"Silent Ted" was another of our camp-fire comrades; he was, as his name implied, not a talkative individual. Long years spent in the bush had served to dry up the vials of his speech. Yet he was not morose or taciturn by nature; he simply seemed too tired to give expression to his thoughts. His eyes were ever fixed and emotionless as the desert sands—sure evidence of the bushman who has lived in the dreary wilderness beyond the Darling. He had been a long time in striking gold, and we all thought his shaft was likely to prove a duffer; but despite our gloomy prophecies he joined our evening circle night after night, and smoked his pipe cheerful as usual, though that was not saying much.
"I forgot to tell you, mates," he broke out one evening, to our great surprise, "that I struck bottom yesterday."
He meant to say more, but his mouth closed with a click in spite of himself, and in reply to our congratulations he handed round for examination two fine specimens of alluvial gold which he had taken from his first day's tests, and when they had been inspected by the community and returned to him, he passed them on to his neighbour with a sigh; he had apparently already forgotten their existence.
The devil-may-care fossicker, also, was well represented, and his species rejoiced in cognomens so euphonious and varied that I could never remember the correct titles to bestow upon their several owners, and only realised my mistakes when greeted with reproachful glances. Among our acquaintances were, "Dead Broke Sam," a proverbially unfortunate miner in a perpetual state of pecuniary embarrassment; "Lucky Dave," who always "came out on top;" "Happy Jack," who seemed to find much cause for merriment in his rather commonplace existence; and "Nuggety Dick," who at all times could unearth one or two specimens from some secret place in his meagre wardrobe, and describe minutely where they had been obtained—usually some place comprehensively indicated as "away out back."
These gaunt, bearded men had many strange stories to tell, and in the ruddy firelight they would trace on the sand intricate charts emblematic of their wanderings. They were those whose roving natures compelled them to follow up every gold rush, with the firm belief that extraordinary fortune would one day crown their efforts. "It's a durned hard life, boys," Dead Broke Sam, who worked with Old Tom on similar terms of remuneration, would often say, looking round for the sympathetic chorus that was always forthcoming, "but if we doesn't peg out, we is bound to strike it some day."
There is no blasphemy in the speech of the Australian miner. The most rugged-looking fossicker is gentle as a lamb, save when undue presumption on the part of some new chum, or "furriner," arouses his ire, and then he makes things hum generally; but his forcible words are merely forcible, and perhaps "picturesque," but nothing more; the inane profanity of the Yankee fortune-seeker finds no exponent in the Australian back-blocker.
Many were the tales "pitched" on these long starlit nights, and narratives of adventure in search of gold, and hairbreadth escapes from the aborigines succeeded each other until the evening was far spent, and the Southern Cross had sunk beyond the horizon. Then we would disperse with a monosyllabic "night, boys," all round, and seek our separate sandy couches.
My comrades, Mac and Stewart, were shining satellites at these meetings, and weird stories from the Pampas plains and the Klondike valley formed at intervals a pleasing change—from the miners' point of view—to the accounts of gold-finds, and rushes, and hostile natives, so fluently described by Nuggety Dick and Co. And now and then a whaling anecdote would lend zest to the gathering, faithfully told by Stewart with much dramatic effect; he was, indeed, a past master at the art, and never failed to hold his audience spellbound.
Emu Bill, though recognised by all as the most experienced miner present, rarely condescended to spin a yarn, and he listened to his confrères' tales with ill-concealed impatience, but showed a decided liking for my two warriors' romances. One evening, however, he broke his reserve and proceeded to give a rambling survey of his wanderings, and as he warmed to his subject his eyes began to glow, and his gestures became eloquent and impassioned.