Leaving one of the ‘jackeroos’ (as the old man called them, apologising, however, and explaining the term) to take charge of the waggonette, the others followed the prospector for a few hundred yards until, as they came to a spot where a few stones had been carelessly thrown together, he stopped, and pointed to a stake. ‘There it is!’ he gasped; ‘no one’s been next or anigh it. I’ll go round, sir, with you and see the other ones. If Mr. Southwater’ll go back to the cart, and feed the horses, and start a fire to boil the billy, we’ll make sure that nothing’s been touched since I left here months ago. It’s not far from daylight, and [54] ]after a bit of breakfast we can open up the reef, and you’ll see what sort of a show it is.’
. . . . . . . . .
‘Well, this is something what we went into the wilderness to see—not to be profane—but isn’t it exactly what one would have thought in the old, old days? This is a wilderness, and no mistake. I used to wonder what one was like when I was at school. Now I know.’
‘Wild and bare, and open to the air,’ continued Mr. Newstead. ‘It takes a lot of imagination to think of villages, towns, cities, and so on—“in this neglected spot,” as Gray’s Elegy hath it. But gold rules the court, the camp, the grove, rather more strongly than t’other imperial power. Everything else follows in its train, so they tell me—Denzil and I are too young to lay down the law on these great subjects. We’ll live and learn, I surmise, as our American friend said.’
. . . . . . . . .
The stakes had been duly cut, sharpened, and driven in, as far as the rocky nature of the hill permitted. There was no path or track to the wondrous spot itself. The faint footsteps of a weak, overwrought, famished man left no imprint upon rock or sand.
An aboriginal tracker on the man-hunt for foe or felon might have read, from a displaced pebble, a bent or broken twig, a deeper indent from a stumbling boot, that a white man had passed that way, but no senses less keen than those of the desert roamer could have followed the tokens of travel.
‘I’d been in an’ out them upper gulches,’ said [55] ]Jack, reminiscent of Californian digger talk, ‘and what with bein’ tol’ble used up when I come, and dead beat afterwards, was just about stumblin’ downhill again when I spots this here openin’. It’s the last chance, thinks I, but I’d better prospect the lot afore I give in. And this is what I come on afore I’d been ten minutes at work. Reg’lar jeweller’s shop, and no mistake.’ While he was talking, his hands were not idle: he had brought a pick and shovel from the waggonette, and after shovelling back the rock and earth from the tiny shaft, commenced to break down the ‘cap’ of the reef. This was almost incredibly rich. The rock appeared to be (as the Commissioner said) half gold—indeed, in some of the specimens there was more gold than quartz.
Strings of the precious metal hung down, which, indeed, seemed to loosely unite fragments of the dull, cloud-coloured quartz—so dear to the miner’s soul—while here and there were ‘nuggets’—actual lumps of the gold. ‘This one’s not short of fifty ounces,’ said he, lifting one of four or five pounds’ weight. ‘And there’s bigger ones to come, I’ll go bail.’
‘I’ve always doubted,’ said Newstead, ‘whether my relations believed my statements about rich finds in Australia. Certainly my banking account was not such as to inspire credence. But I shall pour contempt on their incredulity after this display.’