‘My word!’ cried Phil ecstatically.  ‘We owe it to that lot.’

‘Couldn’t we start now?’ said Peterson, who had been sitting with wide eyes and open mouth, and was consumed with impatience.

‘Oh, no,’ said Dick; ‘we gotter prepare our arms an’ ammunition an’ things.  An’ Saturdee night’s best, ’cause the Cow Flats what have been to Yarraman buyin’ things come up to the Drovers’ Arms on the coach, an’ walk home from there.’

It was agreed that Peterson should stay with Dick in the mine that night.  The boys had no longer any fear of the black hole discovered at the end of the main drive.  An exploring party had made its way through the opening and into the workings beyond, and had found itself in a drive communicating with the Red Hand shaft.  Dick, who once in an emergency had served as tool-boy in the Silver Stream for a fortnight, knew that at a lower level there was another and a much longer Red Hand drive by which access to the Silver Stream No. 1 workings was possible; but he kept this knowledge to himself.

Shortly after midnight Dick and Billy ventured to return to Waddy, with the idea of securing Billy’s goat, Hector, a sturdy black brute much admired as the most inveterate ‘rusher’ in the country.  With the boys of Waddy a goat that butted or ‘rushed’ was highly prized as an animal of spirit.  Peterson caught his goat, and then Dick, with unnecessary wariness and great waste of stratagem, ‘stuck up’ his own home, and secured a parcel of food carefully left for him on the table near the unlatched window by a thoughtful mother.

On Saturday the other boys turned up at the appointed time.  There were rules commanding the utmost caution in entering the mine by daylight.  Every care had to be taken to satisfy the shareholders that no stranger was in sight, and the last boy was compelled to keep a vigilant look-out while the others were descending, and then to make his way to the opening by a roundabout route, exercising a vigilance that would have puzzled an army of black-trackers.

Dick, who before leaving home had rifled his small savings bank, had provided Jacker Mack with money for supplies, and Jacker brought with him a pound of candles, some black material for masks, and half a dozen packets of Chinese crackers.  The Chinese crackers represented cartridges for the pistols of Red Hand’s gang.  Dick had decided to be known as Red Hand.  The pistols were made by fashioning a piece of soft wood in the shape of a stock, and securing to this a scrap of hollow bone for a barrel.  Into the barrel a cracker was thrust, the wick was ignited at a piece of smouldering ’punk ’—­which could be carried in the pocket in a tin matchbox—­and it only needed the exercise of a little imagination to satisfy oneself that the resulting explosion spread death and desolation in the ranks of the enemy.