CHAPTER XXIII.
Forewarned, Forearmed.
Tresco and the Prospector were eating their “tucker” beneath the boughs of a spreading black-birch. In front of them burned brightly a fire of dead branches, suspended above which was the “billy,” black and battered externally, but full of fragrant tea.
“I shall go home to England,” said Benjamin; his mouth half-filled with cold bacon. “I shall visit my widowed mother, and be the comfort and support of her declining years. There must be over 200 ounces in the tent, and hundreds more in the claim.”
“I ain’t got a widowed mother,” said the Prospector. “I shall go into Timber Town and make The Lucky Digger open house—come when you like, have what you like, at the expense of Mr. William Wurcott. That’s my style. I like to see a man free with his dollars.”
They had pegged out their claim at a spot where the corrugations in the rocky bed of the creek stretched from bank to bank and a beach of soft sand spread itself along the water’s edge.
The first “prospect” that they had “panned off” resulted in a return of a couple of ounces. Next they had “fossicked” with sheath-knives in the crevices of the rocks, and had quickly got something more than half a cupful of gold, in shape and size like pumpkin seeds. The day following, they continued to “pan off” the sands in front of their tent; each dish yielding a handsome return. But as Benjamin found this process difficult in his unskilful hands, he directed his attention to looking for new patches. Wading about in the shallows with a dish in one hand and a shovel in the other, he overturned loose bits of rock which he found lying on the sand. Sometimes he would find an ounce or two, sometimes nothing at all; but upon turning over a flat slab of rock, to raise which needed all his strength, he gave a whoop of delight, for a yellow mass lay glittering in the rippling waters. With a single scoop of his shovel he had won 80 ozs. of gold.
This rich spot was where the water was but two feet deep, and above it and below it gold could be seen shining amongst the sand and gravel. When the cream of the claim, so to speak, had been skimmed off with the tin dish, the men began to set up sluice boxes, by means of which they might work the whole of their ground systematically.
In constructing these boxes they received every help from Moonlight, who lent them tools, and aided them in cutting out the slabs. Left mateless during Scarlett’s visit to Timber Town, the veteran miner frequently exchanged his lonely camp for the more congenial quarters of Tresco and the Prospector.