Hear, hear!’ shouted half a dozen voices.

’It strikes me that the inferior race that can skin Levi Long to his pelt in a gamble is providin’ no fit associates for guileless an’ confidin’ children o’ the Occident, like yourselves, f’r instance.’

Long’s professional pride was hurt; the idea of being beaten at his own business by a pack of unlettered Asiatics made him sad.  ’It kinder destroys a man’s faith in himself he said.  As a result of his eloquence the miners knotted windlass-ropes together, and stole down upon the Chinese camp in the small and early hours of morning.  There were twenty men on each cable, and one lot kept to the right of the camp, the other to the left, and, going noiselessly, they dragged the ropes through the frail huts and kennels in which the Mongols were sleeping, mowing them down as if they had been houses of cards, and towing an occasional screaming Chow out of the ruins, rolled in his filthy bedding.  The whole camp of huddled shanties was razed to the ground in about two minutes, and the diggers drew off, without having given any clue to the cause of the disaster, leaving the heathen raging in the darkness.

At about six o’clock Jim Done and his mates were awakened and brought pell-mell from their bunks by the sound of a great commotion coming from the direction of the Chinese camp.  They saw the Chinamen gathered near the ruins of their dwellings, evidently in a state of tremendous excitement.  A number of them were jumping about, gesticulating wildly, and uttering shrill cries, while half a dozen or so, armed with stout sticks, were energetically beating an object that lay upon the ground.

‘By thunder! it’s a man they’re murdering!’ cried Jim.

Mike and the Peetrees laughed aloud.  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Burton.  ‘They’re only bastin’ their Joss!’

‘What’s that?’

‘They’re beatin’ their god.  They keep a few of them little pottery or wooden gods round, an’ if things don’t go quite as well as they think they ought to go, they up an’ take it out o’ the god just then on the job, by knocking splinters off him.’

‘They argue that Joss ain’t been attendin’ to his part o’ the contract,’ said Harry Peetree, ‘an’ they belt him for neglectin’ his business.  Saw a lot o’ them blow up a big Joss at Bendigo ‘cause their dirt was pannin’ out badly.’

By this time the Europeans were all up and out, enjoying the spectacle, and Simpson’s Ranges echoed their laughter, it being assumed that the Celestials’ gods were being punished for the sins of those diggers who had wrecked the camp.  Jim and Con joined a few curious men sauntering down to take a nearer view of the ceremony.

‘Wha’ for?’ Con asked one grave Chow who was looking on.

‘Welly much bad Joss!’ answered the Celestial composedly.  ’Let um earth shake-shake, all sem this, knockum poo’ Chinaman’s house down.’