The Ghost Camp

Possibly he did, as he was wedged in, close to Sheila, and what he had to say was in a softly, murmurous tone; akin to that of the surges on the shore, which the silence of the summer night made clearly audible.

After the triumphant success of the ball, other entertainments followed in quick succession, in which the visitors, civil, naval and military, vied with each other in keeping up the excitement, so that the season of 18 – was long known as the most successful, harmonious, and generally mirthful period recorded in Tasmanian annals. Races, regattas, picnics, gymkhanas, were in turn attended by crowds of visitors from all the colonies.

Of four-in-hand drags there was quite a procession. Agriculture was prospering. Stock was high in price and quality. Mining operations and investments not only in this, but in all the other colonies, were phenomenally payable. The financial glow shed by the ever increasing, almost fabulous yield of the Comstock, and of the great copper and tin mines, Mount Lyell and Mount Bischoff, gave a magical lustre to all monetary transactions. A kind of Arabian Nights’ glamour was cast over the existence of the dwellers in the land, and of all the excited crowds who had hurried to the favoured isle, where Aladdin’s Cave seemed suddenly to have opened its treasure chambers in real life and in broad day, to the favoured inhabitants of the Far South Isle.

Foremost among the gay throngs who seemed bent upon taking fullest advantage of the revelries of the period – so appropriate, so suitable, so thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of the hour, were the festive celebrities of the Victorian party, by which name they began to be known.

Mr. Blount had no notion of receiving all the benefits of his newly acquired possessions without doing something in requital. His liberality was unbounded. He subscribed generously to all charitable societies and local institutions. He gave picnics, dances and fishing parties. He even went the length of chartering a steamer and carrying off a large fashionable party to the weird, gloomy solitudes of Macquarie Harbour.

Here the frolic-minded crowd found their spirits lowered, and their imagination darkly disturbed, as they roamed amid the ruinous prison-houses, where rotting timbers told the tale of long neglect; of fast-fading memories of crime and suffering. They gazed on the immense, tenantless buildings, with hundreds of cubicles, the mouldering walls, roofless and ivy-grown, the church where it was deemed that the wretches whose lives were one long foretaste of hell, might be turned to hopes of Heaven, after completing a life of imprisonment, torture and despair. Vehicles were in attendance, besides saddle-horses and guides, under whose safe conduct the revellers made their way to the silent, deserted settlement, whence long ago the ghastly procession of chained men marched at morn to commence each day – a day in which they cursed their birth hour at dawn and eve, ending it by trusting that each night might be their last. The visitors trod the rotting planks of the stage, where fierce dogs had bayed and torn at their chains, as they scented the escaping convict – where more than one such desperate felon had been literally torn in pieces, or escaped the hounds to die a more terrible death amid the sharks which swarmed around the pier. These and other relics of the bad old days of mystery and fear, having been shudderingly regarded by the awed and whispering company, the Albatross departed with a fair wind, a smooth sea, and her much relieved visitors, who,

“Ignorant of ‘man’s’ cruelty,Marvelled such relics here should be.”

Yet as the stars came out and sat upon thrones, looking with sleepless eyes upon the shadowy outlines of the darksome forest and the savage coast, a wailing nightwind arose sounding as a ghostly accompaniment to the dirge-like murmur of the great army of the dead – buried and unburied – around the accursed charnel-houses, which had polluted even that Dantean wilderness!

“Oh! let us get away from this dreadful place!” said Imogen, clinging to her husband’s arm, “and I vote against seeing any other Chamber of Horrors. We come to Hobart for rest and pleasure while this halcyon season lasts. Let us not sadden our souls by one thought of the terrors in which this place is steeped. I should like to blot out their very memory and consume the relics off the face of the earth.”

It must not be considered, either, that the “Truce of God” (as cessation of siege or battle was medievally termed), which the Happy Isle proclaimed to the war-worn denizens of other colonies, less happily situated for rest and recreation, was entirely devoted to Play. This year was the session, wisely ordained as fitting in with the general vacation, for the meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Science.

