Australia Felix | Page 4

and tailors yielded under the lateral pressure, and the rotten
earth collapsed, bringing down the roof in its train. The digger fell
forward on his face, his ribs jammed across his pick, his arms pinned to
his sides, nose and mouth pressed into the sticky mud as into a mask;
and over his defenceless body, with a roar that burst his ear-drums,
broke stupendous masses of earth.
His mates at the windlass went staggering back from the belch of
violently discharged air: it tore the wind-sail to strips, sent stones and
gravel flying, loosened planks and props. Their shouts drawing no
response, the younger and nimbler of the two--he was a mere boy, for
all his amazing growth of beard--put his foot in the bucket and went
down on the rope, kicking off the sides of the shaft with his free foot. A
group of diggers, gathering round the pit-head, waited for the tug at the
rope. It was quick in coming; and the lad was hauled to the surface. No
hope: both drives had fallen in; the bottom of the shaft was blocked.
The crowd melted with a "Poor Bill--God rest his soul!" or with a silent
shrug. Such accidents were not infrequent; each man might thank his
stars it was not he who lay cooling down below. And so, since no more
washdirt would be raised from this hole, the party that worked it made
off for the nearest grog-shop, to wet their throats to the memory of the
dead, and to discuss future plans.

All but one: a lean and haggard-looking man of some five and forty,
who was known to his comrades as Long Jim. On hearing his mate's
report he had sunk heavily down on a log, and there he sat, a pannikin
of raw spirit in his hand, the tears coursing ruts down cheeks scabby
with yellow mud, his eyes glassy as marbles with those that had still to
fall.
He wept, not for the dead man, but for himself. This accident was the
last link in a chain of ill-luck that had been forging ever since he first
followed the diggings. He only needed to put his hand to a thing, and
luck deserted it. In all the sinkings he had been connected with, he had
not once caught his pick in a nugget or got the run of the gutter; the
"bottoms" had always proved barren, drives been exhausted without his
raising the colour. At the present claim he and his mates had toiled for
months, overcoming one difficulty after another. The slabbing, for
instance, had cost them infinite trouble; it was roughly done, too, and,
even after the pins were in, great flakes of earth would come tumbling
down from between the joints, on one occasion nearly knocking silly
the man who was below. Then, before they had slabbed a depth of three
times nine, they had got into water, and in this they worked for the next
sixty feet. They were barely rid of it, when the two adjoining claims
were abandoned, and in came the flood again--this time they had to fly
for their lives before it, so rapid was its rise. Not the strongest man
could stand in this ice-cold water for more than three days on end--the
bark slabs stank in it, too, like the skins in a tanner's yard--and they had
been forced to quit work till it subsided. He and another man had gone
to the hills, to hew trees for more slabs; the rest to the grog-shop. From
there, when it was feasible to make a fresh start, they had to be dragged,
some blind drunk, the rest blind stupid from their booze. That had been
the hardest job of any: keeping the party together. They had only been
eight in all--a hand-to-mouth number for a deep wet hole. Then, one
had died of dysentery, contracted from working constantly in water up
to his middle; another had been nabbed in a manhunt and clapped into
the "logs." And finally, but a day or two back, the three men who
completed the nightshift had deserted for a new "rush" to the Avoca.
Now, his pal had gone, too. There was nothing left for him, Long Jim,
to do, but to take his dish and turn fossicker; or even to aim no higher

than washing over the tailings rejected by the fossicker.
At the thought his tears flowed anew. He cursed the day on which he
had first set foot on Ballarat.
"It's 'ell for white men--'ell, that's what it is!"
"'Ere, 'ave another drink, matey, and fergit yer bloody troubles."
His re-filled pannikin drained, he grew warmer round the heart; and
sang the praises of his former life. He had been a lamplighter in the old
country,