"You goin' to break new ground, Potch?" he asked. Potch nodded.
"There's a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah," he said. "Roy O'Mara's bottomed on opal there ... got some pretty good colours, and we're goin' to peg out."
"A rush?" Paul's eyes brightened. "Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?"
"Not bad."
As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.
Roy O'Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great, bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump—Roy had been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day's find was spread on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.
When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had marked in his mind's eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond Roy's claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat beading and pouring down their faces.
There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.
Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal dirt beneath it. Roy O'Mara, working on his trace of promising black potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul. Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft; Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour of sinking again.