HOW WE MADE OUR PILE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 114, 16 January 1872, Page 7

HOW WE MADE OUR PILE.

I[Hokitika Leader, Dee. 28.] mate Rube / rid I sat staring at the great outside the 'tent door, —on that evening Mtherof us in very good spirits, and neither fry much inclined to talk. At .last, taking |cobbler from the fire and relighting my fee, I broke silence. I" I suppose it must come someday, if we «ly stick to it," I said ; " but as each chance I a pile comes slowly up like a shaddAv,"until |nost within my very reach, so does it as Irely fade away; until I see myself raggeder |an before, and-more anl more unable to &e the needful capital to start some fresh Spec.'" 1 Rube looked steadily before him, and Miffed the smoke out in volumes ; and at last jfoened his mouth sufficiently wide to speak, %-ior Rube was not a man of many words or Sequent speeches. I « Well, Fred," said he, "I have had three |ood rises now, and each time I have wasted |; but, by thunder ! the next time I get a Sse, I'll stick to it. I had not what you haA r 'e |) keep me square, for, you know, I underftand all your anxiety for a pile before your jpved one's eyes are calmed by weary wait|ig, and your own spirit quieted by the inloads of trouble and rheumatism." [j "Rube," I said, "you have known what , jjhis deferred' is, and have experienced before now the disappointment of jworking night and day for six months to find \pn\y a ' duffer' ; but I had made sure Ave had l * jfnade a hit this time, and should, if not in ie [possession of actual Avealth this Christmas, , e ffce in a fair way of getting it, and have suffiy [pent at least to carry me down to see her for * [I while." ] Rube, two others, and myself had been . tniates together now in this claim for more ti 'Alian six months, during which time Ave had |worked more than twelve hours a day under- } never letting the work cease during » ithe twenty-four hours, buoying our hopes up Bwith the prospect of immediate wealth ; and • fjnow, for all this bitter Avork, we had been gjforcsd to the conclusion that the lead had |broken Avhere our tunnel had been driven Bin, and we Avere duffered out. On each side lof us were parties making £53 a week a man, ilyet we could not touch a grain of gold. Such ff things are known on all diggings, and men i I have been known to pay fabulous prices for a claims that, situated between the richest I claims on the lead, have proved Avorthless. . Two years previously I had met—no matter | in Avhat part of New Zealand—a girl whom I I loved with my Avhole soul, and there was I nothing Avanting but money to unite us. j Her father had frankly told me that until I I was in a position to keep a Avife above the I fear of poverty, I should never have his con:j sent; and bound me down by a promise j) never to marry his daughter until I could I show him evidence of my ability to provide I for her. In return he allowed me to see her, ! to make his house my home while I stayed rj in the neighbourhood, and to receive and ; write as many letters as I wished. He told me he would trust my honour, and I promised him I would act truly to him. As the only Avay to a rapid rise in fortune, I determined to try my luck at digging, and was just bemoaning my hard luck to Rube I when the conversation before related took place. The time was the beginning of December, and the thought of being compelled confess myself at the end of the year again unsuccessful, had made me particularly miserable. Rube fell asleep on his side of the tent, and I sat gazing into the fire until the embers began to appear less and less distinct, and a peculiar feeling of fixity began to creep over me. A grip on my shoulder like an iron vice startled me, and turning round I saAV a square-looking face containing two very bright eyes, and surmounting Avhat appeared to be a human form ; the grip tightened, but never a Avord spoke the head. I felt myself raised erect as by some power pulling me from above, Avith a feeling in my heart that I must follow ; and I folloAved that queer figure through the Wet bush, along the muddy track leading from our tent to the tunnel, over the logs in the path, until at last I found myself in our own claim, Avith a piece of lighted candle in one hand and a pick in the other. I could notice, as I went along, the places in the roof of the tunnel Avhere Ave had pricked upwards in hopes of meeting the lead, and where we had put in the side driA-cs and curves. Twelve hundred feet in one line Ave had eaten our way into the hill, and taken out nothing more precious than gravel. Five hundred feot we had eaten in" at different points with the same result, and the judgment of experienced miners was that the lead had broken there, and our ground Avas worthless. Now I stood facing a triangular block that had been left, and I saw that queer figure bent in the act of picking the floor of the

