In Search of El Dorado Part 15

At this time a public battery, owned by a limited company, was doing yeoman service to the dwellers on an alluvial field some five miles south of us; and after much consideration we, in common with the most of the miners, arranged to despatch our golden gravel thither, as being the only way out of a difficulty. Public batteries exist all over those goldfields, for, owing to the absence of water, a prospector can rarely do more than test samples of his find, and thereby estimate its value; and these public crushing plants are, therefore, a very necessary adjunct to his success.

The time pa.s.sed pleasantly enough now that the trying uncertainty of the first fortnight was no longer with us, and the auriferous channel was being slowly and surely tunnelled and cut in every conceivable direction. Work was pursued in matter-of-fact fashion. The glamour of the goldseeker's life had departed with the risk.

Yet when the practical and perhaps sordid work of the day was done, and we gathered together around one or other of the numerous camp fires, it seemed as if a new world had descended upon us when daylight gave place to the mystic glimmer of the lesser stars and the steadfast radiance of the glorious Southern Cross. Only the world-wanderer who has slept beneath all skies can truly appreciate the grandeur of the southern constellations. The bushman has grown to love them from his infancy; they have been his companions on many a weary journey, and he regards them with an almost sacrilegious familiarity. But to the traveller from other lands these shining guideposts in the heavens arouse a feeling akin to reverence, and later, when he ventures into his grim desert land and trusts his life to their constancy, his admiration, were it possible, increases tenfold. There is, of course, one great reason for the stranger's attachment to the sky sentinels of an Australian night other than their calm, clear brilliance. In no other country is the wanderer brought so close, as it were, to the luminaries of night. In Canada, Alaska, America, India, or China, or, indeed, in any portion of the globe, by reason of climatic or other conditions, one must perforce sleep under canvas, and in some cases where the cold is severe--as in Alaska--the shelter of a heavily-logged hut is almost a necessity. But in the inland parts of Australia, where rain seldom falls, and where no pestilence taints the atmosphere, the sky alone usually forms the traveller's roof. Many times have I gone to sleep in the great silent interior with only my coat for a pillow, and coaxed myself into slumber while watching for the advent of a favourite star, or tracing the gradual course of the Southern Cross.

To me the stars of the south have a peculiar significance. When I gazed at them, even while divided from civilisation by over a thousand miles of dreary arid sand plains, I felt comforted, for though compa.s.s and s.e.xtant may fail, the stars will still show the way.

I recall our evenings spent at the Five-Mile Camp with deepest pleasure.

There only did I meet and talk with the typical men of the West, and the simple, true-hearted, restless spirits of the Island Continent who have pushed the outposts of their country far into the desert. It was my one experience of a Western Australian mining camp, and afterwards, during our weary wanderings in the far interior, we often longed for the company of the generous-minded men who used to gather round our fire and review their early experiences with such vivid effect.

Emu Bill, I have already mentioned, but there were several others whom we came to know during the later days of our sojourn at the golden flat, and they had all their own peculiar characteristics, with a sterling honesty of purpose as the keynote of their lives.

"Old Tom," I remember, possessed an interest in the claim next to ours; not much of an interest it was, either, for he was too old a man to have come in nearly first in the rush. He had simply been promised a percentage of returns in No. 8 for doing all the work thereon; and as at first the presence of gold there was much doubted, it was no great generosity on the part of the owner of the lot to promise slight reward and no wages for labour done. Yet for once Old Tom scored in a bargain, and his labours were not, as he cheerfully said they had ever been, wholly vain.

Old Tom must have been a splendid specimen of manhood in his day; now he was nearly seventy years of age, and his bent shoulders detracted somewhat from his great stature, while his slightly-bowed legs--whose deviation from the perpendicular, he insisted, had been caused by much walking--gave to him a more frail appearance than was justified.

