The Gold Seekers (9 page)

“Then it is to be hoped that Mr. Hargraves is wrong,” she said, and lapsed again into attentive silence, leaving Luke to continue the conversation.

The boy was no more informative; it was clear that he had said all he intended to say concerning his reasons for wishing to make a new life in Australia. Even when pressed as to the wishes of his family, he answered evasively; but when Claus rose to signify that the interview was over, he sensed a sudden return of his would-be passengers’ initial anxiety.

“Are you willing to take us, sir?” the boy blurted out. “We’ll be no trouble to you, I give you my word. And I’ll work, sir—I’m used to hard work.”

Claus held out his hand, aware that Saleh, playing the role of unobtrusive observer, had silently inclined his head. “Yes,” he answered briskly. “I’ll take you on the terms we agreed, Luke. I shall be sending a boat to pick up my other

passengers and the new hands tomorrow afternoon. You can come aboard then, both of you. Provided I have my full complement, I shall aim to leave this port within forty-eight hours.”

He cut short Luke’s thanks, his eyes on the girl’s face, which glowed with sudden radiance, as if she were embarrassed by the intensity of his gaze. She turned away, her cheeks flooding with color.

Saleh escorted them to the deck. Returning, he said softly, “That is a good young woman, master—truly good. But I think she has endured much suffering and remains sorely wounded in her innermost spirit. The boy, however—” He paused, his white brows furrowed. “The boy has not told you the whole truth, and I do not believe he will—at all events, not until he leaves the ship in Sydney. For all that, I think you can trust him.”

“Yes,” Claus agreed. “That was the opinion of them I had formed. And,” he added, with a swift change of tone, “you noticed the girl’s resemblance, did you not?”

“To Alice … yes, of a surety, master. It was striking— the eyes, the manner, the bright-as-gold hair. But the boy is dark. They do not look like brother and sister.” Saleh again paused, for much longer this time, and said finally, “You would do well to remember that she is not Alice.”

“I’m not likely to forget,” Claus assured him. “But I was twelve years old when I first set eyes on Alice. Now I am close to forty, Saleh my friend.”

“And a very rich man,” the old Javanese cautioned.

Claus laughed, brushing the warning aside.

“Let us hope that Luke Murphy is wrong in supposing that the man—what was his name? Hargraves, was it not? Well, that Hargraves will discover gold in New South Wales. I dread the thought of returning to Sydney only to find it filled with fortune hunters.”

“I echo your fears, master,” Saleh said somberly. “Please God we may not!”

The bark Emma dropped anchor in Sydney’s busy cove on January 7, 1851, after a voyage of ninety-two days from San Francisco. All her passengers were Australian—men who had worked in the Californian goldfields with varying success since ‘49.

Edward Hammond Hargraves was responsible for their return, for his talk of a larger and richer source of the gold they were seeking, to be found beyond New South Wales’s Blue Mountains, had finally convinced them—that and the fact that the vigilantes of San Francisco had resorted to lynch law in order to hasten their departure.

Hargraves was thirty-five, a black-bearded giant of a man, standing six feet five in his stockinged feet and turning the scale at nearly three hundred pounds. English by birth, he had come to Sydney almost twenty years earlier, as a cabin boy on board the Wave, a trading vessel commanded by a man named John Lister. At the age of eighteen, tiring of the sea and having survived a severe attack of fever in Batavia, Hargraves had married and settled on the land, initially in the Illawarra district and then at Gosford, on Brisbane Water.

“My means were always limited,” he was wont to tell his friends. “I could never pay a man’s wages, or even feed a convict and clothe him—not with a wife and five young children to support. But by heaven, I know the western foothills, and now I know gold-bearing country when I see it. California taught me that.”

California, he reflected as he stood on the Emma’s deck with the others, watching the crew lower the bower anchor, California had taught him all he had gone there to learn— and much that he could have done without. He had seen

what greed did to a man’s soul, but he had kept his own dream intact, for all the scorn with which some of the Yankee miners had greeted his oft-repeated claim.

“There’s no goddamned gold in that country of yours, Ned,” one of the old forty-niners had scoffed. “And even if there was, that Queen Victoria o’ yours wouldn’t let you dig it!”

