villain and coward, Brady himself, that shot her. She couldn’t keep up with him, and for fear she’d fall into our hands, and give away his ‘plants,’ he fired at her, and nearly stopped her tongue for ever. But he’s overdid it this time – she’s red hot agen ’im now, and swears she’ll go with any party to help track him up.”

“‘“Serve the brute right. Let’s have a look at the poor thing’s shoulder, I wonder if the bullet’s still in it?”

“‘We washed off the blood, and between us, managed to get it out. It was wonderful how many people in those days knew something about gunshot wounds. After we’d shown Mary the bullet, we bound it up, and the poor gin thanked us, and lay down on her furs by the fire, quite comfortable. We kept watch and watch, you may be sure, for fear Brady might come in the night, and shoot one of us, but nothing happened, and after breakfast the party went back to Hobart, taking the girl with them.

“‘I was in fear for weeks afterwards that he might come and pay me out. But he didn’t do that either. He was taken not long after, and when he was, it was through that same girl, Mary, whom he tried to shoot. He met his fate through his own base bloodthirsty act, and if any one brought it on his own head, and deserved it thoroughly, Mick Brady was that man.

“‘Now this happened a many years ago, before you were born, or thought of, as the saying is. Often and often, when I could leave the flock safe, did I try to find out the place where this stone came from, but I never could drop on it again. When I found it first and saw that there was a regular lode, and plenty more “slugs” as rich as this, which is nearly pure silver, mind you, I was in such a hurry to get back to the sheep, that I’d only time to mark two or three trees, and drive in a stake, before I started for home.

“‘I was sure I could find it again. But I never did. It was hot weather, and a bush fire started that day, and burned for weeks, sweeping all that side of the country.

“‘You’ll remember reading of Black Thursday, Master Charles? it burned all Port Phillip, Victoria as they call it now, from Melbourne town to the Ottawa range. So I expect my marks were burnt out. For I never could find the way to it again: what with the fallen timber that covered over the ground, and the ashes that was heaped up a foot deep in some places, the whole face of the country was altered past knowing. You might have heard tell that ashes fell on board some of the coasting craft miles from the shore, and a black cloud hung over the coastline, for days afterwards. But, take my word for it, Master Charles, the word of a dying man, for I’m not long for this world, that whoever finds the gully where this stone came from, and takes up a prospecting claim, will own the richest silver mine, south of the line. Your father’s always been a good master to his prisoner servants, that Mick Brady told a lie when he said he wasn’t, and there’s none of ’em that wouldn’t do him a good turn, if they could; and I have known you and loved you ever since you was the height of a walking stick. So here’s the silver “slug,” and the wash-leather bag of specimens, there’s gold and copper besides, and I hope there’ll be luck with them.’

“The poor old chap didn’t live long after that. He was comfortable enough for the last year or two of his life, for my father pensioned his old servants, and his old horses too, for that matter. He couldn’t bear to think that after they’d worked well all their lives, they should be allowed to drag out a wretched existence, starved, or perhaps ill-treated, till death came to their relief. So the silver ‘slug’ was bequeathed to me, this is a bit of it on my watch-chain, with the malachite colouring showing out. It always comes with time, they say. Anyhow it brought me luck in the end, though it was a precious long time coming about.”

“As you’ve brought us so far,” said Jack Clarke, “and Mr. Blount seems interested (he hasn’t been asleep more than twice), I think it would be a fair thing to give us the last chapter. For, I suppose you did find the old man’s marked tree, and if so, how? as lawyers say.”

“As you have deduced, with your usual astuteness, that I must have found it, or we shouldn’t be here, I suppose, I may lay aside my modesty, and enlighten the company. The ‘Comstock’ has a well-marked track now, if there’s nothing else good about it. Old Parkins gave me the bearings of the ‘Lost Gully,’ as he always called it. Once a year, I always took a loaf round the locality after Christmas, poking about doing a little fishing, when there was any: shooting wallaby or anything worth while that I came across. Got an old man kangaroo bailed up at the head of a gully, one day after a big fight with my dogs. I had fired away my cartridges, and was looking round for a stick to hit him on the head with, when I backed on to a stump of an upright sapling, as I thought, out of a ‘whip stick scrub,’ which had grown up since the fire.

“It did not give way, as I expected, and putting back my hand to feel it, I found it was a stake! It was charred all round, but still sound, and hard to the core. Lucky for me, it was stringy bark timber. I pulled it up, and tried it on the old man’s skull, which it cracked like an egg shell. It had been pointed with a tomahawk, and driven well into the ground. That clinched the matter. It was the old man’s peg! The next thing was to clear the ground round about of timber and ashes, with all the accumulation of years. This I did next day, carefully, and it was not long before I discovered a couple of tomahawk marks on a big ‘mess-mate’ not far off. The bark had partly grown over it. It was in the form of a cross. Underneath the new bark the marking was perfect, as I had often seen surveyors’ marks, years and years after they had been done. Then I came upon the cap of the lode, broke off some rock, fifty per cent. ore, no mistake. Blazed my track and cleared for Hobart. Took up a prospector’s claim next morning at 10 a.m. Registered in due form. Met Clarke and accidentally Messrs. Blount and Tregonwell, new – er – that is to say, newly arrived from England, and the great silver property, known to the world as the ‘Tasmanian Comstock, Limited,’ and so on was duly launched.”

