The Ghost Camp; or, the Avengers

by Rolf Boldrewood

As the season had advanced the weather even in that austere and dreadful wilderness relaxed its icy grip. The forest trees, the giant eucalypts and towering pines, “had a tinge of softer green.” The moss looked bright “touched by the footsteps of spring,” haunting even that unlovely wild. Mr. Blount, though loyally impatient to return to his Imogen and the calm delights of Hobart, felt distinctly in better spirits. He even took a mild gratification in marking the heterogeneous element of the stranger hordes that arrived daily, gathered as they were from the ends of the earth, of all nations apparently, and several colours. “Gentle and simple,” forlorn workers and wayfarers from many a distant land, mingled with derelicts of the classes akin to “Mr. and Mrs. Winchester.” The men feverishly anxious to strike some lucky find or chance investment, the women poorly dressed, working at the humblest household tasks, all wearing the vague, yearning, half-despairing expression, which comes of the heart-sickness of “hope deferred.” Theirs was the harder lot. Still, with but few exceptions, they faced the rude living and unaccustomed toil with the courage women invariably show when hard fortune makes a call on their nobler attributes.

Nowhere is the ascent of the “up grade” of mining prosperity, when the tide of fortune is flowing, and the financial barometer is “set fair,” made easier than in Australasia. Rude as may be the earlier stages, the change from the mining camp, the collection of rude cabins, to the town, the city even, is magically rapid. To the gold or silver deposit, as the case may be, everything is attracted with resistless force as by the loadstone mountain of Sindbad. Time, distance, the rude approach by land travel, the stormy seas, all are defied. And though delays and dangers are so thickly strewn before the path of the adventurer, he and his like invariably arrive at their goal and would get there somehow, if behind every tree stood an armed robber, and were every trickling creek a turbulent river.

Mr. Tregonwell had proved himself capable of carrying out the rather extensive programme, financial and otherwise, which he had produced for the inspection of his partners on their first meeting at the mine. The manager of world-wide experience and unequalled reputation had been procured from America; had been paid the liberal salary; had proved himself more than worthy of his fame. The railway to Strahan was in process of completion. Contracts, let at many different points, were nearing one another with startling rapidity.

The price of provisions had fallen. Wages were high—yet the contractors were making as much money as the shareholders. With the exception of the very poor and the chronic cases of ill-luck from which no community is, ever has been, or ever will be free, the Great Silver Field was the modern exemplar of a place where every one had all that he wanted now, and was satisfied that such would be the case for the future.

The wages misunderstanding had been settled, an arrangement made with one of the most stable banks in Australia, by which the Directors agreed to cash Mr. Tregonwell’s drafts for all reasonable, and, indeed, unreasonable, amounts, as some over-cautious, narrow-minded people considered. The predominant partner began to revolve the question of an early departure. The juniors, Charlie Herbert and Jack Clarke, had earned golden opinions from Tregonwell as cheerful workers and high-couraged comrades. He willingly agreed to their holidays at Christmas time, now drawing nigh, if one would remain with him for company, and perhaps assistance in time of need, while the other enjoyed himself among his relatives and friends in one of the charming country houses of his native land. As for himself, he did not require change or recreation, his duty was to the shareholders, who had entrusted him with such uncontrolled powers of dictatorship.

Mr. Blount would be within easy reach of telegrams at Hobart, whence he could come up for a week when a difficult point or question of further outlay needed to be settled. Comstock was not such a very uncomfortable place now, and would be less so in the near future, and Frampton Tregonwell had lived and thriven amid worse surroundings.

So, as the short summer of the West Coast crept slowly on towards the “great Festival” which heralds “Peace on Earth, and good will towards men,” all things seemed moving in a tranquil orderly manner towards organised success and permanent prosperity. The big mill with the newest improvements, and a high-grade German scientist from Freiburg in command, had just been completed and was turning out unprecedented returns. Everything went smoothly, socially and otherwise. Although so near to what had once been an accumulation of the most desperate criminals the world could show, only kept under by the merciless uniformity of a severe administration—the present crime record was curiously low, and trifling in extent. Labour was well paid, well fed and lodged. All men had, moreover, the hope of even greater benefits, as results from their toil. Under these circumstances the list of offences is invariably light. The inducements to crime were so small, as almost to lead to an optimistic belief that incursions on the goods and persons of neighbours would at an early date cease and determine. The dream of the philanthropist would at last be fulfilled.

Perhaps, also, that other dream of a socialistic division of labour with equal partition of the fruits of the earth, and the partition of the fruits of labour (chiefly other men’s labour) for the benefit of the poor but honest worker would be an accomplished fact.

So, in the ordering of things mundane, it came to pass that Mr. Blount, to his great contentment and satisfaction, had everything arranged and “fixed up,” as Tregonwell expressed it (culling his phrases from all nations and many tongues), and departing via Strahan, bade farewell for the present to Macquarie Harbour, Hell’s Gates, and the other lonely and more or less historic localities. The passage, for a wonder, was smooth, the wind fair, and it was with joy and satisfaction, which he could hardly forbear expressing in a shout of exultation, that he found himself once more in Hobart, within arm’s length, so to speak, of Imogen and his “kingdom by the sea.”

That young woman had kept herself well informed as to the time when the Strahan steamer might be expected, and appeared at the wharf driving the mail phaeton. Black Paddy was beside her on the box; in front was the bay mare, “Matchless,” with her mate “Graceful,” in top condition, and ready to jump out of their skins, with rest and good keep. This valuable animal, formerly hard worked, with but little rest, and far from luxurious fare, had been contented to rattle up and down the hills between Hobart and Brown’s River and the Huon, without so much as a hint from the whip. Under present circumstances, she naturally took a little holding.