The Book of the Bush by George Dunderdale (christmas read aloud .TXT) 📕

was low; my twenty-dollar gold pieces were all consumed. While voyaging to the new Ophir, where gold was growing underfoot, I could not see any sound sense in being niggardly. But when I saw a regular stream of disappointed men with empty pockets offering their monthly licenses for five shillings each within sight of the goldfield, I had misgivings, and I bought a license that had three weeks to run from William Matthews. Ten other men bought licenses, but William Patterson, a canny Scotchman, said he would chance it.

It was about midday when we halted near Bendigo Creek, opposite a refreshment tent. Standing in front of it was a man who had passed us on the road, and lit his pipe at our fire. When he stooped to pick up a firestick I saw the barrel of a revolver under his coat. He was accompanied by a lady on horseback, wearing a black riding habit. Our teamsters called him Captain Sullivan. He was even then a man well known to the convicts and the police, and was supposed to be doing a thriving business as keeper of a sly grog shop, but in course of time it was discovered that his main source of profit was murder and robbery. He was afterwards known as "The New Zealand Murderer," who turned Queen's evidence, sent his mates to the gallows, but himself died unhanged.

While we stood in the track, gazing hopelessly over the endless heaps of clay and gravel covering the flat, a little man came up and spoke to Philip, in whom he recognised a fellow countryman. He said:

"You want a place to camp on, don't you?"

"Yes," replied Philip, "we have only just come up from Melbourne."

"Well, come along with me," said the stranger.

He was a civil fellow, and said his name was Jack Moore. We went with him in the direction of the first White Hill, but before reaching it we turned to the left up a low bluff, and halted in a gully where many men were at work puddling clay in tubs.

After we had put up our tent, Philip went down the gully to study the art of gold digging. He watched the men at work; some were digging holes, some were dissolving clay in tubs of water by stirring it rapidly with spades, and a few were stooping at the edge of water-holes, washing off the sand mixed with the gold in milk pans.

Philip tried to enter into conversation with the diggers. He stopped near one man, and said:

"Good day, mate. How are you getting along?"

The man gazed at him steadily, and replied "Go you to hell," so Philip moved on. The next man he addressed sent him in the same direction, adding a few blessings; the third man was panning off, and there was a little gold visible in his pan. He was gray, grim, and hairy. Philip said:

"Not very lucky to-day, mate?"

The hairy man stood up, straightened his back, and looked at Philip from head to foot.

"Lucky be blowed. I wish I'd never seen this blasted place. Here have I been sinking holes and puddling for five months, and hav'n't made enough to pay my tucker and the Government license, thirty bob a month. I am a mason, and I threw up twenty-eight bob a day to come to this miserable hole. Wherever you come from, young man, I advise you to go back there again. There's twenty thousand men on Bendigo, and I don't believe nineteen thousand of 'em are earning their grub."

"I can't well go back fifteen thousand miles, even if I had money to take me back," answered Philip.

"Well, you might walk as far as Melbourne," said the hairy man, "and then you could get fourteen bob a day as a hodman; or you might take a job at stone breaking; the Government are giving 7s. 6d. a yard for road metal. Ain't you got any trade to work at?"

"No, I never learned a trade, I am only a gentleman." He felt mean enough to cry.

"Well, that's bad. If you are a scholar, you might keep school, but I don't believe there's half-a-dozen kids on the diggin's. They'd be of no mortal use except to tumble down shafts. Fact is, if you are really hard up, you can be a peeler. Up at the camp they'll take on any useless loafer wot's able to carry a carbine, and they'll give you tucker, and you can keep your shirt clean. But, mind, if you do join the Joeys, I hope you'll be shot. I'd shoot the hull blessed lot of 'em if I had my way. They are nothin' but a pack of robbers." The hairy man knew something of current history and statistics, but he had not a pleasant way of imparting his knowledge.

