THE miners pressed about the victor, eager to shake hands with him, and invitations to drink were showered upon him. Aurora clamoured on the out skirts of this crowd, trying to fight her way through, still half delirious with excitement and exultation, calling Jim's name. Her rapture was uncouth, half savage; she had many of the instincts of the primitive woman. But Mike dragged Done's shirt over his head and led his mate away. Burton prepared a hot tub for Jim that night, and after nine hours' sleep the hero awakened on Sunday morning with only a bruise or two, a lump on his forehead, and a stiff and battered feeling about the ribs, to remind him of his fight with Quigley.
It was a pleasant morning, the winter was already well advanced; but only an improved water-supply, an occasional wetting at the windlass, and the need of a rug on the bunk, marked the change of season, so far as Jim could see. There was no place for verdure on Diamond Gully; the whole field turned upside down, littered with the debris of the mines, washed with yellow slurry, and strewn in places with white boulders and the gravel tailings sluiced clean by the gold-seekers. The creek, recently a limpid rivulet, was now a sluggish, muddy stream, winding about its tumbled bed; but a bright sky was over all, and a benignant sun smiled upon the gully, scintillating among the tailings and burnishing the muddy stream to silver. The tents looked white and clean, and the smoke from the camp-fires rose straight and high in the peaceful atmosphere. A strange quiet was upon the lead; it needed only the chastened clanging of a church-bell to complete the suggestion of an English Sabbath.
Jim was sitting on the foot of his bunk reading. Mike had gone up the creek on a prospecting expedition. Presently a magpie in a dead tree at a little distance burst into full-throated melody. Done dropped his book to listen. That clarion of jubilation always delighted him. It seemed to him that if the young Australian republic men were talking of ever came into being its anthem must ring with the wild, free notes of its bravest singing-bird.
'So the bold hayro was not kilt intoirely?' Aurora was smiling in at him, her eyes full of sunshine, her cheeks suffused with more than their wonted colour. 'Are ye axin' me in? Thank ye, kind sir.' She slipped into the tent, and, placing a hand upon each shoulder, examined him critically, while he smiled back into her face, and wondered why she brought with her suggestions of a bounteous rose-garden. 'Ah, Jimmy, I thought I'd hardly know ye!
'"Where are your eyes that looked so mild?
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild,
When my poor heart you first beguiled?"
She sang no more, but sank upon his knee, and her arms were about his neck. Her accent was mischievious, but there was the fire of rubies in her eyes.
'They're both there fast enough,' laughed Jim. 'An' niver a black one among them. The big fellow didn't spoil your picture, then? Ah, Jim, it was fine! fine! fine! It maddened me with delight to see you beating him. You—you sprig of a fighting devil, I love you for it!'
Jim's heart took fire at hers. He strained her to him, and his lips sank upon her handsome, eager mouth in a long kiss that transported him.
'Dearest, you have kissed my heart,' she whispered. 'You fought him for the love of me, didn't you?'
Only twice in his life had he kissed a woman, and as if greedy from long fasting he kissed her now, lips, cheeks, eyes, and neck. His lips searched the deep corners of her mouth.