Ghost Camp — Chapter VII

CHAPTER VII

“‘AT that moment, the last I ever expected to see on earth, the black girl uttered a sudden cry.

The report of a gun was heard, as a bullet passed between me and Brady, flattening itself against the rock where I had been leaning just before.

At the same time four men dashed across the gully and made for him.

He looked at me with devilish malignity for a moment, but I suppose, wanting the charge in his gun for his own defence, turned and fled with extraordinary speed towards the forest, the police—for such they were—with a soldier and the informer, firing at him as he went.

Their guns were the old-fashioned tower muskets; they were bad shots at best—so the girl and he disappeared in the thick wood, unhurt as far as I could see.

I fell on my face, I know, and thanked God before I rose—the God of our fathers, who had answered my prayer and delivered me out of the hand of the “bloody and deceitful man,” in the words of the Psalmist.

I took my sheep home early, and put them in the paling yard—dog proof it was—and needed to be, in that part of the country.

Just as it was getting dark, the men came back, regularly knocked up, with their clothes torn to rags and half off their backs.

They hadn’t caught Brady.

I didn’t expect they would—he was in hard condition, and could run like a kangaroo.

He got clean out of sight of them in a mile or two after they left us.

What astonished me was, that they brought back the black girl, with a bullet through her shoulder, poor thing!

“‘“I suppose that was a mistake,” said I, “you didn’t fire at the poor thing, surely?

” “‘“_We_ didn’t,” said the soldier, “but who d’ye think did?

” “‘“You don’t say?

” said I. “‘“But I do.

It was that infernal villain and coward, Brady himself, that shot her.

She couldn’t keep up with him, and for fear she’d fall into our hands, and give away his ‘plants,’ he fired at her, and nearly stopped her tongue for ever.

But he’s overdid it this time—she’s red hot agen ’im now, and swears she’ll go with any party to help track him up.

” “‘“Serve the brute right.

Let’s have a look at the poor thing’s shoulder, I wonder if the bullet’s still in it?

” “‘We washed off the blood, and between us, managed to get it out.

It was wonderful how many people in those days knew something about gunshot wounds.

After we’d shown Mary the bullet, we bound it up, and the poor gin thanked us, and lay down on her furs by the fire, quite comfortable.

We kept watch and watch, you may be sure, for fear Brady might come in the night, and shoot one of us, but nothing happened, and after breakfast the party went back to Hobart, taking the girl with them.

“‘I was in fear for weeks afterwards that he might come and pay me out.

But he didn’t do that either.

He was taken not long after, and when he was, it was through that same girl, Mary, whom he tried to shoot.

He met his fate through his own base bloodthirsty act, and if any one brought it on his own head, and deserved it thoroughly, Mick Brady was that man.

“‘Now this happened a many years ago, before you were born, or thought of, as the saying is.

Often and often, when I could leave the flock safe, did I try to find out the place where this stone came from, but I never could drop on it again.

When I found it first and saw that there was a regular lode, and plenty more “slugs” as rich as this, which is nearly pure silver, mind you, I was in such a hurry to get back to the sheep, that I’d only time to mark two or three trees, and drive in a stake, before I started for home.

“‘I was sure I could find it again.

But I never did.

It was hot weather, and a bush fire started that day, and burned for weeks, sweeping all that side of the country.

“‘You’ll remember reading of Black Thursday, Master Charles?

it burned all Port Phillip, Victoria as they call it now, from Melbourne town to the Ottawa range.

So I expect my marks were burnt out.

For I never could find the way to it again: what with the fallen timber that covered over the ground, and the ashes that was heaped up a foot deep in some places, the whole face of the country was altered past knowing.

You might have heard tell that ashes fell on board some of the coasting craft miles from the shore, and a black cloud hung over the coastline, for days afterwards.

But, take my word for it, Master Charles, the word of a dying man, for I’m not long for this world, that whoever finds the gully where this stone came from, and takes up a prospecting claim, will own the richest silver mine, south of the line.

Your father’s always been a good master to his prisoner servants, that Mick Brady told a lie when he said he wasn’t, and there’s none of ’em that wouldn’t do him a good turn, if they could; and I have known you and loved you ever since you was the height of a walking stick.