Hither came, therefore, to leaven the ordinary frivolities, learned professors from Australasian universities, legal luminaries, judges, the Q.C. and the rising barrister, mercantile magnates, statisticians of world-wide fame, even, indeed, Sir Gregory Gifford, also Sir Harold Harfager, an ex-Proconsul of our Indian empire. They were vice-regal guests. Minor luminaries, such as authors, war correspondents, politicians, home-grown and foreign – in fact almost all the men of “light and leading” were represented at this unique gathering. Missionaries from far Pacific Isles, who had faced cannibal hordes, and heard the yell from crowded war canoes, when poisoned arrows were in the air. They had their philological treasures and hard-won trophies to exhibit. The crowded lecture rooms testified to the interest taken in the soldiers of the Army of Peace. To add to the satisfaction with which the various excitements and entertainments were availed of by the party from the Upper Sturt, it so chanced that, in consequence of the favourable seasons Edward Bruce was enabled to join them a month earlier than he had expected. He was, moreover, in excellent spirits, openly avowing his intention to devote his stay in Hobart to pleasure unalloyed, as compensation for his late pastoral anxieties. He was not contented, however, after a fortnight’s “idlesse,” without organising a trip to The Mine, which had lately so developed in wealth, prestige, and reputation, that it was difficult to say whether it belonged to Tasmania or Tasmania belonged to it.

Everything and everybody appeared to be in a state of unprecedented prosperity in that happy and care-free annus mirabilis if ever there was one. Mrs. Bruce and Imogen mildly reproached Bruce for being in such a hurry to leave his family after so long an absence, and what was worse, carrying off Imogen’s husband. However, he, a man of unresting energy and enterprise, declared that he could not stand any more of this lotus-eating life, and that if he did not get away out to the mine, he would have to return to Marondah.

At this dreadful threat Mrs. Bruce capitulated, fearing a premature departure from this land of Utopian delights, where the children were improving so fast, and gaining a reserve of vigour impossible in a hotter climate. This consideration, in the devoted mother’s eyes, overbore all others, and caused her to look philosophically upon the proposed expedition – which was accordingly decided upon, and a day fixed for the start, the which came off without accident or delay.

It may be doubted whether, except in theatrical stage life, anything surpasses in rapidity of transformation the change from a fragment of the primeval wilderness into a thickly populated town, founded on a gold or silver field of proved richness. Macadamised streets and level footpaths take the place of miry dray tracks and sloughs of despond. So was it in the city of Comstock. Handsome hotels and shop fronts, with plate glass windows, had succeeded weatherboard and slab shanties with bark roofs. The electric light in globe and street lamps shed its searching radiance through main thoroughfare and alley.

The diurnal coach, by which our travellers arrived, was well horsed and punctual to a fault. The police magistrate and warden of goldfields, assisted by a strong body of police, preserved order and punished evil-doers with such deterrent strictness that offences against the laws were almost unknown. A municipality, with mayor, councillors, and aldermen had been formed after the British pattern. Thus the foundations of earliest English law had been laid, and as the erstwhile barren, hopeless lodge in the wilderness increased in wealth and population, so the State, “broad based upon the people’s will,” emerged ready made, only awaiting that gradual development which comes instinctively in Anglo-Saxon communities, to pass from the rude stage of the mining camp to the perfected organisation of the city. It was soon made apparent to the party that Hobart was not the only place where public entertainments and festive gatherings were to be found. The mayor and corporation of Comstock, waiting upon the distinguished visitors, whose arrival was duly chronicled in the Clarion, invited them to a formal banquet, where champagne in profusion was exhibited, and the health of their guests proposed by the mayor, Mr. Frampton Tregonwell, who made honourable mention of that distinguished pastoralist and explorer, Mr. Edward Hamilton Bruce.

Before this function they had been taken to the lower levels of the mine, when the “drives” being lighted up, and a few judiciously selected masses of “native silver” and malachite looked up for the occasion, Mr. Bruce formed the opinion that he stood in a “quarry” of one of the chief precious metals. Being a man of business habits, as well as of pastoral experience, he took the opportunity, under Mr. Tregonwell’s authority, to inspect the accounts of the Company, and, after examining the astonishing values of crude and treated ore, he came to the conclusion that his sister-in-law (untoward as had been the early stages of their acquaintance) had displayed the unerring instinct with which her sex is credited in her venture in the matrimonial lottery. The audit demonstrated the cheering fact that an income of from ten to twenty thousand a year was assured to each of the four original shareholders in this most fortunate enterprise.