But there was, there had to be, Ned Hargraves told himself. Up there at Guyong, twenty miles from Bathurst, where he had gone in search of some strays from his small cattle herd some years before, the country was so similar to that in the Sierra Nevada that they might have been one and the same. He had mined in the Wood’s Creek field, in the Stanislaus Valley, with fair success, and the dream had been born when he had washed his first pan of dust and found a nugget gleaming dully in his palm.

He would go to Guyong, he decided—now, at once, not even waiting to acquaint his wife and family with the fact of his return. Essie would not welcome him if, after his long absence, he went back to her without the fortune he had confidently predicted would be his when he left for California. But if he were to make his dream turn into reality … ah, she would welcome him then, right enough! And so would the Governor; surely anyone who brought proof that New South Wales possessed potential riches to rival, if not to exceed, those of California could count on being substantially rewarded.

As if reading his thoughts, the man beside him, James Esmond—a onetime coach driver known as Happy Jim, who hailed from the newly created state of Victoria—observed with a grin, “You still reckon they’ll appoint you gold commissioner o’ New South Wales, Ned?”

Ned Hargraves ignored the gibe. He said, with dignity, “I intend to visit friends in Guyong—very old friends, who keep the inn there. And I shall set off as soon as we are put ashore.”

It took, however, somewhat longer than he had anticipated. He had first to shake off those who wanted to accompany him, then to arrange for the hire of a horse and a temporary loan, for, as always, his funds were limited. Finally, ten days after stepping ashore from the Emma’s longboat, he was on his way, riding a big gray horse and leading another loaded with camping gear and the pan he had brought back with him from the Stanislaus Valley. A coach plied from Sydney to Bathurst, taking two days on the 150-mile journey over the Blue Mountains, but Hargraves, anxious to avoid attracting undue attention, decided to make his own way.

It was a decision he came to regret, for the country through which he was traveling was experiencing a severe drought. The steep, winding road leading up into the mountains was choked with dust, and the vehicles he encountered —mainly heavily laden ox-drawn wagons, bearing bales of wool destined for Sydney’s growing export trade—came in procession, their yoked lines of plodding bullocks raising a lingering cloud of dust in their wake that seemed never to disperse.

All the creeks were dried up, and his horse, deprived of the means to slake its thirst and wearied by its rider’s weight, began to show signs of sluggishness by the end of the second day. For several weary miles Ned Hargraves was compelled to walk, leading both the packhorse and his mount. His destination, the small township of Guyong, came in sight at last, two miles from Springfield, where—on his first visit to the area, seventeen years earlier—he had stayed with William Tom, a Methodist lay preacher, and his young family.

The inn, now kept by Susan Lister, the widow of his old sea captain, was a small, single-story weatherboard building, ringed by stables and other outbuildings and shaded by a clump of thickly growing eucalyptus trees. Despite its unpretentious appearance, Hargraves was pleasantly surprised when, having left his horses in the care of a shirtsleeved aboriginal boy, he entered to find the place scrupulously clean and pervaded by an appetizing aroma of roasting meat.

The proprietress herself came to greet him and, at first, gave no sign of recognition. She had aged, of course, in the intervening years, but then, he thought wryly, so had he: the Wave’s onetime cabin boy had been a slim waif twenty years ago, and Susan Lister a beautiful young woman, in the prime

of life. Now she was white-haired, though trim and erect, as he remembered her, and—good heavens! The tall, handsome young man who had come from the back premises to stand at his mother’s side must be John—John Hardman Australia Lister—who had been barely three years old when they had last seen each other.

Ned Hargraves introduced himself and held out his hand, beaming from one to the other of them as he watched their expressions change from astonishment to genuine pleasure. Susan Lister embraced him, and young John wrung his hand and shouted to his sister to join them.

“Hey, Susannah, who d’you suppose has turned up? Meet Ned Hargraves, the fellow who used to bounce you on his knee when you were knee-high to a grasshopper!”

The girl, pretty and dark-haired, appeared, evidently from the inn kitchen, for she wore an apron over her neat gingham dress, and her hands and arms were powdered with flour. She shook hands solemnly, not sharing her family’s enthusiasm.

“You’re so big!” she exclaimed. “Surely you can’t be the cabin boy Ma used to tell us about?”

“I am, Susie,” Ned assured her. “The very same. And it does my heart good to see you grown into a fine young woman, indeed it does.”

