GUINEA GOLD 
 
GUINEA GOLD 
 
 BY 
 
 BEATRICE GRIMSHAW 
 
 AUTHOR OF "WHEN THE RED GODS CALL" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
<? 
 
 / / 
 
 £$5 
 
 t 
 
 Copyright, 1912, by 
 
 BEATRICE GRIMSHAW 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
GUINEA GOLD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Three men sat upon the coral shore of Samarai, 
 and talked about a fourth. 
 
 Their six boots — four heavy and nailed, two light 
 brown leather the worse for wear — projected over 
 the glaring, flour-white sand, and tinkled among the 
 broken branches and fans of coral and the derelict 
 shells from the reef. Pink and pearl and cream, 
 thick as carved white marble, and as thin as East- 
 ern porcelain, were these shells: strangers admired 
 them, and went a-hunting for them on steamer 
 days. But, when they had their hands full, they 
 generally threw the fruit of their toil back into the 
 sea. The shells looked well, nevertheless, they were 
 dead, and you could see it when you handled them. 
 Dead shells are those that have had the life and 
 value burned out of them by tropic suns on far-off 
 savage shores. They are of no use to anyone; you 
 can only leave them on the beach, to rot in the de- 
 vouring sun, and end their lives where they were 
 cast away. There are many kinds of dead shells to 
 be found on the coral beaches, south of Cancer and 
 north of Capricorn, and not all of them own the sea 
 as their home. 
 
2 ; GUINEA GOLD 
 
 The man with the brown boots was not pleasant- 
 looking: he had only one advantage, that of youth. 
 He could not have been more than twenty-five years 
 of age; perhaps he was less. His face was fat, flat, 
 and full, with a disagreeably small mouth, and pale 
 blue eyes, somewhat too large for a man. The two 
 other men were browned and toughened with sun: 
 his skin was as white as a toadstool's, and his hands 
 were soft and dimpled. The man looked damp and 
 soft altogether; one felt certain that he would 
 squash as flat as a spider if you trod upon him. 
 
 The others were of a different stamp from him 
 and from one another. The person with the long, 
 narrow face, and yellow walrus-like moustache, is 
 Rupert Dence : you will hear more of him by and by. 
 He wears his clothes well, though they consist, to- 
 day, of nothing but a woollen singlet, a battered 
 drill coat, and a pair of khaki trousers. His walrus 
 moustache, his manner of looking and speaking, and 
 a certain suggestion of an invisible single eyeglass 
 somewhere, conveyed one knows not exactly how, 
 create a -dim mirage of London in the nineties about 
 his neighbourhood. One feels that his clock of life, 
 like the too-familiar clock of the old street song, 
 u stopped short, never to go again," in London, in 
 eighteen-ninety something, for some reason that 
 Rupert Dence might give you, if you asked for it — 
 and might not. Again, if you asked him, he might 
 tell you that his name is not Dence at all, but some- 
 thing of the picture-poster kind: the sort of name 
 
GUINEA GOLD 3 
 
 commonly chosen by Violets and Maries of the 
 Palace or the Gaiety, to look well upon the bills. 
 But he would not go further, no matter how drunk 
 he might be. 
 
 Joe Anderson (christened John, but, for obvious 
 reasons, always known as Joe) has an odd resem- 
 blance to Rupert Dence. You could not possibly 
 tell where the resemblance lies, for Anderson has 
 not a point or a feature in common with the other, 
 being huge, square, stiff, and strong, with a massive 
 brown beard and a face that looks as if you could 
 turn the edge of an axe on its surface. But the re- 
 semblance is there. More, you can tell by their very 
 way of sitting and speaking that they like one an- 
 other, and have something in common. You can 
 also tell that the third man, Clay, is not one of them, 
 and that they are not going to ask him to join 
 them when they detach themselves from the cool 
 shade of the casuarina tree under which they are 
 sitting, and trickle away down the beach into the 
 bar of Figg's Federal Hotel. But they are inter- 
 ested in what he is saying. 
 
 He had been talking with a certain slow volubility, 
 for three or four minutes on end, when Dence 
 broke in. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mr. Clay, but I don't quite 
 understand. What makes you think that he carries 
 a paper actually under his clothes? " 
 
 " That's my affair," replied Clay, with a small 
 giggle. " I don't think it either — I know it. And 
 
4 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 if it hasn't something to do with the Kikiramu gold- 
 field, I'll eat it" 
 
 The man Joe Anderson let himself slide down 
 the warm sand until his head rested against the root 
 of the casuarina tree. Then he put his hands under 
 his neck and yawned deliberately. 
 
 " Cut it: you've been reading too many penny 
 stories," he said. " This isn't a pirate's island in 
 the Caribbean Sea, in the eighteenth century: it's 
 Papua in the twentieth. Besides, what would a 
 raw new chum know about the Kikiramu, anyhow? " 
 
 " I'm not telling you what he ought to know, I'm 
 telling you what he does," persisted Clay. " Ander- 
 son, you might pay more attention. I'm putting you 
 and Dence on to a good thing, and you'll scarcely 
 listen." 
 
 " You must pardon us, Mr. Clay," put in Rupert 
 Dence, with an accent on the Mr. that apparently 
 passed unnoticed. " So far all we've heard is that a 
 certain fellow called Scott, who got off the Matunga 
 yesterday, carries a paper next his heart. No doubt 
 that concerns Mr. Scott's best girl pretty nearly, but 
 it hardly seems to ' hit us where we live.' If that's 
 all " 
 
 " It's not," interrupted Clay, who rarely let any- 
 one finish a sentence. " This Scott was asking ques- 
 tions about the Kikiramu goldfield an hour or two 
 after he arrived. And he said he would like to meet 
 some of the miners. As to the paper, what I'm tell- 
 ing you is gospel truth. You may trust me to see 
 
GUINEA GOLD 5 
 
 farther into a stone wall than most people. I think 
 I may fairly claim for myself that I always was 
 sharper than the next man. I believe I'm speaking 
 the absolute truth when I tell you that this Scott 
 has some special information about the Kikiramu, 
 and I think it's up to you to help me to find out. 
 I'm not a miner; you are. Where I fail you can 
 come in. I always know my own limitations, I can 
 assure you." 
 
 " Oh, blow your limitations! " interjected Ander- 
 son, getting up. " Dence, come on, and leave this 
 lunatic to rave alone." 
 
 " Stop a bit," said Dence, fixing Clay with his 
 invisible eyeglass, and caressing his long moustache, 
 till he looked like an early Du Maurier caricature. 
 " You didn't say how you saw this precious paper, 
 or what makes you think it is anything about 
 gold." 
 
 " Well," declared Clay with some bravado, 
 " when they put you two in a room in a place like 
 Figg's, and a fellow flings about in his sleep in the 
 other bed, you can't help seeing the outline of a 
 flat packet. And I came in — I can assure you it was 
 accidental — this morning after I had had breakfast, 
 and found Scott with a paper spread out on the 
 dressing-table — a map, I'm willing to swear — I saw 
 it over " 
 
 " Shut up ! " growled Dence. " That's the fel- 
 low, isn't i'? " 
 
 A man was coming towards the three on the 
 
6 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 beach. He had evidently been walking round the 
 island. Samarai, the island town of New Guinea, 
 is said by a good many far-travelled people to be 
 the most beautiful place in the world. The stranger 
 looked as if he thought so: he was tramping along 
 the white coral path slowly, between the high 
 hedges of carmine- and daffodil-leaved croton trees, 
 staring with all his eyes. Celadon green was the 
 shoal water of the strait in front; peacock-breast 
 blue the wider stretch beyond. Islands like bouquets 
 of palm set in holders of pearl sprang out of the 
 glass-stilf water. A long way off, on the other side, 
 dark mountains draped in forest rose straight from 
 the sea, forbidding, secret, grim. 
 
 11 That's . . . Papua, " said the unromantic- 
 looking Anderson, following the stranger's eyes. 
 " Something beautiful — and something black be- 
 hind it." 
 
 u Yes, certainly, that's Papua," agreed the Eng- 
 lishman, Dence. " Smiles at you like a cannibal 
 queen in love with you, and then biffs you over the 
 head with a tomahawk first chance she gets." 
 
 The steamer passenger, Scott, had strolled past 
 by this time, still looking at the wonderful pano- 
 rama of the straits. Clay, getting impatient, dug 
 Anderson with one finger in the ribs. 
 
 " That's him," he said. " Well, are you going 
 to help me to find out what good thing he's got hold 
 of when you go up to the Kikiramu again, or are 
 you not? I'm stuck in this beastly store of King's, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 7 
 
 and can't afford to leave it, or I'd have kept it to 
 myself. I always " 
 
 " Damn you and your always," said Anderson, 
 quite politely. " Dence, take me off for a walk 
 round the island, before I forget my naturally re- 
 fined manners, and chuck — that — into the sea." 
 
 " You haven't listened," expostulated Clay. 
 " You won't " 
 
 " We've listened enough to know that you were 
 as near pick-pocketing as circumstances would let 
 you. We don't want any more. You've got a rat, 
 anyhow. A man can't bring a map of the country 
 up but you think you've hit another Treasure Island. 
 Go and put your head in a bag, and when you've 
 got your head in, put yourself after it, get some 
 good friend to tie up the mouth, and chuck yourself 
 off the jetty when there's a big shark in the 
 neighbourhood. You'd be doing the public a 
 service." 
 
 The two walked away and left Clay on the shore 
 regarding his shabby boots with a vicious eye. 
 Australians wear better boots, class for class, than 
 English, and this fragment of scum, skimmed from 
 Sydney gutters, always felt the injustice of Nature 
 with especial keenness when he looked at his poorly 
 shod feet. They were narrow, arched feet that, 
 like his small hands, spoke of submerged " family." 
 New South Wales is full of such men: prodigal 
 sons packed off so freely to the ends of the earth, in 
 the last generation or two, left descendants, acknowl- 
 
8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 edged and unacknowledged, that scarce adorn the 
 country of their birth. 
 
 In the meantime, George Scott, electrical engi- 
 neer of Belfast, finished his walk round the island, 
 quite unconscious of the " storm in a billy-can " that 
 had arisen about his steps, and returned to his 
 hotel, which, as Clay had explained, was Figg's. 
 
 There are four hotels in Samarai, — the Universal, 
 Bunn's, the Old New Guinea, and Figg's Federal. 
 The three first are not precisely replicas of the Cecil 
 or the Langham, but Figg's is worse. It is, so the 
 white men of Papua say, the worst hotel in the 
 world. And they ought to know, because the in- 
 habitants of Papua know more about odd corners 
 of the earth than the people of any other tropical 
 colony you could mention. 
 
 Figg and Mrs. Figg are obliging and kindly peo- 
 ple, and they do their best to make their guests 
 happy. The native boys are told to wash out the 
 rooms every rainy season, and they do. If anyone 
 objects to use the sheets that the last lodger had, he 
 can generally get fresh ones. You are allowed to 
 choose the company in your bedroom as far as is 
 conveniently possible, and if your room-mates get 
 intoxicated every night, and keep you awake, no 
 one minds your camping, trunks and bed and all, on 
 the verandah. It is related of Mrs. Figg that her 
 desire to make the most of a rare real fowl caused 
 her, once on a time, to salvage the creature's limbs 
 from the plates whereon they had been stripped, and 
 
GUINEA GOLD 9 
 
 serve them up again in a stew, and afterwards (via 
 the plates again) in various soups, until certain 
 boarders of the baser sort complained. But she un- 
 doubtedly meant well. And when the guests at her 
 table complained that the Kiwai waiter was suffer- 
 ing from native skin disease unpleasant to the eye, 
 Mrs. Figg at once gave orders that he was to remain 
 henceforward entirely in the kitchen and help the 
 cook. More, when a steamer passenger new to 
 Samarai objected to the serving of jams undecanted 
 from the tin, did not Mrs. Figg denude her own 
 dressing-table of every pomade pot and hairpin case 
 it contained, and adorn the board with these valu- 
 able personal possessions? That some of the cus- 
 tomers took exception to the appearance of hair- 
 pins, buttons, and stray teeth of combs, in the 
 ultimate conclusion of pots of marmalade and rasp- 
 berry, only serves to illustrate the ingratitude of 
 human nature in the rough. 
 
 George Scott, who did not know much of any 
 country save his own, and had the North-of-Ire- 
 lander's hatred of muddle and uncleanliness, did not 
 take Figg's in the humorous style which was the only 
 way to accept it. He had come straight out from 
 London to Papua, with only a call or two for coal- 
 ing, in a cargo boat that had been bought by a 
 trading company for working the New Guinea 
 coasts. Missing, in this manner, the magnificent 
 procession of all the wonders of the kingdoms of 
 the earth, enjoyed by the traveller who takes the 
 
io GUINEA GOLD 
 
 recognised Red Sea route, and stops at all the ports, 
 Scott came upon Papua as a somewhat unseasoned 
 traveller. The scenery was certainly beyond any- 
 thing he had ever imagined, but he did not think, on 
 the whole, it made up for the eccentricities of the 
 Federal. However, there was no room in any other 
 hotel at the time, since Samarai was just then en- 
 joying a wave of prosperity caused by the develop- 
 ment of a new goldfield: in fact, he saw he was 
 lucky to have secured even the half room he had got. 
 
 It is time to say a word about George Scott. If 
 you have ever visited the North of Ireland, you 
 have met many men a little like him, but none quite 
 the same — one does not pick George Scotts off every 
 family tree. He had the tall stature of the Ulster- 
 man; his eyes were Northern grey, his features well 
 marked and almost hard, save for the mouth, which 
 was slightly retreating and soft in outline. You 
 knew, looking at that delicate mouth forced into 
 firmness, at the too-fine and silky brown hair, at the 
 slight stoop of the broad shoulders, that the pro- 
 fession of George Scott, and the strength of George 
 Scott, and the existence of George Scott in general, 
 had cost a big struggle, somewhere and somewhen. 
 
 They had. A lad of delicate upbringing and 
 strength none too great, flung at seventeen out of a 
 luxurious life into the poverty that lurks always 
 underneath the splendour of mercantile Belfast, 
 George Scott had gone through the hell that only 
 " workmen apprentices " of his kind and class can 
 
GUINEA GOLD n 
 
 know. In the bitter winter days he had risen at five 
 o'clock to get to his workshop by six: had gone 
 short of food and of fire, while his half-grown 
 frame was struggling desperately to keep up with the 
 tale of crushing labour laid upon it: had trudged 
 black-faced and overall-clad through streets that 
 used to see him in hunting kit, riding his fine Galway 
 mare to the meet of the county staghounds. He had 
 worn his way, he never knew how, afoot through 
 illnesses that would have sent most men to bed for 
 weeks: had been always tired for years, always short 
 of tobacco and tram money, generally out at el- 
 bows in clothes. He had had more than his share 
 of the inevitable cruel accidents of a foundry, and 
 had not been able to lay up when they occurred. 
 At the last he had worked through: the race with 
 poverty and sickness was won. George Scott was 
 a man, and a very strong one: instead of a box of 
 bones in the Upper Falls burying-ground. The 
 workman apprentice life of Belfast means one or 
 other to most gently nurtured lads. 
 
 He had his trade now, and had been making a 
 living at it for some years. The life he had led had 
 not coarsened him: not one of the oaths that had 
 rained about him like fiery hail from a volcano for 
 four long years clung to his own lips now that he 
 was free. He was temperate and well-living: his 
 manners were the manners of the class in which he 
 had been born and educated. The only notable 
 trace of those cruel early years left upon the man 
 
12 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 of twenty-eight was his smile. That was the hard, 
 bright smile of one who has made himself laugh at 
 hardship for so long that he cannot drop the habit. 
 
 Scott smiled a great deal. The man to whom life 
 has come easy, glooms, or presents a mask of wax to 
 the world. It costs heart's blood to learn smiling of 
 that particular kind. 
 
 Men liked Scott, and he liked most people, to a 
 certain point. You had to know him a good while 
 before you fully understood that his pleasant man- 
 ner and his frank talk masked a reserve deep and 
 cold as the grey-green strait of Stranraer. There 
 was a woman who had the right to touch the bot- 
 tom of that unplumbed sea, but neither she, nor any- 
 one else, had ever done so. Scott was one of the 
 men who seldom let themselves go. 
 
 What, then, was a Belfast engineer doing in this 
 galley — what had brought Scott to Samarai? His 
 room-mate had some notion: no one else on the 
 island knew. Mr. Clay had not told quite the truth 
 to Dence and Anderson, out under the casuarina 
 tree. He had omitted one very important fact, 
 which was, that he had not seen the paper at all, but 
 had felt it — with his hand inside Scott's pyjamas, 
 when the newcomer was asleep. Clay had argued 
 that men who had lived in the North of Ireland 
 all their lives don't wake at a light touch, in the 
 heart of the five o'clock slumber. Men who had 
 lived in places like Papua do. 
 
 The Sydney man had not dared to pull the packet 
 
GUINEA GOLD 13 
 
 out, but with his thin small fingers he had felt it, 
 until he was satisfied that it was a single folded 
 paper in a sheet of oiled silk — not notes or gold. 
 He had guessed at the existence immediately Scott 
 began to undress, by a certain awkwardness the lat- 
 ter betrayed in taking off his clothes. As to the 
 map, well, Scott was undoubtedly tracing something 
 out with a pencil on it, a route to something or 
 somewhere. And he had asked Clay if the boat for 
 the Kikiramu field was leaving soon. Clay's em- 
 ployers were the agents for the little coasting 
 steamer, so the question was natural enough. Also, 
 it was natural that Scott should ask if there were any 
 miners in Samarai. But, taking all these circum- 
 stances together, Clay thought he smelt something 
 interesting. His diplomacy had broken short off 
 at the crucial point, as it generally did. Still, that 
 left him none the less sure that he was right. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 " I tell you," said Anderson, setting down his 
 glass with some emphasis, " that if he was eaten, 
 it was entirely his own fault. The country's as safe 
 as Sydney Botanical Gardens — safer. Pass the 
 pickles." 
 
 " They're done," said the man next him, a grey- 
 haired, grey-bearded old fellow in a black flannel 
 shirt. " Have chutney. As to his being eaten, it 
 wasn't even proved. None of the bones was split to 
 get the marrow out. As likely as not he was only 
 knocked on the head." 
 
 u Exactly," agreed Anderson. " Making a fuss 
 and a row and a scandal out of nothing, as usual. 
 Those Sydney newspapers ought to know a little 
 better this time. I've always said, and I say again, 
 that when a man does get eaten, it's due to foolery 
 of one kind or another. It never ought to happen, 
 and never does, to anyone who has any sense. But 
 to hear people down south talk, you'd think a man 
 couldn't go out for a week prospecting without get- 
 ting spitted on a stick and roasted alive." 
 
 " There wasn't above six diggers in the whole of 
 New Guinea that that ever happened to — at least, 
 that it was proved to have happened to," com- 
 
 14 
 
GUINEA GOLD 15 
 
 merited the old man, in a voice somewhat muffled 
 with tinned-meat pie. 
 
 " Why, Bodkin," put in Rupert Dence from the 
 other side of the table, " you know you had a pretty 
 narrow escape yourself." 
 
 The old man swallowed his mouthful hastily, put 
 down his knife and fork, and half rose to his 
 feet. 
 
 " I had not," he said, in a voice quivering with 
 anger. " Nothing of the kind. It's a lie — who says 
 so — who dared to tell you anything of the kind? 
 You've been talking to tourists, you have — blank 
 tourists. A-aah, New Guinea's ruined, rotten 
 ruined, since they let them sort come nosing about 
 with their cameras and their picture-books and their 
 double-blank nonsense, talking thrash ! " 
 
 A strong South of Ireland accent was beginning 
 to work out with the warmth of his anger, as a 
 worn inscription shows up on heated metal. 
 
 " It was not thrue, I tell ye. It was nothing at all. 
 Them Orokivas, years and years ago, I will not deny 
 it, got me away by force with one of their war 
 parties, and kep' me in the village for a couple or 
 three days; but what was that? Sure, amn't I tell- 
 ing you I got away all right, and, moreover, I 
 recruited nineteen boys out of that same village not 
 a year after." 
 
 " Come, now, Terry, they broke all your arms and 
 legs, and left you in a stream to make the meat 
 tender — you know they did," teased Anderson. 
 
o 
 
 16 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Bodkin, who had taken his seat again, jumped up 
 once more, and dashed his fork on the cloth. 
 
 " May the divil choke ye, Joe Anderson," he said, 
 " but you know well they never did. I won't deny 
 it's their custom; but what was it they done on me? 
 broke an arm accidental, when the scrap was goin' 
 on, nothing more, if I was to die to-morrow. 
 Aren't ye ashamed of yourself, to be givin' up your 
 impudence to a man who's done with the fighting, 
 and can't drive your ugly alligator eyes out of your 
 secon'-hand doormat head?" 
 
 There was a laugh at this, for Anderson's eyes 
 were as undeniably green as his hair was rudely 
 luxuriant. 
 
 " Let him alone, Joe," advised Dence, who had 
 taken advantage of the dispute to possess himself 
 of the one ripe granadilla on the table, and was 
 rapidly and quietly getting through it unobserved. 
 " You'll get the worst of it, Bodkin; keep your hair 
 on, and finish your dinner. It's too hot to argue." 
 
 It certainly was. Scott, seated at the next table, 
 coatless, like everyone else, and with his sleeves 
 rolled up to the elbow, paused now and then in his 
 dinner to mop his wet forehead, and to envy the 
 native boys who were serving the meal. A cos- 
 tume consisting only of a scarlet cotton kilt, some 
 bead necklaces, and a row of white flowers stuck 
 like pins into the depths of the huge mass of brown 
 woolly hair, seemed sensible and desirable on this 
 breathless night. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 17 
 
 The room was fairly large, and had as many 
 doors arid windows as a scene in a French farce: 
 they were all wide open, and through their spaces 
 one could see dark palms and pawpaws standing 
 up like black paper cuttings on a purple velvet back- 
 ground. There were stars visible among the spaces 
 of the boughs, but they looked hot and still. A vio- 
 lent scent from the invisible pawpaw flowers, and 
 from frangipanis a little farther off, mingled with 
 the odours of cookery and the faint exhalations of 
 the bar. Along the coral sand of the main street 
 outside bare feet scuffled by continually: the square 
 of light thrown out by the open door framed strange, 
 wild pictures, passing from dark to dark like the 
 figures in a cinematograph show — big, brown, naked 
 men, with immense woolly heads full of feathers and 
 flowers, dog-tooth necklaces, and gay red and yellow 
 leaves thrust into their fibre-woven armlets and 
 anklets: house-boys taking the evening air, proudly 
 costumed in a waistcoat and a cuff : women from the 
 mainland villages swinging their full short crinolines 
 of ribbony leaves as they walked, and playing with 
 their neck-chains of scarlet shell-money: a youth 
 from the wild outer islands, who had just drawn 
 up his carved and shell-enamelled canoe on the 
 beach, and was peeping with astounded eyes at 
 the wonderful white men and their wonderful s, 
 food. . . . 
 
 11 By Jove, that fellow's wearing a human jaw 
 round his neck," broke out Scott, dropping the 
 
1 8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 piece of sweet potato on his fork, and staring at 
 the door. 
 
 The man from the outer islands, seeing himself 
 looked at, melted away like a dissolving view into 
 the darkness. 
 
 Anderson, at the next table, answered the ex- 
 clamation, apparently out of civility. 
 
 " Yes; that'll be a Trobriand boy, I should think. 
 They often wear jaws." 
 
 " Why?" asked Scott, turning his chair a little, 
 so as to face the other man. 
 
 " Oh, I think as a kind of memorial of the dead. 
 Sort of locket. Not a piece of an enemy, as a rule. 
 The Trobrianders aren't cannibals." 
 
 " There's a good deal of it still elsewhere, judg- 
 ing by what you were saying just now," commented 
 Scott. 
 
 " There's a lot of nonsense talked about that," 
 said the other, and returned to his dinner. Scott 
 became conscious that all the men at the table were 
 quietly taking him in. None of them stared rudely, 
 but keen covert glances were flying like arrows. On 
 his part he wondered greatly who or what these men 
 might be — these beings who were so various in dress, 
 manner, and (apparently) in social position, yet 
 who bore each one a likeness to the other, and who 
 were all alike in their callous way of regarding 
 death and danger. The young engineer had seen 
 pluck enough in his own profession, but this was 
 something of another kind. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 19 
 
 After dinner the men drifted off into the bar, and 
 Scott, led by curiosity, followed them. He wanted 
 to study them, and he wanted, by and by, to ask 
 them if there were any gold-miners in Samarai. 
 Business must not be forgotten in the midst of all 
 these strange new sights and interests. 
 
 It was, if possible, hotter in the bar. Twenty or 
 thirty men were crowded about the counter, leaning 
 on it and talking. Most of them were of the same 
 type as those who had occupied the table next Scott's 
 at dinner. He recognised it at once, but he could 
 not put a name to it. It began to worry him. What 
 was it that these men had in common? What gave 
 them all alike that unnameable look in the eyes — 
 a look that spoke of distances, of solitudes, of 
 ghastly things seen long ago and forgotten — that 
 deliberate way of moving, that inexpressive, out- 
 ward-looking countenance? Now that he looked at 
 the men more closely, he was struck also by their 
 strength. They were none of them young: most 
 were middle-aged, and some were actually old — but 
 they were bundles of hard, sinewy muscle, every one, 
 and the slight stoop that most of them had detracted 
 little from a certain independence of carriage, al- 
 most approaching a swagger, that the engineer had 
 never seen in any man who could not hold his own 
 with the best. 
 
 Observation, however, seemed likely to stop short 
 where it had begun. There was something reserved 
 and unapproachable in the manner of the men that 
 
20 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 held back the stranger from any attempt at rushing 
 their acquaintance. Big Anderson, towering over 
 even the sturdy Belfast man by a good two inches 
 of height, seemed the only possible bridge of ap- 
 proach. Scott felt this, without knowing why: the 
 fact was, that Anderson, knowing more than the 
 rest, was waiting to be approached. 
 
 A word or two about the heat of the night made 
 a beginning: the inevitable invitation to drink carried 
 it on. Over a glass of whiskey that was good enough 
 to explain the carelessness of Figg's in other mat- 
 ters — why worry about clean sheets and decent table 
 service if you had the one thing that really mat- 
 tered? — Scott found a chance of putting his question. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said, " but I wish you 
 could tell me — are there any miners in Samarai? I 
 want to meet some of them." 
 
 At this every man in the bar turned round and 
 looked at him, glass in hand. 
 
 " We're all miners here," said Anderson briefly. 
 
 Scott said nothing, but he felt himself gaping. 
 He had rarely been more surprised. Some of the 
 men began to laugh. 
 
 " Bret Harte again! " remarked Anderson, half 
 shutting his sharp green eyes, with a wearied ex- 
 pression. " You're disappointed, aren't you? If we 
 had known >^u were coming we'd have had all the 
 stage properties to please you — put bullet-holes 
 through your shirt-cuffs, and gambled with nuggets 
 on the pudding-plates, anpl shot a man on the veran- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 21 
 
 dah after dinner. Not even a red shirt or a pair of 
 knee-boots! Too bad, isn't it? We do disappoint 
 the tourists so ! " 
 
 " But I'm not a tourist," said Scott. " I'm going 
 to try my luck on the goldfields myself." 
 
 " Do you know anything about the country? " 
 asked Anderson. 
 
 " No," said Scott. 
 
 " Anything about mining? " 
 
 " No." The second " no " came easier. Ander- 
 son's green eyes seemed boring into his face. They 
 made him uncomfortable, and yet — he was telling 
 the truth. Was he not? He assured himself that 
 he was, though perhaps not the whole truth. 
 
 " Have you enough money to take a team of 
 boys with you? " asked the big miner. 
 
 " I think so," answered the Northerner cau- 
 tiously. " Is that necessary? " 
 
 M Yes. The white man can't do his own work in 
 this country." 
 
 Scott experienced a shock of astonishment. That 
 such men as these could not do any work, any- 
 where, seemed scarcely credible. He inwardly re- 
 solved to see for himself before making up his mind. 
 But he said nothing. It became incumbent on him 
 to offer Anderson a drink, and he did so, leaving 
 his own as nearly untouched as he could. These men 
 seemed to drink strong spirit like water, but Scott's 
 nervous system was not of the type that requires 
 such fiery spurs. 
 
22 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Under his breath he said to himself — 
 
 " Miners! Well, I'm Wowed!" 
 
 He really had expected something of the kind 
 suggested by the mocking giant at his side. And if 
 you think that a hard-headed young Irish engineer 
 out on an adventurous trip is not likely to cherish 
 story-book fancies, ask yourself if the dog chained 
 up in the yard all week is likely, or not likely, to 
 run hard and far when Sunday morning loosens his 
 collar for him. 
 
 The whiskey, which seemed to have no power to 
 affect anyone's head as yet, had at all events loosened 
 tongues, and a river of bush and mining talk began 
 to flow. Scott listened, evading as well as he could 
 the too-hospitable invitations that began to shower 
 down on him, but finding himself nevertheless con- 
 strained to drink more than he cared for. The bar- 
 room grew unnaturally bright: small shiny waves 
 seemed floating in the air. The voices roared like 
 surf on a pebbly shore. 
 
 " . . . What did he die of? Beri-beri, they 
 reckoned — unlucky thing; those meat-ants seem to 
 have got at him before he was found, and . . . That 
 time Whitman was up at Carpet-Snake: he never 
 did know how to manage his boys, and they ran away 
 from him, and it was just then that he lit on payable 
 stuff — tried to work it himself with an extra dose of 
 dynamite, but he didn't give the fuse time, and if 
 the Government survey party hadn't chanced across, 
 he'd never have got down to Samarai with one hand 
 
GUINEA GOLD 23 
 
 and a foot and a half: been crawling along for days, 
 when they found him. . . . Oh no, Coppinger's boys 
 never ran away, — they liked him all right, — the 
 trouble was that they got scrapping when he went 
 down to the store for a few days, and as they were 
 all man-eaters, and came from different villages, they 
 went ' kavakava ' when he wasn't there to keep them 
 in order, and so, of course, when he got back again, 
 he found they'd mostly eaten each other up, and he 
 had to start out and recruit some more. . . . Ku- 
 kukukus? Never attacked me, not once: anyone 
 who says so is talking through his hat. Came round 
 the camp sometimes and threw spears at us : noth- 
 ing else. . . . Well, I tell you, when that boy came 
 up out of the creek he was spangled all over with 
 gold like a blooming Christmas cake: dropping off 
 him it was — so that's how they found it out. . . . " 
 When do you reckon to start? " asked a voice 
 out of the mist. 
 
 Scott felt clear enough in his head to answer: 
 " As soon as I can." 
 
 " Did you ever hear of Punch's * Advice to Those 
 About to Marry ' ? " went on the voice — Ander- 
 son's apparently. 
 
 "Yes; it was ' Don't.'" 
 
 11 Exactly," said the voice, which certainly had an 
 acid flavour now, unnoticeable before — but perhaps 
 it was not real : perhaps . . . 
 
 (" I had better get out of this," said Scott to 
 himself.) 
 
24 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 The voice went on. 
 
 " You've time to quit yet. Think again, I'd ad- 
 vise you." 
 
 " Why? " asked Scott, with a perfectly clear enun- 
 ciation. (He was glad of that.) 
 
 Anderson's mood suddenly changed. He gave a 
 loud, hard laugh, and moved off. 
 
 " Oh, why, indeed? Why should I trouble, any- 
 how? " he said. And if the bright waves in the air 
 had been a little less dazzling, Scott could have 
 found brain to think that the bitterness of the tone 
 was more unmistakable than ever — could even have 
 guessed that it spoke of loss. . . . What had An- 
 derson lost in that wilderness to which he himself 
 was hurrying? Lost? He was thinking nonsense: 
 his head must really be going. 
 
 The soft, cultivated tone of Rupert Dence rose 
 beside him. 
 
 " Anderson's right," it said. " But you won't 
 mind him: no one does mind that sort of thing. I 
 shall be drunk to-night, but if you will look me up 
 to-morrow, I shall be delighted to give you any 
 pointers that I can." 
 
 " Thank you very much," replied Scott, wondering 
 whether he, or the other, was a little mad. 
 
 There was no more of Dence then, and no more 
 of Anderson, but many flannel-shirted men, with soft 
 hats jammed tight down on their heads, talked for 
 years about recruiting, and ground-sluices, and 
 flumes, and something that they called u the wash." 
 
GUINEA GOLD 25 
 
 (" It does not mean a wash of clothes," explained 
 Scott to himself, with immense seriousness — " they 
 are talking of the working of the mines.") It 
 seemed possible to get away now, and he began edg- 
 ing to the door, congratulating himself on having 
 kept his head. 
 
 " All right after all," he said. And then—" No, 
 by Jove, I'm not — if I've begun seeing things that 
 aren't here." He looked behind the bar in some 
 dismay. The stout man who had been serving 
 drinks was gone, Scott knew not when or how, and in 
 his place stood a girl. There was nothing remark- 
 able about this, but it was remarkable, or some- 
 thing more, that she should be refined and cultivated- 
 looking, an unmistakable gentlewoman — in the 
 roughest bar of the roughest town in New Guinea 
 — and as to her looks . . . 
 
 " It has gone to my head," decided Scott in some 
 dismay. " No girl is as beautiful as that — even if 
 she were there, and I'm not even sure she is. . . . 
 I've got to get out of this." 
 
 Without any apparent interval of stairs he found 
 himself in his own room. He felt aggrieved with 
 himself, as he got to bed, though there seemed no 
 bodily effect from his excess. But his head was 
 undeniably affected. 
 
 " It's been an impossible sort of day, but she's the 
 crowning impossibility," he thought, as his mosquito 
 curtain dropped. " They are not as pretty. They 
 certainly are not." He fell asleep. 
 
26 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Some hours later, Mr. Clay, emboldened by previ- 
 ous immunity, and making a second try after the 
 packet, found himself knocked through the door into 
 the verandah by something like the kick of a horse. 
 
 " You change your room, my son," advised a voice 
 from under a wrecked mosquito curtain. " I'll have 
 to take your net, and I don't feel inclined for com- 
 pany, anyway." 
 
 Clay picked himself up, and went off without even 
 an oath. He went, indeed, as silently as a native 
 dog. Those who know the native dog will tell you 
 that when it does this, you had better keep a guard 
 over your heels for a while. 
 
 Scott turned over and went to sleep again. 
 
 " The brute woke me when I was dreaming about 
 her! " he said, as his eyes closed. 
 
 But next morning she had so nearly passed away 
 from his mind that he did not even look in at the 
 door of the bar as he went downstairs. 
 
 It showed the young Irishman's sense and sobriety 
 alike that he did not worry about his small lapse of 
 the previous night, but merely decided to turn total 
 abstainer for the term of his stay in Papua. Ab- 
 stinence cost him nothing, as he knew by experience, 
 and there was clearly no middle way among men 
 who could drink as the miners did. Moreover, he 
 had not obtained any of the information he really 
 wanted, and he had been rather nearer talking about 
 his own affairs than he liked. 
 
 Half an hour after breakfast he had found a 
 
GUINEA GOLD 27 
 
 comparatively shady and very quiet spot up on the 
 top of the island — a little glade in the heart of a 
 cocoanut-grove, surrounded by low-swinging, glitter- 
 ing fronds that framed, and veiled, and hid, and 
 showed again the jewelled wonders of the straits 
 that lay below. Up here not a roof of the little 
 tin-built town could be seen, not even a turn of the 
 coral path. One might have been alone on Robinson 
 Crusoe's island, with the wreck going to pieces on 
 the beach below. 
 
 Here Scott sat down on the grass, after a careful 
 search for scorpions or centipedes, pulled a paper 
 out of his clothes, and spread it on his knees. It was 
 a map of Papua, such as may be bought in Melbourne 
 for a shilling or two. Some of the rivers were 
 marked with pencil lines, and here and there there 
 was a note of interrogation. He studied the map 
 for a while, then took out a letter, much like other 
 letters, save for the circumstance of its being care- 
 fully mounted on a linen backing, and looked at that 
 too. Finally, he put the letter into its case, and 
 slipped the case inside his shirt, where it hung by a 
 cord. 
 
 " A partner it must be," he said, and fell 
 a-whistling softly. 
 
 It cannot be denied that Nature sometimes plays 
 theatrical tricks. Quite after the best traditions of 
 the stage was the incident that followed. From 
 the sloping side of the hill, some little way off, there 
 appeared first the head and then the entire figure 
 
28 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 of Mr. Rupert Dence, in a very clean white suit, 
 with a calm and sober expression on his face, and a 
 cigarette held daintily between two fingers. It was 
 he who had organised the dog-fight in the dining- 
 room which had disturbed Scott's early slumbers on 
 the night before, and certain smashed glass doors 
 also were connected with Mr. Dence's ideas of ex- 
 pressing the joy of living at two o'clock in the 
 morning. But no one would have thought it, to 
 see him advancing down-stage through that very 
 theatrical-looking glade of palms, with the air of 
 a somewhat damaged jeune premier on the lookout 
 for the leading lady, smiling, smart, and sociable. 
 
 Scott, in his workman days, had been the best fore- 
 man of a gang that ever the M'Aherin ironworks 
 had known. His judgment of men, if not instan- 
 taneous, was quick and safe. 
 
 " This man will do," he thought. " Away from 
 hotels he'll keep right. He doesn't care a hang what 
 I think of him, and he has pluck — they all have, for 
 the matter of that. It has to be someone: I might 
 go farther and fare worse than this." 
 
 The two men met, and Dence made no pretence 
 of having come up by accident. 
 
 " Good-morning! I followed you," he said. " I 
 meant to put you up to something about that room- 
 mate of yours." 
 
 " Did you see him to-day? " asked Scott, getting 
 up. 
 
 " Only in the distance : he seemed inclined to 
 
GUINEA GOLD 29 
 
 skulk — looked as if there was something the mat- 
 ter with his face." 
 
 " Exactly. You see you needn't trouble." 
 Dence laughed. " I see I needn't," he said. 
 A momentary silence fell. Dence smoked deli- 
 cately, enjoying his cigarette, which was of a brand 
 not common in the South Seas. He knew by now 
 that Scott had something to say to him. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 It was very quiet on the top of the island. Below, 
 on the windward side, the reef roared faintly, far 
 away. You could just hear the rattle of the Ma- 
 tunga 's winches, down in the invisible harbour, as 
 she unloaded her cargo. But it seemed almost silent 
 up here, alone with the wind and the palms. 
 
 " I've got to have a partner," said Scott, lifting 
 his eyes to Dence's face and fixing him with a steady 
 look. 
 
 The man with a hidden history and a false name 
 met that look fairly. It waked a pinching pain 
 somewhere or other in his battered personality: there 
 had been a time, though he could scarce believe it 
 now, when he too was twenty-something; steady and 
 straight and diamond-clear down to the bottom of 
 his young soul. . . . Those waters were muddied 
 now. Still, he could answer the unspoken question 
 honestly. 
 
 The eyes of English blue and the eyes of Northern 
 grey read each other for a pregnant instant. Then 
 Scott stretched out his hand, with an action as 
 deliberate as the signing of a bond. Dence took it, 
 and the rough pressure he gave was his promise. 
 
 " I've come here on business," said Scott. 
 
 M T » 
 
GUINEA GOLD 31 
 
 " Stop a bit," said the other, letting himself down 
 on the grass and leaning against a palm-trunk. " I 
 begin to think there was something after all in what 
 that reptile Clay said to Anderson and myself. We 
 didn't pay much attention to him: we only thought 
 he was spyin' about because it was his nature to, and 
 I had an idea you might be carryin' your money on 
 your person — so I meant to give you a hint. But 
 let me tell you what he said." 
 
 Scott, seated on the grass alongside, with his pipe 
 going, listened, and nodded his head once or 
 twice. 
 
 " Not so far out," he said, when the recital was 
 done. " I'm sorry it happened: I did think I was 
 old enough to take care of myself. But I never 
 supposed the little rat would get feeling about when 
 
 I was asleep — one is only on one's guard about 
 money, as a rule, and I have mine in drafts. I don't 
 suppose I need worry, however." 
 
 Dence did not answer immediately. 
 " No — I don't suppose you need," he said by and 
 by. The subject dropped. 
 
 " What I have come here for," said George Scott, 
 
 II is to make money. I feel as if I'd give my life 
 for ten years of a decent income. I've had a bitter 
 hard time of it, and I wasn't brought up to want, 
 worse luck. Engineering's my job — just the com- 
 mon or garden mechanical kind: I've been running 
 a sort of small repairing business in Belfast, and 
 making bread and butter at it, but . . . There's a 
 
32 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 time in a fellow's life when he wants more : — one 
 begins to see all the good things there are in the 
 world, and kick because you haven't your share. 
 And there's where the ' get-rich-quick ' madness 
 comes in. And especially if . . . there's someone 
 else to think of. She ought to have her share — and 
 there's no one but you to get it for her. And that 
 makes you feel worse." 
 
 He picked at the grass under his hands. He had 
 been born with the curse of the nervous tempera- 
 ment, and had trampled it under his feet as St. 
 George trampled the dragon; but microscopic traces 
 still lived. 
 
 " I couldn't think of any way to do it," he said. 
 " Without capital there's nothing in any sort of en- 
 gineering but an endless grind — a fair income, per- 
 haps, when you're forty, but that's too far away. 
 I wouldn't try any wild-cat schemes with the little 
 bit I had. I used to think, and think, but I couldn't 
 see my way out. And Belfast's a town where it's 
 simple hell to be poor. 
 
 " Well, it came by chance — it's like a fairy-tale. 
 I was gathering together what I could in the way of 
 furniture, bit by bit, a chair here, and a set of 
 shelves there — and one day I was hanging out at a 
 pawnbroker's sale, trying to pick up an ornament or 
 so, when they put up a miscellaneous lot — a Chinese 
 vase, a foreign basket or two, some shells, and a 
 New Guinea bamboo pipe, poker-worked by the 
 natives. The lot went very cheap, and as I wanted 
 
GUINEA GOLD 33 
 
 the vase I took it. When I got the things home, I 
 brushed them up, and they didn't look half bad. 
 The pipe " 
 
 " Bau-bau, it's called." 
 
 " Is it? thanks — well, I thought it a very rummy- 
 looking thing, as it hadn't an opening that I could 
 see, and I wanted to find out how it was smoked. 
 I found a little hole in one side that smelt of smoke, 
 so I guessed it was done by sticking the tobacco in 
 that, and letting the smoke fill up the bamboo. I 
 had a fancy then to try it myself, so I cut a bit of 
 plug, and was going to stick it in and light it, when 
 I heard something rattle inside, held it up to the 
 light, and saw something like a little wad of paper. 
 Well, I began to wonder: I didn't think the savages 
 of New Guinea had paper, and I couldn't make out 
 what they wanted putting bits in to spoil their smoke 
 if they had. I went at it with a bit of wire, but I 
 couldn't hook it out — the wad seemed to have been 
 forced in through the hole, and it had spread after- 
 wards. I was getting a bit curious, so I threw a 
 sixpence — heads I break up the pipe, tails I let it 
 alone. And it came to heads. And that's why I'm 
 here to-day." 
 
 The south-east hummed in the palm trees: the 
 rattling of winches down below in the invisible har- 
 bour went on. Dence listened to the tale, and saw, 
 as he listened, many things, in many strange corners 
 of the world, that had nothing at all to do with the 
 saga of George Scott. You, who have roamed the 
 
34 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 world, what does the rattling of those cargo winches 
 say to you? 
 
 " It may be — nothing," went on Scott, " or it may 
 be something very big. Anyhow, I thought it good 
 enough to sell my little repair business and clear out 
 for this country with every penny I had. I've been 
 wild at myself a dozen times for doing it — and yet — 
 a man can't always be prudent. And — the — the 
 girl I'm engaged to — was as — as plucky as old boots 
 about it. I told her, though I didn't tell anyone 
 else, and she just said, l Go, and if you come back 
 a beggar ' " 
 
 Another break. Rupert Dence, who knew him- 
 self born to receive the confidences of other men, by 
 many experiences in many climes, said nothing at all. 
 
 ?'"'.:'. . . I'll get two beggars' sacks, and we'll 
 make bread-puddings of the crusts from the back- 
 doors, and eat them together,' she said." 
 
 Scott shut his mouth on this, and looked very hard 
 at the violet mass of Basilisk Island shouldering up 
 behind tall green Sariba. 
 
 " So I went," he said presently. " It's something 
 about gold, and it seems to be a good thing. But 
 there's one thing quite clear to me from the talk I 
 heard last night, and that is, that I must have a 
 partner. I don't know the first thing about mining. 
 What do you think about joining me? If we agree, 
 I can show you the paper, and we'll discuss shares 
 afterwards." 
 
 " There are one or two things you ought to know 
 
GUINEA GOLD 35 
 
 first/' said Rupert Dence, in the drawling English 
 accent that contrasted so sharply with the crisp, 
 clipped tone of the Ulsterman. " First, I drink. I 
 drink a lot when I'm in Samarai or Port Moresby. 
 I'm not in the least likely to stop, couldn't if I 
 would, probably, and certainly don't mean to try." 
 
 " Do you talk when you drink? " asked Scott. 
 
 Over the tanned face and neck of Rupert Dence, 
 false-named, unclassed, a slow deep red crept up. 
 
 " I did, once in my life," he said. 
 
 Then, after a pause — 
 
 " I never did again." 
 
 " I'm no missionary," said Scott. " We can let 
 it go at that. If that's all you have to " 
 
 " Not quite. I've been diggin' on the Kikiramu 
 lately, in the big camps — so far as Papua ever has a 
 camp. I used to dig in Misima : island away off the 
 south-east coast. I went clean native there : some of 
 them do. Wore nothin' but a waist-cloth, almost 
 forgot how to talk, drank kava till my eyes nearly 
 gave out, and I got a worse kind of jumps than any 
 whiskey can give you. Killed a Papuan or two, with- 
 out cause that a jury would have found sufficient. 
 I'm a bad lot all round: so the respectable people of 
 Papua would tell you — there are lots of respectable 
 people in Papua now, since it became Australian. 
 Some of us liked the old Crown Colony days a good 
 deal the best. Well, ' dost thou like the picture? ' " 
 
 11 Yes, all right," persisted Scott. " That's your 
 funeral, not mine. If I might ask, why ..." 
 
36 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Joe Anderson, that's why," said the other, as 
 Scott paused in some embarrassment. " Anderson 
 went down to Misima, looked me up in the bush, 
 fitted me out with clothes, and did the prodigal 
 father business — or wasn't it the son that was 
 prodigal? Anyhow, Anderson took me off up the 
 Kikiramu with himself. And we both did fairly 
 well. And I spent the result — as I always do. I al- 
 ways will. Now you know." 
 
 " Anything more? " 
 
 " Yes. One thing more. Don't go at all." 
 
 " Why in— Hades— not? " 
 
 " Oh, you'll go — but you'd better not. Papua'll 
 get hold of you. It gets us all. There isn't a man 
 in the country who doesn't and didn't mean to go 
 away again — and they don't. It's the funniest thing 
 in the world. Every government officer, when he's 
 goin' south on leave, tells you, as a startlin' novelty, 
 that he means to get another job, and stay in 
 Australia. And the B.P. salesmen, when they 
 go, tell you they mean to get themselves put on 
 an Australian branch. And the planters are always 
 goin' to settle in Tasmania or New Zealand. And 
 the miners — well, the miners — we're the most 
 shockin' case of the lot. Ten, and twenty, yes, and 
 five-and-twenty years some of us have been here, — 
 always goin' to go away. Whoever else goes, you 
 may take your solemn oath we don't. You see, it's 
 two things have got us — Papua and the little yel- 
 low specks. If the one holds like a crab, the other 
 
GUINEA GOLD 37 
 
 holds like a devil-fish with eight arms and two feelers 
 and a beak. We've no homes; we've no wives — to 
 speak of: and you may take that sentence just how 
 you like — we've no peace, no rest, not as much com- 
 fort as a decent dog in a decent kennel : we've done 
 with everything that makes life worth living: we're 
 buried, like that old Johnnie in the ' Idylls ' that 
 Vivien shut up in the hollow oak: 
 
 "' . . . dead 
 And lost to life and name, and love and fame.' 
 
 And — we go on." 
 
 "Why?" asked Scott, fascinated. 
 
 " The little yellow specks," laughed Dence. 
 " There, I've been gassin' quite long enough. Your 
 play." 
 
 " I should say I've done enough gassing, too," 
 answered the other. " You may believe me, or you 
 may not, but I never talked so much about myself to 
 any man living as I've done to you this morning." 
 
 " Well, don't hate me for it to-morrow," said 
 Dence acutely. " You're almost feeling that way 
 now." 
 
 It was partly true, but Scott laughed the feeling 
 off and returned to the main point. 
 
 " Business! " he said. " I may be asking you to 
 help me hunt up a mare's nest: it isn't proved so 
 far that what I know is of any value. But, assum- 
 ing that it is, and assuming also that my little bit of 
 money turns out enough, will you join in with me? " 
 
38 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Rupert Dence was chewing a piece of palm frond 
 thoughtfully. He took it out of his mouth and 
 threw it down beside the stump of his finished 
 cigarette. 
 
 " Assumin' that you don't develop any objections 
 later to goin' partners with a drunkard and a scally- 
 wag — and assumin' that you aren't barkin' up an 
 empty tree — yes, I'll join." 
 
 " Now for the paper I found in the — what is it? 
 the bau-bau," said Scott, fumbling in his case. 
 
 He felt no reluctance to part with his secret now. 
 George Scott was cautious, like most of his race, but 
 he had none of the mean secrecies of a petty nature. 
 Either he trusted, or he did not. Here, instinct told 
 him to be open — here, with the " drunkard and 
 scallywag," whom he had chosen for his working 
 partner. It was a curious situation for one of the 
 most respectable young men of the most respectable 
 city in the most godly and conventional province of 
 Ireland — but the Papuan sun and moon were to look 
 down on stranger situations yet, with George Scott 
 entangled therein. 
 
 Dence took the paper from his hand and read it, 
 not aloud. Scott followed him over his shoulder. 
 
 " Kikiramu River, Papua, 
 Sometime in January, 19 — . 
 
 " Dear Gil, — You and I have been good mates 
 for years through good and bad times, now the end 
 has come for me. I am writing this with death at 
 hand, I never recovered from the spear wound I 
 
GUINEA GOLD 39 
 
 told you about. Thinking how you saved my life in 
 that trip up the Mambare helps me in my effort to 
 write, as I know if you receive this you will find more 
 gold than you ever dreamed of. Gil, old fellow, I 
 found what we always thought was there, the reef 
 that shed the gold in the creek where we last worked 
 together, you will remember, where the python 
 caught our dog, at that place there is a large boulder 
 in the stream snowing about three feet above water, 
 when the river is very low a granite boulder is ex- 
 posed for about 8 inches; keep those boulders in line 
 and go west up the sidling until you come to the same 
 sort of a tree that we made our box out of at Alli- 
 gator Creek. From the tree go 30 points north of 
 east 260 paces, and you will come to a diorite rock 
 outcropping the edge of the conglomerate, examine 
 the rock. I need not tell you anything more, I hope 
 this gets into no other hands than yours, but have 
 written carefully so that if it goes astray it will profit 
 no one else, you will understand later. I send this 
 down to the coast with my best boy, and hope it will 
 reach T. I. all right, and now good-bye, we have had 
 our last trip together. — Your old mate, 
 
 " Harry Cripps." 
 
 " I was sorry for the poor beggar that wrote it 
 when I read it," said Scott. " It's a pathetic sort 
 of letter. I traced up where it came from, and found 
 that ' Gil ' was dead — it was not nearly as much 
 trouble finding out as one would have thought: I got 
 at the man who pawned the curios : he was a steward 
 on one of the B.I.'s who had lost his berth and come 
 over to Belfast to look for work: pawned his small 
 goods of various kinds, and was not at all secretive 
 
40 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 as to where they came from. The bau-bau, it seems, 
 he picked up in Thursday Island, at the sale of a 
 dead miner's things in some hotel: the miner had 
 gone off rather suddenly with black-water fever, and 
 they sold his luggage to pay his bill. The steward 
 had no idea there was anything in the pipe. I didn't 
 feel bound to let him into the thing, but I dare say 
 I should never have taken the thing up at all if the 
 person called Gil hadn't been dead. I judged that he 
 had not had time to make any use of the paper — 
 you see, the date is this year, and it's only August 
 now — he seems to have hidden it away, and then 
 been surprised by death, as Cripps himself was." 
 
 " I can tell you who Gil was," said Dence thought- 
 fully; " it was a fellow called Gilbert Davidson, who 
 was always a mate of Cripps'. They went prospect- 
 ing together in a lot of places. Yes, Cripps died up 
 the Kikiramu in January last. . . . The reef! Have 
 you any idea what kind of a thing you've got hold 
 of, man? " 
 
 " Not the least," said Scott promptly. 
 
 " Well, it would take me half an hour to explain 
 to you, in your present state of beastly ignorance; 
 but just take it from me that if Cripps did get on 
 to a good payin' reef, he's done what no miner on 
 the mainland has done yet, though we dream of it 
 all night, and talk of it half the day, when we've any- 
 one to talk to — which we haven't, as a rule : that's 
 why most of us are mad: you may have noticed it. 
 They have got the reef in Woodlark Island, but it 
 
GUINEA GOLD 41 
 
 takes big machinery to work there. If I read right, 
 Cripps has got the kind of thing they used to get in 
 West Australia — gold like plums in a puddin'. Oh, 
 hang it, man, it's enough to make a dog sick to see 
 you takin' it as coolly as all that — do you know what 
 you've got? " 
 
 11 No : I told you that before. What the mischief 
 would I be wanting a partner for if I did? Go 
 easy: there's no royal road to it that I can see. 
 What about the puzzle part? " 
 
 " Hang the puzzle part. Cripps had been read- 
 in' penny novels, and they went to his head — that can 
 be worked out — somehow — anyhow. By Jove, old 
 man, you've hit it with this! " 
 
 And the representative of imperturbable England 
 smacked the son of emotional Ireland on the back. 
 Scott grinned his hard, bright smile. 
 
 " I see rocks ahead," he said. " But I'm game to 
 try." 
 
 The two partners went down the hill together 
 towards the hotel. As they crossed the pathway a 
 girl came towards them, walking fast, as if for exer- 
 cise. She was of medium height, with an extremely 
 pretty figure, and small narrow feet. Her beechnut- 
 brown hair broke round her little pointed face like a 
 sea-wave breaking on a pearl-white coral shore. She 
 had the features of the typical pretty girl, the short- 
 ish, straight nose, brief upper lip, and curved small 
 mouth, familiar on posters and magazine covers — in- 
 deed, there were quite a number of men, in various 
 
42 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 places, who cherished different advertisements and 
 magazine fancy heads because they were so like her. 
 Her eyes, when you got a good look at them, made 
 you think of dark heather honey — perhaps because 
 of their colour, perhaps because they were almost 
 cloyingly sweet. She looked just a little sad, just 
 a little timid: if you were a man, you would badly 
 want to know the meaning of that look, so that you 
 could go immediately and break the head of anyone 
 who had caused it. She was, in fine, that most dan- 
 gerous explosive — a woman who draws the hearts 
 of men. And, like almost all of her royal clan, she 
 looked as though the crown weighed heavy and the 
 gold were hard. 
 
 " I say — is that the girl who was in the bar last 
 night? " inquired Scott, as soon as she was past. 
 
 " She is," answered Dence, in a tone that was just 
 a shade over-careless. " She's the new barmaid." 
 
 " Barmaid? in Figg's? Why, man, she's a lady! " 
 
 u Certainly. What else did you think she was? " 
 aske,d the other, bristling a little. 
 
 " Well, one hardly expects What's she doing 
 
 here?" 
 
 " You might ask her: she's paid to talk to any- 
 one. 
 
 " What's her name, I wonder? " 
 
 " Ducane — Charmian Ducane," Dence spoke very 
 clearly. 
 
 " Ducane — Du Where have I heard it be- 
 fore? Was she ever on the stage? " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 43 
 
 " Not to my knowledge." 
 
 " Well, I believe I've heard the name some- 
 where," said Scott, dismissing the struggle to re- 
 member. " She's most uncommonly pretty." 
 
 " So people think. Do you mind telling me just 
 how much money you can raise for that trip? It 
 isn't an affair of twopence-halfpenny in this country, 
 I warn you." 
 
