The Wedge of Gold Part 23

"No," said Sedgwick, "you go to San Francisco, and I will stay and work the mine. It was I who proposed this thing; of right I should meet the heaviest sacrifices." But Jordan was obstinate, declaring that he would enjoy himself at the mine, and after a long discussion his programme was agreed to. In the morning Jordan took the engineer and three natives to the top of the hill, where the mine was covered with debris; walked along to where the mountain, as it sloped to the west, was very abrupt, and there set the Boers to making an open surface cut.

They went to work, and Jordan and the engineer went to measuring to see where, down the hill, a tunnel would have to be started to tap the lode 500 feet deep. It was so sharp a hillside that the tunnel site would be only 1,260 feet horizontally from a point 500 feet below the open cut.

Jordan engaged the engineer to remain with all the men who would stay, and begin that work if the indications on the hill would justify, and also to build a rude stone house at the spring, large enough to accommodate a dozen people.

Then they climbed the hill again and found the croppings of the ledge uncovered in the cut. Being tested, these croppings were found richer than the ore on the dump lower down, where the vein had been opened.

Next morning, with two saddle animals, one pack animal and one Boer to ride another horse and lead the pack horse, the two Americans started back for Port Natal. They followed over the route they had traced out two days before to the ranch, then took a road traveled by the stockmen, and on the second night from the mine came to a house on the main road to Port Natal, which was six or seven miles nearer their destination than the point where they had left the road and taken the trail for the mine.

They hired a Boer to go up and bring back their wagons. They came next morning. The best rig was selected, and the two friends started for the seash.o.r.e. In eight days they were back at Port Natal, having made the round trip in twenty-eight or twenty-nine days. On arriving at the seash.o.r.e they found that no steamer was in port bound North, but there was a fine steamer in the roadstead that was to sail next day for Melbourne, Australia.

Sedgwick's plan had been to go back to London, take his wife and go thence, via New York, to San Francisco. But no ship was awaiting him, and the agent of the Northern Line did not know when a ship would sail. It would have to come first, and might return soon, or might lie in port fifteen or twenty days. So, talking the matter over with Jordan, both concluded that the best thing was to try the voyage via Australia. Again Sedgwick begged Jordan to go, yet he kindly, but firmly refused, saying, "I must hev my way this time, Jim."

Accordingly, Sedgwick engaged pa.s.sage to Melbourne, then wrote his wife what they had found; that he had decided it was best to go by Australia to San Francisco; that, if prosperous, he hoped to reach that port in forty-eight or fifty days; that he would be detained there probably sixty days, and would then return to Africa via England, hoping to be with her in one hundred and twenty days, and to be able to remain with her for a month.

Jordan found six English miners and engaged them to go with him, bought as full an outfit as possible, through a trader ordered more, including a portable saw-mill from England, made an arrangement with Sedgwick how to send and receive news, and the two tired men lay down to take their last night's rest together for, as they calculated, at least six or seven months, perhaps a full year.

It was a memorable night to both, and the confidences they exchanged and the sacred trusts they each a.s.sumed, they never forgot.

In the morning Jordan started back for the mountains and their solitudes; Sedgwick boarded the steamer, which later in the day started on its voyage, and the sea for Sedgwick was a counterpart of the solitude which the mountains held for Jordan, except that at Port Natal he had received from his Grace the greetings which her soul had given his soul through the mornings and evenings of the first twenty days of her married life.

They were to be his balm through all the days of his imprisonment on board ship, and he felt that they would be sufficient. But it grieved him to think that poor, brave, sorrowing, but cheerful and clear-brained Jordan had no such comforters.

"It is very lonely, my glorified one," she wrote; "the roar of the great city seems to me an echo of the voice of the ocean, of the wilderness that surrounds you; but I would not have it different, for I kept saying to myself: 'He is doing his duty, and beyond the horizon that bounds our eyes now, I know that higher joy awaits us which comes of a consciousness of a great trust bravely executed.' Be of good cheer, my love; it will be all right in the end, for the heavens themselves bend to be the stay of steadfast souls when with a holy patience they struggle for the right, as G.o.d gives them to see the right.

"I will wait for you, and in thinking what you have undertaken, and of the persistence required to carry your work through, will try to catch your own grand spirit, try to exalt myself by imitating your patience and faith, and thus be more worthy of you when once more it is given me to clasp your dear hands, and to gaze into your true eyes, which are my light."

As Sedgwick read, his eyes became suffused until he could not see the page before him because of his tears.

"See," he said to himself; "a man's love is selfish; it is a woman's life and light, and yet my beautiful wife loses sight of herself, and all her words are but an inspiration for me to go on and conquer if I can. Thank G.o.d for the treasure that has been given me! And may G.o.d comfort her and comfort brave and true Jordan!"

CHAPTER XX.

THE OCCIDENT AND THE ORIENT MEET.

