"That is copper sulphide. Where did you get it?"
"Mate, if it's any good, there's hundreds and thousands o' tons o' it lyin' on top not mor'n fifty mile from here. But what is this?"
"Why, that is native silver; and that conglomeration in Ted's hand is an ironstone formation carrying gold——"
"Say, mate," interrupted Little Bob, "does ye know what this is?" He held in the palm of his hand a mixture resembling tea in appearance, but which after tasting I knew could not be that substance, "Ah! ye is bested, mate, an' I is glad," continued Bob. "I knows ye is honest now, an' don't skite when ye doesn't know."
"Thank you; but what is it?"
"Pidcherie, stranger. Money can't buy it. It comes from the Mullagine swamps; an' gold nor lead wouldn't make a black fellow part with it. Swallow that, an' you can dance in the fire an' not feel nothin'; cut yourself in little bits an' you'll think it fun. Only the niggers knows what it is, an' no white men barrin' us back boys has iver got any——"
"Time for that again, Little Bob," cried Long Tom, "The question just now is, Will the stranger jine us? Yous can git two shares an' we does all the work," he added, turning to me.
"But, Mr.—that is—Peter here knows more than I do. He——"
"Him!" snorted Tom. "Mate, he's the most on-reasonable man in camp. When he starts talking we can't stop him; an' when he is stopped, darn me if we can start him." I turned to see how my late entertainer took these words, but he was lying back on the sand—asleep. Finally, after much quaint reasoning, the men persuaded us to try our luck with them, at least for a time. "Yous can leave us when you like, if it doesn't pay," was Tom's summing up; but as he had just told me of a sand-patch in which tucker could be made by dry-panning, and of a "darned curious country across the Cooper" which was on fire with opal lying on the surface, I thought that the adventure was well worth any risk in that direction. We were still talking when the Southern Cross dipped behind the Grey Ranges; but before we stretched ourselves on the sand to rest it was decided that I and three others should set out in the morning to inspect the opal formations beyond the Cooper, and pending our report as to its value, the others would keep up the funds by kangaroo-shooting and dry-blowing for gold.
Next morning with the first faint streaks of dawn we were ready. Mac and I had our cycles, which we stripped of all their previous accoutrements, and Kangaroo George and Gilgai Charlie rode two of the finest horses in Queensland.