‘That is the precise state of the case. Here is [51] ]the prospector who discovered our bonanza, and will explain.’
‘Best reef I ever seen,’ interposed the grizzled veteran—‘and I’m a “forty-niner.” So that says somethin’. If no one’s dropped across my cache (as the trappers say) there’s enough to make all our fortunes twice over. We can be t’other side of that there hill inside of twelve hours.’
‘Shortly. You understand enough of mining law, I presume, to see that though we can take up a Reward Claim, we can’t work it with two men. I see by your hands—excuse me—that the manual part of mining is not unknown to you. We must take in some one. I prefer, and so does Jack, to work with gentlemen, so I’m prepared to offer you such shares as may be further agreed between us when the allocation takes place.’
‘It sounds too good to be true,’ said Newstead. ‘You are not going to lure us into a cavern and slay us for our property, are you? But one can’t help regarding oneself as the modernest Aladdin. In any case, I say, done with you, magician or no! and so does Denzil, if I know him. Allow me to help pack, and follow, as Dick Burton used to write to his wife—the pay portion of the injunction must await developments.’
. . . . . . . . .
The journey was resumed, the saddle was removed from the leader’s back, and placed in the waggonette, as were also the effects of the new associates. Apparently willing workers, they proved themselves cheery and entertaining companions.
[52]
]Unaffected in manner and simple of speech, it was yet apparent, though they conversed on perfectly equal terms with old Jack as with the Commissioner, that they had moved in the haute volée of English society.
They made no statement to that effect, but it was indirectly plain to the Commissioner, himself an aristocrat by birth and social surroundings, that such was the case. It was many a year since he had been ‘home,’ yet, nevertheless, the merry chatter of these youngsters, which, though careless, was redolent of the best English ‘form,’ was refreshing in the life of a man who, though long absent from the old country, was yet in full sympathy with her ideas and traditions. So they fared on for the long remaining hours of the day, until they reached the spinifex flat, immediately adjacent to the base of the hill which had been so long within sight, but without reaching the gradually ascending ‘rise’ which led to a plateau slightly above the level of the plain. Here they halted—to feed the horses and await the rising of the moon—after which the journey would recommence.
‘We can’t afford to take no risks,’ said the old man; ‘we might have another party comin’ along from “the Cross” way. And if they got there first—some men’s that smart, you’d a’most swear as they could smell the gold—there’d be a barney over it; and law, likely as not, which you never know how it might turn out. So I’m thinkin’ it’s best to go on, and collar right away—that’ll put an end to all bother in one act.’
[53]
]As the other members of the party were, more or less, excited and ardent with the thought that the tedious journey was nearly at an end, with fame and fortune almost within their grasp (for when is fortune achieved without fame following dutifully behind the triumphal car?)—the Commissioner, with the far-off cottage ready to be illumined with the glad tidings, and the children’s shouts almost in his ears; the young men, fired with the idea of a return to England with a record rivalling that of the hero who ‘broke the bank at Monte Carlo,’—no objection was raised. And when the moon, nearly at her full, rose slowly over the horizon, commencing to flood the wide bare solitudes, the plain, the hill crags, the mighty sweep of waterless silent landscape, and deserted save for themselves, it seemed a weird mockery to expect anything of the nature of wealth won from a region so far removed from the benevolence of Nature or of man.