There was really no stockade in the military sense.  The enclosure was little more than a drill-ground fenced with rough slabs.  These slabs, a few logs, and two or three drays, represented all that had been attempted in the nature of a barricade, and could not have been expected by the least experienced of the insurgent leaders to offer any serious impediment to a charge of regulars.  Two or three small companies of men were being drilled within the limited space, and Done and Burton were attached to one of these and the three Peetrees to another.  At this point Jim was again sadly disillusioned.  He was given no weapon but a pike—­a short, not too sharp, blade of iron secured to a pole about five feet long.  Pikes were the only arms the men of his company possessed, and a blacksmith, who had his smithy within the stockade, was hard at work manufacturing the primitive weapons.  One small company was armed with rifles, and another with pistols, but ammunition was so scarce that these could be of no great value in the event of an early attack.

Done estimated that there were about two hundred and fifty men within the stockade.  He heard that there had been many more, but that the volunteers had returned to their camps on the surrounding fields to make further preparations, believing that there was no likelihood of an early encounter.  There was much confusion on Eureka, and Jim could not see how the men were to benefit from the simple drill in which they were being instructed with great assiduity.  The site chosen was an old mining ground, and the field was broken with holes and piles of dirt, rendering proper formation impossible; and although the leaders were serious and earnest men, the bulk of the rank and file preserved a spirit of careless levity, and were like big boys playing a game.

The rebel leader addressed the men during the afternoon, and Jim listened to him with deep interest.  Peter Lalor was a young Irishman, not yet thirty-five, not far short of six feet in height, and splendidly proportioned; keen-eyed, too, with regular features and a resolute, convincing air.  There was a note of domination in the man’s character, and he was certainly the strongest personality in the republican movement.  He pleaded for zeal in the sacred cause for which they might presently be called upon to shed their hearts’ blood, and although his language was as simple as the diggers’ speech, there was a warmth in his manner that stirred the men, and a whole-hearted conviction pointed every phrase; but even while his rebels were gathered under arms and drilling behind a palisade within a short distance of the regular troops sent to suppress the expected out break on Ballarat, Lalor did not expect the authorities to take the initiative.