In the Roaring Fifties Part 22

'Blast me if it don't make a cove feel religious!' was Harry Peetree's sober comment, after he had lit his pipe and settled his back comfortably against the log.

The night came while they were still at their meal, and sticks were thrown on the fire to provide light. Other diggers, attracted by the glow and the cheerful atmosphere of the party, sauntered up, and modestly disposed themselves in the shadows, where they lay smoking. Women of any kind were few on Jim Crow, and a scene like this was sufficient to stir the deeper feelings of many of the miners, particularly those in whose hearts long absence from hearth and home had served to invest domesticity with a reverent sentimentality.

Aurora insisted on was.h.i.+ng up, but Josh dried the dishes, while the others lit their pipes, and, lying on their backs, with knees drawn up and hands clasped under their heads, gave themselves over to quiet enjoyment of the night. A big moon was stealing through the tree-tops; the denuded gully still lay in the lower gloom, dotted with camp-fires and illumined tents. But Aurora threw aside her domestic mood with her ap.r.o.n, and reappeared as the enemy of reflection and repose. Throned on her gin-case, where the ruddy light of the wood-fire glowed upon her, she chattered in her delectable brogue for an hour or more, the picture of animation. Then came Mary Kyley storming upon the scene.

'Do I pay a girl the wages of a princess to run a temperance meeting among my customers?' she cried.

'Go away, Mother Kyley, an' work yer own ould shebang,' replied Aurora, 'or else bring me fiddle wid ye, an' give us a step on the turf!'

'Not a step will I.'

'Then I'll lave divil a man in the shanty, dthrunk or dthry!'

Aurora sprang upon her box, and began to sing a rousing nonsensical song of the moment. The chorus was caught up, and swelled in the shadows.

Waving her scarf as she had done in the dance-room in Melbourne on the night when Done first saw her, she sang again, and her clear soprano rang in the gullies like the call of a bird, and brought the miners from their tents and their arguments. When the song ended half the diggers on Jim Crow were gathered about Burton's camp-fire, and the loudest roar of applause came from Mary Kyley! Presently somebody out in the crowd commenced to play a flute, and slid from a few bars of' Home, Sweet Home!' into a rollicking jig. Half a dozen strong hands--Jim's first--were laid upon Mrs. Ben, and she was dragged to the front.

'Dance, alauna machree!' cried Aurora.

The flute piped higher, a hundred voices took up the cry, and Mary was conquered. Gathering a bunch of skirts in either hand, the big woman commenced a step. Aurora enlivened it with quaint, melodious Irish cries, the men roared encouragement, and presently Mary Kyley was dancing with heart and soul and every ounce of energy. Dancing was a pa.s.sion with Mrs.

Ben; she experienced a sort of delirium of movement once the swing of the melody took hold of her, and at such moments, despite her uncommon size, the woman became animated with a wild dignity and grace. Now, with head thrown back and face uplifted, her crimson petticoat flas.h.i.+ng in the firelight, she danced like something wild, till she could dance no more, and Done took her in his arms and half carried her to the log, where he fanned her gallantly with his cabbage-tree, while the audience cheered again and again.

Aurora found a partner for a reel in Tim Carrol, and the fun grew warmer, a liberal digger having contributed a keg of rum, which was rolled from Kyley's shanty into the illumined circle. But at this point a man stepped forward from the crowd, and stood where the light fell full upon him, a strongly-built digger of about five foot nine, not yet thirty years of age, with a powerful face, not handsome, but uncommonly attractive in its blend of kindliness and rugged force. Done recognised Alfred Lambert, a voice of the disaffected--one of the little band of men who, animated with that ardent love of freedom which is bred of tyranny and fed on oppression, were ever busy fanning the embers of discontent, and striving to work the diggers up to the point at which it would be impossible for the Government to withhold from the vast majority of the people their liberties and civil rights. Lambert held up his hand to impose silence.

'I have a great bit of news, men,' he said. 'The day before yesterday, at five in the afternoon, the M'Ivor escort was stuck up on the corduroy road in the Black Forest, and the gang got away with all the gold.'

