The Black Opal - Katharine Susannah Prichard (open ebook .TXT) 📗

“You goin’ to break new ground, Potch?” he asked. Potch nodded.

“There’s a bit of a rush on by the crooked coolebah,” he said. “Roy O’Mara’s bottomed on opal there⁠ ⁠… got some pretty good colours, and we’re goin’ to peg out.”

“A rush?” Paul’s eyes brightened. “Roy? Has he got the stuff, Potch?”

“Not bad.”

As they followed the narrow, winding track through the scrub, Paul chattered eagerly of the chances of the new rush.

Roy O’Mara had sunk directly under the coolebah. There were few trees of any great size on the Ridge, and this one, tall and grey-barked, stood over the scrub of myalls, oddly bent, like a crippled giant, its great, bleached trunk swung forward and wrenched back as if in agony. The mound of white clay under the tree was already a considerable dump⁠—Roy had been working with a new chum from the Three Mile for something over a fortnight and had just bottomed on opal. His first day’s find was spread on a bag under the tree. There was nothing of great value in it; but when Potch and Paul came to it, Paul knelt down and turned over the pieces of opal on the bag with eager excitement.

When Michael arrived, Potch had driven in his pegs on a site he had marked in his mind’s eye the evening before, a hundred yards beyond Roy’s claim, up the slope of the hill. Michael took turns with Potch at slinging the heavy pick; they worked steadily all the morning, the sweat beading and pouring down their faces.

There was always some excitement and expectation about sinking a new hole. Michael had lived so long on the fields, and had sunk so many shafts, that he took a new sinking with a good deal of matter-of-factness; but even he had some of the thrilling sense of a child with a surprise packet when he was breaking earth on a new rush.

Neither Michael nor Paul had much enthusiasm about the new claim after the first day or so; but Potch worked indefatigably. All day the thud and click of picks on the hard earth and cement stone, and the shovelling of loose earth and gravel, could be heard. In about a fortnight Potch and Michael came on sandstone and drove into red opal dirt beneath it. Roy O’Mara, working on his trace of promising black potch, still had found nothing to justify his hope of an early haul. Paul, easily disappointed, lost faith in the possibilities of the shaft; Michael was for giving it further trial, but Potch, too, was in favour of sinking again.

Lying under the coolebah at midday, after they had been burrowing from the shaft for about a week, and Michael was talking of clearing mullock from the drives, Potch said:

“I’m going to sink another hole, Michael⁠—higher up.”

Michael glanced at him. It was unusual for Potch to put a thing in that way, without a by-your-leave, or feeler for advice, or permission; but he was not disturbed by his doing so.

“Right,” he said; “you sink another hole, Potch. I’ll stick to this one for a bit.”

Potch began to break earth again next morning. He chose his site carefully, to the right of the one he had been working on, and all the morning he swung his heavy pick and shovelled earth from the shaft he was making. He worked slowly, doggedly. When he came on sandstone he had been three weeks on the job.

“Ought to be near bottoming, Potch,” Roy remarked one day towards the end of the three weeks.

“Be there today,” Potch said.

Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, unable to suppress his impatience, and calling down the shaft now and then.

Potch believed so in this claim of his that his belief had raised a certain amount of expectation. His report, too, was going to make considerable difference to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well: they had cut out a pocket worth £400 as a result of their sinking, and it remained to be seen what Potch’s new hole would bring. A good prospect would make the new field, it was reckoned.

Potch’s prospect was disappointing, however, and of no sensational value when he did bottom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of promising colours, and Michael left the first shaft they had sunk on the coolebah to work with Potch in the new mine.

They had been on the new claim, with nothing to show for their pains, for nearly two months, the afternoon Potch, who had been shifting opal dirt of a dark strain below the steel band on the south side of the mine, uttered a low cry.

“Michael,” he called.

Michael, gouging in a drive a few yards away, knew the meaning of that joyous vibration in a man’s voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went to Potch.

Potch was holding his spider off from a surface of opal his pick had clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leaping, dancing, and quivering together in the red earth of the mine. Michael swore reverently when he saw it. Potch moved his candle before the chipped corner of the stones which he had worked round sufficiently to show that a knobby of some size was embedded in the wall of the mine.

“Looks a beaut, doesn’t she, Michael?” he gasped.

Michael breathed hard.

“By God⁠—” he murmured.

Paul, hearing the murmur of their voices, joined them.

He screamed when he saw the stone.

“I knew!” he yelled. “I knew we’d strike it here.”

“Well, stand back while I get her out,” Potch cried.

Michael trembled as Potch fitted his spider and began to break the earth about the opal, working slowly, cautiously, and rubbing the earth away with his hands. Michael watched him apprehensively, exclaiming with wonder and admiration as the size of the stone was revealed.

When Potch had worked it out of its socket,