“Well done, Charlie, my boy! No idea you’d so much poetry in your composition! You were not regarded as imaginative at the old ‘Hutchins Institute,’ where we both had ‘small Latin and less Greek’ hammered into us. But you were a sticker, I will say that for you. Now that I’m hors de combat, I seem to see that quality in a new light. Main strength and stupidity we used to call it in your case.”

“I’ve no doubt; you were horribly ill-mannered, even without a sprained ankle,” retorted Herbert, “but we make allowances for your condition as an invalid. By the time we get that corduroy track finished, and traffic other than ‘man-power’ restored, we shall look for improvement.”

The next day, being bright with sunshine, dispersed some of the gloom which wet, cold and unwonted fatigue had imposed upon the partners. The shafts of sunlight, flashing through the endless glades and thickets of the primeval forest, formed a thousand glittering coruscations of all imaginable forms and figures.

The pools of water reflected the glimpses of cloudless sky, framed in sombre but still burnished shades of green. Birds called and twittered in approval of the change, while strings of water-fowl, winging their way to the great mountain lakes, told of a happier clime, and the undisturbed enjoyment in which the tribes of the air might revel.

The obvious primary duty after breakfast was to get to the mine itself. The distance was not great, but the task was less easy than might be supposed. The track through the jungle of scrub and forest was necessarily narrow, as the labour necessary for clearing it was great and, therefore, expensive. The tremendous rainfall had turned the adjoining country into a quagmire, the only means of crossing which was by a corduroy road.

On this inconvenient makeshift the friends stumbled along until they came to a collection of huts and tents, the usual outcrop of a mining township, which springs up, mushroom-like, at the faintest indication of proved, payable gold, silver or copper in any part of Australia. Of course there was a “store,” so called, from which proudly flaunted a large calico flag, with “Comstock Emporium” rudely painted thereon, while a few picks and shovels, iron pots and frying-pans, with a half-emptied case of American axes outside the canvas door, denoted the presence of the primary weapons used in the war with nature.

A score or more of shafts, above which were the rude windlasses with rope and bucket of the period, disclosed the beginning of mining enterprise, advertising the hope and expectation of a subterranean treasure-house – the hope invariable, the expectation, alas! so often doomed to barren disappointment and eventual despair.

However, when the prospectors’ claim was reached, within the area of which no intrusion was allowed, the dull grey rock from which Mr. Blount was urged to break down a few fragments disclosed a perfect Aladdin’s cave of the precious metal. His enthusiasm, slow to arouse, became keen, stimulated by this “potentiality of boundless wealth.” His more emotional partner was loudly enthusiastic upon the immense value of the discovery.

“See that stone,” he said, knocking off a corner of the “face,” “it’s all fifty per cent. stuff – when it’s not seventy-five. Look at the native silver and the malachite! I’ve been on the ‘Comstock,’ and the ‘Indian Chief’ in Denver, and can make affidavit that in their best days they never turned out better stone than that – most of it was less than half the percentage, indeed. The ore bodies were larger, you say? No such thing. This lode widens out; the deeper you go, the more there is of it. Easy worked, too. Freight expensive? Wait till the corduroy’s finished to the main road; we’ll have stores and hotels, the electric light, hot and cold water laid on; a couple of clubs, with the last month’s magazines, and The Times itself on the smoking-room table. You don’t know how everything comes to ‘a big field,’ gold, silver or copper, as soon as the precious metal is proved – proved, mind you – to have a settled abode there. Fortune? There’s a fortune apiece for every proprietor here to-day – even for Clarke, who’s now in his bunk reading a yellow-back novel.”

All this fairy-appearing relation turned out to be a sober and accurate statement of facts, as far as could be gathered from the survey made by the partners in the enterprise. The stone, which was of surpassing richness, was principally found in a well-defined lode, forty feet wide, increasing in volume as the shafts pierced more deeply into the bowels of the earth.

A mining expert of eminence turned up, who had, after many perils and disasters, found his way to Comstock. On being permitted a “private view,” he confirmed Mr. Tregonwell’s wildest flights of fancy.

“Nothing in the Southern Hemisphere as rich, or half as rich, has ever been discovered,” he said. He doubted, as did Tregonwell, whether in all the mines from Peru to Denver such a deposit had ever been unearthed. He proved by reference to scientific geological treatises that it was so rare as to have been doubted as a possibility that such a find could occur, but if so, the most apocryphal yield of Peru and Chile would have paled before the size and richness of this Silverado of the Wilderness, so long hidden from the gaze of man.

