Denis Dent

Chapter 15

So the little Company continued its existence, and on Black Hill Flat, because Denis was more and more against sinking a second hole until there was no more gold to be got out of the first. It was like his thoroughness and tenacity of character, but was inconsistent with his original attitude as a digger. A moderate success was of no use to him; it must be a small fortune, or it might as well be nothing at all. So it had been in the beginning, and it was obviously still the case. Yet there was no shifting Denis while there was a pennyweight to the tub, and once there was nearly an ounce, and one day in November yielded two ounces four pennyweight. He was further fortified by the opinion of one whom he instinctively regarded as an expert. Passing with Moseley through Rotten Gully, on the Old Eureka Lead, to look at one of the many sites which his companion fancied in these days, Denis became much more interested in a very well-built hut in juxtaposition to an evidently deep hole with a capital windlass atop. A fellow with trim whiskers and an expression of splendid disgust was turning the handle, and as they watched a very muddy digger came up standing in the pail, from which he stepped with as much daintiness as a lady with a dress to spoil. "Thank you," said this one in an off-hand way to the other, but Denis he favoured with a stare, followed by the shortest of nods, for it was the deep-sinker who had recommended Black Hill Flat.

"Did you try the Flat?" said he.

"I've been trying it ever since," returned Denis, and soon added with what result. He was furthermore able to answer one or two technical questions in such a way as to interest the deep-sinker, who seemed quite struck with the simple device of the hand-barrow.

"Well," said he, as the partners were taking their leave, "I can't help my opinion, and I've got it still. I believe there's gold on Black Hill Flat, and plenty of it; what's more, it's the sort of nice dry place where it should be pretty near the surface, if it's there at all. But, of course, you might prick about for a year without finding it. I'm sorry I said so much about the place the other day; if I hadn't I'd give you another piece of advice now, and that would be to take your time and go in for deep sinking. You're too good a man for surfacing. Good-afternoon to you, and better luck." And he ducked into his hut with a last least nod.

The upshot of this conversation, and of another between Denis and Moseley upon the obvious quality of the deep-sinker, was that Moseley went "pricking about" the flat while Denis persisted in the old hole, and Jim Doherty oscillated between the pair. Nothing more came of it. Moseley was a poor digger, who scarcely pricked skin-deep. He soon went back to his evil cooking, which, however, had been less evil since the little scene with Denis. His chops oftener hit a medium between the blue-raw and done-to-a-rag extremes; but his bread would still have murdered a dyspeptic, and the lean but hungry Doherty was laid up for forty-eight hours after one of Moseley's duffs. Denis himself little knew how many of his sleepless nights he owed to the same devastating cause; and on Black Hill Flat he slept the sleep of the lost.

Early to bed was the digger's natural law, but if Denis kept it he would be wide awake by the smallest hours, and so lie tossing till the Flat was astir. He found it a lesser evil to sit up late over a lonely camp-fire, and beguiled these vigils with congenial employment. He was making a new map of the diggings. This one was in ink on a clean piece of cardboard cut to fit the jacket pocket. It grew out of odd scraps marked in pencil on Denis's walks abroad; some of the latter were taken on purpose during these very sleepless nights. So the map was his own, correct or incorrect, and it was made on his own plan. It was largely geological. There were the depths of sinkings where Denis could ascertain them, and the various leads flowed in rivers of bold red ink, which made up for any lack of academic accuracy by a rather stimulating appeal to the imagination. But that was to come; as yet it was a spy's map, which even Jimmy had not seen.

And sometimes when it had been put away for the night, and there was enough fire still to kick into a redder glow, or a great white moon in the sky, then Denis would loosen the shirt that he buttoned higher than most, and there was the little ring his Nan had given him, the red-white-and-blue of its ruby, diamond, and sapphire, twinkling and glittering as it had in the light of day upon her finger; and there was the lanyard of her beloved hair; and it, too, shone as though still upon her sunny head: and so he thought she told him she was well. But what had he to tell her? He had stayed behind to do something that was not yet fairly begun, and already two months were up. There were times when Denis did not regret the letter which might never arrive. Its unredeemed tale had cost him much in the unvarnished telling on which his nature insisted; what if it were to cost him as much again in her sight? There could be, after all, but one excuse for his separate existence at Ballarat. And when he realized this, it was a hard, dark face that Denis turned to great white moon or little red fire; it was dark with disgust of self and circumstance; it was harder than ever with a determination which had never wavered.

