The situation was serious enough in all conscience, but the great majority of the miners refused to see it in that light.  They had endured much; they felt that it was necessary to assert their rights as men, but the consciousness of their wrongs was borne down in a measure by the light-heartedness that follows great good fortune.  Under the influence of a digger-drive or the stimulus of an impassioned speech they could feel keenly; but the sun shone upon them, the virgin gold glowed in their hands, the riot of devil-me-care existence, unchecked by social restraints, called them, and bitterness could not live in their hearts.  They danced, and sang, and roared, and were glad, who two or three hours earlier might have offered their lives freely to avenge a slight or to mark their sense of a gross injustice.

Jim and his friends were served with a rough dinner at one of the hotels.  The waiter, an old Frenchman, told them that bands sent out by the insurgent leader were taking levies on all hands.

‘Some gather at Eureka.  Ze fight mus’ be soon,’ he said; ’but ze crowd—­ah, zey laugh, zey drink, zey dance wis ze fiddle, zey will not believe!  Et ces a great pity, but zey haff not ze—­what, ah?—­ze experience.’

‘Are many coming in from the other fields?’ asked Jim.

The Frenchman shook his head.  ’Et ees expect zey will come; but the men say always, “Oh, et will go over!” Ze soldier say not so:  they are ver’ bitter.  My friend, the blow come soon; I go to the army of the republic this to-night.’

‘The men are rolling up all right,’ said a digger at another table.  ’They’re rallying them at Creswick again, and on the other fields.  We’ll have an army of thousands in a week.’

‘A week!’ cried the waiter.  ’My soul! in two day more et will all be up wiss ze republic, suppose zey are not here!’

‘That Frenchman’s an all-fired skite,’ said the digger disgustedly.  ’The swaddies don’t like the job:  they won’t strike.  We’ll have the making of the fight, and we’ll call time when it suits us.’

‘All the same,’ commented Mike later, ’the Frenchman’s got the safest grip o’ things, it seems to me.’

In the streets the watchword of the most serious of the diggers was ’Roll up!’ and the friends heard it passing from lip to lip.  They did not lack company on their way to Eureka, but Done experienced a keen disappointment in the absence of deep and genuine emotion amongst the main body of the men.  The popular impression was that there would be no fighting; it was thought that the demonstration Lalor and his men were making would have the effect of bringing the powers to reason, and this opinion was held in spite of past bitter experience of the stupid immobility of the Legislative Council in Melbourne.

The five friends were challenged at the stockade, and on expressing their wish to be enlisted were marched before an officer of the rebel forces and sworn in.  Standing under the blue Australian flag, with its five silver stars, they took Peter Lalor’s oath:  ’We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.’