Denis Dent

Chapter 18

Jewson had not exaggerated the manifest attraction of the claim in Rotten Gully. The hut was eighteen feet by ten, very solidly built, with a fireplace and a chimney at the inner end. Many neat contrivances in the shape of shelves and racks testified to the leisurely particularity of the late owner. He had settled down as on some desert island where a man might expect to end his days. There were refinements so superfluous in themselves as to suggest that the actual work had proved as alluring as the natural reward. In point of fact the Eureka Lead had been followed through the gully and lost on the flat beyond while this deliberate digger built him his hut and sank the hole which he was fated to abandon within a few feet of the gutter.

But the hole was by far the best and soundest in the gully, which deserved its name insomuch as it provided insecure sinkings as a rule. Some of the abandoned shafts had already fallen in; but this one was beautifully slabbed with timber from top to bottom, now some sixty odd feet, the depth of the lead hereabouts being something under seventy.

One of the first things Denis did when they were left in peaceable possession of the claim was to locate it in his last map; and a mark was duly made in the very middle of one of the red rivers.

"Right over the gutter!" he exclaimed. "The sinker said so; but he wasn't the man to sink anywhere else. Don't you remember him saying we were within a few feet of it? Jimmy, I'm going through some of those feet before I'm an hour older, and we'll try the first tub to-night!"

He went down at once in the bucket, armed with a spade-a complete plant had been thrown in with the claim-and for an hour he dug straight down, making the smallest and deepest hole possible, and finally filling the bucket from the bottom. But it was hard work. The red clay was so veritably rotten that again and again the little hole filled up. Denis's shirt was plastered to his skin when Doherty wound him above ground with the bucket, and the clay in the latter was still as red as ever. Denis took it to the creek, however, and tried it piecemeal in a tin dish, but did not get a grain. He returned to Doherty unruffled and smiling.

"It's no use, Jimmy; we've not got down to it yet, and we sha'n't get down to it like that. We must go on digging the whole shaft. But there's another good hour of daylight, and if you like to go down and do a trick I'll wind up the buckets as you fill them."

As the shaft went down by inches the sides had to be slabbed as heretofore; but the "sets of timber" stacked outside the tent proved to be cut to the size, pointed, and ready for fitting into the grooved uprights, which in their turn were found to have been driven into the four corners of the shaft to a depth of several feet beyond that of the shaft itself. So there was no difficulty there while the cut slabs lasted, and as the pair worked half the night in their excitement, by lantern light, and were at it again by sunrise, they had added some three or four feet to the depth by the following forenoon. Then Denis tried another little hole in the middle, and this time the third spadeful was different from the other two. Some particles of gravel trickled from the end of the spade, and even what was on it was of two colours and two consistencies. The next thrust grated to the ear. Denis roared for the bucket, and a head and shoulders stamped themselves upon the square envelope of sky overhead.

"I've struck it! I've struck it! Down with the bucket and stand by to wind up!"

A wideawake danced against the tiny square of blue; a shrill cheer came tumbling in echoes down the timbered shaft; then a leaping bucket, then a writhing rope; and the head and shoulders hung over the brink once more in motionless silhouette, while Denis filled the bucket with the gravelly substance, separating the inaugural spadeful with his hands. There was a difference even to the touch. The red clay was slightly damp, the gravelly compound perceptibly warmer, and so delightfully gritty that Denis could have sworn the grits were pure gold. But it took him some time to fill the bucket, for the red clay was not too damp to crumble, and it continually poured back into his advance hole, burying him sometimes to the thighs. At last, however, a homogeneous bucketful was got to upper air, and Denis after it in a mud-bath of clay and perspiration, but with his triumph shining through his filth.

It still remained to test the stuff and justify the triumph, but Denis did both without delay at the creek, which was far nearer here than on Black Hill Flat. They had no cradle as yet at the new claim, whose late methodical proprietor had not arrived at the stage of requiring one; but Denis took the tin dish once more, and came back beating it like a tambourine, on knee and head, but carrying the empty bucket at arm's length in the other hand. At least it felt as empty to Denis as it looked to Doherty, until the bucket was tilted, and what had seemed but a sparse deposit of rather yellow and sparkling sand formed a slender segment of palpable gold-dust.

They poured it from the bucket back into the tin dish, and from the tin dish into a smaller tin, and from the smaller tin into the saucer in which Jewson really did get a glimpse of about half of it that night. The trial "tub" had yielded upwards of two ounces, by the gold-scales of a friendly neighbour; before night Denis had spent quite half on a good candle, a pair of scales, and the wherewithal for a digger's supper of new damper, steaming chops, and scalding tea.

