"Then sound the chorus once again
And give it with a roar,
And let its echoes ring, boys,
Upon the sea and shore,
Until it reach the mountains,
Where gold is in galore,
In the Golden Gullies of the Palmer."
"Hurrah! Hurrah! We'll sound the jubilee.
Hurrah! Hurrah! And we will merry be,
When we reach the diggings, boys,
There the nuggets see,
In the Golden Gullies of the Palmer."
CHAPTER V.
THE SWAY OF GOLD.
The sounds of the eighteen voices, joined in the Palmer song, travelled through the silent bush, back towards Boulder Creek, along the route where many a camp-fire twinkled in the darkness as the marching army of miners formed their bivouacs in twos and threes. And where it echoed, men turned their heads to listen, and ceased even to smoke for the moment, as they strove to gauge the distance the main camp was ahead, and wondered if it were "good enough to shove along" in the dark. On either side of the main camp, and all around, the sounds reverberated amidst the tall, gaunt, scanty-leaved gums, till the 'possums scratched and chattered as they danced along the boughs, and the slow-witted bears sniffed the cool-scented air of the night to find some reason for the unusual flood of melody. Farther ahead still it travelled, till the lonely dingo heard it as he prowled, and, sitting on his haunches, raised his throat towards the skies and poured forth a melancholy howl in unison, rousing the suspicions of the night curlew that everything was not as it should be, and inducing him in turn to give utterance to his cry, mournful and weird as the wail of an outcast soul, to warn his fellows to be on the alert, and to add to the unspeakably awe-inspiring solemnity of the bush at night.
Farther still it travelled, until, little more than a faint echo, it reached another camp-fire far ahead of the main camp, a fire beside which two men sat. A blanket was spread between them, and upon it lay a pile of small nuggets of gold, and, on a tin plate, a heap of gold-dust.
One of the two, a man whose eyebrows formed a black heavy band across the forehead, held up his hand as the sound came to him. Then he laughed.