“You’ll be ready for a meal,” Mrs. Lister said practically. “And the meal will be ready for you in half an hour. Johnny will take you to your room, and the pump’s outside in the yard, so you can rid yourself of the stains of travel. We’ve still plenty of water here in spite of the drought—it comes down from the mountains, praise be.” She eyed the unexpected visitor curiously. “Where have you come from, Ned? Sydney, is it—or Gosford? That’s where I heard you’d gone. To farm, was it not?”

“That’s in the past, ma’am,” Ned corrected. “I’m back from America—from two years in the California goldfields.”

Over the meal he spoke at length of his experiences in the Sierra Nevada, and urged on by Johnny Lister’s eager questions, he finally revealed the purpose of his visit.

“You reckon there’s gold here, Mr. Hargraves—here in New South Wales?”

“I’m sure of it, Johnny. The country closely resembles the gold country in California. There are the same mountains, the same rivers and gullies.” Warming to his theme, Ned Hargraves gave the boy chapter and verse, ending with a lecture on the geological features and the scientific explanations that accounted for the presence of gold in the rocks and riverbeds.

“Was there not a shepherd, a few years ago, who found a nugget near Lewes Ponds?” he asked.

Johnny nodded excitedly. “Aye, that there was. Old Yorky Macgregor claimed to have found a nugget, just lying in the creek near his hut. He took it to Sydney, but no one believed him.”

“Or maybe they didn’t want to, and it was deliberately suppressed.” Ned shrugged. “There were tales and rumors before I left for San Francisco. I heard that a reverend gentleman by the name of Clarke reported finding gold-bearing quartz in the Wollondilly Valley and in a tributary of Cox’s River, near Winburndale.”

“Talking of quartz, sir …“Johnny jumped to his feet and, after crossing to the mantelshelf, picked up some small rock specimens, which he offered for the visitor’s inspection. “Two young fellows were up this way a year or so back— geologists, they said they were. They stayed here, and they gave me these when they left.” He pointed to the veins in one of the specimens, gleaming brightly in the lamplight. “They said these were gold. But how can anyone hope to extract it?”

“There are easier ways of getting gold,” Ned told him. “Ways I learnt in the Californian diggings. The Yankee miners pan for it and use sluices and cradle rockers—oh, don’t worry, the equipment’s simple and don’t cost above a few shillings. And the place to search is in the beds of streams and rivers—that’s where alluvial gold is found, in the form of dust and nuggets.” He subjected Johnny Lister to an unblinking scrutiny. “I aim to find gold here, Johnny, and I’ve brought my equipment with me. But it’s a good while since I was here. Do you know this area well enough to act as my guide?” Johnny did not hesitate. “I’ve roamed around these parts

since I was a kid, Mr. Hargraves. I know every creek and gully for miles—Ma’ll tell you. I can take you anywhere you’ve a mind to go.”

“He can, Ned,” the widow Lister confirmed, a trifle sourly. “Always out there, Johnny is. Usually when I need him, he’s off with his pal Willie Tom. But he can go with you if you want him, for old times’ sake. Only you’ll probably have to take Willie, too.”

“Can we, sir?” the boy pleaded. “Can we take Willie with us?”

Ned sighed. The last thing he wanted was word of his intentions to get out, but … “All right, lad,” he agreed. “But you’ll both have to keep still tongues in your heads if we find gold. We don’t want all the men who’ve come back from California rushing up here, do we? I’m aiming to strike a bargain with the government, understand?”

“You can trust me, sir,” Johnny said earnestly. “I’ll cut along and warn Willie now. I take it you want to start first thing tomorrow?”

“That’s right. It won’t take me long to prove my case, one way or the other.” Ned stifled a weary yawn. “I think, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Lister, I’ll turn in now. We—” He smiled, struck by an odd thought, all his confidence returning. “We could make history tomorrow, you know, ma’am. And I’ve the strangest feeling that we’re going to do just that!”

The feeling persisted the following morning, when he and the two young men left to begin their search. Young William Tom—son of the lay preacher who had been Ned’s host on his first visit to the area—struck the only discordant note, A thickset, swarthy youth, he seemed to derive considerable pleasure from expressing his disbelief in the prospect of finding anything of value in the creeks and gullies to which they were bound, least of all gold. Examining the flat metal pan attached to Ned Hargraves’s saddle, he said scornfully, “Why, this is a bloomin’ fryin’ pan, ain’t it? How d’you reckon you’ll make our fortunes with that, Mr. Hargraves? Be best if you let me cook up damper in it when we stop to eat!”