“Most probably you’ve got a widowed mother, like me,” said Benjamin. “Go, and comfort her declining years. Do like me: wipe out the recollection of the good times you’ve had by acts of filial piety. A widowed mother is good, but if you can rake up a maiden aunt and keep her too, that’ll be a work of supererogation.”
“Of how much?” asked Bill.
“It’s a word I picked up in my College days—I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the precise meaning.” Benjamin’s face lit up with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. He lifted his pannikin to his lips, nodded to his companions, said, “Here’s luck,” and drank the black tea as though it had been nectar. “That’s the beauty of turning digger,” he continued; “the sobriety one acquires in the bush is phenomenal. If you asked me to name the most virtuous man on this planet, I should say a prospector in the bush—a bishop is nothing to him. But I own that when he goes to town the digger becomes a very devil let loose. Think of the surroundings here—innocent twittering birds, silent arboreous trees, clear pellucid streams, nothing to tempt, nothing to degrade.”
Tresco might have amplified his discourse as fully as a bishop, but that at this point there was a shouting and the noise of dry boughs cracking under advancing feet. In a moment the three men were standing, alert, astonished, in various attitudes of defence.
Moonlight had armed himself with a pick, the Prospector had grasped a shovel, Tresco drew a revolver from inside his “jumper.”
The shouting continued, though nothing could be seen. Then came out of the darkness, “What-ho there, Moonlight! Can’t you give us a hand to cross the river?”
“It’s my mate,” said Moonlight. “I know the voice. Is that you, Scarlett?”
“It’s Scarlett, all right,” called back the voice, “but how am I to cross this infernal river?”
The three men walked to the edge of the water, and peered into the darkness.
“Perfectly safe,” said the Prospector. “She’s barely up to your middle.”