So here’s the silver “slug,” and the wash-leather bag of specimens, there’s gold and copper besides, and I hope there’ll be luck with them.

’ “The poor old chap didn’t live long after that.

He was comfortable enough for the last year or two of his life, for my father pensioned his old servants, and his old horses too, for that matter.

He couldn’t bear to think that after they’d worked well all their lives, they should be allowed to drag out a wretched existence, starved, or perhaps ill-treated, till death came to their relief.

So the silver ‘slug’ was bequeathed to me, this is a bit of it on my watch-chain, with the malachite colouring showing out.

It always comes with time, they say.

Anyhow it brought me luck in the end, though it was a precious long time coming about.

” “As you’ve brought us so far,” said Jack Clarke, “and Mr. Blount seems interested (he hasn’t been asleep more than twice), I think it would be a fair thing to give us the last chapter.

For, I suppose you _did_ find the old man’s marked tree, and if so, how?

as lawyers say.

” “As you have deduced, with your usual astuteness, that I must have found it, or we shouldn’t be here, I suppose, I may lay aside my modesty, and enlighten the company.

The ‘Comstock’ has a well-marked track now, if there’s nothing else good about it.

Old Parkins gave me the bearings of the ‘Lost Gully,’ as he always called it.

Once a year, I always took a loaf round the locality after Christmas, poking about doing a little fishing, when there was any: shooting wallaby or anything worth while that I came across.

Got an old man kangaroo bailed up at the head of a gully, one day after a big fight with my dogs.

I had fired away my cartridges, and was looking round for a stick to hit him on the head with, when I backed on to a stump of an upright sapling, as I thought, out of a ‘whip stick scrub,’ which had grown up since the fire.

“It did not give way, as I expected, and putting back my hand to feel it, I found it was a _stake_!

It was charred all round, but still sound, and hard to the core.

Lucky for me, it was stringy bark timber.

I pulled it up, and tried it on the old man’s skull, which it cracked like an egg shell.

It had been pointed with a tomahawk, and driven well into the ground.

That clinched the matter.

It _was the old man’s peg_!

The next thing was to clear the ground round about of timber and ashes, with all the accumulation of years.

This I did next day, carefully, and it was not long before I discovered a couple of tomahawk marks on a big ‘mess-mate’ not far off.

The bark had partly grown over it.

It was in the form of a cross.

Underneath the new bark the marking was perfect, as I had often seen surveyors’ marks, years and years after they had been done.

Then I came upon the cap of the lode, broke off some rock, fifty per cent.

ore, no mistake.

Blazed my track and cleared for Hobart.

Took up a prospector’s claim next morning at 10 a. m.

Registered in due form.

Met Clarke and accidentally Messrs. Blount and Tregonwell, new—er—that is to say, newly arrived from England, and the great silver property, known to the world as the ‘Tasmanian Comstock, Limited,’ and so on was duly launched.

” “Well done, Charlie, my boy!

No idea you’d so much poetry in your composition!

You were not regarded as imaginative at the old ‘Hutchins Institute,’ where we both had ‘small Latin and less Greek’ hammered into us.

But you were a sticker, I will say that for you.

Now that I’m _hors de combat_, I seem to see that quality in a new light.

Main strength and stupidity we used to call it in your case.

” “I’ve no doubt; you were horribly ill-mannered, even without a sprained ankle,” retorted Herbert, “but we make allowances for your condition as an invalid.

By the time we get that corduroy track finished, and traffic other than ‘man-power’ restored, we shall look for improvement.

” The next day, being bright with sunshine, dispersed some of the gloom which wet, cold and unwonted fatigue had imposed upon the partners.

The shafts of sunlight, flashing through the endless glades and thickets of the primeval forest, formed a thousand glittering coruscations of all imaginable forms and figures.

The pools of water reflected the glimpses of cloudless sky, framed in sombre but still burnished shades of green.

Birds called and twittered in approval of the change, while strings of water-fowl, winging their way to the great mountain lakes, told of a happier clime, and the undisturbed enjoyment in which the tribes of the air might revel.

The obvious primary duty after breakfast was to get to the mine itself.