Thereafter the pair sat up planning, building, furnishing and inhabiting castles which were no longer altogether in the air; but with Denis, in any case, early hours would have been impossible after such a meal hurled into an empty stomach in the late evening of such a day; and the pernicious combination may be confidently traced in the view which he took of this very aspect of a situation otherwise surpassing all his dreams.

"It's all very well for a day or two," said Denis, "but you and I can never go on doing all the work and the cooking too. We couldn't even if we were born cooks. What we want is some fellow to look after us and the hut. Two all told are not enough."

Doherty was toying with the gold-dust in the saucer, picking it up in pinches, and letting it trickle through his fingers in fairy showers, playing with it, drawing in it, as children play and draw in sand. The game palled even as Denis spoke.

"Two were enough for the swell cove who was here before us, mister."

"I know: he took his time: so many hours a day, or so few, and not a minute more. What's the result? He isn't here to reap his reward, because he was in no hurry, and it didn't much matter after all. But I am here-I am in a hurry-every grain and every minute matters to me!"

"It would mean one grain in three instead of in two."

"Then the three would come quicker than the two do now. Not that we're obliged to take another partner because we want an extra hand; at two ounces to the tub we could afford to make it worth many a man's while to do all we want at so much the week."

Jimmy looked up quickly.

"Then you haven't heard from Mr. Moseley yet?"

"I have, Jimmy. I called at the post-office to-night, and the letter was there. Not he! Not for Joe! He wishes us all possible luck, but he has had enough of the diggings to last him a lifetime; and from what he says he ought to be out at sea by this time, homeward bound. Put the billy on the fire, Jimmy, and we'll drink him a good voyage in half a pannikin of tea before we turn in."

To all this Jewson stood listening, if not at the door, still within easy earshot of the unsuspecting friends; and as he listened an inspiration burst upon his crafty brain. He drew away in the moonlight, nodding and grinning to himself-a grotesque Mephistopheles if you will-yet deeper and darker than friend or foe imagined. His plan was matured on the way back to the Gravel Pits, and Captain Devenish was told just as much as it was good for him to know that night, but as we have seen, not a syllable more, and that modicum with the wary tact and infinite precaution of a Mephistopheles of higher class.

Next day was a great one at the new claim; from early morning to high noon the pair laboured in hourly shifts at lowering the whole shaft to the level of the precious wash-dirt. It was not to be done in the time. But later in the day they went deep at one corner, and at last uncovered an angle of the gutter which they had only probed the day before. They took up several bucketfuls to try in the new cradle before dark. The yields were uneven, but the lowest was an ounce, the highest three ounces ten pennyweight, and the day's aggregate just under one pound, or upward of forty pounds sterling.

Yet they were less excited than they had been the night before. The gold was there; it was only a question of getting it out, a question of time, ways, and means. They had taken turns at the creek as well as in the hole, and the friendly neighbour who had lent his scales had kept an eye on the new cradle in their absence, which was intermittent owing to the necessity of one always remaining on the claim. "You must find another mate," said he to Doherty, who no longer disagreed as he toiled back to the hut. They must find another mate, or they must greatly reduce their hours of labour. A reduction of profits would result in either case.

To-night they were too tired to cook. Denis made tea, and each took a pannikin to his couch, and spread himself prostrate in the dusk.

"In another hour or two," said Denis, "we'll go out one at a time, and have the best supper that money can buy on Ballarat. We can afford that; but we can't afford to go on using ourselves up at this rate."

A slumbrous sigh was the only answer from the other bunk; but Denis was too much exercised in his mind to close an eye. Should they seek a mate? or should they restrict their hours? Could they get a respectable hireling to look after them if they tried? The last plan was the most desirable for obvious reasons; and Denis desired it on other grounds as well. He was naturally anxious, for his own sake and for one other's, to make as much money as possible in as little time; and he had tasted blood, at last, in an intoxicating draught. He had begun making up for lost time; that was what he must go on doing. It was not so with Doherty, however, and this time Denis had quite decided to respect the prejudices of the lad who had stood by him so loyally through so many luckless weeks. After all, in the beginning they had actually started for the diggings, they two, to sink or to swim together. The importation of Moseley had been as unfair as it had proved unwise; the ignorant lad had found himself at a continual disadvantage between the two educated men; they could talk in parables beyond his comprehension, and Moseley invariably did. Doherty had been bitterly jealous of him, yet had striven finely to suppress his chagrin, and never stooped to backbiting or tale-bearing under its stress. And his devotion to Denis had never wavered; that was at once a touching consideration and a clear claim. No; there should be no more partners if Denis could help it, but if he could not, then the newcomer should be a man after Jimmy's heart rather than his own.

It was moonlight when Denis came to this conclusion of the matter, though he had lain down in daylight not long before. He did not lie many minutes more. A shambling step came to his ears, came nearer and nearer; he jumped up in time to meet a tottering figure at the door.