“Jacky give him you, George,” said this worthy savage, with superb indifference. He added with a yawn: “What for you dance corroboree when um not dark?—den you bite yellow stone,” continued this original, “den you red, den you white, den you red again, all because we pull up yellow stone-all dis a good deal dam ridiculous.”
“So 'tis, Jacky,” replied Robinson, hastily; “don't you have anything to do with yellow stone, it would make you as great a fool as we are. Now show us the shortest cut back home through the bush.”
At the native camp they fell in with Jem. The monstrous nugget was too heavy to conceal from his shrewd eye, so they showed it him. The sight of it almost knocked him down. Robinson told him where they found it, and advised Jem to go and look for another. Alas! the great nugget already made him wish one friend away. But Jem said:
“No, I will see you safe through the bush first.”
CHAPTER LXXI.
ALL this time two persons in the gold mine were upon thorns of expectation and doubt—brutus and Peter Crawley. George and Robinson did not return, but no more did Black Will. What had happened? Had the parties come into collision? and, if so, with what result? If the friends had escaped, why had they never been heard of since? If, on the other hand, Will had come off conqueror, why had he never reappeared? At last brutus arrived at a positive conviction that Black Will had robbed and probably murdered the men, and was skulking somewhere with their gold, thereby defrauding him, his pal; however, he kept this to himself, and told Crawley that he feared Will had come to grief, so he would go well armed, and see what was the matter, and whether he could help him. So he started for the bush, well armed. Now his real object, I blush to say, was to murder Black Will, and rob him of the spoils of George and Robinson.
Wicked as these men of violence had been six months ago, gold and Crawley had made them worse, ay, much worse. Crawley, indeed, had never openly urged any of them to so deep a crime as murder, and it is worthy of note, as a psychological fact, that this reptile contrived to deceive itself into thinking that it had stopped short of crime's utmost limits; to be sure it had tempted and bribed and urged men to robbery under circumstances that were almost sure to lead to murder, but still murder might not occur; meantime it had openly discountenanced that crime, and checked the natural proclivity of brutus and Black Will toward deeds of blood.
Self-deception will probably cease at the first blast of the archangel's trumpet. But what human heart will part with it till then? The circumstances under which a human being could not excuse or delude or justify himself have never yet occurred in the huge annals of crime. Prejudice apart, Crawley's moral position behind brutus and Black Will seems to bear a strong family likeness to that which Holy Writ assigns to the great enemy of man. That personage knocks out nobody's brains, cuts nobody's throat, never was guilty of such brutality since the world was, but he finds some thorough egotist, and whispers how the egotism of his passions or his interest may be gratified by the death of a fellow-creature. The egotist listens, and blood flows.
brutus and Black Will had both suffered for their crimes. brutus had been nailed by Carlo, twice gibbeted, and the bridge of his nose broken once. Black Will had been mutilated, and Walker nearly drowned, but “the close contriver of all harms” had kept out of harm's way. Violence had never recoiled on him who set it moving. For all that, Crawley, I must inform the reader, was not entirely prosperous. He had his little troubles, too, whether warnings that he was on the wrong path, or punishments of his vices, or both, I can't say.