Denis Dent Part 19

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."

CHAPTER XVI

A WINDFALL

The pair had pa.s.sed the place where they had waved farewell to Moseley, and were in sound but not quite in sight of all that one of them had never expected to see or to hear again, when a voice hailed them in the rear, and they found that a buggy and pair had crept upon them while they talked. Doherty was filled with apprehension. He had not been so happy for two months. But Denis was much interested in the driver of the buggy, who drove alone, and who looked as though he might have been got up in Bedford Row, what with his black silk stock, his high hat still s.h.i.+ning through its layer of yellow dust, and his spectacled face clean-shaven to the lips.

"May I ask if you are Ballarat diggers," said he, "or new arrivals like myself?"

"We are diggers," replied Denis, "and Ballarat's just over that hill."

"So I should suppose," observed the gentleman from afar, and proceeded to weigh the couple with a calculating eye. "Been at it long?" he added as one who did not find them altogether wanting.

"A couple of months."

"H'mph! Not so long as I should have liked, but there's just a chance that you can help me, as I am sure you will, sir," nodding at Denis, who nodded back, "if you can. Perhaps the lad will be so kind as to hold my horse. Thanky. Not that it's mine at all," the incongruous gentleman went on, as he flung down the reins and addressed himself to the contents of a small black bag. "I couldn't afford twenty-four hours in Melbourne waiting for the coach, so I had to hire, with all sorts of arrangements for changing horses on the way. But my coachman was in liquor before midnight, and when I left him, appropriately enough at Bacchus Marsh, early this morning, I wasn't going to trust myself to another. If you have a tongue in your head, sir, you can find your own way from Lincoln's Inn to John o' Groats. Ah, now I have it!" and he produced a photograph, of the carte-de-visite size then alone in vogue, and shook it playfully at Denis before putting it into his outstretched hand. "There, sir!" he wound up. "If you happen to know that face, just say so; and if you do not know it, have the goodness not to pretend you do. The answer to the question is Yes or No."

Denis looked upon the full-length presentment of a very tall gentleman, in a frock-coat, a white waistcoat, and an att.i.tude as stiff as the heart of early Victorian photographer could desire. An elbow rested on the pedestal of a draped pillar, and the thumb of that hand in the watch-pocket; but the handsome face looked contemptuously conscious of its own self-consciousness, only it was the very gentlest contempt, and Denis recognized the expression before the face. Strip off his muddy rags, re-apparel him thus, shave his chin and nick his beard into flowing whiskers, and there was their friend the deep-sinker, hardly a day younger than when Denis had last seen him on his claim in Rotten Gully.

"The answer is Yes," he said, returning the likeness.

"You are sure of that?"

"Quite."

"You don't want the lad to confirm your view?"

"As you like; but he has only seen him once, and I have twice. It's the deep-sinker, Jimmy," added Denis over his shoulder.

The shaven gentleman pulled a wry face.

"May I ask if that's the only name you know him by?"

"I have never heard his name; but that's what he is, and the most scientific one I've come across."

The wry face went into a dry smile.

"And do you know where to find him?"

"Well, I know his claim."

"Would you very much mind getting up beside me and directing me how to drive there?"

"I should be delighted to have the lift."

"Thanky. There'll be room for your young friend behind. This is one of those happy coincidences which almost give one back one's childish belief in luck!"

The diggings were in the state of suspended animation which was their normal condition from twelve to three. The latest pilgrim blinked about him through his spectacles, more interested than impressed with what he saw. Denis took the reins, turned off the road at once, found a ford in the northern bend of the Yarrowee, and drove straight into an outpost of windsails and windla.s.ses hidden away behind the hill. In another minute the buggy drew up beside the deep-sinker's solid little hut, in whose shade his soured a.s.sistant sat asleep, with his eyebrows up and the corners of his mouth turned down, even in his dreams.

"Where's your master?" demanded the visitor, causing Denis and Doherty to exchange glances; but the other merely opened a long-suffering eye, pointed indoors, and had closed it again before the gentleman descended.

At his request, the partners remained in the buggy, where they spent an interval of a few minutes in covetous admiration of the neat hut with its bark roof, the iron windla.s.s, the stack of timber slabs for lining the shaft, and the suggestively solid opening of the shaft itself. They agreed to look down, if not to descend, with the deep-sinker's permission, before departure. Meanwhile his quiet voice was not to be heard outside, but the visitor's was, and eventually the pair emerged.

"But I'm just going to touch bottom," the tall digger expostulated.

"After weeks and months I'm all but on it, and now you want to carry me off!"

The visitor whispered some smiling argument, which elicited a shrug of familiar and restrained contempt.

"It isn't the money," said the tall man. "It's the fun of the thing, don't you know."

The visitor took out his watch as though they could just catch a train.

"I've arranged for fresh horses all along the road," said he. "These have only done ten miles, and they can do the same ten back again. I hope I made it plain about the first s.h.i.+p. It may sail the day after to-morrow."

The digger sighed inevitable acquiescence. He looked rather sadly, yet with some quiet amus.e.m.e.nt, at his rude little home, at the good windla.s.s on its staging stamped against the sky. His a.s.sistant had meanwhile risen from his slumbers, and was standing respectfully at hand.

"Charles," said the digger, "I've got to go home. Are you coming with me, or will you stay out here and make your fortune out of the hole?

I'll make you a present of it if you will."

But the look of splendid disgust had vanished as if by magic from the a.s.sistant's face. "I'll go home with you, sir!" he said emphatically, and then looked from one gentleman to the other, as though he might have committed a solecism. He was forthwith ordered into the hut to put his master's things together, with a grim smile on the master's part, who proceeded at last to notice Denis, or at any rate to record such notice with his fraction of a nod.

"So it's to you I owe my prompt discovery," said he. "'Pon my word I'm not as grateful to you as I ought to be! Doing any better on Black Hill Flat?"

"I've left it," said Denis, rather shortly.

"Where are you now?"