"I hear you have lost your mate Philip, and my mates have all gone away and taken the tent with them; so I want to ask you to let me stay in your tent until I can look round a bit."
This young man's name was David Beswick, but he was known simply as "Bez." He was a harmonious tailor from Manchester; he played the violoncello, also the violin; had a good tenor voice, and a talent for the drama. He, and a man named Santley from Liverpool, had taken leading parts in our plays and concerts on shipboard. Scott, the artist, admired Bez; he said he had the head, the features, and the talent of a Shakespeare. He had a sketch of Bez in his portfolio, which he was filling with crooked trees, common diggers, and ugly blackamoors. I could see no Shakespeare in Bez; he was nothing but a dissipated tailor who had come out in the steerage, while I had voyaged in the house on deck. I was, therefore, a superior person, and looked down on the young man, who was seated on a log near the fire, one leg crossed over the other, and slowly stroking his Elizabethan beard. I said:
"Yes, Philip has left me, but I don't want any partner. I understand you are a tailor by trade, and I don't think much of a tailor."
"Well," replied Bez, "I don't think much of him myself, so I have dropped the business. I am now a sailor. You know yourself I sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne, and, anyhow, there's only the difference of a letter between a tailor and a sailor."
There was a flaw somewhere in the argument, but I only said, "'Valeat quantum valere potest.'" Bez looked solemn; a little Latin goes a long way with some people. He was an object of charity, and I made him feel it.
"In the first place this tent is teetotal. No grog is to come inside it. There is to be no mining partnership. You can keep all the gold you get, and I shall do the same. You must keep all trade secrets, and never confess you are a tailor. I could never hold up my head among the diggers if they should discover that my mate was only the ninth part of a man. You must carry to the tent a quantity of clay and rocks sufficient to build a chimney, of which I shall be the architect. You will also pay for your own tucker, chop wood, make the fire, fetch water, and boil the billy." Bez promised solemnly to abide by these conditions, and then I allowed him to deposit his swag in the tent.
The chimney was built in three days, and we could then defy the weather, and dispense with the umbrella. Bez performed his part of the contract well. He adopted a rolling gait and the frown of a pirate; he swore naval oaths strong enough to still a hurricane. Among his digging outfit was a huge pick; it was a two-man pick, and he carried it on his shoulder to suggest his enormous strength. He threw tailordom to the winds; when a rent appeared in his trousers he closed it with pins, disdaining the use of the needle, until he became so ragged that I ordered him into dock for repairs.
One day in passing Philip's school I peeped in at the flap of the tent. He had already acquired the awe-inspiring look of the schoolmaster. He was teaching a class of little boys, whose wandering eyes were soon fixed on my face, and then Philip saw me. He smiled and blushed, and came outside. He said he was getting along capitally, and did not want to try digging any more. He had obtained a small treatise called "The Twelve Virtues of a Good Master," and he was studying it daily in order to qualify himself for his new calling. He had undertaken to demonstrate one of Euclid's propositions every night by way of exercising his reasoning faculties. He was also making new acquaintances amongst men who were not diggers--doctors, storekeepers, and the useful blacksmiths who pointed our picks with steel. He had also two or three friends at the Governmnt camp, and I felt inclined to look upon him as a traitor to the diggers' cause but although he had been a member of the party of Young Irelanders, he was the most innocent traitor and the poorest conspirator I ever heard of. He could keep nothing from me. If he had been a member of some secret society, he would have burst up the secret, or the secret would have burst him.
He had some friends among the diggers. The big gum tree in front of the church tent soon became a kind of trysting place on Sundays, at which men could meet with old acquaintances and shipmates, and convicts could find old pals. Amongst the crowd one Sunday were five men belonging to a party of six from Nyalong; the sixth man was at home guarding the tent. Four of the six were Irish Catholics, and they came regularly to Mass every Sunday; the other two were Englishmen, both convicts, of no particular religion, but they had married Catholic immigrants, and sometimes went to church, but more out of pastime than piety. One of these men, known as John Barton-- he had another name in the indents--stood under the gum tree, but not praying; I don't think he ever thought of praying except the need of it was extreme. He was of medium height, had a broad face, snub nose, stood erect like a soldier, and was strongly built. His small ferrety eyes were glancing quickly among the faces around him until they were arrested by another pair of eyes at a short distance. The owner of the second pair of eyes nudged two other men standing by, and then three pairs of eyes were fixed on Barton. He was not a coward, but something in the expression of the three men cowed him completely. He turned his head and lowered it, and began to push his way among the crowd to hide himself. After Mass, Philip found him in his tent, and suspecting that he was a thief put his hand on a medium-sized Colt's revolver, which he had exchanged for his duelling pistols, and said:
"Well, my friend, and what are you doing here?"