‘Yes,’ said Harry; ‘there may be something there. One can never tell.’
‘Not much danger!’ he blurted out. ‘The coves as worked Number One North Rainbow weren’t the chaps to leave much behind ’em. Leastways’—he quickly added, seeing his mistake, ‘so I’ve heerd say.’
Treloar gave me a look which meant ‘How now?’ but neither of us took further notice.
‘I’ve heard tell, too,’ he continued, ‘as that claim’s häänted.’
‘Oh!’ said Treloar airily, and as if in constant association with them, ‘we don’t mind ghosts. It’s the living, not the dead, that force us betimes to keep a sharp look-out.’
‘Well, mates,’ retorted Brummy, rather sulkily, ‘I [82] ]ain’t quite cunnin’ enuff yet to chew tacks, but I ain’t not altogether a born hidjiot; an’ if anybody was to offer me a thousand poun’ to go down that ’ere shaft, where you got your win’less rigged, an’ up them drives, I wouldn’t do it.’
‘I was down it to-day,’ I remarked, ‘and didn’t notice anything out of the common.’
‘Mebbe not, mebbe not—yet,’ said he. ‘But the yarns I’ve listened to—on the Lachlan, over yander—consarning that ’ere Rainbow claim ’d make your ’air stick up stiff.’
During the night, feeling restless and unable to sleep, I got up and went outside. The weather was very hot, and, for some time, I sat and listened to the faint wash of the sea, longing for a plunge in its cool depths. Suddenly, in the great expanse of gloom, my eyes caught the glimmer of a light. As nearly as I could guess, it was moving slowly towards the shaft we were to descend in the morning.
‘There goes your aged friend,’ said a voice at my shoulder, which made me start with the unexpectedness of it.