The distance was not great, but the task was less easy than might be supposed.

The track through the jungle of scrub and forest was necessarily narrow, as the labour necessary for clearing it was great and, therefore, expensive.

The tremendous rainfall had turned the adjoining country into a quagmire, the only means of crossing which was by a corduroy road.

On this inconvenient makeshift the friends stumbled along until they came to a collection of huts and tents, the usual outcrop of a mining township, which springs up, mushroom-like, at the faintest indication of proved, payable gold, silver or copper in any part of Australia.

Of course there was a “store,” so called, from which proudly flaunted a large calico flag, with “Comstock Emporium” rudely painted thereon, while a few picks and shovels, iron pots and frying-pans, with a half-emptied case of American axes outside the canvas door, denoted the presence of the primary weapons used in the war with nature.

A score or more of shafts, above which were the rude windlasses with rope and bucket of the period, disclosed the beginning of mining enterprise, advertising the hope and expectation of a subterranean treasure-house—the hope invariable, the expectation, alas!

so often doomed to barren disappointment and eventual despair.

However, when the prospectors’ claim was reached, within the area of which no intrusion was allowed, the dull grey rock from which Mr. Blount was urged to break down a few fragments disclosed a perfect Aladdin’s cave of the precious metal.

His enthusiasm, slow to arouse, became keen, stimulated by this “potentiality of boundless wealth.

” His more emotional partner was loudly enthusiastic upon the immense value of the discovery.

“See that stone,” he said, knocking off a corner of the “face,” “it’s all fifty per cent.

stuff—when it’s not seventy-five.

Look at the native silver and the malachite!

I’ve been on the ‘Comstock,’ and the ‘Indian Chief’ in Denver, and can make affidavit that in their best days they never turned out better stone than that—most of it was less than half the percentage, indeed.

The ore bodies were larger, you say?

No such thing.

This lode widens out; the deeper you go, the more there is of it.

Easy worked, too.

Freight expensive?

Wait till the corduroy’s finished to the main road; we’ll have stores and hotels, the electric light, hot and cold water laid on; a couple of clubs, with the last month’s magazines, and _The Times_ itself on the smoking-room table.

You don’t know how everything comes to ‘a big field,’ gold, silver or copper, as soon as the precious metal is proved—proved, mind you—to have a settled abode there.

Fortune?

There’s a fortune apiece for every proprietor here to-day—even for Clarke, who’s now in his bunk reading a yellow-back novel.

” All this fairy-appearing relation turned out to be a sober and accurate statement of facts, as far as could be gathered from the survey made by the partners in the enterprise.

The stone, which was of surpassing richness, was principally found in a well-defined lode, forty feet wide, increasing in volume as the shafts pierced more deeply into the bowels of the earth.

A mining expert of eminence turned up, who had, after many perils and disasters, found his way to Comstock.

On being permitted a “private view,” he confirmed Mr. Tregonwell’s wildest flights of fancy.

“Nothing in the Southern Hemisphere as rich, or half as rich, has ever been discovered,” he said.

He doubted, as did Tregonwell, whether in all the mines from Peru to Denver such a deposit had ever been unearthed.

He proved by reference to scientific geological treatises that it was so rare as to have been doubted as a possibility that such a find _could_ occur, but if so, the most apocryphal yield of Peru and Chile would have paled before the size and richness of this Silverado of the Wilderness, so long hidden from the gaze of man.

Then an adjournment was made to the “Emporium,” as it was proudly styled, the meagreness of its materials and adornments being in the inverse proportion to its imposing designation.

But the glory of the future, the assured development of the mine, and, as a natural sequence, of the “field,” was shed around with irradiating effect and brilliancy of colouring.

Upon this the proprietor proceeded to dilate, after an invitation to a calico shielded sanctum, sacred to the account books and documents of the establishment.

In the centre of the compartment stood a table composed of the top of a packing case, placed upon stakes driven into the earthen floor.

At one side was a stretcher with his blankets and bedclothes, surmounted by a gaily coloured rug, upon which the visitors were invited to sit, while the host after placing a bottle of whisky of a fashionable brand upon the festive board, cordially requested his guests to join him in drinking the health of the energetic and spirited proprietors of the Great Comstock Silver Mine.