His knowledge of his own country was extensive, but he had fallen into the strange belief that the world began at Australia, and that Europe, Asia, and other portions of the globe were merely remote colonies or dependencies of his own land. "I hiv walked all over Australia, mates,"

he used to say; "I know the world well."

"You ought to see London, Tom," I said, one night, after he had been recounting his travelling experiences; but he shook his head.

"It's too far to walk," he replied sadly; "Old Tom's walking days are nearly over. But," and he brightened considerably, "I've heard tell that Lunnon is full o' people, an' there wouldn't be no room for an old man like me to peg his claim."

It was one of his fixed ideas that the whole world was but a goldfield on which all men had to try their luck. And the sea had its terrors for him, as it has for nearly all bushmen, although most of them get accustomed to it sooner or later. With Old Tom it would be never. "I went on a ship once," he admitted, "when I was a young 'un, an' the mem'ry o't will never leave me." He shuddered at the recollection of his sufferings. "I kin walk 'bout as fast as a ship, anyway," he added with much satisfaction, "an' a hundred miles more or less don't make much difference when Old Tom is on the wallaby."

At another time, when news of Kitchener's brilliant successes in the Soudan had reached us, I read out to him from an old home newspaper details of the capture of Omdurman. There were many around the fire that night, and all listened eagerly to the thrilling narrative except Old Tom; he gazed listlessly into the glowing fire, and smoked his pipe unmoved.

"Have you no interest in these things, Tom?" I asked.

"It's a long time since I've been in the Eastern Colonies," he answered slowly, "an' I hiv lost my bearin's among them names. Soudan is in Queensland, isn't it? Or mebbe it is west'ard in Noo South Wales?" Poor Old Tom! he had fought the aborigines times without number, and taken his life in his hands on many a lone trail, yet he would have been surprised had anyone said that he was more than usually venturesome. He knew no fear, and acted his weary part in life n.o.bly and well.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NUGGETY d.i.c.k AND SILENT TED.]

"Silent Ted" was another of our camp-fire comrades; he was, as his name implied, not a talkative individual. Long years spent in the bush had served to dry up the vials of his speech. Yet he was not morose or taciturn by nature; he simply seemed too tired to give expression to his thoughts. His eyes were ever fixed and emotionless as the desert sands--sure evidence of the bushman who has lived in the dreary wilderness beyond the Darling. He had been a long time in striking gold, and we all thought his shaft was likely to prove a duffer; but despite our gloomy prophecies he joined our evening circle night after night, and smoked his pipe cheerful as usual, though that was not saying much.

"I forgot to tell you, mates," he broke out one evening, to our great surprise, "that I struck bottom yesterday."

He meant to say more, but his mouth closed with a click in spite of himself, and in reply to our congratulations he handed round for examination two fine specimens of alluvial gold which he had taken from his first day's tests, and when they had been inspected by the community and returned to him, he pa.s.sed them on to his neighbour with a sigh; he had apparently already forgotten their existence.

The devil-may-care fossicker, also, was well represented, and his species rejoiced in cognomens so euphonious and varied that I could never remember the correct t.i.tles to bestow upon their several owners, and only realised my mistakes when greeted with reproachful glances.

Among our acquaintances were, "Dead Broke Sam," a proverbially unfortunate miner in a perpetual state of pecuniary embarra.s.sment; "Lucky Dave," who always "came out on top;" "Happy Jack," who seemed to find much cause for merriment in his rather commonplace existence; and "Nuggety d.i.c.k," who at all times could unearth one or two specimens from some secret place in his meagre wardrobe, and describe minutely where they had been obtained--usually some place comprehensively indicated as "away out back."

These gaunt, bearded men had many strange stories to tell, and in the ruddy firelight they would trace on the sand intricate charts emblematic of their wanderings. They were those whose roving natures compelled them to follow up every gold rush, with the firm belief that extraordinary fortune would one day crown their efforts. "It's a durned hard life, boys," Dead Broke Sam, who worked with Old Tom on similar terms of remuneration, would often say, looking round for the sympathetic chorus that was always forthcoming, "but if we doesn't peg out, we is bound to strike it some day."