This information was greeted with a yell of amazement, in which Jim thought he detected no little exultation. It was the greatest coup executed by the gangs since the opening of the goldfields; its magnitude astounded everybody.

'The robbers came on the escort suddenly, shot their horses under them, and carried off the whole swag,' Lambert continued.

'Whose gang?' 'Who 're suspected?' A score of voices shouted questions.

'It is believed that the raid was headed by Solo!'

'No, no; Solo goes alone!' cried a foremost miner with absolute conviction.

'He has always worked alone before, but it is pretty certain that this raid was planned and carried out by Solo, and that he had behind him a gang of the coolest and most daring robbers in the colony He outwitted the troopers at every point; they had no more chance with him than so many sheep. The fools had their carbines strapped behind them, as usual.

Before they could fire a shot they were at the mercy of the thieves.' The crowd yelled again-a yell of derision. The discomfiture of the troopers was a source of grim satisfaction. Lambert held up his hand once more.

'This Solo is a ruffian and a robber. When we say that he stops short of murder we say the best we can for him; but the Government that denies to citizens the rights of men, and enforces laws the people have no voice in making through a vicious and brutal constabulary, cannot look to citizens to respect those laws or feel any sympathy with its officers.'

'You're right, old man!' The crowd took advantage of the pause that followed to raise a clamour of fierce words.

'I have more news for you,' said the orator. 'The cause of liberty is spreading, deepening, strengthening. We are on the verge of civil war.

Latest information from Ballarat, Bendigo, and all the large centres shows that the hour of strenuous resistance, of resistance to the death, has almost come. Even now it may have struck. As I speak, the men of Ballarat may be shedding their blood to rescue our adopted country from the foul and foolish rule of that pitiful handful of nominees in Melbourne, the despicable instruments of a far-off power that is as ignorant of our needs as it is careless of our sufferings. We are commanded to stand ready--commanded by G.o.d, I believe with all my soul--and those of us who have the aspirations of men and the spirit of true Britons must look to our arms. The commissioners of the various fields have been particularly venomous in their treatment of the poorer diggers of late. On all the fields license-hunting has been pushed to such an extremity of oppression that only dingoes and Chinamen could bear it. We must fight! Men, no human creature detests bloodshed more than I, but what else can your leaders ask of you but to fight? Every channel of peaceful progression is closed to you. You are a great population of strong men, the adventurous spirits of the world, and you are held under the lash by a stupid minority so weak that one free movement of your limbs may dash them to perdition. You are asked to confine yourselves to peaceful and legal forms in conducting this agitation, while those who ask you deny you a breath of power, an iota of right, and manifest their goodwill by riding you down like wallabies, or rounding you up like scrub-cattle, and tearing from you the scandalous taxes that go to pay the expenses of a robber Government that represents only your enemies.'

The spirit of the crowd had undergone a surprising revolution; the gaiety of a few minutes since had fled from every heart, and Lambert confronted a great crowd, the faces of which glowed whitely in the moonlight, a crowd that broke into vehement cheering and a babel of oaths and yells at every pause.

The quoted words were the opening sentences of a speech that lasted nearly an hour, and held the diggers by their heart-strings every second of the time. Done felt himself strongly moved--the vehemence, the l.u.s.ty eloquence, and the unquestionable honesty of the speaker possessed him.

He was filled with a longing for strife; the fighting spirit strong within him was up in arms. Like many another in the crowd, he was ready to carve out a republic with a pick-handle, even though a score came to resist him with rifles.

Lambert spoke of the simple rights of manhood, of the demands of the new democracy in the Old World, and the growing belief in the sacred right of a people to govern themselves according to their light, and finished with an impa.s.sioned description of a recent digger-hunt on Forest Creek, in the course of which a man had been killed. The crowd was slow to depart when the speech was ended, and broke into knots, the men feverishly discussing the great news of the robbery and the possibility of a riot extending over the whole of the rushes. Whilst sitting on the log thinking of what he had heard, Jim saw Aurora approach Lambert. She was visibly excited, and offered him an eager hand.

