"God is just. He who robs a man of the results of his labour is a murderer to this extent that he takes a portion of his realized life. I need not remind you, my friends, of our labours in reaching this land, and the sacrifices we have made. Some of us have mortgaged our homes, even sold our all, to make this effort. Many of us have spent the best years of our adult life in this quest of nature's treasure, and in the hour of consummation have been robbed—robbed of our efforts. The result of those years has been torn from us, callously, brutally. Such corruption can only be remedied in one way. 'Thou shalt not kill,' is the Divine decree."
"But we have to get justice."
There came from the audience words of earnest agreement. The harangue of Joseph Andrews had awakened the frenzy of the crowd. The tones and the serious presence of John Berwick appealed to their minds, while his argument wakened the thought of moral right, and, far better than rhetoric could do, steeled their resolves.
John told simply, briefly, the history of gold-mining in Australia, and of the many times corruption had wrecked individual fortunes. Justice, primarily, had to do with the rights of the individual. Countless lives had been lost in the past ages to establish that principle. The conditions in the Klondike were now worse than any that had troubled Australia; but there—as in the Klondike—the distance between the mining-fields and the seat of Government had been too great, and modes of communication too slow, to bring effective remedies. The agents of betterment found the diggings depleted, and the wrongs complained of now irreparable. But there need not be any shedding of blood, that fact he emphasized. What they must do was organize, and so win thousands to their cause against the hundreds under the orders of the established—and ineffective—authorities.
"But we need a head, a strong heart, to rule," John was saying.
"You're the man!" a voice shouted. "You're the man!" a hundred echoed.
"Parson Jack, Parson Jack! I knew he had something in him." Through the uncertain light John could distinguish Long Shorty.
So it happened that Berwick became the head of the revolutionists. As he sprang down from the bar the excited men crushed round him. He whispered a rendezvous to a dozen of the most eager, "Dawson's Dome, to-morrow, noon."
That night Smoothbore paced his room. The scandal of the Dominion Creek hillsides was known to him, and he speculated on its being the last straw on the back of that patient camel, the honest prospector. There was a knock on the door. He told the new-comer to enter. It was Sergeant Galbraith in civilian clothes.