 " Come up to my room, and we'll talk it over," 
 suggested Scott. 
 
 The incredibly pretty girl had passed out of his 
 mind again. Instead, with a talk of money cropping 
 up again, he saw the vision that he and a certain 
 Janie M'Crum of Malone Road, Belfast, had 
 sketched out together, on many a cold, firelit even- 
 ing — a little villa residence with a front lawn and 
 a back garden, somewhere about the Balmoral 
 suburbs, velvet chairs and sofa in the drawing- 
 room, leather in the dining-room, a moderate-priced 
 run-about motor in the little garage, trips to Port- 
 rush every August, Dublin for the horse-show . •. . 
 many, many firelit evenings, when nobody should go 
 home, because everyone would be at home . . . lit- 
 tle fair heads about the garden, in the sunny morn- 
 ings . . . 
 
 Scott swallowed down his vision with a sigh. 
 They were at the hotel now. And the vision, some- 
 how or other, did not cling that night. Perhaps he 
 had thought about it too often, and grown almost 
 tired waiting. 
 
44 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 . . . Over Sariba and Basilisk Island the light 
 slunk away. Purple and blood-crimson, fierce with 
 struggling Titans, and wild with giant fortresses 
 crashing down to fiery ruin, the strange New Guinea 
 sunset began to burn above the blackening ranges. 
 And high in the west, like the crystal lamp of Edith 
 the Swan-Necked, searching for the body of her 
 lover on Senlac's bloody field, Love's star shone 
 down upon the crimson death of day. 
 
 . . . Does one love in villa residences in a Bel- 
 fast suburb, with a good and gentle Janie M'Crum 
 tending the velvet drawing-room furniture, as one 
 might love beneath the burning skies of Papua — 
 Papua, where hearts are strong to dare, and hate, 
 and love, and where the tiny twinkling planet of the 
 North becomes the great bright queen of the tropic 
 world? 
 
 If anyone asked the question of himself that night 
 it found no answer. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 There was no moonlight that nighl 
 
 This was fortunate, because a gentleman who 
 climbs upon a roof to listen to the conversation of 
 other gentlemen naturally prefers darkness. It was 
 very dark, and no one saw Mr. Clay slip round to 
 the back of the house, shin up a verandah post, and 
 get on to the wide, easily sloping iron roof that 
 covered the nest of partitioned cells known as Figg's 
 Federal Hotel. 
 
 In the outback hotels of Australasia and the Pacific 
 you will almost always find that a bedroom means 
 little more than a sort of cubicle partitioned off at 
 a height of some eight or nine feet from the other 
 compartments under the same roof. There are 
 sometimes one or two rooms completely walled off 
 from the rest, sometimes none. Figg's had one: it 
 was the room occupied by Scott, and, until lately, by 
 Clay as well. Clay had removed his traps without 
 protest, and taken himself completely out of his 
 room-mate's sight, in the hope that Scott would for- 
 get all about him. Which Scott, being interested in 
 other things, naturally did. 
 
 But in the heart of Clay there now burned a pas- 
 sion even stronger than the lust of unearned gain 
 
 45 
 
46 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 that had possessed him up to this — the passion of 
 curiosity. 
 
 The strength of that passion, in the tortuous, 
 cloudy souls of certain creatures low in humanity's 
 scale, is a thing for other and normal minds to 
 wonder over speechless. There are beings who 
 seem to live, parasitically, only on the blood of 
 other minds. Clay had the obsession in its worst 
 form: the mere thought of a secret that he could, 
 and ought to, know nothing about set the blood 
 drumming in his ears with desire to get at it and 
 suck the life out of it. He had a reason for want- 
 ing money at any cost that will be heard of later. 
 But stronger now by far was the unsatisfied ache of 
 curiosity. He had seen Scott and Rupert Dence 
 coming back to the hotel together, suspected their 
 conference, and chewed his nails with agony to think 
 that he had not been there. When they went up 
 to Scott's room together, after dinner, he slipped 
 round to the back verandah, bare-footed, and got 
 on the roof, swiftly and without sound. It would 
 have been easier to go into an adjoining room and 
 put his ear to the partition, but Clay was no novice 
 at the game, and he guessed — rightly — that Scott 
 or Dence would take a look into the next room 
 before settling down to talk. 
 
 The iron roof sloped low down upon the room 
 beneath: there was no carpet on the floor, and very 
 little furniture to deaden sound. Lying on what 
 was practically a vast sounding-board, Clay con- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 47 
 
 trived to hear most of what was said almost as 
 plainly as if he had been in the room. 
 
 They were discussing the cost of a trip to the 
 Kikiramu River goldfield, including four or five 
 months' prospecting in the neighbourhood. Dence 
 put it down at £400, and this seemed to trouble 
 Scott. 
 
 11 I have £300," he said, " but I must keep a 
 hundred back in case of failure. And even if I 
 didn't, I shouldn't have enough, according to what 
 you say." 
 
 " Well," said the other voice, " I can't put up a 
 halfpenny more than I said, and that leaves me 
 nothin' at all. D'you like to try someone else? I 
 engage to forget all about it, if you do." 
 
 u No," came Scott's voice thoughtfully. "No; 
 I won't do that. I think I'd like to have you in it, 
 anyhow. It looks as if we'd have to make a syndi- 
 cate of it. Rather a pity, but " 
 
 11 Anderson could just about fill the gap. That 
 would leave two shares to you, and one each to him 
 and myself. You can trust Anderson all right." 
 
 " I can believe that. I don't know that we can 
 do better. I haven't taken awfully to Anderson, it's 
 true, but that may be my fault." 
 
 M It is. Reason why you took to me like winkin' 
 was because you knew I was weaker than yourself. 
 Reason why you aren't takin' to Anderson first 
 jump is because he's just about as strong a character 
 as you are. You'd shake down together all right. 
 
48 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 You take it from me, a fellow that anyone and 
 everyone takes to right off, like me, is rather more 
 likely than not to be a bloomin' waster — like me." 
 
 " I never heard anyone talk like you in all my 
 life," declared Scott, somewhat puzzled. 
 
 u It's only because I'm so beastly clever. Don't 
 you be clever: it's so jolly bad for your chances in 
 life. However, I don't think you need be afraid." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " Not at all. And now suppose you stop talkin' 
 all this beastly frivolous nonsense and get down to 
 business." 
 
 (Clay, up on the roof, shifted an uneasy leg along 
 the hard iron ridges, and prepared to listen.) 
 
 " First thing I want to tell you is, you're up 
 against the hardest job you've ever had, as well as 
 the biggest payin', in this thing. You don't begin 
 to have a notion what this country is like, in the in- 
 side — nobody has until they've seen it. You'll have 
 to risk your life in a dozen ways: and you'll have 
 to live harder than you ever dreamed, and you'll 
 have to take what's comin' to you, even if it's dyin' 
 very quickly and very nastily, without kickin' at it 
 by so much as half a word, no matter what it is. 
 That's what the New Guinea miner is. He kicks 
 all the time about the Government, or the weather, 
 or the way his neighbour's usin' up his water-power, 
 or things of that kind — but when it's starvin', or 
 dyin', or bein' worked all out in a way you don't 
 know the very beginnin's of yet, or bein' smashed 
 
GUINEA GOLD 49 
 
 up with dynamite, and havin' his mates take off an 
 arm or a leg for him with bush-knives and no 
 chloroform, or any little thing of that kind — why, 
 he takes it as all in the day's work, and doesn't even 
 know he's what people would call a brave man. 
 There's not another man but me in the whole of the 
 diggin's could even tell you that. They're so close 
 to it they don't know." 
 
 There was silence in the room for a minute, and 
 then Dence's voice recommenced. 
 
 " Well, about that reef of Cripps'. The first 
 thing we have to do is to find out where the boys 
 are that he employed on his trip, and get as many of 
 them as we can. We might find out from them 
 whereabouts he was workin'. Then we can recruit 
 what more we want and start up the Kikiramu River, 
 because it's evidently somewhere in that part of 
 the country. No use tryin' to work out the puzzle 
 part till we get there." 
 
 " It sounds simple," said Scott reflectively. 
 
 " Does it? I'm glad; you just keep on thinkin' 
 that way as long as you can. Now I think, if you'll 
 be good enough to excuse me, I'll go and spend the 
 rest of the evenin' in my usual state of beastly 
 intoxication, and you can read the last annual volume 
 of the Reports of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation " 
 
 There was the sound of a trunk lid opening here, 
 and a pause, broken only by a slight rustling of 
 paper. Then, in Dence's voice — 
 
50 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 "Well, I am— blessed!" 
 
 " Receipt for my last year's subscription. I'm 
 careful about receipts." 
 
 " Well, I am " 
 
 " So you said. They've got a good library and 
 gymnasium, you know. And we aren't quite as 
 Christian as you think. All the same, I go to church 
 most Sundays. And I used to have a class in the 
 Sunday school whenever they were short-handed." 
 
 " Well, I am — well, they do say we're all mad 
 here, and there was once someone who called Papua 
 the Country of the Impossible. But a Young Man 
 Christian — a Sunday-school teacher — among the dig- 
 gers ! Will you kindly let me go and get drunk at 
 once? Good evening. See you to-morrow." 
 
 The footsteps died away on the verandah. Clay 
 slipped like a snake from the roof to the rail and 
 disappeared. He had heard enough to go on with. 
 He thought he should sleep to-night. 
 
 Scott slept well, and did not dream — not even of 
 the Malone Road on a summer's evening, with some- 
 body beside him on the narrow top seat of the tram. 
 But towards the morning he woke up all of a sudden 
 and found himself sitting upright in bed. The win- 
 dow was wide open to the breathless night: outside, 
 about the top of a pawpaw tree, the wings of an 
 unseen flying-fox thrummed like the propeller of a 
 motor-boat. The sea breathed low on the reef, very 
 far away. 
 
 " Charmian Ducane! My God! the poisoner! " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 51 
 
 He remembered now. He had read all about it 
 in the home papers, just before he left. The woman 
 who had been divorced by her husband, down in 
 Sydney — the woman in whose jewel-case had been 
 found a bottle of poison, cunningly designed to kill 
 without leaving dangerous traces — the woman whose 
 lover was a doctor, skilled in the use of uncommon 
 drugs — the woman who had threatened to kill her 
 husband, and had put the poison in his very glass — 
 the woman who had not been tried for her life, be- 
 cause her husband had not taken the drink, but who 
 had been divorced, under circumstances of the deep- 
 est infamy : whose name was a byword in the mouths 
 of decent people — Charmian Ducane ! Well might 
 he think he had heard the name before. The heroine 
 of that scandal — with an innocent, childlike face, 
 and soft, frightened, honey-sweet eyes: the little lady 
 he had seen walking round the island. 
 
 Well, in truth this was the Country of the Im- 
 possible, and Charmian Ducane was the most impos- 
 sible thing in it. 
 
 Scott slept no more that night. 
 
 It seemed to Scott that events had been raining 
 very fast and thick during the first day or two of his 
 stay in the Impossible Country, but the calm came 
 close on the heels of the storm. 
 
 He had to wait. Anderson had gone off sud- 
 denly, at half an hour's notice, in a schooner that 
 was running down to Ferguson Island: he wanted 
 
52 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 to recruit boys from that place, and it was not at 
 all certain when he would return. Dence declared 
 there was nothing to be done for the present : so the 
 " new chum " settled down, with what patience he 
 might, to the waiting and hanging about that are 
 the inevitable portion of travellers in Papua. 
 
 The arrival of a mail, with letters for himself, 
 made a welcome break. There was one from Janie : 
 the first he had had since leaving home. He took it 
 out with him to read at the windward cool side 
 of the island, where there was a comfortable 
 seat fixed on a rock looking towards China Straits. 
 What the straits had to do with China, Scott never 
 knew: does not know to this day. Nor did he ever 
 find out why the authorities of Samarai had placed 
 the typical " lovers' seat " of the island right up 
 against the wall of the explosive magazine — unless 
 through some symbolic fancy scarcely to be expected 
 of a grave Government official. 
 
 Leaning up against the magazine he opened his 
 letter and read it through. It was not a very senti- 
 mental letter: Janie was less sparing of deeds than 
 words where her affections were concerned. It told 
 the little happenings of her daily life: spoke of a 
 carpet she had bought, at a reduced price, which 
 might do for the dining-room of their house: of the 
 Intermediate Examinations, in which her pupils 
 (Janie was a school-teacher) had done well: of 
 weather and mutual friends. And at the last it broke 
 into one little wave of reminiscence : 
 
GUINEA GOLD 53 
 
 " . . . It's summer now, and the trees are just 
 big castles of green along the Lagan River, and 
 sometimes of an evening I go out for a walk along 
 the tow-path, all by myself. Last summer, when the 
 leaves were out, it was you and I that walked along 
 the river. I wonder will we ever walk there again? 
 Oh, George, the men who go away never know how 
 the women feel who have to stay behind. Do you 
 remember the song we used to sing — i Teddy 
 O'Neale ' ? — and how the colleen said good-bye 
 ' with tears in her eyes, and a stone on her heart ' ? I 
 have a stone on my heart when I think of you, and 
 that is always. 
 
 1 Says he, 'twas to better his lot he went roving, 
 But what would be gold to the joy I should feel 
 To see him return to me honest and loving, 
 Though poor still, my darling boy, Teddy O'Neale ! ' 
 
 Good-bye, my man — come back some day. — Your 
 
 " Janie." 
 
 Scott grinned as he folded the letter and put it 
 away. He was not in the least amused, but he had 
 picked up a mechanical habit of smiling when he 
 was hurt. Something in Janie's letter hurt him: he 
 could hardly tell what. 
 
 " They trust us so," he said. " They trust us 
 so . . ." 
 
 He looked up to see the woman from the bar com- 
 ing across the narrow causeway that led to the seat. 
 
 Since that sudden awaking in the middle of the 
 night, Scott had seen and heard almost nothing of 
 Charmian Ducane. He had not been into the bar 
 again, and the girl was seldom seen about. In truth, 
 
54 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 he had not had a good look at her, save on the day 
 when he had met her out walking. He had thought 
 about her a good deal, however, — first with disgust, 
 then with curiosity, at last with a feeling that there 
 must be another side to that awful story, if one could 
 only hear it. I will not swear that there was not 
 also a touch of patronage in the mental attitude of 
 George Scott regarding this charming little sinner. 
 The virtuous woman who honestly feels it her duty 
 to " do good to " attractive male prodigals is not 
 without her counterpart in the opposite sex. 
 
 It seemed that Charmian Ducane was out walking 
 again. In the island town of Samarai there is just 
 one walk — round the coral path: twenty minutes 
 slow, fifteen minutes fast — and you are sure to meet 
 everyone else out walking too, if you only go often 
 enough. Mrs. Ducane seemed to have as many 
 rounds of the island as she wanted when she reached 
 the magazine. She was looking tired, and she 
 glanced at the seat desirously. Scott was on his feet 
 at once. 
 
 " Please don't let me turn you out," she said, 
 looking at him with the half-mechanical smile of the 
 very pretty woman. As a matter of fact, she hardly 
 saw him. She knew so exactly what he would do 
 and how he would look — the long warm stare, the 
 gleam of teeth under an upward curved moustache, 
 the little bend of homage, the old, familiar phrase — 
 men had so few — " Delighted ! " " It's a pleasure ! " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 55 
 
 " Only too glad ! " . . . But the man said nothing at 
 all. He merely lifted his hat for an instant, and then 
 took his seat again. And Charmian Ducane dropped 
 down rather wearily at the other end of the bench. 
 She supposed it would only be a minute or two 
 until her companion began edging up to her end and 
 looking under her hat, and when that began she 
 would get up and go, as she always did. For the 
 moment she might rest. 
 
 But the man sat quite still and looked out to sea. 
 
 Charmian began to wonder. 
 
 If she had only known, the man was wondering 
 too: and the subject of his wondering was — " How 
 could anyone say she did? " He had had one good 
 look at her this time. The — pretty picture-poster 
 face was overlaid with a certain surface coquetry, but 
 underneath there was 
 
 Purity. Yes. He would have staked his life 
 on it. 
 
 Charmian also had had one good look since she 
 sat down. She had been curious about the new- 
 comer, and wondered what his business in Papua 
 might be. She liked the look of his fine height and 
 strong make: his Northern fairness and his steady 
 grey eyes. 
 
 " I suppose he is just like all other men when you 
 get to know him," she said to herself, " but he 
 looks . . . kind. O God! men aren't kind, what- 
 ever they look. You always think they are, and 
 then . . . you find out. 
 
56 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " He will tell me it is a cool day, by and by," she 
 thought. " And then he will ask me if I admire the 
 scenery. And then he will say all the usual things. 
 They are never different, really." 
 
 But the man still said nothing. 
 
 The blood-warm water beat upon the rocks, toss- 
 ing up foam. The dry, sword-shaped leaves of the 
 stilt-legged pandanus behind the magazine rustled 
 thirstily. Some minutes passed. Then Scott stirred 
 as if about to go. 
 
 And Mrs. Ducane said hurriedly — 
 
 " It is almost a cool day, isn't it? " 
 
 " Yes, comparatively cool," answered Scott, turn- 
 ing his head politely and pushing back his Panama 
 to feel the breeze. 
 
 " He has a forehead like a child," thought the 
 woman. . . . " Don't you admire the scenery here 
 very much? " 
 
 Then happened a thing that Scott has never been 
 able to account for. Instead of replying that he 
 did admire the scenery very much, and thought the 
 views from the coral walk unequalled, he spoke 
 straight out what was in his mind — what he had 
 been turning over and over, ever since the girl from 
 the bar sat down on the rustic seat. 
 
 " You are Mrs. Ducane," he said. " I can't be- 
 lieve it was true. I can't, somehow." 
 
 The honey-brown eyes grew suddenly darker with 
 the dilation of their pupils. It was plain that 
 Charmian was moved. It was also plain that she 
 
GUINEA GOLD 57 
 
 might have shed tears if she had not been tired of 
 crying. The swollen skin under the eyes proved 
 that, and the tiny droop at the corners of the mouth. 
 How much pain must a woman — a girl — endure be- 
 fore she grows weary of tears? 
 
 " A great many people have said that," answered 
 the soft, tired voice. " I don't think they meant it." 
 
 " Well, I should think you must know I do," said 
 Scott. Where was the virtuous thought of u im- 
 proving " wicked Charmian? . . . Where were the 
 sun-dried spots of spume that had fallen on the 
 burning rocks half an hour before? 
 
 " I don't know. If I told you— but " She 
 
 hesitated. 
 
 Scott was unlike his new friend Dence in that he 
 hated to be confided in. He saw it was coming 
 now, and he set his teeth, mentally. 
 
 11 But — I don't know you, and I suppose you 
 would not be interested," said Charmian, with a 
 sudden change of mind. 
 
 Scott was amazed at the pang of disappointment 
 that shot across his mind. He felt absurdly like 
 the lady of the comic papers who has braced herself 
 reluctantly to meet the shock of a proposal, only to 
 find that it dpes not come after all. 
 
 " I would be interested," he said promptly. " I 
 would be very much interested." 
 
 After all, — blue air and sea, gold sun and waving 
 palms, the turn of a romantic country, and a beau- 
 tiful penitent ready to pour out her heart into your 
 
58 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 more or less sympathetic ear, — it was a moving 
 situation, Scott did not think at all that this 
 Charmian was a white-winged angel: but he was 
 ready to believe that her feathers were a good deal 
 less black than they had been painted. 
 
 " Well," said the girl, speaking in a tired, monot- 
 onous tone, like one who has said the same thing 
 over and over till it has almost lost meaning — " the 
 things they said weren't true. I never gave any just 
 cause for a divorce. I never tried to, or wanted to, 
 poison anyone. I did say I wished my husband were 
 dead, and I did say I would kill him some day. Mil- 
 lions of women say and think the same thing, but 
 they don't really mean it. I did like that doctor, 
 until I found out what he was. It was because I sent 
 him away that he would not tell the truth. He gave 
 me the medicine for myself: it was a nerve tonic, and 
 it was poisonous if you took it in anything but very 
 small doses. I thought perhaps if things got worse, 
 and if I'd the courage, I would kill myself, so I put 
 it in my jewel-case to be safe. And I went so far 
 as to pour some of it in a glass, and my husband 
 found it. And the man lied about that and every- 
 thing else. So it looked badly. And my husband 
 
 believed Well, anyone would have: everyone 
 
 does. But it wasn't true. That man compromised 
 me on purpose, thinking if Mr. Ducane — he was 
 my cousin, so I have the same name still — if Mr. 
 Ducane divorced me on his account, I should have 
 to marry him. Mr. Ducane never would have sued 
 
GUINEA GOLD 59 
 
 for a divorce, only for the idea that I had tried to 
 poison him: he just went mad about that, and 
 wouldn't listen to anything anyone said. You see, he 
 made a kind of slave of me. I married him when I 
 was seventeen, and he never let me have a thought 
 of my own. He loved me, I suppose: I could have 
 got on somehow or other if he hadn't, but that was 
 what made it hateful, because he knew I never cared 
 for him, and he just kept me chained. I was afraid 
 of him, and I hated him — I . . . hated . . . him." 
 
 Her little knuckles tightened till the bones showed 
 white. 
 
 " It makes you feel so wicked. You can't think. 
 If I'd done everything they said, I don't think I'd 
 feel as wicked as I do whenever I think of him. It 
 makes one feel one isn't anything human, but just a 
 sort of devil, to hate anyone like that. I — I'm not a 
 strong sort of character. I'm rather weak; and he 
 had hold of my soul with his great coarse hands — 
 somehow. I couldn't even find strength, ever since I 
 was seventeen, and I'm twenty-four now — I couldn't 
 even run away from him all by myself. When he 
 left me, and wrote that he was going to divorce me, 
 and have me tried for my life if he could, I — I — I 
 was glad, when I could get breath enough to think. 
 I thought of never seeing him again, and it seemed 
 like heaven. I just didn't think beyond the divorce. 
 . . . But then, you see, I had to think, because there 
 was no money, and when the decree was given, the 
 other men — the other men ..." 
 
60 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 She was almost crying again: but it seemed as if 
 the tears would not come: as if they had been all 
 cried away. There was a thickness in her voice as 
 she went on — 
 
 " They all believed . . . everything. They came 
 like crows round a corpse. ... I went to a pawn- 
 shop in the dark and sold everything I had. I saw 
 an advertisement in the Herald for a resident gov- 
 erness for Samarai, to teach the families of several 
 people — music, and so on. I answered it, and hid 
 away till I heard. They said I could come. ... I 
 called myself ' Mary Ducane ' — Mary is my sec- 
 ond name. But when I came up here they had seen 
 the pictures in the papers, and they knew, and they 
 said . . . Oh, it doesn't matter. But I was so glad 
 when the Figgs took me as barmaid. They're kind, 
 and the work isn't nearly as bad as I thought it 
 would be. Nobody is rude. You wouldn't think how 
 good those miners are. I was most afraid of them 
 of all — but one day a commercial traveller from 
 the boat hung over the bar and tried to kiss me, and 
 one of the miners took him and flung him right 
 out into the gutter, and said he and the others would 
 do the same for anyone who dared to treat that lady 
 disrespectfully. . . . And you know, they must all 
 think . . . everyone does. You do too: you need 
 not trouble to tell me you don't." 
 
 She ceased speaking. . . . How fierce was the 
 blue flame of the sea ! how dazzling and shadeless 
 the green fire of the low-growing bush upon the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 61 
 
 white-sanded islands! Out in the straits a black 
 three-cornered fin, shaped like the sail of Death's 
 own boat, cruised up and down, questing for prey. 
 A cruel, formidable land, this Papua, for all its 
 beauty: a land for strong men to seize and break 
 and tame, it might be, but for little, weak, unhappy 
 women? . . . 
 
 Scott was strangely moved. The tired, sweet 
 voice: the uncomplaining tone: the certainty of be- 
 ing misunderstood and disbelieved, now and always, 
 that ran like a sad accompaniment to a plaintive 
 song all through Charmian's simply told story — 
 these things seemed to him, somehow, intolerable. 
 Why should she suffer so? Could not anyone help? 
 Could not he? 
 
 He turned round to face her, on the bench, push- 
 ing back his hat again, as was his way when excited. 
 Charmian thought once more, u How noble, how 
 good he looks ! If any man in the world were really 
 what some of them seem ! " He spoke with de- 
 liberate, deep emphasis. 
 
 " I believe every word you say, Mrs. Ducane. If 
 it helps you at all to know that, I'm very glad indeed. 
 If I could do anything for you . . . " 
 
 The woman laughed a bitter little laugh. 
 
 "What can a man do for a woman?" she said. 
 " When a man says that, he doesn't mean anything. 
 Or rather, he does mean ' anything,' and anything's 
 nothing." 
 
 " Well, if you can tell me what I could do. . . . 
 
62 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 I'm sorry. Believe me, I — I am — I — what can one 
 
 say? Words are such useless Mrs. Ducane, 
 
 can you ask me to do anything? Ask me what you 
 like." 
 
 " There's nothing," said the girl. " I've got to 
 work out my future by myself. If I didn't get so 
 tired. . . . But that's not being brave, and I just 
 have got to be brave: that's all that's left me. I 
 do think you have helped me a little, if you like to 
 know — just by talking to me as a human being. If 
 you knew how sick a pretty woman gets of being 
 taken always from the one point of view — of acting 
 the part of Circe and turning people into brutes — 
 though she may hate it all the time — well, you'd 
 understand why this talk has been like a — like a 
 drink of fresh water when one has had nothing but 
 syrups and brandies. There, that reminds me of 
 my work: I've stayed out far too long. No, don't 
 come with me — I like to be alone. Good-bye — and — 
 thank you." 
 
 When Scott went back to the hotel he found 
 Rupert Dence extended on a long chair on the veran- 
 dah, smoking. 
 
 " Will you come and go over those figures again 
 with me when you've finished your smoke? " he said. 
 He was feeling jovial and good-humoured and in- 
 clined for work. Doubtless this was due to the 
 south-east wind which had sprung up strongly in 
 the course of the afternoon, cooling and clearing the 
 hothouse atmosphere of the island. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 63 
 
 Dence got up from the lounge and walked off 
 towards his own room. There was a sulky look in 
 his usually amiable blue eyes. 
 
 " Don't feel like it," he said. 
 
 " Fever? " queried Scott. 
 
 " Perfectly fit, thanks. Just been for a walk 
 round the island." He went into his room and 
 slammed the door. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Charmian Ducane, gentlewoman by birth, and 
 barmaid at the Federal, had always been a lonely 
 little soul. 
 
 Men's admiration, it was true, she had had in 
 overflowing plenty, ever since, at barely fourteen 
 years of age, her singular prettiness began to de- 
 velop under the influence of the burning Queensland 
 suns. She was an orphan, brought up by a some- 
 what cold and unsympathetic English grandmother, 
 who smelled evidence of bush-ranging ancestry in 
 every departure from the standards of South Ken- 
 sington. And Charmian had none of the blood of 
 South Kensington in her veins. She was her mother's 
 daughter all in all — the child of beautiful Mary 
 Eves, whose father . . . Well, in the old Queensland 
 days nobody thought cattle-lifting the worst of 
 crimes : and a too hasty use of rifle or revolver was 
 easily forgiven. 
 
 Charmian " took after " the Eves' side of the 
 family. Grant Ducane, her second cousin, resembled 
 the English side. Charmian used to think it was 
 small wonder the Ducanes had emigrated to Aus- 
 tralia : surely any country that was cursed with the 
 whole family would do its best to get rid of as many 
 
 6 4 
 
GUINEA GOLD 65 
 
 as possible. . . . And at seventeen years of age 
 she married Grant. 
 
 She was not in love with him. But old Mrs. 
 Ducane was dying: there was no money in the family 
 except what Grant possessed, and everybody said 
 little Charmian would come to a bad end if she were 
 not looked after. She had had admirer after ad- 
 mirer, all penniless and few " serious ": she had 
 been half engaged to one at fifteen, entangled with 
 two a year later, and jilted another before her next 
 birthday. She did not care particularly about any 
 of the crowd — who cares for what is won so cheaply? 
 — and when Grant told her she was going to marry 
 him, she accepted the fact with resignation, not un- 
 mixed with pleasure. There would be a wedding, 
 and a white satin dress with a long train, and a cake, 
 and a bridal journey — all sorts of pleasant things, 
 with only Grant to take the edge off them. And 
 Grant had always been a kill-joy in her life: he 
 wouldn't be any worse now. He was so old — 
 thirty-five or more — she hardly felt as if he could 
 have much to do with her. They would go their 
 different ways, like lots of married people. And it 
 was something to have a house of one's own — be- 
 sides the wedding fun. 
 
 She did not get the wedding fun. Grant did not 
 want to be laughed at for marrying a girl nearly 
 twenty years younger than himself: he insisted that 
 the grandmother and Charmian should travel to 
 Brisbane and have a private ceremony early in the 
 
66 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 morning. There was not even a cake. There was 
 no white satin dress — the little bride cried her eyes 
 red over this the night before the wedding, and 
 Grant scolded her next day for having made a 
 figure of herself. There was no house of her own. 
 Grant's business took him to a dull inland town and 
 they lived there in an hotel. They went straight to 
 the hotel from Brisbane, and there was no wedding- 
 tour. Charmian wondered indignantly what was 
 the good of getting married at all. 
 
 She discovered before long that it was possible to 
 hate Grant much more than she had ever done be- 
 fore. She discovered that other men were sorry for 
 her, and that they seemed very kind. There were 
 storms that gave the other people endless food for 
 talk. And the women began to look coldly on 
 Charmian. 
 
 She discovered more things as the months and 
 years went by. She discovered that the other men 
 were not really kind at all, only wicked. She cried 
 and cried when she found this out. What was she to 
 do when the women hated her and the men were 
 wicked? Was she never to have anyone to talk 
 to? She grew ill with worry of mind, and a doctor 
 was called in. He seemed different from all the rest, 
 and Charmian, only three-and-twenty as yet, confided 
 all her troubles to him. She told him how she hated 
 Grant, and what a lonely life she had. She told 
 him that the other men were wicked. The doctor 
 was sympathetic and patient: he was rather re- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 67 
 
 ligious too, and that pleased Charmian: when a man 
 quoted texts to you — the Song of Solomon and other 
 Bible things — he could not be bad. Charmian, at 
 this period of her married life, used to pray for the 
 doctor every night, and quite seriously thank Heaven 
 for having sent him to her. She did not like wicked 
 people, and there were so many in the world, and 
 they all wanted you to be like themselves. The 
 doctor told her he loved her for her purity of soul. 
 
 It was after this that the explosion came — the 
 volcanic eruption that laid waste the dull and homely 
 garden of Charmian's life, and cast her out to wan- 
 der in the wilderness. She never knew how they 
 missed that train, lost their way, got left in the little 
 country inn. The doctor knew, but he never told. 
 He told her a great many other things — things she 
 had never thought to hear from him — but not that. 
 Charmian, burning with indignation and sobbing 
 with bitter disappointment, went home next day to 
 tell her husband, and bear his sarcasm, his reproofs, 
 even perhaps his violence. " It will only be another 
 row," she said to herself . . . there had been so 
 many, though he was always saying he loved her. 
 
 Grant Ducane was gone. Their rooms were 
 given up. There was a letter for her, written that 
 morning and left with the manageress. The woman 
 stood by and watched her read it, with a greedy 
 eye. Charmian was always sorry that she had so 
 nearly fainted — it must have pleased the harpy who 
 watched her. 
 
68 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 The letter told her that he had found her out, that 
 he would have her disgraced and imprisoned, and 
 that she had no home with him any more. 
 
 She lived on the remains of her last quarter's 
 allowance till the case came on. She was not ar- 
 rested on the poisoning charge, for Grant Ducane 
 had found there was not evidence enough. Never- 
 theless, he believed firmly that his downtrodden little 
 wife had intended to free herself by a crime, and 
 during the hearing of the divorce case his counsel 
 brought in so many references to the unlucky bottle 
 in the jewel-case, to Charmian's one frantic threat, to 
 a certain dose of the poison, mixed and poured into 
 a glass Ducane occasionally used, that for some time 
 the question of arrest really did hang in the balance. 
 On the public mind the final effect was much the 
 same as if Charmian had been tried and barely ac- 
 quitted. Most people believed she intended to com- 
 pass the death of Grant. 
 
 The divorce was given without question. The 
 doctor denied everything smilingly, and as if from 
 mere conventional motives. Charmian's innocent 
 walks and talks, the incidents of her illness, the 
 stay at the hotel, all appeared black as night, 
 under the clever handling of Ducane's counsel. The 
 doctor employed no counsel at all. He knew him- 
 self to be ruined professionally, but he had come 
 into money not long before, and could snap his 
 fingers at that. He expected to marry Mrs. Ducane 
 in six months' time: true, she had expressed the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 69 
 
 strongest disgust and hatred for him; but, after all, 
 she had been very fond of him to begin with, and 
 what could she do for a living? 
 
 What Charmian did has been told. She was 
 mortally afraid of the doctor, as she was afraid of 
 the man from whom she had been freed. She did 
 not think it impossible that her lover might succeed 
 in worrying and driving her into a marriage — the 
 little creature felt herself, instinctively, destined to 
 be a quarry in the struggle of life. But hunted 
 beasts are swift, if they are not brave. She fled. 
 New Guinea seemed to her a sanctuary, by reason 
 of its remoteness, and once landed under the leaning 
 palms of Samarai she felt safe. 
 
 The insult that had driven her into the bar of 
 Figg's hotel really did not trouble her much. 
 Women had always been hateful to her: had always 
 talked and hinted and cast sly stones. They were a 
 little more open now: that was all. She was very 
 lonely at times. But then, she had been lonely all 
 her life. 
 
 She liked Rupert Dence. He had been senti- 
 mental about her from the first, just like all the other 
 men, and when she told him something of her story, 
 he had promptly said he believed her. She felt, 
 indeed, that, whether he did believe or not, he didn't 
 care — that if the tales had been true he would have 
 shot those long glances from his sleepy blue eyes at 
 her, and pressed her fingers when she handed him 
 his glass, just the same. That, she supposed, was as 
 
70 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 much credit as she could ever expect from anyone 
 again. And poor Rupert, if he had not been such a 
 drinker, was a lovable soul. As to the drinking — 
 well, you cannot act as barmaid in an Australasian 
 hotel for several months without losing a good deal 
 of the ordinary feeling on such matters. Charmian 
 was rather in danger of classing her men friends, in 
 these days, by the various ways in which they got 
 drunk. Some were so much less objectionable than 
 others. 
 
 Then came George Scott. 
 
 He did not drink at all, after the first evening. 
 He went to church on Sundays, whenever the mis- 
 sionary held service. He had nothing to do with 
 the native girls. He did not swear (Charmian had 
 never heard him in an engine-room wrestling with 
 a refractory piece of machinery). He was a gen- 
 tleman every inch, in spite of his hardened hands: 
 and he treated her like a gentlewoman. And he 
 was brave. One of the pearling men from the Tro- 
 briand Islands, where the saints do not come from, 
 called him a " wowser," on a certain Sunday morn- 
 ing, as the Ulsterman was starting out to church. 
 Scott did not understand the term at first, but being 
 told by a Melbourne traveller that it meant, in the 
 " Australian language," the most offensive kind of 
 canting sneak and hypocrite, he said that it was a 
 work of piety and necessity to teach the pearler 
 better, and that he would stay home and do it. 
 On which the whole population of Figg's adjourned 
 
GUINEA GOLD 71 
 
 to the top of the island, where they spent the hours 
 of divine service enjoying the spectacle of the best 
 fight that Samarai had seen since the good old, bad 
 old Crown Colony days. The pearler was the worse 
 damaged of the two, and public opinion voted him 
 " served right." Scott went to evening church, black 
 eyes, swollen nose, and all. He said he would teach 
 any confounded beach-comber in the Pacific to dic- 
 tate to a decent Belfast man: but it seemed that no 
 beach-comber, confounded or otherwise, desired any 
 further lessons on the subject. 
 
 Charmian was delighted: she had not very much 
 religion herself of any kind, but she could not help 
 respecting a man who was ready to defend his beliefs 
 so vigorously. It was about this time that she began 
 watching for Scott's boots on the staircase. From 
 the back of the bar you could see the boots of people 
 going up and down the stairs, though you could not 
 see their bodies or faces until they crossed the hall 
 and came out into the street — and if you were busy 
 serving at the crucial moment you did not see them 
 at all, which was bitterly disappointing. She got to 
 know every pair of boots and shoes the young Ul- 
 sterman possessed, as well as she knew her own face 
 in the glass. By and by she used to feel a jump 
 of the heart that nearly made her drop the tumblers 
 when that pair of brown boots with the heavy strap- 
 ping, or the black leather shoes with the wide laces, 
 or the canvas deck-shoes, trodden long and narrow 
 by the light Irish foot, came quickly down the stair- 
 
72 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 case. She didn't want Scott to drink like some of 
 the others, but she did wish he would come in now 
 and then for a glass of beer — where was the harm of 
 that? A man needn't be so very, very good. 
 
 She began to be conscious now of a gnawing little 
 hunger that beset her every morning when she had 
 not seen Scott since the previous night. It was a 
 desire to look at him again. She used to come out 
 into the front of the bar and stand in the breeze, 
 because it was so hot. . . . From this point of view 
 you could see people going upstairs — all of them. A 
 good view of the clean white " patrol " suit, with the 
 fair bright head topping it, seemed to give her 
 enough to go on with for the morning. But after 
 that the hunger would begin again, and the sight of 
 a pair of long narrow shoes taking the stairs three 
 at a time was no better than a crumb of bread to a 
 starving man. She did not know how to live till 
 four o'clock, — when one was off duty one could go 
 round the island, and sometimes one passed the white 
 patrol suit on the coral track so near that one could 
 see the very threads in the stuff. Every time she met 
 Scott, after an interval of half a day or so, she de- 
 cided that his face was better-looking than she had 
 remembered it. She was never quite sure that his 
 eyebrows were really jet-black, in spite of his fair 
 hair, until she had had another look. " If he were a 
 girl," she said, " nobody would think it real." And 
 she could never believe that his forehead was really 
 so white and so broad and smooth, just like a little 
 
GHJINEA GOLD 73 
 
 child's, till she had seen it again. " It makes him 
 look so innocent," she said. " But men are not — 
 none of them are really good." 
 
 She could not understand why he did not talk to 
 her more. After that hour on the bench beside the 
 magazine, when he had been so kind, — or seemed so 
 kind: she had to remind herself that it was always 
 seeming, — she had certainly expected that he would 
 ask her to go a walk with him, or come into the 
 bar for a bottle of mineral waters, or linger near her 
 corner of the verandah when she was likely to come 
 out of her room. He did not. He looked at her 
 in a merry, bright-eyed Irish way when they met by 
 accident, and sometimes he stopped for a moment's 
 talk — but Rupert Dence took three times as much 
 trouble to please her. Dence used to go over to the 
 islands in the Straits to find bush flowers that she 
 liked: he was always asking her to go boating, and 
 sometimes she went, — and he was never out of the 
 bar. Even when he had taken too much whiskey, as 
 he did every night, he was civil and kind to her: 
 when he found he had almost reached his limit he 
 would slip away as best he could, to avoid offending 
 her eyes. If he grew violent, it was always after she 
 had gone to bed and Figg had taken her place in 
 the bar. Rupert, according to his lights, thought 
 much of her, and considered her. 
 
 Did Scott? 
 
 Well, yes, she thought he did. She had no reasons 
 at all for thinking so, which made her all the more 
 
74 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 certain. But if he did, why did he stay — just where 
 he was? Other men were ready enough, and quick 
 enough, if they got so much as a crumb of encour- 
 agement: sometimes when they got none. And 
 Scott . . . 
 
 She did not understand him. 
 
 In the long days that had to be worn through 
 somehow, waiting for Anderson's return, Scott 
 avoided much intimate conversation with himself. 
 He had the habit of hard work, and made it serve 
 him. There was a steam launch that had been sunk 
 and salvaged: her engineer found the job of repair- 
 ing the machinery almost too much for him, and 
 Scott, with his solid Belfast training at his back, and 
 his kindly will to help anyone who needed helping, 
 came in at the right moment, like an angel into, 
 rather than out of, a machine. The engineer's trou- 
 bles melted in a morning, and his heart was filled 
 with gratitude for this aristocrat of his profession 
 who was so ready to waive his superior position, and 
 come down to labour all day among strained and 
 rusted machinery with a little Tyneside rat who had 
 never a certificate to his name, nor a shade of gentle 
 manners in his whole composition. 
 
 Working hard all day in a tropical climate, and 
 going to bed early, left not much time or inclination 
 for musing. Scott did not muse. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, irrelevant scraps of poetry would float into his 
 brain and stick there an entire day, keeping time 
 
GUINEA GOLD 75 
 
 to the sound of his tools on the rusted steel, or to the 
 low " sss-frssh " of the waves on the spit of sand 
 where they worked. . . . There was a poem of 
 Adam Lindsay Gordon's : he could only recall stray 
 fragments, but they haunted him all one burning 
 day, when the trades had blown themselves out, and 
 the sea was white-hot glass, and Normanby Island's 
 three thousand feet of sapphire cliff stood pale and 
 clear on the horizon of the Straits, forty miles 
 away. 
 
 "... You in your beauty above me bent, 
 Spoke to me, touched me without intent, 
 Made me your servant for once and all. 
 
 From a long way off, to look at your charms 
 Made my blood run redder in every vein. . . . 
 
 . . . The gusts in the gloomy gorges whirl 
 Brown leaves and red till they cover your bed — 
 Now I trust that your sleep is a sound one, girl!" 
 
 Would she live long — that beautiful, ill-fated soul? 
 
 "Now I trust that your sleep is a sound one, girl!" 
 
 The sea was saying it: the hot waves that crisped 
 upon the blinding shore. Would she be sorry when 
 the long sleep came? Would it come soon? 
 
 1 Desdemona should have been her name," some- 
 thing inside the man was saying. " Desdemona — ill- 
 fated." 
 
 u If you wouldn't mind 'olding that axle a bit 
 stiddier "... came the apologetic voice of the 
 
76 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 little man from Tyneside. And Scott begged his 
 pardon. " Give it to me," he said. " You'd better 
 do the holding, and I'll fix it." 
 
 u Do you take quinin' now and again? You 
 should," said the other. u You look as if a dose 
 wouldn't do you any 'arm. That fever's always on 
 the pounce after a new chum." 
 
 Next day it rained: a roaring, stamping, drown- 
 ing rain, that made the Ulsterman understand once 
 for all how the two-fathom annual rainfall of Sama- 
 rai came about. It was impossible to go on with the 
 launch. One could only tramp restlessly up and 
 down the verandahs, looking out through a grey cur- 
 tain upon drowned white coral streets, downbeaten 
 pawpaws, flooded cricket-ground. The noise was so 
 great that one had to shout when speaking. It was 
 not really rain that fell, it was water in great sheets : 
 one felt as though one stood in the perilous passage 
 behind Niagara, seeing the ceaseless fall swing down 
 before one's face. Every moment one felt that it 
 was pouring so hard that it must stop: and every 
 minute it seemed to take breath and pour harder. 
 
 It got on Scott's nerves — it, the relentless rain of 
 Samarai, gets on the nerves of most people. Most 
 of the day he tramped ceaselessly, feeling the veran- 
 dah boards sag beneath his feet, but hearing no more 
 noise from his steps than if he had been deaf. 
 Something beat in his brain to-day, as yesterday, but 
 it seemed to have reference to nothing in particular. 
 All the more it tormented him, and would not leave 
 
GUINEA GOLD 77 
 
 him, chanting throughout the day to the magnificent 
 orchestra of the rain . . . just a scrap of Shake- 
 speare out of his old school " Reciter," marked with 
 the mechanical emphasis of the book: first one word 
 in prominence, and then another — 
 
 "But Brutus is an honourable man , . ." 
 "For Brutus is an honourable man . . ." 
 
 Late in the day, when the dark afternoon was 
 glooming down to night, a call of " Sail-0 ! " sounded 
 from the beach. A small white schooner, driving 
 dim and ghostlike through the rain, came up from 
 China Straits and fluttered to the jetty. 
 
 Rupert Dence came out of his room and looked 
 from under the pouring eaves. 
 
 " That's Blackwood's schooner," he said. " An- 
 derson's back." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 " . . . Easy? I'm glad you think so: just you 
 keep on thinkin' that way as long as you can." 
 
 Scott was beginning to understand what Dence had 
 meant when he said that. They were well started 
 on the gold-hunt now — Dence, Anderson, himself, 
 and four-and-thirty native carriers — and the way of 
 the traveller in Papua was unfolding itself. 
 
 First, there had been a trip of several hundred 
 miles along the coast, in a cranky toy steamer meant 
 to carry nine passengers in her cabins and twenty or 
 so on her decks. She carried nineteen and eighty- 
 one. The nor'-west season was setting in, and the 
 weather was uniformly bad. There were storms 
 every .day, and they could seldom anchor at 
 night, which was annoying, because much of the 
 Papuan coast is hardly charted at all, and if you run 
 in the dark you take chances. The Cora Lynn took 
 them, also much of the Pacific Ocean in sections. 
 They got to the Kikiramu in time, nevertheless : and 
 the captain said he had really thought she was gone 
 this time; another trip like that would finish her, 
 because there wasn't a spot in her plates you couldn't 
 rip up with a tin-opener. Nobody minded what he 
 said: they had heard it all before, and the Cora 
 Lynn still laboured up and down the coasts. 
 
 78 
 
GUINEA GOLD 79 
 
 Arrived at the Kikiramu, it seemed that the 
 launch which travelled irregularly up and down the 
 river was out of reach at the upper end, and not 
 likely to appear until her engineer wanted cocoa- 
 nuts or fish. Scott's party, and the various other 
 miners going up to the Kikiramu field with their 
 boys, were dumped out on a black sand beach in the 
 midst of the mangrove swamps and left to wait. 
 They waited two weeks, living in tents, using up 
 their provisions, and swearing. When the Dragon- 
 Fly launch turned up, she took forty or fifty carriers, 
 and ten white (she was built to carry two in her 
 cabin and eight or nine on deck) , while the remain- 
 der waited another week. It rained atrociously: it 
 was as hot as the inside of a Turkish bath: the 
 sand-flies bit, and mosquitoes stung, and if you went 
 along the beach in the dusk, to get cool, you ran 
 the risk of being taken by an alligator. Scott found 
 this out the first night that he tried a solitary stroll : 
 something that sounded like a torpedo leaving its 
 tube charged at him in the dark out of the water, and 
 if he had not spent five years in the shipyards of 
 Belfast, where clumsiness of movement means 
 wounds and death, there would have been a full-fed 
 crocodile that night on the banks of the Kikiramu, 
 and an empty tin plate at the miners' supper. But he 
 jumped quick enough — just — and ran as he never 
 had thought he could run, reaching the lighted tents 
 much out of breath. Nobody thought his adventure 
 remarkable, though some laughed at it. Nor was 
 
80 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 anyone excited when a miner came in exhibiting an 
 ugly barbed throwing-spear which he had found 
 sticking in the wall of his tent a few minutes earlier. 
 Anderson said they were cross-grained little beggars 
 about here, and related, as an excellent joke, an 
 adventure he had met with on Ferguson Island, while 
 recruiting. Taking French leave, he had entered 
 the house of an absent trader, and while enjoying a 
 capital night's rest in the trader's good new bed, 
 fitted with a real chain mattress, he was awaked by 
 several violent blows from underneath, followed by 
 enraged and embittered howls. He snatched a lan- 
 tern from the table where it was burning, and made 
 a dash out underneath the house. There he found 
 a Ferguson Islander yelling over the loss of his 
 treasured spear, which was hopelessly entangled, ow- 
 ing to its barbs, in the meshes of the chain mattress. 
 The native fled at his approach, crying with rage 
 and disappointment, and accusing the absent trader 
 of witchcraft — also, incidentally, of unsportsmanlike 
 conduct, and not playing the game. 
 
 The story was received with roars of laughter. 
 Dence remarked that some of the D'Entrecasteaux 
 traders put sheet iron on the wicker floors under 
 their beds, and further observed that he had known 
 a whole Papuan family (down in Mekeo, where 
 they sleep in a huge native-cloth bag, to keep off the 
 mosquitoes) speared like snakes in a sack by a war- 
 party, who never so much as entered the house. 
 More laughter greeted this tale. Scott turned into 
 
GUINEA GOLD 81 
 
 his bed — a sack stretched over a frame of poles — 
 wondering at the local taste in jokes, and feeling 
 thankful that the solid sand of the beach was his own 
 flooring that night. 
 
 Then for four days they chunked and rattled up 
 the river, a great cocoa-coloured flood full of snags 
 and reefs, in the tired little launch. All day they 
 lay under the awning of the engine-room roof, where 
 they could just find space to crawl about: enduring 
 as best they could the three-times-heated furnace of 
 the sun, the engine, and the stove, where meals were 
 cooked. Food was served among the sprawling 
 boots of the company, and eaten from their knees. 
 At night they landed, holding on by teeth and eye- 
 lids, on a perpendicular bank topped by trees set as 
 close as hairs in a brush. The boys started clearing 
 immediately, and swung their axes to fine effect: in 
 half an hour the dense undergrowth was gone, and 
 space left among the great trees for tents and fires. 
 They had supper in the ©pen, where they could 
 stretch their cramped limbs, and they slept under the 
 hastily slung flies of their tents, the fresh-smelling 
 earth of the forest floor beneath them, and the un- 
 trodden, unknown vistas of the primeval wilderness 
 looking at them through the open flaps of the canvas. 
 It was always possible that the Karivas, a ghostly 
 night-wandering tribe, never yet seen by the white 
 men of Papua, might attack the camp in their silent 
 way and carry off a dead body or two out of the 
 tents without the others being a whit the wiser. It 
 
82 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 was not impossible that a hungry alligator might 
 creep up out of the river and take his luck where 
 he found it. And it was clear — judging by the death- 
 adder that dropped from the fly of the tent right 
 into Anderson's supper-plate one night, and the 
 lively tiger-snake captured under Scott's mosquito 
 net — that other drawbacks to the simple life might 
 be discovered along the Kikiramu River. But the 
 miners " took the chances." . . . Scott began to 
 know the phrase. 
 
 During the journey he thought it well to learn as 
 much, and say as little, as he could. The miners 
 seemed to like him, though they called him a " new 
 chum " and a " kid " — they were all much older than 
 himself, some of them beginning to display grey 
 beards on their unshaven chins as the days went on. 
 They talked a good deal of the field, and the best 
 ways of prospecting, and the possibility of the reef 
 being found some day — up on the spurs of Albert 
 Edward or Victoria, perhaps, or it might be some- 
 where on Scratchley. Scott learned that " alluvial " 
 mining is mere scraping and washing out of gold 
 that has escaped from the mother-source: he heard 
 that all the gold found on the mainland of Papua had 
 been of this kind, and that none of it began to com- 
 pare with the richness of some of the Australian 
 fields in the early days. You didn't get nuggets in 
 Papua, he heard : you might, if you were very lucky 
 indeed, and if you were not a new chum, find a patch 
 
GUINEA GOLD 83 
 
 where there was as much as eight or ten ounces a day 
 to be got for a little while (What was an ounce 
 worth? Three pounds, fifteen shillings), and, say, 
 two or three ounces for some months. But in gen- 
 eral, if you got a couple of ounces a day, you did 
 very well. And you had to work for that, and you 
 had to feed and pay your boys out of it. What did 
 you want boys for? Well, you were to wait till you 
 got to the field and you'd see. 
 
 None of the other miners knew the real object of 
 Scott's party: it was supposed that they were merely 
 out on an ordinary prospecting trip. They had suc- 
 ceeded in finding two of the late Mr. Cripps' boys, 
 by the simple process of going down to the village 
 where he had recruited his carriers and asking where 
 each available recruit had last been working. But 
 they had asked no questions so far. 
 
 "What a native don't know, he can't tell: we 
 don't want to get them talking when we're passing 
 through the field," said Anderson. 
 
 They had gone over the paper again at Samarai, 
 and Anderson had given it as his opinion that Cripps' 
 reef might be found, though it would take a good 
 deal of finding. The dead man and his mate had 
 started from the Kikiramu field into the unknown, 
 on their last journey, accompanied only by their 
 boys. None of the miners knew exactly where 
 Cripps had gone, or what he had been doing when 
 he met with his end. They only knew that his 
 mate had come back to Samarai alone, abandoning 
 
84 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the trip because it was unsuccessful, and that, later 
 on, the natives had brought down news of Cripps' 
 death. That was all. 
 
 Anderson had taken command of the little party 
 from the first, and Scott, not without a grimace or 
 two, had let him do it. He was not fond of being 
 " bossed "; but the tall, tough, quiet miner had the 
 knack of inspiring confidence, even in those who did 
 not like him. Lying on the hot roof of the engine- 
 room, and watching the mysterious black walls of 
 the forest slide endlessly by, Scott thought once more 
 of his favourite poet, and decided that certain lines 
 of Gordon's — describing a horse, it was true — fitted 
 Anderson to a hair. 
 
 "The lean brown head of the Blacklock breed 
 And the resolute eye that loves the lead." 
 
 Dence was a much more likable character, even al- 
 lowing for his destroying weakness — but Anderson 
 was the man to take them through what they were 
 going to face, or die in the attempt. And here, on 
 the Kikiramu River, the second clause seemed to 
 carry a meaning more than merely rhetorical. 
 
 He also thought, much and long, of Charmian 
 Ducane. Not for a moment did he attempt to dis- 
 guise from himself the thing that had happened to 
 him. It was just what had happened to millions of 
 other men, in fiction and in real life. He had found 
 out, after binding himself to a woman, that she was 
 not the one woman, and that someone else was. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 85 
 
 That other had been shapen and made for him from 
 the earliest dawn of life and time, and he loved her 
 to the remotest corner of his soul. But he was not 
 to have her. 
 
 Yes, it had certainly happened to millions: he 
 could believe that. What he could not believe 
 was that it had hurt any of the millions as it hurt 
 him. 
 
 Well, pain could be borne. But there was some- 
 thing worse. Truth and untruth, honour and dis- 
 honour, seemed to have changed places. Was it 
 not wrong, even wicked, that he should leave his 
 own woman, Charmian, and marry the other, the 
 good, noble, loving girl who yet was not created and 
 marked out for him from the world's beginning? 
 Almost adulterous that union looked to him — now. 
 . . . Had not he and Charmian lived before, been 
 married in some former existence? He had always 
 laughed at crystal-gazers and their kin, but if one 
 of them were to come to him now, and show him in 
 the depths of the magic ball strange pictures of a 
 life of long ago, when he and Charmian had been 
 bridegroom and bride, had travelled together, lived 
 in the same house for years and years, brought 
 up and married their children, grown old and died 
 together — why, he would have believed every bit of 
 it. He almost believed it now. Could a man have 
 such a sense of passionate right to a woman without 
 foundation for that right existing — somewhere, 
 somewhen? He found himself thinking of Char- 
 
86 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 mian's divorced husband as a man of the Middle 
 Ages might have thought of a robber-knight who 
 had carried away and imprisoned his lady. The 
 lady was freed: the robber had never had any right 
 to her: she had hated him, and gone with him all 
 unwillingly — in God's name, then, forget, and let 
 her come back to her home ! 
 
 But the gate of home was barred — something in 
 time and space had gone wrong, and she might not 
 enter any more. So she was out there all alone on 
 the open road, where cruel storms might break on 
 her unprotected head, and other robber-knights 
 might come riding by and carry her off again. And 
 he to whom she belonged of right could only look at 
 her across the bars- and turn away. She had called 
 to him (he knew well that Charmian loved him), 
 but he could not answer. 
 
 . . . Could he not? Was it really right to 
 spoil three lives instead of one? Down went the 
 balance with a clang on the side of expediency. 
 . . . Was there such a thing in the world as 
 honour? Up flew the scale and down on the other 
 side. What would any decent man say, if one asked 
 him? Why, of course he would say . . . but then, 
 the decent man would not know the circumstances: 
 he would think that this was an ordinary love- 
 affair, whereas . . . 
 
 Scott almost burst out laughing. Was not every- 
 body's especial love-affair unique? And had he not 
 supposed himself, a year ago, that the feeling he 
 
GUINEA GOLD 87 
 
 had for Janie was without parallel in the history of 
 humanity? 
 
 Then — this new love of his — was it something 
 that he would forget and make little of, some day? 
 
