Nevermore Part 2

Their luggage, an avalanche of bags, bundles, trunks, and boxes, is shot on deck. A puffing, vicious-looking tug, with the air of 'a guinea a minute for my time,' drags them off, through the shoals of the Yarra, and so bustles forward till that grand and wonderful structure, the Melbourne wharf, a rudely planked platform fringing an illimitable ocean of black mud into which the river flat, guiltless of macadam, has been churned. Here their goods and chattels are unceremoniously transferred to the unsheltered wharf. It had been raining. The pa.s.sengers, surrounded by draymen, hotel and lodging-house keepers, look blankly at each other. A few of the women begin to cry. Thus for them, as for all the _Red Jacket's_ pa.s.sengers, save the favoured few of the saloon, the hard schooling of colonial experience commences. If quarrels arise and animosities are generated on board s.h.i.+p, so also do friends.h.i.+ps, true and permanent, spring up. Trevanion had made acquaintance with a young couple from the border of his own county. The man was a st.u.r.dy fellow, half miner, half farm-labourer, whom the hope of bettering his condition had tempted to the desperate step, as it appeared to all his neighbours, of emigration. His wife was a fresh-coloured, innocent, country villager, their one child, an engaging little b.u.t.ton of three years old, one of the pets of the s.h.i.+p. The two men had arranged to go up to the diggings together, and Trevanion decided that in some respects he could not have a better mate. 'Gwenny here can cook and wash for us, and if we get a share of the gold and Tottie doesn't fall into one of their deep holes as they tell us about, we shall do main likely, Mr.

Trevanion.' So it was settled, Mrs. Polwarth was a little nervous about travelling through the 'bush' and living at a 'digging,' but where her man went, she, as an Englishwoman and wife, was bound to go too. '"For better, for worse," pa'son he says, and I reckon, lad, I'll stick to thee as long as we've bread to eat or a shed to cover us.' Such was her simple creed.

'It strikes me,' said Trevanion, after the first few minutes of blank astonishment, in which the country-bred couple, and even he himself gazed around at the strange crowd and unfamiliar surroundings, 'that we'd better hail one of these drays and get our luggage taken up to a lodging-house, till we can look around. The weather is rather cold to my fancy for camping out, though it is Australia. We mustn't get laid up with chills, and fever, and ague, as that American warned us, to start with. So Jack, you take care of the boxes and the family--I'll soon manage a conveyance.'

After a short but spirited engagement with a drayman, who seemed an educated person, to Lance's astonishment, he compounded for a payment of two guineas, for which moderate sum the owner of this expensive equipage--worth a hundred and fifty pounds at ruling prices--covenanted to land them all in safety at a decent lodging-house.

'You are in luck,' said the drayman, as they were walking back to the wharf, 'to find a place to put your head in to-night, I can tell you.

Lots of your fellow-pa.s.sengers will have to camp out under any shelter they can extemporise. But I happen to hear the people I am taking you to say they had one bedroom and a small attic to let, the occupants having started for Ballarat this morning.'

'And how is it you are not there with all the rest of the world, if it's as rich as they say it is?'

'They can't exaggerate the richness of it. I know so much of my own knowledge, but I happened to buy this old nag and the dray, which brings me in about a thousand a year at present. I'm not an avaricious man, so I'm waiting on here till I feel in the humour to tackle digging in earnest.'

By this time the wharf was reached, and the dray being loaded with their boxes and bundles, Mrs. Polwarth placed comfortably in the centre, the men walked beside the driver. Two long and very broad streets were traversed before they arrived at a neat weatherboard cottage with dormer windows and an upper floor. The proprietor, a bronzed colonist, received them cheerfully, and immediately set to work to take in their luggage.

'Mother,' he said to a cheery, brisk little woman who now came up to the garden gate, 'you take in this young lady and little gal, and make 'em comfortable. Mr. Waters says as they've just come out in the _Red Jacket_. They'll be all the readier for their tea, I'll be bound. We'll see to all the boxes and things.'

'Mr. Waters, you'll just have time to do up the old horse afore the tea-bell rings. I wouldn't let them beef-steaks get cold, if I was you.'