The ship was twenty-four days in reaching Melbourne. It caught a gale crossing the stormy Bight, and for two days no progress was made. It was all that the men in charge could do to hold the plunging craft up into the face of the storm and meet the big seas as they rolled, furious, up against her stem. But the winds were laid at last, the ship was put upon her course and her natural speed resumed. On the afternoon of the twenty-fourth day the ship pa.s.sed between the heads of Port Philip, and two hours later came to anchor before Sandridge, three miles below Melbourne. Going ash.o.r.e, Sedgwick cabled to his wife his arrival on his way to San Francisco, "as first letters from Port Natal would explain,"

and added: "Hope to be with you in one hundred days. Write, care Occidental Hotel, San Francisco." Then he took the night train for Sidney, and arrived there the next night about nine o'clock.

Going to a hotel, he found that the first steamer for San Francisco would sail on the next day but one.

He then sought his first sleep in a comfortable house, with modern improvements, that he had found since he left London.

Next morning he went early and secured transportation on the steamer, then returned and wrote a long letter to his girl-bride; then engaging a rig took in as much of Sidney as he could. Next morning he cabled his wife that he was just going to sea again, and boarded the steamer early.

The ship sailed promptly at midday, and as it pa.s.sed out of the beautiful harbor the islands and sh.o.r.es beyond were just putting on the vestments of spring. Sedgwick had never before seen spring approaching in October; never before had he heard the love-calls of mating birds at that season, and apparently had never before realized so keenly that he was on the other side of the world from those whom he loved and knew. After dinner he went on deck. He knew no one on board, and he was nearer being homesick than he had ever been before. It was a balmy night. The sea was tumbling a little from the effects of a far-off storm, but the ship was riding the waves superbly and making rapid progress, and the stars were all out and sweeping grandly on in their never-ending, stately processions.

In the midst of his thoughts, when he was fast giving way to a mighty fit of the blues, he happened to glance upward. _Corona Australis_ was blazing with unwonted brilliancy, and, it seemed to him, the constellation was making signs to him from its signal station in the heavens. Instantly he thought of the night that he and Jordan had particularly noticed it, and of what the great-hearted man had said. Then he thought of his friend; how unselfishly he had turned his face away from the ship that would have carried him to a pleasanter country, and had voluntarily gone back into that profound wilderness to work out a trust which would require months of time; and he said to himself: "What a selfish creature I am to repine, when I have been so blessed; when in England an angel is waiting for me; when in the depths of Africa a brave soul by his every act is teaching me lessons of self-abnegation."

A moment later another thought came to him which was a delight, and that was that with every revolution of the screw he was drawing nearer to his Grace. When an hour later he retired to his state-room he hummed a song as he went, and the throbbing of the machinery and the wash of the seas against the ship's beam made his lullaby, as the long roll of the steamer rocked him to sleep.

As before stated, Sedgwick had written his wife fully at Port Natal. Two days after he left, the steamer from the North came in. It remained five days, and then started North again. Its mails were eighteen days in reaching London.

Grace was looking for a letter from Port Natal, when Sedgwick's cable from Melbourne reached her. She could not quite comprehend the matter until, a day later, his letter came, and the next day his second cable, announcing that he was just about to sail for San Francisco. That day she did what she had not done since she left school--got a map of the world and studied it until she put her finger on a spot between Sidney and New Zealand, and said: "He is there now," and bent and kissed the place on the map.

That evening she went over from her home to call upon Jack and Rose.

There she found a gentleman who, with his wife and daughter, were going to sail two days later for Australia, via New York and San Francisco.

Their names were Hobart. Grace had known them ever since her father had moved to London. They were talking of their proposed journey, when the young lady said gaily: "Mrs. Sedgwick, come along with us as far as New York, or San Francisco at least." At this the father and mother together seconded the invitation.

"Do you really mean it?" said Grace.

"Indeed we do," said all three.

"And when do you sail?" asked Grace.

"Early, day after to-morrow. That is, we leave here early and sail at noon," said Mr. Hobart. "We have two full staterooms engaged. You can room with Lottie"--the young lady's name--"and be companion for us all."

"I will be ready day after to-morrow morning," said Grace, seriously.

"Not in earnest?" said Rose.

"In sober earnest," said Grace.

"To New York?" said Browning.

"To New York, and may be farther," was the reply.

"As far as Ohio, I guess," said Jack.

"May be as far as Ohio," said Grace, and she smiled as she spoke.

The Hobarts were delighted, but Jack and Rose looked serious.

"It is a long way, Gracie," said Jack.

"A fearfully long way," said Rose.

"Suppose, Rose, that Jack was as far away, would you think it a long way to go to see him?" asked Grace.

"O, Gracie! No, no," said Rose.

"When did you hear last from your husband?" asked Hobart.

"This afternoon," said Grace.

"And how long, Grace, before he will be in England?" asked Jack.

It was the first time any question had been asked of her more than the question if she had heard, and if he was well.