 No, by God, it was not. He had no reasons: he 
 could not have made a statement of his case, in 
 speech or in writing, worth twopence. He could not 
 find words to express or prove anything at all in 
 connection with the whole affair: it seemed to have 
 no more to do with words than music had to do with 
 the symbols of algebra — but this was — IT. This 
 made him understand what Antony felt for Cleo- 
 patra. This told him why Parnell had sold Ireland. 
 This made plain to him the excuses claimed by 
 seeming-virtuous wives and husbands when they 
 broke through the fences separating the Good from 
 the Bad, and fled hand in hand with their disgrace- 
 ful loves to obscurity. Why, if he, George Scott, 
 had met Charmian before her divorce, he could 
 have imagined himself smashing through that very 
 fence with small remorse, — if he had been free. 
 But now . . . 
 
 It seemed a much worse thing to desert Janie. It 
 seemed so bad, indeed, that he could not do it. 
 
 " And I would like to know," groaned Scott, 
 "where my ideas of decency have got to if I can 
 look at things in such a crooked way? " 
 
 " All the same," he said to himself, " crooked or 
 straight, it comes to the one thing — I can't be a 
 beast to Janie." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 He had something else to think of before long. 
 The lazy days were ended at last — the long, slow 
 crawl up the coast, the wait at the river-mouth, the 
 leisurely chunking up the river, the mornings and 
 afternoons when one lay on the deck of the Dragon- 
 Fly smoking and dreaming and watching the flights 
 of gargoyle-headed hornbills rise screaming out of 
 the reeds, or the rare red birds of paradise rocket 
 from tree to tree. Already the world of trains and 
 cities seemed almost incredibly remote, the very 
 ports of Papua itself dim, unsubstantial as mirages 
 seen and forgotten on a long desert journey. And 
 yet the real work lay all before them. 
 
 One morning, about eleven o'clock, the miners 
 began to get astir, packing their canvas " swags " 
 and shouting directions, in pidgin-English and in 
 scraps of many dialects, to their boys. The car- 
 riers themselves, who had spent the days of travel in 
 one long orgy of betel-chewing and Jew's-harp and 
 tin-whistle playing, began to collect their own ef- 
 fects, their beads and bits of dried fish and sticks of 
 sago, their shell armlets and . dog-tooth necklaces, 
 and Manchester cotton singlets. It was plain that 
 the landing-place was near. 
 
 &3 
 
GUINEA GOLD 89 
 
 In another half-hour the Dragon-Fly had stopped, 
 and a stream of excited Papuans was spilling over 
 her bulwarks on to the muddy river-bank, like ants 
 running on to a plate. Sacks, bags, and cases were 
 chucked ashore; owners jumped after them. The 
 launch began vomiting cargo to an incredible extent, 
 and the crowd of fresh carriers who had been wait- 
 ing for her arrival, encamped in a small clearing, 
 came forward with their sacks and poles to carry 
 the goods to the little split-log store just visible some 
 distance off. There was a dwelling-house beside the 
 store, — a mere hut piled together of miscellaneous 
 bush material, — and here, in company with the one 
 lonely white in charge of the store, the miners spent 
 the night, camping in their tents as before, and busy- 
 ing themselves all evening over the packing of their 
 goods in carrying-swags for the journey to the gold- 
 field, two days' march away. 
 
 By seven o'clock next morning the storekeeper 
 had his own boys — a crowd of thirty-nine naked 
 savages, marshalled by a wild-looking Kiwai in a 
 crownless hat and half a pair of trousers — away on 
 their march to the field. The miners spent the day 
 breaking open countless cases of their own, cov- 
 ering the muddy ground with small mountains of 
 tinned goods, — meat, fish, vegetables, fruit — with 
 mats of rice and sacks of flour, with oblong tins 
 of kerosene, sides of bacon in canvas, canisters of 
 tea, bottles of sauce wrapped in straw, matches, 
 tobacco, blankets, billy-cans. Scott took a hand in 
 
90 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the work and in the subsequent stowing away of 
 everything into small swags for the backs of the 
 carriers. Loads were light, no more than fifty 
 pounds was given to any man, and some had less. 
 It looked as though there were work ahead. Scott 
 was not sorry: he rather fancied his walking, and, 
 as the youngest man in the company, thought he 
 might be able to show them a thing or two. 
 
 But next morning, when they started, it took ex- 
 actly half a mile to dispose of that illusion — half 
 a mile of the Kikiramu track, which was not, as 
 some of the men assured him, by any means the 
 ,orst in the country. Scott would not have known it 
 was a track at all if he had not been told. When 
 you could see it, it was mostly a river-bed, with 
 the river in full possession, or else a ninety-foot 
 log, worn and slippery with rain, slung across some 
 precipitous gully at an alarming slope, and guiltless 
 of handrail. Sometimes it was a swamp of scarlet 
 clay, glutinous, holding, and half-knee high. Oc- 
 casionally it was a bit of " corduroy " logging, laid 
 in black slime and more than half-buried in it: as 
 soon as you got over this, you stopped to pick the 
 leeches out of your socks, and you did not bother to 
 wipe the trickles of blood off your boots, as you 
 knew there would be plenty more by and by. 
 When you were not staggering over the corduroy or 
 balancing with set teeth and throbbing heart across 
 one of those atrocious log bridges, or jumping from 
 rock to rock in the midst of a foaming rapid, you 
 
GUINEA GOLD 91 
 
 were climbing endlessly up a sort of purgatorial 
 staircase composed of roots and slippery clay, help- 
 ing yourself with your hands, lifting your feet to 
 the level of your waist at every step, and feeling, as 
 the relentless tramp went on and on, that you would 
 certainly die before the end of it, but that you would 
 rather die — much rather — than give in. 
 
 " Good God, what are they made of? " groaned 
 the u new chum " to himself. " This would be a 
 fair-to-middling pace on an ordinary road, in a 
 cool climate — whereas here ..." 
 
 It did not look as if they were going fast — they 
 seemed to be strolling — strolling up precipices, over 
 bridges made of half a dozen plaited creepers, 
 strolling from tip to tip of rocks buried in roaring 
 foam, strolling from bristling log to log, in a chaos 
 of felled trees — always in a temperature that set 
 every pore gaping wide, and kept it streaming — 
 just strolling. It was not the pace, but the unvary- 
 ing rate, that was killing. Scott got left a dozen 
 times, struggled up as often, got left again, and 
 kept the party waiting, but shut his teeth and stuck 
 to it. They did nine miles of this fearful country 
 between two o'clock and six, with the help of one 
 long downhill that came as near diving on land as 
 anything Scott had ever seen, and stopped at last in 
 what was evidently a favourite camping-place — a 
 brown clearing in the forest, walled in by cliffs of 
 vegetation so knitted together with orchids, creep- 
 ers, and the long Jacob's ladders of the lianas, that 
 
92 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 it seemed as if not even a snake could have wound 
 its way through. 
 
 The miners' small army of carriers were almost 
 all up as soon as the masters: some of them had 
 beaten the unloaded whites by half an hour. Tents 
 were got up and fires lighted with as much speed as 
 possible, for the afternoon rains, which had held 
 off amazingly so far, seemed now about to burst. 
 They did burst before supper was fairly over, and 
 the men finished their meal sitting almost in one 
 another's laps, inside the narrow shelter of the 
 canvas flies. All night the thunderous torrent 
 roared down, drowning every other sound; the 
 swollen Kikiramu seemed to run silently over its 
 rocky bed below; the carriers laughed and chattered 
 round their sheltered fire apparently in dumbshow. 
 When the camp had gone to rest, Scott slept but ill 
 on his sack-and-sapling couch. Something was op- 
 pressing him, he could scarce tell what . . . not the 
 thought of Charmian — that was just a dull pain that 
 he had learned to bear — it was something new. So 
 new in his experience that it seemed nameless. 
 
 He fell asleep at last with the weight still on his 
 mind; woke in the dead hour of the night, with the 
 last sparks of the camp-fires out, and the rain thun- 
 dering ceaselessly, and knew what it was. It was 
 the terror of the wilderness ! 
 
 "What a country! what a country! " he said to 
 himself, over and over, feeling all the time that it 
 was not the country, but something behind it: a 
 
GUINEA GOLD 93 
 
 giant, sinister, unfriendly power — a thing that the 
 little handful of whites in the country fought against, 
 as cavemen might have fought against " dragons of 
 the prime " with their little useless sticks and slings. 
 . . . Those awful ridges buried in knitted forest, 
 over which they had been creeping — the plunging 
 scarps and precipices — the torrential rivers, the 
 blue, far, unscalable mountain horns that looked at 
 him mockingly through rents in the choking forest 
 wall — what were they, ant-like little human crea- 
 tures, that they should dare to challenge such 
 powers? Here, in the interior of the last uncon- 
 quered territory of the world, life floated as pre- 
 cariously on the tossing surface of a thousand war- 
 ring forces as a shipwrecked swimmer floats on a 
 furious sea. Men were nothing, Nature — not 
 Mother Nature any longer, as in the lands of golden 
 fields and smiling hills, but " Nature red in tooth 
 and claw," was everything. . . . And it was out of 
 this appalling welter of unbroken primeval world 
 that he, and Dence, and Anderson, meant to rip the 
 secret of Cripps' gold — they three against the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 " Oh, Lord, I must go to sleep! " groaned Scott, 
 worrying his head down into the bundle of clothes 
 that served him for pillow^ " I'll never keep up 
 to-morrow." / 
 
 The rain thundered; the forest smelt fresh and 
 wet, through the opening of the fly. There was an 
 odour of something tropical and scented; there was 
 
94 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 an oozy whiff from the river, there was the acrid 
 breath of dying fires, and rising through all there 
 was the smell of the night itself that wanderers and 
 campers know. Scott, the man house-reared and 
 city-bred, lying there beneath the little shelter of 
 the fly, with the men of the wilderness sleeping by 
 his side, began to feel that this day and this night, 
 and the days and the nights that had gone by be- 
 fore, had been an initiation. Something in him had 
 changed since the Cora Lynn lurched out of Sama- 
 rai. Something that had been lost . . . how long 
 ago? Gods of the doors that close behind our birth, 
 how long? . . . was found. 
 
 The task ahead looked no less gigantic; but the 
 miners' phrase gathered meaning in the face of it. 
 
 " Yes — ■ one takes the chances/ " thought Scott. 
 
 And now the camp was all asleep. 
 
 The next day was a little better than the first. 
 Scott found himself keeping back the party not so 
 much, and suffering somewhat less than the utmost 
 extremity of physical agony himself. This was an 
 improvement; but the log bridges almost annihilated 
 it, for they were much worse on this section, and the 
 newcomer found himself obliged to get down and 
 cross them at an ignominious crawl, shutting his 
 eyes to the rocks and rapids far below — while the 
 miners went before and after him as lightly as tight- 
 rope dancers, smoking and talking as they crossed. 
 
 It dawned upon him to-day, in the midst of the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 95 
 
 eternal scrambling and sliding, wading and climbing, 
 that they were, and had been, passing through mag- 
 nificent scenery. The mad monsters at play, who 
 had apparently seized all those mountain ranges and 
 precipices and rivers, and beaten them up together 
 like smashed eggs in a bowl, had effected some com- 
 binations very wonderful and beautiful to see in the 
 process. There were bird-songs to be noted, too, 
 when labouring lungs and straining muscles allowed 
 one to pay attention. The loveliest birds, such as 
 the fiery Raggiana, the snow-white, golden-crested 
 cockatoos, the rare black velvet rifle-bird, only 
 squawked and scolded; but there were little tinkling 
 notes of infinite sweetness from unseen recesses of 
 the bush, and cheery fluting of the impudent pied 
 butcher-bird, and, best of all, the deep, bell-like toll 
 of the giant Gaura pigeon, Clara Butt among birds, 
 calling with a velvet voice from somewhere dim 
 and shadowy and far away. . . . 
 
 . . . But, after all, one had to keep up — and if 
 one listened or looked too much, one fell behind, 
 which was unbearable. Scott was well aware by this 
 time that these toughened pioneers could give him a 
 mile in every three, and more, that they were kindly 
 men who would grant him just as much law as he 
 asked for — when he asked it. Just for that reason 
 he asked none. He could not swallow a bit of 
 tinned meat or a fragment of biscuit at the midday 
 halt for lunch; he burned with thirst, but kept his 
 pannikin slung to his belt, scarce wet all day, know- 
 
96 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 ing that too much water is the end of all things on 
 a heavy march. And he kept up. 
 
 Near sundown someone said they were close upon 
 the field, and Scott said the heartiest prayer of 
 thanksgiving that had left his lips for many a day. 
 Just as he was calculating that they must be within 
 half an hour's walk, came the last insult of Nature 
 and New Guinea — a ridge like a wall, four hundred 
 feet high, with a rough log and liana ladder set upon 
 its face among the tangled trees that hung down and 
 out over the empty air. The heart of the " new 
 chum " died within him, but he set his face to the 
 wall and climbed himself blind. He could scarcely 
 see where he was, or stand upon his feet when he 
 reached the top. Dence had gone on; the rest were 
 invisible, far ahead. Only Anderson stood at the 
 top of the ridge, with one foot on the upward and 
 one on the downward slope — for it was no wider 
 than the roof of a house — holding a whiskey-bottle, 
 cork out. 
 
 " Take two or three swallows; it'll get you down 
 to the camp," he said. His manner was cold, but 
 there was approval in the hard green eyes; and 
 Scott, his ragged-out nervous system responding in- 
 stantly to the fiery drink, felt warmed in body and 
 mind. Absurdly glad, too, that he had pleased 
 Anderson. 
 
 They waited for a moment on the narrow spine of 
 the ridge, Anderson standing as still as a tree-trunk 
 and looking at something a long way off. The 
 
GUINEA GOLD 97 
 
 miners always seemed to be looking at something a 
 long way off. Scott, while he got back his strength, 
 and let the whiskey do its work, sat on a fallen log, 
 staring up and down, and wondering where the field 
 was; for he had heard you could see it from the top 
 of the ridge, and he was eager for the sight of that 
 wonderful and fateful thing, a goldfield. 
 
 Under the toes of his boots there were treetops 
 garlanded in wreathing cloud: below, more and 
 more treetops, veiling a tremendous gorge deep- 
 furred with forest that had shot up close and spindly 
 to reach the far-off light. At the bottom one could 
 hear an invisible river wrangling over rocks and 
 falls. Opposite, the wave of forest that swept 
 down to the river from the crest of the ridge gath- 
 ered itself again for a splendid rush up again into 
 the zenith of the sky. Beyond were green and 
 blue fragments of the crests of other incredible earth 
 waves — one could almost feel the colossal down- 
 ward rush and upward sweep of every billow. It 
 seemed as though the ridge on which one stood must 
 by and by swing loose and hurl its tossing forest 
 crest at the very sun in heaven. 
 
 An appalling landscape, if a lovely one. But. . . 
 where was the field? 
 
 Scott began to .understand. A few thin streams 
 of smoke rose up through the trees, here and there, 
 indicating camps and fires. In one spot there was 
 just so much bush cleared away as would allow one 
 to build two or three little brown huts; and there 
 
98 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 was a thin scratch of track leading down to the 
 clearing. This, no doubt, was the store and the 
 warden's office. For the miners it was clear that 
 they lived, like fish, groping about at the bottom of 
 the deep green sea of forest, a hundred feet re- 
 moved from the light of day. 
 
 " What a country! " he thought. 
 
 " Ready? " asked Anderson, turning his iron-bark 
 face and shaggy beard towards Scott. 
 
 Scott was not ready, for his limbs felt like lead, 
 and his internal organs were fighting each other for 
 place and space that seemed to have suddenly failed. 
 But he was up at once, and footing it down the 
 gorge, as gaily as he might. There was a sort of 
 staircase of rough logs here, and a handrail to hold 
 by — it was possible for a very, very tired man to 
 walk as if he were not tired at all. And here was 
 the store, after only a few minutes — a long, low 
 hut built of split slabs from the bush, with a wide 
 verandah and a rough bench set on the ground be- 
 neath, and a score or more of miners, raising a 
 shout as Anderson came down the log ladder. He 
 was a favourite, it seemed. 
 
 Some of them greeted Scott too, and Dence, who 
 was already rather above himself (having clearly 
 been sampling the goods of the store), called out 
 patronisingly, " Not too bad for a new chum." 
 
 That night the men slept in mosquito-netted rows 
 under the verandah roof, while the inevitable rain 
 poured down, and somebody's gramophone snarled 
 
GUINEA GOLD 99 
 
 tiny songs from a neighbouring hut. Scott felt at 
 peace. They were well on the way to fortune now — 
 to fortune and . . . 
 
 Janie? 
 
 Why, of course. What other possibility was 
 open — to Brutus, who was an honourable man? 
 
 " And so that's how you get gold? " 
 
 Anderson, standing in the bed of a river, shook 
 the last of the wet stones and gravel out of the 
 shallow tin basin he was holding. In the midst of 
 the round of white metal were one or two pinhead 
 specks of dull yellow. 
 
 " That's how you get it," he said. 
 
 Scott looked on, fascinated. Gold! The thing 
 you had to wring from other men, all the world 
 over — the thing you sold your liberty for, lied and 
 cheated for, maybe; worked for, six days through, 
 so that on the eve of the seventh day another man 
 might, grudgingly, hand you out two or three little 
 pieces of it — gold, here, before his eyes, dipped out 
 of the Kikiramu River — free! 
 , You hired your team of boys, you took up your 
 claim and worked it, you lifted tin dishes full of 
 gravel and clay out of the water and shook them. 
 And in your hand was gold. 
 
 Here, in the heart of New Guinea, the im- 
 memorial bargain of the world — so much liberty, 
 so much of the free winds and the stars and the seas, 
 so much of your own soul and your own hopes and 
 
ioo GUINEA GOLD 
 
 dreams against so much hard yellow metal, held no 
 longer. You paid with your body for what you got, 
 not with your soul. You were hard-worked and hun- 
 gry and thirsty, you held your life in your hand, you 
 faced dangers, and abandoned luxuries — but it was 
 at your own command. And the gold you won was 
 clean. There was none in the world so clean as 
 this. Other gold came soiled by a million hands, 
 bloodstained, tarnished with sweat and tears. This 
 at least was pure: no one had ever cheated, slaved, 
 or oppressed to get it. You had never seen 
 or thought of the dirt on all the other gold, 
 but you saw it now, because of the cleanness of 
 this. 
 
 Something of the kind passed through the new 
 chum's mind as he stood beside Anderson in the 
 welter of mud and water where the jolly Papuan 
 boys were working hard with pick and shovel. That 
 the gold had not been got without labour was clear 
 enough. This claim was Anderson's, lying vacant 
 under the nominal care of the warden for the last 
 few weeks, while the owner went to recruit boys. 
 What he had done here in the course of a few 
 months, with his own head and hands and some 
 dozen untrained Papuans, was almost incredible to 
 Scott. The claim looked like a railway in process 
 of making. The dense forest trees had been re- 
 moved, the ground, cut down into a fifty-foot hol- 
 low for near a quarter of a mile, so that a wooded 
 flat was transformed into a raw red cliff; hundreds 
 
GUINEA GOLD ioi 
 
 of tons of loose rock had been cleared away, and 
 strata of earth peeled off like the skins of an onion. 
 A fair-sized river had been coaxed down from its 
 course two miles away, by means of a long race and 
 several " flumes " or aqueducts, built bridge-wise 
 over intervening gullies. This river had been let 
 loose over the new cliff and the new valley, and now 
 ran down Anderson's claim, clearing away the over- 
 burden of earth that lay on the stratum of gold- 
 bearing " wash," and driving the gold, day by day, 
 into the " box " — a hollowed log lined with stones, 
 which was cleared out every week or so. You might 
 at any time wash a dish for yourself, and see how 
 much was probably draining into the box. This 
 was what Anderson had been doing. 
 
 They were to start in a day or two on their 
 prospecting trip; in the meantime, Anderson was 
 occupying some of his leisure in showing Scott over 
 a few of the nearer claims, including his own. This 
 he was just about to give over to a friend, as mining 
 law forbids a man to hold two claims, and the trip 
 would necessitate empty hands on the part of all 
 three prospectors. 
 
 The engineer Was fascinated; he had no idea that 
 gold-mining could be so interesting. He showered 
 questions upon Anderson, and picked up facts — as 
 the miner afterwards admitted, out of his pupil's 
 hearing — like a pigeon picking up peas. Scott's 
 intellect was a good tool finely handled; he was no 
 genius, but his mind went where he wanted it to go, 
 
102 
 
 and did what he required it to do. In the course of 
 that morning he learned more about gold-mining and 
 prospecting than many another would have learned 
 in a month. 
 
 Anderson, the iron-faced, the silent, began to like 
 him, and even to feel somewhat proud of his new 
 chum pupil. It was with a view of showing him off 
 that he took him down to another claim a mile or 
 two away, and introduced him to another miner — a 
 white anaemic creature with glittering eyes, who was 
 seated on a log overlooking the boys. 
 
 It seemed that his day's work was done, for he 
 rose as they came up and began shaking the clay off 
 his boots, tightening his loosened belt and pushing 
 down his hat on his head, while the boys, who were 
 doing something to the u box," straightened up at 
 his whistle and began to climb the bank. Down 
 here at the bottom of the river-gorge, stifled by 
 overhanging trees, one felt the heat oppressively; 
 the afternoon thunderstorm was banking up in the 
 north-west, purple and pewter-grey, and the witches' 
 dance of cloud-wreaths was beginning across the 
 dark green summits of the valley. It certainly 
 seemed time to go home. 
 
 "Going up to the store?" asked Anderson of 
 the white-faced man, who looked as if he had been 
 literally boiled in the steaming woods of the Ki- 
 kiramu, and boiled so long that he was quite over- 
 done. 
 
 " No," said the other, looking at Scott. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 103 
 
 " Been washing up, haven't you? " asked the lat- 
 ter. "What did you get?" 
 
 The white-faced man looked at him again and 
 replied — 
 
 " Did you ever hear how Tom Mackay grew so 
 fat?" (mentioning a publican well known in the 
 territory) . 
 
 11 No," replied Scott, rather bewildered. 
 
 " It was," said the miner, pausing at the turn-off 
 of another track, " by minding his own business." 
 
 He turned his back and disappeared down a dark 
 green tunnel of leafage lit with dangling orchid 
 blooms. 
 
 " I reckon I've got to do some talking to you," 
 observed Anderson at this juncture. " You'd bet- 
 ter understand that we don't ask each other ques- 
 tions like that. You're my partner, and I didn't 
 mind your asking me just now what I was getting 
 out of my claim, though it was no particular business 
 of yours anyway — but don't ask the men what 
 they're making, and, particularly, don't let a man 
 think you're spying about his wash-up. Do you 
 understand? " 
 
 " I do," said Scott, with a good temper that dis- 
 armed the other at once. " And now I'm going to 
 do some talking to you. Why hadn't you savvy 
 enough to see what he was wearing round his 
 waist? " 
 
 M Round his waist? " 
 
 " His belt was snakeskin — an unusually big 
 
104 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 python, if I may make a guess after being so short a 
 time in the country.'* 
 
 "Snakeskin?" Anderson was still puzzled. 
 
 " ' Where the big python killed our dog,' " quoted 
 Scott. " I'm no Sherlock Holmes — neither are you, 
 it seems — but that looks to me enough of a clue to 
 be worth an inquiry or so." 
 
 " My word! " A pause. " I'm going after him; 
 I'll see you at the store." 
 
 When the three partners met again that evening 
 round the log table that was fixed outside the store 
 building for meals, Anderson was wearing a snake- 
 skin belt, made from a very large python. 
 
 " I paid four weights for that," he remarked, 
 pointing it out. 
 
 Scott was about to say something, but Anderson 
 checked him with a glance. They were alone at the 
 table: privacy, however, was scarce compatible with 
 a split log wall behind, and a cook getting ready the 
 dinner within short onion-range of the human nose. 
 
 At the store kept on the field by the philanthropic 
 Carter and his wife (the latter absent for the mo- 
 ment) no one was charged anything for meals or 
 beds. True, meals were plain tin and biscuit for the 
 most part, and beds meant a yard or two of space 
 beneath the verandah wherein to pitch one's mos- 
 quito net. Also, the miners got most of their stores 
 there, and they drank " for the good of the house," 
 so that Carter's pickle-jars of coarse river-gold 
 waxed many between the runs of the launch; and 
 
GUINEA GOLD 105 
 
 Carter's castles in Spain, which were situated in the 
 Toorak quarter of Melbourne, grew wide and tall. 
 But, nevertheless, he was a good-natured old fel- 
 low, and liked to see his boarders enjoy themselves. 
 
 After dinner was over the three partners, at a sign 
 from Anderson, strolled away from the store and 
 up on to the great log staircase that led to the top 
 of the gully. In any other country the staircase 
 would have been regarded as a fine piece of difficult 
 road-making — it is not the easiest thing in the world 
 to make a way, practicable for heavily loaded car- 
 riers, and stable in a constant rainfall of several 
 feet per month, up a greasy clay slope of one in 
 three, through dense forests matted with under- 
 growth. But in the Country of the Impossible, im- 
 possible things have to be done every day. A hand- 
 ful of raw cannibals had made that track in a week 
 or two, and made it well. The miners topped it as 
 lightly as girls tripping in satin shoes up a ball- 
 room stairway. Near the summit there was a shady 
 bit where you could sit down on one of the cross- 
 way logs close to the big trees on the top of the 
 ridge and look away over the rolling sea of treetops 
 to the peeping blue crests of some unknown Ger- 
 man New Guinea range. 
 
 The three men got out their pipes and began to 
 smoke. Then Anderson spoke, looking at the far- 
 off fingers of lilac smoke that marked the camps in 
 the dense green of the " bush." 
 
106 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " You got it all right that time. Gabriel told me 
 about the belt. He bought the skin from Cripps' 
 cook-boy after he died. I didn't want to ask too 
 much about it, and Gabriel is a bit of a hatter any- 
 how — almost forgotten how to talk, he's been here 
 so long. But he did say something that's going to 
 be of use to us." 
 
 Anderson paused provokingly to draw at his pipe. 
 In the moment before he began to speak again the 
 two others saw brilliant and amazing visions, — little 
 parcels the size of your hat, sewn up in ship canvas 
 and monstrous heavy, like those the storekeeper had 
 in his safe — suites of state cabins on the P. & O. — 
 long grey motor-cars with glass wind-shields built 
 to do seventy an hour — horses in a string, clothed 
 and hooded and out for exercise on an empty heath, 
 under grey skies of the North — thousand-ton yachts 
 with clipper bows and mirrored saloons, and the 
 blue-and-biscuit coloured shores of Italian coasts, 
 and bays showing up through the satin-hung ports — 
 the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them 
 ... all to be wrenched out of this wilderness of 
 the Kikiramu bush. 
 
 " It seems," went on Anderson, " that the cook- 
 boy died too — he pegged out with dysentery not long 
 after he got down to the Kikiramu camp. But be- 
 fore that he'd sold the skin to Gabriel, and told 
 him where it was got." 
 
 Two eager faces were turned to Anderson. The 
 afternoon thunderstorm was coming up fast: it was 
 
GUINEA GOLD 107 
 
 nearly over the valley now, darkening the dark of 
 the treetops, blackening the shadowy wolf-throat 
 of the gorge. 
 
 The river, hidden far away below, talked thin 
 and clear through the threatening hush of the skies. 
 
 " He said," went on the miner, " that Cripps 
 killed the python on an island in a creek, where it 
 had been living in a hollow tree. Now, that must 
 have been a fair-sized island, and a big tree, I 
 reckon, for the python was an all-right big one. He 
 said, too, that Cripps and the boy had a big fight to 
 kill the brute, and that it smashed their dog up in 
 its coils like a bit of biscuit. That shows the other 
 boys weren't there — so they couldn't have told us 
 where the brute was killed. All we've got to go 
 on is that bit of description, but it may be worth 
 everything to us. I think our chances don't look too 
 bad. The two chaps we got on Ferguson can prob- 
 ably find the country he was working in, and once 
 we get so far we can locate the creek if we've any 
 luck at all. That was a lucky shot of yours, 
 Scott." 
 
 Scott's eyes were sparkling with pleasure, but 
 Dence looked more sober. 
 
 " It sounds all right, but this is a rotten bad 
 country for givin' you surprises," he remarked. 
 " However, we'll know before long. Scoot, you 
 fellows, if you want us to miss that storm: it's just 
 openin' its mouth." 
 
 It did open its mouth with a vengeance some two 
 
io8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 or three minutes later, but by that time the three 
 were under shelter in the verandah of the store, 
 after a flying dive down the giant stairway that 
 would have given points to Graham-White or the 
 Wright Brothers. There was nobody seated on the 
 rough log bench or lounging over the long table that 
 the store proprietor had made by the simple process 
 of leaving four young trees in their native earth and 
 nailing packing-case boards across the stumps. The 
 store building clung to the hip of the gorge like 
 a swallow's nest set on a wall: from one side of 
 the verandah Scott could throw the ashes out of his 
 pipe right into the young, salad-green foliage at the 
 top of a hundred-foot tree. In front the immense 
 drop-curtain of dark forest that shut off a full third 
 of the sky was swiftly disappearing behind a curdled 
 flood of mist. Before the men had shaken off the 
 stray drops of rain from their hats and faces the 
 landscape had been spirited away, and the store, like 
 some new Noah's ark, was set afloat upon a track- 
 less sea, islanded only by the tops of the highest 
 trees. 
 
 They stood looking down at the driven breakers 
 of mist and at the snapping sheets of lightning that 
 leaped between almost ceaseless stamps and thump- 
 ings of thunder. And in the mist they saw — what 
 the men of Phoenicia saw when they set their high- 
 beaked ships for unknown Africa — what Cortez and 
 his steel-breasted soldiers saw when they fought 
 through Mexico in search of the Land of Gold long 
 
GUINEA GOLD 109 
 
 ago : what the men who made West Australia saw, 
 in the drought-smitten nineties, when they tramped 
 across the fiery plains strewn white with skeletons of 
 horse and man, to the deserts and gullies that bore 
 
 "Death in their hands, but gold!" 
 
 " If we don't get off to-morrow," said the ' new 
 chum/ " will you let me go down and work your 
 claim for a day? " 
 
 " I reckon we shan't get off," answered Ander- 
 son. " One or two of the boys seem to need a spell. 
 Yes, of course you can : I'll make you a present of all 
 you get — it won't be much." 
 
 " I don't care whether it's much or little," de- 
 clared Scott, his boyish face lighting up with a 
 certain hard eagerness, " and I don't want to keep 
 it — but I feel as if I must go and handle it some 
 more — wash out the dirt, and see the little yellow 
 specks at the bottom, and put them together. . . . 
 This gold-digging's a queer thing — it gets hold of 
 you, somehow." 
 
 " A few other men before you have noticed that," 
 observed Anderson dryly. 
 
 " The little yellow specks! Don't say I didn't 
 warn you against them," put in Dence. " There's 
 nothing like them for getting hold of you, body and 
 soul ! Whiskey isn't in it. A girl isn't in it — even 
 if she is a lovely little " 
 
no GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " What? " said Scott, turning round sharply. 
 
 " A lovely little lassie in the North of Ireland," 
 finished Dence, with something that Scott described 
 to himself as " a rather three-cornered look." " Or 
 a dozen — I'm sure you left quite a dozen of the 
 braw Antrim leddies crying into their Robins and 
 Beaver linen handkerchiefs on the Fleetwood boat 
 quay — agh, man dear, sure ye did!" 
 
 " I don't care for that sort of joke very much," 
 said Scott patiently. 
 
 " Then I'll change the conversation to something 
 altogether different. Do you know that there's a 
 mail going out to-morrow? The R.M. is sending 
 down boys to the landing to meet the Dragon-Fly 
 before she goes back." 
 
 "A mail to Samarai?" said Scott, and could 
 have bitten his tongue out immediately after. 
 
 " To everywhere, via Samarai," answered Dence, 
 the three-cornered expression just a little more vis- 
 ible than before. 
 
 " Then I'll see about getting some letters ready, 
 if there's pen and ink to be had here," said Scott. 
 
 But, somehow or other, after he had directed and 
 stamped the pencilled letter to Janie that had been 
 growing at odd moments all the journey through, he 
 did not feel like finishing his correspondence. How 
 could you write letters that . . . letters which . . . 
 well, anyhow, important letters — sitting at a log 
 table on an open verandah, with stray miners pass- 
 ing in and out of the store every now and then? Be- 
 
GUINEA GOLD in 
 
 sides, there was too much noise. When people had 
 gone to bed . . . 
 
 By eleven o'clock lights were out, and mosquito 
 nets up all along the verandah. The Kikiramu, 
 swollen with rain, sent up a leaden rumble from the 
 bottom of the gorge. The mopokes wailed like 
 homeless ghosts away in the blackness of the bush. 
 There was no moon; the rain poured in the 
 dark. 
 
 Scott slipped out of his bunk, pyjama-clad, and lit 
 a hurricane-lamp. No one was in the store, and the 
 big counter made an excellent writing-table. He 
 covered several sheets of paper, writing without a 
 pause, closed, stamped, and directed the envelope, 
 and put it in the box left for mails. 
 
 When he crept back to his bunk he did not sleep, 
 but lay thinking for a long time. 
 
 " I'm glad I wrote," he decided. " She will feel 
 she has a friend. ' Anything I can do, at any time — 
 call me — send for me ' — yes, that was the right 
 way to put it. If we make a lot out of this dis- 
 covery — why, if one has money enough, and will 
 enough, one can do almost anything — without people 
 finding out. And she'll want help — little Charmian ! 
 the little bird that should have lived in a safe, quiet 
 nest . . . she'll never make it, all alone. ..." 
 
 For he knew what Charmian did not, that even 
 the small foothold she had secured, in her uncon- 
 genial work as barmaid, was tottering beneath her 
 feet. Figg had been repenting his generosity in 
 
ii2 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 engaging her, for some time, and had not scrupled 
 to say so. It was true that she was pretty, but that 
 didn't do much good to his bar, when she was so 
 shy and stuck up that hardly a man dared to speak 
 to her, — why, she was enough to frighten away his 
 custom into Bunn's! A bouncing North Queens- 
 land girl, who would joke and laugh, and take her 
 share of drink, for the good of the house — that 
 would have been a dozen times better. 
 
 Mother Figg, for the moment, was holding out 
 in favour of Charmian: she was, as has been ex- 
 plained, a thoroughly good-natured woman, and felt 
 sorry for the innocent little waif. How long her 
 good nature would continue to hold out against a 
 diminishing tale of receipts was another matter, 
 however. . . . Yes, Scott felt glad he had sent the 
 letter — though he was not certain, now he thought 
 it over, that he had not worded it a little — perhaps 
 a good deal — more warmly than was fair — to the 
 other. 
 
 But even if he had she would never see it: and, 
 Heaven knew, he had meant no disloyalty. 
 
 Next morning the rain was over, and the river 
 had run itself down a good deal. Anderson pro- 
 nounced his claim quite fit to work, if Scott really 
 wanted to try his hand, and told the newcomer what 
 to do — to take one or two of the boys, and set them 
 to work shifting the big stones in the creek, so as 
 to leave the " wash " free: to see the boys loosen it 
 
GUINEA GOLD 113 
 
 up with their picks, and spade the gravel that car- 
 ried the gold into the current that led through the 
 " box " : later in the day, to lift the big stones out 
 of the hollow tree-trunk through which the water 
 ran, gather up all the small stones, gravel, and 
 clayey stuff at the bottom by degrees, and wash it 
 out in the prospecting dish over a still pool. What- 
 ever he got he might keep, Anderson insisted, with 
 the miner's generosity: and Scott agreed, for the 
 excitement of the hunt had got him, and he ached 
 to finger gold of his very own, found by himself. 
 In any case, Anderson meant to dispose of the 
 claim before leaving the Kikiramu; so all that was 
 got was saved from some unknown successor. 
 
 He did not return all day. It grew very hot : the 
 treetops in the gorge rose up still as spires in the 
 windless noon: the distant peaks of the German 
 ranges rumbled coming thunder. Anderson was 
 quietly busy, tallying stores with Carter and over- 
 looking the painted canvas swags for leaks or tears: 
 answering questions now and then, as other men 
 drifted into the store, and asked him about his pros- 
 pecting trip. He was very quiet, very unembar- 
 rassed i quite ready to discuss the journey with any- 
 one who wanted, but not much interested in it or 
 anything else. The miners " reckoned " he did not 
 expect very much from the trip, but thought it bet- 
 ter business than working on a rather poor claim in 
 the unprosperous Kikiramu. Dence was drinking 
 more than was good for him, and seemed inclined 
 
ii 4 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 to be quarrelsome: one would almost have thought 
 he had something on his mind. 
 
 Dinner passed over: it was rather a good dinner, 
 considering the poor materials, and the few miners 
 who had dropped in, after the casual fashion of 
 the Kikiramu, remarked on the cooking. Carter, a 
 nebulous little person, all beard and hat, who was 
 supposed scarcely to know his own name, unless his 
 wife were there to tell it to him, murmured some- 
 thing about a cook: new fellow just come up from 
 Samarai: lazy brute who slept in the cookhouse all 
 the time he wasn't getting meals, but was well worth 
 his tucker and screw, because he could do more with 
 a tin of " dog " and a handful or so of flour than 
 most men could. Hadn't wanted a cook, but had 
 to take him when he came along the other day, be- 
 cause the fellow was " stony," and had scarce a 
 pair of boots to his feet, and anyhow, there was no 
 harm in him. Seemed he meant to start prospecting 
 when he had got enough to hire a few boys. More 
 fool he: the Kikiramu 'was nearly about done. 
 Thus Carter, mumbling in his beard, and not listened 
 to — no one ever listened to Carter, his wife least 
 of all. 
 
 It grew to afternoon: the rain came up roaring, 
 fell, and passed, leaving a pleasant freshness in the 
 stifling valley. The sun got behind the crest of the 
 giant forest billow above the store, sent out mag- 
 nificent rays of gold and thunder-blue through the 
 treetops, and disappeared. The German peaks were 
 
GUINEA GOLD 115 
 
 yet in full day, but darkness was coming very fast 
 down in the gorge where the Kikiramu ran. 
 
 Not till the rising flood of night lay deep on stone 
 and stream and washed about the higher reaches of 
 the great log staircase on the cliff did Scott return 
 from his work. The boys trailed after him, hungry 
 and tired. They had had their usual " spell " and 
 food, but the Taubada (chief) had taken neither, 
 and had driven them all day as the mule-drivers 
 drove the mules that carried from Port Moresby to 
 the ranges of the Astrolabe. There was no sense 
 in the thing, for they were not on good gold — no 
 one knows better than a trained mine labourer just 
 what his master is getting — and there was therefore 
 no precedent for frenzied working, such as the 
 older boys had seen and joined in, time and again, 
 with willing hands, when Jimmy So-and-so, or Bobby 
 The-Other, had struck it rich, and was taking more 
 out of a few yards in a day than half a dozen other 
 claims were producing in a week. 
 
 If the boys were tired, however, Scott, who had 
 been working harder than any of them all day, 
 looked quite fresh. He was unspeakably dirty, but 
 that seemed to trouble him not at all — though as a 
 general rule he was somewhat of a dandy about his 
 clothes, and always eager for a clean up when he 
 had had a dirty job to do. Now, he came into the 
 store, dripping clay and water all over the dry 
 earthen floor, and, leaning on the bar, flung down 
 an exceedingly unclean pocket-handkerchief tied into 
 
n6 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 a knot in the middle. Undoing the knot, he spilled 
 the contents into his dirty palm, and held it out to 
 Anderson. 
 
 " How much is that? " he said eagerly. 
 
 Anderson put the few flakes and grains of dull 
 gold into the store-keeper's scales. 
 
 " Just on fifteen weights," he said. u Not too 
 bad for a beginner. I dare say you let as much get 
 away down stream." 
 
 " That's two pounds sixteen shillings," com- 
 mented Scott, gazing at the gold hungrily. " It's 
 an awfully rum thing, but, do you know, I feel as 
 if I'd never got any gold that was really mine be- 
 fore." 
 
 He took the grains back into his hand and caressed 
 them. 
 
 " It is — fascinating," he said. 
 
 Dence, somewhat " flown with insolence and 
 wine," strolled into the bar from his lounging-seat 
 on the verandah. That dimly perceptible aura of 
 long-ago London — London of hansom-cabs and vic- 
 torias, of camellia buttonholes, of the early days of 
 Gilbertian comic opera — clung close about him to- 
 day: and the phantom single eyeglass was almost 
 plain to see. He pulled his drooping yellow mous- 
 tache with one hand and surveyed the curious little 
 scene before him. Scott, curled over his gold like a 
 cat with its kitten, did not notice him. 
 
 " The mail is gone," said Dence, his English 
 drawl a little more marked than usual. " Carriers 
 
GUINEA GOLD 117 
 
 got away early; they'll catch the Dragon-Fly to- 
 morrow, and the letters will get to Samarai in time 
 for the Matungcts down trip." 
 
 " Eh? " said Scott absently, stroking a flake with 
 his finger-tip. 
 
 " The mail's away." 
 
 " What mail?" 
 
 Dence laughed — unpleasantly — and moved out 
 again. Scott looked up with the expression of one 
 who awakes. 
 
 " Oh — the mail — of course ! " he said. 
 
 Anderson, busy with swags and tins, cast a glance 
 of his imperturbable green eyes in the direction of 
 the two. You could not have told what he thought. 
 You never could tell what Anderson thought. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Green forest was round them, dark green forest 
 always. Green forest was over them, a hundred 
 feet above their heads. They saw green forest 
 wave on wave, when they halted half a day on the 
 crest of a hill to fell a lookout, and find where 
 they might be. When the forest was far away it 
 looked purple; very far away it looked pale blue. 
 It reared itself up towards the sun-bleached sky 
 sometimes, on the necks of the shouldering ranges, 
 three, and five, and eight, and ten thousand feet: 
 it flowed down again, smooth and deep, over 
 straight-falling precipices and gigantic foothill 
 stairs, into unsounded depths of river gorges. And 
 at the bottom of the forest sea the explorers strug- 
 gled on, day by day, towards the creek, and the 
 island, and the gold. 
 
 " Go up the Iri first of all," had been Anderson's 
 decision. The Iri, one of many rivers unmarked on 
 any map, and only known some ten or fifteen miles 
 back from the mouth, had always been considered a 
 " likely " stream by the miners of the Kikiramu 
 country. Cripps had certainly started up that river 
 when he left the field on the last journey of his 
 chequered life. After striking the Iri, Anderson 
 
 118 
 
GUINEA GOLD 119 
 
 said they would find out from the boys what creeks 
 or branches Cripps had followed. On one of these 
 creeks — impossible to guess where — there would be 
 an island with a big hollow tree: and from that 
 island they would begin the tracing out of the prob- 
 lem indicated by the letter. Scott, new to the work, 
 and as eager to " fling his heart before him " here, 
 in the Papuan bush, as he had been long ago when 
 steering a four-year-old across stiff country behind 
 the Killultagh Harriers, wanted to map out the 
 whole plan of campaign in the evenings after sup- 
 per, while the three white men sat under their nar- 
 row fly, smoking and sheltering from the steamy 
 rain. But Anderson, who knew better than he the 
 risk of getting a fixed idea on the brain, in these 
 formidable solitudes, declined to go into the matter 
 at all, beyond what was necessary from day to day. 
 They had to find the creek and the island first, he 
 said. They had better take things easy, and not 
 worry. 
 
 In truth, as the days went on, the high-strung 
 Celt, with his nervous pluck, and that other, whose 
 brain was eaten into at the finest points by the 
 nibbling caterpillar of drink, felt more and more 
 strongly the advantage of journeying under the 
 guidance of such a man as Anderson. For him 
 " the hardest work was never too hard, or the 
 longest day too long." He was never anxious, never 
 discouraged. His iron-bark face never showed an- 
 noyance or fear: to the latter, indeed, he was as 
 
120 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 nearly insensible as a human being could be. There 
 was one hideous day when the little expedition, im- 
 prisoned in a deep stone-walled gorge they had been 
 following for some days, found themselves likely to 
 be caught like sewer rats in a drain by a thunder- 
 storm that was threatening above their heads. If it 
 came and got them there — there, where they had 
 to climb and leap down the centre of the river on the 
 tops of the boulders, because there was not footing 
 for a fly anywhere near the edge — not one of the 
 party would live half an hour. Scott knew this as 
 well as the others, for he had seen the mountain 
 rivers of Papua rise after rain, and knew what they 
 could do when confined to a natural race like this 
 gorge of beetling stone. In such a place the rapids 
 raised by a sudden flood might be heard half a mile 
 away, like the roar of countless railway trains all 
 approaching one junction together. . . . You would 
 not hear another sound, even if four-and-thirty 
 human beings, caught in a trap, were being beaten 
 to death among those cruel rocks. . . . 
 
 That afternoon the expedition walked in the 
 shadow of near and ugly death from two o'clock 
 till six. The roll of distant thunder from the ranges 
 sounded in their ears like the turning of the hinges 
 on Eternity's opening gates. A flash of lightning 
 stabbed as if it had struck. A drop of rain falling 
 on a man's hand came heavy as coffin-lead. For, if 
 the clouds once broke, and still there were no way 
 up and out, twenty brief minutes would see the end. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 121 
 
 The poor black boys, heavy laden with their 
 swags, scrambled along at top speed, frightened, 
 yet not realising all the danger. Dence made little 
 jokes now and then about " old Peter " looking 
 out for them at the gate, and about the white night- 
 dresses and spiky crowns they would have to try 
 and sleep in that night. Scott, sickeningly reluctant 
 to die, could do nothing but hold his tongue and get 
 along over the stones, his whole being aflame against 
 the relentless powers that were threatening to blot 
 him out, here and now, without the gold, without 
 the woman, without anything at all but a black cold 
 vacancy into which he scarcely dared to look — alone. 
 And Anderson 
 
 Anderson kept the party at the highest pace it 
 could make, slacking when necessary, pressing on as 
 he saw the boys and the white men could stand it. 
 He watched the sky, and he watched the beetling 
 walls of the gorge. He climbed those walls again 
 and again, and again and again fell back, beaten, 
 bleeding, but not discouraged. Dence was swag- 
 gering in the face of death, Scott, in his heart, was 
 cursing, but Anderson was just as he was when 
 checking goods in Carter's store, or overseeing the 
 clearing of their track. He had something to do, 
 and was doing it. He would go on doing it till 
 there was no more to be done. 
 
 And Scott, through all the struggling, and the 
 exhaustion, and the smothering heat, and the grow- 
 ing dark — dark that might never lift to dawn for 
 
122 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 them — saw, and wondered at, the soul of a man 
 who knew not fear. 
 
 They escaped. When the rain had actually 
 broken, and the ominous talk of the river about 
 their feet was rising to a rattling snarl, one of the 
 mountain boys pointed out a crack in the side of the 
 cliff. Anderson was into it and swarming up like 
 a chimney-sweep in a chimney before the boy had 
 finished speaking. There was a moment of suffocat- 
 ing suspense, and then — 
 
 " Sling me a line,'' called Anderson above the 
 gathering death-roar of the river. " You can all 
 get a start up the cliff if I haul." 
 
 Dence was very gay in the camp that night, up 
 on the crest of the cliff, with the flooded river 
 thundering below. He sang comic songs, and was 
 imitative, and witty, and rather profane. Scott felt 
 tired enough to sink through his canvas bunk into 
 the ground beneath : his store of nervous force was 
 an emptied cistern, run dry by the strain of the day. 
 Anderson sewed rough patches on his clothes, and 
 made a few remarks about the favourite for the 
 Melbourne Cup. The afternoon was over: he was 
 not thinking about it at all. 
 
 "When are we going to strike the In?" asked 
 Scott. 
 
 There was — for once — something of a view this 
 
GUINEA GOLD 123 
 
 morning. They had camped on the top of one of 
 the usual knife-edge ridges, just where the fall of a 
 huge cottonwood had cleared away a canon of forest. 
 There, one could look out and away, over the bil- 
 lowing world of treetops, coloured dainty emerald 
 green in the six o'clock sun, and creased here and 
 there, deeply and softly as an arm creases at the 
 elbow, to show where the unseen river valleys ran. 
 One could see the royal purple of the five-thousand- 
 foot peaks, with the mists of day just beginning to 
 gather in bridal veils of cloud about their heads, 
 and ' one could glimpse, very far away, the chal- 
 cedony blue of mighty unknown crests, Dianas of 
 the mountain world, ever desired, and ever un- 
 won. 
 
 It was a magnificent view. But when you have 
 spent a week or two in learning the inner meaning of 
 magnificent views, considered not as landscape, but 
 as routes of travel, you are likely to look upon the 
 most beautiful of scenery with a somewhat callous 
 eye. The three white men only saw that the coun- 
 try ahead was " the same old thing," and Scott, at 
 least, sighed a little. 
 
 Half a dozen of the boys, who had been looking 
 anxiously (in a direction many points removed from 
 the right one) for a glimpse of the sea that would 
 take them back to their island homes, created a 
 diversion by flinging themselves upon the ground 
 and weeping bitterly. 
 
 " We-fellow never go back some time no more," 
 
124 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 wailed the biggest, a sturdy little savage with a mop 
 of hair as big as a sofa-cushion. " Altogether we- 
 fellow finish along this place. No good this place." 
 He howled like a dog. 
 
 " Oh, stop your confounded row!" said Dence. 
 They had all been hoping to get a sight of the Iri 
 from this point, and everyone was feeling the dis- 
 appointment too much to have any sympathy with 
 this Papuan Mrs. Gummidge, who persisted in 
 " feeling it more." 
 
 " I don't know," said Anderson in reply to Scott's 
 question. " This is all untrodden country, and no- 
 body knows exactly how the Iri runs: we can only 
 guess at the way it ought to. We're far enough 
 up country now to strike the upper waters, if we 
 could find it — you know, there's no looking for gold 
 on the lower waters of a river." 
 
 " What are you going to do? " 
 
 u Strike west of this, I reckon. By the lie of 
 those hills there should be a big river somewhere 
 near the horizon. We might hit it in a couple of 
 days." 
 
 "Or mightn't?" 
 
 " Or mightn't. We'd better, though. The tucker 
 won't last forever." 
 
 11 Well," said Scott, after a minute's pause, " ex- 
 ploring is interesting enough — and exciting — but it 
 isn't at all like what one fancied." 
 
 " I know what you fancied," observed Dence. 
 u You were to start in the early morn, with the dew- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 125 
 
 drops twinklin' on the grass, and step out gaily over 
 a palmy plain, carryin' your trusty shot-gun, and 
 singin' as you went. You'd camp for lunch beside 
 a boundin' brook " 
 
 " They bound all right," put in Anderson dryly. 
 
 11 Don't interrupt my beautiful English — beside a 
 boundin' brook, where you'd light a fire and roast 
 the deer and the bears and the wild boars you'd shot 
 as you came along. In the evenin', beside the glow- 
 in' camp-fire, song and story and jest " 
 
 " Oh, shut it, Dence, I'm not a new chum now, 
 and I never was such an idiot as you make out. But 
 it's true enough that I didn't realise the food diffi- 
 culty. It seems that every expedition splits on that 
 rock." 
 
 " Sooner or later — the idea is to make it as late 
 as possible," said Anderson. " I suppose it's about 
 the hungriest country in the world. You get a pig 
 or a wallaby once in a blue moon, and as to food 
 from the natives, it's like what the Frenchman at sea 
 said when they asked him if he'd had his breakfast 
 — ' Quite the contrary.' " 
 
 " Yes, I rather guessed what they meant when 
 they pinched our arms and legs at that little village 
 the other day," agreed Scott. " And small as it 
 was, it was the only one we've seen. This is a God- 
 forsaken place." 
 
 " As to God-forsaken, I won't argue," said An- 
 derson. " But as to men — there are probably a 
 good many more than we've any idea of." 
 
126 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Do you mean they're stalking us? " asked Scott, 
 with a queer little adventurous feeling stealing 
 through him. 
 
 " I wouldn't worry about that. Look here, do 
 you see where the country seems to take a bit of a 
 lean down towards the west? That's where we're 
 going to head for now. Time we got off. Dence, 
 don't loaf, it's your job to see the tents struck, and 
 you oughtn't to want telling. You hurry up and 
 help me with the carriers, Scott: get a move on you. 
 I believe we'll have the rain early to-day." 
 
 The party took up the hand-to-hand fight with 
 nature once more, at the point where it had been 
 abandoned last night. . . . All day scrambling up 
 and plunging down: edging along impossible gorges 
 where indignant white cockatoos skimmed and 
 shrieked through blue vacancy, below the toes of 
 your rusty, string-laced boots : climbing down where 
 you never could get up, and up where you certainly 
 never could get down again: creeping, half a mile 
 an hour, behind the boys and their slashing knives, 
 through dense green jungle where the sunlight 
 dripped down like starshine into a well; seeing your 
 hands wrinkle up like a washerwoman's with the 
 ceaseless soak of perspiration, and watching the 
 other men's shirts stick in black patches to their 
 back and arms: smelling the forest smell of wet 
 earth and sopping mosses, and hearing — when the 
 party halted for a moment to bring some straggler 
 
GUINEA GOLD 127 
 
 into line — the aloof, unfriendly murmur of the giant 
 trees that shut away the day, and the treacherous 
 low-voiced talk of baffling rivers that struck up 
 hands of prohibition across your track, a dozen 
 times in a morning. . . . 
 
 Yet withal, to-day was not quite as yesterday. 
 The brooding sense of solitude was gone. 
 
 One listened for cracking sticks in the forest. 
 One saw shadows that moved . . . did they not? 
 ... in the dark where the river walls curved in, 
 behind the many waterfalls. One fancied the birds, 
 that rose screaming out of glades as deep and green 
 as the midmost Coral Seas, had been frightened 
 ... by what? 
 
 When one halted for lunch, one sat on a fallen 
 log, eating one's measured ration of tin and biscuit, 
 with an odd feeling about one's shoulder-blades — 
 a feeling that made one want to look round — at 
 nothing — and reflect, without any apparent reason, 
 that a brick wall was a comfortable thing to lean 
 against ... if one had it. 
 
 And when the tiring hour of three o'clock came 
 round, that hour that tests endurance and spirit, for 
 men on the march, as surely as Wellington's three- 
 o'clock-in-the-morning tests military courage, one 
 felt, as always, that sundown, supper, and sleep were 
 as far away as Paris or St. Petersburg: and one 
 felt, too, that something else — something intangible, 
 a brooding weight upon the heavy air, a shade upon 
 
128 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the shadow of the eternal forests — was . . . not 
 so very far away. 
 
 About four o'clock, as they were creeping in In- 
 dian file up the face of a deeply-wooded slope, some- 
 thing happened. An arrow out of nowhere in par- 
 ticular (who could tell, in that chaos of jungle?) 
 went past Dence's shoulder with a kind of low 
 whoop, and plunged a foot and a half into the earth 
 of the rise. Another skimmed so close to Scott's 
 head that he was not sure whether he had been hit 
 or not, until he saw the weapon quivering in the 
 trunk of a tree. It went deep into the solid wood. 
 . . . One could not help thinking, in a swift, un- 
 pleasant " aside," that the human body was a mushy 
 sort of thing at best. Soft tearable skin, pulpy 
 internal organs, that a chance prick would disable — 
 what an unsatisfactory fragile engine wherewith to 
 confront the — there it went again ! just missed the 
 head boy, and set the others howling ! Was anyone 
 hit? 
 
 " Put down your swags, and get your rifles ready," 
 said Anderson to the boys, in exactly the same tone 
 that he used when ordering them to halt for lunch. 
 The boys, chattering with excitement, obeyed. The 
 white men had already shouldered their arms. They 
 were all facing the same way — across the track — it 
 seemed that Anderson, at least, knew whence the 
 arrows were coming. Scott caught a glimpse of 
 Dence's face, and scarcely knew it: it was suddenly 
 younger, and the blue eyes glittered. He saw his 
 
GUINEA GOLD 129 
 
 own left hand extended along the rifle barrel, and 
 felt the cool steel of the trigger against the middle 
 finger of the right. 
 
 " Look out. Now then, fire into the bush ! " said 
 Anderson, firing himself as he spoke. 
 
 The boys had been drilled now and then through- 
 out the trip, but their excitement got the better of 
 them now, and a good many shots flew up into the 
 tops of the trees — some went perilously near the 
 whites. Anderson, Dence and Scott aimed for the 
 thickest part of the forest, and shot straight into it. 
 