As they sat smoking over a snug fire in the kitchen, after a well-cooked and sufficing meal, Lance and his 'mate' came fully to the conclusion that they _had_ been in luck in falling across their friend the drayman, and being guided to such good quarters. Here they were comfortably lodged at a reasonable charge, and, moreover, had the advice of two experienced and well-disposed men as to their future plans and prospects.

'Yes. After stopping a week in Melbourne, I should certainly make tracks for Ballarat, if I were in your place,' said Mr. Waters the drayman.

'You've come all this way to dig. Jack has a wife and a child to work for, and the sooner you set about it the better.'

'But what is the best way to get there?' asked Lance. 'The road is bad, and it's a long way there. We can't carry our boxes. It's too expensive to go by coach. I don't see my way.'

'What Mr. Waters says is G.o.d's truth,' chimed in their host. 'You can't do nothing but spend money, and waste your time here, unless you was in a way of business, which ain't likely. Your only dart is to buy a staunch horse with a tip-cart, and put a tent atop of your luggage. Take tea, and sugar, and flour with you, a little bacon and so on. Then you camp every night. It costs you little or nothing, and you're as jolly as sand boys.'

'And how about finding the road, Mister?' asked Jack, looking rather anxious. 'It's many a long mile, and mostly through the woods, as I'm warned. We might lose our way.'

'A blind man could find the road night or day,' said Waters, with a laugh. 'It's a mile wide, and there's a string of carts and drays, men, women, and children, going along it, like a travelling fair. Night and day you can hear the bells on the horses and bullocks a couple of miles off.'

'Won't the turn-out cost heaps of money?' asked Lance, thinking of the price of Mr. Waters's horse and dray.

'Not above seventy or eighty pounds altogether, and you can sell them for the same or more money when you get to the diggings. We'll try and find you a decent turn-out with a canvas tilt to keep the rain off Mrs.

Polwarth and Tottie. My friend Burnett knows half the miners that come here from Ballarat, and they often have a cheap lot, horse and cart, and a good many useful things given in, which they are in a hurry to sell before they leave for England.'

'That will suit us down to the ground, eh, Jack, and then--this day week--hey for Ballarat and a golden hole.'

For the next week Trevanion devoted himself to exploring Melbourne, and seeing as much as he could of the strange world to which he had voyaged on the other side of the globe. It was--to his British and comparatively untravelled idea--a state of society utterly foreign and at variance with all his preconceived ideas.

In the first place there were no poor people, no beggars, no evidence anywhere to be seen that anybody lacked money, food, clothes, or amus.e.m.e.nt. It was distinctly Utopian in the evidences of material prosperity, which everywhere abounded. The diggings both at Ballarat and Bendigo (as Sandhurst was then called) had been sufficiently long established to have furnished a cla.s.s of lucky diggers who dominated the urban population, and gave a tone of universal opulence to the community.

With all this, though men were plentiful who had made their ten or twenty thousand pounds each in a few weeks, there was but little disorder, and no lawlessness observable. A good-natured extravagance, a defiant recklessness of expenditure were the leading characteristics of the mining aristocracy.

It was true that their wives sported expensive silk dresses, gold chains, and diamond earrings; that they entertained one another as agreeable chance acquaintances regale at the Criterion--a hostelry built in the most expensive period of skilled labour, every brick used in which was reported to have cost half-a-crown. The theatres and concert-halls were crowded every night with a fairly appreciative and orderly audience. The theatrical and musical talent was exceptionally good at that time. For the news of the abounding gold of Ballarat travelled far and fast, and, where the auriferous lure is waved, have ever been wont to gather the mimes and the sweet singers of the world's best quality.

It was literally, and in many respects a revival of the golden age, a truly Arcadian time. A truce seemed to have been proclaimed to the world's sad-faced task-workers, to the slavery of desk and plough and loom. Save the exciting labour of the mine--when, perhaps, each stroke of the pick brought down stone heavy with the precious metal, or dislodged ingots and gold dust--work was there none. So, at last, a strong, light box-cart, with a staunch and active draught horse, having been purchased at a reasonable price,--their new-found friend arranged that part of the business,--a start was made one fine morning for Ballarat--the El Dorado of the South. All their worldly goods were packed safely and snugly. There was a canvas tilt, under which Mrs.

