'You're right, old man!' The crowd took advantage of the pause that followed to raise a clamour of fierce words.
'I have more news for you,' said the orator. 'The cause of liberty is spreading, deepening, strengthening. We are on the verge of civil war. Latest information from Ballarat, Bendigo, and all the large centres shows that the hour of strenuous resistance, of resistance to the death, has almost come. Even now it may have struck. As I speak, the men of Ballarat may be shedding their blood to rescue our adopted country from the foul and foolish rule of that pitiful handful of nominees in Melbourne, the despicable instruments of a far-off power that is as ignorant of our needs as it is careless of our sufferings. We are commanded to stand ready—commanded by God, I believe with all my soul—and those of us who have the aspirations of men and the spirit of true Britons must look to our arms. The commissioners of the various fields have been particularly venomous in their treatment of the poorer diggers of late. On all the fields license-hunting has been pushed to such an extremity of oppression that only dingoes and Chinamen could bear it. We must fight! Men, no human creature detests bloodshed more than I, but what else can your leaders ask of you but to fight? Every channel of peaceful progression is closed to you. You are a great population of strong men, the adventurous spirits of the world, and you are held under the lash by a stupid minority so weak that one free movement of your limbs may dash them to perdition. You are asked to confine yourselves to peaceful and legal forms in conducting this agitation, while those who ask you deny you a breath of power, an iota of right, and manifest their goodwill by riding you down like wallabies, or rounding you up like scrub-cattle, and tearing from you the scandalous taxes that go to pay the expenses of a robber Government that represents only your enemies.'
The spirit of the crowd had undergone a surprising revolution; the gaiety of a few minutes since had fled from every heart, and Lambert confronted a great crowd, the faces of which glowed whitely in the moonlight, a crowd that broke into vehement cheering and a babel of oaths and yells at every pause.
The quoted words were the opening sentences of a speech that lasted nearly an hour, and held the diggers by their heart-strings every second of the time. Done felt himself strongly moved—the vehemence, the lusty eloquence, and the unquestionable honesty of the speaker possessed him. He was filled with a longing for strife; the fighting spirit strong within him was up in arms. Like many another in the crowd, he was ready to carve out a republic with a pick-handle, even though a score came to resist him with rifles.
Lambert spoke of the simple rights of manhood, of the demands of the new democracy in the Old World, and the growing belief in the sacred right of a people to govern themselves according to their light, and finished with an impassioned description of a recent digger-hunt on Forest Creek, in the course of which a man had been killed. The crowd was slow to depart when the speech was ended, and broke into knots, the men feverishly discussing the great news of the robbery and the possibility of a riot extending over the whole of the rushes. Whilst sitting on the log thinking of what he had heard, Jim saw Aurora approach Lambert. She was visibly excited, and offered him an eager hand.
'Did I do well?' she asked.
Lambert seized her hand and pressed it warmly. 'Splendidly, my girl,' he said. 'A man couldn't want a better audience. Like a true Irishwoman, you're the twin sister of Liberty, Miss Aurora.'
Done drew Aurora to his side a few minutes later. 'So,' he said lightly, 'my Joy is a conspiratress.' 'It's the hard name, me darlin',' she answered, taking his hand between hers. 'I just promised Lambert to have the half of Jim Crow here to hear him an' I'm afther keepin' me word.'
XIV
THE rising Lambert had anticipated in August did not come off. For a few days the country trembled on the verge of civil war, but the blow did not fall. The trouble was averted; the anger remained in men's hearts. During the lovely spring weather that followed Done saw much of the Bush. He and Mike spent weeks prospecting about the Jim Crow district. They loitered away a few restful days among the ranges, and for the first time Jim saw a wattle-gully in full blaze, a stream of golden bloom sweeping along the course of a little mountain creek as far as the eye could see, each tree a huge bouquet, the whole mass foaming in the gentle breeze, a rich feast of colour, lit up by a glowing noonday sun, and bordered by the subdued green of the mountain gums. The delicate perfume stole up to where the mates lay on the side of the range in peaceful enjoyment of the scene, and Done, looking with half-closed eyes, day-dreaming, felt the inspiration that has since driven about twenty-five per cent of the native-born population of Australia desperately to poesy.