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Updated: April 30, 2025
The boy tried to shout and arouse his father, but he was paralysed with horror. His blood seemed to curdle in his veins. No sound would issue from his lips, neither could he move hand or foot while the cold glassy eye of the captain rested on him. Suddenly Graddy sprang up, and Billy's voice found vent in a shrill cry.
"You see, mates," observed Joe Graddy, after the others had given their opinions, "this is how it stands. I must stick by Mister Allfrey, 'cause why, we've bin pullin' in the same boat together for some time past, an' it's nat'ral for to wish to continue so to do.
"Now, do ye give in?" he shouted fiercely, as he compressed the other's throat with both hands. Graddy gasped that he did; so Gaff allowed him to rise, and bade him take the baling-dish from the boy and set to work without delay. The wretched man was so thoroughly cowed that he thereafter yielded instant obedience to his companion.
Instantly Bradling bounded away like a hunted deer, overturning several men in his flight, and being followed by a perfect storm of bullets from rifles and revolvers, until he had disappeared in the neighbouring wood. Then the miners turned with fury on Frank, but paused abruptly on seeing that he and Joe Graddy stood back to back, with a revolver in each hand.
The piece of pork would have been a sufficient meal for any ordinary man, but it quickly vanished down the throat of the savage, who licked his fingers, and, with eyes which required no tongue to interpret their meaning, asked for more! "Look out!" cried Joe Graddy, tossing him a sea biscuit as one throws a quoit.
Need we say, reader, that he insisted on sharing it with Joe Graddy, without whose prompt and vigorous aid the rescue of Bradling could not have been effected? and need we add that the two friends found their way to the sea-coast as quickly as possible, and set sail for England without delay? We think not.
Again and again did his head fall forward, again and again did he look up with a startled expression to perceive that Graddy was regarding him with a cold sardonic smile. Gradually Billy's eyes refused to convey a correct impression of what they rested on.
Snow-blindness occurs from prolonged exposure of the eyes to snow upon which the sun is shining. Some years ago, some seventy laborers, who were clearing away snow-drifts in the Caucasus, were seized, and thirty of them could not find their way home, so great was the photophobia, conjunctivitis, and lacrimation. Graddy reports six cases, and many others are constantly occurring.
Thanking him with all the fervour peculiar to his race, the Irishman emptied the sand into his bag, and heaving a heavy sigh, left the hut to request a similar favour of other miners. "You may depend on it," said Frank, as the old man went out, "that fellow is humbugging you. It is gold, not sand, that he wants." "That's a fact," said Joe Graddy, with an emphatic nod and wink.
That night, as Frank and Graddy lay together under the same blanket, the latter observed that, "he had travelled a goodish bit over the univarse, but that he had niver before comed across nothin' like the experiences of the last two days; and that, if the end of their diggin' for goold woe to be as bad as the begginin', the sooner they set about diggin' their graves the better!"
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