Ere he reached the busier part of the town, Jim made the disconcerting discovery that he was a marked man, an object of public contumely.  He had heard calls of derision at various points along the road, and was convinced now that for some reason or another he was exciting the laughter and badinage of the men.  This was a painful shock to Done’s happiness.  The situation recalled Chisley, and something of the old Ishmael stirred within him.  He set his teeth and hurried on.  ‘Pea-souper!’ was the epithet most in favour amongst his tormentors.  Why ‘Pea-souper!’ Jim could not understand.  He could see no aptness in its application to him, and yet it was certainly a term of mockery.  ‘Pea-souper!’ The taunt had an ignominious flavour.  It hurt because it recalled so much of what he had travelled halfway round the world to escape.

He plunged into Elizabeth Street as if seeking cover.  Here the crowd was thick, and one man might pass unheeded.  Elizabeth Street was the busiest thoroughfare of Melbourne—­a miserable, unformed street, the buildings of which were perched on either side of a gully.  Pedestrians who were not sober ran serious risks of falling from the footpaths into the roadway below, a rather serious fall in places.  Plunged is the right word; the road was churned into a dust-pit, on the footpath the dust lay ankle-deep, and people on foot had the appearance of wading through shallow water.  Occasional gusts of the hot north wind seemed to lift the Street like a blanket, and shake its yellow, insinuating dust in the faces of the people.

Here Done found the characteristic lassitude of the unemployed digger and the surging life of a town suddenly thronged with the adventurous men of the earth blended in a strange medley.  Men were lounging everywhere, talking and smoking, or merely sunk in a state of abstraction.  The talk was all of digging.  The miners were exchanging news, rumour and opinions, and lying about their past takings, or the fabulous patches they had just missed—­lying patiently and pertinaciously.  Many faces were marked and discoloured from recent debauches.  Lowly inebriates slept peacefully in the dust, one with his head affectionately pillowed on a dog that snarled and snapped at anyone coming within three feet of its master.

There was little variety in the dress worn.  Even the man who had not been two miles from Melbourne affected the manner of the digger, and donned his uniform.  Cabbage-tree hats or billycocks were on every head, and for the rest a gray or blue jumper tucked into Clay-stained trousers and Wellington boots satisfied the majority.  A few swells and ‘flash’ diggers exhibited a lively fancy in puggaries and silk sashes and velvet corduroys and natty patent-leather leggings, but anything more pretentious was received with unmistakable manifestations of popular disfavour.  A large bullock-team hauling a waggon load of bales blundered slowly along the road, the weary cattle