"Well, that's bad. If you are a scholar, you might keep school, but I don't believe there's half-a-dozen kids on the diggin's. They'd be of no mortal use except to tumble down shafts. Fact is, if you are really hard up, you can be a peeler. Up at the camp they'll take on any useless loafer wot's able to carry a carbine, and they'll give you tucker, and you can keep your shirt clean. But, mind, if you do join the Joeys, I hope you'll be shot. I'd shoot the hull blessed lot of 'em if I had my way. They are nothin' but a pack of robbers." The hairy man knew something of current history and statistics, but he had not a pleasant way of imparting his knowledge.
Picaninny Gully ended in a flat, thinly timbered, where there were only a few diggers. Turning to the left, Philip found two men near a waterhole hard at work puddling. When he bade them good-day, they did not swear at him, which was some comfort. They were brothers, and were willing to talk, but they did not stop work for a minute. They had a large pile of dirt, and were making hay while the sun shone--that is, washing their dirt as fast as they could while the water lasted. During the preceding summer they had carted their wash-dirt from the gully until rain came and filled the waterhole. They said they had not found any rich ground, but they could now make at least a pound a day each by constant work. Philip thought they were making more, as they seemed inclined to sing small; in those days to brag of your good luck might be the death of you.
While Philip was away interviewing the diggers, Jack showed me where he had worked his first claim, and had made 400 pounds in a few days. "You might mark off a claim here and try it," he said. "I think I took out the best gold, but there may be a little left still hereabout." I pegged off two claims, one for Philip, and one for myself, and stuck a pick in the centre of each. Then we sat down on a log. Six men came up the gully carrying their swags, one of them was unusually tall. Jack said: "Do you see that big fellow there? His name is McKean. He comes from my part of Ireland. He is a lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a dirty digger."
"What made you leave Ireland, Jack?" I asked.
"I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn't live in it. My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned. Mother was left with eight children, and we were as poor as church mice. I was the oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin boy. I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes. My last port there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named Small. He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him early and late. He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it across the bay to Boston, where the old man's eldest son kept a boarding-house. There was a daughter at home, a regular high-flier. She used to talk to me as if I was a nigger. One day when we were having dinner, she was asking me questions about Ireland, and about my mother, sisters, and brothers. Then I got mad, thinking how poor they were, and I could not help them. 'Miss Small,' I said, 'my mother is forty years old, and she has eight children, and she looks younger than you do, and has not lost a tooth.'
"Miss Small, although quite young, was nearly toothless, so she was mad enough to kill me; but her brother Jonathan was at table, and he took my part, saying, 'Sarves you right, Sue;' why can't you leave Jack alone?'
"But Sue made things most unpleasant, and I told Jonathan I couldn't stay on the farm, and would rather go to sea again. Jonathan said he, too, was tired of farming, and he would go with me. He could manage a boat across Boston Harbour, but he had never been to sea. Next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me; we left the boat with his brother, and shipped in a whaler bound for the South Seas. I used to show him how to handle the ropes, to knot and splice, and he soon became a pretty good hand, though he was not smart aloft when reefing. His name was Small, but he was not a small man; he was six feet two, and the strongest man on board, and he didn't allow any man to thrash me, because I was little. After eighteen months' whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at Hobarton; he said he was tired of the greasy old tub; so one night we bundled up our swags, dropped into a boat, and took the road to Launceston, where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne. When we were half-way across the island, we called just before sundown at a farmhouse to see if we could get something to eat, and lodging for the night. We found two women cooking supper in the kitchen, and Jonathan said to the younger one, 'Is the old man at home?' She replied quite pertly:
"'Captain Massey is at home, if that's what you mean by 'old man.'
"'Well, my dear,' said Jonathan, 'will you just tell him that we are two seamen on our way to Launceston, and we'd like to have a word with him.'
"'I am not your dear,' she replied, tossing her head, and went out. After a while she returned, and said: 'Captain Massey wanted to speak to the little man first.' That was me.