John Caldigate. Anthony Trollope
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at length on the wooden veranda before the house, they found the hero of the potatoes—the man who had taken them down to Crinkett's house. He seemed to be fast asleep, but as they came up on the boards, he turned himself on his elbow, and looked at them. 'Well, mates,' he said, 'what do you think of Tom Crinkett now you've seen him?'
'He doesn't seem to approve of Ahalala,' said Dick.
'In course he don't. When a new rush is opened like that, and takes away half the hands a man has about him, and raises the wages of them who remain, in course he don't like it. You see the difference. The Old Stick-in-the-Mud is an established kind of thing.'
'It's a paying concern, I suppose,' said Caldigate.
'It has paid;—not a doubt about it. Whether it's played out or not, I'm not so sure. But Ahalala is a working-man's diggings, not a master's, such as Crinkett is now. Of course Crinkett has a down on Ahalala.'
'Your friend Jack Brien didn't seem to think much of the place,' said Dick.
'Poor Jack is one of them who never has a stroke of luck. He's a sort of chum who, when he has a bottle of pickles, somebody else is sure to eat 'em. Ahalala isn't so bad. It's one of them chancy places, of course. You may and you mayn't, as I was a-saying before. When the great rush was on, I did uncommon well at Ahalala. I never was the man I was then.'
'What became of it?' asked Caldigate with a smile.
'Mother Henniker can tell you that, or any other publican round the country. It never will stick to me. I don't know why, but it never will. I've had my luck, too. Oh, laws! I might have had my house, just as grand as Polly Hooker this moment, only I never could stick to it like Tom Crinkett. I've drank cham—paign out of buckets;—I have.'
'I'd rather have a pot of beer out of the pewter,' said Caldigate.
'Very like. One doesn't drink cham—paign because it's better nor anything else. A nobbler of brandy's worth ten of it. It's the glory of out-facing the swells at their own game. There was a chap over in the other colony shod his horse with gold—and he had to go shepherding afterwards for thirty pounds a-year and his grub. But it's something for him to have ridden a horse with gold shoes. You've never seen a bucketful of cham—paign in the old country?'
When both Dick and Caldigate had owned that they had never encountered luxury so superabundant, and had discussed the matter in various shapes—asking whether the bucket had been emptied, and other questions of the same nature—Caldigate inquired of his friend whether he knew Mick Maggott?
'Mick Maggott!' said the man, jumping up to his feet. 'Who wants Mick Maggott?' Then Caldigate explained the recommendation which Mr. Crinkett had made. 'Well;—I'm darned;—Mick Maggott? I'm Mick Maggott, myself.'
Before the evening was over an arrangement had been made between the parties, and had even been written on paper and signed by all the three. Mick on the morrow was to proceed to Ahalala with his new comrades, and was to remain with them for a month, assisting them in all their views; and for this he was to receive ten shillings a-day. But, in the event of his getting drunk, he was to be liable to dismissal at once. Mick pleaded hard for one bout of drinking during the month;—but when Dick explained that one bout might last for the entire time, he acknowledged that the objection was reasonable and assented to the terms proposed.
Chapter XI.
Ahalala
It was all settled that night, and some necessary purchases made. Ahalala was twenty-three miles from Nobble, and a coach had been established through the bush for the benefit of miners going to the diggings;—but Mick was of opinion that miners ought to walk, with their swag on their backs, when the distance was not more than forty miles. 'You look so foolish getting out of one of them rattletrap coaches,' he said, 'and everybody axing whether you're going to pick for yourself or buy a share in a claim. I'm all for walking—if it ain't beneath you.' They declared themselves quite ready to walk, and under Mick's guidance they went out and bought two large red blankets and two pannikins. Mick declared that if they went without swags on their backs and pannikins attached to their swags, they would be regarded with evil eyes by all who saw them. There were some words about the portmanteaus. Mick proposed that they should be left for the entire month in the charge of Mrs. Henniker, and, when this was pronounced impossible, he was for a while disposed to be off the bargain. Caldigate declared that, with all his ambition to be a miner, he must have a change of shirts. Then Mick pointed to the swag. Couldn't he put another shirt into the swag? It was at last settled that one portmanteau should be sent by the coach, and one left in the charge of Mrs. Henniker. 'Them sort of traps ain't never any good, in my mind,' said Mick. 'It's unmanly, having all them togs. I like a wash as well as any man—trousers, jersey, drawers, and all. I'm always at 'em when I get a place for a rinse by the side of a creek. But when my things are so gone that they won't hang on comfortable any longer, I chucks 'em away and buys more. Two jerseys is good, and two drawers is good, because of wet. Boots is awkward, and I allays does with one pair. Some have two, and ties 'em on with the pannikin. But it ain't ship-shape. Them's my ideas, and I've been at it these nine years. You'll come to the same.'
The three started the next morning at six, duly invested with their swags. Before they went they found Mrs. Henniker up, with hot tea, boiled beef, and damper. 'Just one drop at starting—for the good of the house,' said Mick, apologetically. Whereupon the whisky was brought, and Mick insisted on shouting for it out of his own pocket.
They had hardly gone a mile out of Nobble before Maggott started a little difficulty—merely for the purpose of solving it with a master's hand. 'There ain't to be no misters among us, you know.'
'Certainly not,' said Caldigate.
'My name's Mick. This chap's name's Dick. I didn't exactly catch your'n. I suppose you've been kursened.'
'Yes;—they christened me John.'
'Ain't it never been Jack with you?'
'I don't think it ever was.'
'John! It do sound lackadaisical. What I call womanish. But perhaps it's for the better. We have such a lot of Jacks. There's dirty Jack, and Jack the nigger, and Jack Misery—that's poor Jack Brien;—and a lot more. Perhaps you wouldn't like not another name of that sort.'
'Well; no—unless it's necessary.'
'There ain't another John about the place, as I know. I never knew a John down a mine—never. We'll try it, anyhow.'
And so that was settled. As it happened, though Dick Shand had always been Dick to his friend, Caldigate had never, as yet, been either John or Jack to Dick Shand. There are men who fall into the way of being called by their Christian names, and others who never hear them except from their own family. But before the day was out, Caldigate had become John to both his companions. 'It don't sound as it ought to do;—not yet,' said Mick, after he had tried it about a dozen times in five minutes.
Before the day was over it was clear that Mick Maggott had assumed the mastery. When three men start on an enterprise together, one man must be 'boss.' Let the republic be as few as it may one man must be president. And as Mick knew what he was about, he assumed the situation easily. The fact that he was to receive wages from the others had no bearing on the subject at all. Before they got to Ahalala, Caldigate had begun to appreciate all this, and to understand in part what they would have to do during this month, and how they would have to live. It was proposed that they should at once fix on a spot—'peg out a claim,' on some unoccupied piece of ground, buy for themselves a small tent—of which they were assured that they would find many for sale—and then begin to sink a hole. When they entered Ahalala, Caldigate was surprised to find that Mick was the most tired of the three.