"No—of gold; an' Long Tom here shot one hundred and twenty-three kangaroos at ninepence each——"
"Did you say that your companion found gold?"
"I reckon I did, stranger, an' what's more, we has all dropped on to gold."
"What! There is no gold so far west as this."
"So we was told, mate. Them as is supposed to know, say there can be no gold west of the ranges; but you can allow that this push knows gold when they see it, an'—but show it to him, Shandy." Shandy instantly detached a leather pouch from his belt, and without a word put it into my hands.
"That is gold without doubt," I said, handing it back; "I know by the weight." Vic Charlie seemed surprised at my knowledge of the metal, but he said nothing.
"Does you know much about minerals?" inquired an elderly man who had been listening intently to the conversation.
"I have prospected in most countries," I answered, "and ought to know all that is worth knowing by this time, for the experience was about all I did get."
"Tucker!" sang out some one. "Git table-covers for the visitors, an' look lively." My own companion, while I was talking, had been engaged in similar fashion in the centre of another group, and I smiled to see how intensely interested were his listeners. He was not seeking information, I knew, but from the unconscious ejaculations which frequently arose from his audience, I guessed that he was imparting some; and his selections were invariably strange and wonderful. The cry of "Tucker," however, created a diversion, and during the half-hour that followed, all apparently had but one object in view, and being blessed with a healthy appetite, that same object was very pleasing to me. I was placed between a gentleman called Dead-broke Peter and one dubbed Silent Ted. I afterwards discovered that Peter had been a member of the New Zealand Parliament, but Long Tom introduced him simply as the best talker in camp. I suppose it was to balance matters that the thoughtful Tom placed Ted on my other side, for he never spoke.
"He is a first-class cook an' a most extraordinar' thinker, though," said Tom; and as Ted's corrugated but wonderfully expressive face beamed at the compliment, I saw that a tongue to him was quite unnecessary. The night was very dark, and as the fitful fire-flashes lit up the surrounding gloom and cast fantastic shadows of the squatting men on the sands behind them, the scene was indeed weird. Towards the end of the meal Dead-broke Peter began a conversation, at first very general in character, and which I easily sustained without interrupting my study of the men around; but before I realised that Peter was a man with a past, I found myself floundering in the subject of astronomy hopelessly beyond my depths.