“Not that it looks much now, gentlemen; no more does this stringy bark and calico shanty of mine.

But that says nothing.

I was at Ballarat in the ‘fifties,’ and Jack Garth, the baker, had just such a gunya as this.

I brought up a load of flour for him, and was paid a hundred and fifty pound a ton for the carriage.

The roads were bad certainly—puts me in mind of this hole, in that way; but you _could_ travel, somehow.

And look at Ballarat now, with trams, and town halls, and artificial lakes, and public gardens and statues—just like the old country.

And Jack Garth, well, he’s worth a couple of hundred thousand pounds, if he’s worth a penny; owns farms and prize stock, and hotels, and everything a man can want in this world.

How came that, gentlemen?

Because he was a hardworking straightgoing chap?

No!

that wouldn’t have done it, though he’d always have made a good living—any man of the right sort can do _that_ in Australia.

But _the gold was there_!

It was there then, and it’s there now.

It floated the whole place up to fortune and fame, the diggers, the storekeepers, the publicans, the commissioners, the carriers, the very police made money: some of ’em saved it too.

Didn’t one of ’em own a whole terrace of houses afterwards?

Well, the gold was there, and _the silver’s here_; that’s all that’s wanted for miners to know, and they’ll follow it up, if it was to the South Pole; and mark my words, gentlemen, this place’ll go ahead, and grow and flourish, and make fortunes for us men standing here, and for the er—er—babe unborn.

” Concluding his peroration with this effective forecast, which showed that his connection, as member, with the Bungareeshire council had not been without effect on his elocution, Mr. Morgan replenished his glass, and invited his distinguished guests to do likewise.

* * * * * Hobart, at length.

Mr. Blount was unaffectedly pleased, even joyous, when for the second time he sighted the towering summit and forest-clothed sides of Mount Wellington, overlooking the picturesque city, the noble stretches of the Derwent, and the Southern main.

Impatient of delay, and feverishly anxious to receive the letters which he had not cared to trust to the irregular postal service of Silverado;

almost certain, as he deemed, of answers to his letters from Mrs. Bruce and Imogen, even if the master of the house had not relented, he had stayed a day to ensure the company of the mining expert, the road being lonely, the weather bad, and the conversation of a cultured companion valuable under the circumstances.

Mr. Blount ran rapidly through the pile of letters and papers which he found awaiting him; indeed, made a second examination of these former missives.

A feeling of intense disappointment overcame him when no letters with the postmark of the village on the Upper Sturt turned up, nor did he discover the delicate, yet free and legible handwriting, which conveyed such solace to his soul at Bunjil.

Looking over the correspondence, mechanically, however, he came across the postmark of that comparatively obscure townlet, and recalling the bold, characteristic hand of Sheila Maguire, tore it open.

It ran as follows:— “DEAR MR. BLOUNT,—You told me when you went away that cold morning, that if anything happened here that I thought you ought to know, I was to write and tell you.

We all thought there would be a heavy fall of rain, and most likely a big storm that night.

I expect you just missed it, but there must have been a waterspout or something, for the Little River, and all the creeks at the head of the water, came down a banker.

It knocked the sluicing company’s works about, above a bit, and flooded the miners’ huts—but the worst thing it did was to drown poor Johnny Doyle the mailman.

Yes!

poor chap, it wasn’t known for days afterwards, when the people at Marondah wondered why they didn’t get their mail.

He was never known to be late before.

However, drowned he was, quite simple too.

He could swim first-rate, but the pack-horse was caught in a snag, and he must have jumped in, to loose the bags, and got kicked on the head and stunned.

So the packer was drowned, and him too, worse luck!

His riding horse was found lower down—he’d swum out all right.

They fished up the pack saddle with the mail-bags, but the letters were squashed up to pulp—couldn’t be delivered.

“So, if you wrote to any one _down the river, she didn’t get it_.

“I thought it as well to let you know, as you might be waiting for an answer, and not getting one, go off to foreign parts in _a despairing state of mind_.

Bunjil’s much the same as when you left, except that Little-River-Jack, the two O’Haras, and Lanky Dixon were arrested in Gippsland, but not being evidence enough, the P. M.

here turned them up.