'Did I do well?' she asked.

Lambert seized her hand and pressed it warmly. 'Splendidly, my girl,' he said. 'A man couldn't want a better audience. Like a true Irishwoman, you're the twin sister of Liberty, Miss Aurora.'

Done drew Aurora to his side a few minutes later. 'So,' he said lightly, 'my Joy is a conspiratress.' 'It's the hard name, me darlin',' she answered, taking his hand between hers. 'I just promised Lambert to have the half of Jim Crow here to hear him an' I'm afther keepin' me word.'

XIV

THE rising Lambert had antic.i.p.ated in August did not come off. For a few days the country trembled on the verge of civil war, but the blow did not fall. The trouble was averted; the anger remained in men's hearts. During the lovely spring weather that followed Done saw much of the Bush. He and Mike spent weeks prospecting about the Jim Crow district. They loitered away a few restful days among the ranges, and for the first time Jim saw a wattle-gully in full blaze, a stream of golden bloom sweeping along the course of a little mountain creek as far as the eye could see, each tree a huge bouquet, the whole ma.s.s foaming in the gentle breeze, a rich feast of colour, lit up by a glowing noonday sun, and bordered by the subdued green of the mountain gums. The delicate perfume stole up to where the mates lay on the side of the range in peaceful enjoyment of the scene, and Done, looking with half-closed eyes, day-dreaming, felt the inspiration that has since driven about twenty-five per cent of the native-born population of Australia desperately to poesy.

Beyond and below them stretched the Bush, an ocean of tree-tops, as level as the windless sea, and over this green expanse shadows of fleecy clouds chased each other. Presently Jim discovered a brown s.p.a.ce in the distance, and detected a thin column of smoke rising on occasions between the vagrant winds. He called Burton's attention, and Mike turned experienced eyes in that direction.

'A settler's clearing,' he said. 'No; by Jove, it's Macdougal's homestead!'

'What!' cried Done, sitting up with a jerk. 'Donald Macdougal's station?'

'Yes, Monkey Mack's.' Burton rose to his feet and looked about him.

'There isn't a doubt,' he continued. 'That's b.o.o.byalla all right. I was over the country to the west once with cattle.'

'And since we came to Jim Crow I have been so near.'

''Bout twenty mile as the crow flies. Why, old man, you look all caved in.'

'I'm greatly surprised. I thought b.o.o.byalla was right away in the wilds.'

A pity this isn't wild enough for you.'

'Yes; but cut off completely from the people.'

'The people have been distributin' themselves a good deal o' late.

b.o.o.byalla was far enough out o' the runnin' till the rushes broke out at Forest Creek an' Jim Crow. As 'tis, I'll bet my boots the Macdougal's as lonesome down there as a sick sheep.'

'Why do you think that?'

''Cause you can't keep white men on the runs these times; they prefer the rushes. Squatter, J.P., ain't the little G.o.d almighty he used to be when he held his hands as if they were n.i.g.g.e.rs bought an' paid for.'

Done was silent and thoughtful for a few minutes. The knowledge of his proximity to Lucy Woodrow awakened mixed feelings, and contrition was prominent. He had promised to write to her. He remembered how anxious she seemed to win the promise, and how deep her interest in him had been.

Suffused with a melancholy tenderness, he told himself he had never forgotten her; her image had lived in his heart as in a shrine, screened perhaps, but only for sanct.i.ty's sake. No thought of Aurora stole in to disturb his unconscious hypocrisy. He had an unexpected longing to see Lucy again.

'Fact is, Mike,' he said presently, 'there is a s.h.i.+p mate of mine down there at Macdougal's I should very much like to meet again. What do you say?'

'I'm on. This s.h.i.+pmate, is she married or single?' Mike accented the third person feminine.

'Single. She is teaching Macdougal's youngsters. I had no other friend aboard.' Aurora obtruded now, and he looked into his mate's face. It was suspiciously vacant. 'What the devil are you thinking of, Mike?' he said with warmth.

'A friend o' mine,' answered Mike.