“I suppose you and Imogen will be taking a trip home in a few months?” he said. “With all this money, and the prospects of the season in London, Australia will lose some of its interest.”

“Such is our intention; unless anything unforeseen comes in the way after the Hobart season has come to an end and you good folks have wended your way back to the Upper Sturt, I think of taking our passage by the first P. and O. steamer from Sydney.”

“Won’t it be rather cold to arrive in England so early in the year?”

“We propose to stay a month or two in Cairo on the way, refreshing our memories of the Arabian Nights; trans-shipping by the Brindisi route, and after a week or two in Paris, reaching London in May, in time for Imogen to hear her first nightingale.”

“A very sensible programme, I wish we were going with you. However, later on, if the seasons and the stock keep up, we may come and stay at your country seat.”

“It was the most fortunate day of my life when I stayed at yours, though appearances were against me, I confess. However, I look forward to seeing you and Hilda in my native county, which is not wholly without interest, especially in shooting, hunting, and fishing. However, I think it’s drawing on to feeding time. Champagne goes better after subterranean experiences than before.”

The banquet was a success. Blount found himself referred to, not only as the original capitalist in the formation of the great Mineral Property, which had advanced Tasmania by half a century, socially, commercially, and mineralogically (the last word a trifle slurred), but as “a patron of the fine arts, a generous supporter of local charities, and a citizen of whom they would all be proud, and would remember gratefully in days to come. They trusted that even in the splendid pageantry of the old and venerated society, in which he and his amiable wife were so soon to share, the humble, but heartfelt hospitality of the ‘tight little island,’ called Tasmania would not be wholly forgotten. Their honoured guests had accepted invitations to be present at a ball to be given that evening for the purpose of supplementing the funds of the local hospital, and all hoped to meet them there. They knew that there were several representative institutions, including the library, of which they were justly proud, to inspect. They would not detain the guests by making further remarks.”

Mr. Blount had no hesitation in saying that he was never more genuinely surprised than by witnessing the astonishing, he might say unparalleled, progress made by the town and district since his last visit. In the formation of the streets, in the water service, in the installation of electric lighting, in the hospital and library, Comstock was ahead of many old-established country towns in Britain. Personally, he should always take a deep interest in the municipal, as well as the material, progress of the city, and feel genuine pride in having contributed to its inception and development.

A general inspection of the local institutions filled up the afternoon. The free library attracted much attention. It had been commenced by subscription, and with private donations, supplemented by books from tourists and visitors, who generally left any they brought to read by train or steamer on the journey up. It was a heterogenous collection, ranging from very light fiction to works on metallurgy, theology, and civil engineering. However, there was no lack of works of solid value, so that the miner who wished to improve or distract his mind had no difficulty in finding books to suit his taste. At the hospital, apart from typhoid fever and dysentery patients, the cases were mostly fractures and other injuries resulting from mining accidents. This establishment, as at all gold and silver fields, was most liberally supported, irrespective of race, creed, or colour. No working miner knew whose turn it might be the next to be carried there in agony or insensibility. Many were the gifts, unostentatiously bestowed, by former patients in the shape of necessaries or luxuries for convalescents. These duty visits performed, dinner was undertaken at the Palace Hotel, a stately three-storeyed building, with a verandah nearly twenty feet wide and balconies to match. After a more or less sumptuous repast in the salle à manger, electric lighted, where they were served by well-dressed waiters, with wines of undoubted excellence, and a menu almost extravagant in variety, and but sparingly partaken of; Messrs. Bruce, Blount, and Tregonwell sallied forth accompanied by a dozen dignitaries to the Town Hall. In this imposing building, a crowd of dancers in “plain or fancy” dress were already in the full swing of pleasurable excitement.

