'Pull 'em down!' cried Mike, 'but do no damage.'
'Halt there!' ordered the sergeant, rising in his stirrups, but the crowd took little account of him and his four gallant followers. It swarmed round them for a moment, plucked the five men from their saddles, and passed on, leaving the troopers sprawling on the ground, and driving their horses before them with the terrified Celestials.
The chase continued all the way to Carisbrook, and for a mile or so beyond; but at the river, where the main body of Chinese was overtaken, there was a brief but vigorous fight. The Chinese used their shovels and sticks and stones, and what other weapons presented themselves, in defence of their property, and for about five minutes the hand-to-hand conflict raged with a rattle of pick-handles, a thud, thud, thud of busy clubs, oaths in good round English, and a squeaking and yelling in shrill Chinese, and then the Chows, overborne by numbers, backed, broke, and fled, and the hunt was continued. In two hours' time there was not a Chinaman in sight, and virtuous Europeans were busy washing the golden gravel left near the river, satisfying their consciences when they pinched that only even handed justice had been done in robbing the robbers.
Five weeks passed before the Chinese went creeping back to Simpson's Ranges, and by this time the diggers were engrossed in more important affairs, and offered no serious opposition. It seemed that the trouble was rapidly coming to a head at Ballarat. Wearying of the effort to secure reform by peaceful agitation, the men were arming themselves as best they could. The lawful endeavours of the miners had resulted only in spurring their enemies to greater activity in oppression, and blundering and brutal officials had chosen the moment when the agitation was at its height to institute one of the most strenuous and tyrannical license-hunting expeditions that had been inflicted upon the miners of Ballarat. Diggers were brutally man-handled; in some cases their clothes were torn from their backs, in others they were insulted and beaten by the troopers. The hunt was manifestly an organized and deliberate effort to display the contempt officialdom felt for the men and their cause. Blood ran hotly; there were casual skirmishes between the people and the police, who, while serving as the zealous and willing instruments of oppression, offered the diggers absolutely no protection from the thieves and ruffians infesting the fields.
Arrangements had been made to convey the news of a general rising to the men at Simpson's Ranges in time to enable them to reach the disturbed centre before the outbreak of hostilities, and on a Friday morning, shortly after midnight, Jim Done, Mike Burton, and the three Peetrees set off together. They left their tents as they stood, and carrying only a blue blanket apiece and such arms as they possessed, started on their long tramp to Ballarat as gaily as if bent upon a pleasure excursion. They slept in the Bush on Friday night, and reached the Australian Eldorado on Saturday at about noon. Approaching the field from the north, they were bailed up on the edge of wide lagoon fringed with gum-trees and scrub by a party of men on horseback.
'Halt!' cried the leader.
'What's the matter now?' said Mike.
'I demand all arms and ammunition you may have about you.'
'Then I'm hanged if you'll get them!'
'For the use of the forces of the republic of Victoria,' continued the leader.