Polwarth and Tottie would be sheltered from sun and storm, and could sleep at night. There was a small tent in which the men could dispose themselves. The bay horse, led by Jack, stepped off cheerfully and briskly, and then, with the blessings, metaphorically speaking, of their landlord and Mr. Waters, the little expedition set forth. The latter gentleman accompanied them for a short distance, until fairly past the outskirts of the town, and on the broad highway marked by a thousand wheels which led to Ballarat. He volunteered a modic.u.m of advice, limited in quant.i.ty, but valuable.

'There's plenty of gold there, never fear, and new finds every day. You may go home with a fortune next year, and in the _Red Jacket_ too, if she keeps lucky and don't get run down. You and that "Cousin Jack" are both workers, I can see it in all your ways. Stick together, you can trust each other, and don't make more friends than you can help. You'll find men by the score there that would cut your throat for a ten-pound note, and chuck Mrs. Polwarth and Tottie down a shaft for the same price. Keep a good look-out at night. Don't drink or play cards with strangers. If you fall across a streak of luck, follow it up to the end, but don't keep gold in your tent. If you don't hit it just at first, persevere all the same. It's bound to come. And now I'll say good-bye, and good fortune to you. Look up Burnett when you come back; if I'm not with him, he'll know my address.'

So their friend--a good and true one in every sense--shook hands with Jack and his wife, kissed Tottie, with whom he left a large parcel of sugar-plums, and departed. It was strange that he and the boarding-house keeper should have taken such a fancy to the party; but such was the fact, and in new countries and wild places outside the pale of ordinary society, sudden and chance-made friends.h.i.+ps spring up and blossom into full fruition much more frequently than people in old countries would believe. They had nothing to gain from these emigrants. They only accepted the bare amount due for services rendered. They prevented them from being over-reached in the purchase of that vitally necessary equipment in goldfield days--the horse and cart. They saw, too, that unlike the hero in that exciting Anglo-Colonial romance 'It's Never too late to Mend,' they were put in possession of a horse that _would pull down hill_ as well as up. In fact they acted with simple good faith, generosity, and gratuitous courtesy, all through.

This was not the conduct to be expected from perfect strangers in a 'lawless community' like Melbourne, _vide_ the fiction of the day. But it happened to be true nevertheless.

CHAPTER IV

It is unnecessary to accompany the little party along the somewhat tedious and decidedly muddy road which led the adventurers of the day to the spot 'where the root of all evil grew wild up the country.' O dear old friend, who used to quote this, and make merry over Governor Tarbox, where art thou now? They saw the Royal Mail dash by, drawn by six horses in an American coach, the leather-brace springs of which, and the plank road, were a constant wonder to Jack and Mrs. Polwarth. Now trotted along a dozen well-mounted police troopers, their boots and steel scabbards s.h.i.+ning in the sun, conveying 50,000 ounces of gold in a four-horse drag. Anon, a drove of staring, long-horned fat cattle, engineered by a dog of high educational attainments, a black boy, and a couple of bearded, wild-looking stock-riders. Then, again, the bullock team of the period--fourteen bullocks drawing a laden canvas-covered waggon, with a tall Australian driver, the whip of him at times raising hair, at times volleying like musketry--was another unequivocal surprise. A flock of 2000 fat sheep, a drove of unbroken horses, a train of a dozen pack-mules, all these were fascinating novelties and wild surprises to the newly-arrived Britishers.

A few days, however, sufficed to inure the little party to the toils and difficulties of the journey, such as they were, and to teach them to make light of them. The road--as before stated--nearly a mile wide in places, and marked in black mud on the green turf, was visible to the naked eye night or day. Mrs. Polwarth learned to fry chops and steaks and make cakes as if she had been to the manner born, while the men pitched their tents and made their nightly camp as if they had done nothing else all their lives. Tottie, even, used to run about and pick great bunches of yellow flowers, which were so like b.u.t.tercups, together with daisies and fringed violets, and was the merriest of the party.