CHAPTER XII

A gold or silver field of decent rank and reputation must always compare favourably in its amusements with a town. In the wide range of his experiences, in war and peace, on land and water, British or foreign, the roving miner may challenge comparison with all sorts and conditions of men. Thus, he is never at a loss for a character to represent, a costume in which to disguise, or to heighten his personal attractions. The same rule applies to the women of the family, who have followed his wanderings, sharing in his privations or triumphs, as the case may be. Bearing with exemplary patience the inevitable hardships, they are none the less eager to recoup themselves when legitimate opportunities arise for amusement.

When Messrs. Bruce, Blount, and other magnates arrived on the scene, they were accommodated with seats on the daïs, where they sat proudly in full public view, reflecting how sharply contrasted was the scene before them with any possible gathering on the site of the “Comstock Claim” – “of four men’s ground” – little more than a year ago! The great hall, seventy feet in length, by thirty in width, was brilliantly lighted, draped with flags of all nations, above which, surmounting the daïs, the Union Jack reigned supreme. Upon the satin-like Huon pine floor strolled a motley crowd. Pirates and princes, peasants and brigands, ballerinas and matadors, mingled with dairy maids and broom girls, flower sellers and fishwives (whose “caller herrin’” had the smack of the well-remembered cry), while dowagers and duchesses, grisettes, tricoteuses, shepherds and sundowners, jostled here and there, in the dance, with a Red Indian, a cow-boy, or even an aboriginal in his blanket.

“The distinguished visitors,” so described in the morning’s Clarion, paid due respect to their municipal and other entertainers. They stood high in the estimation of their partners, whose looks and enthusiasm for the dance they would have been indeed hypercritical to have criticised. Charlie Herbert and Jack Clarke, the latter having got rid of his unfortunate lameness, were habited as a bushranger and a stock-rider, respectively. They remained till supper was over, during which exceedingly festive refection, Mr. Blount’s health, as a fearless explorer, was enthusiastically toasted, while Mr. Tregonwell was referred to as a world-renowned mining captain, and the father of the field. Charlie Herbert was eulogised as a worthy son of the soil, who, like Mr. Dereker – the speaker must say “Dick” Dereker (cheers) – was an honour to his native land, and like him, destined to make a name in the great world. Here every one rose, and cheered to the echo. The speeches in requital of this courtesy were brief but pointed; and long before the conclusion of the function, Messrs. Bruce and Blount quietly departed and soon after sunrise were on the way back to Hobart, accompanied by Charlie Herbert and Clarke, who deemed themselves to have a just claim to exceptional recreation after their pioneer experiences. Moreover, they explained that they could afford to enjoy themselves with a clear conscience, while Mr. Tregonwell remained on guard – a man never known to sleep on his post. So these young men chartered a four-in-hand drag, a few miles out of Hobart, and having borrowed a coach-horn, entered that city with all proper pomp and circumstance. When Charlie Herbert proceeded to “swing his reefing leaders,” and pull up at the General Post-Office, quite a crowd had assembled, eager to gaze on, and to welcome the prospectors of the wondrous Comstock mine.

After depositing themselves and their belongings at the Tasmanian Club, the junior shareholders stated with decision that, having had a fair allowance of hard work and hard living, they were now going to enjoy themselves; also to make some return for the hospitality they had enjoyed in former years. As pleasant detrimentals, though suspiciously regarded by cautious matrons, they had always, on the whole, been popular, their want of capital being overlooked in favour of their engaging manners and family connections. Now, as original shareholders in the great mining property of the day, they were princes, paladins, long-lost brothers; in fact, most desirable and distinguished. Everybody, from the Supreme Court judges downward, called on and made much of them. Without them no party was complete. At the polo meets they were conspicuous; they rode splendidly, every one said, as indeed they did, but not having been able to keep ponies in former years, this was their first opportunity of exhibiting that accomplishment in public.

Of course, they were not long in letting people know that they wanted to give their friends, and more particularly the ladies of Hobart, some kind of entertainment; the question now being of what pattern and dimensions it should consist. To this end grave consultations were held; of balls and parties there had been nearly enough – the young people were, strange to say, beginning to be tired of dancing.

Laura Claremont talked of going home to Hollywood soon. If not earlier, certainly next week. Mr. Bruce was becoming impatient; he began to think about mustering those polled Angus bullocks in the river paddocks for the Melbourne market, when a chance remark by Mrs. Blount settled the matter, and decided the character of the entertainment.

