Palmer Billy for once was silent as the camp was made.
"It's no good," he grumbled, when, with pipes alight, they lounged round the fire after the evening meal. "It's no good. We've struck a duffer. It's the old yarn. When we had a pile we didn't know how to keep it from the sharks, and now—well, we've struck a duffer."
"We're not through yet," Peters remarked, after a moment's silence.
"Not through?" Palmer Billy exclaimed, his raucous voice taking to itself a touch of scorn. "What do you call this? Are you going to take this up as a selection and grow pumpkins? Do you think there's any gold in this mud-pan? Did you ever see nuggets in a swamp of reeds? There's not an ounce of sand or gravel to the acre. How are you going to work it? Mine? Sink a shaft and drive tunnels? Not through, you call it, and never more than a colour to the dish after fourteen days and more of graft. I'm full of it. There was more of a show on Boulder Creek."
"'Kick at troubles when they come, boys,'" Tony chanted from the other side of the fire.
"Wot price that?" Palmer Billy interrupted. "Singing a digger's song on a darned dirty mud-heap. It's a blasphemy."
"Why?" Peters asked quietly.
"Why? Because there's no gold in it, that's why," Palmer Billy retorted.
"No; but there may be under it," Peters answered.
Palmer Billy rose to his feet, and stood with the firelight playing on his rugged face and figure as he turned towards Peters.