This was plainly our dismissal, and his horse was waiting at the door for him. So as the sun was still high in the heavens, and the weather very favourable, we resolved to try to reach the mine that night, or rather I should say the diggings, for it had not attained the dignity of a mine, and was not very likely to do so. We took a young goatherd for a guide, and leaving our horses at a hut, set forth in search of the emerald-hunters.
Although we had no very great height to ascend, for the diggings were far below the summit, and there was a fair track nearly all the way, and a rope laid along the worst places, it was close upon sunset before we reached the magnificent gully where the miners had their camp. They were just leaving work for the day, and marching almost like a squad of soldiers to the cells they had scooped for their dwelling-places under the shelter of an overhanging crag. Each of them carried a rifle on his shoulder as well as a strong iron rod with a crook at the end, and a tool something like a spud, and a hammer with a long peak of steel. The captain, or master, or foreman, came last in the file with nothing in his hands but a deep tar-pot, and he proved to be Mr. Jack Nickols, a sturdy young man with a round red face, active, resolute, and profoundly contented with his own endowments.
"Halloa! Haven't you got a word to throw at a brother Englishman?" Strogue was sadly short of breath, but still capable of indignation, as these twelve or fourteen men regarded him with some suspicion, and not a token of hospitable emotion kindling in their bosoms. "We are not come to steal your dirty stones, or to set up shop against you. We are of the highest English birth, cousins to two Dukes, six Marquises, and a good round dozen of Earls. And what will touch you up more, my boys, if you are driven against nature to be Radicals, we have got three pounds of fine tobacco left; and if you are good, you shall have half of it."
This was an outburst of "Altruism," as the people who ought to be in Bedlam call it, which found no echo in my breast (because we were beginning to smoke our ashes), but set up an irresponsible rub-a-dub in theirs.
With one accord they all turned round; though bound for their suppers (as their mouths would have frankly declared, if sure of having more than they could do with), still they proved their higher value, and their sense of the fine arts—such as we cultivate now with picture-frames on Sunday—by stopping and pulling out empty pipes, and dropping their thumbs from the barrel to the bowl.
"Plenty of time," said Captain Strogue, who was up to all those little things; "fine fellows all of you; but you don't get a whiff till I know more about you. The laws of Great Britain hold good all over the globe, because they are righteous. You may shout in vain for Bacco, as the heathen gods did in their time. I am not a man of many words. We have had to smoke a lot of poison ourselves, and not a blessed son of a gun among you tastes a shred of the genuine weed, till I have got all I want out of you."
I thought that they would have turned crusty. But such misgivings showed that I did not understand my countrymen. An Englishman can put up with everything but humbug. Bar that, and he begins to think of you.
"I want a young fellow called Jack Nickols, the nephew of my old friend, Jemmy Nickols," Strogue went on with louder shouts, as he saw that the men were taking to him; "you are a rough lot, and you know it. But I have been round the world seven times; and take you as you are, I would rather have you than any other fellows I have ever come across. You are no wonders, mind you; but you know what's what. And more than that, you do it."
This was rather vague, though it sounded so precise. And I whispered to the Captain, "You are as good as John Bright." But he shoved me with his elbow, while his eloquence went down. Then the young man with the tar-pot came up mildly, in the presence of a larger spirit, and said, "Captain, you must be the celebrated traveller;" and Strogue looked at him augustly, and said, "Young man, you are right."