 The smoke cleared away. The chorus of bird- 
 screams died. Silence, a hundred times more still 
 than the virgin quiet of the forest undisturbed by 
 man, fell upon the bush and track. Then, from far 
 away in the gloomy green, a cry rose. It lifted and 
 lifted, thin and sharp-edged. It sank, full of pro- 
 test, rattled and broke. And Scott, who had seen 
 men die, but never heard one before, knew, never- 
 theless, that in the seconds of that cry, the green 
 forest, and the sun, and the good days and nights of 
 warm, familiar earth had dropped away, for one 
 poor Papuan soul, into the dark. 
 
 11 That's enough," said Anderson, lowering his 
 rifle. He opened the breech, and replaced the 
 cartridge just fired. The boys dropped their guns, 
 and fell into line again. Dence, with that sparkle 
 still on his face, ranged up to the other men. 
 
 " I believe I bagged the bird," he said. " That 
 cry came from the very place I aimed at." 
 
130 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " I'm glad I didn't," said Scott, a sense of relief 
 passing over him like a breath of cool air. He felt — 
 not exactly sorry, not shocked, but just a little sea- 
 sick. Anderson threw a glance at him. 
 
 " It has to be done," he said, and started the 
 column again. 
 
 One of the boys, an Orokiva, was so delighted 
 with the little brush, that he could not be got on for 
 a minute or two; he seemed to have gone " kava- 
 kava " for the moment, and stood and danced in the 
 pathway, singing a war-chant. 
 
 " Stir that beggar up with a stick, Dence, and 
 let's go on," called Anderson from the head of the 
 column. 
 
 " Hold on a bit," said Dence. u He's singin' a 
 very rummy sort of song, this Johnnie, and I want 
 to hear what it is. I know some Orokiva." 
 
 " Oh, you know every lingo in the country, 1 
 reckon," said Anderson, " but this isn't a time for 
 studying philology. Get him on." 
 
 "•You wait," persisted Dence. 
 
 The boy finished his song, came down to earth 
 again, and promptly demanded tobacco. Dence, as 
 promptly, poked him in the back with his rifle, and 
 started him into the column. 
 
 " Got the artistic temperament bad, that chappie," 
 he observed. " Always wants refreshment after 
 expressin' itself, the artistic temperament does. 
 Prima-donna needs Perrier-Jouet in her dressin'- 
 room, painter and his model have a can of beer 
 
GUINEA GOLD 131 
 
 from round the corner, I want half a dozen drinks 
 of any sort you like, when I've been more than com- 
 monly eloquent and amusin'. And this Papuan 
 Johnnie wants tobacco, after doin' his little 
 bit." 
 
 14 You're talking too much," said Anderson, with 
 pioneer simplicity. 
 
 44 I'll talk more by and by," answered Dence, fall- 
 ing silent. Scott thought his behaviour rather odd, 
 but there was plenty to think about just then, with 
 the pace that Anderson chose to set through the 
 jungle, and the impression did not remain long upon 
 his mind. 
 
 No one said much about the attack; it seemed to 
 be a matter of small importance to the two old 
 hands, once it was over, and Scott himself was as- 
 tonished to find how little it had really impressed 
 him, beyond the immediate horror of that dying 
 cry. They halted to cut a small lookout, by and by : 
 and Anderson informed them that the Iri was not 
 very far away. Nothing whatever was to be seen 
 but the usual ocean of treetops, but the trend of the 
 various slopes seemed to have conveyed something 
 to the eye of the trained bushman, that Scott was 
 powerless to understand. 
 
 44 There's a big sago swamp down there," said 
 Anderson, pointing to a slight variation in the tex- 
 ture of the forest at one spot a good way off. " If 
 we can make that before sundown, we'll camp near 
 it. We shall have to start crossing it early to- 
 
i 3 2 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 morrow : one had better not get stuck in a swamp in 
 the dark." 
 
 " Might get drowned, I suppose?" asked Scott. 
 
 " I don't think you'd get drowned," was Ander- 
 son's reply. " Go on, boys." 
 
 At sundown they were near the swamp, and there 
 was fair camping-ground available, also water. 
 After supper, pickets were chosen from among the 
 boys, and Anderson told the white men that they 
 also would keep watch and watch through the night. 
 He did not expect any attack, he said, but in this 
 country it was as well to leave no possible loophole 
 for accident. 
 
 After supper, at eight o'clock, Scott and Anderson 
 turned in, while Dence kept watch. At eleven, Scott 
 was to relieve him. Anderson would take duty at 
 two, and wake the whole company at five. 
 
 They were all rather more tired than usual that 
 night, and Scott's turn seemed to him to come be- 
 fore he had fairly closed his eyes. Dence had left 
 him part of a billy-can of strong cold tea (Anderson 
 had forbidden fires), and he swallowed it at a 
 draught, to drive away the sleepiness that held down 
 his eyelids. It was very dark, and very still. The 
 boys were sleeping like the dead, beneath their 
 faintly glimmering white flies, all save the two 
 yawning sentries, who had to be found and felt for 
 in the dark now and then, and poked up with the 
 butt of a rifle. Apart from that duty, one had noth- 
 ing to do but sit on a log, wonder if there were 
 
GUINEA GOLD 133 
 
 many snakes in the neighbourhood, and listen to 
 the soft sliding of the little creek beside which they 
 had camped, into the unseen swamp. 
 
 Scott opened his watch and felt the face. Twelve 
 o'clock — two hours more. It was getting almost 
 cool; his hands were dry, and the perspiration had 
 ceased trickling down the back of his neck. A bell- 
 bird sounded from a long way off — tank-tank ! — just 
 like a horse-bell. 
 
 One o'clock. Scott began to want a drink. It 
 would be easy to step down into the bed of the little 
 creek, where it widened out to join the swamp, and 
 put one's face in a pool. . . . 
 
 Three or four steps in the dark — this liana stuff 
 was a nuisance; one could not bend down. . . . 
 
 By heaven, that was a curious smell ! Could the 
 water be good to drink? was there anything dead in 
 it? And yet — the smell was not exactly like putrid 
 stuff ; it was loathsome, yet scented in a way — like — 
 like — a perfumed corpse. 
 
 Scott sniffed — sniffed again. He did not like it, 
 though he could not tell why. Something impelled 
 him to turn backwards in the dark up the sloping 
 bank, and find his way to the flies again, thirsty as 
 he was. After all, it was only half an hour or so 
 now. . . . 
 
 Close on two o'clock; almost time to awaken 
 Anderson. He would. . . . Great God, what was 
 that? 
 
 There are no cattle in the Papuan wilds, but it 
 
134 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 sounded like the roaring of a bull. There are no 
 ocean liners on the Iri, yet it seemed as if the siren 
 of a steamer had been suddenly let off within fifty 
 yards of the camp. A horrible sound, a sound to 
 make a man's blood run cold, heard in those mys- 
 terious wilds, in the dark, with that loathsome smell 
 so close at hand. 
 
 Scott stood still where he was, rifle ready to swing 
 up on his shoulder, listening to the stirring and 
 cackling of the awakened boys. It was only a few 
 seconds before he felt Anderson's hand on his arm 
 in the darkness. 
 
 " We'll have to chance the natives, and light a 
 fire," said the miner. " This place is full of alli- 
 gators — there ! " 
 
 It was the hideous snarling bellow again, so near 
 as to send a trembling through the air. From some 
 way off, another answered it. A third and a fourth 
 took up the cry. And the loathsome scented smell 
 suddenly grew thicker. 
 
 " They're too close," said Anderson. " This must 
 be the rendezvous of half the alligators in the coun- 
 try. I never heard so many together. This won't 
 do." 
 
 He had half a dozen of the awakened boys up in 
 a minute, and started them cutting wood by the light 
 of a hurricane lantern. A fire was made, and the 
 natives crowded round it, pushing each other almost 
 into the flames, shuddering, looking back over their 
 shoulders into the dark. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 135 
 
 " Does a fire keep them off? " asked Scott, stand- 
 ing beside Anderson, and watching the impenetrable 
 black under the trees. 
 
 " It ought to. There's really not much risk with 
 a big party. Two or three natives by themselves 
 would probably not have much chance. The fact is, 
 you never can tell what an alligator will or won't 
 do. Mostly, he's a cowardly brute, but sometimes 
 he isn't. He gets desperate when really hungry — 
 or if there are a lot of them. There it is again. 
 Must be a sort of home for lost alligators, to judge 
 by the row." 
 
 He slung his rifle up on his shoulder, and walked 
 a few yards away. 
 
 " Can't see anything," he said, " but you can't see 
 them in daylight often, when they're close at hand. 
 I suppose they've smelt us out, and that's what is 
 bringing them about. We have to cross the swamp 
 to-morrow, but I think it'll be all right then." 
 
 The bellowing sounded farther off after the fire 
 was lit, but did not cease altogether till sunrise. In 
 the daylight, the swamp looked ugly enough. It was 
 mostly black mud and slime, cut up by channels of 
 stagnant, ill-smelling water. So many trees had 
 fallen, however, that there was little difficulty mak- 
 ing a way through, and when there was a big gap 
 of choking mud, the boys readily bridged it with 
 another tree. The mud was boiling with crabs and 
 creeping things; the sun, scarce tempered by the 
 thin fronds of the sago palms, struck fiercely on 
 
i 3 6 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the slow-moving column of Papuans and whites. It 
 was less than two miles across the swamp, but they 
 were not clear of it for near two hours. All the time 
 the boys kept an eager, frightened watch for alli- 
 gators, and the white men, too, were on the alert. 
 But not a claw or a snout showed among the poison- 
 ous green weeds and grasses, not a sound rose from 
 the simmering pools of scum. 
 
 " You see, they don't trouble in daylight," said 
 Anderson. 
 
 He saw the last boy out of the swamp, set the way 
 up another of the usual razor-back ridges, and took 
 the lead. Dence and Scott were left as rear-guard. 
 
 " I say," said the latter, "what on earth did 
 Anderson take us through that place for, anyhow? 
 You can't ask him questions, unless you want your 
 head bitten off, but I really want to know." 
 
 " Oh, it was reasonable enough," answered Dence. 
 " By the way the Iri valley runs, we have saved a 
 day's march, if not two, taking this route. We 
 should have had a five thousand foot range to cross, 
 which we've escaped." 
 
 " What would you take, to go across in the 
 dark?" 
 
 " Nobody would take anything, to be such a 
 bloomin' fool." 
 
 They were partly up the rise now, and they turned 
 to look back. The swamp stretched below, black, 
 simmering, sinister — a very witch's cauldron of evil. 
 
 Years afterwards, Scott remembered just how that 
 
GUINEA GOLD 137 
 
 other looked — the glitter of the blue English eyes, 
 staring far away at something that seemed beyond 
 the range of his own sight: the sudden shadow that 
 swept across those fine, worn features, like a dark 
 wing fleeting over a sunny field. ... It was gone — 
 if it had ever been. Dence turned to face the hill 
 again. 
 
 14 ' A goose walking over my grave ! ' " he quoted, 
 with a laugh. Give us a smoke, Scott — I'm out. 
 This blessed country gets on your nerves." 
 
 44 What was the boy singing yesterday?" asked 
 Scott, by and by, when they paused to breathe the 
 carriers. 
 
 44 A queer thing," answered the other. " He was 
 chantin' his own bravery, of course, and about the 
 guns, and the arrows the little beasts in the bush 
 had been peggin' at us. And then he was singin' 
 about " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 44 Don't quite understand it. He said his white 
 men were brave, and the Orokivas were brave, but 
 the other white man ran away into the bush. Now, 
 there wasn't any other white man." 
 
 44 No, of course." 
 
 44 But — I picked up a queer thing on the track — 
 that time I went back for half a mile to find the 
 compass I dropped — in the morning." 
 
 44 Yes, I remember. What did you pick up? " 
 
 44 Sprig belongin' to a boot. Now, that's nothin' 
 much — but Anderson's boots have all the sprigs on, 
 
138 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 and so have yours — I looked at your tracks. I lost 
 one, but it was a week ago." 
 
 " Did the boys pick it up at the time? " 
 
 " Maybe — and maybe not." 
 
 " Why, what do you think? " 
 
 " Don't know what I think — don't know that I 
 think anythin' — a fellow had better not think, out 
 in the bush. . . . What the mischief are the boys 
 raisin' such a hullabaloo about? " 
 
 The column had started on again while Dence and 
 Scott talked, and was crawling, like a snake, a bit 
 at a time, over the crest of the ridge. Those who 
 were up had raised a cry of delight. 
 
 " Coo-ee! " yelled Dence to Anderson. 
 
 " The Iri ! " called Anderson in reply. 
 
 " That's as good as a bottle of beer apiece ! " said 
 Dence, suddenly galvanised into speed. The two 
 fairly raced up the ridge, and arrived at the top 
 together, panting and steaming, eager to see the river 
 that was to lead them to their goal. 
 
 After all, they could see nothing, for the forest 
 was deep and unbroken, but they could all hear the 
 voice of an unmistakably big river, rumbling away 
 far below. Anderson was standing on the spine of 
 the ridge, his leathery face showing something like 
 human satisfaction for once. 
 
 " She takes a turn to the west — just as I guessed 
 she would," he said. u This saves us days. We'll 
 camp on the bank to-night, and begin going up the 
 river to-morrow." 
 
GUINEA GOLD 139 
 
 " How are we to find Alligator Creek? M asked 
 Scott. " Where the box was, you know." 
 
 " If Alligator Creek isn't the creek that drains out 
 of that swamp into the Iri, you may call me a 
 Chinaman," averred Anderson. " Boys, we're get- 
 ting on ! " 
 
 That night in the camp by the side of the great 
 dark river they had sought so long, many a Spanish 
 castle was built, many a story told of wonderful 
 finds, in the Magnet, in the Klondyke, in sun-dried 
 Mexican river-beds, in monkey-haunted kloofs of 
 inner Africa. They were all a little excited, and 
 sleep was long in coming to the white men's tent. 
 As for the song of the Orokiva, it was forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The days that followed were among the pleasant- 
 est of the trip. 
 
 In the first place, they had a rest. Anderson did 
 not want to forego the chance of re-provisioning 
 offered by the sago swamp : so camp was pitched on 
 the bank of the Iri, and there three whites took it in 
 turns to escort the boys back to the edge of the 
 swamp every day, and oversee them while they cut 
 down palms, chopped out the inside pith, washed it 
 in troughs made of hollowed trunks, and collected 
 the starchy matter that drained off. The floury, 
 crumbly mass that resulted was not in the least like 
 any sago ever seen in shops, but it was nourishing and 
 palatable food, boiled with a little sugar, and whites 
 and natives revelled in it, after the inevitable short 
 commons of the march. 
 
 While the boys were busy making sago, and put- 
 ting it up in mats of roughly plaited leaves, the white 
 men repaired swags and flies, mended their clothes, 
 wished they had anything to read, and talked a great 
 deal. Anderson had removed the embargo on dis- 
 cussion, now that they had successfully accomplished 
 the first stage of their search, and the letter (which 
 everyone knew by heart) was talked over and over 
 — especially at night, when the three were together. 
 
 140 
 
GUINEA GOLD 141 
 
 It was a wonderfully lovely spot, this elbow of 
 the Iri, where they had made their camp. The river, 
 like all Papuan streams of the hinterland, was wild 
 and precipitous; it ran boisterously over a bed full of 
 rocks, and dashed foam and spray upon the dangling 
 ferns and lianas, and rare flames of orchid bloom, 
 that overhung its waters. There was a great boom- 
 ing waterfall quite close to the camp, with tree- 
 ferns like green lace parasols hanging over it, and 
 scarlet D'Alberti flowers, shaped like wistaria, spot- 
 ting the cool gloom of the over-arching forest roof. 
 Birds, crested, spangled, aigretted, orange, crimson, 
 gold and blue, swooped and skimmed above the 
 water-pools in the downward-spreading light of 
 dawn, or in the strange green sunset glow — that 
 " Ragnarok, Twilight of the Gods," known to all 
 Papuan wanderers. Butterflies, strong bird-winged 
 creatures, gold and velvet-black, vermilion, verdigris, 
 and sapphire, struck the heart with their beauty, as 
 they sailed like living flowers across the river of 
 sun that cut the gloomy forest, above the river of 
 rock and water. Dragon-flies, red, green, and yel- 
 low: inch-long flying things that scintillated in the 
 sun like some new jewel, half-emerald, half- 
 turquoise; how lovely they were, and how lovely it 
 all was, to a man who was marching no longer, and 
 had time and strength to note the wonder and the 
 beauty of the unknown lands ! 
 
 Scott liked it. He liked the colour and the still- 
 ness and the solitude, and yet more the feeling, new 
 
i 4 2 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 and wonderful to him, of being in country where, in 
 all probability, no white man's foot had passed — for 
 they could not tell what route might have been taken 
 by Cripps and his mate. To look at the great fall 
 of the Iri, and know it was marked on no map — that 
 the river leaped into the knowledge and mind of man 
 just here, where his own eyes met it; beyond that 
 little range of his sight, existed not at all, till he 
 should find it — this was a sensation of keenest pleas- 
 ure. To think of all that lay somewhere among the 
 branches and tributaries of that stream, of the for- 
 tune that the wilderness held in its grip, for him and 
 his mates to find, was an intoxication. Did the whole 
 world hold a better way of making fortunes than 
 this? 
 
 The ache in his heart was wonderfully soothed. 
 Nothing was changed, but he felt as men do feel in 
 the far-out places— that everything beyond the little 
 circle of the daily task was very dim and distant, and 
 that sorrows belonging to the outer world were al- 
 most as sorrows belonging to someone else — things 
 that pained you with a gentle, impersonal sort of 
 melancholy alone. . . . He began to understand how 
 it was that the real men of the wilderness, these min- 
 ers and their mates, who had lived on the fringes of 
 the Never-Never half their lives, seemed so curiously 
 detached from all human affections or ties. It was 
 hard to believe that the men he had met on Kikiramu 
 had mothers or brothers or relations of any kind — 
 that they had ever had homes, or ever taken the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 143 
 
 morning train to anywhere, with a daily paper in 
 hand, or ever footed it in the merry dances of the 
 Australian bush, when selectors' daughters and 
 " cockatoo farmers " and stockmen and shearers 
 made the earthen floors rise up in dust to the music 
 of accordion and violin ! Surely they had lived all 
 their lives just as they were living them now — just as 
 he was living his — in the dark of the eternal forests, 
 hunting down and gathering the little yellow specks, 
 and . . . what was the blank verse Dence had 
 quoted? 
 
 "Lost to use and name, and life and fame . . ." 
 
 Not lost, of course — that was nonsense. Ab- 
 sorbed, perhaps — as he was absorbed. Who could 
 think of Sydney and of London, of Germany's in- 
 tentions towards Morocco, of the newest way to 
 drop bombs out of aeroplanes upon an enemy's 
 head, when he was thinking of, and looking for — 
 gold? 
 
 u ' . . . The tree that we made our box out of, 
 at Alligator Creek,' " quoted Anderson, one morn- 
 ing. Quotations from Cripps' letter were as com- 
 mon in the talk of the three, these days, as texts in 
 the mouths of Cromwell's Ironsides. 
 
 " * That we made our box out of . . .'" He had 
 got up from the felled log they used for a seat at 
 meals, and was standing with his back to the river, 
 looking into the bush, and pulling his long beard 
 thoughtfully. 
 
144 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " That means," he said, " that they got something 
 on Alligator Creek. It wasn't good, or they'd have 
 stayed instead of going farther on. But we'll have 
 to find it, I reckon, if we want to know what tree to 
 look for at the right time." 
 
 Dence, in the full enjoyment of his after-break- 
 fast smoke, looked up, and followed Anderson's 
 eyes. 
 
 " Behind the swamp, of course," he said. 
 
 " Yes — a goodish bit, I should think. I don't be- 
 lieve Cripps came through just here. I've been 
 working it out, and I reckon he struck Alligator 
 Creek a good way farther up, and prospected there — 
 it would be full of alligators all along, I suppose: 
 some creeks are — and by and by moved on same as 
 you and I would do, in the direction of the Iri: he'd 
 strike a tributary some good way behind this, and 
 probably got — what he got — there." 
 
 " Why not on the Iri itself? " asked Scott. 
 
 " Too big and too deep, here or anywhere near. 
 You don't get gold — alluvial gold — where the water 
 would carry a big steamer." 
 
 " And why do you think he didn't follow the Iri 
 up to its higher waters? " 
 
 " Wasn't long enough out, from all I could 
 gather. Take it from me, the gold's within two or 
 three days of here — one way or another. We'll 
 prospect Alligator Creek to-day, to try and find the 
 first working and the box." 
 
 "Shall I get the boys together?" 
 
GUINEA GOLD 145 
 
 " You might. I want to look about a little at the 
 mouth of the creek and see what size it is, before we 
 start." 
 
 " Thirty-two boys, isn't it? " 
 
 " No, thirty-one. What's the matter with you, 
 Scott, that you can't remember the number of boys, 
 after all this time? " 
 
 " Well, the counting hasn't been my job, because 
 I didn't have them in the afternoons — but I cer- 
 tainly thought it was thirty-one." 
 
 " What did you say thirty-two for, then? " 
 
 " Because yesterday, when I went home in the 
 middle of the day, I did happen to count them before 
 I left, and there were thirty-two." 
 
 11 You counted wrong." 
 
 " I did not. There were thirty-two. I counted 
 three times." 
 
 " All our own boys — no stray natives from round 
 about?" 
 
 " They'd all got red ramies on, and were making 
 sago together." 
 
 " You must have been mistaken." 
 
 " I was not," repeated Scott, getting hot. " I saw 
 them, and counted them." 
 
 " You take ten grains of quinine, and don't keep 
 out in the sun without your hat: I've no time for peo- 
 ple getting sick," was Anderson's only comment, as 
 he walked off down the river. 
 
 Scott said something forcible, and Dence laughed. 
 
 " Quit laughin', you ! " ordered the Ulsterman, 
 
146 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 his native accent coming out strong, as it usually did 
 in moments of irritation. 
 
 Dence, for the ten thousandth time in his life, 
 quoted under his breath: "Ifs not that one is so 
 clever oneself: its only that other people are so 
 stupid. . . " \ 
 
 " I wasn't laughin' at you," he said. " Only at 
 Anderson. For a death-or-glory kind of leader to 
 an expedition, there isn't his match in Papua — but I 
 really think he has even less brains than you, 
 Scott." 
 
 " Thank you," said Scott, sensing an obscure com- 
 pliment wrapped up somewhere or other. He could 
 not always understand Dence, especially when the 
 Englishman smiled with sleepy blue eyes, and spoke 
 in the low, velvet voice that was so peculiarly his 
 own. Dence had the power of creating odd illusions 
 about himself. To-day, standing beside the stained 
 arid sagging tent that was all their home, his roughly 
 booted feet set in river mud, his ragged shirt scarce 
 holding to his sun-blackened shoulders, he contrived, 
 somehow, with his voice and his eyes and his manner, 
 to suggest a dim ghost of evening dress. . . . Just 
 so men spoke and looked who wore costly raiment 
 of finest black and white, who stood in stained and 
 mullioned window embrasures lit with the late-setting 
 English sun, and looked down upon terrace and ter- 
 race, lawn and lawn, statue and stone balustrade and 
 sunk Italian garden — all the pomp and the beauty of 
 the life that Scott had just glimpsed at as a boy, that 
 
GUINEA GOLD 147 
 
 " Dence," who was not Dence, had lived and known 
 — how long? 
 
 Some transfer of thought, touching the sensitive 
 Celtic brain, made Scott point derisively to the tent 
 and the log table and begin to repeat: 
 
 "The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand! 
 Amid the tall ancestral trees ..." 
 
 The explosion that followed struck him dumb. 
 
 M Lord ! where did you learn to swear like that? " 
 he said, when he had recovered his breath. " And, if 
 I may ask, why? ..." 
 
 11 You may ask nothing," said the other, with flam- 
 ing eyes. " That poem — that poem ! " He nearly 
 choked. 
 
 " I won't quote it again, if that's what you mean," 
 said Scott, still puzzled. For only the Englishman 
 or the Irishman, torn in two by half-caste Celt and 
 Saxon blood, can know how those formal schoolroom 
 lines of Campbell's stab, with a poisoned blade for 
 every letter, the man who may see the " stately 
 homes of England " never more. 
 
 Dence recovered himself instantly, and answered 
 Scott's first question with as much ease as if nothing 
 had occurred. 
 
 11 Why, a man can scarcely spend all these years 
 in Papuan mining camps without picking up a swear 
 or two," he said. 
 
 " You don't swear like a miner," commented 
 Scott. " You swear like a — like a — cavalry officer." 
 
i 4 8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Do I? " asked Dence mockingly. " You show 
 an occasional gleam of intellect, certainly. Try 
 turnin' it on to the reason why you couldn't count 
 the boys, and see what you get." 
 
 " Don't get anything," said Scott. " I can only 
 say what happened — or what I thought hap- 
 pened." 
 
 " Well, I'd advise you to stop talkin', then, and 
 help me muster the boys." 
 
 They mustered the carriers: Anderson returned: 
 the start was made. 
 
 " How many boys are there? " the leader jerked 
 over his shoulder. 
 
 " Thirty-one," said Scott. 
 
 Anderson laughed. 
 
 " I'll remind you of the quinine when we camp 
 to-night," he said. 
 
 But when it came to night, nobody was thinking of 
 anything so commonplace as quinine. For the march 
 had been an unusually light one, and they had gone 
 quite a long way up Alligator Creek, leaving the 
 deadly swamp miles behind, and, close to sunset, 
 there had been a yell from one of the boys (who 
 all knew by this time what their " Taubadas " were 
 looking for), " Bokis, bokis! " 
 
 The native eyes, trained to the bush, had beaten 
 the white man's sight. Yassi, a fur-headed small 
 person clad in a red rag and a necklace of dog's 
 teeth, had spied a hollow log lying jammed in a cleft 
 
GUINEA GOLD 149 
 
 between two stones — a log that had evidently been 
 shaped by steel tools — and was giving tongue to his 
 discovery. 
 
 The three men precipitated themselves on the 
 worn and weathered fragment of wood. It was a 
 piece in the puzzle — a thread of the clue. . . . From 
 what tree had the " box " been cut? 
 
 Cedar, evidently. Now cedars were not very 
 common in the valley of the Iri: no one could 
 remember having sighted more than one or two. 
 It would not be difficult to locate the cedar that 
 marked Cripps' discovery — if they could find the 
 creek. 
 
 " Yassi, you and Kobo come here/' said Anderson. 
 Yassi and Kobo were the two boys formerly em- 
 ployed by Cripps, that Anderson had managed to find 
 and engage. Heretofore they had been of no use in 
 finding the way, for an East End Papuan, taken 
 away from his own district, cannot remember a 
 monotonous route through unbroken forest with any 
 more success than might be expected from a " new 
 chum " white. But now it was possible the two 
 might be of service. 
 
 " How long you stop work along here, one time 
 you come along Kippi (Cripps)?" asked Ander- 
 son. 
 
 A week or two, it seemed; after that, they had 
 gone through the bush a long way, Yassi and Kobo 
 could not say where. And by and by they had very 
 little kai-kai left, so Kisi, the other white man, had 
 
150 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 gone back to the Kikiramu, and a great many of the 
 boys had gone too. But Yassi and Kobo had been 
 kept, and some more, and they had gone with Kippi, 
 and Kippi had found gold, but Yassi and Kobo did 
 not know where, because the boys were not told to 
 work it — Kippi made them stay in camp, and he 
 worked it himself. And they liked that very much, 
 because there was kai-kai enough since the other boys 
 were gone, and they sit-lie-down and smoke all day. 
 But by and by some bad fellow shoot Kippi, and he 
 get sick, and he die, and all the boys plenty frighten, 
 and they go back to the Kikiramu very quick. And 
 they, Yassi and Kobo, had had nothing to do with 
 killing the white man : they wanted the Taubadas to 
 know that, for they were frightened when someone 
 talked of Kippi; they feared the white men at the 
 Kikiramu would be angry, but there was nothing bad 
 they had done. 
 
 So much from Yassi and Kobo, their pidgin-Eng- 
 lish being translated. It was clear that they knew 
 nothing of Cripps' great discovery, and clear, too, 
 that they had been very shy of mentioning him at all, 
 lest they should be implicatedinhismurder. Whether 
 they deserved to be or not, Anderson considered an 
 open question. One never knew with natives, he 
 said, and doubtless the boys had been anxious to get 
 home again. The Karivas might have done the job, 
 or Yassi himself — impossible to say, and it didn't 
 matter now. 
 
 The search went on. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 151 
 
 Now, for the first time, the pleasure of the hunt 
 took hold upon these three. Before, it had been 
 merely a matter of travel, of a long fight against the 
 daily, hourly, momently difficulties of the way : of a 
 set task to be got through between every dawn and 
 dusk, with sleep, delicious sleep, as payment at the 
 end. There was nothing exciting in the adventures 
 of the way: even Scott, new to the bush, felt this. 
 The peril of the flooded gorge — the attack in the 
 dark forest — the night among roaring alligators — 
 these things stirred scarce a pulse of fear at the time, 
 scarce a throb of interested recollection after they 
 were over. Take a man into a powder factory once : 
 he will go with strung-up courage and beating heart 
 and talk of the adventure long after. Set him to 
 work there eight hours a day, and in a week you 
 will find him handling high explosives like so much 
 corn out of a bin. . . . 
 
 So, in the pioneer lands, do men learn to confront 
 danger and hardship, not with the excited pluck of 
 over-civilised man, but with the cold emotionless 
 courage that grows only in the soil of constant risk 
 and death. They are wrong who call this bravery the 
 pluck of the savage. No primitive race ever knew 
 it. True, it is the strength of Antaeus, regained from 
 the ancient earth that bore him — but Antaeus came 
 back to the earth for the strengthening embrace, first 
 having left it far and long. Who never leaves it, 
 who never comes back, knows not this strength. 
 
 Thus it was into the midst of something like monot- 
 
152 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 ony and boredom that the first scent of the hidden 
 gold arose, like a breeze into a stifling forest track. 
 In a morning all was changed. They left the upper 
 waters of Alligator Creek and started to prospect 
 the tributary streams leading into the great sweep of 
 the Iri, with interest and excitement vividly re- 
 newed. For men may readily learn to look upon 
 the face of death with indifference, but never upon 
 the gleam of gold. 
 
 It is over now, years over, and they who took part 
 in the chase, and in the strange happenings that fol- 
 lowed and attended it, are, some of them, dead, some 
 of them mewed in cities, some of them ... I know 
 not, nor does anyone know. It came and passed, 
 one flying picture in the long cinematograph of time. 
 Scott remembers it to-day, but he cannot tell you 
 much of the time they spent in searching for the 
 wonderful reef, because a man may recall a time of 
 incident, happening by happening, but he cannot re- 
 member very clearly a time when sensations were 
 events, and incidents took but second place. And in 
 those days hope and fear, despair, delight, wonder, 
 disappointment, speculation, seemed, in after recol- 
 lection, to have sponged out the landscape and the 
 marches, and the little happenings of every day, as 
 the wreathing mists of afternoon blot out the green 
 hills and blue ranges and serried forest crests of the 
 Papuan mountain lands. 
 
 One day after another day they tramped up river- 
 beds, crossing the stream thirty and forty times be- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 153 
 
 tween sunrise and sunset, cutting their way along the 
 banks, climbing the walls of gorges, circling behind 
 waterfalls, and all the time looking out for what they 
 knew would be the sign of success in their long, long 
 quest — the island in the midst of the water, with a 
 great hollow tree upon it. Yassi and Kobo, at first 
 relied on, proved afterwards to be of no use at all, 
 for they were perfectly certain that each and every 
 tributary of the Iri was the very one that Cripps had 
 been prospecting when he found his gold. It seemed 
 evident that he had been up at least five or six rivers, 
 and that the boys had got hopelessly mixed in con- 
 sequence. After a day or two, Anderson paid no 
 attention to them, but made his own observations, 
 and led the party as seemed best to himself. 
 
 Over and over again they would see something 
 that looked like the island and the tree, and the man 
 who saw it would call out, with dry throat, and the 
 others would scramble hurriedly to his point of sight 
 and look. But always it turned out to be an island 
 with an ordinary tree on it, or a peninsula that looked 
 like an island, or a sandbank that had caught a 
 drifting snag, and held it aloft, wreathed with green 
 lianas, to deceive the eager eyes of the wanderers. 
 And after every one of these false alarms their 
 hearts would sink, and they would say hopeful things 
 to encourage each other, every man feeling hopeless 
 himself. 
 
 The spectre of famine, that creeps close at the 
 heels of every Papuan exploring party, now began 
 
154 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 to dog their track. Flour was running low, meat was 
 opened only every second day, and, worst of all, the 
 tea was done. They had tobacco, but it was neces- 
 sary to husband that, for tobacco is the coin of the 
 Hinterland, and they hoped constantly to find some 
 native village where- they might purchase a little 
 food. But it was becoming clear that the upper 
 waters of the Iri were uninhabited, save for wan- 
 dering predatory tribes like the Kariva. A beauti- 
 ful, luxuriant, yet an utterly hungry land was this 
 that they were travelling through. 
 
 Anderson began to press his party. The pace of 
 the weakest member was necessarily the pace for 
 all, but he had chosen his boys well, and they trav- 
 elled under their lightened loads fast enough to 
 give the half-seasoned Briton as much as he cared 
 for, during the burning hours of climbing and splash- 
 ing and scrambling up the endless tributaries of the 
 Iri. Looking for a needle in a hayfield seemed 
 to Scott a simple task compared with the chase they 
 had undertaken in this primeval wilderness; but An- 
 derson seemed to know what he was about, and 
 had reasons for going up this river, and abandoning 
 the other, that gave the hunt some air of purpose 
 and direction. 
 
 It was a race now — a race with hunger and the 
 powers of the wilderness. They must find the gold 
 before the last loads were broken into, the last tins 
 opened. Enough must be left to take the white men 
 back to the Kikiramu: as for the boys, they could T 
 
GUINEA GOLD 155 
 
 at a pinch, manage well enough on a few loads of 
 native sago, gathered from the swamp on the way 
 back. 
 
 The short allowance of food, the want of tea, and 
 the small supply of tobacco, were felt by all the party, 
 but no one complained. It was in the nature of things 
 that one should suffer depression, weariness, unsatis- 
 fied cravings for many things on a prospecting or 
 exploring trip. One gambled with one's power of 
 enduring these pains against the hostile forces of 
 Nature. Sometimes Nature won, sometimes man. 
 It was the way of the explorer in Papua. These 
 explorers did not mean to be beaten in the game. 
 
 " How far are we from the sago swamp? " asked 
 Scott one weary evening when they were all lying on 
 the platform of the fly, too tired to sit up, enjoying 
 their tiny allowance of trade tobacco before going to 
 sleep. It was very dark at the bottom of the forest 
 sea : one could not tell whether there was a moon or 
 not. The crowding tree-trunks dripped slow moist- 
 ure from leaf and bole: the air smelt rank with 
 decay. 
 
 You could see strange blossoms of flame in the 
 darkness, where lily-shaped fungi grew on the fallen 
 logs; and fire-flies, soaring and hovering, made green 
 spangles against the black of the woven boughs. 
 
 " Not more than eight or nine miles, in a direct 
 line," was Anderson's reply. " We've been making 
 a track like a spider's web. That swamp's a nui- 
 sance, anyhow — it's in the direct road to the Ki- 
 
156 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 kiramu, and if we get gold about here it'll make no 
 end of trouble for the carriers going to the field." 
 
 " First catch your hare," quoted Dence. 
 
 " We'll catch it all right," affirmed the leader, with 
 his pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth. There was 
 something in his tone that gave the others confidence. 
 They slept well that night. 
 
 Three ragged men, waving their arms and yelling, 
 stood on the top of a peaked and battlemented preci- 
 pice, against a sky of thunderous black. They would 
 have been dancing, only for the fact that an ill- 
 considered step might have danced them into eter- 
 nity. They had to hold by trees in order to wave 
 their hats and arms. They held on, and waved, and 
 shouted, red in the face and sparkling-eyed. And 
 the carriers, strung out along the crest of the preci- 
 pice for a quarter of a mile behind, took up the cry 
 and yelled in their turn, though they did not know 
 what it was all about. But they had a shrewd idea 
 that this yelling meant a halt and a rest by and by, 
 and that was heaven to them. 
 
 Below the explorers a new reach of the river 
 opened out. The stream they were following was 
 one of the many unknown tributaries of the un- 
 mapped river Iri. Here the tributary widened, 
 spreading out from the narrow gorge they had been 
 following all the morning into an open shallow 
 reach bordered by bush-covered slopes. The differ- 
 ent greens of tree-fern and bush and vine, of palm 
 
GUINEA GOLD 157 
 
 and banyan and huge New Guinea rubber trees, 
 stood out in incredible brilliance against the thunder- 
 clouds behind. In the steely mirror of the open 
 reach one plumy bouquet of glowing emerald rose 
 up alone ... an islet, with a streak of shadowy 
 black across its heart. 
 
 " The island, the island — look at the trees!" 
 howled Scott. 
 
 ''Hooray!" cheered Dence, thumping Scott on 
 the back. 
 
 " We're getting warm, boys — we'll be hot by and 
 by!" roared Anderson, shaking the thick sweat- 
 drops off his arms and face. They all spoke as if 
 the party had been suddenly smitten with deafness, 
 and there was not an inch of room in anyone's mind 
 for amusement at Anderson's incongruous remark. 
 The excitement of the hunt filled them to the brim. 
 Almost, they sighted their game — for the gold had 
 become a living thing to them now, after these weeks 
 of famished chase. They felt that they were going 
 to get something by the neck, and worry it — soon! 
 
 After the moment of ecstasy came plain prose for 
 a while. The party had to be got down to the river, 
 and that took time, as the precipice was almost bare 
 of hand- or foot-hold, and bush ropes of liana had 
 to be used. Then they were down on a muddy bank, 
 and stumbling through the ooze towards the open 
 space of steely-grey water. And then, regardless of 
 possible alligators, they were all into the lagoon, 
 down over their knees, splashing and stamping to- 
 
158 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 wards the islet. The carriers stayed on the shore, 
 squatting on their haunches, with their loads laid 
 down, and watching the white men with dark, ex- 
 pressionless eyes. They were not in the least curious. 
 
 It was a small islet, but it stood high, and sup- 
 ported quite a number of trees, palms of different 
 kinds for the most part, with trunks scaled and 
 diamonded like snakes, or lifting slim white stems 
 far into the sky, or standing up on the quaintest of 
 tall wooden stilts. But one tree, a massive cotton- 
 wood, had a solid trunk like an oak, and that trunk 
 was split by lightning from root to crown, leaving 
 a wide dark hollow, deepened by time and weather 
 into a chamber that would easily have sheltered two 
 or three men. Beyond all doubt it was Cripps' tree 
 — the tree of the great python. From this point, 
 then, might be unwound the clue that led to riches — 
 to the opening of all the doors of all the delights in 
 all the world. . . . 
 
 It was midday now, but no one thought of lunch 
 or rest. To unwind another turn of the clue, here, 
 at once, was all that anyone desired. What next? 
 
 " ' A large boulder in the stream, showin' about 
 three feet above water/ " quoted Dence. " There it 
 is, as plain as the nose on Anderson's face. ' When 
 the river is very low a granite boulder is exposed 
 for about eight inches ' — well, the river is low, but 
 not very, judgin' by the bank. Should think the 
 granite boulder must be awash or underneath." 
 
 " It's bound to be upstream, anyhow," said An- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 159 
 
 derson. " He was going up the river, and would 
 naturally take his bearings the way he faced when 
 going after the reef himself." 
 
 " What had we better do? " asked Scott, chafing 
 at the little delay. 
 
 Anderson called up the boys, and set them to wade 
 about in the river, feeling with their bare feet for 
 submerged boulders. A curb of granite rewarded 
 the search before long, just under water. 
 
 " Put a stone on it," ordered Anderson. " Now 
 we can see our way. We have to get those two 
 stones in line, and go west up the sidling." 
 
 "What's a sidling?" asked Scott. 
 
 " A ridge. That in front of us. If we go west, 
 according to my compass, we'll strike gradually into 
 the bush." 
 
 " Till we come to ' the sort of tree they made their 
 box out of,' isn't it? " 
 
 " Yes. It's a good scheme, but I reckon I could 
 have bettered it." 
 
 11 Lucky for us Cripps slipped up a bit." 
 
 " He didn't, much. It was the chance of finding 
 the python skin, and the luck of getting the original 
 box, that helped us. Leave out chance, and we'd not 
 have been here. Nelson said you must always leave 
 something to chance, and it's a true saying — miners 
 could tell you that." 
 
 They were edging into the bush now, led by the 
 trembling needle of Anderson's compass. The 
 juicy, rank-smelling underwood clung round their 
 
i6o GUINEA GOLD 
 
 knees, the thorn-studded vines caught at clothes and 
 flesh. The two carriers who had been chosen to 
 accompany them had to get out their great clearing 
 knives and cut the way. Farther and farther from 
 the river they crept, among the gnarled and but- 
 tressed trunks of the forest, under the swinging gar- 
 landry of air-plant, orchid, and bird's-nest fern. It 
 was damp and dark here, and the cheerful talking 
 of the river began to die away. A dozen times at 
 least they saw the cedar tree in fancy before it came, 
 but at last Scott sighted it plainly enough in a little 
 clearing that it had made for itself by dint of starv- 
 ing out the feebler growths that struggled beneath 
 its shade. 
 
 Under its boughs they stopped to mop their 
 streaming faces and arms and consult the compass 
 again. 
 
 " ' Thirty points north of east, two hundred and 
 sixty paces,' " quoted Anderson. " We're close on 
 it now. That would take us pretty near back into 
 the river again. Boys, we can't miss it — that gold's 
 somewhere within three hundred yards of where 
 we're standing at this minute, unless Cripps was 
 mad — and I don't think he was, though most of us 
 are, more or less." 
 
 He set the course by the compass again, and they 
 headed away at a slant from their former track, 
 counting paces as they went in tones that gradually 
 rose from a whisper to a shout. They smashed 
 through vines, they tore away their bleeding arms 
 
GUINEA GOLD 161 
 
 and hands from the myriad thorns of the bush, they 
 flung themselves over logs, and took gullies at a 
 flying leap. Behind them the carriers toiled, assur- 
 ing each other that their masters had certainly been 
 bitten by ghosts in the night, or had eaten roots be- 
 witched by some mighty sorcerer. 
 
 " It is very good to lie under the roof of your 
 house when the sun is high up, and chew betel-nut all 
 day long," panted Yassi, in the Orokiva tongue, pull- 
 ing his black shins out of a tangle of many-hooked 
 " lawyer." 
 
 " Yes, we were mad to come with the white men 
 again — what is a little trade stuff? " lamented Kobo. 
 " Work was meant for women, not for men. Ow- 
 wow, I wish I were back in my yam-garden, stirring 
 up my wives with a stick when they do not dig quick 
 enough ! 
 
 14 But I will make them work when I get back — 
 I will make them work ! " he added thoughtfully. 
 
 " Listen to that! The Taubadas are going mad- 
 der than ever," commented Yassi, as a yell broke 
 out ahead, followed by a sudden smashing and 
 crashing through the low bushes. 
 
 " If they go altogether mad, we will hit them on 
 the head with stone clubs when they are not looking, 
 and then we will eat them, and then we will go back 
 to the coast with all the goods, and tell the other 
 white men they were killed by the Kariva. And then 
 we will go home, and we shall be great men in our 
 villages." 
 
162 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Great men!" chanted the other Orokiva ex- 
 citedly. 
 
 But at this point Scott and Dence came crashing 
 back through the undergrowth, faces and eyes on 
 fire. 
 
 11 Go back! " they said, using the pidgin-English 
 which is the lingua franca of Papua. " Altogether 
 you fellow go back. No more you come up along us. 
 You go along river where big tree stop ; you go out 
 island; you makem camp there." 
 
 " Scoot! " added Dence, in a tone that sent the 
 carriers flying. 
 
 M The Taubadas are certainly mad," babbled 
 Yassi, as they ran through the underbrush, not dar- 
 ing to look back. 
 
 " If one of you leaves the island, we'll shoot 
 him! " came the voice of Scott, retreating in the dis- 
 tance. Silence fell on the forest, save for the scurry- 
 ing noise of the carriers hurrying down to the river. 
 They splashed through the shallows, reached the 
 island, and flung themselves down in the shade. Not 
 two o'clock, and halted for the day! Surely some- 
 body's pet sorcerer was working well for him, far 
 away in the delightful coast villages where pigs and 
 cocoanuts flourished, and where a man might live a 
 man's life, smoking and chewing idly under his 
 pandanus thatch. ... 
 
 Out in the forest, a quarter of a mile away, Dence 
 was hugging Anderson round his brawny neck, and 
 
GUINEA GOLD 163 
 
 swaying to and fro, while Scott sat on the ground and 
 cried. The nervous temperament had got its own 
 with him at last. But nothing any one of the three 
 could have done at that moment would have aston- 
 ished the others. They were past astonishment, past 
 feeling of any kind save one. Had the woman who 
 spoiled Anderson's life years before (you never 
 heard of her, and never will), had the girl with the 
 honey-brown eyes, who was loved by Dence and by 
 Scott, to the sorrow of both, stepped suddenly into 
 that theatrical-looking glade, among the palms and 
 fern trees, hands outstretched and lips smiling for 
 a kiss, it is long odds that not one of the men would 
 have taken any particular notice of her. Had the 
 brooding thunderstorm above them broken in a roar 
 and a flash that shook the earth they stood on, and 
 split the trees that were their shelter, nor Dence, 
 nor Scott, nor Anderson would have moved an inch 
 from where he stood. They had found the gold. 
 
 Running for thirty or forty feet through the 
 scanty underbrush — here poor and feeble, because 
 of the rocky soil — was a little rugged wall of some- 
 thing whitish — a hard, milky stone, stained here and 
 there with dull red. It came up out of the ground 
 edgeways, with a sharp cant to one side; rough grey 
 granite overhung it, and bluish diorite underlay it, 
 making it into a sort of mineral sandwich. The 
 meat of the sandwich — the whitish quartz — was set 
 thick with streaks and lumps of gold, ounces and 
 pounds of it full in sight. Pieces that had broken off 
 
1 64 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the reef lay half buried in trailing green, showing 
 gold in their fractures and edges. One, near as 
 big as a bucket, was studded all over with yellow 
 lumps, as a school-feast pudding is studded with 
 blocks of suet. 
 
 " My God in heaven! look at that! " exclaimed 
 Anderson, breaking loose from the polar-bear hug of 
 Dence to put his hands about the lump and heave 
 it from the ground. " There's three hundred ounces 
 in it if there's a single weight." 
 
 "Gold!" sobbed Scott, with heaving chest. 
 " Gold ! " He got up, the tears running unshamedly 
 down his cheeks, and began picking at the reef with 
 his nails. Dence was patting and petting it as if it 
 had been a favourite horse, swearing strange cavalry 
 oaths as he did so. In a minute he straightened him- 
 self up and turned to Anderson, who had just let 
 go his gold-studded boulder. By a simultaneous im- 
 pulse, all three men seized each other's hands, and 
 began swaying about together, shaking and gripping 
 one another's dirty fingers, and uttering half-articu- 
 late cries of delight. 
 
 " Three cheers ! " cried Dence at last. They gave 
 them, and three more to follow, and three more 
 after that, till the arches of the forest rang as they 
 had not rung since creation's dawn. And then, being 
 suddenly very tired out indeed, the adventurers sat 
 down upon the reef and looked at one another's mar- 
 vellously altered faces. 
 
 It felt — how did it feel ? As if a window had 
 
GUINEA GOLD 165 
 
 suddenly slipped down and shut out the noise and 
 rush of a hurrying midday thoroughfare, leaving, in- 
 stead, a silence almost bewildering. As if one had 
 been rushing across a continent in an express train, 
 engine screaming, dust flying, landscape quivering 
 past — and in a moment found oneself standing still, 
 on a quiet little country platform, with the sunshine 
 sleeping on the empty rails, and the far-off throb of 
 the train dying away in the distance. . . . The 
 struggle, the chase, the fight with time and space 
 and peril and hunger were done. And to the three 
 hungry, weary, overworked, and excited men the 
 sudden blank was staggering. 
 
 " I can't believe it, somehow," said Scott, with 
 a rather weak laugh, absently fingering the wonder- 
 ful reef. 
 
 " Nor I; but it's true," said Anderson, his eyes 
 fixing themselves on the bucket-shaped fragment, 
 with its glittering incrustations, as if they could never 
 detach themselves again. " Dence, I can't keep my 
 hands off this much longer. Suppose we send back 
 to the camp and fetch our picks and some tucker, 
 and get all we can out of this show before 
 dark?" 
 
 11 Righto," assented Dence. " I'm aching to be 
 at it. Who'll go?" 
 
 " I don't mind," said Scott, who felt as though he 
 needed a little sobering. " We don't want the boys 
 here at present, I suppose." 
 
 " You suppose right," answered Anderson em- 
 
1 66 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 phatically. " They're not needed to work this sort 
 of thing, and the less they know the better." 
 
 " I thought so when you sent us back to stop them 
 as soon as you caught sight of the reef." 
 
 " Hurry, hurry! " urged Dence, who was fidgeting 
 about the reef, picking away with a penknife. An- 
 derson had already got hold of a sharp fragment 
 of stone and knocked a bit of gold out. 
 
 "Yes, hurry! " he added, hitting away with his 
 improvised hammer. 
 
 They had had a tiring and exciting half-day, and 
 every one of the three was more or less weak for 
 want of proper food. The heat, as the day wore on, 
 became appalling, down in this airless glade, shut off 
 from every breath of river air, and canopied by 
 thickly gathering thunderclouds. Yet they worked 
 that afternoon as if the Last Day were upon them, 
 and salvation purchasable by the gold they should 
 win before the dark came down. They tore and 
 smashed at the rock with their picks, and clawed it 
 with their hands. They put the broken fragments in 
 an iron camp oven, and beat them still smaller, and 
 picked the gold out of them in flakes and lumps and 
 pieces. They pooled their gains in a quart billy-can, 
 and saw the gold cover the bottom, and begin to 
 climb up the sides, before the four o'clock storm 
 broke upon their heads. And in the middle of the 
 storm they went on, swinging their picks under a 
 ceaseless crackle and roar of bellowing flame that 
 
GUINEA GOLD 167 
 
 lit up the dripping caves of the forest with blue lights 
 like signal-flares, and turned the rain to streaming 
 glass, and showed the lines of weariness on the three 
 tired faces, as they passed continually, in the alter- 
 nating leap of the flashes, from glare to gloom. . . . 
 That night, in the camp by the river, white men and 
 black slept as sound as Cripps himself, lying in 
 his unknown bed beneath the sodden earth and leaves 
 of the " untrampled forest floor." There was no 
 sentry set, and no one waked, so the little point of 
 flame that rose and brightened and died away, a long 
 way off down the river, was seen by none. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Mr. Rupert Dence was thinking. 
 
 Two days had passed since the finding of the reef, 
 and almost two nights. It was the second night now 
 — still and blue and moonlit, the river black glass in 
 the shadows, silver glass in the light; the forest in- 
 digo and moss-agate green beneath the pouring flood 
 of the wonderful tropic moon. She was past the full 
 to-night, and so rose late. The camp by the river 
 had been long asleep when Rupert Dence stirred on 
 the rough sacking of his bed, stretched, sighed, 
 awoke, and looked out from under the fly upon a 
 slumbering world. 
 
 There is no man or woman but knows that three 
 o'clock waking, when the little nibbling care that has 
 lain drugged by labour throughout the day, and by 
 weariness through the early night, stirs to life again, 
 and sets its teeth at work. " Sleep no more ! " it 
 cries, like the voice that grieved Macbeth. " Sleep 
 no more — I have been waiting for the moment when 
 your tired body should rise for a moment like a 
 corpse through the drowning sea of sleep, and I 
 have set my fangs into it, to make sure that it shall 
 not sink again. Wake, and listen, and feel ! " 
 
 Rupert Dence had been haunted by just such a 
 little rat-like care, ever since the day in the forest 
 
 168 
 
GUINEA GOLD 169 
 
 when they had met with the invisible Kariva bow- 
 men. Something had happened that day which puz- 
 zled him. Something more had happened on the 
 day when Scott failed to count the carriers right. 
 And only a few hours before a third thing had hap- 
 pened — he thought. 
 
 He was not sure — that was the worst of it. When 
 a man is constantly tobacco-hungry he imagines the 
 smell and taste of tobacco, at times, where it does 
 not exist. Dence, like all New Guinea miners, was 
 a heavy smoker, and the daily reduction of his allow- 
 ance irked him not a little. That evening, when 
 the sunset wind was blowing up the river, he had 
 been washing himself in the stream, and he really did 
 think that the faintest possible whiff of " navy cut " 
 not stick, which was all the expedition carried — had 
 been blown for an instant to his hungry nos- 
 trils. 
 
 If it had been? If they had allowed the hunt and 
 the finding of the reef to blind them to things they 
 should have remembered . . . 
 
 The madness of gold was upon them; they could 
 think and speak of nothing else. All that day, from 
 sunrise to dark, they had been labouring desperately 
 at the reef, tearing from it its shining treasure, hardly 
 believing their eyes as they saw the richness of what 
 they had got, yet talking constantly of the untouched 
 millions that might lie buried in the earth below. 
 Before those millions the hundred that they were 
 garnering with their picks from the exposed outcrop 
 
170 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 seemed almost poor. Anderson calculated, at the 
 end of the day, that they had won about four hundred 
 and fifty among the three, and nobody thought it 
 nearly enough. 
 
 For all that, they were wild with the excitement of 
 the work; not one of them went back to the camp for 
 food or rest during all the long, hot day. They 
 hacked open a couple of tins, and bolted the contents 
 from plates of ship's biscuit, drinking out of the 
 bucket of water they had brought from the river in 
 the morning, and feeding themselves from hands cov- 
 ered with clinging dirt, and curiously spangled about 
 the nails with gold. They talked gold all day. They 
 told each other what had been got in Westralia in 
 the early times of the rush; they spoke of the cruel 
 Klondyke; they went back to tales of Ballarat and 
 Bendigo, and the era of the u Forty-Nine." They 
 threw bitter contempt upon the moderate gains of 
 old Papuan fields, Yodda and Lakakamu and Ki- 
 kiramu, and sneered at the Woodlark Reef, which 
 you had to go after four hundred feet underground, 
 and which didn't work out more than an ounce or so 
 to the ton when you got it. Now and then one of 
 the three would break off into an account of what he 
 meant to do with his share, but that part seemed far 
 off, and unreal, and did not really interest anyone 
 very much in these first hours of furious gold-getting. 
 The royal metal seemed aim and end in itself. 
 
 So they worked, and went home, and slept. And 
 so Dence woke up, late in the night, with the little 
 
GUINEA GOLD 171 
 
 rat of anxiety gnawing away in his mind, and de- 
 manding to be noticed. 
 
 Was there anyone else on the river? 
 
 Most unlikely — well-nigh impossible. . . . Yet — 
 was not Papua the Country of the Impossible? 
 
 Rupert Dence sat up on his bunk in the moonlight, 
 his eyes looking down the river, his chin set on his 
 knees — and found no answer to his thoughts. 
 
 Anderson and Scott, rising at the dawn of day and 
 making haste to get breakfast over, so that they 
 might begin their work again as soon as possible, 
 found the third partner disinclined to get up. Dence 
 was in one of his nasty moods. He was not sick, he 
 said; he was simply tired and sleepy, and he meant to 
 stop where he was. When they tried to punch him into 
 getting up and taking his share of work, he swore at 
 them elaborately, and wrapped his head in his blan- 
 ket, out of which proceeded, afterwards, certain muf- 
 fled sounds, having reference to the folly of losing 
 your night's sleep under any circumstances, espe- 
 cially when it did no adjectived persons any ad- 
 jectived good, and brought you no adjectived thanks. 
 
 " Let him alone," advised Anderson. " Dence is 
 a queer fish, and won't stand being interfered with. 
 There isn't any terrible hurry." 
 
