"Dat is vat is called zircon," he whispered to me, as he placed a pebble on his tongue. "Gott! it is over twenty carats," he continued excitedly. "Ask him ver it vas come from."
"Why not ask him yourself?" I suggested jokingly, but the reproachful look he gave me made me regret that I had spoken. Kaiser's race, in most British colonies, is always suspected of underhand dealing. On my inquiring of the owner where he had found the stones, he placed them in my hands.
"In some creeks in the back ranges," he answered. "You can have them all. I ain't going to carry them further."
"But look," I said, chipping the edge of one, and disclosing a translucent mass of pale straw colour, in which a tinge of port wine danced according to the manner in which the stone was held.
"I don't care," he replied. "I is a gold-miner, an' I knows that every ounce of gold is worth £3 17s. 6d.; but that is darned stuff only Jews will buy, and I'll throw them away if you don't want them."
I had no spare money—the prospector never has—and as he refused to take a new Winchester rifle and my silver-mounted revolver, I did not know what to give him in return.
"Ye'll need all yer pop-guns where ye are goin'," he said. "I is going down to South Aus. with my pile; but say, if ye has any fruit-salt, or sugar, or quinine to spare, I an' the boys would be ontarnally obliged to ye."
I gave him a bottle of quinine tabloids, and another of saccharine, and, as few of the miners had ever heard of the latter substance, and of course seldom carried sugar, their delight was a treat to see. We entertained them to dinner, and next morning they started for the Kumusi River, en route for the coast, Samarai, and Australia. At the same time we picked up their old tracks and steered for the distant peak of Mount Scratchley.
Our progress was now necessarily slow, for, in addition to being in a hostile country, through which Sir William Macgregor and his native police was the only armed force that had ever passed, we had to carry on prospecting operations. Three days out, our first "strike" was made. We bridged a deep river in the usual manner, by felling a tree across from bank to bank, and after we had crossed, Kaiser, who was an enthusiastic botanist, descended into the channel to examine a curious growth on an under branch.
"Come on, Kaiser," shouted Mac; "there's nae gold doon there."