A report came that you had struck it rich in Tasmania, so you may be sure of getting _all_ your letters now and some over.

I’ve noticed that.

So long.

I send a newspaper with the account in it of the flood.

“Believe me always, “Your sincere friend and well-wisher, “SHEILA MAGUIRE.

“P. S.

—The cob goes first-rate with me.

I’m learning him to jump.

He’s christened ‘Bunjil.

’ I’m going to live in Tumut after Christmas, and he will remind me of the time you came here first.

” “By Jove!

Sheila, you’re a trump!

” was Mr. Blount’s very natural exclamation, as he arose and walked up and down the room, after mastering the contents of the momentous epistle.

“This clears up the mystery of their silence.

No wonder they didn’t write, Bruce thinking that I was willing to let judgment go by default.

Mrs. Bruce and Imogen believing Heaven knows what?

That I must be a shady character, at any rate, no gentleman, or I would have answered one or other of their letters—sent in the goodness of their hearts.

So this is the explanation!

” The temporary relief accorded to the recipient of Sheila’s letter encouraged him to hunt through the pile of newspapers for the unassuming _Bunjil, Little River, and Boggy Creek Herald_, which, presently descrying, he fastened upon the headlines, “Disastrous flood.

” “Great destruction of property.

” “Lamentable death by drowning.

” “We regret deeply to be compelled to chronicle the melancholy and fatal accident by which Mr. John Doyle, a valued employé of the Postal Department, lost his life last week.

“The mail from the township to the Tallawatta Post-Office, by no means inconsiderable or unimportant, is carried on horseback, though we have repeatedly pointed out its inadequacy as a mode of transport.

Our remonstrance has unfortunately been emphasised by the drowning of the mail-carrier, and the total loss of the letters and papers.

Mr. Doyle was a fine young man, of steady habits, a good horseman and expert swimmer.

It is surmised that in attempting to free the pack-horse, since discovered entangled in a sunken tree root, he was kicked by the struggling animal and stunned; the _post-mortem_ examination before the inquest, made by Dr. Dawson, M. D.

, who came over from Beechworth for the purpose, disclosed a deep cut on the temple and the mark of a horseshoe.

The coroner, with a jury of six, brought in a verdict of ‘Accidental death by drowning.

’ At the funeral, nearly a hundred persons attended, showing the respect in which the deceased was held by the neighbours.

Father O’Flynn of the Presbytery at Hovell conducted the service.

This occurrence has cast quite a gloom over our township and the surrounding district.

” So much for poor Johnny Doyle, a game, active, hardworking son of the soil; sober and well conducted, the chief support of his widowed mother, with a brood of half-a-dozen young children.

There was some argument after the funeral upon the mystery of permitted evil, and the dispensation which allowed the sacrifice of poor Johnny, whose life was a benefit in his humble sphere, to all connected with him, while as to certain worthless members of the body politic, freely referred to by name, the invariable verdict upon an apparently charmed life was, “You couldn’t kill ’em with an axe.

” Though temporarily immersed in thought, Mr. Blount quickly came to the conclusion that, as his former letters had been prevented by fate from achieving their purpose, it would be the obvious course to write to the same persons at once, furnishing the same explanation.

He devoted the evening to that duty solely, and after conveying to Mr. Bruce his regrets for the unavoidable delay which had occurred, and lamenting the injurious construction which might be put upon his silence, made an appeal to his sense of honour that he should be granted a hearing, and be permitted to explain personally the apparent inconsistency of his conduct.

To Mrs. Bruce he wrote with more freedom of expression, deploring the unkind fate which had denied him an opportunity of clearing away the aspersions on his character.

As to his non-appearance, he had been called away by business of the _greatest urgency_, affecting not only his own but other people’s interests.

His future prospects had been deeply involved.

Nothing short of prompt action could have saved the situation.

Now, he was rejoiced to be able to assure her and Miss Imogen, that a fortune of no inconsiderable amount was actually within his grasp.

He forwarded a copy of the _Hobart Intelligencer_, a respectable journal, in which she would find a confirmation of his statement.