 It was pleasant walking through the bush to the 
 reef again, in the cool of early morning, pink and 
 lilac orchid flowers smelling sweet on the branches 
 of the great dusk trees, bell-birds tank-tanking, and 
 
172 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Gaura pigeons ringing golden chimes. The two men 
 spoke little. They were filled with quiet, dreamy 
 happiness, the calm of feeling that follows on the 
 storm, whether of joy or grief. They saw before 
 them long years of luxury and ease that they had 
 bought with toil and danger unspeakable. They felt 
 the weight of common human anxieties lifted away 
 for ever from their hearts — those anxieties that' 
 are carried all through life by almost every man; 
 fear for the " rainy day," fear for the grey, cold 
 years when the grasshopper shall be a burden, fear 
 for the vulnerable body so easily hurt or crippled, 
 and fear of the bitter bread that broken men must 
 eat. There were no such fears for them. The little 
 white curb of quartz, with its yellow spots and 
 streakings, was high enough to wall them off for ever. 
 
 They walked into the clearing that they had made 
 about the reef. 
 
 Astride the curb of quartz sat Clay of Sama- 
 rai, his pasty face terrible with fear and twitching 
 with evil triumph. He had a loaded revolver in 
 each hand. A bunch of native carriers squatted on 
 the ground behind him. Some few yards from where 
 he sat, the morning sun rays shot through the trees 
 straight upon a new-cut wooden post hammered into 
 the ground, and bearing a paper, on which some 
 words were written in blotted ink. 
 
 Scott stopped dead on the verge of the clearing, 
 dumfoundered. He could not believe he saw rightly. 
 And what the mischief . . . 
 
GUINEA GOLD 173 
 
 He caught the expression on Anderson's face, 
 and it struck him like a blow. The miner had 
 turned a horrible white, and his greenish eyes had 
 dilated till they looked nearly black. 
 
 " Good God in Heaven ! " he choked. " The little 
 devil's jumped our claim! " 
 
 " I don't understand," said Scott, with a feeling 
 of cold fright creeping up his back. " What has he 
 done? What business has he here? Kick him 
 out!" 
 
 " I can't," said Anderson, still in that low, choked 
 voice. 
 
 " You can't! You can't!" crowed Clay, like a 
 rooster with the croup. He was terribly frightened, 
 and the revolvers swayed in his grip. " You never 
 pegged your claim. I've a perfect right. The 
 Government will support me. My boys are witnesses 
 — I pegged out the claim first, early this morning — 
 read the notice. It's all in order. I — I — I'll shoot 
 any man who touches it." 
 
 He laughed the high whinnying laugh of abject 
 fear. But it was not the fear of the creature that 
 was so disgusting to see; it was his dreadful courage 
 — the courage of a starveling dog over a stolen bone. 
 The bone is life to him — if its loss were death to 
 you, or a thousand of you, he would keep his teeth 
 in it just the same. 
 
 " Finding's keeping! " he whinnied. " Don't you 
 dare touch me. You'll hang if you do. This — this 
 isn't your old Crown Colony days. We've got a 
 
174 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Government of our own. You'll be hanged, I tell 
 you." 
 
 There seemed to be something in Anderson's face 
 that induced him to harp on the question, for he 
 called out yet once again that they hanged you in 
 Papua nowadays, before he fell silent, looking at the 
 two miners, and trying to keep his chin from jerking 
 up and down. 
 
 " The question is," said Anderson, speaking quite 
 quietly, " whether it isn't worth hanging — for you." 
 
 " I'll shoot you," babbled Clay. 
 
 " I've seen men strung up — for much less," stated 
 Anderson. " In Venezuela. And other places." 
 He seemed to be communing with himself, and mak- 
 ing up his mind — under the wobbling barrels of the 
 two revolvers. Scott clinched his teeth as the gleam 
 of the trembling steel crossed his own face; he could 
 see that Clay was scarcely responsible for his actions 
 at the moment, and he wished himself well out of 
 the range of those threatening muzzles. But one 
 could not move away, while Anderson stood look- 
 ing right into the clump of lead-nosed barrels, coolly 
 deciding what he should do. 
 
 There was always a chance of surprise from stalk- 
 ing Karivas in these unknown regions, and the three 
 adventurers had fallen into the habit of wearing 
 their own revolvers all day long. Anderson's swung 
 loose on his hip in an open holster, and Scott saw his 
 fingers stealing round to it, while Clay, half blind 
 with fright, kept babbling and exulting, and waving 
 
GUINEA GOLD 175 
 
 his weapon in the air. . . . The big miner's face had 
 changed — was changing . . . 
 
 "No, by God, you don't! " 
 
 Scott never knew whether he said the words, or 
 merely thought them. But he had Anderson by the 
 arm in an instant, and with all the strength of his 
 shipyard-toughened muscles was tugging him back 
 into the bush. Before you could have called out, 
 they were struggling and scrapping confusedly 
 through the undergrowth, one hauling, the other 
 resisting — a wrestling bout that meant life or death 
 to Clay. 
 
 Clay had sense enough to see that, and, still clutch- 
 ing his revolvers, but forgetting that he held them, 
 fled into the forest. And the two partners fought, 
 among the thorny citron bushes, and the tangled 
 lianas, and the spindling, long-branched gum trees — 
 smashing, tripping, and shouting out. 
 
 " Quit it, Anderson, ye fool ! " gasped the Belfast- 
 man. " Quit, I tell ye ! I'm not going to stand by 
 and see ye commit murder." 
 
 a You'll feel me commit it, if you don't let me 
 go ! " roared the other. " Do you know what he's 
 done? LET GO!" 
 
 " I will," said Scott suddenly, releasing his hold. 
 He had seen Clay disappear in the bush. 
 
 Anderson glared round him like a tiger robbed of 
 its prey. 
 
 " Where's he gone? " he demanded. 
 
 " Now, you don't suppose I'm going to tell you 
 
176 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 that. Can't you keep your hair on for a minute, and 
 tell me what's happened? " Scott was fastening up 
 his shirt, torn nearly off his back. He seemed much 
 the cooler of the two, but in reality a horrid fear 
 was thumping at his heart. What must the injury 
 be that had so transformed the iron-natured Ander- 
 son? 
 
 " Happened? " said Anderson, breathing quickly, 
 and catching hold of a tree-fern trunk, as though he 
 needed its support. " He has taken the reef from 
 us. That's all." 
 
 "How?" asked Scott, with dry lips. This was 
 very bad. 
 
 " Pegged out a claim — all over the outcrop. I 
 didn't need to look at the notice — it was the one 
 thing he would do. It's his — by mining law, and 
 Commonwealth law." 
 
 " Why didn't we peg out our claim? " 
 
 Anderson groaned. 
 
 u Why didn't we? Because Dence and I were two 
 of the wretchedest fools that ever . . . But there 
 wasn't a white man within a week's march. — How 
 
 could one Scott, we've been bad mates to you. 
 
 We've ruined you." 
 
 " Oh, that's all rot; if you can stand it, I can. Of 
 course, I didn't know " 
 
 " No— and we didn't think. . . . The little devil's 
 been at the Kikiramu all the time. That cook must 
 have been him. He must have got Carter to grub- 
 stake him, with some plausible tale or other, and 
 
GUINEA GOLD 177 
 
 followed us up almost as soon as we started. A 
 child could have traced us by our track. And there 
 were his boys making sago in the same swamp as 
 ours — the day one of them got into our crowd, and 
 you counted thirty-two. . . . Why didn't we see? " 
 he groaned. 
 
 They had both quieted down now. They were 
 beginning to realise what it meant. The golden 
 dream was gone. There would be no triumphal 
 voyage down to Sydney in the best cabins of the B.P. 
 liners — the gates of all the delights in all the world 
 opening wide before them as they went — no magic 
 raft to float them up above the struggles and mis- 
 eries of a drowning, moneyless humanity — no latter 
 end secure from the fear of dependence, that haunts 
 a brave man worse than the fear of death. They 
 would be — like other people. Nothing more. 
 
 Slowly, as beasts that have received a deadly 
 wound, they crawled home. The camp was as they 
 left it; the natives had not finished their billy-can of 
 rice they were beginning when the two had started 
 out. Dence, coiled in his bunk, still slept. 
 
 The Australian and the Irishman sat down upon 
 the ground and looked at the carriers wolfing their 
 food. A flight of hornbills, dark green bodied, 
 orange necked, crossed the river. A wild pig, far 
 away in the forest, crashed among the trees. It was 
 very quiet; you could hear the insects crawling in 
 the bush and the dead leaves dropping in the stream. 
 
 They had not the heart to speak. 
 
178 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Presently Dence took his head from under his 
 arm, untwisted his legs, and woke up. 
 
 " I've had a good sleep," he remarked, turning 
 out of his bunk. " Did you fellows eat all the kai- 
 kai? I could manage half a pig, if we had one." 
 
 u Dence," said Anderson, sitting on the ground, 
 " there's only one damned fool to match you in the 
 world, and that's me." 
 
 " But why? " queried Dence, pulling on his boots. 
 " No use looking so down in the mouth about it, 
 anyhow, if you have found out the truth once in a 
 way." 
 
 " I'm not having the loan of you," said Anderson. 
 *' I'm serious. Clay has sneaked after us and pegged 
 out our claim." 
 
 Mr. Dence finished pulling on his boot without 
 any comment. He looked under the bunk for the 
 other, pulled that on too, and then came out from 
 under the fly, hair on end, and shirt open over his 
 chest. He looked at Anderson with a quizzical eye. 
 
 11 You are a funny devil, you know," he said. 
 
 "Hang you, we're not making fun!" shouted 
 Scott. " It's true. Go and look at the peg he's put 
 up, if you don't believe it." He was feeling very 
 sore indeed against the two for their neglect in peg- 
 ging out the claims — though he knew that not one in 
 a thousand would have done so, in such a place as 
 this — and the effort to keep back any reproach made 
 him vicious. 
 
 Dence, being out of the tent, looked deliberately 
 
GUINEA GOLD 179 
 
 round him for a tree with a good, steady trunk. 
 Having found one, he leaned up against it, shut his 
 eyes, opened his mouth, and laughed till he nearly 
 choked. 
 
 " I never — never — knew — such a good one," he 
 
 panted. " Oh, to see your faces " He was off 
 
 again. u Stop me, Anderson, I'll shake my ribs 
 loose. Oh — I can't breathe. Oh, by Jove, it's too 
 rich." He yelled louder. 
 
 Scott stared in utter bewilderment, tinged with 
 annoyance. But Anderson's eyes were beginning to 
 glitter, and the colour was coming back to his face. 
 He got up, looked at Dence, saw his laughter fit was 
 hot likely to come to an immediate end, and de- 
 liberately emptied a bucket of water over the laugh- 
 er's head. 
 
 "Confound you, what did you do that for?" 
 spluttered Dence, all the laugh washed out of him. 
 
 " I reckoned it was the best way to treat hysterics," 
 said Anderson dryly. " Out with it. What have you 
 done?" 
 
 " Got up in the middle of the night and pegged 
 out three claims, one for each of us — 75 by 400 
 apiece. We'll see to the extra reward claim to- 
 morrow. (Where's there a towel? You've half 
 drowned me!) Put the four pegs in all right and 
 
 stuck up the notice. Took Here, you needn't 
 
 pound my ribs off my backbone — who's got hysterics 
 now?" 
 
 " Good for you ! Good old man ! " Anderson was 
 
180 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 exclaiming, to the accompaniment of hearty slaps 
 upon Dence's back. Scott had leaped to his feet with 
 a spring like a wallaby, and was pumping the Eng- 
 lishman's arm up and down, using, in his excitement, 
 expressions that would certainly not have passed 
 muster in the Young Men's Christian Association. 
 
 " Unhand me, sir ! " commanded Dence loftily. 
 " My Lord, I conjure you let me pass — I would go 
 and clean myself in the river." 
 
 " No, you don't," Anderson assured him. " We 
 want to hear some more." 
 
 " There isn't any more. I dated it, and took 
 Yassi and Kobo with me to see what I did, by the 
 struggling moonbeams' misty light, and the lantern 
 dimly burnin'. Then I went back, and lay like a 
 warrior takin' his rest, till you two came back. . . . 
 And Clay got up very early, did he, the little bird, 
 and went out to catch the early worm? And why 
 didn't the little bird see that the bloomin' little worm 
 was caught already? " 
 
 " Oh, that's plain," said Anderson, who now 
 looked ten years younger than he had done a few 
 minutes earlier. " He was afraid to take up time 
 marking out the proper square, so he put in a datum 
 
 Peg " 
 
 "What's that?" asked Scott. 
 
 " What you saw. A peg put up to claim a cer- 
 tain area — 75 by 400 is the limit — in the two direc- 
 tions mentioned on the notice. It's as good as the 
 other — if it gets there first. Of course, he had to 
 
GUINEA GOLD 181 
 
 take up a smaller area, so he never saw Dence's 
 pegs at all — they must have been out of sight in the 
 bush." 
 
 "Then we're really all right, after all?" 
 
 " You bet." 
 
 44 Three cheers for Dence ! " yelled Scott, throwing 
 up his hat. 
 
 They gave them, and another to follow, Dence 
 very obligingly joining in himself, because, as he 
 explained, the cheer would have been spoiled if he 
 hadn't. Clay, skulking about in the bush, as near as 
 he dared, heard the cheering, and felt his heart sink 
 with fear. Why should ruined men cheer? 
 
 He found out before very long, when the ruined 
 men, quartering the bush among them with scientific 
 precision, started out to run him down. He heard 
 them coming, and made widely for the river, hoping 
 to reach the canoe he had left tied up under a log in 
 time to get away. But his boys, who liked their 
 master not at all, and considered the hunt an excel- 
 lent joke, frustrated his efforts by getting in his way 
 at every opportunity, so that the chase was short and 
 disastrous — for the quarry. In less than ten minutes 
 Clay was struggling and howling in the grip of 
 Dence, while Anderson and Scott, roaring with 
 laughter, tied his hands and feet with " bush ropes " 
 and slung him on a pole, after the fashion of cannibal 
 Papua preparing for a feast. His own boys, at the 
 order of the miners, took him very readily upon 
 their shoulders, and carried him through the bush 
 
182 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 to the camp by the river. The miners followed, still 
 laughing; Clay filled the bush with terrified cries 
 and entreaties and threats of Government vengeance; 
 the native carriers, uplifted and excited, sang a war- 
 song as they went. And above all the noise made 
 by the strange procession, rose the frantic screeching 
 of the great white cockatoos that lived on the cliffs 
 above the river; for your cockatoo is the natural 
 sentry of the wilds, and gives ample tongue to his 
 suspicions at the least suggestion of trouble. 
 
 Before they reached the camp, they carried their 
 prisoner round by the reef, and showed him every 
 one of Dence's pegs, bumping his head soundly on 
 each, to impress it upon his memory. 
 
 " The Government will protect us," they told him. 
 " You'll be hanged if you look crooked at us. 
 There's law and order in the country nowadays." 
 
 They carried him down to the river-bank, and 
 deposited him, none too carefully, on the ground. 
 His doughy face was green with fright, and he kept 
 crying on them, in God's name, for Christ's sake, to 
 let him go. 
 
 " Hear the brute ! " said Anderson disgustedly, 
 spitting into the river. " He's enough to make any- 
 one turn atheist." 
 
 " Do you think," said Dence, with a sidewise wink, 
 " that it would be better to drop him into the river 
 just as he is, or give him to the boys to play with? 
 We've a few young devils of Orokivas who would 
 enjoy a little fun." 
 
GUINEA GOLD 183 
 
 At this, Clay began to fight wildly against the re- 
 straining ropes. Kobo, who was a fine, upstanding, 
 well-mannered boy, came forward eagerly, his eyes 
 glowing, and pulled the lianas tighter. 
 
 " Taubada," he said, with an ingratiating smile, 
 " more better you give him along we-fellow Orokiva 
 boy. All the time we-fellow no got betel-nut, no got 
 dance, no got fight, no got nothings, makem play 
 belong Orokiva. All the time belly be long we- 
 fellow all same one big stone he stop along him. 
 Suppose you giving bad-fellow white man, Orokiva 
 boy he plenty like." 
 
 "What will you do with him? " asked Anderson 
 gravely. 
 
 14 By n' by we breakem leg belong him, takem one 
 stick-fire, put him along eye," said the Orokiva, with 
 a delightful smile. " Behind, he stop one day, two 
 day, we look along him, no can run away, plenty 
 we talk along him, make sing, make dance. By n' 
 by makem plenty big pyre, puttem that fellow along 
 pyre, he cook all same pig, all same dish. Plenty he 
 sing out, altogether grease belong him he fell down 
 along fire. Very good, my word! Taubada, you 
 like?" 
 
 It seemed to the Orokiva that his employers were 
 showing signs of a more liberal-minded sporting 
 disposition than he had believed them to possess, 
 and he was ready at once to meet them on their own 
 ground. A New Guinea savage is not really sur- 
 prised. 
 
1 84 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 But Scott had had as much as he wanted, for 
 Clay was beginning to howl. 
 
 " Shut up, you silly brute ! " he said loudly. 
 " They're only taking a rise out of you. No one's 
 going to hurt you. Go on, you bushman, and clean 
 the billy-cans," he added, throwing at the Orokiva 
 the epithet that for some incomprehensible reason 
 grieves and reduces to submission almost any native 
 of New Guinea. 
 
 " Me no bushman ! " protested the warrior, in a 
 mortified tone, slinking away to his scullion-work. 
 
 " Well, since Scott has given the show away, 
 there's no use keepin' it up any longer," remarked 
 Dence. " Anderson, I vote we make this thing use- 
 ful, as we'll have to keep it here for a good bit. It 
 can cook, it seems, so we'll make it cook and general 
 orderly, and pay it wages, so that it can't say it 
 hasn't had a fair deal." 
 
 11 Right," said Anderson, slashing through the 
 ropes with his knife. 
 
 It was arranged later in the day that Scott, as the 
 least experienced miner, should go back in a short 
 time to the Kikiramu field to place the applications 
 with the warden, and fetch up a fresh supply of food, 
 taking a number of carriers with him. For the pres- 
 ent, and until the miners thought well to release him, 
 Clay was to look upon himself as a prisoner. There 
 was no fear of his running away, since he could not 
 get back to civilisation without carriers or stores. 
 
 In the evening the three mates sat on a log near 
 
GUINEA GOLD - 185 
 
 the river smoking, beating off the mosquitoes, and 
 talking. Clay's tent had been put up within sight 
 of the others, but he was given to understand that his 
 company was not desired in the white men's camp, 
 so, like Achilles, he skulked apart. 
 
 " It was the oddest thing to see him defy us," said 
 Scott, relating the incidents of the morning yet again. 
 " It gave one quite a turn, just as if a sheep had made 
 for you and bitten you. Seemed sort of unnatural." 
 
 " Nothing's unnatural," said Dence. 
 
 11 Well, what was that?" 
 
 " Perfectly natural. Anything that has life will 
 fight, if its motive is strong enough. I happen to 
 know Clay's motive." 
 
 " Oh, the gold." 
 
 u Not quite — or not only. What's the next 
 strongest passion in the world? " 
 
 " You don't mean to say that thing's got a girl? " 
 
 " I don't. That's the trouble." 
 
 "How?" asked Scott, puzzled and interested. 
 He felt at times that Dence went a good deal beyond 
 him. Clay, to his vision, was a mere human rat — 
 how could a rat have any motive or feeling save the 
 rat-like one of greediness? 
 
 11 Did you ever think," asked Dence, smoking 
 slowly, " you and Anderson, what it would be like 
 if no woman cared for you — ever had, or ever 
 could?" 
 
 Two right hands went up to two moustaches and 
 twisted them a little knowingly. Anderson only 
 
186 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 smiled. You could see he thought of many things. 
 Scott answered quickly. 
 
 " No, by Jove, I did not — but it would be — well, 
 it would be " 
 
 He wished very much that somebody were here to 
 boast for him. Though a modest man enough, Scott 
 was not blind to the fact that Janie, and the girl with 
 the sweet brown eyes, were — what could one say? — 
 well, scarcely singular in their tastes. 
 
 " Just so," said Dence. " Well, there are men, 
 not very many of them, but some, who have never 
 been liked by anything that wore a skirt. Clay's 
 one. Any woman on earth would fancy a humpback 
 sooner than him — fancy a blind nigger — fancy Satan 
 himself. Why? You ask women; they might tell 
 you — I couldn't, for I don't know, but there it is. He 
 isn't exactly an ugly fellow, in a way : he's as big and 
 strong as the average; if he lies and sneaks, so do 
 thousands who are liked by women whose shoes they 
 aren't fit to tie. But — women won't count him in 
 the game. Never did. Never will. I've known 
 Clay a good while, and I know that's true. 
 
 " Well," he went on, " it's pretty well poisoned 
 his life, and — naturally — made him hate men who 
 are liked by women. And he dreams of turnin' the 
 tables, somehow or other, some day. He dreams of 
 being rich, so that he can buy a handsome wife, as any 
 rich man can — just as you buy a horse at a fair, and 
 put a halter on it, and tie it in your stable. And he 
 fancies how he'd be seen drivin' in motor-cars with 
 
GUINEA GOLD 187 
 
 famous actresses and singers, who wouldn't go out 
 to lunch with the handsomest man he knows, unless 
 they got somethin' out of it — he reckons he'd have 
 diamonds enough handy to make them play they liked 
 him, anyhow. And he'd flash his money about to 
 such an extent that the girls who like all the other 
 men he knows, and who have given him the ugly 
 set-down, would just come crawlin' round. Oh, some 
 of his notions are not so far out — for a little rat 
 with a rat's brain. And, if you want to know, that's 
 why Clay has done — what he has." 
 
 " I don't see how you know," commented Scott, a 
 little acidly. The subject Dence had started held 
 certain drops of bitterness somewhere — for that 
 company. 
 
 " I know," said the man who had lived too much, 
 and, as he sometimes told himself, too long. " There 
 are keys that unlock most doors. . . . Deuce of it 
 is, they cost such a lot, that by the time you've got 
 the bunch, you're pretty well bankrupt." 
 
 Well, I'm for bed," said Scott, stifling a yawn. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 They were taking round the eleven o'clock tea in 
 Samarai. 
 
 Only in the Land-of-Lots-of-Time does eleven 
 o'clock tea really flourish. In England, it sulks 
 ashamed about back drawing-rooms and housemaids' 
 pantries, cherished as a secret vice by the women of 
 the house, and contemned by the men. It lifts its 
 head to the status of a tolerated luxury in Australia, 
 where the station owner and his hardy sons are not 
 ashamed to sit down on the verandah with wife 
 and sisters and temper the heat of the morning with 
 a refreshing cup or two before they set foot in stir- 
 rup again. And in Australia's outback colony, 
 Papua, it finds its own at last. For here eleven 
 o'clock tea is actually an institution of the country, 
 recognised by Government. 
 
 It was eleven, and a beautiful, molten-gold-hot 
 morning. Up and down the little white coral path- 
 ways, between the ranks of scarlet crotons, and 
 under the shadow of the tossing palms, trotted the 
 Government boys, brown-legged, blue-tunicked, bear- 
 ing jugs and plates to the Government offices. On 
 all the verandahs of the bungalows and hotels spoons 
 tinkled and china clinked. Men who did not drink 
 tea, because their tastes were for stronger stuff, 
 
 188 
 
GUINEA GOLD 189 
 
 drifted into the bars of Figg's Federal, and Bunn's, 
 driven irresistibly by the universal thirst, and there 
 comforted themselves with beer. 
 
 Charmian Ducane was kept busy serving, for the 
 town was full at present, and the morning was un- 
 usually warm. Her little soft hands, once white, but 
 reddened now by the constant washing and wiping 
 of glasses, were hard at work drawing and handing 
 drink, taking money, giving change, and marking 
 down scores. She had found the calculating part 
 almost impossible at first; even yet she depended 
 a good deal on a paper and pencil, and more on the 
 kindness of the men who frequented the bar, and 
 who were always ready to help her out with a sum, 
 or to protect her against taking bad money. She 
 had taken a good deal at first, especially on steamer 
 days. Figg had scolded her, and she had cried so 
 much about it that her eyes were very red. Then a 
 couple of Yodda miners had asked her what the 
 matter was, and she had told them. After that the 
 word had gone round in Samarai that anyone who 
 was caught giving her bad money would suffer for it. 
 Thenceforward pewter florins and composition sov- 
 ereigns came no more to the Federal till. 
 
 Figg, however, was dissatisfied. He had engaged 
 the heroine of the Ducane trial with certain ex- 
 pectations which had not been fulfilled. He had 
 never supposed she would make a smart barmaid, 
 but he did anticipate that her notoriety would draw 
 all Samarai to his hotel, out of sheer curiosity. It 
 
ic,o GUINEA GOLD 
 
 did, for a fortnight — no more. In the tiny island 
 town, with its stationary population, everybody had 
 done all the staring that curiosity demanded, very 
 soon, and there was nothing to keep up interest, once 
 the nine days' wonder had subsided. 
 
 And Mrs. Ducane was not a good barmaid. 
 
 Anyone could see that she hated the work, and 
 felt degraded by it. She tried to be pleasant to 
 everybody, for Charmian was an honest soul (else 
 had she paid back Ducane in his own base coin, 
 years and years ago), and she knew that her smiles 
 were considered in her salary. So she wore a gal- 
 vanised little grin that was the most piteous thing 
 about her piteous position, and she did not slap the 
 customers in the face, as she really wished to do, 
 when they squeezed her fingers as she was handing 
 glasses. But she could not manage to look as if she 
 liked her work or her patrons, and, what with the 
 fear of being too civil, and the fear of not being civil 
 enough, she always seemed half scared — more and 
 more to the annoyance of landlord Figg, who began 
 to think that charity was too expensive a luxury for 
 the Federal Hotel. 
 
 This day, however, she was brighter than usual, 
 and even talked to the men she was serving with 
 something like the old gaiety of manner that had 
 made Mrs. Ducane's at-home days the most popu- 
 lar in North Queensland — once upon a time. The 
 wave of take-it-easiness that floods all Samarai about 
 the coming of the eleven o'clock hour had settled 
 
GUINEA GOLD 191 
 
 down upon Figg's ; the boarders who had something 
 to do had slipped away from doing it, to lounge 
 and loaf away a quarter of an hour in Charmian's 
 bar. The boarders who had nothing to do (and they 
 were many) were lying about the seats on the veran- 
 dah, where they had lain since breakfast, drifting 
 in and out of the bar now and then, and all the time 
 exchanging sleepy gossip with the people who came 
 in from the streets and stores. 
 
 More than usual this morning Charmian disliked 
 it all — the smell of liquor, the reek of tobacco, the 
 heat and the dry rattle of the palms, and the glare 
 from the fierce blue sea outside. Yet she felt better 
 able to stand it than usual, for she had a letter in 
 her pocket, crackling every time she moved, that had 
 put new light in the golden brown of her eyes, and 
 had caused her, for no reason except a general up- 
 lifting of heart, to put on her very best muslin dress. 
 Who shall separate cause and effect in the tangle of 
 gratified emotion that induces, and accompanies, the 
 wearing of a pretty woman's prettiest dress? Char- 
 mian felt twenty per cent, happier than usual when 
 she got the letter, and ten per cent, happier still when 
 she had preened her feathers to celebrate its com- 
 ing. In spite of the ill-smelling bar, and the glaring 
 light, and the rude talk of the men about her, life 
 looked pleasant this morning. Scott's letter, hidden 
 away in her pocket, where she could feel it crumple 
 as she moved, shed its own glamour upon the bar, 
 and the town, and the island — even upon the world 
 
i 9 2 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 beyond, that had been so cruel to little Charmian. 
 After all, her trouble had rid her of Grant Ducane; 
 was not that one glorious fact compensation enough 
 for anything? 
 
 She wiped glasses industriously, tripping about the 
 bar with a lighter foot than usual, and singing softly 
 as she moved. The hot sea creamed hissing on the 
 scorching sand, at the other side of the road the 
 palm-vanes struck their huge dry hands together with 
 a sound like rain. From the verandah one could 
 hear the steady stream of talk that flowed among the 
 lounges and long chairs — news from the pearling 
 islands a day to eastward; chatter about Kikiramu 
 goldfield news, just brought down by the coasting 
 steamer; ship talk of every kind — when the Govern- 
 ment yacht was due, what had happened to So-and- 
 so's schooner; whether the German boat would call 
 on her upward trip . . . 
 
 "Not she; the North German Lloyd never calls 
 without she's got forty pounds' worth of passenger 
 to fetch at the least, and there's no one due from 
 here to Singapore. She won't call," maintained a 
 fat trader in a worn suit of khaki. 
 
 "What's the next boat in from south, then?" 
 asked some invisible person. 
 
 " Matunga's due in three days," they bab- 
 bled on. 
 
 Charmian felt half asleep as she stirred about her 
 bar, drawing beer for a couple of men who had come 
 in, and listening dully to the interminable shipping 
 
GUINEA GOLD 193 
 
 talk. It did not interest her at all. How stupefying 
 the smell of beer was ! 
 
 Of a sudden a howl arose from the natives on 
 the beach—" Say-0 ! Say-O ! " 
 
 " Sail-0 ! " shouted the men on the verandah, 
 everyone jumping to his feet. In the direction of 
 China Straits the imperial blue of the morning sky 
 was stained by a thin smear of trailing black. 
 
 "It is the German boat!" triumphed the man 
 who had been arguing with the trader. " Nothing 
 else could make such a smoke. Never calls going up, 
 doesn't she? " 
 
 " She must have passengers to land — a good lot 
 of them," maintained the trader. He was really 
 mortified, for they take the doings of ships mighty 
 seriously in Samarai, and the trade of marine prophet 
 — in the absence of telegraphy, wireless or wired — 
 carries some repute. 
 
 But when the great yellow-funnelled Norddeut- 
 scher Lloyd had come to anchor in the Straits before 
 the town, looking absurdly big there, as she towered 
 up among the schooners and luggers and oil- 
 launches, it became plain that she had not come to 
 land passengers — at least, of the ordinary kind. The 
 doctor was signalled for, and went out as usual; he 
 remained a good while on board, and when he came 
 ashore, it was only to tell his hospital assistant that 
 a bed would be wanted for an accident at once, and 
 to oversee the preparing of a stretcher. Then he 
 went on board the steamer again, and helped to 
 
194 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 lower a sick man into his own whaleboat. A pas- 
 senger on the ship had fallen down a hatchway, and 
 had been so badly injured that the ship's doctor re- 
 fused to subject him to the chances of wind and 
 weather for the rest of the run to Singapore. As 
 Samarai had a doctor and a hospital, he must be 
 landed there. So ordained the Herr Doktor, and so 
 it was done. 
 
 Therefore the German boat called, and therefore 
 she got away again as quickly as she could, having 
 landed her accident case. All Samarai was in a flut- 
 ter of excitement; they are habitually on short com- 
 mons as regards happenings of interest in the island 
 town (save for murders in the interior, cases of 
 cannibalism reported from the islands, and other 
 everyday incidents about which nobody cares) . The 
 doctor was fairly besieged on his usual rounds that 
 afternoon. Who was the man? What was the mat- 
 ter with him? Where had he been going? Was he 
 going to recover? How would he get away again? 
 And a hundred questions more followed the busy 
 official as he went up and down the park-like walks 
 of the island, from Bob of Woodlark, the latest 
 miner to blow off his right arm fishing illegally with 
 dynamite, to Blank of Ioma, brought in a week ago 
 with blackwater fever; from Mrs. Q. and her baby, 
 to young R. the magistrate and his " New Guinea 
 sore leg." 
 
 The man, according to the doctor, was no less a 
 person than Kenton, lately of Lemba Plantation — a 
 
GUINEA GOLD 195 
 
 man who had made money in Papua, and gone away 
 to enjoy it, travelling about the world. He had 
 smashed a leg, and several ribs, and the lung was 
 perforated. He had been on his way to England, 
 via the Malay States. He was certainly going to 
 recover, now that he was off a rolling ship, but he 
 wasn't to be visited. He would get away again when 
 it pleased Providence and Dr. Cornwall. (The doc- 
 tor was young, new, and a locum tenens ; which is as 
 much as to say that he took a dignified and solemn, 
 not to say sacred, view of his responsibilities of 
 office.) 
 
 It happened that evening that Dr. Cornwall, being 
 kept rather long at Figg's Federal Hotel in attend- 
 ance on a sick trader, thought well to dine there, 
 instead of climbing up to his own Governmental 
 residence on the top of the island. It happened 
 also that the doctor, who advocated teetotalism in 
 hot climates, but did not practise it, turned into the 
 bar after dinner and refreshed himself with a glass — 
 or two, or three — of Figg's excellent whiskey. And 
 it also happened that he talked, perhaps rather more 
 than a doctor should. 
 
 He discoursed, with excellent learning, on the 
 state of his patient's injured limbs and organs, and 
 on the natural processes that would assist his own 
 healing efforts. He was patronising about Lister, 
 and mentioned " old Ambrose Pare " with kindness. 
 He said that Frederick Treves was a good fellow 
 if people only wouldn't spoil him, and observed that 
 
ig6 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 he personally never had. He went off at a tangent 
 into the oath of Hippocrates, and remarked in 
 the same breath that Kenton's evidently intemperate 
 habits wouldn't improve his chances of keeping his 
 leg; also, that Kenton's acquaintances and bosom 
 friends down in Sydney, as evidenced by his conver- 
 sation, did not do him credit. Being now well 
 warmed up by the whiskey, he proceeded to give 
 instances. He said that Kenton was a regular pal 
 of the doctor who had been mixed up in that dis- 
 reputable Ducane divorce (Cornwall was very new 
 to the island, and had never heard Charmian's 
 name), that the doctor had died lately, and Kenton 
 had been with him. Somebody kicked Cornwall 
 fiercely on the shin at this, but Cornwall, being more 
 than half intoxicated, only swore at him, and went 
 on. This Kenton, he said, had told him a queer 
 thing. The doctor, who must have been a frightful 
 blackguard — intemperate fellow, too, they said — had 
 told Kenton, when he was just about going, that the 
 evidence he gave in the divorce case was false, and 
 the whole charge a lie. Told the whole thing, how 
 
 he had What, in the name of several ugly 
 
 things, did his neighbour (a lean, leather-faced 
 miner, in a flannel shirt) mean by digging him, a 
 Government officer, in the ribs like that? (This 
 with great dignity.) 
 
 •" Hold your tongue," said the miner plainly. 
 " That lady's Mrs. Ducane." 
 
 The doctor, who was really not a bad young 
 
GUINEA GOLD 197 
 
 fellow, being in truth nothing worse than an 
 over-educated, under-vitalised slip out of a college 
 nursery-garden, not yet acclimatised to the winds 
 of the open world — set down his glass confusedly 
 and begged the pardon of the extremely silent and 
 pale-faced girl who was standing behind the counter. 
 He thought she looked rather sick, and wondered 
 why. 
 
 " You want a — want a — tonic, my dear," he told 
 her, staring at her glassy-eyed. " I'll s-send you 
 down some stick-stick — some sticknine to-morrow. 
 If you're Mrs. Ducane, my dear, got good news for 
 you." 
 
 It scarcely seemed possible that any human being 
 should turn paler — yet she did. 
 
 " Good news," repeated the doctor, nodding his 
 head. " Kenton says — Ducane heard all about it — 
 most awfully cut up — heard you were here — Kenton 
 told him — he's comin' up by Matunga, day after to- 
 morrow. Bygones be bygones, an' have another 
 wedding — that's what he says, Kenton says. Wish 
 you luck. You let me sen' that sticknine? Pretty 
 girl like you shouldn't look " 
 
 The floor was concrete ; the bottle that Charmian 
 had been holding made a fearful crash as it fell, and 
 instantly the bar was filled with the pungent fumes 
 of (alleged) green Chartreuse. She did not even 
 stop to pick up the fragments. She made two steps 
 to the door at the back of the bar and was gone. 
 No one saw her face as she went. 
 
i 9 8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Somebody told Figg that Mrs. Ducane was taken 
 ill, and the landlord, with an ill-grace, left his after- 
 dinner nap and came into the bar himself. More 
 than ever he was resolved to-night that the Federal 
 should know no more " charity." 
 
 Charmian, alone in her dark little bedroom, where 
 the day-long heat from the iron roof and walls re- 
 mained all through the stifling night, was lying face 
 down on her bed, praying God to let her die to- 
 morrow. 
 
 In the strange little island town of Samarai, the 
 expression of every human feeling is strictly regu- 
 lated by geographical conditions. 
 
 When you are in love, you walk round the island. 
 You walk round it always, because this is the only 
 available form of athletic exercise, but love makes 
 you walk round it a great deal more than usual, 
 partly because love is restless, and partly because 
 you have always a chance of finding the beloved ob- 
 ject somewhere on the circular track. When you 
 are very much in love you walk round it in the moon- 
 light, and sit on the seat below the powder maga- 
 zine — not alone. If your love takes the regrettable 
 form of a passion for one who is already " an- 
 other's," you entice your Helen out boating to the 
 quarantine island, and get sociably seasick in her 
 company, while Menelaus, jealously surveying you 
 with an opera-glass from the Government jetty, 
 gloats over your agony. When you marry, you go 
 
GUINEA GOLD 199 
 
 away in a cutter, the bride's white veil fluttering 
 over salt green water, as you head for the cocoanut 
 plantation down the coast that has been lent you for 
 the honeymoon. When you die, they put your coffin 
 in a whale-boat, and the mourners sit all round it, 
 cramping their legs out of the way, and you are 
 taken to the cemetery island and buried there, and 
 the mourners go back in the boat without you, to 
 finish their mourning in the bar of Bunn's Hotel. 
 And when you are in trouble, with love and marriage 
 and death and money and misery all mixed up to- 
 gether, like the ingredients of the witches' brew in 
 Macbeth, you must inevitably go and sit on the top 
 of the island, because that is the only spot in Samarai 
 where, among the palms and the wet long grass, and 
 the uncleared, untracked brushwood, you can be 
 reasonably sure of a chance to cry unseen. 
 
 On the day before the Matunga was due from 
 Sydney, via " ports," there was somebody up on the 
 top of the island, in a quiet little spot where no casual 
 passer-by need be feared — a place where the palms 
 were young and small, and shut off all the splendid 
 panorama of the Straits, with their low-swinging, 
 criss-crossing feathers of gold-green. On the ground 
 under the palms sat the refugee from the town, her 
 arms clasped about her knees, her head on her arms, 
 crying — crying — crying. 
 
 It was Charmian's way of meeting the emergencies 
 of life. She had never been able to face things, or 
 fight things, like stronger women — women who wore 
 
200 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 black cashmere skirts and white blouses and flan- 
 nelette petticoats, who did their hair in little wal- 
 nuts on the top of their heads, and bargained with 
 the butcher and the milkman in loud, firm tones. 
 Charmian had never been able to bargain, or to make 
 sensible clothes for herself, or to stand firmly upon 
 flat-soled boots, and defy the people who differed 
 from her. She wore the pretty things bought for 
 her by the men who loved her — with a sigh for an 
 impossible dream of pretty things bought by a man 
 she might love herself: she gave in to anyone who 
 spoke in a bullying tone : she did what she was told 
 to do, whether she hated it or not: and when trou- 
 ble came, she cried, or ran away. 
 
 Troubles had come in plenty to her sad little life, 
 and now they were gathering again, thick as the 
 rainclouds gather of a north-west afternoon, in the 
 main range country of inland Papua. They were 
 worse troubles than ever this time. Figg had dis- 
 charged her: Scott was away in the un-get-at-able 
 interior: Grant, hateful Grant, was coming up by 
 the Matunga to-morrow to find and claim her again 
 — after all that had passed — after all that she had 
 paid for her wretched little freedom ! — and worst of 
 all, she could not run away. How could one run 
 away from an island? where to run to, if one could, 
 in this terrible country that was a mere welter of 
 jungle, river, mountain, and marsh, inhabited by 
 man-eating fiends and hungry alligators? 
 
 Remained but one thing to do, and Charmian was 
 
GUINEA GOLD 201 
 
 doing it, bitterly, despairingly, soaking her hand- 
 kerchief through, and spotting her dress, wishing, 
 amidst the gusts of her misery, that she had only 
 courage to go out to the end of the Government 
 jetty, where the water was deep and green, and 
 finish it all with one little jump into oblivion. . . . 
 
 " I do think I could, if it were only drowning," 
 she sobbed into her wet muslin knees. " But those 
 horrible sharks. . . . Oh, if God would just let me 
 die, any time before to-morrow ! He knows I've got 
 to die some time — what can it matter to Him whether 
 it's now, or in forty years? and it matters such a lot 
 to me. I can't, can't, go back to Grant — and yet I 
 know he will make me: he always made me do 
 everything he said. And what is there to stop him? 
 Oh, if I'd only married again — anyone, anyone! it 
 would not have mattered whom, so long as it wasn't 
 him. If George were here he'd help me. He would- 
 n't let Grant have me again, he's so strong — and 
 brave — and good. Oh, George! " 
 
 The vision of Scott rose up before her, clear as a 
 " living picture " in a cinematograph — the tall, big- 
 boned figure with its slight stoop, the grey Irish eyes 
 that were so kind and so pure: the smile, like sun- 
 shine of the North, bright, yet almost cold. . . . 
 Behind it, overlapping it, driving it out, came another 
 face — gross, red-skinned, shiny with high living — a 
 face with murky, fiery eyes, with thick lips, half shut 
 over cruel teeth, with black and grey hair growing 
 low on the low forehead, and a heavy neck and chin 
 
202 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 that rose in waves behind the fine, smart collar and 
 costly tie.'. . . The features were well-marked and 
 regular: the figure of the man was good, though 
 over-stout. There were many women who called 
 Grant Ducane a handsome fellow. There was one 
 to whom his face and himself were as the face and 
 self of Satan — mid- Victorian, Calvinistic Satan, with 
 horns and hoofs and tail and the flames and smoke 
 of hell coming up out of the dark for back- 
 ground. . . . 
 
 . . . Charmian had done crying. She was lean- 
 ing against the trunk of a palm, tired out, and scarce 
 able to see with her swollen eyes. She knew she 
 would begin again by and by, but for the moment the 
 pendulum had swung back. Was it indeed hopeless? 
 Could nothing — no drop of comfort or hope — be 
 squeezed out of that letter of Scott's that she had 
 carried night and day since it came? " Any trouble 
 
 — call me — send for me " He meant it, she 
 
 knew. Most men didn't mean such things when they 
 said them — they were only trying to make you think 
 they were to be trusted when they were not — but 
 Scott was of another kind. 
 
 Yet — how to send, when there was no time? when 
 Grant would have come, and made his hateful ex- 
 planations, and asked for the pardon that he did not 
 deserve, and forced her to give it, and taken her 
 away again to the old detestable life in England or 
 somewhere far away — long, long before a letter 
 could even reach the place where George had gone ? 
 
GUINEA GOLD 203 
 
 Charmian pressed her hands tightly together, and 
 braced her body back against the tree as she sat. 
 She would think. She would plan. There must be 
 a way. A clever person would have found one out. 
 Well, she had got to be clever — or else she had 
 got to be brave enough to face the Government jetty 
 — to-night, under the stars, when the town was 
 asleep. . . . 
 
 " I will be clever," said Charmian, wiping her eyes 
 and setting tight her soft mouth. " I will. Please, 
 God, make me clever — make me think of some- 
 thing! " 
 
 There was much of the child in Charmian. She 
 closed her eyes and put her hands together, palm to 
 palm, as she prayed her odd little prayer — just as 
 she had done when she was three years old. She 
 opened her eyes and unclasped her hands when she 
 had finished — and there was a tall, strange woman 
 climbing up the side of the hill. 
 
 The woman was not young, and she came slowly, 
 with heavy, audible breathing. When she had 
 reached the top, she looked about her; saw Charmian 
 sitting under the palm, and walked straight up to 
 her, with an air of decision and command that sat 
 upon her as naturally as the fine crown of yellow- 
 grey locks under her black shade-hat. 
 
 " Get up at once," she said. . . . " It's been rain- 
 ing all night, and you'll catch your death." 
 
 Charmian rose to her feet, because she usually 
 did what she was told. 
 
204 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " No such luck," she said, with a quiver in her 
 voice. 
 
 " That's naughty talk," said the tall woman re- 
 provingly. " I'm afraid you're a naughty girl alto- 
 gether, to sit crying up here in the wet grass, and 
 then say you want to catch your death. When a 
 girl behaves in such a silly way it's generally because 
 she's been getting into mischief. Bless you, I know 
 girls: I've got six daughters of my own; and if I'd 
 ever caught one of them behaving so foolishly, I'd 
 have taken her home and spanked her! Look at 
 your dress — tut, tut ! And you've been crying fit to 
 make yourself sick. What do you mean by it? " 
 
 The tall woman stood above her, extremely erect, 
 and shook her slightly by the shoulder, like a nurse 
 remonstrating with a wilful child. 
 
 Charmian, her breast still heaving with the ground- 
 swell of the storm that had passed, her mouth half 
 trembling, half laughing, felt suddenly and inexplic- 
 ably safe. Had the stranger caressed her and purred 
 over her, after the usual fashion of women consoling 
 each other, she would have submitted, escaped as 
 soon as possible, and gone back to her miserable 
 problem unmoved. Caressing and purring was the 
 way of women, in Charmian's experience: also 
 scratching — one mattered as little as the other. 
 
 But this stranger, with the six feet of almost 
 masculine strength, and the manner of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, shook her and scolded her . . . and immedi- 
 ately the lost and terrified feeling began to slip away. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 205 
 
 There was safety and help somewhere in the world, 
 after all. 
 
 She turned her eyes on the woman — Charmian's 
 beautiful eyes, with the innocent soul looking out of 
 their sad depths like snow-white Undine from her 
 troubled pool — and fixed a steadily inquiring gaze 
 upon the strange new friend. It was someone she 
 had never seen before — of that she was certain. 
 Who could forget such a personality? 
 
 She had not to wonder long. 
 
 " I'm Mrs. Carter," said the woman, still keeping 
 hold of her shoulder. " Came in from my island 
 to-day, and going up to my store at the Kikiramu 
 to-night. And who are you, you silly, naughty girl ? " 
 
 Charmian's eyes brightened: she knew all about 
 Mrs. Carter — who in Papua did not? The Queen 
 of North-West Island, she was called : and if half the 
 tales told about her were true, she fully deserved 
 the name. Twenty years before, when New Guinea 
 knew neither law nor order, and every man who 
 landed on its inhospitable shores went with his life 
 in his hand night and day, Mrs. Carter had come 
 to North-West Island and taken possession of it. 
 There was gold there in those days, gold long since 
 worked out. Mrs. Carter had kept a store for the 
 diggers, nursed them when they were ill, traded with 
 them when they were well; mothered them, advised 
 them, kept them in order — with rifle and revolver 
 sometimes, in the days when the scum of Sydney 
 and Melbourne gutters streamed into the far-away 
 
206 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 island, to try its luck digging or fleecing the diggers, 
 as might seem easiest. When the diggers went, she 
 cleared and planted her land, built a handsome 
 house, and ruled the native population of the place 
 as never a resident magistrate, with police and 
 Government to back him, ruled elsewhere in Papua. 
 In North-West Island alone the natives were clean, 
 orderly, peaceable, and industrious, cultivating their 
 land without quarrels, and gathering up the small 
 remains of the gold from the worked-out diggings, 
 year after year, to purchase luxuries for themselves 
 and their families from Mrs. Carter's store. While 
 over almost all the mainland, and the neighbouring 
 islands, cannibalism, murder, and tribal warfare 
 flourished unchecked. 
 
 She had even wiped out the native language of the 
 place, or at least made it bi-lingual, for every North- 
 West Islander spoke good English: and this excel- 
 lent deed, in a land of Tower-of-Babel confusions, 
 she had accomplished by means of a process that left 
 Ollendorff, Gouin, and the inventors of Esperanto 
 hopelessly in the shade. She had enclosed her house 
 and grounds with a palisade, within which no word 
 of the island language might be spoken, under pain 
 of immediate and violent expulsion. It did not mat- 
 ter whether the offender had had any opportunity of 
 learning English or not — like Nature herself, Mrs. 
 Carter heard no excuses, listened to no pleadings. 
 Out the speaker of alien tongues must go — away 
 from the store where all the treasures dear to the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 207 
 
 native heart were kept, and from the big backyard 
 where the Queen, from time to time, gave royal 
 feasts to all the natives she employed and many be- 
 sides. No shopping, no feasting, no looking at the 
 wonders of the house and verandah, and the aston- 
 ishing children with white faces and straight yellow 
 hair — nothing that made life worth living on North- 
 West Island unless one learned the tongue of the 
 Queen . . . the giant white woman who could shoot 
 a bird flying high in air with either rifle or revolver, 
 who laid it on to erring subjects with a big stick in 
 a mighty hand, and whose husband, wonderful to 
 see, was among the very humblest of her slaves. . . . 
 They learned to talk English, or North-West, and 
 they learned it quick. 
 
 Mrs. Carter's sons were grown up and gone away, 
 all to Australia. They said, in their simple way, 
 that New Guinea seemed too crowded for them, 
 somehow, when they and mother were in it together : 
 so they went south to the Northern Territory, and 
 became drovers of cattle (it takes men to drive cattle 
 in the Never-Never country of the North) and 
 southward still, to West Australia and the goldfields, 
 and away in pearling luggers along the burning 
 coral coasts to Thursday Island, and to Broome. 
 Mrs. Carter's daughters were married to various 
 New Guinea traders and officials. Remained, Mrs. 
 Carter's husband, a useful man to the Queen, and 
 invaluable as a manager of her store on the Kikiramu 
 goldfield. She visited the store now and then; but, 
 
2o8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 for the most part, in her kingdom of North-West 
 Island, or in her trading-stations here and there 
 about the coast, or in her allamanda- and bougain- 
 villaea-covered cottage at Samarai, she was well con- 
 tent to reign alone. 
 
 All this Charmian had heard, and she looked at 
 the tall woman with suddenly awakened interest. 
 Mrs. Carter was certainly like Queen Elizabeth — 
 very like. The arched, commanding nose, the de- 
 termined mouth and pointed chin, the heavy eyelids 
 and bright brown, gem-hard eyes were all Eliza- 
 bethan. So was the mass of wavy yellow-grey hair 
 above the high forehead: so was the poise of the 
 head: so were the long thin hands. These last were 
 work-worn and hardened, for Mrs. Carter had 
 handled broom and frying-pan, pick, oar, and bul- 
 lock-whip, in her day, doing the work of woman or 
 man, or both together, as circumstances seemed to 
 need : but they showed innate refinement, and power 
 of command, to any eye trained in the spelling out 
 of bodily signs. Her dress was made after a fashion 
 of her own, suggestive of the eighteenth century. 
 Where other women of Samarai, old and young, m 
 wore the inevitable dark cotton wrapper of a morn- 
 ing, and the inescapable coarse white muslin, with 
 ugly lace trimmings, of an afternoon, Mrs. Carter 
 was always seen in stately trained robes, made with 
 the sacque pleat of Boucher and Watteau, and meet- 
 ing the sun's fierce stare with soft reflections of 
 heliotrope, gauzy black, or cloudy grey. She wore 
 
GUINEA GOLD 209 
 
 a hat that sat like a shady crown : she carried a fan, 
 for the most part, and held it like a sceptre. 
 
 It was with this fan that she now tapped Char- 
 mian's shoulder, a. trifle impatiently, repeating her 
 question — 
 
 " What are you doing here, you naughty girl, and 
 what's your name? " 
 
 That name! Charmian felt like a leper of the 
 Middle Ages, forced by law to carry a bell, and ring 
 it to tell the unspotted people here and there that he 
 carried with him a curse. . . . She must take up 
 her bell and ring it. . . . 
 
 " I am Mrs. Ducane," she said. 
 
 It came — the inevitable surprise and dismay: the 
 inevitable chill in the friendly eyes. Then 
 
 " Why, why, I've been hearing — they say the story 
 wasn't true — they say the man confessed when he 
 was dying ..." 
 
 The eyes warmed up again : the fan ceased tapping 
 her shoulder, and a hand took its place. 
 
 " Now aren't you really a very, very naughty girl, 
 to be up here crying and talking of getting your 
 death, when all that trouble's blowing over for you, 
 after all? Of course I heard about it. Everybody 
 did. But, bless you, my good girl, I think I would- 
 n't have believed it anyhow — after a look at you — 
 even if this news hadn't come. You haven't kick 
 enough in you to serve any man out like that — or to 
 serve him out in any way at all. One hears he didn't 
 treat you too well. Your own fault, I'll lay. You're 
 
210 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 not the girl to keep your end up. Put them down, 
 keep them down, my dear — that's the only way to 
 manage the men. I hear he's coming to take you 
 back: very right and proper of him too, but mind 
 you put your foot on his neck this time and keep it 
 there." 
 
 Mrs. Carter beat her own handsome foot on the 
 earth, and ground it down as though the neck of the 
 despised sex were indeed beneath the sole of her 
 Sydney shoe. 
 
 " Put them down," she said again, with a flush on 
 her faded cheek: and the thoughts in her eyes were 
 not of Charmian at that moment. 
 
 The girl, mopping her wet face and her small 
 pink nose with her wet handkerchief, looked up. 
 
 " I'd rather die in the bush and be eaten by meat- 
 ants than ever see his face again," she said: and 
 there was a driving force behind her words that made 
 the woman look at her narrowly, as at something she 
 did not quite understand. 
 
 " Tut, tut! " she said, after a minute. " A mar- 
 ried woman's best to keep on terms with her hus- 
 band. What can most of you do? You've got to 
 give in, or starve. Make him pay for all he's done — 
 it was mostly the fault of the other man, wasn't it? 
 — make him pay well, and take him back." 
 
 Charmian did not answer, but her face grew white. 
 
 So this refuge too was failing her! 
 
 She turned from Mrs. Carter with a sudden move- 
 ment, and looked down upon the sea below — down 
 
GUINEA GOLD 211 
 
 upon the Government jetty, where the water was 
 deep and green, close inshore. 
 
 Something pricked Mrs. Carter's heart quick and 
 keen. Something came back to her, at that look, 
 which would have meant nothing at all to ninety-nine 
 women in a hundred. As one might see a world of 
 rocks and precipices, behind a veil of driven cloud 
 lifted for a moment by the wind, she saw a vision of 
 Charmian's little figure standing on the steps of the 
 jetty, hands out to the water. ... A girl had stood 
 like that, on the rocks that border the deep green 
 waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria — a girl with 
 brown eyes and yellow-red hair and a plain gold ring 
 on her hand — a tall, big girl with a heart as big as 
 herself: too big for the keeping of little Tim Carter 
 ... in Queensland, thirty years ago. There had 
 been times since then when the Queen of North- 
 West had wondered why the girl had turned back 
 to the land. If there had been times when she wished 
 the girl had not, she never told herself. 
 
 There was silence for a moment under the palms, 
 and then Mrs. Carter took Charmian by both arms 
 and swung her round. 
 
 " Now, look here," she said, " who's the other 
 man?" 
 
 14 George Scott," said Charmian, paler than ever. 
 44 He's never — never — but I'd die, ten times over, 
 rather than go back." 
 
 "Then what's the trouble?" asked the big 
 woman. 
 
212 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Grant will make me. He always did. Let me 
 go — please! " 
 
 u I'll do no such thing. You only want to go off 
 and cry again, and you sha'n't do it. I can't make 
 head or tail of you and your nonsense unless you tell 
 me the whole thing from beginning to end. I see I 
 sha'n't have time now to look at the building sites 
 up here before lunch, so I may just as well give it up 
 to you. Out with it, miss ! " 
 
 And Charmian told. From the beginning of her 
 marriage through to its disastrous end, and down 
 even to the letter that she carried in her pocket, she 
 told the whole story. She did not cry any more : Mrs. 
 Carter's sharp Elizabethan eye was fixed upon her, 
 and she was afraid to let the tears go, under that 
 keen scrutiny. The Queen of North-West Island 
 listened, silently and critically, and did not say a 
 word till the other had done. Then she unfolded 
 the fan with a sharp jerk, and began fanning herself, 
 rapidly and strongly. 
 
 " Why doesn't Scott ask you to marry him? " she 
 demanded. 
 
 " I think — he hasn't any money, except what he 
 wants to go looking for gold with. And there's 
 something else too. I don't know what. Sometimes 
 I think there's another woman. If there were, I 
 think I'd just die." 
 
 " Oh, pff ! you make too much yap about dying! " 
 said the pioneer woman contemptuously. " Does 
 he want you, that's the point? Don't put on school- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 213 
 
 girl airs, but just say, does he, yes or no? You're 
 the kind they all want, more or less — you ought to 
 have had experience enough to guide you." 
 
