‘What a wonderful outlook!’ said Reginald, as they sat at breakfast in a lofty cool room at the G.F.H. (as the Galle Face Hotel is irreverently and familiarly known). ‘It is good to travel. How it broadens one’s views! What a change from that pestilential Port Said and the Red Sea! By the way, I hope the Times is making a row about our threatened capture. These blundering Russians did take the Malacca a month since, and put an armed crew on board. What a bore if we had met with the adventure! Captain Bucklaw and his Japanese cruiser saved us from that fate. What a magnificent fellow the Captain is! I never saw a finer man in my life, although he is growing old. What adventures he has had! You knew him years ago, didn’t you, sir?’
‘Yes, many years ago. He is a most remarkable man, as you say; but that he is the right man in the right place occasionally, and was so when we met him, no one can doubt for a moment. I will tell you more about him another time.’
Albany—Fremantle—Perth—all outposts of the ‘Briton’s far-flung line’ of conquest and [448] ]colonisation, the latter the more important operation of the two, were successively reached, and now, in Reggie Banneret’s eyes, far their most exciting and interesting objective came within the range of vision. That Aladdin’s cave, Pilot Mount, was at length reached, and the great desert-seeming panorama, strange and unfamiliar as it was to the graduate of Cambridge, did not fail to impress him on that account.
‘This is something like!’ he exclaimed. ‘It is so delightfully un-English, except in results. Such a true, unadulterated bit of Africa, Australia, America, all in one. Don’t let any one say it’s unconventional, uncomfortable, disagreeable. Why, that’s the beauty of it all. It’s what I came out to see; what makes one proud of being an Englishman, that is, an Australian, which is all the same, of course. I must say I like to belong to people that have done things.’
‘And suffered too,’ said his father. ‘You must not forget that side of the adventure; it is, or rather was, very essential.’
‘I suppose there was a good deal of that ingredient mixed up with the gold and glory of the earlier days of the Field.’
‘Field is a very apposite expression as applied to gold areas—battlefield almost more appropriate, when typhoid fever decimated the men in every camp; hunger, thirst, and privation of every kind took toll; when water was dearer than wine or spirits on many goldfields. And now, what a transformation!’
‘Transformation indeed!’ said the younger [449] ]man; ‘it appears to me like the work of an enchanter who has waved his wand, and lo, behold! what has arisen? Spouting fountains where the famished horses and camels scraped the barren sand; the green growth of gardens, irrigated and fertilised; fruit and vegetables, and this’—looking round the lofty, spacious room in which they had been dining. ‘Waiter, bring more ice. This Chasselas will be none the worse for cooling.’
The formal reception of the mining magnate of Pilot Mount was much like any other function of the sort, and was transacted with the usual, or, perhaps, slightly unusual formalities. Once the principal shareholder and part owner of a very valuable mining property, Arnold Banneret was now almost the sole owner. Old Jack Waters’s will had been proved, probate had been granted, and all necessary forms complied with. The erst ex-Commissioner of Goldfields at Barrawong, in New South Wales, found himself one of the richest men in Australia. The mine was a ‘going concern’ in every sense of the word, but after a month’s sojourn, a steadily increasing desire to see once more the higher aspects of civilisation commenced to assert itself, though there was a club well-conducted and most comfortable, and also polo—a game of which Reggie was passionately fond, with ponies which were excellent, the members practised and well-mannered. The working of the great mine, with all the latest appliances for the extraction of the precious metal, and 2000 men on the payroll, was in itself an interesting, even exciting, spectacle—a triumph of mechanism to watch; all [450] ]but human in so much of its automatic action. But even this source of interest and occupation came to an end, and one day Reggie confessed to his father that after, of course, a look-in at Sydney and Melbourne, he should not be sorry to be on board a P. & O. liner once more.
‘If I did not feel,’ said his father, ‘that I was quitting Australia for the last time, which is for me a mournful reflection, I should welcome the idea; but I cannot regard the desertion of one’s native land, in my case and yours, as merely a matter of practical convenience.