Also, a detailed account of the rise and progress of the property, though more rose-coloured than he would care to assert.

The value of the property, a mining expert of eminence had said, could hardly be over-estimated.

It was his intention, without more delay than the consolidation of the directorate and other essential arrangements required, to return to New South Wales, and present himself before them at Marondah, no matter what the outcome might be.

The result he felt would colour his future existence for happiness or misery, yet he was determined to undergo the ordeal.

A final decision, however disastrous, would be more endurable than the condition of doubt and uncertainty under which he had existed for the last few weeks.

Accompanying these letters was a packet containing letters of introduction to the Governors of more than one colony.

They were from personages of high standing, even of great political influence.

Not couched in the formal phraseology which the writers of such communications hold to be sufficient for the purpose, they spoke of the bearer as a young man of great promise, who had unusual opportunities of rising in the diplomatic or other official branches of the Civil Service, but had, somewhat inconsiderately, preferred to explore new and untried roads to fortune.

The writers had no doubt but that he would distinguish himself in some form or other before his novitiate was ended.

A short but impassioned appeal had been enclosed in this letter to Mrs. Bruce.

Her womanly compassion would, he trusted, impel her to deliver it to Imogen, whose sympathetic feelings, if not a warmer emotion, which he hardly dared to classify, he felt instinctively to be in his favour.

Having completed his task, he was not satisfied until he had posted the letters and packet with his own hands, and with an unuttered prayer that they would meet with no mischance similar to the last, he returned to the Tasmanian Club, where he slept soundly till aroused by the fully arisen sun and the hum of labour, combined with the ceaseless clatter of vehicles.

A man’s mental turmoils and uncertainties doubtless act upon his physical constitution, but he must indeed be exceptionally framed who can withstand the cheering influence of a well-cooked breakfast and a fine day in spring.

The surroundings of a first-class Australian Club are such as to cause the most fastidious arrival from Europe to recognise the social kinship of the cultured Briton to be worldwide and homogeneous.

The conventional quietude of manner, the perfection of attendance, the friendliness towards the stranger guest, all these minor matters, differentiated from the best hotel life, tend to placate the traveller, much as he may be given to criticise all more or less foreign institutions, when distant from the “Mecca” of his race.

So it came to pass that, on forth issuing from that most agreeable caravanserai, his bruised and lacerated spirit felt soothed by the courtesy of the members generally, as well as of those immediately near to him at the table where he sat.

He had drifted easily into conversation with several manifestly representative men: with one, indeed, an all-powerful mining investor (as he learnt subsequently), holding the fortunes of a mammoth copper syndicate in the hollow of his hand.

Of this gentleman he took special heed, but neither from his appearance, manner nor conversation was he enabled to make a probable guess as to the nature of his occupation.

He might have been an _habitué_ of cities, or a life-long dweller in the country, interested in commerce, in finance, pastoral or agricultural pursuits; in any one of these, or in all.

But there was nothing to indicate it.

A complete negation of the first person singular marked his conversation, yet he was apparently equally at ease in each and every topic as they arose.

One thing, however, could not be mistaken—the massive frame and exceptional capacity for leadership, which would seem to be wasted on a city life.

Another of a widely different type had been his right-hand neighbour at the genial but conventional board—a young and fashionably-dressed man, “native and to the manner born,” who seemed to be the recognised _arbiter elegantiarum_, as well as leader and referee of all sport and pastime.

Secretary to the polo club, steward at the forthcoming Race-meeting and Hunt Club Cup, on the committee of the Assembly Ball, also imminent, he tendered an offer to our honorary member to procure seats, tickets, and introductions for himself and friends, with special facilities for joining or witnessing these annual celebrations.

He also was not _affiché_ to any known profession—at least, to none that could be gathered from looks or manner.

Others of the ordinary denizens of club-land to whom he was introduced mentioned his partner, Mr. Tregonwell, as an out-and-out good fellow, and, as a mining expert, a benefactor to this island.

He had evidently toned down his exuberance in the interests of conventionality.

Mr. Blount, in contradistinction to the men who had extended the right-hand of friendship to him, was patently a _novus homo_—ticketed as such by dress and deportment, and assured of courteous entertainment from that very circumstance.