 " Yes, he does, then," answered Charmian, al- 
 most defiantly. " I do know. But I believe in my 
 soul there is another woman." 
 
 " Why?" snapped Mrs. Carter. 
 
 " Well — just — because." 
 
 Mrs. Carter, being a woman herself, acknowl- 
 edged the weight of this feminine reason sufficiently 
 to accept it in silence. She bit the top of her fan 
 and thought. 
 
 " There's only one way for it that I can see," she 
 proclaimed. " You're just what you say — the sort 
 that would allow your Grant to come back and carry 
 you off like a dingo carrying off a turkey, with hardly 
 a cheep for yourself. Well, the Cora Lynn sails 
 for the Kikiramu at nine to-night, and there won't 
 be another thing going for a fortnight — unless it's 
 a stray cutter, that might take a month to get half- 
 way, with this north-west weather. You pack up 
 and come with me to the Kikiramu field, and if Scott's 
 half the man you say he is, he and the Resident 
 Magistrate will put it out of your Grant's power 
 ever to worry you again, inside of half a day." 
 
 Charmian turned scarlet. 
 
 "How could I?" she said. 
 
 " Now don't make mouths, missy: you know you 
 would rather go there than anywhere else on earth, 
 and you needn't feel shy about it, either — I'll take 
 
214 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 you as my visitor, and you can help me with my sew- 
 ing at the store as long as you like. As for the 
 other woman, why, wherever and whoever she is, 
 she isn't in Papua, and better a living dog than a 
 dead lion, say I. It's your innings, my girl: don't 
 you trouble about her." 
 
 " I wasn't," said Charmian simply. " I wish she 
 was dead." 
 
 " You and your dying ! Such funeral talk I never 
 heard. Wipe your eyes, and put your hair tidy, and 
 come down with me to the town : you'll want to do 
 some shopping first, and buy sensible boots and hats, 
 and I'll see you do it. And if you're one minute late 
 when the steamer whistle sounds to-night, don't think 
 I'll keep her for you — I'll leave you behind for 
 Grant. Girls like you are never punctual or tidy. 
 I know the lot of you ! " 
 
 Like a collie driving a lamb, she hustled her on 
 to the pathway and down the long hill again. 
 
 Many people saw Figg's barmaid, who was under 
 notice, going on the Cora Lynn in the starlight, after 
 dinner. Half the town was going on to the vessel 
 also, to gossip and to see off friends. But nobody 
 noticed that, when the clumsy gang-plank was with- 
 drawn, and the last whistle had sounded, the shore- 
 going party did not include little Charmian Ducane. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 " Did I ever tell you," said Mrs. Carter conver- 
 sationally, " about the time when I had a murderer 
 chained under my bed for six weeks? " 
 
 11 No, you did not," answered Charmian, looking 
 up at her hostess with a slightly startled expression. 
 She had not become quite accustomed to Mrs. Car- 
 ter yet. 
 
 The two women were sitting on the verandah of 
 the little brown mountain house where Carter kept 
 store for the Kikiramu goldfield. The morning was 
 hot and clear. There was not a shred of mist in the 
 river-gorge, or on the great drop-curtain of forest 
 that shut off the unknown inland ranges. Thirty or 
 forty feet below the verandah rail two huge sapphire 
 butterflies were sporting about the summit of a tree: 
 in all the valley there was not another sign of life, 
 save the stray columns of smoke that rose here and 
 there above the crests of the leafy sea, each marking, 
 like bubbles from a diver's helmet, the spot where 
 a human being was living and working far below, hid 
 from the light of day. 
 
 Charmian had been on the Kikiramu field for some 
 days now, and the wonderful peace of the bush was 
 beginning to flow over her heart, deep and still as 
 the still deep forests that flow over the inland val- 
 
 215 
 
216 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 leys and hills. The journey had been very rough and 
 hard, even though Mrs. Carter cut the ordinary 
 day's marches into two, and saw to it that a hammock 
 was always ready to carry Charmian, whenever the 
 track allowed. But the woman of cities and draw- 
 ing-rooms had never faltered or complained. She 
 only wanted to get away from Samarai as soon and 
 as far as possible: the more difficult the way, the 
 safer she felt from pursuit. 
 
 Here, in the heart of New Guinea, where she 
 could look up her position on the map, and see that 
 the little store lay actually over the edge of the 
 known country, right in the blank white space beyond 
 the dotted ends of guessed-at rivers, she felt that, 
 for the present at least, she might surely call her- 
 self safe. Grant would not even know for some time 
 where she had gone. Of course he would ferret it 
 out in the end — the Cora Lynn had called at various 
 plantations down the coast, and the news of her being 
 on board would filter back at last to Samarai. But 
 even then it might be some time before he could 
 find any means of reaching the west end. And be- 
 fore he did — she might be safe. 
 
 She thought much about that, lying of nights in 
 her quaint little bird-cage of a room, above the tree- 
 tops of the gorge, with the night-long rain of the 
 mountain lands roaring down upon the sago-thatch 
 roof, and the unseen river rumbling away below. 
 
 She realised that most people would be on her 
 husband's side — would say that the wrong which had 
 
GUINEA GOLD 217 
 
 been done her could only be righted in full by a re- 
 marriage, and that her reputation could be restored 
 in no other way. Ducane, it appeared, was very 
 penitent. The man who had caused the trouble, who 
 had lied and perjured himself, and bought false wit- 
 nesses, was dead — having confessed his infamy in 
 the very hour of death. No doubt the public knew. 
 No doubt they would look for a reconciliation. Less 
 than no doubt Ducane would want it and have it — 
 if she could not make herself safe. 
 
 . . . Arguments, defiances, objections — what were 
 they? They could not help. Against every argu- 
 ment of hers he could bring a dozen. Against her 
 little straw of defiance he could sweep the flame of 
 the overruling will that she had known and suffered 
 under all her life. . . . No, words were not to be 
 trusted. 
 
 But facts? Facts fought for you. You could hide 
 behind their shield, and say no word at all. Before 
 the fact of another marriage, argument, entreaty, 
 command must die on the lips that spoke them. 
 
 k The words of Scott's letter flamed before her in 
 the darkness of the nights. 
 
 " Any trouble you are in . . . send for me . . . 
 I would do anything in the world to be of help to 
 you. ... I cannot say all that I would wish. . . . 
 1 am always yours. . . ." 
 
 The woman who had been loved of men since her 
 childhood could make no mistake as to the meaning 
 
2i8 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 of such words, though they stopped short of those 
 three words that had been worth all the rest. 
 
 One could wait here . . . there was no harm in 
 that. One could help Mrs. Carter with her sewing, 
 and see the strange life of the goldfield, and listen 
 for every word that bore upon the return of the men 
 who had gone to look for gold . . . and hope. 
 
 Carter thought the party would run out of tucker 
 very soon, and come back. He didn't think that they 
 would get anything: but then, they might. That 
 stone-broke fellow who had come up from Samarai 
 last boat to cook for him had been quite certain there 
 was gold up the Iri : so certain that he had bounced 
 him, Carter, into " grubstaking " him (provisioning 
 him on credit) and helping him to get a few 
 boys. 
 
 Of course if they did get anything, the Kikiramu 
 would be deserted straight away. Meantime, Carter 
 thought it a good thing his wife had brought a visitor 
 up with her: it was lonely for her when she came, as 
 a rule, being the only woman on the field. And if 
 Mrs. Ducane liked, he'd be glad to take her a walk 
 about, and show her some of the claims, whenever 
 she chose. 
 
 Charmian went out under his guidance here and 
 there, down the giant staircase, through the riverbed, 
 from one dim isolated camp in the wilderness to 
 another, seeing the black boys at work, lunching in 
 " bushes " on tinned foods and biscuits, talking with 
 the strange, silent, bearded men who won the gold, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 219 
 
 and refusing, with difficulty, presents enough of their 
 gainings to have stocked a small jeweller's store. 
 For months after, in many a lonely camp and clear- 
 ing, her visits were remembered and talked over, 
 and her beautiful, sad, sweet face (in which the sun- 
 shine of peace began to dawn these days) floated 
 among the stars of midnight before the eyes of soli- 
 tary men, who sat awake among their sleeping 
 " boys/' with only the dying fire for company. No 
 one thought it strange that she should have come to 
 stay in that remote fastness. They said, " their 
 oath, it was a shame and a waste "; but they them- 
 selves had, most of them, more or less secret reasons 
 for choosing to live beyond hail of civilisation, and 
 they asked no questions of Charmian, as they asked 
 none of one another. 
 
 So, on that hot still morning, with the jewelled 
 butterflies floating in the sun outside, and unseen 
 birds of paradise sending long calls from the bush, 
 Charmian sat on Mrs. Carter's verandah and listened 
 to the pioneer woman's tales. 
 
 " It was a good few years ago," said Mrs. Carter, 
 biting off her thread. " My husband had gone down 
 to Queensland to see about buying some cattle, and I 
 was alone on North- West, except for the kiddies. 
 The natives had been quiet for a long time, but just 
 about then, one of the fellows from the far end of the 
 island, where they were pretty wild, started lording 
 it over the rest of the place, killing and burning 
 alive and eating everyone he'd a fancy to. Now, 
 
220 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 you know, that made me mad, for I thought I had 
 both ends of the place in such order that there wasn't 
 a cheep out of one of them — but you never know 
 these natives. Well, I made up my mind to shift my 
 gentleman out of that, quick- and lively, and I took a 
 few of my own boys, armed with Winchesters, and 
 a bit of tucker, and my little mare that I'd had up 
 from Charters Towers, and off I went to teach the 
 fellow what for." 
 
 " What did you wear?" asked Charmian, with 
 interest. 
 
 Mrs. Carter, being quite as much a woman as her 
 guest, saw nothing remarkable in the inquiry. 
 
 " Well, now, I'll tell you," she said. " I wore a 
 blue denim skirt, made very short, and a pair of my 
 husband's bluchers — he has a very small foot, and 
 they fitted me. And I had a red Turkey cotton 
 blouse on my back, and a white flannelette, to change, 
 in the swag the boy was carrying. And I had a navy 
 blue leather belt, with a black leather holster on it, 
 and a 45 Colt in the holster. And I'd a ten-inch 
 knife in a black sheath at the other side of the belt. 
 My hat was a big Panama, with a red silk scarf 
 round it, and I'd a navy blue tie." 
 
 " It would have looked better if your holster and 
 knife-sheath had been blue," said Charmian thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " It would," agreed the Queen of North-West 
 Island, " but they don't make fancy colours, not in 
 revolver holsters. Well, to cut a long story short, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 221 
 
 I and the boys had a two-days' hunt before we got 
 him; and even when we'd found him, the people of 
 the village were that afraid of him that they would- 
 n't give him up, so I had to take my Colt in one 
 hand and my riding-whip in the other — they were 
 about the same afraid of the two — and hunt through 
 all the houses till I got him — hidden away under a 
 roll of mats, if you please, and not looking a bit 
 like the devil of a fellow they said he was, with all 
 the war-paint running in streaks over his face, on 
 account of the heat of the mats, and the feathers in 
 his hair tumbling out and smashed. I gave him a 
 good thrashing on the spot, just to teach him that 
 I would have no cannibal nonsense going on in my 
 island, and then I tied him with a long rope to my 
 saddle, and made him follow me home — with all the 
 natives raising a howl as if he was dead, and flinging 
 themselves down on the ground, and cutting their 
 faces. 
 
 " Well, when I got him home, there was the diffi- 
 culty. I wanted to have him taken away to Port 
 Moresby to be tried and hung, but I'd had prisoners 
 before waiting for the Government yacht, and, some- 
 how or another, most of them had managed to get 
 away — you see, the natives would help them, being 
 frightened of them for the most part, and anxious to 
 get into their good books — specially if they were 
 sorcerers. He was a bang-up sorcerer, this gentle- 
 man, and I was sure they'd have him out if I put him 
 in any of the stores. So I just took him down under 
 
222 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the house, and ran a chain from his waist up through 
 the floor right on to the leg of my bed in the room 
 above. And then at any time of the night, if they 
 tried to get the chain off him, I was bound to know : 
 besides, I could more or less see through the floor, 
 it being sticks, as usual. And so I kept him there 
 till the Merrie England called, and then they took 
 him off to gaol in Port Moresby. He wasn't hanged, 
 but he got ten years, and died before two were out; 
 and the natives thought the Government had eaten 
 him, so it had an excellent effect. Indeed, it was 
 the last case of cannibalism that happened on the 
 island." 
 
 Mrs. Carter took another needleful of thread. 
 
 " Would you have feather-stitching or French 
 knots on the edge of the collar? " she asked thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " French knots, I think," answered Charmian. 
 ' They're very smart in black. . . . Didn't you think 
 they might have eaten you? " 
 
 " No fear: I'd like to have caught them at it! " 
 replied Mrs. Carter, with a fine disregard of physical 
 possibilities. "I'm afraid I can't do the French 
 knots right. Can you manage them? " 
 
 " Oh yes, do let me. I'll embroider it all over for 
 you, if you like — any kind of embroidery you 
 choose," offered Charmian, eager to help. 
 
 " Could you? " asked the pioneer woman a little 
 wistfully. " And you can speak French, and play 
 the piano, and all that sort of thing, I reckon? " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 223 
 
 " Why, yes, but I don't know that it has ever done 
 me much good." 
 
 " I wish I'd had more education myself," mused 
 Mrs. Carter, looking a long way off over the valley. 
 
 " Old woman," said the shadowy Carter, suddenly 
 popping out from the doorway of the store, " don't 
 you wish any such thing. You're that clever as it is 
 that no one would want to see you more so. If you'd 
 had education on the top of it, maybe you'd have 
 been in gaol by now." 
 
 " And I daresay that's true," agreed Mrs. Carter 
 composedly. " Mrs. Ducane, I won't ask you to 
 embroider it all over, but I should like the French 
 knots, if you think you could manage them. I'm glad 
 to see you picking up and taking your tucker these 
 few days. You're not quite as silly as you were when 
 I first ran across you. If I'd the handling of you' a bit 
 longer I'd make a smart sensible girl out of you yet." 
 
 " She's coming round," Mrs. Carter told her hus- 
 band that night as they were going through the store 
 and putting out the lights. M My word, Tim, you 
 should have seen her dancing to herself just about 
 sunset, out on the track, when she thought there was 
 nobody about. . It's a way she has, and the prettiest 
 way I ever saw. She picks up her skirts, and she 
 sings a little bit, and she floats in the air, or it looks 
 near like that — just like a flower tossing in the 
 wind. You'd think she didn't know she was doing it, 
 any more than the flower itself. I declare to good- 
 ness she didn't look a day over sixteen — and she all 
 
224 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 of five-and-twenty. Of all the babies to be a mar- 
 ried woman — but there, I always did have a weak 
 place for babies." 
 
 " She's a baby could do mischief whenever there 
 was men about," observed Carter, piling his mats of 
 rice into a sturdy bulwark. " The men's been com- 
 ing in here something amazing since you brought 
 her — just to get a look at her round the corner." 
 
 " I daresay," said the Queen contemptuously. 
 " Baby faces are the thing to fetch you, all the lot of 
 you, like sugar fetches flies. And whether the baby 
 face will look as nice to you across the top of a 
 burnt pie, or a batch of bread gone sour, is a thing 
 you never think about, no more than a New Guinea 
 nigger thinks about heaven. Their looks have to 
 sweeten their cooking, for the most part." 
 
 " Well, old woman, your cooking doesn't need 
 that sweetening," remarked Carter, with some ob- 
 scure intention of a compliment. 
 
 " Pff ! " said the Queen. " Don't you forget to 
 lock that door." 
 
 It was very hard to take a walk at the Kikiramu. 
 
 You could take a plunge, or a dive, or a climb — 
 in fact, you were obliged to take one or the other as 
 soon as you left your house. You could let yourself 
 down hundreds of feet of log stairs, hanging back 
 by the liana hand-ropes, until you got into a dim 
 green wilderness of forest and riverbed, and broken- 
 down flumes, and abandoned races: and then you 
 
GUINEA GOLD 225 
 
 could climb and wade along the edges of the river, 
 unfil you got wet through, and had to go home for 
 a change. Or else you could scramble up three or 
 four hundred feet of the other staircase — the giant 
 one, with the steps as big as dinner-tables — and get 
 caught in a sudden thunderstorm in the very middle 
 of it, with no more possibility of crawling away in 
 time than if you had been a fly in a treacle plate. 
 Or you could cross the ridge at the top of the valley, 
 climbing slowly, with hands and feet, and immedi- 
 ately take a header down the other side. But if 
 you wanted a walk, it was hard to get. 
 
 There was just one place where you might manage 
 it. After you climbed the great staircase, you could 
 find a piece of track that ran for a little way along 
 the top of the ridge before it plunged down the long 
 six-hundred-foot drop that tired the carriers so, when 
 they came up laden from the lower reaches of the 
 river. On this comparatively level bit you might 
 walk up and down, like a captain pacing his bridge, 
 and, like the captain, look about you and see all over 
 your little kingdom. 
 
 And here, in the afternoons, before the breaking 
 up of the four o'clock rains, Charmian used to walk 
 alone, up and down, looking into the depths of the 
 formidable forest, and thinking. 
 
 Always her thoughts went one way — Scott. This 
 little creature, made for love, had no interests, recol- 
 lections, ambitions, in her life, save those that were 
 linked to love. Love light and amusing, sugar-kiss 
 
226 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 flirtation — that was girlhood. Love tyrannical, pos- 
 sessive, selfish — that was marriage. Love treacher- 
 ous, leading to perilous swamps by the lure of poison- 
 sweet flowers — that was romance. And all these 
 loves, with her, had been love accepted, not given. 
 The men who had made her life for her had not 
 asked her for anything but acceptance. 
 
 To Scott alone she had given. And it came upon 
 her now that whatever the end might be, this free 
 giving of hers was what none of the other loves 
 had been — life itself. Loving her might be what the 
 other men had lived for — so they had said, more 
 than one of them. But no one had wanted to know 
 what she lived for: nor did she know herself — in 
 the time that was past. Now she knew. 
 
 When would he come back? 
 
 She had gone up to the top of the ridge one after- 
 noon, a still, scented day, with a purple-grey sky of 
 brooding heat. She had spent half an hour at her 
 looking-glass before leaving the house, as she al- 
 ways did, " just in case . . ." 
 
 She was sure, somehow or other, that he would 
 come that day, and she waited long, bitterly dis- 
 appointed, till it was almost too dark to get down 
 the great log staircase . . . 
 
 And, after all, he came that night. 
 
 Charmian was asleep in her little stick-walled 
 bedroom, " papered " with calico. The Carters were 
 asleep in their lean-to close at hand — a curious apart- 
 ment walled with split logs and floored with the tops 
 
GUINEA GOLD 227 
 
 of packing-cases. The native carriers attached to 
 the store were asleep in their shed a little way off: 
 they had eaten a big python, an iguana, and the 
 best part of a wild pig for supper, and lay gorged 
 and stupid about the fire that they had built to keep' 
 off ghosts. The rain was making so much noise that 
 no one heard the approach of Scott and his train 
 until the verandah, all of a sudden, shook and thun- 
 dered under the tramp of an army of bare feet and 
 the shock of twenty loads thrown down. Charmian, 
 springing half out of bed in a wild alarm of Karivas, 
 was stopped by the sound of Scott's voice loudly 
 hailing the Carters, and the answering exclamation 
 from the storekeeper's room. In a moment, it 
 seemed, lights were flitting everywhere, wood was 
 being chopped in the cookhouse, men were waking on 
 the back verandah (where the spare beds were put) 
 and jumping up with loud thuds, dogs were barking, 
 natives and whites calling to each other. The whole 
 house was awake — not only awake, but excited. 
 Surely something beyond the ordinary return of an 
 ordinary party had happened ! 
 
 Charmian, barefooted and in her nightdress, 
 slipped over to the wall that partitioned her room 
 from the main verandah, tore a thread or two of 
 the calico screening, and peeped though the sticks, 
 her heart thumping so that she could hardly stand. 
 The verandah was full of men, mostly in pyjamas, — 
 Jacky and Jimmy and Harry and Mike, bearded, 
 strange-eyed men from the outer camps, who had 
 
228 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 "come in" the night before: another visitor, the 
 resident magistrate and warden, an angelic-looking 
 young man with curly hair and a sweet smile, who 
 was as tough as pinwire, and about as hard: Carter, 
 bringing whiskey out of the store, and setting it down 
 on the log table: Mrs. Carter, stirring round after 
 the house-boys, and getting plates and food carried 
 in from the kitchen : a crowd of native carriers, lay- 
 ing down miscellaneous bundles of tent-flies, cook- 
 ing pots, sago, sacks of food, rifles, and shotguns, 
 and drifting away to the boys' house in the yard, ab 
 they rid themselves of their loads. The dull orange 
 light of two or three hurricane lamps fell on the glit- 
 tering bodies of the carriers, wet with rain, on the 
 white tooth necklets they wore, and the red and yel- 
 low leaves in their mountainous hair. The white 
 men's striped pyjama suits stood out gaily against 
 the black curtain of night and rain beyond the veran- 
 dah rail. On the table, pink ham, a crusty loaf, a 
 tin of butter, lobster, asparagus, peaches, and other 
 canned luxuries from the store, were rapidly sur- 
 rounding the bottles, glasses, and cups. It looked 
 as though the Carters were minded to make a feast. 
 
 All this Charmian saw with half an eye, in half a 
 second. Almost instantly her glance swept on to the 
 central figure in the strange, uncivilised scene — Scott. 
 
 He stood in the middle of the whites, leaning up 
 against the verandah rail as though he were tired 
 with the day's tramp, and patiently answering the 
 showers of excited questions cast at him by everyone 
 
GUINEA GOLD 229 
 
 who could get in a word. She could not hear what 
 they were saying, because of the noise of the rain, 
 but she could see that something had happened, and 
 that Scott was telling about it: also, that he was 
 fagged out, and wanted rest and food, and the other 
 men would not let him have either. She burned with 
 rage and pity — what brutes men were to each other ! 
 
 Standing there in her nightdress, with the wet 
 warm wind blowing through the chinks of the crazy 
 wall, she took her fill of gazing. . . . He was 
 changed. He had grown older and graver, even in 
 those few weeks — so quickly does the Land of Mys- 
 tery set her seal on those who serve her. But the 
 bright, cool sunshine of his eyes and smile — the 
 sunshine of that far Northland that she had never 
 known — was the same. 
 
 She found herself seeking for words to clothe a 
 thought that floated before her, naked, dim, elusive. 
 She had never been good at handling and clothing 
 ideas, though her active brain brought forth its full 
 share. People had not asked her to have ideas, or 
 to express them. They had asked her to be pretty 
 and charming, no more. 
 
 And now she was trying to be more, and she 
 could not. 
 
 The idea was one of importance: she knew that. 
 She stretched out at its flying wings with the fingers 
 of her mind, frowning as she thought, and still 
 looking through the chinks at Scott. 
 
 . . . The love of the North. . . . The love of the 
 
230 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 South. . . . Dark and true and tender is the North, 
 and bright and fierce and fickle is the . . . 
 
 " No — oh no! " said little Charmian, her lip be- 
 ginning to quiver. " . . . Fickle is the South — no 
 — if I only were! 
 
 " There's something I'm afraid of in his face," 
 was what she sobbed to herself at last. " I could do 
 anything with poor Rupert. And Scott loves me 
 
 far more, but with him There are men who 
 
 would break your heart and their own just as they'd 
 break a thread — a leaf — I can't say it, but I know 
 what I mean. 
 
 " I've been saying all my life that men are too 
 bad," she told herself, " and now there's one who's 
 too — too — good. 
 
 " But I'm thinking such nonsense," she said. " I 
 don't know what I mean myself. And I must hurry 
 up and dress at once. Oh, I wonder would it be 
 wicked to pray that I may do my hair really well? 
 
 " At any rate," she said, " it would do no harm. 
 I'll pray God to make me look very, very pretty 
 indeed: that'll include the hair." 
 
 She prayed rapidly and inclusively while she 
 dressed, not forgetting, all the same, to " keep her 
 powder dry " so far as to select her prettiest blouse, 
 and her long Sydney riding-boots, because they 
 looked so well under the brief skirts one had to wear 
 at the Kikiramu. The trade glass on the wall gave 
 back a gratifying reflection by the light of the hur- 
 ricane lamp. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 231 
 
 " Thanks very much, O Lord," she said. " I 
 don't think I ever looked nicer . . . if I weren't so 
 pale." 
 
 There was a little pot of rose-red powder in her 
 trunk. She took it out, looked at it thoughtfully, 
 then put it back. 
 
 " I won't," she decided. " He would think it hor- 
 rible if he knew " (he in this case meaning Scott, 
 not the Almighty). "And, anyhow, rouge is only 
 for women who are wicked, or women who are 
 dreadfully miserable, and want to hide it. It's really 
 bad to put it on for mere becomingness, and I never 
 did, so back it goes." 
 
 Nature, waiting with the rose of life in her hand, 
 out there on the verandah, invisible, but strong, 
 touched the cheeks of the girl with the petals of the 
 immortal flower as she came into full view of her 
 lover, and Charmian, feeling her own beauty run 
 through her veins like wine, knew that no rouge was 
 needed. 
 
 So, like a rose indeed she came into his sight, 
 shining out in the rabble of rough whites and naked 
 savages, under the flickering glare of the hurricane 
 lamps, against the background of the dark and roar- 
 ing rain. 
 
 And when Scott saw her he ceased speaking. 
 
 " Go on ! " yelled half a dozen voices. " Sticking 
 in the reef like plums — go on ! How much of it was 
 in sight — how far do you reckon it runs down? 
 How . . ." 
 
232 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 They drowned each other in questions. They 
 seemed half mad with excitement: every man's face 
 was red or pale beyond common, and some of them 
 were thumping wildly on the table, or half dancing 
 on the shaky floor. Mrs. Carter seemed to be keep- 
 ing her head better than the men: she was busy with 
 plates and glasses, listening, but asking no ques- 
 tions, and her face showed no especial pleasure. 
 Tim was transfigured: he was hanging on Scott's 
 words as though they were veritable gold: he was 
 uttering strange ejaculations, and giggling like a 
 girl. 
 
 But the crowd were left to ask unanswered when 
 Charmian came in. Straight to her went Scott, and 
 " the light that never was on sea or land " was in his 
 eyes as he took her hand. 
 
 "You here!" he said. "Charmian, I thought 
 it was your ghost — your little ghost — when I 
 
 He dropped her hand, and suddenly his eyes, 
 though looking into hers, were veiled. 
 
 " You have come up to see the field? " he said, in 
 another voice. " I hope you'll have a pleasant time. 
 You'll pardon my going back to these men, won't 
 you, Mrs. Ducane? The fact is, our party have got 
 onto very good gold, and they are all anxious to hear 
 about it." 
 
 " I am glad you have been fortunate," said Char- 
 mian, feeling her transient roses ebb away. 
 
 " We have : I must tell you by and by," said Scott, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 233 
 
 moving back to the men and being instantly absorbed 
 once more. 
 
 Charmian joined Mrs. Carter and began helping 
 her with the supper. 
 
 " That's a good girl," said the lady of the house, 
 with something less than her usual sharp decision of 
 tone. " Come out to the store and help me to open 
 some more tins: they'll be wanted." 
 
 In the comparative quiet of the store, as they took 
 down the tins and sawed them open, tumbling the 
 contents into plates, the two women had a chance to 
 speak. 
 
 " What's it all about? I don't half understand," 
 said Charmian. 
 
 " Why, I reckon they've struck it rich, somewhere 
 up on the Iri. Scott's come down to file the claim for 
 the lot of them, with the warden here. He'll be off 
 again as soon as he's loaded up with tucker. Every 
 mother's son on the field will be off too, I reckon, 
 Carter among them." 
 
 " And you? " asked Charmian, her head bent very 
 low over the clumsy tool in her hand. 
 
 u And you, you mean," corrected Mrs. Carter, 
 with a hard laugh. u It's all the same, however. 
 You and me together don't go for so much as a rot- 
 ten stick in the Kikiramu in flood — now. You've 
 got to learn, my girl, how much a woman counts in a 
 gold rush." 
 
 She swept her tin-opener round the top of a can 
 
234 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 of grapes, and poured them bubbling out on to a 
 plate. 
 
 " I hadn't seen Tim — not for a year/' she said, in 
 a dry, indifferent tone. " Hand me that pickle 
 bottle. He gets asthma sometimes. Always bad in 
 the high country under canvas. And he lives in wet 
 clothes day and night, out of sheer damn foolish- 
 ness. Some of these days Men are babies, the 
 
 whole lot of them. You don't know — you're a 
 girl." 
 
 " I think you forget I'm a married woman — or 
 was," said Charmian quietly. 
 
 11 Oh no, I don't forget you've been to church 
 with a man," answered the other woman, piling bis- 
 cuits on plates with the rapidity and precision of a 
 machine. " But you aren't a real wife, and you never 
 was. You don't know. You've been a man's pet 
 cat, and purred on a cushion to please him. There's 
 all sorts of marriage, and a lot of it isn't marriage 
 at all. If you'd ever been a real married woman, 
 instead of just a plaything that a man had to pay 
 for with a ring, you'd know they was all babies — 
 you'd know your husband was far more your child 
 than any of your children. ... If you're done, pick 
 up them forks — you'll find more in paper in the 
 drawer, and come along. Don't drop anything — 
 you girls are that butter-fingered. ..." 
 
 Charmian, a little dizzied by the hail of hard 
 facts that had just been rained about her ears, fol- 
 lowed mechanically in her hostess's track, without 
 
GUINEA GOLD 235 
 
 asking herself why she, a gentlewoman, delicately 
 bred, should act parlourmaid to all these rough 
 men. Here, in the Never-Never land, where so 
 many of the small things of life seemed to have been 
 sifted away, the big things stood out with uncom- 
 promising plainness. It was the place of a man to 
 protect a woman, to put a roof over her head, and to 
 keep her. It was the place of a woman to see to the 
 comforts of a man. You did not ask, first of all, 
 whether the man were on the dinner-list at the Fed- 
 eral Government House, and if he used the proper 
 kind of engraved visiting-cards when he went call- 
 ing, with the right combination of boots and suit 
 on, and the right kind of tie, tied by hand. . . . 
 This was the Never-Never country, where such 
 things did not matter. If you did not like it, you 
 could go back to Sydney. 
 
 11 If you'd been a real married woman, you'd 
 know they was all just babies. . . . " The sentence 
 buzzed in her ears as she came out into the verandah 
 again and set down her load on the table, about 
 which the men were beginning to gather. Scott had 
 been set free at last, and had found a place at the 
 end of the log bench. He was reaching hungrily for 
 tea, and his face, through the yellow tan of the bush, 
 was white with weariness. Charmian slipped into a 
 seat and helped herself to something, she scarcely 
 knew what, in order to have an excuse to stay and 
 look. It was so delightful to see him eat. He had 
 
236 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 got some salmon on his plate now — and bread — 
 and pickles. 
 
 Tears almost came into her eyes. She would have 
 liked to stand beside him and help him to all he 
 wanted. She would have liked to feed him with a 
 spoon. . . . Would not he shout with laughter if 
 he could read her silly thoughts! Yet — she sup- 
 posed — most women cared for men. 
 
 " You'd know your husband was far more your 
 child than any of your children." 
 
 "Why — that's what she meant! " thought Char- 
 mian in a flash of illumination. " How I used to 
 hate to watch Grant at his dinner ! He ate so much 
 and his face grew so red! But if ... he ... ate 
 too much, I wouldn't mind. I wish he would: he 
 never eats enough. I wish they wouldn't keep him 
 talking so much." 
 
 The food on her plate turned to sawdust then, 
 and she could not get on with it, for she remembered 
 what it was they were talking about — this find of 
 gold, this hateful thing that (she felt in her heart) 
 would put yet another obstacle between her and him. 
 Another . . . ? What was the first? Well, about 
 that she did not want to think. 
 
 It was near three in the morning now, and sup- 
 per was done, but talk still kept on. The rain had 
 stopped: the valley below was full of sweet wet 
 smells, and a cold night breeze was beginning to 
 blow down from the far main range. The Kikiramu 
 sang a deep, full-throated song at the bottom of the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 237 
 
 gorge — the war-chant of the wild, unbroken land 
 that these strong men were seeking to break and 
 tame. 
 
 Charmian crept away to bed with the sound of 
 that song in her ears. Scott had looked at her many 
 times in the course of the evening — but he had come 
 near her, or spoken to her, scarce at all. 
 
 When she slept she dreamed that she stood some- 
 where in empty space, " whether in the body, or out 
 of the body," she knew not; and that Scott stood 
 near her: but that she could not reach him, or touch 
 his hand, because of two strange shapes that pressed 
 her away. One of the shapes was veiled and dim: 
 the other was clear to her sight. It was the figure 
 of a woman, dark and savage, with cruel beautiful 
 eyes and bloodstained mouth. With one hand the 
 woman held her away, and with one she held the 
 man, tight as the white-toothed alligator holds in 
 the steaming swamps of the river lands. And the 
 name of the woman was Papua. 
 
 Charmian awoke. She had thrown off the sheet, 
 and felt cold. The house was still at last, and the 
 dawn was creeping down, purest gold, from the 
 peaks of the German ranges. The girl sat up and 
 flung aside her net to look out across the valley. 
 
 " They say this country is full of witchcraft," she 
 thought. u I believe it was a vision. I believe, 
 between them, they will take him away." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Melba was singing in the Kikiramu valley. 
 
 In the full white blaze of morning, from the rocks 
 of the riverbed to the trembling finials of the trees 
 that crowned the ridge, rose and sank down the 
 golden voice. Across the leaf-embroidered heights 
 of the giant staircase, away to the broken flumes 
 and bush-grown races in the branchy depths below 
 — from the great drop-curtain of forest that might 
 well hide peering eyes of the dreaded Karivas, to the 
 little cleared and built-on piece of land, where stood 
 the rough brown buildings of the store — Melba was 
 singing. 
 
 "Falling leaf and fading tree . . . 
 Shadows rising on you and me, 
 Shadows rising on you and me." 
 
 Here, where never leaf seemed to fade, or sum- 
 mer to die, Melba was singing of waning suns and 
 dying flowers. 
 
 "The swallows are making them ready to fly, 
 Wheeling out on a windy sky, 
 Good-bye, summer— good-bye, good-bye!" 
 
 Down in the gorge a scarlet bird of paradise went 
 by, like a comet dropped from heaven : little jewelled 
 
 238 
 
GUINEA GOLD 239 
 
 king-birds, swaying on scented orchid bloom, bathed 
 their shining feathers in the sun that never failed. 
 
 "Hush! a voice from the far away, 
 Listen and learn, it seems to say, 
 All the to-morrows shall be as to-day, 
 All the to-morrows shall be as to-day, 
 The cord must break, and the lamp must die, 
 Good-bye to hope, good-bye, good-bye!" 
 
 Scott was climbing up the giant stairway at the 
 head of his trail of carriers. All the way the voice 
 beat upon him as a wave beats on a swimmer half 
 buried in the surf. Its golden spray deafened and 
 blinded him. It seemed to fill the world. 
 
 "Good-bye, summer — good-bye, good-bye!" 
 
 Under the diamond rays of the New Guinea 
 morning, with the scent of unfading flowers rising 
 among trees that were always green and young, 
 summer was dying. 
 
 "What are we waiting for, O my heart? 
 Kiss me straight on the brows, and part. . . ." 
 
 Not even a kiss ! not even a kiss to take with him 
 on the long journey into winter and dark that must 
 last the rest of his life. How could a lover be alto- 
 gether unhappy if he had a kiss to carry with him? 
 But he had not had a kiss from Charmian. He had 
 held Her hand, and let it go, and gone. 
 
 "What are we waiting for, you and I? . . . 
 Good-bye for ever! good-bye! good-bye!" 
 
240 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 The voice, the marvel of a century, rose into a 
 passionate cry that embodied all the pain of all the 
 lovers' partings in all the world. How could one 
 feel such pain and live? How could one go on, 
 stumbling up the ferny steps of the great staircase, 
 with the forest ahead, and the brown, naked, can- 
 nibal carriers behind, — the long day's tramp to come, 
 the rivers to ford, the camp to make in the wilder- 
 ness at night, — as though the world held nothing of 
 her? 
 
 He did not know how. He only knew that he 
 was going. 
 
 "Good-bye for ever!" 
 
 They had reached the top of the ridge. The 
 voice was growing faint. 
 
 "Good-bye! Good-bye!" 
 
 They were over and plunging down the steep. 
 Melba's voice was still. 
 
 Tim Carter, sitting on his verandah, took the 
 finished record out of his new gramophone and 
 slipped in another. 
 
 " I don't think much of that," he remarked to 
 himself. " I'll have something tastier this time." 
 
 And in another moment the valley rang to the 
 strains of " Stop Yer Ticklin', Jock! " 
 
 He had scarcely settled down to enjoy the song 
 when a terrible thing happened. Someone, tall, furi- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 241 
 
 ous, and very much out of breath, swept on to the 
 verandah like a " gooba " (a New Guinea hurri- 
 cane), there was a rush, a smack, and Tim fell half 
 over the side of his canvas chair, rubbing his ear. 
 
 " Old woman! old woman! " he groaned, without 
 looking up. " What have you got against me now? 
 What is it I've done this time? " 
 
 " Got against you?" demanded Mrs. Carter, 
 dropping into a chair and speaking between ex- 
 hausted gasps. " If I could have climbed up that 
 confounded lower ladder in time, I'd have let you 
 know! I was down at Mick's camp — he's ill — and 
 I heard you begin that thing when I was half-way up 
 those steps from the river — and I could no more 
 hurry — Tim Carter, you're a born fool, if ever there 
 was one! " 
 
 u Well, well," said Tim pacifically, content, as he 
 had been content a hundred times, to accept what 
 he could not understand, " better take a bit of a 
 rest : there's a lot to do by and by, with all the men 
 getting off, the stores coming up from the landing. 
 There's fifteen carriers from the Dragon-Fly in half 
 an hour ago — they brought my new gramophone." 
 
 " Oh, you — you " Mrs. Carter was on her 
 
 feet again. " You and your gramophone ! " the 
 words were charged with blistering scorn. Mrs. 
 Carter fanned herself fiercely, and looked at her 
 husband as though she could say a good deal more, 
 but refrained, for reasons known to herself, and in- 
 comprehensible by him. 
 
242 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Her silence, as she rose again, and moved across 
 the verandah in the direction of Charmian's room, 
 was of such a highly charged kind that Tim, fearing 
 to cut the wire by some unguarded word or act, 
 fairly held his breath until his better half had dis- 
 appeared. Then he slipped away on tiptoe, out to 
 the native carriers' shed in the yard, carrying his 
 silenced gramophone in his hands. Shortly after, 
 the raucous scream of a Cockney recitation rose on 
 the heated air, mingled with the delighted " Woofs " 
 of the house-boys. 
 
 Mrs. Carter, left alone, stalked, like a tall Fate 
 with a flat hat on, into Charmian's bedroom, and 
 planted herself beside the bed. 
 
 Charmian was lying on her face, with the heels 
 of her shoes pointing up to the sago-thatch ceiling. 
 Her hair had come down, and was spread all over 
 the pillow. . . . Her round waist and finely sculp- 
 tured thigh, beneath the twisted folds of the cotton 
 dress, had the beauty of the wind-blown figures in 
 the Elgin Marbles. And no marble could have been 
 more still. 
 
 " She's taking it hard — confound Tim and his 
 1 Good-byes! ' " thought Mrs. Carter. For a min- 
 ute or two she waited. A bird in the forest called — 
 " O-tui O ! O-ree ! O-ree ! " It was half dark in the 
 brown-walled room: light shot in long spears 
 through the floor. 
 
 Charmian lay still. 
 
 " Tui ! Tui ! " The mate of the bird was an- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 243 
 
 swering from far away. " Tui ! Tui ! I hear you, 
 love ! " The thousand warm scents of the tropic 
 forest, the glory of the eternal tropic sun, were in 
 that call. The bird loved, and was happy. 
 
 Charmian stirred restlessly, and flung her hand 
 across the edge of the bed. A long sigh passed 
 over her, shaking her as the wind shakes the spear- 
 grass at sundown. 
 
 " Mrs. Ducane," said the tall Fate. 
 
 " I want to be alone." Scarcely to be heard, 
 muffled by long brown hair, came the reply. 
 
 11 I know you do," answered Mrs. Carter, " but 
 I'm not going to let you. It's not time to cry till 
 you know you've reason." 
 
 " I'm not crying." Charmian turned on her side 
 and looked up. Her face was deadly white, and her 
 eyes were underlined with splashes of purple, but she 
 was not shedding tears, nor had she shed any. 
 
 " Things you can cry over aren't ..." Her 
 voice trailed away. " If the end of the world came, 
 you wouldn't . . . cry ..." 
 
 " My God ! how you do lie down to things ! " said 
 the woman who had tamed North- West. " Before 
 I'd let a man treat me like that " 
 
 u Did you marry the man you cried about most? " 
 asked Charmian, sitting up and flinging back her 
 hair. 
 
 Mrs. Carter's hard, handsome face grew slowly 
 red. 
 
 " No," she said. 
 
244 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Then I don't see how you can talk." Charmian 
 was aroused now, and looked at the other with the 
 instinctive hatred of woman against woman, that 
 flashes out beneath the crust of civilisation when 
 love's volcano-fire begins to play. 
 
 " You're a lot braver and stronger than I am, but 
 you couldn't help yourself either. You needn't 
 come and triumph over me. We're all unhappy to- 
 gether — women — that's the truth. I don't believe 
 in the story of the snake and the apple, but there's 
 something true in it somewhere. Life couldn't be 
 so abominable to us if we hadn't somehow done 
 something that had to be punished." 
 
 She put her hands over her face suddenly. 
 
 " Oh, I'm talking — talking," she said, " and he's 
 going away ... all the time, I don't know why I 
 can't cry. I'm . . . broken . . . somewhere." 
 
 " Look here," — Mrs. Carter had sat down on 
 the bed beside her and taken her hand into firm 
 custody— " let's drop all that skite and come to 
 facts. Why has he left you? This week or two 
 that he's been here you was never away from one 
 another. You was walking on the ridge, and sitting 
 on the log staircase, and spooning on the verandah 
 in the moonlight, and getting up to see the sun rise, 
 and — well, what does it all mean? " 
 
 11 It means — the other woman," said Charmian. 
 The momentary excitement had faded: she was sit- 
 ting in a crumpled heap on the bed, her eyes like 
 gold-brown flowers that had faded in the rain. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 245 
 
 " What other? " Mrs. Carter spoke with a cer- 
 tain sharpness, expressive of her contempt for the 
 ways of men in general. 
 
 " He never told me. He only said — to-day — 
 when his boys were ready, and they put the loads 
 
 on — he just said, ■ If I were free ' and then he 
 
 took my hand, and then he went away." 
 
 " Did you tell him about the Ducane man? " 
 
 " Yes. Yesterday. He said I must never go back 
 to him." 
 
 " Oh, he did, did he? And did he tell you how 
 you were going to manage to live — not that I would- 
 n't keep you as long as you like, my girl, but I 
 know you " 
 
 " No, I wouldn't — thanks. What does it matter 
 how I live? I shan't live long! " 
 
 She had propped her little chin on her hands, and 
 with her hair falling all about her, was looking out 
 through the low window, a long, long way, beyond 
 the valley, and the forest curtain, and the far high 
 peaks of the German ranges — whither? 
 
 " Don't look like that: you give me the blooming 
 shivers," said the other, shaking her slightly. Char- 
 mian turned away from the window and sank back on 
 her pillow again, face hidden. You could see the 
 life slipping away from her as you might see the sap 
 in a withering flower. 
 
 " Oh, hell ! " said the woman of the backblocks, 
 standing up straight and tall, with her hands on her 
 hips, and setting her face in a baffled frown. For 
 
246 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 once she had met with a situation she could not 
 handle. 
 
 She swung her foot irritably as she stood — a trick 
 she had in moments of annoyance. The toe of her 
 shoe struck against a parcel lying on the floor, half 
 under the bed. In spite of the swinging stroke the 
 parcel moved not at all. Mrs. Carter looked at it. 
 It was a smallish oblong packet, sewn up in ship 
 canvas, rather like a loaf of bread in shape and 
 size. She bent down and put one hand under it to 
 lift it. It stirred no more than if it had been nailed 
 to the floor. She took both hands and raised it with 
 a mighty heave. In spite of her strength she could 
 scarcely hold it. 
 
 11 My Oath ! " she panted. " Gold ! " She set it 
 down on the bed, and the crazy piece of furniture 
 creaked with its weight. 
 
 " Here," said Mrs. Carter, pulling Charmian up 
 with small ceremony, " what on earth do you mean 
 by having a fortune lying on your floor? What's 
 the gold? Where did you get it? My oath! there's 
 every weight of eight hundred ounces in that. If 
 Scott left it for you to take care of " 
 
 11 He didn't," answered Charmian in a dull, unin- 
 terested voice. " He gave it to me." 
 
 " Gave it to you! " Mrs. Carter could scarcely 
 find words. " Why, it must be every bit he's got! " 
 
 " It isn't. He said it was half." 
 
 " And you leave three thousand pounds, or there- 
 abouts, lying under your bed ! " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 247 
 
 " I didn't know it was so much," said Charmian, 
 her face showing some disquiet. " It was such a 
 small parcel. . . . He gave it to a boy to carry to 
 my room. He said it was half of his gold, and I 
 was to keep it, to prevent my having to go back 
 to . . . He was saying good-bye — and I couldn't 
 think of anything else. . . . What does it matter? 
 He's gone." 
 
 Her face was like an alabaster lamp when the 
 flame is dead within. 
 
 "Matter?" said Mrs. Carter vigorously. "I 
 should think it did matter. If you're going to take 
 three thousand pounds from him, you may as well 
 have it put away in Tim's safe. . . . My word! they 
 must have struck it rich all right — there won't be a 
 digger in New Guinea but will be up on the field in 
 another month — and from Australia, too. . . . Half 
 of what he got! Eight hundred! — There, let's take 
 it to the scales." 
 
 She trod heavily out of the room, carrying the 
 parcel of gold nursed in her arms. 
 
 " Tim ! " she called. " Tim ! You come along 
 here, quick and lively. Tim!" 
 
 " Eight hundred and sixty-three ounces ! " she 
 proclaimed, returning by and by with the parcel still 
 in her arms, freshly sewn up. " Three thousand 
 and sixty-three pounds, or thereabouts, in money. 
 Over fifty pounds sheer weight, avoirdupois. And 
 what am I to do with it, Mrs. Ducane? " 
 
248 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 There was no answer from the bed. She bent 
 down and looked at the girl. Charmian seemed 
 asleep, but she did not wake when spoken to, and 
 her pulse, when Mrs. Carter lifted the delicate wrist, 
 was very slow and faint. It grew fainter as the 
 older woman held it. 
 
 " Brandy! " called Mrs. Carter, sending the gold 
 under the bed with a kick. " Brandy, Tim — she's 
 got a heart attack, or something like it." 
 
 The shadowy Tim drifted in with a bottle and 
 glass, waited while his wife poured out and applied 
 the remedy, saw the fluid trickle down unswallowed 
 on the pillow, and watched still, while Mrs. Carter 
 briskly, efficiently, yet with a growing shade of 
 anxiety in her face, tried one fainting-fit remedy 
 after another — to no effect. Charmian breathed 
 quietly, her pulse beat, though slowly. But she 
 did not regain consciousness. 
 
 Some white men came in from the camps, bound, 
 like all the rest, for the new discovery. Tim went 
 out to attend to them, to sell them stores from the 
 stock that had arrived by the Dragon-Fly, tell the 
 story of the golden reef over and over again, and 
 served drinks that grew stiffer and more numerous 
 as the day went on. There were several men sing- 
 ing and quarrelling on the verandah before the sun 
 began to sink. A train of boys, apparently master- 
 less, came down the log staircase, and began drifting 
 about among the carousing men. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 249 
 
 " Here, you, where do you come from? " shouted 
 Carter, overbearing with drink. 
 
 No one could make out. They were unable to 
 pronounce the name of their " Taubada," as is usu- 
 ally the case with Papuans. They spoke very little 
 English. One of them was able to explain, indis- 
 tinctly, that their leader had gone on in front of 
 them, and they had expected to find him at the 
 store. 
 
 " Well, he ain't here," said Carter. " You go 
 long house belong boy, you kill some tin meat, you 
 cook tea. By and by he come." 
 
 It grew on towards evening: smoke began to rise 
 from the cookhouses, and there was a sound of 
 chopping wood. Rain piled up in the north-west, 
 threatened, and came down. It became dark: the 
 yellow-flamed hurricane lamps were lighted, and 
 hung out in the verandah and store. 
 
 Mrs. Carter came out of Charmian's room at 
 last. She was wiping her forehead with her hand- 
 kerchief, and looked dishevelled and tired, but re- 
 lieved. 
 
 " My word, Tim, I have had an afternoon ! " she 
 said. " Never came round till about half an hour 
 ago, she didn't. I thought she was going to peg out, 
 sure and certain. She seems all right now, and only 
 thinks she fainted a little." 
 
 "Well, didn't she?" asked Carter, insinuating 
 the corkscrew into a bottle of beer. 
 
 " If that's for the man you may go on with it. 
 
250 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 If it's for yourself, put it back on the shelf: you've 
 had enough," ordered the Queen. 
 
 Carter meekly put it back. 
 
 " Faint? " went on his wife. " No. Nor heart 
 attack neither, so far as I can see. Looked to me 
 more like something I've never seen in a white per- 
 son — yet." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " Well, you know how those niggers can die in 
 half a day, without anything being the matter with 
 them, if they happen to lose interest in life, and 
 reckon it isn't good enough to go on? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I know that, same as everyone does." 
 
 " I'll swear," said Mrs. Carter, with some emo- 
 tion, " if she hadn't been a white woman, I'd have 
 been certain sure she was just going off like that. 
 She's right now — more or less — and I'm going to 
 make her eat some tea, if I have to choke it down her 
 throat for her." 
 
 "Where's the gold?" asked Carter, with a sud- 
 denness that was one of his most astonishing char- 
 acteristics. You would have thought him half 
 asleep, as a general rule : but he waked up when least 
 expected. 
 
 Mrs. Carter changed colour and stepped quickly 
 back into the bedroom. 
 
 " Under the bed," she said, with a glance and a 
 kick. " Tim, you gave me a turn." 
 
 " You ought to have a turn, old woman, leaving 
 it there. Of course there isn't a digger on the field 
 
GUINEA GOLD 251 
 
 would touch it, but these Kiwais are too fly alto- 
 gether about gold: any one of them ..." 
 
 " Lord Almighty! " said his wife, making a sud- 
 den dart outside the house into the fierce rain that 
 was beating on the track — " if that isn't Scott coming 
 back, you may call me a Chow! " 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The track to Cripps' Reef — the new track that 
 Anderson had marked out for Scott to follow on 
 his way back — was already unmistakable to the eyes 
 of any bushman. Coming down, Scott had gone 
 mostly by compass, and by the lie of the Iri River, 
 which, as it turned out, ran much nearer the Ki- 
 kiramu, in the lower part of its course, than anyone 
 had supposed. The men who went over the track 
 sometime after him went by the footmarks of scores 
 of carriers, by campfire ashes, by felled bush and 
 torn-away vine, by rough log bridges newly thrown 
 over unfordable rivers — by all the signs showing a 
 road that has been passed over many times. For the 
 rush had begun. 
 
 A very small rush, as yet — only the men from 
 the claims around the Kikiramu store, and a few 
 who had " come in " from the outer camps, after 
 Scott's arrival. The news was even now going down 
 the Kikiramu River in the Dragon-Fly launch, and 
 before another three weeks had gone past, would be 
 flying by the fortnightly mail-boat, and the Aus- 
 tralian telegraph wires, south, east, and west, all 
 over the great continent. About the same time it 
 would filter through to the outback posts of civilisa- 
 tion in Papua itself, to the northern and north- 
 
 252 
 
GUINEA GOLD 253 
 
 eastern divisions, and the isolated D'Entrecasteaux 
 and Louisiades. Then the rest of the Papuan miners 
 — a body of some three hundred in all — would come 
 by steam-launch, cutter, or canoe: on foot through 
 leech-infested forests, and alligator-haunted swamps, 
 over huge ranges, choked with forest, where never 
 white man's foot had trod, to the new El Dorado, as 
 some of them had found their way in the old days, 
 to the fever-smitten fields of Misima and Tagula: 
 to the workings of the Yodda and Mambare coun- 
 try, inhabited by the fiercest race of cannibals in 
 Papua : to the scarcely accessible Waria and Wood- 
 lark Island, and all the other fields, now mostly 
 worked out, that had been discovered and exploited 
 at the cost of many scores of lives. 
 
 Rupert Dence, coming down to the Kikiramu for 
 reasons best known to himself, found the track as 
 plain as a high-road, if scarce as easy. It was only 
 a three-days' walk, by the newly marked out way — 
 the prospectors' wanderings had taken them far 
 away from the goal at first, and by the time they 
 reached it, they had verged back within thirty miles 
 or so of the Kikiramu field. If you crossed the 
 alligator swamp — a reasonably safe thing to do in 
 daylight — you could even manage the trip in two 
 days and a half, with loaded boys. Dence took care 
 to strike the swamp before sundown: he did not 
 want to go round by way of an unnecessary range of 
 mountains, and lose half a day . . . now. 
 
 As he had started in the middle of the night from 
 
354 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Cripps' Reef, it was the middle of the second day 
 when he reached the spot where the new track to the 
 Iri struck into the old track along the Kikiramu. 
 There was a well-worn camping-ground here: trees 
 had been cleared a little, and rough bush sheds for 
 carriers had been built. Skeleton tent frames — the 
 two pairs of gabled posts, the two horizontal side 
 supports on four crotch sticks, which are so familiar 
 a sight to camping folk — stood in the empty spaces. 
 There was water, an elbow of a tributary stream, 
 with a good gravelly bed. There were traces of 
 fires everywhere, and bits of native baskets, and 
 abandoned carrying-poles, and a stray emptied tin or 
 two. The ground was leafy and boggy, and crossed 
 with trunks of fallen trees. 
 
 " We'll kai-kai here," said Dence to his head boy, 
 picking out a log under the shade of a huge but- 
 tressed trunk. " Get water — make fire." 
 
 The Papuan went down to the river, and the 
 Englishman set himself upon the log, and lit his pipe. 
 It was good to rest and smoke after the tramp of the 
 morning. It was pleasant to watch the long clouds 
 drift through clouds of trees, and see the sun make 
 spangles of white fire upon the varnished leaves in 
 the clearing — sheltered oneself by the age-old clois- 
 ters of the bordering forest. 
 
 There was time for a good long halt, and he took 
 it, letting the boys prepare the midday rice and meat 
 at their leisure. They brought him his dinner in a 
 tin plate, and he ate it with the knife from his belt, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 255 
 
 drinking milkless tea out of his metal pannikin. If 
 you had seen him there, and known his history, you 
 would have thought, perhaps, of the days when 
 Rupert, not called Dence, had eaten off silver plate, 
 and drunk vintage wines from engraved glasses; 
 when he had had other service than that of brown 
 naked men with red leaves in their hair. . . . But 
 Rupert, called Dence, had well-nigh forgotten those 
 days now: having moulded himself, like the rest of 
 us, to the medium in which he lived. 
 
 He had pleasant thoughts as he sat and ate, and 
 yet anxious ones, too. He frowned a little at his 
 food, and often stopped, half-way through a mouth- 
 ful, to consider. The head boy thought the rice 
 was badly cooked, and trembled over his own din- 
 ner, for the soft-voiced Rupert had a heavy hand, 
 on occasion. 
 
 ... If one could divert the Taubada's mind to 
 anything else there was, perhaps, a chance of escap- 
 ing trouble. ... If there were any game to point 
 out — any traces of nomad tribes to find and make 
 much of . . . anything — 
 
 The Papuan stopped eating, and sat still as a 
 figure of wood, listening. Why, surely, there was 
 something — feet advancing in the far distance . . . 
 the faint, faint tread of a white man's boot, the far- 
 away pad of bare soles ... 
 
 " Taubada, one white man he come! M cried the 
 boy, springing up. 
 
