‘We’ve been breaking down the south end of the reef to-day, and got some pretty coarse gold, so the ladies has come at a good time, sir. Please to follow me, and we’ll see what we can do. It ain’t every day we see a young lady like Miss Jean. Lord bless and prosper her!’
So the party was introduced to the ‘shift boss,’ with other leading officials and men in authority; afterwards to be lowered down in the ‘cage’ to where men were working two hundred yards from the surface, in narrow alleys with gleaming white or pink walls of quartz, in which were golden streaks. Narrow bands of dull red or yellow metal, almost unrecognisable as the root of all evil, and the lure for which men—ay, and women—bartered soul and body, and were content to work in hunger, dirt, rags, and wretchedness, if only they could gain a sufficiency of the dross, so called, which people profess to despise, but which [231] ]all men covet and hanker for to their lives’ end.
The atmosphere was hot and humid; the men at work in these lower levels might have passed for Red Sea stokers, as they laboured with tense muscle and sinew.
To what purpose this labour was expended—so far from the light of the sun or the fresh air of heaven—a visit to the treasure-chamber, in one side of the great gallery, was recommended. There the person in charge of the gold pointed out some of the specimens which had recently been sent in. Besides these there was the retorted gold.
After the gold was extracted from the innocent-looking matrix, it was poured into shapes, one of which, looking like the half of that anchor of British loyalty and instinctive reverence to the Empire, the British plum-pudding, the guardian had more than once offered to an adventurous damsel ‘on tour’—if she could carry it away: a challenge sometimes accepted; but in all cases the weight proved too great for the fair arms which so lovingly enfolded the bullion. However, fragments of the pure, precious metal were extracted from the glittering heap and handed to Mrs. Lilburne and the fair Jean, with apologies, even entreaties that they would deign to accept them, and so bring good luck to the mine, and all who laboured in it.
‘I must say,’ said Lilburne, after marking with experienced eye the various indications on this and other ‘drives’ (galleries), and workings generally, ‘that this country of yours appears to me more [232] ]wonderful every hour I spend in it. Think of a solitary traveller, “remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,” dropping upon a property like this, and, what is more noteworthy, being able to keep possession of it.’
[233]
]CHAPTER X
‘All this is very nice,’ said the fair damsel, who had refused to accept another pennyweight of gold, ‘but the sun is going down, and I must see the exact spot where the battle was fought, where Mr. Newstead lay, and where the tall robber fell dead; also where old Jack stood when he “opened business on his own account”—I should like to have been there, I confess.’
‘Next time, Miss Jean, we will let you know,’ replied Southwater; ‘but come with me, and I will show you all the points of the attack, and where our camp stood.’
Scrambling up the narrow path, the young people reached the conical flat-topped boulder near the summit, where the ‘frontal attack’ of the gold-robbers had been made. Exclaiming that ‘she was out of breath,’ the girl seated herself upon the historic stone—to be famous henceforth in the legends which are so apt to grow and develop with age.