There was a splashing as of some one walking in the water, and presently a dark object was seen wading toward them.
“Now, what the deuce is all this about, Scarlett?” It was Moonlight who thus expressed his wonderment. “The man who travels here at night deserves to get bushed. That you reached camp is just luck.”
“Camp?” replied the dripping Scarlett. “I’ve been waiting for you at our camp since nightfall with twenty other devils worse than myself. Don’t you ever sleep in your tent?“
“Of course ’e does,” the Prospector answered for Moonlight, "but mayn’t a digger be neighbourly, and go to see ’is friends?
“Come, and dry yerself by the fire, and have a bit of tucker.”
“But Great Ghost!” exclaimed Moonlight, “all the gold’s in my tent, in the spare billy.”
“Quite safe. Don’t worry,” said Scarlett. “All those twenty men of mine are mounting guard over it, and if one of them stole so much as an ounce, the rest would kill him for breach of contract. That’s the result of binding men to go share and share alike—they watch each other like ferrets.”
Jack took off his clothes, and wrapped in a blanket he sat before the fire, with a pipe in his mouth and a steaming pannikin in his hand.
“Well, happy days!” he said as he drank. “And that reminds me, Tresco—you’re wanted in Timber Town, very badly indeed—a little matter in connection with the mails. ’Seems there’s been peculation of some sort, and for reasons which are as mad as the usual police tactics, the entire force is searching for you, most worthy Benjamin. The yarn goes that you’re a forger in disguise, a counterfeiter of our sovereign’s sacred image and all that, the pilferer of Her Majesty’s mails, a dangerous criminal masquerading as a goldsmith.”
“Holee Smoke!” cried the Prospector. “Look to your gold, gen’lemen—there’s thieves abroad, and one of us may be harbourin’ a serpent unaware. Ben, my lovely pal, consider yourself arrested.”