Picaninny Gully ended in a flat, thinly timbered, where there were only a few diggers. Turning to the left, Philip found two men near a waterhole hard at work puddling. When he bade them good-day, they did not swear at him, which was some comfort. They were brothers, and were willing to talk, but they did not stop work for a minute. They had a large pile of dirt, and were making hay while the sun shone-that is, washing their dirt as fast as they could while the water lasted. During the preceding summer they had carted their wash-dirt from the gully until rain came and filled the waterhole. They said they had not found any rich ground, but they could now make at least a pound a day each by constant work. Philip thought they were making more, as they seemed inclined to sing small; in those days to brag of your good luck might be the death of you.

While Philip was away interviewing the diggers, Jack showed me where he had worked his first claim, and had made 400 pounds in a few days. "You might mark off a claim here and try it," he said. "I think I took out the best gold, but there may be a little left still hereabout." I pegged off two claims, one for Philip, and one for myself, and stuck a pick in the centre of each. Then we sat down on a log. Six men came up the gully carrying their swags, one of them was unusually tall. Jack said: "Do you see that big fellow there? His name is McKean. He comes from my part of Ireland. He is a lawyer; the last time I saw him he was in a court defending a prisoner, and now the whole six feet seven of him is nothing but a dirty digger."

"What made you leave Ireland, Jack?" I asked.

"I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn't live in it. My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned. Mother was left with eight children, and we were as poor as church mice. I was the oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin boy. I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes. My last port there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named Small. He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him early and late. He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it across the bay to Boston, where the old man's eldest son kept a boarding-house. There was a daughter at home, a regular high-flier. She used to talk to me as if I was a nigger. One day when we were having dinner, she was asking me questions about Ireland, and about my mother, sisters, and brothers. Then I got mad, thinking how poor they were, and I could not help them. 'Miss Small,' I said, 'my mother is forty years old, and she has eight children, and she looks younger than you do, and has not lost a tooth.'

"Miss Small, although quite young, was nearly toothless, so she was mad enough to kill me; but her brother Jonathan was at table, and he took my part, saying, 'Sarves you right, Sue;' why can't you leave Jack alone?'

"But Sue made things most unpleasant, and I told Jonathan I couldn't stay on the farm, and would rather go to sea again. Jonathan said he, too, was tired of farming, and he would go with me. He could manage a boat across Boston Harbour, but he had never been to sea. Next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me; we left the boat with his brother, and shipped in a whaler bound for the South Seas. I used to show him how to handle the ropes, to knot and splice, and he soon became a pretty good hand, though he was not smart aloft when reefing. His name was Small, but he was not a small man; he was six feet two, and the strongest man on board, and he didn't allow any man to thrash me, because I was little. After eighteen months' whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at Hobarton; he said he was tired of the greasy old tub; so one night we bundled up our swags, dropped into a boat, and took the road to Launceston, where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne. When we were half-way across the island, we called just before sundown at a farmhouse to see if we could get something to eat, and lodging for the night. We found two women cooking supper in the kitchen, and Jonathan said to the younger one, 'Is the old man at home?' She replied quite pertly:

"'Captain Massey is at home, if that's what you mean by 'old man.'

"'Well, my dear,' said Jonathan, 'will you just tell him that we are two seamen on our way to Launceston, and we'd like to have a word with him.'

"'I am not your dear,' she replied, tossing her head, and went out. After a while she returned, and said: 'Captain Massey wanted to speak to the little man first.' That was me.

"I went into the house, and was shown into the parlour, where the captain was standing behind a table. There was a gun close to his hand in a corner, two horse pistols on a shelf, and a sword hanging over them. He said: 'Who are you, where from, and whither bound?' to which I replied:

"'My name is John Moore; me and my mate have left our ship, a whaler, at Hobarton, and we are bound for Launceston.'

"'Oh, you are a runaway foremast hand are you? Then you know something about work on board ship.' He then put questions to me about the work of a seaman, making sail, and reefing, about masts, yards, and rigging, and finished by telling me to box a compass. I passed my examination pretty well, and he told me to send in the other fellow. He put Jonathan through his sea-catechism in the same way, and then said we could have supper and a shake-down for the night.

"After supper