He came to a large wooden hall with a row of lamps blazing along its front and a foreign sign over the door.  From within floated strains of music and the beating of many feet.  Jim entered.  The place was crowded with hairy diggers—­mostly successful, he learned presently.  The atmosphere was heavy with smoke.  A wild dance was going on, and several sets held the floor.  Half a dozen of the most fortunate of the men had female partners, the others danced ‘bucks,’ man and man, and the pounding of their heavy boots and the yells of laughter provoked by their clumsy movements quite drowned the music of the feeble orchestra, crowded away in the far corner of the room.  Along one end ran an unplaned wooden counter, where two or three barmen were kept busy serving gin, brandy, and rum to the parched dancers.  When the dance was ended there was a rush for the bar, and Jim found now that dancing did not go by favour, the hands of the fair being bestowed upon the highest bidders.  One tall, lack-haired, laughing girl, with the figure and face of a Bacchante, sprang upon a chair, shaking aloft a yellow scarf, and was auctioned for the next dance amidst a storm of bidding and a hurricane of merriment.  She was borne down the room in the arms of the triumphant digger, who had paid thirty ‘weights’ for his bouncing partner—­six pounds for ten minutes’ dancing, and the proud purchaser couldn’t dance a step!

Jim watched the women curiously; they were a new type to him—­young, virile, red-lipped, flushed with wine, shameless in the face of the crowd, their faces kindled with laughter.  They led the men in their wild revel—­pagans absolute.  One in particular attracted Done; she was tall, dark-eyed, and black-haired.  This, in conjunction with the bold combination of red and black in her costume, gave him the belief that she was Spanish.  There was about her some suggestion of character and strength that pleased him.  She romped like a child; her merriment was clean and unforced.  He saw nothing of the corruption that Vice is supposed to stamp upon the faces of her votaries.  These women, despite the feeble kerosene lights, the tobacco-smoke, and the bare, ugly walls, might have been participants in the revels of Dionysus.

Several times, passing him in the dance, the eyes of the Spaniard flashed into his own, and she smiled.  When the dance was ended she confronted him.

‘Sure, you’re goin’ to dance wid me, ain’t ye now?’ she said in the most mellifluous brogue.

Done shook his head and laughed with diffidence.

‘No, thanks,’ he said.  ‘I’m not a rich digger.  Only a poor new chum,’ he added, hoping to carry conviction.

‘Straight from the Ould Country, is it?’ asked the girl eagerly.  ’Have ye the word of ould Ireland, an’ how does she stand?  The dance is yours for the shmallest token.’

‘I’m sorry I don’t know Ireland,’ said Jim.

‘Then I’ll give you the dance fer natural love an’ affection.’