“The poor old chap didn’t live long after that. He was comfortable enough for the last year or two of his life, for my father pensioned his old servants, and his old horses too, for that matter. He couldn’t bear to think that after they’d worked well all their lives, they should be allowed to drag out a wretched existence, starved, or perhaps ill-treated, till death came to their relief. So the silver ‘slug’ was bequeathed to me, this is a bit of it on my watch-chain, with the malachite colouring showing out. It always comes with time, they say. Anyhow it brought me luck in the end, though it was a precious long time coming about.”
“As you’ve brought us so far,” said Jack Clarke, “and Mr. Blount seems interested (he hasn’t been asleep more than twice), I think it would be a fair thing to give us the last chapter. For, I suppose you did find the old man’s marked tree, and if so, how? as lawyers say.”
“As you have deduced, with your usual astuteness, that I must have found it, or we shouldn’t be here, I suppose, I may lay aside my modesty, and enlighten the company. The ‘Comstock’ has a well-marked track now, if there’s nothing else good about it. Old Parkins gave me the bearings of the ‘Lost Gully,’ as he always called it. Once a year, I always took a loaf round the locality after Christmas, poking about doing a little fishing, when there was any: shooting wallaby or anything worth while that I came across. Got an old man kangaroo bailed up at the head of a gully, one day after a big fight with my dogs. I had fired away my cartridges, and was looking round for a stick to hit him on the head with, when I backed on to a stump of an upright sapling, as I thought, out of a ‘whip stick scrub,’ which had grown up since the fire.
“It did not give way, as I expected, and putting back my hand to feel it, I found it was a stake! It was charred all round, but still sound, and hard to the core. Lucky for me, it was stringy bark timber. I pulled it up, and tried it on the old man’s skull, which it cracked like an egg shell. It had been pointed with a tomahawk, and driven well into the ground. That clinched the matter. It was the old man’s peg! The next thing was to clear the ground round about of timber and ashes, with all the accumulation of years. This I did next day, carefully, and it was not long before I discovered a couple of tomahawk marks on a big ‘mess-mate’ not far off. The bark had partly grown over it. It was in the form of a cross. Underneath the new bark the marking was perfect, as I had often seen surveyors’ marks, years and years after they had been done. Then I came upon the cap of the lode, broke off some rock, fifty per cent. ore, no mistake. Blazed my track and cleared for Hobart. Took up a prospector’s claim next morning at 10 a.m. Registered in due form. Met Clarke and accidentally Messrs. Blount and Tregonwell, new—er—that is to say, newly arrived from England, and the great silver property, known to the world as the ‘Tasmanian Comstock, Limited,’ and so on was duly launched.”
“Well done, Charlie, my boy! No idea you’d so much poetry in your composition! You were not regarded as imaginative at the old ‘Hutchins Institute,’ where we both had ‘small Latin and less Greek’ hammered into us. But you were a sticker, I will say that for you. Now that I’m hors de combat, I seem to see that quality in a new light. Main strength and stupidity we used to call it in your case.”
“I’ve no doubt; you were horribly ill-mannered, even without a sprained ankle,” retorted Herbert, “but we make allowances for your condition as an invalid. By the time we get that corduroy track finished, and traffic other than ‘man-power’ restored, we shall look for improvement.”
The next day, being bright with sunshine, dispersed some of the gloom which wet, cold and unwonted fatigue had imposed upon the partners. The shafts of sunlight, flashing through the endless glades and thickets of the primeval forest, formed a thousand glittering coruscations of all imaginable forms and figures.
The pools of water reflected the glimpses of cloudless sky, framed in sombre but still burnished shades of green. Birds called and twittered in approval of the change, while strings of water-fowl, winging their way to the great mountain lakes, told of a happier clime, and the undisturbed enjoyment in which the tribes of the air might revel.
The obvious primary duty after breakfast was to get to the mine itself. The distance was not great, but the task was less easy than might be supposed. The track through the jungle of scrub and forest was necessarily narrow, as the labour necessary for clearing it was great and, therefore, expensive. The tremendous rainfall had turned the adjoining country into a quagmire, the only means of crossing which was by a corduroy road.
On this inconvenient makeshift the friends stumbled along until they came to a collection of huts and tents, the usual outcrop of a mining township, which springs up, mushroom-like, at the faintest indication of proved, payable gold, silver or copper in any part of Australia. Of course there was a “store,” so called, from which proudly flaunted a large calico flag, with “Comstock Emporium” rudely painted thereon, while a few picks and shovels, iron pots and frying-pans, with a half-emptied case of American axes outside the canvas door, denoted the presence of the primary weapons used in the war with nature.