While he was speaking, Mac and Hoskins were assiduously painting the address of a famous Sydney firm of jewellers on a well-roped candle-box, and after eyeing them intently for a minute, Aaron—— said—
"Vell den, we don't cares, we is speculative business men. No, we do not want to see your drives. Ha, ha! we vas not built to go through rabbit-holes. Here is de money, sign this papers all of you, an' come and dine with us in the Australian Thirst saloon."
The above is the history of the finding of the "forty-four" feet level, and the selling of "Block 91." The money was equally divided among the men interested, after which most of them pegged out fresh claims elsewhere, but Bill, Ted, Satan, Black George, Scottie, the Parson, and I, procured bicycles and water-bags, and started off on our Western prospecting trip that same afternoon. It is unnecessary to repeat the details of our journey. The country was at first a hard, sandy plain dotted here and there with sparse growths of the ubiquitous mulga scrub, and occasionally broken by outcrops of silver lodes; but as we advanced, all forms of vegetation disappeared, and on the third day we found ourselves on an undulating sea of ironshot sand bounded only by the horizon. We had not as yet seen any signs of surface opal formations, and of course had no intention of sinking shafts to investigate, in the heart of such a desert. On the fourth day we calculated that we had now reached a point one hundred and forty miles west from White Cliffs, and that night we camped on the edge of a dry clay-pan and considered the advisability of returning. Bill and Ted, however, persisted that we had not yet gone far enough to see the place of which they had spoken so often, and although I could not understand how they had managed to travel such a distance, nor how they knew whether we had passed their farthest-out camp or not, I had implicit faith in the correctness of their observations.
"I reckon we has to go 'bout thirty miles yet. We was jest a day off here," said Bill.
"You must have been quite close to Lake Frome then," I said.
"Never seed it, nor knowed of it, nor don't believe there ever was any lake in this part o' the world," replied Bill, and I wondered greatly, seeing that Lake Frome was distinctly marked across our path on the Government map in my possession. We had no fire that night, there being nothing that would burn within at least a day's journey, and consequently our supper was not of a tempting nature.
"Well, men, I don't know that I care to be responsible for taking you further west," I announced. "How much water is left in the bags?"
"There war' six gallons between them all after supper," answered Satan, "but Ted took a drink since then."
"Let us try another day yet," advised the Parson, "we can go back over our tracks in two days, and the opal might only be an hour ahead."
All expressed their approval of these remarks, so soon after, we scraped the top off the hard sand and went to sleep. The pests were unusually energetic that night, and several times we were awakened by their voraciousness. The Parson and Black George seemed to be affected even more so than the others, but it must have been an exceptionally large and active centipede that bit our dusky comrade in three places before he could discard his garments. At any rate, his yells aroused four evil-eyed crows from their dreams of the gorge they expected to have soon, and a skulking dingo also started in affright, emitting as it retreated a blood-curdling howl, that instantly brought us all to our feet.