“What, don’t you know?”

“No! nor I don’t care, so long as it is in your service I go.”

“Still it is a long journey.”

“Oh, is it?  Your health then, and my happy return.”

“You are not afraid of the sea or the wind?”

“I am afraid of nothing but your wrath, and—­and—­the law.  The sea be hanged, and the wind be blowed!  When I see your talent and energy, and hold your checkbook in my hand and your instructions in my pocket, I feel to play at football with the world.  When shall I start?”

“To-morrow morning.”

“To-night, if you like.  Where am I to go to?”

“To AUSTRALIA!”

That single word suspended the glass going to Crawley’s lips, and the chuckle coming from them.  A dead silence on both sides followed it.  And now two colorless faces looked into one another’s eyes across the table.

CHAPTER LVI.

THREE days the gold-finders worked alone upon the pre-Adamite river’s bed.  At evening on the third day they looked up and saw a figure perched watching them with a pipe in its mouth.  It disappeared in silence.  Next day there were men on their knees beside them, digging, scraping, washing and worshipping gold.  Soon they were the center of a group—­soon after of a humming mob.  As if the birds had really carried the secret north, south, east and west, men swarmed and buzzed and settled like locusts on the gold-bearing tract.  They came in panting, gleaming, dusty and travel-stained and flung off their fatigue at sight, and, running up, dived into the gullies and plied spade and pickax with clinched teeth and throbbing hearts.  They seamed the face of Nature for miles; turned the streams to get at their beds; pounded and crushed the solid rock to squeeze out the subtle stain of gold it held in its veins; hacked through the crops as through any other idle impediment; pecked and hewed and fought and wrestled with Nature for the treasure that lay so near yet in so tight a grip.

We take off our clothes to sleep and put them on to play at work, but these put on their clothes to sleep in, and tore them off at peep of day, and labor was red-hot till night came and cooled it; and in this fight lives fell as quickly as in actual war, and by the same enemy—­Disease.  Small wonder, when hundreds and hundreds wrought the livelong day one half in icy water, the other half dripping with sweat.

Men rotted like sheep, and died at the feet of that Gold whom they stormed here in his fortress; and some alas met a worse fate.  For that befell which the world has seen in every age and land where gold has come to light upon a soil; men wrestling fiercely with Nature jostled each other; cupidity inflamed hate to madness, and human blood flowed like water over that yellow dirt.  And now from this one burning spot gold fever struck inward to the heart of the land; burned its veins and maddened its brain.  The workman sold his tools, bought a spade and a pickax, and fled to the gold; the lawyer flung down his parchment and off to the gold; the penny-a-liner his brass pen and off to a greater wonder than he had ever fabricated; the schoolmaster to whom little boys were puzzling out