At the Sign of the Silver Flagon

by B. L. Farjeon

"No; but I'm glad to hear it. Good luck to the Margaret, and all concerned in it. I'll have a horse ready for you in a jiffy." (A new kind of conveyance for a horse to be harnessed to.)

Out he went again, and before he returned, Margaret had disappeared, first telling Philip that she was going to pray for the dam. Philip was satisfied that her praying was better than the best of puddling. Before the men mounted, they had a look at the theatre; it was a mass of ruins. The wind only had not only blown it down, but had blown pieces of it miles away. In a gully, four miles from the spot, into which a pick had not yet been stuck, the first thing that was found some months afterwards by men who went to seek for gold was a scratch wig belonging to the Low Comedian: which puzzled the prospectors. They did not go to that gully to find scratch wigs. Some part of the wardrobe belonging to the actors was buried beneath the ruins of the theatre, but a great deal had been blown away. Most of it was brought back, at odd times, by diggers and their wives, who had rare laughs over the queer vestments. Some of them made a great commotion in the township one day, by marching into High Street, dressed most absurdly. Charles the Second, in a red wig and with Macbeth's shield on his arm, was followed by Clown, with heavy eyebrows, moustaches, and Lord Dundreary whiskers; behind him came one who was half Roman and half Scotchman; and a perfect piece of patchwork brought up the rear. A fine jollification followed, you may be sure, when they halted at the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle.

As William Smith and his companions were gazing on the ruins of the theatre, a dozen labourers came up, and under the direction of one began to clear away the fallen timber. Mr. Hart and Philip looked to William Smith for an explanation. He gave it them. While the storm was raging, he had made a contract for a new theatre. It might almost be thought that he slept with one eye open. Mr. Hart said as much. William Smith laughed.

"It would be a useful thing to be able to do," he said. "But what are you wondering at? William Smith never loses a day."

He was a kind of man to put heart into men when misfortune overtook them. He would say, "If bad fortune gives me a slap in the face, I don't lay down and whimper." (He was not particular as to his grammar, although he had a proper respect for knowledge and education.) "I don't lay down and whimper," said he; "I tuck up my sleeves, and set to--with a will."

When they were in the saddle, and riding along towards the Margaret Reef, they saw evidences of the same kind of spirit in other men. Numbers of tents had been literally torn into shreds by the storm; valuable shafts had fallen in; tools and windlasses and puddling machines had been swept away by the flood, which in many places had made hills of gullies and gullies of hills. All was confusion, but men were working everywhere, with goodwill, to repair the damage. Very different were the faces of these men and women from the faces of some poor people I saw a short time since, in the crowded city in which these words are written, after an extraordinary high tide in the river, the waters of which had overflowed its banks, and washed into the cellars where they lived and slept. In the new country the men and women bustled about vigorously, with faces almost cheerful; in the old, they stood, banging their heads dolefully, and with not spirit enough amongst them to make one good worker out of a hundred. But the cases are different.

As William Smith and his companions rode along, looking this way and that, Philip suddenly cried "O!" as though he was shot, and turned his horse's head to the west, whereas the Margaret Reef lay to the north of them. Away he galloped, as though for dear life, with no thought of the Margaret Reef in his mind, and William Smith and Mr. Hart followed him. They went only some five hundred yards, but the horses had to make some big leaps over new watercourses in that short distance. Philip jumped off his horse, and tying the animal to a fallen tree, set to work helping some men to dig the earth away from a tent which had been nearly buried by the caving in of a hill. Seeing what was the matter, William Smith, who was at first disposed to grumble, jumped off his horse, and in another minute he and Mr. Hart were by the side of Philip, with their sleeves tucked up. Philip worked like a young Hercules, and when sufficient of the earth was cleared away, he cut a great gash in the canvas roof, and, stooping over with a rope tied round his waist, tenderly lifted two children from the chasm, and handed them to the gold-diggers. He was like a steam hammer, that can come down one minute with an awful thump and beat ten tons of metal into shape, and the next can come down with a tap gentle enough to fashion a thin leaf into the likeness of a delicate flower. After the two children came a woman, whom he raised in his arms as though she weighed about an ounce, and at sight of whom the gold-diggers, seeing that she was alive and comparatively unhurt, raised a great shout. And one, her husband, who was lying on the ground, crippled, burst into a passion of grateful tears. I should like to tell you the story of this family, but I have not time just now. Philip and his companions could scarcely escape from the persons they had helped to rescue, but they had other work to look to, and having ascertained that there was no more human life to be saved, they mounted their horses, and resumed their course. At the foot of the range, on the other side of which the dam lay, Philip paused for a moment to breathe the spell of Margaret's name, but William Smith dashed straight on. The first things that met their sight were wrecks of canvas tents and broken tent-poles lying about. William Smith bit his nether lip, but said not a word. He was already calculating the cost of another and a stronger dam; what he chiefly regretted was the waste of time and water. The panting horses reached the brow of the range, and the men leaped off. William Smith did not stop to ask questions of his workmen, but ran swiftly onward, to see with his own eyes. He was an older and a weaker man than Philip, who raced at his heels, but he was the first to reach the dam.

"Hurrah!" he screamed. "Hurrah! hurrah!" And Philip followed suit, and made the hills resound again with his joyous shouts.

A fair sheet of water lay before them, winking in the eyes of the sun. The head man--I cannot call him master; there was no such thing, in the sense that we in England understand it--met William Smith with a smiling face, and they shook hands. But both of them sobered down within a minute.

"A tolerable piece of work this of yours," observed William Smith, in an off-hand way.