unnel, as if to sink a shaft. I sprang to work, and hj seemed:as if the.gravel'and stones came-almost up of their oavu accord. We filledtruck after track, and sent them flying down the little tramway in the drive, fresh trucks always heing there to be filled. An awful glee seized me ;. drops of perspiration rollel off"every part of my body. The strange man was above me, shovelling the stuff that I wa3 throwing up into the trucks. The echo of the" pick was reverberating through the holbwed-out hill, and the hole was rapidly deepening. Standing upright in the shaft, at last the floor of the long drive Avas on a level with my head. The candle was burnt down to within quarter of an inch of the piece of wood that served as a candlestick, j and lifting in my hands some of the cement-1 like gravel, I looked at it by the aid of the I glimmering light. Thunder! there it was, glittering like a swarm of fireflies, not in a j a silver braid, but half-buried in the. gross earthly mould. The candle dropped from ray hand, the light expired, and I was in that pit with none but perhaps an emissary from the nether world ! My voice choked, —I felt that I must cry out or die ; and 1 yelled a horrified yell of terror. "Hallo, mate, what's up now ?" said a voice I recognised as Rube's. '' I think it's time you had turned in ; I guess its breaking day." " Rube," said I, rubbing my eyes, " I sleep no more just now, whether night or day. We have still a chance left, though whether it comes from the dark fiend or not, I cannot tell ;" and I told him my dream. "It's mighty queer," said he, "and it's worth proving, though I should think more seriously of it if it were not that little Bill told us~about a rum dip in a lead that had happened in California. This may have made you fancy that ours dipped in a like manner, and although I ain't what you call a metaphisician, I think it probable that it had some- ! thing to do with your dream. The little old man and the getting up business 1 attribute to' your romantic turn of mind, the awful heaviness of that last damper you baked, and the i fact of your being in love, —this last state j being, I think, accountable for many actions that might well send a man to the lunatic asylum." The grey dawn was just breaking as Rube and I, after a hearty but refreshing dip of our heads in a bucket of water (to keep us cool, as Rube remarked), ascended the hill on the road to our claim. We had with us a stock of candles, a lump of bread and meat, i and a newly-sharpened pick. We soon found the place, and I confess to i looking curiously round to see if we could discern any signs of the little square-faced man, or of the ground being disturbed ; but there were none, and we set to work. Seven hours Ave toiled, and then the floor-leA-el of the drive Avas just on a level with my head. I stooped and took up the gravel, just as it seemed I had done in my dream ; and there it Avas sure enough ! —twenty pennyAveights to the dish ! —a fortune ! My head sAvam — the Avant of rest, the excitement, and the work, had been too much for me, and I fainted in the shaft. For three weeks Ave toiled, stripping the floor of the drive six feet deep, and tunnelling again ; and at the end of that time we had cleared fifteen hundred a man. On Christmas eve I made my appearance at the j station rather unexpectedly. I astonished them with the news of my good fortune, ! though I thought it wise to suppress that j part of my dream relating to the peculiar j stranger. I left with the promise that in ! three months' time I could claim her for my j Avife. In that time we took three thousand a man | out of the claim, for Rube and I had hit the j richest patch of ail ; and I then sold out for i a good round sum. I have taken to cattle-grazing now, and j with a good farm around me, a good house | over me, a good wife beside me, and a couple lof sturdy boys about me somewhere, I am, at the instigation of my Avife, penning this rough account of hoAv I obtained all these good things. In conclusion, let me state that no thought of these blessings having come through the \ evil one disturbs us. If there AA-as anything ; supernatural about it, Ave attribute it to that I God in whom avc place our trust, and to . whom we daily return our thanks. W. H. R.