"If you can't turn a man out of his hole, and prevent him getting all that's to be got out of it, what on earth can you do that's any good to me?"
"If you went home," said Jewson, slowly, "I could keep him here till it was no use his following you--till you were married!"
"Oh, so you think you could do all that?"
"I know I could, Captain Devenish."
"You know it, do you?"
"Of course, you would make it worth my while."
Ralph laughed harshly as he raised the pannikin once more.
"I was waiting for that, you old villain! I was waiting for that!"
But it did not disgust him. He did not even pretend to be disgusted.
There were no scruples left in those reckless, heated eyes.
"You give me your promissory note for a thousand pounds, payable on your wedding day, or on demand thereafter, and you'll be married the month after you get back."
Ralph laughed more harshly than before.
"Go on, Jewson! You aren't drunk, are you? Then how do you think you're going to manage it?"
"Ah, that I sha'n't tell you; but manage it I can and will. You leave it to me. If you sail at the New Year--and there's two or three ships advertised--it'll be your own fault if you aren't married by midsummer.
And if that isn't worth a thousand pounds I don't know what is."
"It's worth two!" whispered Devenish, hoarsely; "and you shall have two if--if----"
"If what?"
"If he--if he lives to see the day."
Jewson chuckled aloud.
"Of course he will!" he cried. "Where would be the fun if he didn't?
Where would be my fun--that's been due to me ever since he had me disrated?"
"Then it's a bargain."
"What? Are you going to give me your hand on it, Captain Devenish?"
"My hand and word, and if I break the one may the other wither!"
"But you'll put it on paper, sir, won't you?"
"Whenever you like."
"One thousand or two?"
"Two if he lives to see it--nothing if he doesn't."
"A bargain it is."
CHAPTER XVIII
ROTTEN GULLY
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."