The Great Crushing at Mount Sugar-Bag | Page 7

out o' this!" said Mr. Minogue, roughly. "I don't want any of your dashed blarney. Ten days ago you wouldn't give poor Harry Durham a fiver to take him to the bay, and here you come crawling round me, now that our luck has changed. Go to the devil with you! I can pay you your dirty seventy quid now and be hanged toy!"
And with this he pushed his way over to where Fryer and Buller were, keeping guard over the white gleaming masses of precious amalgam.
"Going to retort it now, Rody?" said a digger.
"No; we can't. There isn't a retort big enough to hold a quarter oft he hard stuff, let alone the quicksilver, which is as lumpy as porridge, as you can see," and he lifted some in the palm of his hand out of a bucket. We'll have to send over to Big Boulder for Jones' two big retorts."
"Boys," said a digger, solemnly, "so help me, I believe there's a thousand ounces of gold going to come out of that there amalgam. What do you think, Rody?"
"About eight hundred," he answered, modestly; and Ikey Cohen metaphorically smote his breast and wished he had lent Durham all he asked for.
Placing the amalgam in the big box Fryer kept for the purpose, Rody was about to lock it, when some one make a remark--just the very remark he wanted to hear and be heard by Isaac Cohen, who was still hanging about him.
"Sometimes there's a lot of silver in these mullocky leaders. I heard that at the Canton Reef, near Ravenswood, there was a terrible lot of it."
"Oh, shut up! What y'r gassin' about? There ain't no silver about this field, I bet," called out two or three miners in a chorus.
Rody's face fell. "By jingo, boys, I don't know. Perhaps Joe is right. I've seen Canton Reef gold, it's only worth about twenty-five bob an ounce owing to the silver in it."
"Try a bit of amalgam on a shovel," suggested some one.
Rody lifted the cover of the box and took out a small enamelled cup half full of hard amalgam--the contents of his trousers pockets surreptitiously placed with the rest while cleaning up.
In a few minutes a fire was lit and a shovel with an ounce of amalgam on it wa held over the flame. As the shovel grew red hot and the quicksilver passed away in vapour there lay on the heated iron about eight pennyweights of bright yellow, frosted gold.
"Right as rain!" was the unanimous opinion, and then every one went away to get drunk at Cohen's pub in honour of the occasion.
"Vere are you going to, Mr. Minogue?" said Cohen, oilily, to Rody.
"To Big Boulder, to send another wire to Durham and tell him to come back."
"My friend, you will be foolish. Now you and me vill talk pizness. I vant to buy Mr. Durham out. If you will help me to ged his inderest in the crushing sheap I will call my ackound square and give you--vell, I will give you ��200 for yourself."
Rody appeared to hesitate. At last he said, "Well, I'll do it. I'll write him that the stuff is going about two ounces, and that you want to buy him out. I'll tell him to take what you offer. But at the same time I won't see him done too bad. Give him ��200 as well."
"No, I vill give him ��150."
"All right. I'll wire to him at once. The steamer goes to-morrow,"
"And I rides in with you to Big Boulder and sends him a delegram, too," said Ikey joyfully.
In another hour the two messages were in Harry Durham's hand. He read them and smiled.
"Rody's managed it all right."
At five in the afternoon Mr. Cohen received an answer--
"Will sell you my interest in the Claribel crushing, now going through, for ��150 if money is wired to Bank New South Wales before noon to-morrow."
Mr. Cohen wired it, grinning to himself the while as he thought of the rich mass of amalgam lying in Fryers box. Nothing much under ��350 would be his share, even after paying Rody ��200, in addition to Durham's ��150.
There was a great attendance to see the retorts opened two days afterwards, and Mr. Cohen went into a series of fits when the opening of the largest cylinder revealed nothing by a black mass of charred nastiness (the result of the lead filings), and the other (which contained the amalgam from the first crushing) showed only a little gold--less than twenty ounces.
Of course he wanted to do something desperate, but Rody took him aside, and showing him certain documents concerning horses, said--
"Now, look here; you had better let things alone. It's better for your to lose ��350 than go to gaol. This crushing is a great disappointment to me as