“Neither; he’s a medical man in large practice. His name is Macandrew. Medical superintendent of the new Norfolk lunatic asylum.”
“Well, really, Tregonwell, this is too bad,” answered the other partner, roused from his habitual coolness. “Has it escaped your memory that you wished to sell out before I left for Australia, that I stuck to the claim, and have been paying my share of expenses ever since?”
“Quite true, old fellow; it was your confounded obstinacy and luck combined, a sheer fluke, which has landed us where we are, not a particle of judgment on either side; and now, then, let’s get through business detail before lunch. I have it all here.”
Mr. Tregonwell was a thoroughbred Cornishman, short, square set, and immensely powerful. His coal-black, close-curled hair, with dark, deep-set eyes, short, upright forehead, and square jaw proclaimed him a “Cousin Jack” to all who had ever rambled through the picturesque Duchy, or heard the surges boom on castle-crowned Tintagil. In one way or other he had been interested in mines since his boyhood; had, indeed, delved below sea level in those stupendous shafts in his native place of Truro.
An off-shoot of a good old Cornish family, he had worked up to his present position from a penniless childhood and a youth not disdaining hard manual labour as a miner, when none better was to be had. This gave him a more thorough knowledge of the underground world and its inhabitants than he could otherwise have obtained. As a mining “Captain” therefore, his reputation had preceded him from the silver mines of Rio Tinto in Mexico and the great goldfields of California. A noted man in his way, a type worthy of observation by a student of human nature, like Valentine Blount, who, having added him to his collection, had drifted into friendship, and a speculative partnership which was destined to colour his after life.
As there remained a couple of hours open to such a task before lunch, the partners settled down to a “square business deal,” as Mr. Tregonwell (who had possessed himself of trans-Atlantic and other idioms) phrased it; in the course of which the following facts were elicited. That the stone, in the first place accidentally discovered as an out-drop in one of the wildest, most desolate, regions of the West Coast of Tasmania, was the richest ever discovered in any reefing district “South of the Line,” as Mr. Tregonwell magniloquently expressed it. On sinking, even richer ore came to light, “as much silver as stone” in some of the specimens. He, Tregonwell, had taken care to comply with the labour conditions, and the necessary rules and regulations, according to the Tasmanian Mining Act, in such case made and provided. He had satisfied the Warden of their bona fides, and this gentleman had supported him in all disputes with the “rush crowd” which, as usual under such circumstances, had swarmed around the sensational find, as soon as it was declared. Everything, so far, had been plain sailing, but there was sure to be litigation, and a testing of their title on some of the technical points of law which are invariably raised when the claim is rich enough to pay the expenses of litigation. The great thing now was to float the discovery into a company, exhibit the specimens in the larger cities and in England, and offer half the property in shares to the public. This was agreed to. Tregonwell, with practised ease, drew out the prospectus, explaining the wondrous assays which had already been made, the increasing body of the lode, its speculative value and unrivalled richness as it descended to the hundred and fifty feet level. The prospectors had invited tenders for a fifty head stamp battery to be placed on the ground. Abundance of running water was within easy reach; timber also, of the finest quality, unlimited in quantity. Carriage, of course, in a rough, mountainous country, must be an expensive item. The directors were anxious not to minimise the cost in any way, and all statements might be regarded as absolutely truthful. The stone, if it kept up quality and output, would pay for any rate of carriage and the most up-to-date machinery. When a narrow-gauge railway had been completed to the Port, where the Company had secured wharf accommodation, the transit question would be comparatively trifling.
Mr. Blount retired for lunch to the hotel in which Tregonwell had engaged rooms—a quiet, old-fashioned house of highly conservative character, selected by his partner as specially adapted for privacy. The family had inherited the business and the house from the grandfather, who had made the business, and built the house in the early days when the island was still known as Van Diemen’s Land. Mr. Polglase, whose portrait in oils still ornamented the dining-room, in company with that of Admiral Rodney, in whose flagship he had been a quartermaster, had reached Tasmania in a whaler from New Zealand.
The Clarkstone having made a successful voyage, and Mr. Polglase’s “lay” as first mate amounting to a respectable sum, he decided to quit the sea, and adopt the more or less lucrative occupation of hotel-keeping. In those days when the convict population outnumbered the free, in the proportion of fifty to one, when the aboriginal tribes and far more savage convict outlaws terrorised the settlers at a comparatively short distance from Hobart, it was not altogether a peaceful avocation. But Mark Polglase, a man of exceptional strength and courage, who had enforced discipline and quelled mutiny among the turbulent whaling crews hailing from Sydney Cove, was not the man to be daunted by rioters free or bond. The small, but orderly, well-managed inn soon came to be favourably known both to the general public and the authorities, as a house where comfortable lodging was to be procured, and, moreover, where a strict system of orderliness was enforced. When the coaching system came to be developed, for many years the best in Australasia, after admirable roads had been formed by convict labour, the Lord Rodney was the headquarters of the principal firm. From the long range of stabling issued daily in the after-time the well-bred, high-conditioned four-horse teams, which did the journey between Hobart and Launceston (a hundred and twenty miles) in a day. To be sure the metalled road was perfect, the pace, the coaches, the method of driving, the milestones even, strictly after the old English pattern. So that the occasional tourist, or military traveller, was fain to confess that he had not seen such a turn-out or done such stages since the days of the Cottons and the Brackenburys.
The pace was equal to that of the fastest “Defiance” or “Regulator” that ever kept good time on an English turnpike road. Here the erstwhile Cornish sailor settled himself for life. To that end he wrote to a young woman to whom he had become engaged before he left Truro on his last voyage, and sent her the wherewithal to pay her passage and other expenses. She was wise enough to make no objection to a home on “the other side of the world,” as Jean Ingelow puts it, and had no reason to regret her decision. Here they reared a family of stalwart sons, and blooming lasses—the latter with complexions rivalling those of Devonshire. They married and spread themselves over the wide wastes of the adjoining colonies, with satisfactory results, but never forgetting to return from time to time to their Tasmanian home, where they could smell the apple blossoms in the orchards and hear the bee humming on the green, clover-scented pastures.
The parents in the fulness of time had passed away, and lay in the churchyard, near the Wesleyan meeting house, which the old man had regularly attended and generously supported. But his eldest son, lamed through an accident on a goldfield, reigned in his stead. He too had a capable wife—it seemed to run in the family. So the name and fame of the Lord Rodney remained good as of old.