Then an adjournment was made to the “Emporium,” as it was proudly styled, the meagreness of its materials and adornments being in the inverse proportion to its imposing designation.

But the glory of the future, the assured development of the mine, and, as a natural sequence, of the “field,” was shed around with irradiating effect and brilliancy of colouring. Upon this the proprietor proceeded to dilate, after an invitation to a calico shielded sanctum, sacred to the account books and documents of the establishment. In the centre of the compartment stood a table composed of the top of a packing case, placed upon stakes driven into the earthen floor. At one side was a stretcher with his blankets and bedclothes, surmounted by a gaily coloured rug, upon which the visitors were invited to sit, while the host after placing a bottle of whisky of a fashionable brand upon the festive board, cordially requested his guests to join him in drinking the health of the energetic and spirited proprietors of the Great Comstock Silver Mine.

“Not that it looks much now, gentlemen; no more does this stringy bark and calico shanty of mine. But that says nothing. I was at Ballarat in the ‘fifties,’ and Jack Garth, the baker, had just such a gunya as this. I brought up a load of flour for him, and was paid a hundred and fifty pound a ton for the carriage. The roads were bad certainly – puts me in mind of this hole, in that way; but you could travel, somehow. And look at Ballarat now, with trams, and town halls, and artificial lakes, and public gardens and statues – just like the old country. And Jack Garth, well, he’s worth a couple of hundred thousand pounds, if he’s worth a penny; owns farms and prize stock, and hotels, and everything a man can want in this world. How came that, gentlemen? Because he was a hardworking straightgoing chap? No! that wouldn’t have done it, though he’d always have made a good living – any man of the right sort can do that in Australia. But the gold was there! It was there then, and it’s there now. It floated the whole place up to fortune and fame, the diggers, the storekeepers, the publicans, the commissioners, the carriers, the very police made money: some of ’em saved it too. Didn’t one of ’em own a whole terrace of houses afterwards? Well, the gold was there, and the silver’s here; that’s all that’s wanted for miners to know, and they’ll follow it up, if it was to the South Pole; and mark my words, gentlemen, this place’ll go ahead, and grow and flourish, and make fortunes for us men standing here, and for the er – er – babe unborn.” Concluding his peroration with this effective forecast, which showed that his connection, as member, with the Bungareeshire council had not been without effect on his elocution, Mr. Morgan replenished his glass, and invited his distinguished guests to do likewise.

Hobart, at length. Mr. Blount was unaffectedly pleased, even joyous, when for the second time he sighted the towering summit and forest-clothed sides of Mount Wellington, overlooking the picturesque city, the noble stretches of the Derwent, and the Southern main. Impatient of delay, and feverishly anxious to receive the letters which he had not cared to trust to the irregular postal service of Silverado; almost certain, as he deemed, of answers to his letters from Mrs. Bruce and Imogen, even if the master of the house had not relented, he had stayed a day to ensure the company of the mining expert, the road being lonely, the weather bad, and the conversation of a cultured companion valuable under the circumstances. Mr. Blount ran rapidly through the pile of letters and papers which he found awaiting him; indeed, made a second examination of these former missives.

A feeling of intense disappointment overcame him when no letters with the postmark of the village on the Upper Sturt turned up, nor did he discover the delicate, yet free and legible handwriting, which conveyed such solace to his soul at Bunjil.

Looking over the correspondence, mechanically, however, he came across the postmark of that comparatively obscure townlet, and recalling the bold, characteristic hand of Sheila Maguire, tore it open. It ran as follows: —

“Dear Mr. Blount, – You told me when you went away that cold morning, that if anything happened here that I thought you ought to know, I was to write and tell you. We all thought there would be a heavy fall of rain, and most likely a big storm that night. I expect you just missed it, but there must have been a waterspout or something, for the Little River, and all the creeks at the head of the water, came down a banker. It knocked the sluicing company’s works about, above a bit, and flooded the miners’ huts – but the worst thing it did was to drown poor Johnny Doyle the mailman. Yes! poor chap, it wasn’t known for days afterwards, when the people at Marondah wondered why they didn’t get their mail. He was never known to be late before. However, drowned he was, quite simple too. He could swim first-rate, but the pack-horse was caught in a snag, and he must have jumped in, to loose the bags, and got kicked on the head and stunned. So the packer was drowned, and him too, worse luck! His riding horse was found lower down – he’d swum out all right. They fished up the pack saddle with the mail-bags, but the letters were squashed up to pulp – couldn’t be delivered.

“So, if you wrote to any one down the river, she didn’t get it.

“I thought it as well to let you know, as you might be waiting for an answer, and not getting one, go off to foreign parts in a despairing state of mind. Bunjil’s much the same as when you left, except that Little-River-Jack, the two O’Haras, and Lanky Dixon were arrested in Gippsland, but not being evidence enough, the P.M. here turned them up. A report came that you had struck it rich in Tasmania, so you may be sure of getting all your letters now and some over. I’ve noticed that. So long. I send a newspaper with the account in it of the flood.