'This is going gipsying with a vengeance,' said Lance one day. 'I never expected to find myself driving a cart and hobbling out an old horse, like a tinker on a common; but as it's the regular thing to do, and as this Tom Tidler's ground can't be so very far off now, I suppose one mustn't grumble.'

'It's main cheap travelling,' Jack would reply to these occasional repinings. 'It don't cost much, that's one thing, and the weather seems like taking up, so the little one can play about same as if she was at home.'

Ballarat--at length! The far-famed!--the wonder-town!--the capital of the kingdom of gold! A confused array of huts, tents, weatherboard houses, and stores huddled together, as if rained down from the sky, on the side of a hill partly covered with the iron-stemmed, sombre Eucalyptus. A brook, with yellow waters hurrying down between green and gra.s.sy banks. Crowds of silent, preoccupied looking men anxiously engaged in what, to the new-comers, seemed mysterious mining operations.

Some were standing mid-leg deep in the creek, protected by thigh boots, rocking curious wooden cases, which looked like children's cradles, and which they afterwards found were called by that name. Policemen and mounted troopers went to and fro among them, or issued from an encampment higher on the hill--which was evidently the headquarters of the executive department. Mud-stained, bearded, and roughly dressed were the greater part of the population; Lance thought he had never seen so many ruffianly-looking fellows before. A marsh, filled with waving reeds, lay on a plateau a short distance to the westward of the field.

The green banks looked pleasant to the eye, shaded, as they were, by wide-spreading trees--thicker of foliage than the others.

'If you think well, sir, we might just as well pitch our camp here,'

said Jack. 'It's away from the crowd like, and I'll manage to make it snug and home-like in a week or two. We can leave the Missis here while you and I look out for a claim, as they call it.'

So they made their temporary home by the side of Lake Wendouree, as it came afterwards to be called, little dreaming that the day would come when the marsh would be dammed and deepened, when, steamers would ply upon its surface, and boat races and regattas take place thereon, with a thousand school-children holding high festival on its banks.

However, these developments were in the future. Nothing was to be seen now but the waving reeds, the green gra.s.s, and a great black log lying on the ground, by the side of which they pitched the tent, as being a species of shelter and handy for purposes of cookery. Then the men wandered through the diggings, talking to the miners, as opportunity offered, and trying to learn something about the recognised method of making a commencement to dig gold.

Chance favoured them the day after they arrived, by the occurrence of a dramatic incident, instructive in its way, as it turned out.

They were walking along the side of the creek, looking at a curiously-silent toiling crowd of 20,000 men, who, working in very small and shallow claims, 16 feet square, on the celebrated 'Jewellers'

Point,' were turning up gold in handfuls, panfuls, and, in some instances, nearly bucketfuls.

Suddenly every man raised his head and shouted 'Joe.' Jack and Lance thought the whole crowd had gone mad, as they hasted to join in the chorus. They noticed, however, a dozen or more individuals leave their work and depart un.o.btrusively. A moment after, a man came running desperately down a gully which led to the creek, hotly pursued by two troopers. He wormed his way among the holes, where the hors.e.m.e.n could not well follow him, and seemed in a fair way of escaping, when he ran nearly into the arms of a constable on foot, whom, coming from another direction, he had not seen. This official, a wily and active person, promptly secured him. He was then handcuffed and led off to the camp, where, to the great astonishment of the Englishmen, who followed to see the end of the affair, he was chained to a log by the leg; evidently a desperate criminal, they decided.

Lance interrogated one of the troopers who remained by the prisoner. 'I suppose he's a hardened offender. Is it for murder or robbery? or only horse-stealing?'

The trooper laughed. 'Well, he ain't what you might call a desprit bad 'un, though he's broke the law. He's been diggin' without a license.'

'What's that?'

'Well, you'll soon find out, young man. If you don't get one, you'll get tethered like this chap here. It's a permit to dig gold, and you have to pay thirty bob a month to the Crown. You didn't think you were going to be let dig up a fortune on Crown land for nothing, did you?'