There is no blasphemy in the speech of the Australian miner. The most rugged-looking fossicker is gentle as a lamb, save when undue presumption on the part of some new chum, or "furriner," arouses his ire, and then he makes things hum generally; but his forcible words are merely forcible, and perhaps "picturesque," but nothing more; the inane profanity of the Yankee fortune-seeker finds no exponent in the Australian back-blocker.

Many were the tales "pitched" on these long starlit nights, and narratives of adventure in search of gold, and hairbreadth escapes from the aborigines succeeded each other until the evening was far spent, and the Southern Cross had sunk beyond the horizon. Then we would disperse with a monosyllabic "night, boys," all round, and seek our separate sandy couches.

My comrades, Mac and Stewart, were shining satellites at these meetings, and weird stories from the Pampas plains and the Klondike valley formed at intervals a pleasing change--from the miners' point of view--to the accounts of gold-finds, and rushes, and hostile natives, so fluently described by Nuggety d.i.c.k and Co. And now and then a whaling anecdote would lend zest to the gathering, faithfully told by Stewart with much dramatic effect; he was, indeed, a past master at the art, and never failed to hold his audience spellbound.

Emu Bill, though recognised by all as the most experienced miner present, rarely condescended to spin a yarn, and he listened to his _confreres'_ tales with ill-concealed impatience, but showed a decided liking for my two warriors' romances. One evening, however, he broke his reserve and proceeded to give a rambling survey of his wanderings, and as he warmed to his subject his eyes began to glow, and his gestures became eloquent and impa.s.sioned.

"Yes, boys," said he, winding up a _resume_ of his exploits in various parts of Australia, "I calc'late I hev had a fair-sized experience o'

gold mining in my time, an' as ye may guess, I hevn't allus come out right end up, nuther, else I shouldn't be here. Thank the Lord! I've struck something at last."

"I'm wi' ye thar, mate," grunted Old Tom in sympathy. "I guess this is Old Tom's last rise."

Then a silence fell over the little a.s.sembly, during which Emu Bill drew fanciful diagrams in the sand with an improvised camp poker, and Silent Ted almost went to sleep. The rest of us gazed at Emu Bill with a show of interest, expecting him to proceed with his reminiscences, and soon he started again.

"Yes, boys, I've had my disappintments, as we've all had, I opine, but I had an un-common disappintment at the time o' the Kalgoorlie Rush----"

"Kalgoorlie Rush, Bill?" I exclaimed. "Were you in that?"

"Wur I in that?" he echoed dismally. "I wur, an' I wurn't, which is not mebbe a very plain statement, but you kin jedge fur yourself if you care to hear my yarn."

"Let her go, Bill," said Nuggety d.i.c.k.

"I'm listenin' wi' vera great interest," Mac spoke slowly. "Ye've been a man o' pairts, Emoo."

After sundry expressions of approval had been elicited, Bill again picked up the thread of his narrative.

"You've heard o' old Hannan, of course," he began, "the diskiverer o'

Kalgoorlie? The diskiverer o' Kalgoorlie!" he repeated, mimicking a general expression often heard on the fields. "Well, boys, I kin tell you how Kalgoorlie was diskivered.... Pat Hannan an' me had been mates for a considerable time. We walked from South'ron Cross together afore the railway, an' we 'specked around Coolgardie camp wi' fairish success.

There was no township at Coolgardie then, boys, though that jumped up quick enough. One day we thought we'd jine a party as was going out eastward to 'speck for gold furrer back in the n.i.g.g.e.r country; an' after gettin' our water-bags filled an' provisions for a month rolled up in our swags, we all cleared out. In two days we camped at Kalgoorlie well.

