Fortune has given to Surprise the greenest fold of the western ranges. Easy hills stand up about the camp, tracing a zig-zag rim against the sky. The camp lies in the hollow, as in the bottom of a cup. It clambers about the lower slopes, following the whim of the latest comer. The hotel boasts a roof and walls of iron, that much boasts the store, that much the manager's house. The staff barracks and the mine offices equally are favoured. Wooden piles lift the buildings high from the ground. Elsewhere stand weather-worn tents; and sometimes a bough shed, thatched with gum-leaves, serves its architect as parlour.
Towering over all rise the poppet-heads and bins of the mine. Goats take a siesta beneath the scrubby trees, explore the rubbish heaps, and clamber about the dump; fowls of more breeds than Joseph's coat knew colours, employ themselves in the dusty places, or keep the shade of the broken rocks. Here and there an optimist nurses a garden, and finds reward in a few drooping vegetables. Goats and fowls peer through the netting with evil in their hearts. This is Surprise Valley to the stranger eye.
Three score burnt men and a handful of shabby women here find living. They dig for the green copper hidden jealously in the bosom of the hills. From distant parts they have drifted, they stay awhile; again they drift; but the camp endures, and the wilderness is powerless to harm it. Forward and backward from the railroad, a hundred miles away, the weekly coach crawls on its journey, keeping open the track to civilization, and bringing such news and comforts as that world has leisure to send. The mail bags disgorge stale papers; the driver delivers stale news. Round and round turns the wheel of affairs. A whistle begins the day for this community: a whistle ends it. Deep in the earth the men labor with hammer and drill. Overhead the women bend at their pots and pans, and peg the weekly washings under cloudless skies. The children, untaught, unchecked, patter among the stones and tussocks, and send abroad their cries. Summer follows winter. The suns climb up; in season the rains roar down; the frost comes in its turn. But the men of Surprise Valley dig always in the bowels of the hills, and the women busy themselves about their doors.
CHAPTER II How They Pass the Evening at Surprise.
The last week of October was ending. At Surprise seven red-hot days had crowded after one another; six breathless nights had brought men and women gasping to their doors. The seventh evening had seen, an hour since, the moon come up, white, round and full, behind the Conical Hill; and with the moon arrived a flagging breeze—not cold, not even cool, but with life left to turn the narrow gum-leaves, to move the tent walls and the hessian blinds on the verandahs of the iron houses. The moon had climbed the hilltop an hour since, and now was some distance in the sky. Falling with a broad white light over the ranges, and no doubt upon the plain beyond, it found a way to the valley holding the stifled camp. It picked out the iron roofs, and discovered the trees, to make of their leaves bunches of silver fingers: it counted the tents straggling down the distance, and on the journey wove many patterns of light and shade. The stones in the bed of the dry creek shone with polished faces. The white ball in the sky numbered the panels of the yard, where the buggy horses—two greys, two bays—stood reflecting on their fate; and it numbered the crinkles in the stable roof.
The breeze had moved several times down the valley, and as often as it passed the people of Surprise turned gratefully in their seats. Mr. Robson, shift-boss, found heart to swear appreciation and light a pipe; Mrs. Boulder, brisk and brawny, reached from her chair to slap the youngest child; and Mr. Horrington, general agent—unappreciated cousin of Sir James Horrington, Bart., of Such-and-such Hall, England—pledged again his lost relatives in whisky and a dash of water. The members of the staff, telling smoking-room stories from their long chairs outside the mess-room, re-settled for something newer and choicer.
Two sounds were repeated, and helped to make the stillness live. They were the stamp of horses near the creek, and the cornet of Mr. Wells, storeman. The cornet player was feeling the way, with poor luck but an honest persistence, through the pitfalls and crooked ways of "The Death of Nelson." He had reached the thirteenth verse. The thirteenth verse was the unlucky verse: unlucky for him, because he broke down, unlucky for his listeners, because he repeated it. The notes fell slowly, uncertainly, mournfully upon the night. As the fourteenth verse began, Mr. Neville, manager of Surprise, swore with feeling.
The old man of Surprise sat in the recess of his verandah, on a full-length wicker chair, both legs at easiest angle, heavy walking stick at hand, a glass at his elbow, a pipe in his clutch. The hessian blinds, nailed to the woodwork, threw the place into gloom, unless crevices let in a beam of the moon. Old Neville sat back in the half-dark, a man of small and tough make, covered from collar to ankles in white duck, with brown, wrinkled face, bristling grey moustache, shaggy white eyebrows, and an aggressive manner. He was seventy; but he was to be reckoned with still. Behind him, two canvas waterbags hung midway from the roof, and the single small table, with the whisky bottle and the box of matches on it, he had taken for himself. He put out bony fingers for the matches.