 " Some more of the men coming up," said Dence 
 
256 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 to himself, and lifted a bladeful of rice. He watched 
 the turn of the track before him without interest, 
 until the white man at the head of the column of car- 
 riers came into sight. Then he jumped to his feet 
 and uttered an exclamation. The turn was very 
 near, and he had seen the expression on Scott's face. 
 Hag-ridden, desperate, white, wearied with fierce 
 exercise that had failed, after all, to ease the torment 
 of his mind — the man's whole aspect spoke aloud of 
 defeat and of pain. 
 
 It was only for a moment. He saw Dence almost 
 as quickly as Dence saw him, and instantly the blind 
 was drawn down, the bright, hard smile lit up like a 
 lamp, the bent shoulders straightened. Scott, when 
 he tramped into the clearing, and held out a hand 
 to his mate, was Scott as everyone knew him : tired- 
 looking, perhaps, but pleasant, cheerful, ready to 
 talk and even to joke. You would not have sup- 
 posed he had a care in the world, other than that 
 of making good time, and getting up to his camping- 
 ground at dusk — unless, maybe, you had been a 
 woman, and had loved him. Or unless . . . you had 
 been a man whose eyes were made keen by the 
 mighty power of jealousy. 
 
 In the days of Samarai, which seemed so long ago, 
 Dence had almost loved this man, and Scott as- 
 suredly had been drawn to him, as he was not drawn 
 to any other man in Papua — not even to the fine 
 nature and noble courage of Anderson, their leader. 
 Now, the two met with pleasant words on their lips, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 257 
 
 but the hate of hell itself in their hearts. The upper- 
 most thought in each man's mind that moment was — 
 "Does she care for him?" — and the undermost 
 thought . . . 
 
 I think that neither Dence nor Scott knew what 
 that thought was. But the savages who stood about 
 them knew. And one from the Aird River country, 
 where they kill men for pastime as a child might kill 
 flies, began to chant a low, fierce song, and to cast 
 devilish looks and laughs behind him at his com- 
 rades. 
 
 Meantime, the white men were talking. 
 
 " Only getting back now?" said Dence. "I 
 thought I'd have met you a good deal farther 
 out." 
 
 " Why, what's bringing you down, anyhow?" 
 asked the other, speaking more lightly than he felt. 
 
 "Bringing me down?" replied Dence thought- 
 fully, as if he had been set a riddle. Then, brightly 
 — " I'll think it over, and let you know as soon as I 
 find out. Do you know, I was just wondering about 
 that myself? Couldn't suggest anything, could 
 you?" 
 
 This was insolence. Scott felt his blood warming 
 up. For the moment he dared not trust himself to 
 reply. 
 
 Dence seemed to draw new life from every line of 
 Scott's worn face and body, as a vampire draws food 
 from living veins. 
 
 " Had your kai-kai? " he asked, breaking into a 
 
258 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 gay whistle as soon as the question left his lips, and 
 staring about him in the forest. 
 
 " No," answered Scott 
 
 " Have some? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Reef's pinchin' out, Anderson thinks. Hard 
 luck for all the Johnnies who are comin' up now. 
 What?" 
 
 " Is that why you left it? " 
 
 " No. I left it," explained Dence, smoking as he 
 talked, and speaking very gently, " because I — as 
 dear old Micawber would say — ' in short, chose.' " 
 
 The Aird River boys did not know English. 
 There was a certain universal language that they 
 did know, however, and they kicked each other 
 with delighted anxiety. Were the Taubadas going 
 to give them some fun? 
 
 Under the black shade of the great buttressed tree 
 there was silence for a few seconds. The sea-like 
 murmur of the forest grew very clear. You could 
 hear the tinkling of the carriers' beads and neck- 
 laces as they breathed. 
 
 " The diggers have told him. . . . He is going to 
 her. . . . She is alone — unhappy — afraid of Du- 
 cane. . . . She liked him before. . . . She will! 
 She will do it! ..." 
 
 " He has left her. . . . He is keeping faith with 
 his Irish girl. . . . By God, it's my turn now! 
 Charmian, Charmian! " 
 
 There was not a word spoken. The two men 
 
GUINEA GOLD 259 
 
 looked at each other. And in that look the fate 
 of three lives took shape. 
 
 Scott, remembering in the after years, knew that 
 he had not thought at all, after seeing — what he 
 saw — in Dence's eyes. He had only acted. Three 
 thousand years of evolution shredded away from 
 his mind as bark shreds from a tree before a light- 
 ning blast. He became as the naked savages who 
 stood beside him. And the new (or was it the old?) 
 Stone Age man in him laughed consumedly at the 
 incomprehensible madness of rejection and sacrifice, 
 so nearly committed by the fool, George Scott. 
 
 It was Scott as others knew him, however, who 
 turned to the carriers with his usual kindliness of 
 manner, and bade them open their food-bags and 
 dine: who took meat and biscuit for himself, and sat 
 down on a log to eat it, with the calm purpose of 
 a man who had work to do, and means to neglect 
 no aid towards the doing. Dence looked at him 
 oddly. He could not understand this sudden silence, 
 this ignoring of himself. He did not altogether 
 like it. 
 
 " The poor devil can't bear to talk to me: he's 
 so beastly jealous," was the solution that he tried 
 to make himself accept. But it did not satisfy him. 
 
 He made a remark or two, as the meal went on. 
 He was answered quietly: but conversation dropped, 
 heavy as lead, into unfathomable silences. The boys 
 finished their food. Dence cleared his tin plate. 
 Scott broke the last piece of his biscuit. 
 
260 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Well, I suppose we must be going," observed 
 Dence. 
 
 The carriers hoisted up their loads again, and 
 took leave of one another, with many strange cries 
 of farewell. Dence beckoned his boys out on to 
 the track. 
 
 "Well, so long!" he said, with the touch of 
 swagger in his bearing that always made one listen, 
 unconsciously, for the jingle of spurs. He held out 
 his hand. 
 
 Scott did not take it, or return the salute. 
 
 "Out of friends, eh?" asked Dence, twisting 
 his moustache. The idea did not seem to displease 
 him. 
 
 " Not at all," replied Scott coolly. " I'm coming 
 with you." 
 
 " Coming with me? " His face grew dark. 
 
 " Certainly. We ought to get in by six o'clock, 
 without pressing the boys." 
 
 " And may one ask," said Dence, with more than 
 a touch of insolence in his manner now, " the rea- 
 son of this curious proceedin'? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, one may," answered Scott, smiling very 
 pleasantly, " it's because I — ' in short, choose.' " 
 
 No white man's tongue could tell — it is probable 
 that no white man's brain could imagine — the disap- 
 pointment that took possession of the Kiwais and 
 Orokivas and Goari-Bari men as that strange after- 
 noon wore on. They had been certain that the Tau- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 261 
 
 badas were going to fight — possibly to kill one an- 
 other with the desirable little six-throated guns that 
 they wore in their waistbelts. They, the carriers, 
 had smelt blood in the air, and were half-drunk on it 
 already. . . . After these long months of unutter- 
 able ennui — eating and working all day, sleeping all 
 night long with never so much as a midnight stab- 
 bing raid, or a skull smashed in with a pineapple 
 stone club, to give a bored unlucky heathen a little 
 taste of amusement — they really had had hopes 
 that things were beginning to brighten. And now, 
 there were the Taubadas walking one after the 
 other, hour by hour, along the track, and up the 
 steep knife-ridges, and through the riverbeds, ex- 
 changing no word, it was true, but never so much as 
 reaching out to make a stab at a bare, sweating neck, 
 or a jab into an unprotected back, between the 
 shoulder-blades, with their knives! This, too, on a 
 track that offered every facility for good, effective 
 fighting, according to the standards of sensible folk 
 — a road that furnished ambushes uncountable, 
 drops and down-slides of unimaginable tempting- 
 ness, and that never for a moment allowed two men 
 to walk easily abreast! 
 
 There was still one hope left, and the boys dis- 
 cussed it eagerly among themselves as they padded 
 on under the steamy shades of the forest. When the 
 two white men saw the woman (no one who knows 
 the Papuan will need to be told that the cause of the 
 trouble was as plain to these simple savages as it 
 
262 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 would have been to a whole drawing-room full of 
 black coats and silk dresses) — when they saw the 
 woman, there might be fun after all. The Orokivas, 
 and the Goari-Baris, and the Yassi-Yassis, and the 
 Kiwais, knew quite well, by experience, how exceed- 
 ingly annoying it was, even to the best-tempered 
 men, to have another man actually bothering round 
 in the presence of the woman you happened to want 
 yourself. All sorts of things were liable to happen 
 in a case like that— even with a really good-natured 
 man, who would not so much as roast a captive on 
 a stick, alive, or bite off an enemy's nose. . . . 
 
 It began to rain at four o'clock, and kept hard on 
 all the rest of the way. Dark came down soon after 
 six: they climbed the heart-breaking height of the 
 cliff more by feeling than by sight, and reached the 
 summit winded, scratched, and bruised by a dozen 
 falls. They had kept together, silent, throughout 
 the afternoon, and they did not speak when the lights 
 of the camp blinked into view through beating rain, 
 some hundreds of feet below. On Scott had fallen 
 the calmness of a resolution made for good and all. 
 The new, strange man in him smiled quietly at the 
 thought of the fool with the breaking heart who had 
 climbed up that height in the silver of the early 
 sun, rocks and valley ringing out into his ears: 
 "Good-bye to hope— good-bye, good-bye!" 
 
 He was breaking the most solemn promise of his 
 life: he was jilting an innocent girl who loved and 
 
GUINEA GOLD 263 
 
 trusted him: he was, in fine, a blackguard. Cer- 
 tainly: agreed: allowed. It didn't particularly mat- 
 ter. Nothing had mattered very much, since, in the 
 forest clearing he had met that look on Rupert 
 Dence's face, and had seen, in the sudden lightning 
 blaze of prevision, Charmian with Rupert's lips on 
 hers. 
 
 And Dence? 
 
 The stream of wild fury in his heart raged like 
 the torrent of a mountain waterfall. So far the sav- 
 ages were right. So far had they read well that his 
 hand had indeed been near the haft of his knife 
 more than once during that silent march through 
 the forest. Almost he had called out on Scott to 
 halt — to draw his knife, or take his pistol from its 
 holster, and see once for all which was the better 
 man of these two who loved one woman. Only one 
 thing held him back — the hideous knowledge that, 
 in sober truth, there was nothing to fight about: no 
 chance to stake. Scott held all the cards. Charmian 
 loved him. She might marry another man — indeed, 
 Dence told himself bitterly, she would marry a 
 dozen times, if a dozen times set free, being in truth 
 no more able to help herself than a little soft-eyed 
 hare loosed among a pack of dogs — but the chance 
 that he, and others, might have, would only come 
 through Scott's defeat. And, save Scott himself, 
 who was to defeat him? 
 
 So, sick at heart, and blind with rage, he fol- 
 lowed Scott down the long staircase, scarce knowing 
 
264 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 why he followed, but determined, all the same, not 
 to leave him until . . . 
 
 What? That remained to be seen. 
 
 "Mrs. Ducane! Mrs. Ducane!' , 
 
 There was something in Mrs. Carter's voice that 
 snatched Charmian from her bed like a hand laid on 
 her shoulders. Yet the pioneer woman had not even 
 touched her. She had put her head inside the door- 
 way of Charmian's room and spoken her name. 
 And in an instant Charmian was out, and up, and 
 . . . at the looking-glass. 
 
 Mrs. Carter burst out laughing, with a cry some- 
 where in the laugh. 
 
 "Yes!" she said. "He's there. He's back. 
 Put up your hair, and pull down that blouse of yours. 
 Doll yourself up as much as you like, and come 
 out!" 
 
 She was gone. She took Tim by the ear and led 
 him into the store and told him to stop there. Stray 
 carriers were swept off the little side verandah like 
 leaves before a storm. Miners wandering about 
 were somehow conjured away. The leaf-thatched 
 verandah, with its rough table and sapling floor, was 
 empty of all save one white figure with a small, pale, 
 glorified face, when Scott, big, ragged, mud-smeared, 
 with eyes like grey Irish diamonds alight beneath 
 his black-set brows, stepped out of the night and 
 the rain. 
 
 " Charmian, I've come back," he said. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 265 
 
 .The pale ghost of the other woman, and the dark 
 ghost of the spirit of Papua, faded away. . . . 
 Charmian held out her hands to the man who was 
 only hers. And the kiss that had haunted the wak- 
 ing and sleeping hours of Scott, from the coral 
 shores of Samarai to the long reaches of the Iri 
 River, through all the wonders of the unknown 
 secret lands, through thirst and hunger and peril, 
 and the spilling of blood, and the search for gold, 
 was his at last. 
 
 A few seconds later Rupert Dence walked into 
 the store, lifted a case of whiskey from one of the 
 shelves like a feather, went out without a word of 
 greeting, and plunged away down the lower log 
 staircase into the dark. 
 
 As he went, several disappointed heathens crept 
 out from under the house, where they had been 
 eagerly watching the course of events, up to the 
 moment when Rupert had turned away from the 
 lighted oblong of the verandah doorway. Chant- 
 ing their disgust and disillusionment in loud major 
 thirds, they made their way to the cookhouse in the 
 yard. If there were going to be no games, there 
 would at least be bread. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carter were breakfasting. 
 
 After the rain the morning was magnificent. 
 Sweet cold scents of orchid and jasmine rose up 
 from the river valley. Beyond the treetops the 
 mountain peaks stood out in facets of blue crystal 
 against a sky of primrose-gold. The world, the un- 
 soiled, unhandled world of the virgin forests, was 
 new and pure. 
 
 " Tim, it's a fine morning," observed Mrs. Carter 
 over her plate of cold boiled cassowary. u And 
 that girl loafing over her tea in bed. . . . Ah! I've 
 no patience with girls — they're a rabbit-headed crew, 
 all the lot." 
 
 " You took her her tea," observed Carter, out of 
 his own cup. 
 
 " Had to : she's fair shook up. But she's no busi- 
 ness to be. That's what I quarrel with. Nerves ! 
 If I'd caught a daughter of mine havin' such a thing 
 about her " 
 
 " I reckon they knew better," said Carter im- 
 personally. 
 
 " And, as you can bear witness yourself, there 
 wasn't one of the six performed like that, wedding- 
 day or no wedding-day. Up they were, as bright as 
 
 bees, baking " 
 
 266 
 
GUINEA GOLD 267 
 
 " Wedding-day ? " Carter interrupted, with small 
 ceremony, the amazing entomological parallel just 
 commenced by his wife. " Whose wedding-day is 
 it?" 
 
 " Scott's and hers, of course," replied Mrs. Car- 
 ter calmly. " I wasn't going to stand no nonsense, 
 so I told them both last night, when I saw they'd 
 done canoodling on the verandah. There's the 
 Dragon-Fly due to leave the landing the day after 
 to-morrow, and there'll not be more than time to 
 send off a notice of the wedding, if it goes to-day 
 with the carriers. They've muddled about this job 
 long enough: time it was settled for good and all. 
 I must say Scott was very reasonable : he said he had 
 no objection in the world, and sent a message to the 
 warden right off. He's coming up some time before 
 lunch to marry them, and he's lending them his 
 house into the bargain. As for that girl, she cried, 
 and told me — had the face to tell me — she oughtn't 
 to marry him, because of some nonsense about an- 
 other woman. Said she was making him act against 
 his conscience: he'd never mentioned the other girl 
 to her, but she was sure of it, all the same. And she 
 yesterday morning breaking her heart because he 
 hadn't left the other ! I declare, Tim, my patience 
 just pinched right out, and I said to her: ' You get 
 to bed quick and lively, and if I hear any more yap 
 about not marrying, my girl, I vow I'll smack you ! ' 
 Off she went like a lamb: but she's all nerves this 
 morning, and says she's wicked. Wicked? Trash 1 
 
268 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 I'm going in to help her to doll up by and by, and 
 then I reckon we'll hear no more about wickedness. 
 I've got a nice muslin dress that I brought up to 
 make for Mary's girl: it'll do her all right, with a 
 tuck or so — and, by the way, Tim, just you send one 
 of the boys down to the warden's house for a bit of 
 that orange blossom he has." 
 
 " Widows don't wear orange blossom," objected 
 Tim. 
 
 "Widows? She ain't a widow: she's only got 
 rid of a bad bargain, and she'll be married like a 
 regular decent bride, or my name isn't Ann Carter. 
 Did you ever hear of any law against a divorced 
 woman marrying in white and orange blossom?" 
 
 " Only widows," allowed Tim perplexedly. 
 
 " Well, then, send that boy off, and sort up the 
 store : all the men that aren't away by one o'clock 
 will be there, so we'll want room to stand." 
 
 "What about that parcel of gold?" asked' 
 Tim. 
 
 " Man, you're like a bluebottle fly. I tell you it's 
 all right. I saw it — and kicked it — this morning. 
 Where d'you think we are? In a back alley of 
 Melbourne, or up on the Kikiramu? If it was lying 
 on the counter of the store, instead of under her bed, 
 there isn't a man here who would touch it." 
 
 " Well, old woman," maintained Carter, with the 
 curious persistence that he could show at times, 
 u I'm not saying anything against anyone, but I 
 don't see what we've got an expensive safe for, that 
 
GUINEA GOLD 269 
 
 near killed three carriers out of ten, on the way up, 
 if it isn't to put gold in, when gold's in the house." 
 " I suppose you're right: you do seem to be right, 
 once in a way," allowed his wife grudgingly. " She's 
 dressing now: I'll give her this muslin, and as soon 
 as she's out of her room, I'll get you the gold. 
 Now you go and see to having the store swept." 
 
 To Charmian, being a beautiful woman, even the 
 signs of sleeplessness and nervous strain were not 
 altogether unbecoming. Any ordinary woman would 
 have looked plain, with black shadows under her 
 eyes, drooping mouth, and colourless cheeks. But 
 under Charmian's lovely eyes the dark stain of 
 fatigue looked like an Eastern beauty's touch of 
 kohl: the paleness of her pearl-white face seemed 
 designed to make the lips look redder: the very 
 droop of the mouth invited kisses. When she had 
 finished dressing, and taken a long look in the glass, 
 there was scarce a shadow left of the nervousness 
 that had aroused good Mrs. Carter's wrath. Char- 
 mian loved her- own beauty too well not to know all 
 its different phases, and she saw at once that her 
 looks to-day had touched their zenith. More, surely 
 more ! There was something added — a perfume to 
 the flower, a sun-ray to the jewel. She had never 
 looked so in all her life before. 
 
 Knowing this, she felt suddenly and completely 
 happy. What if she were luring Scott away from 
 the shadowy woman to whom (she guessed) he had 
 
270 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 given faith! Look what she was giving him! She 
 was so beautiful! 
 
 She put on the white laced muslin that Mrs. Car- 
 ter had given her, and spent a delicious half-hour ad- 
 justing and arranging it, and fastening in her hair 
 the cluster of orange blossom brought her by Car- 
 ter's messenger. She knew it was all wrong, this 
 white dress, these bridal flowers, for her, Grant 
 Ducane's discarded wife : but that troubled her little. 
 The only thing that mattered was that her looks 
 should be brought to the highest point of perfection 
 possible. Was not George Scott giving up his best 
 prospects in life to marry her, with her stained name, 
 and his honour, to free himself for her? The value 
 for which he had bartered these things should be 
 as high as possible: it was her business to see to 
 that. 
 
 ^yhen she came out on to the verandah there was 
 no one there. The miners — some ten or fifteen, 
 who were waiting for the arrival of provisions from 
 the landing-place, to make a start for Cripps' Reef 
 — had gone off to tidy themselves up; Razors were 
 at a premium in the camp, ties urgently demanded, 
 and the bitter remonstrance of one or another, un- 
 lawfully bereft of hoarded clean shirt or " flash " 
 new belt, sounded among the outbuildings of the 
 store. Scott, with characteristic energy, was getting 
 his train of carriers in shape to start: they were to 
 get away for Cripps' Reef as early as possible, 
 loaded with the food that Anderson required, in 
 
GUINEA GOLD 271 
 
 charge of a miner who had secured his own pro- 
 visions and boys, and would start that day. Mrs. 
 Carter was in the cookhouse, making her boys fly 
 round as she began the concoction of a wedding 
 breakfast out of the few supplies procurable. For 
 the moment there was peace and quiet in the camp, 
 and Charmian was glad of it as she dropped on to a 
 long canvas chair, and shut her eyes, to rest. 
 
 Being tired after her restless night, she half 
 dropped off to sleep. She heard a bustle in her 
 room by and by, people moving about, somebody 
 talking, somebody else hushing him or her. She did 
 not pay any attention — there was only one thing 
 in the world that mattered to-day. 
 
 Feet began to sound about the house — heavily 
 booted feet that came from many quarters, and met 
 together somewhere about the doorway of the store. 
 The talking in the bedroom was drowned by the in- 
 creasing hum outside. It swelled to a shout, by and 
 by, and voices could be heard raised in loud greeting 
 to Phillips, the magistrate and warden, who was 
 evidently coming up the lower series of ladders, 
 from his bungalow across the valley. 
 
 Charmian jumped up and went to the rail . . . 
 Phillips, the gay young fellow with curly hair whom 
 she had seen in the store on the night of Scott's 
 arrival, was almost at the top of the stairs: he wore 
 a white suit — a thing seldom seen on the Kikiramu 
 — and a newly pipe-clayed helmet: and his snowy 
 shoes made it plain to the eyes of all present that he 
 
272 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 had carried a pair with him, and put them on at the 
 last flight of the muddy ascent from the river. 
 
 The miners, Micky and Bobby and Jack and Dick, 
 and German Billy, and Cortland, and Otto Riddick, 
 and the rest, were all round the doorway of the 
 store, waiting. They had managed to find clean 
 shirts and trousers, and to fasten pins in the place 
 of missing buttons, and every man who did not wear 
 a beard was shaved. They looked a rough crew 
 and a mixed one — there were men among them who 
 had taken university degrees, and others who could 
 barely write a dozen words of an ungrammatical 
 letter: there were men who drank themselves half 
 to death once or twice a year, and men who were 
 strictly sober: men who were lads when gold was 
 first found in Australia, and men who remembered 
 nothing older than the Boer War . . . men 
 who ... 
 
 " That is it," said Charmian to herself, pausing 
 on the constant repetition of one word — " they are 
 lots of different things, but they are all — men. 
 Most men aren't." 
 
 She became conscious that something was drag- 
 ging. There was a delay: a pause. Where was 
 Scott? The magistrate had gone into the store: 
 the miners were following. She waited for him to 
 fetch her. What was keeping him? 
 
 Nothing much, apparently: he was coming now — 
 she could hear him hurrying along the verandah 
 from the Carters' room. He arrived almost out of 
 
GUINEA GOLD 273 
 
 breath, glowing and gay as became a bridegroom, 
 dressed in a white suit exactly like the magistrate's, 
 and evidently borrowed from him. He had a white 
 orchid in his buttonhole: his hair was brushed 
 smartly, and he trod as though the floor were india- 
 rubber. 
 
 " You're to take my arm," he laughed, " and I'm 
 to lead you into the store, and you're not to dare to 
 be nervous, and you're to speak up and be sensible. 
 That's what Her Majesty the Queen of North-West 
 Island says. Come, Charmian ! Isn't it a lark, get- 
 ting married! " 
 
 He took her by the arm, and ran her along the 
 verandah: they entered the store at a gallop, Char- 
 mian laughing, blushing, and remonstrating; Scott 
 with a flush on his face, and shine in his eyes, and a 
 gaiety about his whole demeanour that made him 
 look almost as though he had drunk of some stimu- 
 lant more earthly than the pure wine of happiness. 
 But most of the people in the store had seen men 
 married before, — some few had even been married 
 themselves, — and they were not slow to recognise 
 a well-known variety of bridegroom's nervousness. 
 As for Charmian, who had been crying with agita- 
 tion and doubt only an hour or two before, she was, 
 and looked, as calm as the still lagoons of the Coral 
 Sea. 
 
 The magistrate married them, and Mrs. Carter, 
 stepping forward, gave the bride a hearty kiss, al- 
 most before the last words were well pronounced. 
 
274 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Good luck, my girl ! " she said. 
 
 " Good luck! " echoed shadowy Tim, taking the 
 bridegroom's hand. 
 
 " Good luck! Good luck! " shouted the miners, 
 pressing round and shaking hands freely. They 
 raised a cheer for Scott, and a cheer for his bride, 
 and shouted themselves nearly hoarse. And then 
 big Mike, the man who was the recognised leader 
 of the Kikiramu field, suddenly produced a bag made 
 of white moleskin, and tied up closely at the mouth, 
 and handed it to Charmian. 
 
 11 Just a little present, to show our goodwill," he 
 said. Letting go the bag as if it were red-hot, he 
 turned tail and bolted out of the store, followed by 
 all the other men, who instantly assumed the de- 
 meanour of criminals fleeing from a crime. 
 
 " Hand over, you'll drop it!" ordered Mrs. 
 Carter, taking the bag from Charmian's fingers. 
 " Tim, there's a good twenty ounces in that! " 
 
 " Oh, George, how can we take it?" remon- 
 strated Charmian, tears in her eyes. " From those 
 few men — when we've so much — all that great par- 
 cel of gold — and most of them haven't done any- 
 thing like so well ! " 
 
 Scott looked rather odd for a moment, and then 
 burst out laughing, somewhat over-loudly. 
 
 " Don't let that turn your hair grey, sweetheart," 
 he said. " We'll have to take it, anyhow. They 
 would never forgive us if we didn't." 
 
 " Well, will you give them our thanks — our very, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 275 
 
 very best thanks?" asked Charmian of Mrs. 
 Carter. 
 
 " I will, certainly," said the Queen, with her 
 queenliest manner. 
 
 " And I'll take the gold off of you this minute, 
 and lock it up," said the unexpected Carter, grab- 
 bing at the bag and disappearing like a vision. 
 
 The breakfast was over: the miners (who had 
 come back after all) were dispersing. 
 
 "Time we started on our wedding-tour: put on 
 your hat, Charmian," suggested the bridegroom. 
 
 While the bride was absent in her room, the three 
 in the store (Carter having returned) put their 
 heads together and talked. Charmian caught a 
 word or two as she came in again. 
 
 " Don't tell her," was what she heard. 
 
 " Of course not," answered Scott. Then he 
 turned to meet her, and gave her his arm, and to- 
 gether they went down the track leading to the log 
 ladder, and the flumes and the riverbed, and the 
 little bungalow house away alone in the forest. 
 
 11 Tui ! Tui ! O-tui O ! " sang the happy bird in 
 the valley, calling to its love. 
 
 Above, in the store, there was trouble. 
 
 While Charmian was dozing on the verandah, 
 waiting for the wedding-party to assemble, Mrs. 
 Carter had gone into her room, intending to take 
 away the small, weighty parcel of gold that had lain 
 underneath the bed for a day and a night, and put it 
 
276 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 in the safe. She stooped down and put her hands 
 round it. It did not come up ; it seemed appallingly 
 heavy. She gave another tug and another heave, 
 and now it lifted with a vengeance, ripping some- 
 thing as it came away, and sending her staggering 
 back against the wall. 
 
 She knew in an instant what had happened. This 
 was no soft, creaking parcel of gold-dust that she 
 held in her hands: it was a hard, irregular bundle 
 of metal, roughly sewn up, and not half as heavy 
 as it ought to have been. A bit of fishing line passed 
 through the floor, and a rip in the canvas of the 
 parcel, told her why it had not rolled away when 
 she kicked it, once and again, to feel that it was 
 there. 
 
 Strong woman though she was, she felt sick at the 
 greatness of the disaster. Three thousand pounds 
 gone at a stroke ! And in her house ! Much she 
 feared, too, that it was her own fault for neglecting 
 to have the gold put away in the safe. 
 
 She tore open the canvas, and out dropped a num- 
 ber of tomahawk heads, falling on the bed with a 
 thump. 
 
 The eye of Mrs. Carter lightened ominously. 
 
 " This is no native's work! " she said. " I don't 
 know who's the skunk we've got in camp, but if once 
 the men catch him ..." 
 
 She paused, on a long stride doorwards, with the 
 ripped canvas in her hand. She hung irresolute for a 
 moment, then laid the stuff down, and walked quietly 
 
GUINEA GOLD 277 
 
 out to the back, where Tim was packing his swag 
 ready for the afternoon. 
 
 "Here!" she said. "Something's happened — 
 but keep it quiet till the wedding's over : no use up- 
 setting her again." 
 
 " It's the gold," said Tim instantly. 
 
 Mrs. Carter swallowed in her throat. 
 
 " It is. I suppose now you'll be crying, ' I told 
 you so,' for the rest of your natural. You may as 
 well be right once in a lifetime, for fear people might 
 forget you'd any sense at all." She was greatly 
 agitated: her neck worked under the low collar of 
 her dress, and her breath came quick. 
 
 Tim finished the task of ramming down a pair of 
 boots on the top of a flannel shirt. 
 
 " Well," he said, straightening himself, " who 
 done it? When did it go? " 
 
 " It's well to be you, that can take it like as if it 
 was a thruppenny bit disappearing off of a collection 
 plate in church! " said Mrs. Carter scornfully. " It 
 was a white man stole it, and none of your Kiwais. 
 When I went to lift the parcel, there was nothing but 
 a lot of old tomahawk heads sewed up in the canvas, 
 and tied to the floor, so that it wouldn't roll away 
 when I kicked it." 
 
 Carter fastened up the top of his swag and went 
 into the bedroom, followed by his wife. He pulled 
 out the bed, and examined the stick floor. 
 
 " Look at that," he said, lifting half a dozen of 
 the saplings that had been cut away from the rest 
 
278 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 by the simple process of severing their lashings of 
 bark fibre. " There's how he done it. He was 
 standing under the house in the dark, and seen you 
 carrying the parcel about, and got it when she was 
 asleep at night, most likely." 
 
 " Who got it?" asked Mrs. Carter irritably. 
 u You'd make a flash detective, wouldn't you? " 
 
 " No use performing about it," commented Car- 
 ter. " We're trying to find out who. When did you 
 bring it to me to weigh — about midday yesterday, 
 wasn't it? " 
 
 11 Yes, about — talk quietly, man, or she'll hear 
 you outside there." 
 
 " Then she took ill, and you was working over 
 her all afternoon and half the evening. And the 
 men was all over the place, buying stores, and hav- 
 ing drinks, and annoying of me to tell them when 
 there'd be more stores up by the Dragon-Fly, which 
 I didn't know, no more than a dead Kiwai. 
 And " 
 
 " You needn't say it was Mike, or Riddick, or 
 any one of the lot; it just isn't in them, and no one 
 knows that better than you," declared Mrs. Carter 
 in a fierce whisper. 
 
 " I didn't say it was anyone, but we've got to think 
 about it, seeing it was our house it was lost in," 
 maintained Carter. " I'm going on about yester- 
 day. . . . Then them carriers that belonged to no- 
 body came in " 
 
 He stopped suddenly. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 279 
 
 " Ah ! " said his wife sharply. " One of those 
 
 boys " 
 
 " It wasn't any boy," persisted Carter. " It " 
 
 11 If it wasn't, they know something about it, and 
 I'll have it out of them, or knock their blooming 
 heads off! " declared Mrs. Carter in the same fierce 
 whisper. In a moment she was gone. 
 
 Carter sat down and employed himself cutting 
 up stick tobacco in the palm of his hand. His face 
 was devoid of all expression, but he listened. By 
 and by, from the yard at the back, there came the 
 howl of a frightened native, and the sound of Mrs. 
 Carter's voice raised in rapid and threatening speech. 
 Afterwards was silence. 
 
 She came back like a human whirlwind, and 
 dragged her husband away into their own room, 
 panting. 
 
 " Tim that — that " She could hardly speak. 
 
 « The cook " 
 
 " You mean the feller that came up from Samarai, 
 and went off prospecting after? " 
 
 " Yes ! It was his carriers — he came down from 
 Cripps' Reef a day or two after Scott, and got in 
 just at sundown, before those boys — yesterday! No 
 one saw him come in, and the boys think he got 
 bushed somewhere or other. Bushed? No fear — 
 he got in here when the lamps was lit, and saw you 
 and me with the gold. And he sneaked under the 
 house after, and cut the lashings of the floor, and 
 took the swag through and emptied it, and put that 
 
280 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 iron in, and — and — my God, Tim, if I had him here 
 I'd cut the hide off of him!" 
 
 " I've no doubt you would, old woman," agreed 
 Carter soothingly, " but that don't do us any good 
 now. My oath, I never liked the fellow, and there 
 was some yarn about his having been chucked out 
 of the store he was in, in Samarai, for stealing. 
 He's got it, all right. He's off to catch the Dragon- 
 Fly with it, too, I'll lay, but he won't, because I'll 
 send one of them Yassi-Yassi boys after him, to take 
 a letter to the ingineer." 
 
 " You don't savvy any more than a Yassi-Yassi 
 boy yourself." Mrs. Carter was recovering her 
 spirits with the prospect of regained superiority 
 over her husband. " What do you think he'd want, 
 going down by the launch, with you and me ready to 
 stop him the minute it was found out? No fear. 
 He'll hide himself a bit, and then get a canoe some- 
 where, or make a raft, and go down the Kikiramu 
 by himself. It's risky, but the feller that carried 
 off that swag won't stop at . . ." 
 
 " What's the matter now? " 
 
 " You wait." The whirlwind blew itself out into 
 the yard again, with a frightful fluttering of incensed 
 petticoats, reversed its course, and blew itself 
 back. Mrs. Carter, out of breath, dropped into a 
 chair. 
 
 " I knew it! " she panted. " One of the boys is 
 missing." 
 
 "Missing?" Carter had finished cutting up his 
 
GUINEA GOLD 281 
 
 tobacco, and was packing it into his pipe with his 
 little finger-tip. " Where is he? " 
 
 " If I knew that, I'd know where that little ser- 
 pent, Clay, was. I just remembered that the gold 
 weighed over fifty pounds, avoirdupois, and that a 
 man loaded with that couldn't carry his tucker, un- 
 less he was a sight more of a man than that — two- 
 faced centipede was. I asked if they was all there, 
 and the boys says no, there was one of them come 
 in with the rest, but he strayed off somewhere, about 
 dark, when it was raining a lot, and they never saw 
 him again. Of course, like natives, they didn't think 
 it good enough to mention such a trifle till they was 
 asked!" 
 
 She gasped and fanned herself for a minute or 
 two, Carter meantime stolidly smoking. The miners 
 were gathering in the yard outside for the wedding, 
 and Scott's footsteps sounded, coming in. 
 
 " We've got to tell him," sighed Mrs. Carter. 
 
 " You tell him, old woman," said Carter placidly. 
 " He'll be proper vexed." 
 
 The Queen went out with a somewhat heavy step, 
 and returned by and by. 
 
 " He was a bit cut up," she said, frowning at the 
 world in general. " He wouldn't allow it was our 
 faults: said it was hers, and he thought he could 
 manage to forgive her that much, specially to-day. 
 She's not to be told, now or any time, he says: he 
 thinks they'll get back the gold all right, and, any- 
 how, she isn't to be bothered. Bothered? He don't 
 
282 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 know much. She'll never bother. Some women 
 would want to know what had become of a parcel of 
 that kind if they didn't see it about, but she won't 
 never think about it again, now she's going to get 
 him: she'll just take it for granted he has it. I've 
 no patience with her — never had — she's as silly as 
 they make them, which, I suppose, is why all the men 
 in New Guinea is half mad about her! " 
 
 Tim, declining to be drawn into a controversy on 
 the cause of attraction between the sexes, sucked 
 at his pipe. 
 
 " Once the wedding's over," said Mrs. Carter, 
 a we'll tell all the men, and rake the matter right 
 to the bottom. But there can't be no upsetting 
 things now." 
 
 " No, old woman, so put your best bonnet on and 
 come," suggested her smaller half. " The warden's 
 on the way." 
 
 And the wedding, as we have told, took place. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 There was a brown house in the forest. Its 
 thatch was brown sago-palm leaf. Its walls were 
 peeled brown sapling, set close, and laced together 
 with strings of brown bark fibre. Its floors were 
 brown sago-palm sheath, hard and slippery, and 
 springy to the foot. The doorway was closed with 
 curtains of brown sail-cloth. Through the chinks 
 among the saplings and the palm-sheaths light sifted 
 softly, amber-coloured and dim. The gabled pitch 
 of the roof, high above the branch-woven partitions 
 of the rooms, was almost dark. 
 
 It was a house of dreams. There was no sound 
 there but the soft pouring of a little waterfall away 
 in the green of the forest. There was no light but 
 the honey-coloured glow that came through half- 
 transparent walls. There was nothing beyond — no 
 world, no thunder of great cities, no murder nor 
 unrest. Sea upon sea, river upon river, range upon 
 range, the remotenesses, mysteries, obstacles of the 
 unknown lands rose round the little cottage and 
 cloistered it in. 
 
 You could hear your own thoughts in this small 
 brown house that lay clasped like a nut in the great 
 green hands of the forest. You could loose the 
 
 283 
 
284 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 orchestra of your strangest fancies, and listen to 
 the wild Valkyrie-ride they made, beneath the umber 
 gloom of the gabled roof that had never echoed to 
 any sound but that of the leaves, and the rain, and 
 the waterfall. You could lie in the stream of cool 
 air between the doors, and sleep softly, with the 
 scented breeze of the forest pouring over your face, 
 so that you might dream of secret islands and 
 strange, uncharted seas, and wonderful, unvisited 
 valleys, and magic cities hid among remote dim 
 mountain peaks. . . . The winds of the Never- 
 Never can work strange wizardry on sleep-loosed 
 brains : who knows the wild countries knows this. 
 
 It was a house of dreams, and of a dream — the 
 dream that lies deep hid in lovers' hearts, of some 
 exquisite secret place, shut from the world, with 
 leaves and water and the song of birds about it: a 
 little place, fit to hold the happiness that is so much 
 too great for palaces. And in the little secret house, 
 Charmian and George, hand-fast at length, were 
 living through that which not one life in twenty 
 thousand knows — a dream come true. 
 
 She was more beautiful than he had thought. 
 She was dearer than he had ever imagined. He 
 told her so many times a day — the hard-bitten Bel- 
 fastman, who buried his emotions as men bury their 
 dead, beneath a face of stone. He told her every- 
 thing in his life. He told her secrets that were 
 those of other people, just as all the world's best 
 and greatest men have told the things they should 
 
GUINEA GOLD 285 
 
 not tell, to the one only woman. He told her that 
 he would die for her, and that no man had ever 
 loved as he did: and the outworn words seemed 
 made anew for him as he spoke them. 
 
 He saw the sunrise and the sunset with her, and 
 the miracle-play of the thunderstorm; and all these 
 things were new created, here in the forest, for her 
 and him. 
 
 As for Charmian, the woman made for love, she 
 spoke but little. No well-informed, capable, lecture- 
 nourished woman in the world but would have felt 
 a fine contempt for her conversation, for her lack of 
 interest in serious matters, for the lazy way in 
 which she lay about the little brown house, singing 
 a little, reading a little poetry, dreaming a great 
 deal. She seemed to have sponged out past and 
 future from her existence; she never spoke of either. 
 Heart and soul, she had minted herself into a single 
 coin, and flung it royally upon the board of life. 
 The game was played. 
 
 In the very midst of his new unbelievable happi- 
 ness that thought struck coldly upon Scott. It shut 
 the future from his mind too. He could not picture 
 the years ahead. He did not know what was to come 
 after. Beyond the brown house in the forest — and 
 a darkly looming separation, when he must go back 
 to the Iri — and a vague thought of a return to 
 civilisation, somehow, some day — he could see noth- 
 ing. 
 
 He told all this to Charmian, of course, and she 
 
286 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 laughed at him, and got up from her lounge to dance 
 in a streak of sun on the sagging palm-sheath floor. 
 She whistled lightly for herself as she danced: no 
 bird in the forest fluted so sweet and true. She 
 stopped whistling to laugh, and stopped laughing to 
 dance again, her hair flying loose as she swung from 
 foot to foot. She seemed the very spirit of the 
 passing hour. 
 
 " You dear fool, don't try to wake," was all she 
 would say. " You might wake me. Keep the 
 dream." 
 
 " But, Charmian " Scott began. 
 
 Charmian was singing now, in a very soft and 
 sweet soprano: 
 
 'I hold within my hand 
 Grains of the golden sand. . . . 
 Ah, why can I not grasp 
 Them with a tighter clasp? 
 Ah, why can I not save 
 One from the pitiless wave? 
 All that we see or seem 
 Is but a dream within a dream 
 
 . 
 
 "Where did you get that?" asked Scott, struck 
 by the wild, sweet air and strange words. 
 
 " It's an old, old song. A poem of Edgar Allan 
 Poe's, I think." 
 
 She had sunk down on the floor now, with all her 
 soft white draperies billowing round her, and was 
 sitting with her chin propped on her folded hands. 
 A lance of the westering sun stabbed through her 
 
GUINEA GOLD 287 
 
 fleecy hair, and turned it to nets and webs of gold. 
 
 " I don't want to wake," she said, her amber eyes 
 set on something very far away. " I shall wake 
 some day, and then . . . " 
 
 "What then?" asked Scott, drawing a lock of 
 the beautiful hair through his hand. 
 
 " I . . . don't . . . know," said Charmian slowly. 
 Her eyes grew dark, and she turned to hide her 
 face in his arms. 
 
 " Take care of me ! " she said, with a little shiver. 
 u The world makes me afraid." 
 
 Since they came to the little brown house — he 
 scarcely knew whether it was a week, or a year 
 ago — Scott had written a letter and received one. 
 
 The letter he wrote was penned with his very 
 heart's blood. It was to Janie, and it told her that 
 he was false to her. 
 
 The cold airs of the North blew on his face as he 
 wrote. He tasted the salt tang of the breeze from 
 Belfast Lough: he saw the purple profile of Cave 
 Hill, lying like a giant asleep above the roaring, 
 many-windowed mills. He smelt the odour of 
 crushed grass along the tow-path of the Lagan, where 
 Janie and he had walked. He heard the grinding 
 cringe of the train as it rounded the curve leading 
 into the station of Portrush, where Janie spent her 
 holidays, and where he used to run down to see 
 her. . . . The very names of the stations rang in 
 his head like bells. Ballymena — a long way off: 
 
288 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 one smoked, and read, and looked at one's watch. 
 Glarryford — one was coming near her now. Bally- 
 money — only three stations — she would be putting 
 on her things and leaving the house. Coleraine — 
 one got eager and excited now, and could not keep 
 still: the train seemed to scream with joy as it 
 rushed out under the bridge. Portstewart — oh, the 
 look of the little copse by the rails, and the bending 
 trees, that began to feel the push of the wild sea- 
 wind! and the sheer delight of having to give up 
 one's ticket, and know that it was done with, and that 
 one was all but there ! Then the last seven-minutes' 
 run that was so long, and the strong, pure breath of 
 the Atlantic beating in at the window, and the blue, 
 blue sea above the green shadows, and the last 
 swinging curve of the railway round to the bridge, 
 and the little grey, sandy, windy town lying down 
 below . . . and now one ran smoothly, shutting off 
 speed, along the inward platform, with one's head 
 thrust as far out of the window as it would go — and 
 there, with her still, sweet face scanning the rows of 
 carriage doors . . . 
 
 Something choked in Scott's throat. Never, never 
 again! . . . 
 
 The fiery green of the forest, seen through the 
 open door, swam like an emerald sea before his 
 eyes. He set down the pen for a moment, and 
 looked back at sleeping Charmian, where she lay 
 upon her long deck-lounge, beyond all telling fair. 
 To pay for one's happiness with one's own pain — 
 
GUINEA GOLD 289 
 
 that was a feather-stroke. But to pay with 
 Janie's. . . . 
 
 Scott took up his pen again, and with tightened 
 lips wrote himself down — untrue. 
 
 He did not offer to send her half his fortune, 
 though he would have been glad indeed to be allowed 
 this much relief. He knew that no power on earth 
 would ever make Janie take a farthing from his 
 hands. She would post him back his ring, and re- 
 turn his letters : perhaps without even a word — that 
 would be like Janie. She would sell the few things 
 she had collected to help with the furnishing of their 
 home. She would wear out the pretty things she 
 was gathering for her trousseau — another girl 
 might hoard them or give them away, but Janie 
 would wear them with her teeth set, and defy her- 
 self to care. She would remain in her school, and 
 go on teaching. There would never be anyone in 
 his place. He would never go home to Ireland 
 again: if he died, she would not hear of it, and 
 when the little burying-ground above the windy 
 White Rock Road unclosed its gates to take in the 
 woman who was to have slept by his side, in death 
 and in life — he would not know. 
 
 So — that was ended: the letter was written, 
 signed, and closed. To-morrow a boy would take 
 it away, down to the landing-place, to await the 
 next run of the steam-launch down the river. The 
 bullet would have sped on its twelve-thousand-mile 
 course, to find its deadly end in a woman's heart. 
 
290 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 The letter he received was from Anderson. 
 
 Dence had brought it down with him, but no one 
 had heard anything about it for several days, be- 
 cause the messenger was lying drunk in his camp by 
 the river, a case of whiskey at his side. Carter had 
 gone away up the Iri with all the other men on the 
 Kikiramu; the Dragon-Fly provisions had come at 
 last, and not a miner would stay on the field an in- 
 stant after the food arrived, with such an El Dorado 
 as Cripps' Reef within three-days' march. Mrs. 
 Carter, left alone in a deserted valley with a few 
 house-boys, had gone down to see how Dence was 
 faring, found him on the verge of delirium tremens, 
 and had him carried up to the store, where, helped 
 by the natives, she tended him with the matter-of- 
 fact kindness of the bush. She discovered the letter 
 in his clothes, and sent it down to Scott. It ran as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Dear George, — I have been working hard at 
 the reef, with all the boys to help me, and Dence 
 until to-day, when he leaves, I do not know what for. 
 I am sorry to tell you it shows signs of pinching 
 out, but we have done well, and have not much cause 
 for complaint. Only I am sorry for the men who 
 will come up here by and by and have their trouble 
 for their pains. We followed down and worked out 
 the shoot of gold for about thirty feet, and it was 
 gradually getting smaller and wedge-shaped, and in 
 another eight feet pinched to a vein about eight 
 inches wide. I think there is a chance of its making 
 again, but it is only a chance, and we have certainly 
 
GUINEA GOLD 291 
 
 got the best out of it. It will pay us to keep on at it 
 a few months longer, I daresay, but there is not 
 going to be much for anyone else. You might show 
 this to any men who come up while you are down. 
 It will not stop them coming, but they may as well 
 know what to expect. As Dence will tell you, Clay 
 started for the store a day before he did. There 
 was no need to keep him once you had got down to 
 file our claim. He prospected about to see if there 
 was anything for him to take up, but could not find a 
 colour, so he goes back as poor as he came. There 
 are eight of the men from the Kikiramu here now, 
 allthat could get tucker from Carter, but so far 
 none of them have found anything, and they are 
 chewing the rag about it above a bit. They brought 
 some news from the Kikiramu; it seems you have 
 ladies there now. Well, I don't want to hurry you, 
 but when you get back I will not be sorry, for this 
 reef is taking some work, and Dence might not re- 
 turn for some time. I suppose you will send the 
 tucker up in any case. Look after your swag; I don't 
 know that you did well in taking it down so soon. — 
 I remain, yours sincerely, 
 
 " John Anderson." 
 
 Scott read the letter alone in the little living-room 
 of the hut. Charmian had taken one of her rare 
 fits of housewifely energy, and was out in the kitchen 
 teaching the boy how to make tinned-oyster patties, 
 which she knew very little about herself. There 
 was nobody near: the waterfall rustled pleasantly in 
 the distance, and a wet-smelling breeze blew in at 
 the door. 
 
 He frowned a little over the last sentence. If 
 
292 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Dence had only remembered to give him the letter ! 
 Knowing Anderson as he did, he would have been 
 sure that the man who wasted no words, and said 
 what he meant, had not put in that last sentence 
 merely to fill up the sheet. One would have been 
 on one's guard, whereas now . . . 
 
 There was another eight hundred ounces of his up 
 in the camp by Cripps' Reef: he was glad he had 
 not brought that down. The other men's shares 
 were there, too. Anderson meant to take down the 
 gold under his own supervision later on. He must 
 have seen or heard something that made him dis- 
 trust Clay's sudden departure: hence the warning. 
 If it had only come in time! 
 
 Well, it seemed that the gold was gone for good. 
 He had had a message or two from the miners be- 
 fore they left for the Iri, telling him of the efforts 
 that had been made to find the thief. Men and boys 
 had scoured the bush in all directions: messages had 
 been sent down to the landing-stage to warn the 
 engineer of the Dragon-Fly agairist taking Clay on 
 board. Nothing had been heard, seen, or guessed 
 of him. He seemed to have vanished off the face 
 of the earth. 
 
 Some of the men believed that he had had noth- 
 ing to do with the gold at all, and that he had simply 
 got bushed on the way down, and met his death 
 from hunger, or that he had been taken by an alli- 
 gator when crossing a stream. Most of the miners 
 swam or waded across alligator-infested rivers with 
 
GUINEA GOLD 293 
 
 absolute callousness. They reckoned, they said, 
 that the brutes would not touch them : and the brutes 
 did not, — generally, — which was quite good enough 
 for a New Guinea miner. But Clay might have got 
 into a river in the dark, when everyone knows that 
 the chance of disaster is infinitely increased. Or 
 he might have been picked off from the bush by some 
 of the Kariva bowmen. Or again — the most popu- 
 lar theory of all — he might be sneaking down the Iri 
 in a native canoe with the missing carrier, camping 
 in quiet spots at night, and keeping a good lookout 
 for the Dragon-Fly in order to avoid her. That 
 would be easily done. He could dodge into the 
 bush on the banks when he heard the sound of her 
 engine, leaving nothing for anyone to see but an 
 ordinary canoe tied up to the bank, apparently in 
 waiting for some painted and feathered owner who 
 had gone off spearing pig. One might pass him a 
 dozen times and never know it. * 
 
 The party that believed the gold had been taken 
 by some shrewd Fly River native, and buried to 
 await the termination of the thief's indentures, grew 
 stronger as time went on. Clay seemed to be lost. 
 The Dragon-Fly engineer had seen nothing of him : 
 the natives had no news. Some chance there might 
 be of eventually getting back the gold, if the thief 
 tried to carry it off all in one swag, but the miners 
 thought that a Kiwai would have sense enough to 
 know that he ought to split it up. For the present, 
 at all events, there seemed no hope. 
 
294 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 One afternoon, Mrs. Carter, who thought that 
 the honeymoon seclusion had lasted long enough, 
 appeared at the little brown house. 
 
 Charmian was delighted, and ran down the steps 
 to welcome Mrs. Carter, who looking older than 
 usual, and a little tired, stalked along the verandah, 
 with all her usual dignity, and entered the sitting- 
 room with that effect of a ship in full sail that always 
 seemed to distinguish her comings and goings. She 
 was rather elaborately attired, for the Kikiramu, in 
 a grey tea-gown, well pinned up over her stout boots, 
 and she wore her best hat and her best manners. 
 
 " So your husband's out," she said, scanning the 
 rough furniture as though she thought Scott might 
 be hidden under a canvas chair, or at the back of 
 a packing-case sideboard. 
 
 " Yes; he went to see if he couldn't shoot a young 
 wallaby for dinner to-morrow," answered the bride. 
 
 " And so you've cried for the moon and got it. 
 Well, my girl, that's more than most women do," 
 observed Mrs. Carter composedly, unpinning her 
 dress as she sat. "Hitting it off all right?" 
 
 11 Yes," answered Charmian simply. She had the 
 gift, rare in a nervous century, of sitting perfectly 
 still. You could not have seen the light waver on 
 her hair as she leaned back in her deck-lounge, hands 
 folded and eyes looking quietly out to the leaves 
 and the sun. 
 
 " We'll be grass-widows together soon, you and 
 I," went on the other, " Scott will go back in a 
 
GUINEA GOLD 295 
 
 few days, I suppose. Tim's gone this week and 
 more. I'm stopping to look after what's left of the 
 store: the men are just as likely as not to come back 
 by and by. I reckon you'd better come up to me 
 when he goes: I'll be glad of your company. I did 
 reckon to give Tim a bit of my society just now, 
 but " 
 
 She bit down a sigh and fanned herself rapidly. 
 
 " I'm sorry. I can't stay with you," said Char- 
 mian, " but I'm going with George." 
 
 " Going with George? " repeated Mrs. Carter in 
 strong italics. " Is George out of his mind, or are 
 you?" 
 
 " I suppose I am," answered Charmian coolly. 
 " He isn't. He doesn't know about it yet: he thinks 
 I'm going down to Port Moresby." ' 
 
 " And you mean to go up with him? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well! " Mrs. Carter, for once, seemed speech- 
 less. 
 
 " I've no doubt," said Charmian, " there are lots 
 of things to say against it — all about the road, and 
 the natives, and the gold rush, and so on. Of 
 course he'll say them. But I sha'n't mind. I'll just 
 go on saying that I mean to go, till he gets tired. 
 Then I will go. That's all." 
 
 " You're changed," said Mrs. Carter, after a 
 silence. M Time was, not so long ago, you'd do 
 anything anybody told you, and never raise a 
 cheep." 
 
296 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " I suppose I would still," answered the other, 
 uninterestedly. " It's just this one thing." 
 
 u And what's stiffened your back so about that? " 
 asked Mrs. Carter. 
 
 " I don't know. I don't want to be always think- 
 ing. There's something warns me . . . tells me 
 . . . Oh, I don't know. Let me make you some 
 tea." 
 
 "I don't mind: it's hot walking," agreed Mrs. 
 Carter. When Charmian came back she returned 
 for a moment to the charge. 
 
 " Look here, my girl, don't you think you'd bet- 
 ter give it best about the Iri, and stop on here with 
 me?" 
 
 " Yes, I'd better," replied Charmian, pouring 
 out the tea. She paused, with a cup in her hand. 
 
 " I'd better — but I'm going, all the same," she 
 said. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 In the Iri valley the rush had come and had gone. 
 
 Three months before the little piece of flat coun- 
 try by the riverside had been a humming town — 
 here, in the unknown heart of New Guinea, days 
 and days up the Kikiramu in the launch, days and 
 days and days more up the terrible track to the Iri. 
 There had been hundreds of adventurers wound 
 about the spot where the golden reef had been 
 found — shopmen and lumberers, and dentists, and 
 horse-dealers, and West Australian miners, and 
 Queensland " cocky " farmers, and broken down 
 remittance men and A.B.'s from coasting steamers, 
 and actors, and labourers, and bank clerks. They 
 had found their way to Port Moresby, almost pen- 
 niless, in many cases: they had disregarded all the 
 warnings issued by a Government old in experience 
 of Papuan gold rushes, and once more, as in eighty- 
 nine, and ninety-five, the cruel country had taken 
 its deadly toll. 
 
 In the capital they had camped on the wet ground 
 under Government offices and hotels, slinging rough 
 hammocks to the supporting piles of the houses, and 
 living anyhow, as best they could, till the over- 
 crowded launches and schooners could take them 
 
 297 
 
298 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 down the stormy coast. They had done without 
 mosquito nets, they had drunk to keep away malaria, 
 they had eaten the little township bare of food, and 
 had to subsist on the refuse of the sold-out stores. 
 They had got away at last, without carriers, with- 
 out proper tents or provisions, determined to show 
 that a white man could " hump his swag " here, as 
 well as in Australia. . . . And they had paid: the 
 golden Minotaur had had his meal of flesh. On 
 the long track up from the Kikiramu they had lain 
 down, not to rise again. They left low, stoneless 
 graves in the bush, by the road to the Iri. They 
 had turned and crept back half-way, cursing the 
 cruel country and the deadly lure of gold. They had 
 reached the field, wrecks of men, and found their, 
 stock of money done, fever gripping them hard, and 
 gold in paying quantity as unattainable as in the 
 deeps of the Coral Sea. There was nothing on the 
 Iri River for any man to find, save a poor sprinkling 
 of alluvial stuff scarce worth working. The three 
 discoverers had taken all. 
 
 Here and there the forest had been feebly cut 
 into, as a man might cut himself with a penknife 
 into a load of hay. Rough tent-flies, stretched above 
 platforms of sticks, rose by scores in the little clear- 
 ings: bush houses, made of poles and brushwood, 
 stood about the verges of the reward claim owned 
 by the discoverers. The clink of billy-cans sounded 
 down by the tea-green river: thin pillars of smoke 
 spired up out of the tops of the forest, in a hun- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 299 
 
 dred different places. Of nights, in Carter's make- 
 shift store, there was drinking and card-playing, 
 and fighting too at times. But, for the most part, 
 the field kept a dispirited silence : you would never 
 have thought that some hundreds of adventurers 
 from all corners of Australia were scattered like 
 deep-water Crustacea here at the bottom of the forest 
 sea. 
 