After one such night in the middle of December, the beginning of the end came quite quietly and naturally at the following evening's meal. Moseley had received his remittance, days before it was due, and, as Denis said, it could not have come at a better time. At this the moneyed partner had looked up from his platter in somewhat anxious inquiry.

"Because I'm going to take your advice," explained Denis, "and give in-and clear out!"

"Home to England?" cried Moseley, while Doherty stayed the hand that held a loaded fork.

Denis shook his head, and Moseley's face fell a little; but Doherty sat munching with a satisfaction as solid as the morsel in his mouth.

"Eureka?" inquired Moseley, putting a brave face on it.

"No."

"Canadian Gully?"

"No."

"The Gravel Pits?"

"No, thank you."

"I know!" chimed in Doherty. "Sailor's Gully!"

"No, Jimmy."

"Little Bendigo, then?"

"No."

Jimmy said he gave it up. But Moseley had an idea.

"Not the other Bendigo, Dent?"

Denis smiled. "From what you've always said," he went on, "it's the better diggings of the two."

"I believe it is," said Moseley, doubtfully.

"Not quite so over-run and overdone, you know."

"No; that is so, I'm sure; but-but, I say, Dent, I don't want to show my face there again, I don't really!" said Moseley, with a manifold anxiety more droll than he supposed. "You may laugh," he went on, smiling himself, "but I didn't commit a crime there, though you might think it. I didn't even tell a lie. But I did pretend that I had done pretty well. I let them think I was on the point of sailing, c**k-a-hoop, for England home and beauty!"

"And so you are," said Denis at length. He spoke very quietly, but with a conviction that turned Moseley's blushes to an almost passionate glow. Yet in an instant the loyal creature was fighting his heart's desire.

"I don't want to desert you," he said. "I don't-and won't!"

"Then you keep us here."

"I don't want to do that either. Yet you see my position about Bendigo?" And his troubled glance included Doherty, whose brown face was also awry with mixed feeling.

"We see it perfectly, my dear fellow," Denis answered; "and if we ever have another mate" (Doherty looked up quickly), "may he be half as staunch as you! We have done our best, but so far we've made a mess of it. You had had enough in October, and you've wasted these two months on our account out of the sheer goodness of your heart; my dear Moseley, you sha'n't waste another week. You've tried Bendigo, and we haven't; you go home with as good a conscience as you leave us, and in three or four months I shall follow you."

And they really parted in three or four days, and at a point not very much further than that from which they had first beheld the tents and mud-heaps of Ballarat; only Jimmy looked his last on them with a sigh, and even he had recovered his spirits when it came to clasping hands. But all three had light hearts at the end, and shoulders to match; for they had sold their entire kit at the very fair figure of 11 3s. They had also cash in hand to the tune of 2 11s. 6d., so that the Bendigonians had nearly 10 as their share, to take with them to the new field, but as Denis said, at least a hundred pounds' worth of experience to put to it. He it was who had kept the accounts, all through, and he who would not hear of Moseley's generous but unfair proposals at the end. It may be added that the Company's debt to the latter had been duly, if not forcibly, discharged; but after all, they had taken some thirteen ounces of gold out of the maligned hole on Black Hill Flat, and sold the same for over 50.

Denis and Jim stood without speaking while Moseley hurried away from them down the Melbourne road; but it may have been that their hands ached more from his than did their hearts. When he had waved his wideawake at the bend, and they theirs for the last time, it is certain that from that moment the original pair were more to each other than they had been for two wearisome months. They had almost as much to say as if they had been separated for the same period. But it was not Moseley that they discussed; it was their own new prospects, ways, and means. Nor had Denis long to wait for Mr. Doherty's earlier manner, which got up like a breeze in the free expression of his opinion that ten pounds was not enough to "see" them to Bendigo, "let alone starting of us when we gets there."