You know where that is, boys; but there was nary a shanty within twenty-five miles of it then, nothin' but sand an' black boys, an' hosts o' nigs. But we never thought o' lookin' for gold there, worse luck; at least, none o' the rest did; but old Hannan had a skirmish round' an'

reported nary sign o't, so we struck camp at oncet. But jest as we wur movin' off, Hannan comes to me with a twist on his mug an' snickers, 'Bill, me bhoy, phwat can I do? Me water-bag's bust!' Now that wur a ser'us matter, for we needed all the water we could carry, not knowin'

when another well might turn up, so I voted we shid all camp again until Pat's water-bag had been repaired, an' the rest o' the boys of course agreed, unan'mous. But that wouldn't suit old Hannan, 'Ye'd better go on, boys,' said he, 'an' I'll come after yez in half an hour.' So we went on; but though we went slow, and arterards waited fur half a day, no Hannan turned up, an' we had to continue our journey without him.

Well, boys, we came back in less'n a fortnight, arter trampin' about in the durnedest country on G.o.d's earth in search o' water an' findin'

none. We hadn't time to look fur gold, so ye kin guess we wur mighty miserable when we drew near to the place where old Hannan's water-bag had busted; but the appearance o' the camp sort o' mystified us, thar wur rows an' rows o' tents, an' the ground was pegged fur miles.

'Howlin' tarnation!' I yelled at the first man we came across. 'Is this a mir-adge, or what has we struck?' 'Nary mir-adge, mate,' said he, 'this is Hannan's Find, or Kalgoorlie if yous like that name better.' ... An' it wur a bitter fack, boys. Old Hannan must have notised an outcrop somewheres around, an' being allfired afeared that we, his mates, might get too much benefit, he had ripped the water-bag on purpose so as to get an excoose fur waitin' behind. Then, of course, he had gone back to Coolgardie an' got the Government diskivery reward, which otherwise would have been divided atween us. But we got nothin', boys, nary cent, an' nary square inch o' ground. The camp had been rushed when we wur sufferin' howlin' terrors out back....

There's wan favour I'd ask of you, boys, don't none of you start 'G.o.d blessin" old Hannan for diskivering Kalgoorlie in my hearing. I can't stand it, boys, an' you know why."

Bill ceased, and a murmur of sympathy ran round the little group. The Kalgoorlie rush was fresh in the minds of nearly all present, many of whom had taken part in it. Every one knew Hannan, but who better than his one-time partner? and if his tale showed the much-honoured finder of Kalgoorlie in a less favourable light than that in which he was usually regarded, no one doubted Emu Bill's version of the story; yet it was hard to dispel from the mind the glamour of romance a.s.sociated with the event from the first. One more ill.u.s.tration of the difference between the real and the ideal, but it seems almost a pity to destroy the illusions, they lend so much colour and interest to otherwise sordid episodes.

The night was unusually dark, fleeting clouds constantly obscured the feeble light of a slender crescent moon, and the myriad stars glimmered fitfully. Our fire was the only cheerful object in the darkness, and it blazed and crackled, lighting up the weather-beaten faces of the circle around it, and illuminating our tent in the background. For a long time no one spoke, every man seemed gloomily affected by Bill's story, and with chins resting on their hands they gazed into the vortex of the flaming logs long and earnestly.

Then a familiar voice interrupted their reveries. "When Stewart an' me discovered Gold Bottom Creek----"

"Go slow, Mac," I objected wearily; "it's getting late and we'd better turn in."

"It is wearin' on fur midnight," grunted Dead Broke Sam, surveying the heavens for the position of his favourite reckoning star.

"What was your last battery returns, mate?" asked Emu Bill, turning to me with a revival of practical interest.

"Fifty tons for 150 ounces," I replied.

"Not too bad," commented Nuggety d.i.c.k.

"I'm 20 tons fur 60 ounces," said my interrogator, "which is the same ratio. I guess Nos. 6 and 7 are the best properties on the Five Mile."