第42章 Payable Gold(2)

He never drank nor "played", and he took little enjoyment of any kind, yet there was not a digger on the field who would dream of calling old Peter McKenzie "a mean man". He lived, as we know from our own observations, in a most frugal manner. He always tried to hide this, and took care to have plenty of good things for us when he invited us to his hut; but children's eyes are sharp.

Some said that Peter half-starved himself, but I don't think his family ever knew, unless he told them so afterwards.

Ah, well! the years go over. Peter was now three years from home, and he and Fortune were enemies still. Letters came by the mail, full of little home troubles and prayers for Peter's return, and letters went back by the mail, always hopeful, always cheerful.

Peter never gave up. When everything else failed he would work by the day (a sad thing for a digger), and he was even known to do a job of fencing until such time as he could get a few pounds and a small party together to sink another shaft.

Talk about the heroic struggles of early explorers in a hostile country; but for dogged determination and courage in the face of poverty, illness, and distance, commend me to the old-time digger -- the truest soldier Hope ever had!

In the fourth year of his struggle Peter met with a terrible disappointment.

His party put down a shaft called the Forlorn Hope near Happy Valley, and after a few weeks' fruitless driving his mates jibbed on it.

Peter had his own opinion about the ground -- an old digger's opinion, and he used every argument in his power to induce his mates to put a few days' more work in the claim. In vain he pointed out that the quality of the wash and the dip of the bottom exactly resembled that of the "Brown Snake", a rich Victorian claim.

In vain he argued that in the case of the abovementioned claim, not a colour could be got until the payable gold was actually reached.

Home Rule and The Canadian and that cluster of fields were going ahead, and his party were eager to shift. They remained obstinate, and at last, half-convinced against his opinion, Peter left with them to sink the "Iawatha", in Log Paddock, which turned out a rank duffer -- not even paying its own expenses.

A party of Italians entered the old claim and, after driving it a few feet further, made their fortune.

. . . . .

We all noticed the change in Peter McKenzie when he came to "Log Paddock", whither we had shifted before him. The old smile still flickered, but he had learned to "look" grave for an hour at a time without much effort.

He was never quite the same after the affair of Forlorn Hope, and I often think how he must have "cried" sometimes "inside".

However, he still read us letters from home, and came and smoked in the evening by our kitchen-fire. He showed us some new portraits of his family which he had received by a late mail, but something gave me the impression that the portraits made him uneasy.

He had them in his possession for nearly a week before showing them to us, and to the best of our knowledge he never showed them to anybody else.

Perhaps they reminded him of the flight of time -- perhaps he would have preferred his children to remain just as he left them until he returned.

But stay! there was one portrait that seemed to give Peter infinite pleasure.

It was the picture of a chubby infant of about three years or more.

It was a fine-looking child taken in a sitting position on a cushion, and arrayed in a very short shirt. On its fat, soft, white face, which was only a few inches above the ten very podgy toes, was a smile something like Peter's. Peter was never tired of looking at and showing the picture of his child -- the child he had never seen.

Perhaps he cherished a wild dream of making his fortune and returning home before THAT child grew up.

. . . . .

McKenzie and party were sinking a shaft at the upper end of Log Paddock, generally called "The other end". We were at the lower end.

One day Peter came down from "the other end" and told us that his party expected to "bottom" during the following week, and if they got no encouragement from the wash they intended to go prospecting at the "Happy Thought", near Specimen Flat.

The shaft in Log Paddock was christened "Nil Desperandum".

Towards the end of the week we heard that the wash in the "Nil" was showing good colours.

Later came the news that "McKenzie and party" had bottomed on payable gold, and the red flag floated over the shaft. Long before the first load of dirt reached the puddling machine on the creek, the news was all round the diggings. The "Nil Desperandum" was a "Golden Hole"!

. . . . .

We will not forget the day when Peter went home. He hurried down in the morning to have an hour or so with us before Cobb and Co. went by.

He told us all about his little cottage by the bay at St. Kilda.

He had never spoken of it before, probably because of the mortgage.

He told us how it faced the bay -- how many rooms it had, how much flower garden, and how on a clear day he could see from the window all the ships that came up to the Yarra, and how with a good telescope he could even distinguish the faces of the passengers on the big ocean liners.

And then, when the mother's back was turned, he hustled us children round the corner, and surreptitiously slipped a sovereign into each of our dirty hands, making great pantomimic show for silence, for the mother was very independent.

And when we saw the last of Peter's face setting like a good-humoured sun on the top of Cobb and Co.'s, a great feeling of discontent and loneliness came over all our hearts. Little Nelse, who had been Peter's favourite, went round behind the pig-stye, where none might disturb him, and sat down on the projecting end of a trough to "have a cry", in his usual methodical manner. But old "Alligator Desolation", the dog, had suspicions of what was up, and, hearing the sobs, went round to offer whatever consolation appertained to a damp and dirty nose and a pair of ludicrously doleful yellow eyes.