"Oh, not too bad," a tall and gaunt Queenslander answered. "We keeps a team of our own always on the move with stores from the nearest township."

"But that must cost a lot of money so far out as this. How do you earn----?"

"We can always make tucker shootin' kangaroos and emus for their skins; an' if any man wants a cheque bad, for a spell or anything, he can always go shearing inside country. Of course we takes turns at opalling, if we strikes a good show; an' if thar's any new gold discoveries, we git there quick an' lively."

"But you can never make a fortune at work so uncertain?"

"Lor'! mate, but you is hard to please. Here, Charlie; you lend a hand here; this stranger's fresh, an' I is no good pitchin'----" Charlie stepped forward, and at once relieved his comrade of the burden of conversation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EMU'S NEST.]

"You reckons we can't make no money?" he said. "Well, I reckons ye is wrong. How about old Tyson, the millioner? An' how about Gilgai Charlie sitting over there?--my handle is Vic Charlie, cos' I comes from Victoria--he made four thousan' clear outen his opal claim only last week; an', darn it all, mate! there's Shandy Bill, that little fellow on yer left, he made ten ounces yesterday jes' by dry-blowing in a pan----"

"Ten ounces! of copper?"

"No--of gold; an' Long Tom here shot one hundred and twenty-three kangaroos at ninepence each----"

"Did you say that your companion found gold?"

"I reckon I did, stranger, an' what's more, we has all dropped on to gold."

"What! There is no gold so far west as this."

"So we was told, mate. Them as is supposed to know, say there can be no gold west of the ranges; but you can allow that this push knows gold when they see it, an'--but show it to him, Shandy." Shandy instantly detached a leather pouch from his belt, and without a word put it into my hands.

"That is gold without doubt," I said, handing it back; "I know by the weight." Vic Charlie seemed surprised at my knowledge of the metal, but he said nothing.

"Does you know much about minerals?" inquired an elderly man who had been listening intently to the conversation.

"I have prospected in most countries," I answered, "and ought to know all that is worth knowing by this time, for the experience was about all I did get."

"Tucker!" sang out some one. "Git table-covers for the visitors, an'

look lively." My own companion, while I was talking, had been engaged in similar fashion in the centre of another group, and I smiled to see how intensely interested were his listeners. _He_ was not seeking information, I knew, but from the unconscious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns which frequently arose from his audience, I guessed that he was imparting some; and his selections were invariably strange and wonderful. The cry of "Tucker," however, created a diversion, and during the half-hour that followed, all apparently had but one object in view, and being blessed with a healthy appet.i.te, that same object was very pleasing to me. I was placed between a gentleman called Dead-broke Peter and one dubbed Silent Ted. I afterwards discovered that Peter had been a member of the New Zealand Parliament, but Long Tom introduced him simply as the best talker in camp. I suppose it was to balance matters that the thoughtful Tom placed Ted on my other side, for _he_ never spoke.

"He is a first-cla.s.s cook an' a most extraordinar' thinker, though,"

said Tom; and as Ted's corrugated but wonderfully expressive face beamed at the compliment, I saw that a tongue to him was quite unnecessary. The night was very dark, and as the fitful fire-flashes lit up the surrounding gloom and cast fantastic shadows of the squatting men on the sands behind them, the scene was indeed weird. Towards the end of the meal Dead-broke Peter began a conversation, at first very general in character, and which I easily sustained without interrupting my study of the men around; but before I realised that Peter was a man with a past, I found myself floundering in the subject of astronomy hopelessly beyond my depths.

"Yes," I said, endeavouring to collect my senses, "it is wonderful how the science has advanced, but I cannot understand how you have made the heavens a clock."

"Oh, that is a simple matter," he replied. "Canopus sets behind Warrego plains at half-past nine at present; take that fact for your unit, and then the positions of the Cross will indicate plainly, even to minutes, the divisions of the night. But look at that poor snake crawling out of the hollow stump beside you; that means a cyclonic disturbance is approaching----"

"Great Scot! That's a black snake. Look out, boys!" I cried, springing to my feet. Ted, who had been drinking in every word spoken, quietly reached over, and catching the wriggling creature by the tail, skilfully swung it round his shoulder and brought its head forcibly against the log. The snake must have been killed instantly: but its long body quivered convulsively for a moment, and then with a sudden jerk shot backwards and coiled tightly round Ted's arm. To my surprise, none of his comrades troubled even to look at Ted during this performance: all, with the exception of Peter and himself, were absorbing the words of my very Scotch companion, who was relating with powerful dramatic effect some peculiar experiences of his in other parts of the world. But evidently Ted did not expect any attention, for without uttering a sound he arose, shook his enc.u.mbrance into the fire, and sat down again, with a look on his face that plainly said to us, "Go on! What have you stopped for?"

