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Updated: May 13, 2025
Not through, you call it, and never more than a colour to the dish after fourteen days and more of graft. I'm full of it. There was more of a show on Boulder Creek." "'Kick at troubles when they come, boys," Tony chanted from the other side of the fire. "Wot price that?" Palmer Billy interrupted. "Singing a digger's song on a darned dirty mud-heap. It's a blasphemy." "Why?" Peters asked quietly.
Oh, I was just thinking of something that happened yesterday" and Polly sat up, agog to tell. It appeared that the day before, while he was out, the digger's wife who did Polly's rough work for her had rushed in, crying that her youngest was choking. Bonnetless, Polly had flown across to the woman's hut.
The two friends had experienced during three years the varying fortune of a digger's life; sometimes working for long periods successfully, and gradually increasing their "pile;" at other times toiling day after day for nothing and living on their capital, but on the whole, making what men called a good thing of it until Tom took to gambling, which, almost as a matter of course, led to drinking.
So he is rarely seen in daytime, but probably is out oftener than is supposed. Peter has told how he nearly stepped on Digger before seeing him. It is Digger's wise habit to lie perfectly still until he is sure he has been seen, so people often pass him without seeing him at all, or if they see him they take him for a stone.
Notwithstanding this the little reptile returned to the bed, keeping close to his master, but he continued to be very restless and excited for the remainder of the night. When day dawned, preparations were begun for the day's march. The tents were struck and the bedding was rolled up, ready to be placed on the rough digger's cart. Then the mystery was explained.
Jim fell on his feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger's hole, about ten feet deep, and dropped down into it landing on soft mud and was safe. The dog grinned sardonically down on him, over the edge, for a moment, as if he thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
His adversary was so close behind that a collision resulted; the digger's feet slid from under him, he fell on his face, the other on top. In their fall they struck a huge pillar of tin-dishes, ingeniously built up to the height of the store itself. This toppled over with a crash, and the dishes went rolling down the slope between the legs of the police.
From early morn till long past midnight, the little bar of the "Digger's Best" was crowded with diggers, packhorsemen and teamsters; a police trooper arrived and fixed his tent on the ridge overlooking the creek, and then the very zenith of prosperity a bank official followed, and a stately building, composed of a dozen sheets of bark for a roof, and floor sacks for the sides, was erected and opened for business on the same day, amid much rejoicing and a large amount of liquid refreshment dispensed by the landlord of the "hotel" at a shilling per nobbler.
He carried him gently in the blouse to the camp, and there, with the usual courage and confidence of his race, the little reptile quickly adapted himself to his new surroundings in the digger's tent. He was carefully fed, kept warm at night, and soon began to like his new quarters with the gold-seekers.
Three nights after I was out at sea, bound for Melbourne, a steerage passenger with a digger's tools for my baggage, and seven shillings in my pocket. After three and a half years of hard and bitter struggles on the goldfields, at last I struck it rich, realised twenty thousand pounds, and a fortnight later I took my passage for England.
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