“You don’t know him!” cried the Pilot, pulling himself together. But the Titanic laughter again took hold of him, and shook his vast frame. “You’ve travelled with him, you’ve sailed with him, you’ve known him, Sartoris—you’ve bin shipwrecked with him!” Here the paroxysm seized the Pilot anew; and when it had subsided it left him exhausted and feeble. He sank limply upon the old-fashioned sofa, and said, almost in a whisper, “It’s Jack Scarlett, and you didn’t know him; Jack Scarlett, back from the diggings, with his swag full of gold—and you thought him a stranger.”
It was now the turn of Rose and the skipper to laugh. Jack, who up to this point had kept a straight face, joined his merriment to theirs, and rushing forward they each shook him by the hand again, but in a totally different manner from that of their former greeting.
Out of his “jumper” the fortunate digger pulled a long chamois-leather bag, tied at the neck with a boot-lace. Taking a soup-plate from the sideboard, he emptied the contents of the bag into it, and before the astonished eyes of the onlookers lay a heap of yellow gold.
They stared, and were speechless.
From about his waist Scarlett untied a long leather belt, which proved to be lined with gold. But the soup-plate would hold no more, and so the lucky digger poured the residue in a heap upon the polished table. Next, he went out to the verandah, and undoing his swag, he returned with a tin canister which had been wrapped in his blankets. This also was full of gold, and taking off its lid, he added its contents to the pile upon the table.
“And there’s some left in camp,” he said. “I couldn’t carry it all to town.”
“Well, well,” said Sartoris, “while I’ve been boxed up in that stinking plague-ship, I might ha’ been on God A’mighty’s earth, picking up stuff like this. Well, well, what luck!”
“There must be a matter o’ two thousand pound,” said the Pilot. “Two thousand pound!”
“More,” said Jack. “There should be about 800 ozs., valued at something like £3000; and this is the result of but our first washing-up.”
“Good lord, what luck!” exclaimed the Pilot. “As I always have said, it comes in streaks. Now, Jack, here, has had his streak o’ bad luck, and now he’s got into a new streak, and it’s so good that it’s like to turn him crazy before he comes to the end of it. If you want to know the real truth about things, ask an old sailor—he won’t mislead you.”