“How would it be to have a picnic party to the Hermitage?” she inquired, with an air of much innocence and simplicity. “There is a lovely road by Brown’s River, and such a view! No one is at the Bungalow now but a caretaker. There is one fine large room, and a grand verandah looking out to sea. The eatables, etc., could be arranged early in the day, and if we were a little late coming home, the nights are so lovely. We can have all the men-of-war people, and just in time, too; I heard they were to be off to the islands soon.”

“Magnificent!” cried out Charlie Herbert and Jack Clarke in one breath. “Mrs. Blount, you have saved our lives. Jack and I were getting quite low-spirited and suicidal. We could think of nothing worth while. Balls are played out. The races at Elwick were about the last excitement. A picnic on a vast and comprehensive scale is the very thing. Miss Maguire, when does the Admiral give the order for Nukuheva?”

Sheila blushed, and seemed taken aback, but rallying, answered, “‘The captain bold does not confide in any foremast hand, Matilda!’ Isn’t that in one of the Bab Ballads?”

“Oh! I thought Vernon Harcourt might have told you,” said Charlie. “You and he seemed so confidential the other evening.”

“Suppose you ask him yourself, Mr. Herbert? But, at any rate, it won’t be till the week after next.” Here everybody laughed, and the girl, seeing that she had “given herself away,” looked confused.

“Tell him not to be rude, Sheila. What business is it of his? Say you won’t go to his picnic, and then it will be a dismal failure.” Mrs. Blount stood alongside her protégée and looked threateningly at Master Charlie, who pretended to be shocked at his faux pas, and went down on one knee to Sheila to implore forgiveness.

“I’ve a great mind to box your ears, Mr. Herbert!” she said, as her face lighted up with a smile of genuine mirth, “but I suppose I must forgive you this time. Now, what about this picnic? that’s the real question, and where is it to be?”

“I vote for the Hermitage,” said Imogen. “Don’t you, Hilda? I drove you there one day with ‘Matchless.’”

“A lovely spot,” said Mrs. Bruce; “only I was afraid the mare would jump over the cliff once. The road is lovely; I feel sure all the world will come. We must have half-a-dozen four-in-hands – Imogen and I will be chaperons. I suppose you young men can forage up two more?”

“Miss Claremont!” suggested Jack Clarke. “She is so nice.”

“Quite agree with you,” said Imogen; “but she is not married yet. Suppose you ask Mrs. Wendover, of the Châlet, she is so kind, and, at the same time, capable of keeping order, which is necessary, Mr. Herbert, isn’t it?”

“Now, don’t be severe, Mrs. Blount! All you young married women get so dreadfully proper, and talk alarmingly about your husbands. I’ll find security for good behaviour.”

“Only my fun,” said Imogen. “But I’m afraid you’ve hurt Sheila’s feelings. Has she forgiven you?”

“Oh! Mrs. Blount, don’t tease him any more,” cried Sheila. “He looks really sorry. It was all my fault, for taking his chaff seriously.”

“What do you think of Lady Wood?” said Mrs. Bruce, “from West Australia?”

“The very one,” cried out all the council. “She has a habit of authority, as the wife of the Premier of the Golden West Colony – (“and, though this is a silver mine, ‘Shivoo,’ the relationship is obvious,” this interpolation was Mr. Jack Clarke’s). Those who are in favour, hold up your hands! Against it, nobody. The resolution is carried.”

“Now for ways and means,” said Charles Herbert. “First of all, the four-in-hand drags – there mustn’t be fewer than half-a-dozen, with power to add to their number; the men, too, must be able to drive. Claude Clinton and I will see to that. Of course we make him an honorary member of the committee of management. The affair wouldn’t be complete without him.”

“Of course not. (Chorus) ‘For he’s etc. etc.’”

“Isn’t it rather early for a song?” queried Mrs. Bruce.

“Not at all, when two such voices as yours and Mrs. Blount’s are available, and this is such a grand room to sing in. Music after breakfast – when you’ve nothing to do afterwards, is simply delicious.”

“Well, only one verse – Sheila and I will join in,” said Mrs. Bruce. “If Edward comes in, he’ll think we’re going out of our minds.”