"Perhaps it isn't," said Denis, slackening a stride which had lacked something since the parting of the ways. "Let's sit down under that gum-tree and talk about it. If you are right," continued Denis, paring a slab of tobacco when they were duly seated, "it might be better to turn back to Ballarat instead of going on to Bendigo."

The matter-of-fact tone in which Denis made this startling suggestion betrayed him to Doherty without more ado. "You meant to do it all along!" said he.

"It was the only way to do it," returned Denis, rubbing his tobacco between both palms, "without hurting anybody's feelings. Now he need never know. He had a heart of gold, Jimmy, but it was the only kind we should have got with him; and that's the last word about him now he's gone, poor chap! Back he goes to Silly Suffolk, and back we go to Ballarat with nine-pound-three between us! But no more nice dry games on Black Hill Flat, or anywhere else where the chances are big and the certainties next to nothing; we're going to sink deep and wet and dirty, Jimmy; and we're not going to sink on chance again."

Jimmy's eyes were wide open in all senses at once.

"Sink deep on nine-pound-three, mister? And you've been studyin' the 'ole game all this time?"

"There's this," said Denis, producing Bullocky's nugget. "I believe you still have its fellow."

"And many's the time I've thought of it," cried Jimmy; "but you said we was to keep them forever-for luck!"

"A lot of luck they've brought us," said Denis; "on the other hand, I've learned a lot since then, and even now I don't propose to part with them altogether. No, but since the devil drives we must raise our fresh capital on them, and so let them bring us luck after all. If they do we can soon redeem them; and I mean them to, Jimmy, this time. Come a bit nearer: I've something to show you," continued Denis, drawing out his new map. "I've made this at odd times, some of it when you and Moseley were fast asleep. I don't say it's accurate, but it's given me a better grasp of the diggings as a whole than ever I had before, and I should like it to do the same for you. You see the double lines straggling from top to bottom like a bit of loose tape?"

"Yes."

"That's the Yarrowee."

"And the little squares sprinkled all over?"

"Fancy tents."

"And the blots in between?"

"The holes belonging to them."

"And the centipedes, or whatever they are?"

"The Seven Hills of Ballarat, Jimmy! Bakery Hill, Specimen Hill, and all the rest."

"And the hanks of red ink in between the hills, twisting all over the place, under half the tents and holes; you must have put 'em in first, mister; they look like rivers of blood. I'm blessed if I know what else they do look like!"

"They're rivers of gold, Jimmy, and I did put them in first."

Jimmy looked up very quizzically, for, of course, he felt he was being quizzed, and made a scathing inquiry as to the green that was or was not in his piercing eye. But Denis swore to his golden rivers, and then admitted they were underground, which heightened Jimmy's interest while it restored his faith.

"They're the leads, of course," continued Denis; "and the leads are neither more nor less than rivers of gold, flowing on the bed-rock at heights varying with its height, or, if you like, frozen where they flowed a million years ago. On the whole they flow thin, and you only get so much to the tub; but like other rivers they have their thicker backwaters, and here and there their absolutely stagnant pools; those are their 'pockets' and their 'jewelers' shops,' as they call them-and as we shall call ours one of these days. But it will take time, Jimmy, perhaps weeks and months, before we sink deep enough to begin driving right and left as all the deep sinkers do. If it wasn't for that I should have shown Moseley my hand. He never could have held out, and he would have hindered us who can and will. He was longing to go, and he may be back in Silly Suffolk before we get down deep enough to do much good."

Doherty began to feel consoled for a prospect which could not but chill his younger blood a little. He did not wish to be months in getting to the gold; at any rate he would have preferred not to know that they might be months; but still less did he want Moseley back. He was content therefore to inquire how Denis could know before he went to work that he was sinking in the right place. And in a moment their heads were together again over the map.

"You remember what the squares and blots are?"

"Tents and holes."

"Then don't you see how they follow and fill the red rivers?"

"There's nothing else from bank to bank."

"Well, we've only got to squeeze in between any of them, on the lead we decide on, say Eureka, or Sailor's Gully, wherever there's room to peg out a claim and pitch a tent. Now look up to the top of the map, and tell me if you see that square and blot all by themselves."

"I see them."

"High and dry on the banks of one red river, instead of on the river itself?"

"Yes."

"That was our old claim."