“What is it?” asked Robinson.

“The merchant refuses my gold.”

“I refuse no man’s gold,” objected Levi coolly, “but this stuff is not gold.”

“Not gold-dust,” cried a miner; and they all looked with wonder at the rejected merchandise.

Mr. Levi took the dust and poured it out from one hand to the other; he separated the particles and named them by some mighty instinct.

“Brass—­or-molu—­gilt platinum to give it weight; this is from Birmingham, not from Australia, nor nature.”

“Such as it is it cost me thirty pounds,” cried Jem.  “Keep it.  I shall find him.  My spade shall never go into the earth again till I’m quits with this one.”

“That is right,” roared the men, “bring him to us, and the captain shall sit in judgment again;” and the men’s countenances were gloomy, for this was a new roguery and struck at the very root of gold digging.

“I’ll put it down, Mr. Levi,” said Robinson, after the others had gone to their work; “here is a new dodge, Brummagem planted on us so far from home.  I will pull it down with a tenpenny cord but I’ll end it.”

Crash! went ten thousand cradles; the mine had breakfasted.  I wish I could give the European reader an idea of the magnitude of this sound whose cause was so humble.  I must draw on nature for a comparison.

Did you ever stand upon a rocky shore at evening when a great storm has suddenly gone down, leaving the waves about as high as they were while it raged?  Then there is no roaring wind to dull the clamor of the tremendous sea as it lashes the long re-bellowing shore.  Such was the sound of ten thousand cradles; yet the sound of each one was insignificant.  Hence an observation and a reflection—­the latter I dedicate to the lovers of antiquity—­that multiplying sound, magnifies it in a way science has not yet accounted for; and that, though men are all dwarfs, Napoleon included, man is a giant.

The works of man are so prodigious they contradict all we see of any individual’s powers; and even so when you had seen and heard one man rock one cradle, it was all the harder to believe that a few thousand of them could rival thunder, avalanches, and the angry sea lashing the long reechoing shore at night.  These miserable wooden cradles lost their real character when combined in one mighty human effort; it seemed as if giant labor had stretched forth an arm huge as an arm of the sea and rocked one enormous engine, whose sides where these great primeval rocks, and its mouth a thundering sea.

Crash! from meal to meal!

The more was Robinson surprised when, full an hour before dinner-time, this mighty noise all of a sudden became feebler and feebler, and presently human cries of a strange character made their way to his ear through the wooden thunder.

“What on earth is up now?” thought he—­“an earthquake?”

Presently he saw at about half a mile off a vast crowd of miners making toward him in tremendous excitement.  They came on, swelled every moment by fresh faces, and cries of vengeance and excitement were now heard, which the wild and savage aspect of the men rendered truly terrible.  At last he saw and comprehended all at a glance.