Peter politely directed my gaze to a nine-inch centipede that was prospecting across my boots, and then launched into a discourse on theological matters, which in time led into the supernatural, and finally narrowed down to a discussion on the mysterious rites of the aborigines' Bora.

"Little Bob, that tall man sitting next your companion, has had much experience among the natives of the north," Peter said, "and if you could only get him to talk he could tell some marvellous tales."

I looked over to the other side of the fire, and saw that Little Bob was the individual who had asked the extent of my mineral knowledge. "I have heard some tall stories of their corroborrees, Ghingis, and Bunyips," I answered; "but no white man has ever seen anything that could not be easily explained."

"Think not? Perhaps you are right, but my experience leads me to think differently. There is a Bunyip's pool seventeen miles from here--in fact, we get our water from it; but there is not a man in this camp who would go near it at night for--well for anything. And as for the corroborrees, there are men here who have actually gone through a series of them, and if you stay with us, or travel northwards, you will probably see some for yourself."

Peter's words interested me greatly, so, careful not to interrupt his flow of eloquence, I soon became as silent as the gentleman on my left, and was rewarded by hearing a most wonderful account of the dreaded Bunyip--that strange mysterious creature, half fish and half fiend, the very sight of which, it is said, means death to the unfortunate beholder. I had often heard of this "dweller in the waters" from half-caste aborigines in New South Wales, and knew that it was supposed to live in the subterranean pools which abound throughout the Australian interior; but I never imagined that white men could be so firmly convinced of its existence as were my present companions.

"It's in the Brumbie's water-hole, you can bet your life," said a strangely deformed man, who had joined our group when the name was mentioned.

"How do you know? Have you seen it?" I inquired.

"No, an' doesn't want to; but Jack Ford did."

"And where is he?"

"Ask Sam Wilkins. He's the only glory prospector here."

"What has he to do with it?"

"Lor'! stranger, if he doesn't know where Jack went, no one here does.

Jack was as fine a mate as iver I met; but whether he staked off a claim up aloft, or pegged out in the other place, I'm darned if I knows.

He saw the Bunyip one full moon, an' croaked the next day."

I now noticed that all the men had gathered round our little group, and before I could further question the speaker, Long Tom broke in. "Is ye in a hurry to git up to the Gulf country?" he said.

"Not particularly," I answered.

"Yer mate tells us you is a great mineralogist?"

"Oh, no,--not great; but I know a little of the science."

"Does ye know what that is?" Tom opened a sack as he spoke and took out a greenish ma.s.s of something.

"That is copper sulphide. Where did you get it?"

"Mate, if it's any good, there's hundreds and thousands o' tons o' it lyin' on top not mor'n fifty mile from here. But what is this?"

"Why, that is native silver; and that conglomeration in Ted's hand is an ironstone formation carrying gold----"

"Say, mate," interrupted Little Bob, "does ye know what this is?" He held in the palm of his hand a mixture resembling tea in appearance, but which after tasting I knew could not be that substance, "Ah! ye is bested, mate, an' I is glad," continued Bob. "I knows ye is honest now, an' don't skite when ye doesn't know."

"Thank you; but what is it?"

"Pidcherie, stranger. Money can't buy it. It comes from the Mullagine swamps; an' gold nor lead wouldn't make a black fellow part with it.

Swallow that, an' you can dance in the fire an' not feel nothin'; cut yourself in little bits an' you'll think it fun. Only the n.i.g.g.e.rs knows what it is, an' no white men barrin' us back boys has iver got any----"

"Time for that again, Little Bob," cried Long Tom, "The question just now is, Will the stranger jine us? Yous can git two shares an' we does all the work," he added, turning to me.

"But, Mr.--that is--Peter here knows more than I do. He----"

"Him!" snorted Tom. "Mate, he's the most onreasonable man in camp. When he starts talking we can't stop him; an' when he is stopped, darn me if we can start him." I turned to see how my late entertainer took these words, but he was lying back on the sand--asleep. Finally, after much quaint reasoning, the men persuaded us to try our luck with them, at least for a time. "Yous can leave us when you like, if it doesn't pay,"

was Tom's summing up; but as he had just told me of a sand-patch in which tucker could be made by dry-panning, and of a "darned curious country across the Cooper" which was on fire with opal lying on the surface, I thought that the adventure was well worth any risk in that direction. We were still talking when the Southern Cross dipped behind the Grey Ranges; but before we stretched ourselves on the sand to rest it was decided that I and three others should set out in the morning to inspect the opal formations beyond the Cooper, and pending our report as to its value, the others would keep up the funds by kangaroo-shooting and dry-blowing for gold.