They lifted Jem and set him up again, and sprinkled water in his face. The man's thick lip was cut by the side of the vessel, and more than one drop of blood had trickled down its sides and mingled with the gold-dust.
No comment was made on this at the time. They were so busy.
“There, he's coming to, and we've no time to waste in nursing the sick. Work!” and they sprang up on to the work again.
It was not what you have seen pass for work in Europe, it was men working themselves for once as they make horses work forever. Work? It was battle; it was humanity fighting and struggling with Nature for her prime treasure—(so esteemed). How they dug and scraped, and fought tooth, and spade, and nail, and trowel, and tomahawk for gold! Their shirts were wet through with sweat, yet they felt no fatigue. Their trousers were sheets of clay, yet they suffered no sense of dirt. The wounded man recovered a portion of his strength, and, thirsting for gold, brought feeble hands but indomitable ardor to the great cause. They dug, they scraped, they bowed their backs, and wrought with fury and inspiration unparalleled; and when the sun began to decline behind the hills these four human mutes felt injured. They lifted their eyes a moment from the ground, and cast a fretful look at the great, tranquil luminary.
“Are you really going to set this afternoon the same as usual, when we need your services so?”
Would you know why that wolfish yell of triumph? Would you see what sight so electrified those gloating eyes and panting bosoms? Would you realize that discovery, which in six months peopled that barren spot with thousands of men from all the civilized tribes upon earth, and in a few years must and will make despised Australia a queen among the nations—nations who must and will come with the best thing they have, wealth, talent, cunning, song, pencil, pen, tongue, arm, and lay them all at her feet for this one thing?
Would you behold this great discovery the same in appearance and magnitude as it met the eyes of the first discoverers, picked with a knife from the bottom of a calabash, separated at last by human art and gravity's great law from the meaner dust it had lurked in for a million years—Then turn your eyes hither, for here it is:
[Knife handle drawing]