 Fever, that the old hands knew and could fight, 
 attacked the defenceless newcomers without mercy. 
 They lay sick in their tents and huts by the score: 
 some rose to walk abroad again, and one or two 
 were carried forth, to rise no more. Then came the 
 inevitable scourge of a New Guinea mining rush — 
 dysentery — and the camp became a hospital. The 
 Government sent up a doctor, new-caught from Mel- 
 bourne schools : and, in the midst of several hundred 
 native carriers, and some scores of whites, down 
 with the disease, he did the work of ten men, helped 
 by the old hands among the New Guinea miners, 
 who had nearly all escaped. . . . There were two 
 hundred graves of poor black boys, and twenty or 
 thirty of whites, away in the green silence of the 
 bush, before that last worst wave of ill was spent. 
 
 Now it was over. The Iri rush, cruellest of all 
 the cruel rushes that have darkened the annals of 
 New Guinea, was done. More men had been killed 
 by the Yodda: the Waria had set worse difficulties 
 in the way of prospectors. But there had never be- 
 fore been such bitter and universal disappointment. 
 
300 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 One or two of the old New Guinea hands had found 
 gold — mere traces: not enough to pay the expenses 
 of their boys. Of the shopmen and lumberers, and 
 dentists, and horse-dealers, and farmers, and sailors, 
 and labourers, and bank clerks, scarce one had 
 found as much as a single colour. 
 
 The old hands stayed on for a while: where so 
 much had been found there was always the chance — 
 for an experienced miner — of striking the golden 
 reef again. But the outsiders fled. As fast as the 
 few available launches and schooners could take 
 them down the river and the coast, they went, broken 
 and disappointed men, cursing the name of New 
 Guinea. And on the way the country took its toll 
 again. In the edges of the unknown forest, by the 
 Iri and Kikiramu tracks, there were more dark, 
 nameless mounds before the broken men won 
 home. 
 
 It was never known — it will never be known till 
 the day when all things are made plain — how much 
 the silent, hard-faced miner folk of the older fields 
 helped these weaker souls who had come to New 
 Guinea in defiance of all warning, destitute of ex- 
 perience or means, and cast themselves as a burden 
 upon the country. Carter, the store-keeper, made 
 little out of the rush, for his heart was too soft to 
 refuse a penniless creature food. But he could not 
 cope with the misery and destitution of an entire 
 township unaided. And so it was that gold, which 
 was never found in the valley of the Iri, made its 
 
GUINEA GOLD 301 
 
 way into the pockets of men who could not have dis- 
 covered it, had it been lying in the earth within a 
 yard of their feet. 
 
 The discoverers themselves were nobly generous 
 to those who needed help; yet even so it was hard 
 for the unsuccessful ones to watch work going on in 
 the reward claim — to hear the boom of dynamite, 
 and the thud of picks, and the steady pounding of 
 sledges, as Anderson, Scott, and their boys worked 
 the golden reef; to guess, with bitter envy, how 
 much was being taken out, and to know that a for- 
 tune sufficient to place each one of the owners be- 
 yond want for the rest of his life had already been 
 won. In any other country than New Guinea there 
 might have been trouble over the matter, but the 
 warden, with his native police at his back, and the 
 Government doctor, and the officials from Port 
 Moresby, who came all the way up to the field to 
 inspect it and see that everything was being done 
 fairly and in order, created an impression of power 
 and civilisation that had its effect on the most law- 
 less. It was known that one of the discoverers 
 had been robbed of a sum that grew in value the 
 oftener it was talked about: and it was also known 
 that the thief had never been caught, though several 
 months had gone by. Still, everyone knew that he 
 had not got away with the gold, whatever had hap- 
 pened: and the imaginary picture of Clay, hiding 
 and starving among native villages somewhere down 
 in the Gulf, while he looked for a stray sailing ves- 
 
302 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 sel, deprived his crime of all glory that success might 
 have shed upon it. 
 
 No one among the newcomers knew why the third 
 owner of the golden reef did not stay up on the Iri 
 and help in the working of his property. He was on 
 the Kikiramu field, living in an abandoned camp, and 
 drinking more than was good for him. A number 
 of Kikiramu miners had already returned to their 
 old haunts, so that he was not without companion- 
 ship. But the newcomers thought it strange that he 
 did not care to work his claim. The others, it was 
 understood, were getting a percentage of his gold 
 in return for doing his work. 
 
 There was no mystery to the old hands of the 
 Kikiramu in Rupert's behaviour: but they did not 
 think it good for outsiders ,to know more than was 
 necessary about the affairs of that very close cor- 
 poration, the miners of Papua. For themselves, 
 they knew quite well that the presence of Mrs. Scott 
 on the Iri River field was enough to keep Rupert 
 Dence away had the valley been paved with gold. 
 
 No one thought she ought to have been there. A 
 new rough goldfield is no place for a woman : more 
 especially for a gently bred lady. And the horrors 
 of the dysentery epidemic had made Cripps' Reef, 
 more than ever, a spot to which no bridegroom 
 would willingly have brought his bride. But there 
 had been no choice in the matter. 
 
 Charmian had refused to stay behind. 
 
 With a soft yet steady persistence that seemed 
 
GUINEA GOLD 303 
 
 utterly alien to her character, she had not combated 
 but slipped away from all Scott's reasons, entreaties, 
 commands. She must go, she said. Yes, it was true 
 that the track was a terrible one — but she had come 
 up the Kikiramu track already, and that was almost 
 as bad. Yes, the field would be a very rough place : 
 yes, it would be exceedingly remote from civilisa- 
 tion — food, lodging, surroundings would be worse 
 than at the Kikiramu, and Mrs. Carter would not 
 be there to keep her company. Yes, she quite under- 
 stood all Mr. Anderson said (for Anderson, too, 
 had joined in the chorus of disapproval, and tried 
 to shake her resolution), and she was sure Mr. 
 Anderson knew more about New Guinea fields than 
 even her husband. They were all very good to 
 trouble so much about her, and she knew all they 
 said was true. But . . . 
 
 M Charmian, I won't take you — it comes to that," 
 declared Scott at last. 
 
 The woman set her small hands very tightly to- 
 gether and drew a long breath. They were all 
 against her, these men. Always men were against 
 women, when it came to the things that mattered. 
 And behind the men was something greater than 
 they — the darkling, cruel spirit of Papua. 
 
 . . . "A queen, with ruddy lips and large black eyes, 
 Brow-bound with burning gold." 
 
 They should not win. Papua should not win. 
 The lure of the gold should not win. Nothing 
 
304 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 should take him from her. He did not know what 
 she knew, and would not tell him. But . . . there 
 should be no parting now. 
 
 u I'm sorry," she replied breathlessly, to Scott's 
 last words. " I'm sorry." She panted a little as she 
 spoke, as if she had been running. " Because it 
 would be so dreadful — and I should be so fright- 
 ened — going up alone." 
 
 There was a silence, and then — 
 
 " Oh, Charmian! " from Scott. His voice had a 
 hidden laugh in it somewhere: there was reproof, 
 and there was surrender. Anderson (he had come 
 down to the Kikiramu with a load of gold, leaving 
 his claim with a friend) passed his hand over his 
 long beard and turned away to hide a smile. 
 
 " You naughty, naughty girl ! " said Mrs. Carter. 
 
 But among them all they let her go. 
 
 Scott built the best house for her that had ever 
 been seen on a New Guinea goldfield. It had two 
 rooms, and a verandah all round, and the stick walls 
 were lined with costly unbleached calico, so that they 
 were quite untransparent. It had chairs, wonder- 
 fully made of split bamboo from a huge feathery 
 grove that stood just behind the house: it had a 
 table, put together from inestimable pieces of flat 
 packing-case — the only sawn boards within three- 
 weeks' journey. Rustic baskets of the forest ferns 
 (unknown and unnamed, some of them, and worth 
 their weight in gold to a collector), and of pink and 
 yellow and ice-white orchids, were hung from the 
 
GUINEA GOLD 305 
 
 low roof of the verandah. The house was half a 
 mile removed from the camp : it stood high above 
 the green-glass reaches of the river, and behind it 
 and about it was the bush. If you went for a walk, 
 you came at once into the unbroken forest, where 
 you might creep a mile an hour: see the light from 
 above fall white on the unmoving leaves : smell the 
 rotting red and blue forest fruits that no one ate, 
 and hear, far away, through the stillness, the horse- 
 like tramp-tramp of a cassowary's running feet. 
 
 Scott forbade her, with some sternness, to go near 
 the camp, and she obeyed. She obeyed him in every- 
 thing now. When the dysentery epidemic broke out, 
 and she was preparing herself to go to the field 
 hospital, as a matter of course, and help the doctor, 
 Scott told her to remain at home, and she remained, 
 without a word. When he stopped her from going 
 to the edge of the river for flowers, lest an alligator 
 might stray out on the bank, she went no more, and 
 did without her little bouquet for the table. She lived 
 in the house that he had built for her, and never 
 seemed to know what went on beyond it, save for the 
 talk of Scott's own friends, Anderson, Brabant, the 
 Government doctor, and some of the old Papuan 
 miners whom he used to bring in of an evening. 
 When the men from Australia were all gone away, 
 and the camp was left to the miners who had come 
 from the Yodda and Kikiramu, Scott relaxed some- 
 what his rule, and told her she might walk about in 
 the neighbourhood of the reef if she cared and see 
 
306 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 them at work. But she seemed, now, to have little 
 liking for anything beyond her house. There she 
 occupied herself, while her husband was away, in 
 making her own clothes and mending his : contriving 
 pretty decorations from the ferns and creepers from 
 the bush, brought in by the native labourers : singing 
 a little, reading a little, dreaming alone, by the 
 verandah-rail overlooking the glass-green river, for 
 long, long hours. 
 
 Scott was happy. In spite of the bitter smart 
 waked by the thought of Janie (she had taken his 
 letter in utter silence, though there was now more 
 than time for a reply) , in spite of the wretchedness 
 and disappointment that overshadowed the Iri field, 
 in spite of the fact that Dence, the man he had made 
 his friend, was loafing aimlessly about the Kikiramu, 
 hopeless and helpless — the world was good. He 
 did not look before or after. Charmian was his; 
 she loved him, and he loved her. They had their 
 little home above the still Iri River, with the silent 
 forests all about. He had work to occupy mind and 
 body all day: he was adding to his hoard of yellow 
 flaky gold, hidden safely away in a nook of the house 
 specially built to conceal it, and the loss of that eight 
 hundred ounces was being steadily made up. It 
 was true, as Anderson had predicted, that the reef 
 was " pinching out " : true that the yield was, almost 
 daily, less and less. But there was still enough to 
 keep them at work for some months : and when all 
 that could be won was won, they could sell the reef 
 
GUINEA GOLD 307 
 
 for a good sum down in Samarai, or Port Moresby, 
 or Sydney, to anyone who would care to take the 
 risk of bringing up machinery. A company could, 
 doubtless, squeeze something more out of the fruit 
 when they, by their primitive methods, should have 
 sucked it and flung it away. 
 
 In the evening hours of this strange isolated place, 
 that felt as far away from cities and from civilisa- 
 tion as Uranus or Neptune, the house above the river 
 became a magnet to all Scott's friends. Charmian 
 rose in the wilderness, was the only reminder to 
 these lonely men that such things as wives and homes 
 existed, in countries far away — that beautiful women 
 still lived and laughed and wiled men's hearts away, 
 somewhere beyond the gloomy forest lands. Just to 
 hear her soft woman's voice — just to see her brown- 
 gold head bent over a piece of sewing, under the 
 light of the hurricane lamp, with the circle of her 
 light-coloured skirt flowing out on the floor — sent a 
 man back to his mildewed, damp-smelling tent with 
 a heart that sank less low than usual when the night 
 pressed down upon the forest and the rain began to 
 thunder in the dark. . . * 
 
 Camp is well enough in the daytime: the green 
 things are friendly, round about your open door: 
 the birds flirt and flutter sociably: the river talks to 
 you. But with the going of the sun your friends go 
 too. Out of the darks of the forest creeps your 
 nightside mind, to keep you company, as the drowned 
 wife of the legend crept forth from the depths of 
 
308 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the sea to clasp her dank, cold arms about her liv- 
 ing lord. . . . Your fire is out, your boys are sleep- 
 ing. You lie among the shadows, as you will lie 
 among the endless shadows some day soon : the an- 
 chor chain of your tenuous life drags, frail as a 
 spider's thread, upon the feeble holding-ground that 
 skirts the Unknown Sea. So, looking into the heart 
 of life and death, you learn why men of the wilder- 
 ness know no fear. By one wind or another the 
 ship will take the deep. What does it matter 
 whether to-morrow or to-day? 
 
 Brabant, the doctor, could not understand why 
 Mrs. Scott disliked him. 
 
 He was a little in love with her: not very much, 
 for he had a girl-wife and two babies down in Mel- 
 bourne, and was just as fond of them as an honest 
 young Australian can be — but he was assuredly in- 
 terested in the beautitful, rather silent girl that 
 George Scott had married: and he did not like being 
 neglected by her. 
 
 She certainly did neglect him. His camp was 
 farther away than Anderson's : Anderson often came 
 in to spend the evening with the Scotts, and when 
 Brabant arrived he was sure to find all three laugh- 
 ing and talking sociably on the verandah. . . . 
 Then, with his own coming, something like a shadow 
 would fall upon the party. Mrs. Scott would drop 
 silent, produce cards for the men, and slip away to 
 a quiet corner with her sewing, watching them while 
 
GUINEA GOLD 309 
 
 they played, but speaking scarce at all. Before long 
 she would have vanished indoors: the boy would 
 bring out supper, and no one would see any more of 
 the lady of the house. Scott was always ready to 
 " yarn " with him, and Anderson was sociably dis- 
 posed, for the most part: neither, he thought, had 
 observed Mrs. Scott's apparent dislike of himself. 
 Sometimes, if he spoke to her, she would start as 
 though she were frightened, and look up at him 
 with large eyes, dark in the dusk of the verandah, 
 and half-parted lips. . . . What was it that made 
 her avoid and fear him? Brabant, young, pleasant, 
 and popular with women, could not guess. 
 
 He had not been long in New Guinea, and was 
 one of those unfortunates who are especially sus- 
 ceptible to the poison of malaria. In his riverside 
 camp the deadly anopheles mosquitoes held high 
 revel at nights : and Brabant, with his fresh Southern 
 blood, was a tempting victim. He had fever again 
 and again: pulled himself through, with the aid of 
 Anderson, and got about his work among the sick 
 native carriers almost sooner than was prudent. He 
 found, with a little flutter of gratified vanity, that 
 Mrs. Scott was really troubled about his health, 
 whether she liked himself or not: she used to ask 
 most kindly after his condition, when he came to 
 the house, and even begged him not to overwork. 
 One day she brought out a small case of meat-juice, 
 and pressed it on his acceptance, with polite and 
 
310 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 kindly words. Brabant was glad of it. There were 
 few luxuries in the camp, and he knew that Scott 
 had no particular use for the meat-juice — but could 
 not for the life of him understand why Mrs. Scott, 
 who always seemed to shrink away from him, should 
 give him that, or anything else. 
 
 " She's got some feminine dislike or other to me," 
 he agreed with himself. " There's no accounting 
 for the whimsies of their nervous systems. And 
 she's naturally kind-hearted, and tries to overcome 
 it. Well, I'm the better by a case of Oxil, anyhow. 
 \ That is something,' as Hans Andersen would 
 say. 
 
 " But I wonder," he said to himself. " I wonder 
 why . . ." 
 
 One morning he met Mrs. Scott alone beyond the 
 house, taking a short walk on the top of the river 
 cliff. And suddenly he knew. 
 
 She knew that he knew. She came towards him 
 with hands stretched out and honey-brown eyes 
 opened wide. 
 
 " Oh, don't — don't tell!" she exclaimed — and 
 burst into tears. 
 
 Brabant found himself holding her little hands, 
 grown suddenly cold, and comforting her like a cry- 
 ing child. 
 
 " No, no," he said soothingly, the physician all 
 awake. " Of course not: but you mustn't cry. And 
 why " 
 
 " Oh," cried Charmian, " I was so afraid — I 
 
GUINEA GOLD 311 
 
 thought you would make him send me away. And 
 I can't leave him." 
 
 u Why? " asked Brabant, feeling for the moment 
 that he was wading in deep waters. Little Mrs. 
 Brabant had not taken the idea of his going up to 
 Papua in such high-tragedy fashion. But she was a 
 sensible small body, whereas this passion-flower of 
 womanhood 
 
 Charmian was not crying now. She was looking 
 out over the tops of the forest sea, on the other side 
 of the river — away to the blue mysterious domes of 
 the far main range, where no man's foot had trod. 
 
 " I'm not good — at talking," she said slowly. " I 
 feel things — I can't say them very well. It's just — 
 that — something tells me. I don't know what it is, 
 but it's stronger than I am." 
 
 Brabant, with his physician instinct, kept silent, 
 to let her have her say out. 
 
 " It's been all — like a dream," she went on. " It's 
 like a dream still. The strange, wild country — 
 and the storms — and the sunsets like the Judgment 
 Day — and the sweet, sweet scents that get into your 
 brain — and those dark shadowy faces of the natives, 
 flitting — and the far-awayness. I'm afraid all the 
 time — of waking up. It makes one . . . cling." 
 
 " But, my dear lady " began Brabant. 
 
 " Yes, I know," interrupted Charmian. " You'd 
 
 all have talked and worried till Now you can't. 
 
 I can stay with him." 
 
 " Well," said Brabant, dropping down to earth 
 
3tt GUINEA GOLD 
 
 determinedly, " it's a jolly good thing for you that 
 the Government didn't take me away. And now 
 you'll have to be sensible. Let your husband know 
 at once — take care of yourself — and take all the 
 advice I give you. You'll be all right, never fear." 
 
 " I don't. I only care ... to stay," said Char- 
 mian. 
 
 Brabant saw her back to the house above the 
 river. 
 
 There were no visitors that evening. The hus- 
 band and wife sat alone. They had much to say. 
 Yet, in all that they said, the future held small part. 
 It was as though the wilderness had enmeshed them 
 body and soul, shutting away even their thoughts 
 from the outer world, as the rivers, and the forests, 
 and the ranges, and the stormy coral seas shut the 
 common lot and life of common man away from 
 Papua. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Kikiramu was awake again. Brown, naked 
 carriers, bearing fifty and sixty pound loads on their 
 backs, tripped lightly up and down the great log 
 stairway. Smoke rose among the treetops. The 
 distant hack-hack of clearing-knives and axes came 
 up from the valley to the store in the still blue hours 
 of noon. The store was going again : its outhouses 
 were taxed to put up the crowd of carriers needed 
 for the work of supplying the camp, and its veran- 
 dah and bar were never empty of buying, lounging, 
 smoking men. Claims had changed hands on the 
 Kikiramu, as they generally do when a big rush car- 
 ries away the miners in a body, leaving a whole 
 camp to the deliberate choosing of those who re- 
 main behind or return early. But the personnel of 
 the field was the same, save for the addition of one 
 or two outsiders who had stayed over the rush, and 
 the absence of a well-known face here and there. 
 One had gone down to Melbourne with a " good 
 shammy " of gold to have a spree : one had given 
 up digging and taken to plantation managing, away 
 East: Anderson was still at the all but deserted Iri 
 field, working out the last of Cripps' Reef with Scott. 
 The old hands mostly lived as they had lived before 
 
 313 
 
3 H GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the delusive rainbow of Cripps' gold rose on the 
 horizon — making enough for comfort and content, 
 with no dazzling views of fortune. 
 
 Mrs. Carter was still at the store. She had 
 stayed a good while this time, and people were be- 
 ginning to wonder how North-West Island was get- 
 ting on without its sovereign. But the Queen 
 remained where she was. She meant to go up to 
 Cripps' Reef before very long: by and by would be 
 time enough to talk of returning to her kingdom. 
 
 News, as usual, circulated from the store round 
 about the camps in the bush whenever the lazy 
 Dragon-Fly crawled up the river and lay a day or 
 two before coming back — rumours from Port 
 Moresby, scandal from Samarai, strange happen- 
 ings from the D'Entrecasteaux and Louisiades. A 
 tale of a traveller came, one voyage, to cause delight 
 and amusement among those who could cross the 
 t's and dot the i's. The traveller's name was Du- 
 cane, and he had turned up by the Matting a (some 
 weeks later than he was expected) to look for the 
 lady once known as Mrs. Ducane. No one had been 
 able to tell him where she was gone: there was a 
 general impression to the effect. that she had got 
 away on the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer, but 
 some supposed she might be in North-West Island 
 since Mrs. Carter's schooner had sailed back thither 
 on the day when Charmian was last seen in Samarai. 
 Ducane, who had succeeded in making himself thor- 
 oughly unpopular during the few days of his stay 
 
GUINEA GOLD 315 
 
 in the island town, found little help or encourage- 
 ment in his search : but he had plenty of money, and 
 spent it liberally, so that a pearling Greek from the 
 Trobriands was moved to offer him his cutter and 
 his services in looking for the missing lady. They 
 went and looked in North-West Island, about the 
 Calvados Chain, in Misima and Woodlark and Ros- 
 sel, and might have been looking yet (since the 
 Greek was paid by the day) had not news come 
 down at last by the Cora Lynn to tell of the wedding 
 up on the Kikiramu field. At this, it seemed, Du- 
 cane was like a madman, and wanted to go up to the 
 Kikiramu himself, being sure that the story was a 
 lie: only, by and by, when the leisurely mails had 
 been sorted and delivered, the resident magistrate 
 of Samarai produced a certificate of marriage, made 
 out by the resident and warden of the Kikiramu 
 field, and directed to " Grant Ducane," under care 
 of the Samarai official. Whereupon Ducane, look- 
 ing white and beaten, and ten years older, had 
 secured a launch, gone down the coast to Port 
 Moresby, and steamed away out of sight and re- 
 membrance, on the Dutch company's liner Van 
 Linschoten. 
 
 Then there were rumours about Clay — how some- 
 body had seen him down in Brisbane cleaning boots 
 in a back-street hotel: how others declared he had 
 never got down the Kikiramu River, but had been 
 caught by the natives : how others yet were sure that 
 he had been seen on the P. & O. Macedonia, as she 
 
316 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 was leaving Sydney, gorgeously clad, and rejoicing 
 in the possession of a royal suite of cabins. . . . 
 And there was talk about Scott and Anderson, how 
 much they had gained, how soon they would come 
 down — and about Brabant, who had apparently been 
 forgotten by the Government, now that the rush was 
 over, and was occupying himself making a collec- 
 tion of leaf-insects and butterflies, likely to be 
 worth some hundreds of pounds when he had com- 
 pleted it. 
 
 Rupert Dence, wandering about the bush, smok- 
 ing, talking, and generally idling, seemed to have 
 got over the effects of his late violent bout of drink, 
 and returned to something very like his former self. 
 He was exceedingly restless, however; he would not 
 go down to Port Moresby, or up to Cripps' Reef: 
 he could not work his old claim, as it had lapsed 
 when he left it : he could not take up a new one, as 
 he held all that the law allowed him, up at the Iri. 
 Much of his time, therefore, was spent in a sort of 
 aimless prospecting about the neighbourhood of the 
 camps : he did not seem to care for distant journeys. 
 Often he came up to the store, lingered long over 
 the few purchases he had to make, and looked at 
 Mrs. Carter with eyes that spoke things unintel- 
 ligible to the heavy mind of her husband, though 
 clear enough to her. She always managed, on such 
 occasions, to mention the arrival of any carriers 
 from any outside place, and the news they might 
 have brought, or failed to bring. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 317 
 
 At last, one day, when Rupert called at the store, 
 he saw the capable mistress of the place making 
 preparations for departure. Swags were being 
 taken out and packed: tins and bags selected from 
 the store. Mrs. Carter stood on the verandah, di- 
 recting and commanding. Carter skulked in the 
 shadows, feeling his beard. He had a vaguely 
 regretful look. 
 
 "Off to port?" asked Dence carelessly, leaning 
 an arm on the rail. 
 
 " Bless you, no," said Mrs. Carter. " I'm off to 
 Cripps' Reef to-morrow at daylight. It's full time 
 I was there now: I'd have started a fortnight ago, 
 only that I got a leechbite on my foot that inflamed 
 and knocked me up for bush walking. You, Gibi! 
 look out with that tin of flour: don't put it on top of 
 the wine-bottles. Get a pull on the cord: haul him 
 tight — lively! That one finish: you put him long 
 verandah." 
 
 " Who's taking you up? "asked Dence. 
 
 " Well, that's the question just now," replied Mrs. 
 Carter, making a hawk-like dart into the pile of 
 goods on the floor. " Where 'nother fellow bottle 
 kerosine he stop? You no gammon me! Go catch 
 him, quick, that bottle ! My word, by and by I cut 
 the hide off of you ! 
 
 " You see," she went on, " German Harry's got 
 fever — he was going — and I can't leave the store 
 without anyone, so Tim's got to stay. I think I'll 
 ask Mike. He's not doing much on his claim." 
 
318 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 "What about me?" demanded Dence, looking 
 at her with a face devoid of all expression. 
 
 " You? " Mrs. Carter turned, her hands on her 
 hips, her Elizabethan eye fixed hard and keen. " I 
 thought you wasn't set on going up to the Iri, any- 
 how." 
 
 " Don't know that it matters what you've been 
 thinkin'. I'll go. I know every inch of the way. 
 I'd— rather." 
 
 " Very well." Mrs. Carter turned back to her 
 pile of goods. " You be here at half-past five to- 
 morrow, sharp. Don't fool. And — I'm obliged to 
 you, Mr. Dence." 
 
 Much had been done to improve the way to the 
 Iri field since first the discoverers tracked it out. 
 Rivers had been spanned by logs or by liana sus- 
 pension bridges. Swamps had been " corduroyed " 
 in the worst places. Bush huts had been put up at 
 the usual camping-grounds. Nevertheless, it was a 
 terrible road, and Mrs. Carter, not so young as she 
 had been, was fain to cut some of the longer marches 
 in two. It happened that she did this just before 
 reaching the alligator swamp: and, the latter part 
 of the way proving easy, they found themselves 
 arrived at the height above the swamp as early as 
 four in the afternoon. 
 
 Dence opined that it was too late to begin the 
 crossing now : they might be caught by the dusk. In 
 daylight, experience had proved that there was little 
 
GUINEA GOLD 319 
 
 or no danger in crossing the swamp. True, a car- 
 rier or so had been taken by the alligators during 
 the time of the rush, but these had simply courted 
 disaster by leaving the corduroy path and going off 
 into the swamp after crabs. Since the frequent 
 coming and going across had ceased, these last few 
 months, the alligators had evidently increased in 
 numbers: men camping on either side at night had 
 been kept awake by the bellowing of the brutes down 
 in the mud and slime below. Still, in daylight, and 
 with common care, there was no risk to speak of. 
 
 So Dence explained to Mrs. Carter as that deter- 
 mined lady was stirring up the carriers to unpack 
 the swags needed for the night. Mrs. Carter did 
 not pay much attention to him. She seemed to have 
 something on her mind. 
 
 " I wish," she said, when the dusk had come and 
 the fire was lit and they were sitting on a log to 
 sup, with the warm, wet-scented forest close about 
 them, and the bell-birds tank-tanking under the stars 
 — " I wish I could have made better time of it. I 
 reckoned on being there before now." 
 
 She tilted her tin pannikin of tea and drained it: 
 she was not tired, after the short day's walk, but she 
 was thirsty, for the night promised to be sultry and 
 still. 
 
 Dence made no reply: he was sitting huddled up 
 on the log, chewing his moustache. He had been 
 very silent all day. 
 
 The boys took the plates away, unfastened the 
 
320 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 sacks of bedding, and slung the mosquito nets under 
 the roof of the open bush-house. It grew darker: 
 the stars were hidden behind purple clouds. 
 
 " Where 'nother lantern stop? " called Mrs. Car- 
 ter impatiently. It seemed as though " bush 
 nerves " were abroad that night. 
 
 " Sinuabada (lady), altogether he pinish," 
 quavered the boy she addressed. 
 
 " Finished? What d'ye mean? " 
 
 " He pall down along big river." 
 
 " Fell in the river? Fell in the river? You 
 wait till we get in to-morrow, and I'll talk to you, 
 you black bushman! Fell in the river? " 
 
 The native fled, trembling lest the promised 
 " talk " should take place there and then. Mrs. 
 Carter, slapping at the mosquitoes, remarked, in an 
 aggravated voice, that it seemed likely to rain: 
 Dence said nothing. He sat looking out into the 
 illimitable bush, silent, chewing his moustache. His 
 face seemed white in the dim light of the single hur- 
 ricane lantern. 
 
 " There! " said Mrs. Carter at last, killing a mos- 
 quito with a smack that almost overbalanced her. 
 " I'm full up with this. Dence, you may think to 
 hide your head under a bushel" (Mrs. Carter's 
 Biblical knowledge was growing rusty), " but you 
 don't take me in. Good God, man, why are you 
 spoiling your life over another man's wife like this? 
 How many lives do you reckon you've got to throw 
 away? " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 321 
 
 " She's not spoilin' it," answered Dence, in a 
 monotonous tone. " That's a job I did myself, and 
 did thoroughly, fifteen years ago." 
 
 " You can keep your own secrets, I reckon," said 
 Mrs. Carter keenly. " There's not a man in the 
 Territory knows anything about you, except what 
 they've seen." 
 
 " And not a man will," came the answer. Rough, 
 degraded, broken as he was, there seemed a certain 
 dignity about Dence to-night. He was no favourite 
 of Mrs. Carter's, but for the moment she could see 
 what it was in him that had made Anderson, the 
 strongest character on the goldfields, choose him for 
 his " mate," and had won the affection of the cool, 
 fastidious Scott. 
 
 " Well, however that may be, I say you're a fool 
 to go on caring for Charmian Scott. Forget her, 
 man! The world's full of women; and if you 
 only knew it, one of us is pretty much as good as 
 another." 
 
 Rupert Dence made no reply: he was saying some- 
 thing to himself that sounded like poetry: 
 
 "Dark grows the valley, more and more forgetting, 
 So were it with me, could forgetfulness be willed. 
 Tell the running river that feeds the bubbling well-head, 
 Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled." 
 
 11 Oh, poetry ! " said Mrs. Carter contemptu- 
 ously. " The world isn't poetry." 
 
 " Not for you," answered Dence, looking at her 
 
322 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 with the mocking expression that always irritated 
 her. It made her feel that, after all, she didn't mat- 
 ter very much : worse, that she was a woman. . . . 
 Mrs. Carter did not like to be made to feel that she 
 was a woman. 
 
 She drove home a stab of plain truth, as hard as 
 she could, in return. 
 
 " Mrs. Scott never cared a brass pin about you. 
 She'll care less when she's got her baby." 
 
 Rupert was not listening to her. He was sitting 
 with his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his 
 hands, looking into the black-blue gloom beyond the 
 circle of the lamp. A night-moth, big as a bird, 
 swept into the light and out again, like a human soul 
 flitting from dark to dark. 
 
 " Buck up, and look cheerful, if you can," com- 
 manded Mrs. Carter irritably. " You're not much 
 of a mate to go through the bush with, I don't 
 think." 
 
 She fanned herself jerkily with her handkerchief: 
 the night was breathlessly warm. Rain could not be 
 far away: the stars were surely fainter. . . . Why 
 could she not walk as she had walked ten years ago? 
 She could have kept pace with almost any man in 
 Papua — then. Why could she not have got farther 
 on her way? There was no knowing whether . . . 
 
 " Oh, talk, can't you ! " she snapped. The boys 
 were feeding round about their fly: one heard the 
 clink of their spoons on the tin plates, and the low 
 babble of a dozen different languages. Someone 
 
GUINEA GOLD 323 
 
 was relating something exciting: the others jerked 
 interested comment. 
 
 " I don't feel like talking," answered Rupert, 
 without taking his head out of his hands. " I'll 
 recite to keep the blue devils off, for both of us." 
 
 " Recite away," agreed Mrs. Carter. Rupert's 
 recitations were famous all over the Territory, but 
 it was seldom indeed that anyone could prevail on 
 him to give one, unless he happened to be in the 
 mood. The Queen, in her heart, hated poetry: but 
 she hoped his choice might be prose. 
 
 It was not. It was Lindsay Gordon's " Sick 
 Stockrider." He began sitting, his head half bent 
 down: but before long the poem gripped him, and 
 he rose to his feet, and recited as he had never in 
 his life recited before. The boys, frightened at first, 
 became fascinated, and crowded round him, leaving 
 the remains of their supper to the ants and iguanas. 
 Mrs. Carter sat breathless, looking at his lit-up face, 
 and feeling, without quite understanding, the swing 
 of the lines. Rupert had a wonderful singing voice: 
 and he used it almost to equal effect in speaking 
 when he chose. The Queen was wiping her eyes 
 and catching her breath before long: poetry was 
 rubbish, but it did sound heart-breaking! . . . 
 
 Rupert was nearing the end: his voice, clear as 
 silver, sank like a fountain falling slowly back to its 
 source. The lean, shabby figure in the worn khaki 
 clothes, the hawk-like, high-bred face stood out in 
 the circle of lamplight: behind was the dark. 
 
324 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 "I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, 
 
 And life is short — the longest life a span, 
 I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, 
 
 Or the wine that maketh glad the heart of man; 
 For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolutions vain, 
 
 'Tis somewhat late to trouble— this I know, 
 I should live the same life over if I had to live again, 
 
 And the chances are — I go where most men go!" 
 
 " Taubada ! " said an excited voice among the 
 boys. Someone came forward, apparently pushed 
 from behind. 
 
 Rupert stopped: the flame in his blue eyes went 
 out. He unclenched his hands and looked at 
 them oddly, as though they belonged to someone 
 else. 
 
 " How I have been gassin' ! " he said. He ad- 
 dressed the boy like one waking up from a dream. 
 
 ■■' Well, what do you want? " 
 
 " Me boy belong Missi Kotti." 
 
 " One of Scott's boys, are you, by Jove! When 
 did you come, and what do you want? " 
 
 " Me been come close-up sun he pinish (near sun- 
 set). Me gottum letter." 
 
 " Letter? " Dence's face changed. " Why didn't 
 you give it before? " 
 
 " Me talk alonga boy." 
 
 " Confound you! Give it here! What do you 
 mean by Mrs. Carter, it's for you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Carter had sprung to her feet and snatched 
 it out of his hand almost before he spoke. Bending 
 over to catch the light of the lantern she read it, and 
 
GUINEA GOLD 325 
 
 passed it to Dence. Then she sat down on the log 
 and burst into tears. 
 
 " Oh, my God, why aren't I ten years younger! " 
 she said, rocking on her seat. " Why wasn't I here 
 day before yesterday! " 
 
 Rupert had read the note in a flash. It was from 
 Scott — a blot-spattered scrawl, scarce legible: 
 
 " For God's sake come on as quick as you can, 
 wherever this meets you. Brabant is down with 
 black-water fever, delirious. I think Charmian is 
 ill. For God's sake come. I have sent a carrying- 
 chair with the boys. Drive them all you can. An- 
 derson can't leave Brabant — he is very bad. Make 
 haste, for God's sake. 
 
 " George Scott." 
 
 Dence dropped the letter on the ground and 
 pulled Mrs. Carter to her feet with a jerk. 
 
 " Are you game to cross to-night? " he said, his 
 breath coming quick. 
 
 " Game? What do you take me for? Do you 
 think all the gold in the country would keep me 
 here?" demanded Mrs. Carter, sobbing loudly. 
 " Cross? I should think so! " 
 
 " Do you know the risk? " asked Rupert gently. 
 
 "There's alligators, ain't there?" 
 
 As if in reply to the question a long, moaning 
 bellow came from below, answered by another. It 
 was a grisly sound — here in the forest, in the night. 
 
 Mrs. Carter listened to it, her face setting hard. 
 She stopped crying, and wiped her eyes dry. 
 
326 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " Where's those boys of Scott's? " she demanded. 
 
 " Sinuabada (lady) — he stop along 'nother side." 
 
 " Other side — and, anyhow, not one of them 
 would cross in the dark, if you drove them with 
 bayonets. I reckon ours won't either." 
 
 " Suppose you come alonga we-fellow, I give you 
 plenty kuku (tobacco)," suggested Dence to the 
 head boy. 
 
 "Where me go?" 
 
 " Alonga 'nother side." 
 
 The boy's eyes dilated till they showed a white 
 ring all round the dark-brown iris. 
 
 " You gammon, Taubada ! " he panted. 
 
 " No gammon. Suppose some boy he come, to- 
 night, I give him five pounds money." 
 
 The carriers drew back and huddled together, 
 their faces showing mortal fear. Another snarling 
 moan came up from the swamp. 
 
 " Hear him, Taubada ! " trembled the carrier. 
 " Me too much dam fright. Me no go." 
 
 " Dence, leave them alone," came from Mrs. 
 Carter. She had just finished pinning up her dress, 
 and was rapidly snicking cartridge after cartridge 
 into the 45 Colt she had taken from one of the 
 swags. " They won't go, and I don't know as it's 
 a square deal to try and make them." 
 
 " The risk is worse for you," said Dence. 
 
 " It's got to be taken. They haven't any call to 
 throw away their lives, and I reckon they won't, 
 anyhow. We'll have a lantern apiece " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 327 
 
 She broke off. 
 
 " That fool of a boy — there's only one! " 
 
 It was beginning to rain, a fitful dropping that 
 promised the usual nightly downpour before long. 
 Dence pulled a couple of brands from the fire and 
 tried to make them burn. But they hissed and went 
 out as the fall grew heavier. 
 
 " You'll have to go first," said Dence, turning 
 away from the useless fire, " and carry the lantern. 
 They're more or less afraid of light." 
 
 " I reckon I know about as much of them as you 
 do. And what's to become of yourself?" asked 
 Mrs. Carter. She had girded up her dress now, and 
 stuck the revolver in her loosened belt: her keen, 
 handsome face looked much as usual, save for a 
 slight paleness under the tan, scarcely perceptible in 
 the lamplight. 
 
 " I'll keep as close as I can. And look here " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " If anything should happen to me — don't you 
 fool trying to do anything. Go on. You must get 
 through." 
 
 Mrs. Carter looked at him. There was nothing 
 that she could say. 
 
 For some unexplained reason they turned and 
 gripped one another's hands before starting down 
 the slope to the marsh, whither they were followed 
 by the loud howlings of their boys. A peculiar, 
 booming cry rose up as they went, dominating all 
 the other shrieks — the Orokiva death-song. 
 
328 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 " For delicate tact and consideration of your feel- 
 in's the Papuan takes some beatin'," observed Ru- 
 pert dryly. 
 
 They were at the borders of the swamp now: the 
 huge marsh-ferns rose up and brushed their faces as 
 they passed : and the stiff spikes of the water-loving 
 sago-palm swung low above them. It was raining 
 hard and very dark: the hurricane lantern showed 
 only a low circle of muddy track and rank lush 
 grasses, poisonously green. 
 
 And suddenly, as though a tap had been turned 
 on, a flood of sickening scent filled the air. It was 
 warm and animal: it smelt of musk and of decay. 
 It was so thick that you felt you could beat it apart 
 with your hands. There was no sound now at all. 
 The bellowing had ceased. 
 
 The track went down into the marsh here: there 
 was no more solid ground in front, only a glimmer 
 of mud and water, with scaly sago trunks and clumps 
 of giant spear-grass looming dimly in the dark. 
 Underfoot a narrow path of felled trees, laid length- 
 wise for economy's sake, stretched out into the 
 gloom. 
 
 The man and the woman stood for a moment on 
 the brink of the swamp, while the rain pattered in 
 the pools and hissed on the lantern. There was still 
 no sound. The darkness was thick as a wall. Only 
 the stifling musky scent, with its hideous suggestion 
 of a perfumed corpse, grew denser, in waves that 
 could be perceived. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 329 
 
 11 God defend us, Mr. Dence," said Mrs. Carter, 
 in a low voice, " but I think they're all around." 
 Her hand on his arm gripped him so tight as to 
 bruise. 
 
 "Will you go back and wait till to-morrow?" 
 asked Rupert, in the same low tone. His eyes, blue 
 fire in the lantern-light, pleading, commanding, gave 
 the lie to his tongue. 
 
 Mrs. Carter loosened the pistol in her belt. 
 
 44 No," she said. Rupert could see that her nos- 
 trils were beating like a heart. She took the lan- 
 tern from him and stepped out on the felled-log 
 track. 
 
 Just for an instant Rupert paused behind her. In 
 the dank heat of the night something like a wave of 
 cold air, a waft from an unseen wing, seemed to pass 
 over his face. 
 
 " Purely subjective," he said to himself. But as 
 he set foot on the logs, taking what they both well 
 knew to be the post of danger in the rear, his hand 
 fluttered for a moment in the darkness, making, on 
 brow and breast, a sign that had not rested there for 
 many a year . . . the sign of the Cross. 
 
 It was almost an hour's journey across the swamp, 
 in the night and the rain, with the uncertain footing 
 given by the slippery logs. The circle of lantern- 
 light showed only the perilous track and the oily 
 glitter of mud and water close beside it. Twice a 
 droning call came from far away: once the sound 
 rose suddenly at their feet, and seemed to shake the 
 
330 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 logs on which they stood, while the musky smell beat 
 up in a warm wave into their very nostrils. Rupert 
 fired his revolver at the sound, but there was no 
 splash or movement, and nothing to be seen. They 
 went on. Neither spoke. The logs tilted and 
 creaked beneath them as they crept along, and their 
 feet sucked loud in the gaps between : the lantern 
 clinked as it swung: their breathing sounded. 
 
 They were near the other side. 
 
 " O God in heaven! " cried Mrs. Carter. 
 
 The roughly laid logs swayed down and tilted: 
 mud and water flowed over one side of the track. 
 A huge grey head, with cold impassive eyes, had 
 risen like a phantom of death from the slime, open- 
 ing a gulf of white-toothed jaw. The body of the 
 creature, invisible under mud, bore down the logs 
 as though a dray-horse had rested its weight on 
 them. 
 
 Mrs. Carter, shrieking, dashed her lantern at the 
 horrible head: she had not time to reach for her 
 pistol. Somehow, in the momentary withdrawal of 
 the creature, she got past, on the sound half of the 
 track. Then, behind her, came a shot, a struggle, 
 and a splash — no cry. 
 
 She flung round again, rushed back, pulling out 
 her revolver, and fired shot after shot into the dark- 
 ness. . . . Rupert Dence was gone. Sobbing with 
 horror, she saw the mud and water heaving under 
 the lantern-light: saw a deep pool near at hand send 
 out dark waves. The track was empty. 
 
GUINEA GOLD 33 1 
 
 "If anything should happen to me, don't try to 
 do anything. You must get through/' 
 
 She remembered. 
 
 " No use," she panted, reloading her revolver, 
 while sobs shook her from head to foot. " A regi- 
 ment couldn't save him now — but if he'd only called 
 out in time. . . . He's given his life, as sure as 
 
 ever Oh, how am I to Mary Ann Carter, 
 
 don't lose your head. Don't dare. You get 
 through, I tell you. . . . Confound the lock — that's 
 it." 
 
 Panting, shaking, beating back her tears, she made 
 the last piece of the track, and climbed up on the 
 other side. Safe. But what of him? 
 
 " He gave his life," she said, letting the tears go 
 at last. " If he'd called out I might have hit the 
 brute — but he wanted me to get clear . . . for 
 her . . ." 
 
 The rain had passed: the stars shone out. The 
 night was very still. 
 
 Mrs. Carter looked up to the arch of eternal 
 splendour, high above the spiring palms. 
 
 " If ever a man went straight to heaven, what- 
 ever he's been or done, it's Rupert Dence," she said. 
 
 She ceased her tears. She gathered herself to- 
 gether. She went up the slope. The boys and the 
 carrying-chair were waiting on the top. 
 
 Mrs. Carter was widely known in Papua as a 
 nigger-driver. She had never earned the title so 
 fully as she earned it that night. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 It was one of New Guinea's diamond days. The 
 river dazzled unbearably down at the foot of the 
 cliff : light shot in spangles from the points of forest 
 leaves that stood up as stark as foliage of cast metal. 
 It seemed as though no roof, no shade, were dark 
 enough to shut away the sun. Under the deep-hung 
 palm leaves that thatched the house above the river 
 it came this burning noon, dropping white-hot pen- 
 cils on the empty lounge and deserted work-table 
 in the outer room, weaving lattice work- of molten 
 silver in the inner chamber round the borders of the 
 carefully guarded shadow that lay, all day and all 
 night, about Charmian's bed. 
 
 Charmian was lying in the heart of the shadow 
 asleep. Her little son slept in a white-hung basket 
 at her side. Mrs. Carter, her back turned to the 
 bed, was busying herself, somewhat unnecessarily, it 
 seemed, about the tidying of the dresses that hung 
 on the wall. Beside the bed, his strong brown hand 
 laid very lightly on the flower-pale fingers that 
 drooped over the edge of the sheet, sat Scott. He 
 had been there since early morning: it was now near 
 noon. 
 
 " George, leave her, and let me stop : you've never 
 332 
 
GUINEA GOLD 333 
 
 had a bite to eat to-day," said the figure at the wall, 
 somewhat thickly, without turning round. 
 
 11 I won't leave," answered Scott. His face in 
 the last two days had grown a span smaller: his 
 eyes looked out of dark caves. " There'll be time 
 for everything when ..." He stopped. 
 
 Mrs. Carter, her face curiously wrinkled, but her 
 eyes dry, turned round from the wall. 
 
 " George — don't you eat your heart out," she 
 said. " We did what could be done. If all the doc- 
 tors in Sydney had been here it would have been the 
 same." 
 
 " Brabant's still delirious. He was a hundred and 
 six yesterday," was Scott's only answer. 
 
 " Six, or six hundred, it don't matter," declared 
 the Queen. She crossed the room and looked at the 
 sleeping face. The eyes were ringed with violet: 
 the delicate nose stood sharp and high. " Nothing 
 matters," said the Queen. 
 
 There was a pause : the short, quick breathing of 
 the child sounded in the quiet room. Charmian's 
 breast heaved slowly, silently. 
 
 "Will she not wake up?" asked Scott, keeping 
 his hungry eyes fixed on her face. The minutes for 
 looking on that face were numbered now. 
 
 " No telling. She might." 
 
 They sat there silently: Mrs. Carter's fan swept 
 back and forward over the brown-curling head on 
 the pillow. A minute — or an hour? — went by. 
 
 " She wasn't made for long life — anyhow," said 
 
334 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 Mrs. Carter, her hand laid on Scott's head as on a 
 child's. 
 
 " She had her day." Another pause. 
 
 " She said to me, just after I don't know as 
 
 I ought to tell you." 
 
 " Tell me," said Scott, both hands now clasped 
 about the drooping fingers on the bed. 
 
 " She said — ' I've had his son — she can't do 
 more.' " 
 
 11 1 never knew she knew," said Scott, looking 
 up, startled. " I never told her." 
 
 The room was still again, the sun-rays sank — 
 sank down. The day was waning. No need to 
 guard the shadow round the bed: it deepened as 
 they watched. And now on Charmian's face the 
 shadow deepened too. The quiet breathing flut- 
 tered: the lips dropped apart. Scott saw her eyes 
 were open. 
 
 " My love ! " he said, his face close to hers. 
 " Charmian — are you awake? " 
 
 There was a slight struggle, and then — 
 
 " I'm waking." And, very faint, " Good-bye." 
 
 They sat beside her, afterwards, for almost an- 
 other hour: and, in the gathering shadows, neither 
 knew when Charmian woke at last. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Anderson handed the glass to his friend. 
 
 " It's Colombo all right," he said. 
 
 " Colombo," agreed Scott, looking out to the blue 
 horizon. The Macedonia ploughed steadily across 
 the quiet sea. A dark line was steadily growing out 
 on the edge of the world. Some of the passengers, 
 collected on the promenade deck, were quoting 
 Kipling : 
 
 "The Indian Ocean sets and smiles 
 So sof, so bright, so bloomin' blue, 
 There ain't a wave for miles and miles, 
 Except the jiggle of the screw." 
 
 Others were murmuring the far too well-known 
 hymn that celebrates the " spicy breezes " alleged to 
 11 roll " from cinnamon gardens that used to be, and 
 are not. The deck stewards, hurrying round with 
 trays of tinkling glasses, assumed a look of patient 
 endurance. Only the P. & O. deck stewards them- 
 selves can tell what they are made to suffer, through 
 that hymn — and telling is naturally impossible, with 
 the fees of half a voyage yet ahead. 
 
 Scott felt curiously moved at the sight of the 
 growing land. It was the Old World's first out- 
 post — the first returning glimpse of the lands above 
 
 335 
 
336 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 the Line that he had left two years — could it only 
 be two years? — before. Now the last link with the 
 new, unbroken countries was left behind: he had 
 parted from Australasia. ... As for the Red Sea 
 and the Mediterranean, and Marseilles- and " Gib," 
 they were next thing to home. 
 
 Much interest had been aroused on the Macedonia 
 by these two passengers, about whom no one, early 
 in the voyage, could obtain any information. It 
 was generally supposed, up to Perth, that they were 
 important Colonial dignitaries travelling incognito': 
 afterwards a report went round to the effect that 
 they were two Russian princes in disguise. Their 
 lack of interest in deck sports, and their total indif- 
 ference to the still more popular sports of toad-eat- 
 ing and tuft-hunting, encouraged these two supposi- 
 tions, and laid upon them the necessity of repulsing a 
 good many unwelcome acquaintances. When it leaked 
 out, through the industrious " little bird " inhabiting 
 the Marconi mast of the P. & O. liner, that Ander- 
 son and Scott were two miners from New Guinea, 
 who had found a fabulously rich gold mine, and 
 were off to spend the proceeds, public opinion wav- 
 ered. Had they enough gold to gild the undoubted 
 squalor of their occupation? Public opinion, helped 
 by the little bird, decided that they had. The ro- 
 mantic possession of a motherless baby, by one of 
 the mysterious passengers, turned the scale still fur- 
 ther. The stewardess in charge of little Rupert was 
 interviewed, coaxed, and bribed to tell all she knew, 
 
GUINEA GOLD 337 
 
 and a great deal she did not. In the end, by dint 
 of much detective work, the following story was 
 unearthed and passed about the ship : — 
 
 Anderson and Scott had really found a gold mine, 
 and made a fortune out of it. Scott was going home 
 to see his old friends in Belfast, and live there. The 
 baby belonged to him: his wife had died in New 
 Guinea. Anderson (of whose iron self-possession 
 and cool dry humour nobody could make anything 
 at all — except that he really " must be somebody ") 
 — Anderson was going for a tour round the world. 
 The two had had the wildest adventures : you could- 
 n't fancy (which was quite true). Some of their 
 gold — ten thousand pounds, it was said — had been 
 stolen from them, and the man who stole it had 
 never been found till ages and ages after. The little 
 bird, at the last Australian port, was able to supple- 
 ment its chirpings on this subject by the plain narra- 
 tive of a local newspaper, which gave a vivid ac- 
 count of the finding of the gold: — 
 
 11 EXCITING INCIDENT IN PAPUA. 
 
 miner's lost gold recovered, 
 how the thief met his doom. 
 
 11 Our Port Moresby correspondent, by the last 
 mail, sends an interesting and exciting account of a 
 strange adventure in the unexplored wilds of Papua. 
 Some weeks ago, a party of miners, prospecting in 
 unknown country about the Kikiramu field, came 
 unexpectedly upon a village of the Kariva tribe, 
 which was evidently inhabited, but which had been 
 
338 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 deserted on the arrival of the party. Fires were 
 still burning in the houses, and freshly chewed betel- 
 nut had been expectorated about the track, showing 
 that the Karivas were, in all probability, concealed 
 close at hand. The miners explored the village, and 
 found among other trophies, in the usual cannibal 
 temple, the unmistakable skull of a white man. It 
 had been broken in at the top, the Kariva tribe being 
 in the habit of extracting the brains and eating 
 them fried in the top of the skull. The teeth were 
 stopped with gold; this, together with the general 
 shape of the skull, serving to identify it as that of 
 a prospector named Clay, who had been missing for 
 the better part of a year. 
 
 " In the bush close to the village the miners found 
 a heavy parcel of canvas, part rotted away, and con- 
 taining over eight hundred ounces of gold. It ap- 
 peared that the Karivas had opened the parcel, and 
 finding in it no knives, tomahawks, or other article 
 of any value to them, had thrown it away in the bush, 
 where it lay untouched until found. 
 
 " This gold had been stolen from one of the dis- 
 coverers of the notorious Iri field, many months be- 
 fore. It was at once restored to its rightful owner, 
 and the skull buried in the Kikiramu camp. So 
 ends one of New Guinea's many mysteries." 
 
 Anderson and Scott themselves had seen the paper 
 at Perth, and were looking over it again as the 
 Macedonia made her way towards Point de Galle. 
 
 " Substantially correct," said Scott, folding up the 
 scrap and putting it in his pocket. " Joe, I can't 
 believe it all happened now. It seems like a yarn 
 that someone else has told me. Only for " 
 
GUINEA GOLD 339 
 
 He broke off and looked out across the sea. 
 Anderson knew how to read the look. In the last 
 six months the boyishness had disappeared from his 
 comrade's face for good: and a certain shadow, dat- 
 ing from the days on the Iri River, had made its 
 home in his eyes. Scott was " still young," but he 
 was no longer a " young man." 
 
 " I don't believe much of it myself," agreed An- 
 derson thoughtfully. 
 
 They were left to themselves now: the passengers 
 had gone away in a crowd to watch the Bishop 
 of Negropolis hopping on one leg along the 
 deck, and endeavouring to pick up more potatoes 
 with a spoon than the wife of the Governor of 
 British Chili had already been happy enough to 
 secure. 
 
 44 I shall be home in three weeks," said Scott. 
 " Joe — you remember " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "What I told you, that night we left Port 
 Moresby." 
 
 14 Yes, I remember," said the big miner, standing 
 up against the rail, his hands hanging down at his 
 sides. Anderson had no nervous tricks — Scott used 
 often to wonder how he could keep so still for so 
 long. 
 
 44 I've been thinking it all over, again and again. 
 You know, my letter missed her — I've found that 
 out since — and she never really knew anything ex- 
 cept that I'd been up country for a long while, and 
 
340 GUINEA GOLD 
 
 got out of reach of mails: she thought me dead, I 
 believe. " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I am going to see her the minute I get to Ire- 
 land. I mean to tell her everything." 
 
 " And then what will you do? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 But some years after, when his little daughter was 
 first laid in his arms, he remembered the all but last 
 words spoken to Mrs. Carter by Charmian, and 
 knew that she, at least, had known. 
 
 The Scotts have a beautiful country house, not 
 very far from Balmoral, on the Lisburn Road. 
 There are leather chairs in the dining-room, and 
 velvet chairs in the drawing-room, and there are con- 
 servatories, and a motor garage, and a stable, with 
 one or two good saddle horses. Scott has a small 
 yacht with a motor, and uses it in the summer-time. 
 Janie has carriages and furs, and more than one 
 solid silver tea-set. They agree excellently well; 
 Scott is growing a little stout, and thinks of standing 
 for Parliament one of these days. 
 
 Janie is a just and kindly stepmother. The toys 
 of her little girls are never better than Rupert's, 
 and she always remembers to kiss him every night, 
 and to call him dear. Sometimes, when she sees his 
 father holding him nursed in his arms of an evening, 
 looking at the honey-brown eyes and scarlet lips of 
 the child as a man may look at the picture of some- 
 
GUINEA GOLD 341 
 
 thing loved and lost, she goes away to her own 
 room and sorts linen determinedly, with a hard-set 
 lip. She does not believe in crying. Sometimes, too, 
 when Scott takes one of his rare fits of restlessness, 
 and disappears for a week at a time, flying down 
 the Channel on his yacht — southward, always to- 
 wards the sun — she feels a strange fear creep about 
 her heart. But she does not believe in worrying: 
 there are the children, and there is Duty. 
 
 By the Iri River the grass grows over Charmian. 
 
 THE END 
 
Vts 
 

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