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

the knobby was found to be even bigger than they had thought at first. The stroke which located it had chipped one side so that its quality was laid bare, and the chipped surface had the blaze and starry splendour of the finest black opal. Michael and Potch examined the stone, turned it over and over, tremulous and awed by its size and magnificence. Paul was delirious with excitement.

He was first above ground, and broke the news of Potch’s find to the men who were knocking off for the day on other claims. When Michael and Potch came up, nearly a dozen men were collected about the dump. They gazed at the stone with oaths and exclamations of amazement and admiration.

“You’ve struck it this time, Potch!” Roy O’Mara said.

Potch flushed, rubbed the stone on his trousers, licked the chipped surface, and held it to the sun again.

“It’s the biggest knobby⁠—ever I see,” Archie Cross said.

“Same here,” Bill Grant muttered.

“Wants polishin’ up a bit,” Michael said, “and then she’ll show better.”

As soon as he got home, Potch went into Paul’s hut and faced the stone on Sophie’s wheel. Paul and Michael hung over him as he worked; and when he had cleaned it up and put it on the rouge buffer, they were satisfied that it fulfilled the promise of its chipped side. Nearly as big as a hen’s egg, clean, hard opal of prismatic fires in sparkling jet, they agreed that it as the biggest and finest knobby either of them had ever seen.

Potch took his luck quietly, although there were repressed emotion and excitement in his voice as he talked.

Michael marvelled at the way he went about doing his ordinary little odd jobs of the evening, when they returned to their own hut. Potch brought in and milked the goats, set out the pannikins and damper, and made tea.

When Michael and Potch had finished their meal and put away their plates, food, and pannikins, Michael picked up the stone from the shelf where Potch had put it, wrapped in the soft rag of an oatmeal bag. He threw himself on the sofa under the window and held the opal to the light, turning it and watching the stars spawn in its firmament of crystal ebony. Potch pulled a book from his pocket and sprawled across the table to read.

Michael regarded him wonderingly. Had the boy no imagination? Did the magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael’s eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby ever taken out of the fields.

Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered book.

As he gazed at the big opal, a vision of Paul’s opals flashed before him. The consternation and dismay that had made him scarcely conscious of what he was doing the night Potch found him with them, and Maud Johnson had come for Potch to go to see her sick goat, overwhelmed him again. He had not yet given the opals to Paul, he remembered, or explained to Potch and the rest of the men how he came to have them.

Any other mate than Potch would have resented his holding opals like that and saying nothing of them. But there was no resentment in Potch’s bearing to him, Michael had convinced himself. Yet Potch must know about the stones; he must have seen them. Michael could find no reason for his silence and the unaltered serenity of the affection in his eyes, except that Potch had that absolute belief in him which rejects any suggestion of unworthiness in the object of its belief.

But since⁠—since he had made up his mind to give the opals to Paul⁠—since Sophie had gone, and there was no chance of their doing her any harm; since that night Potch and Maud had seen him, why had he not given them to Paul? Why had he not told Potch how the opals Potch had seen him with had come into his possession? Michael put the questions to himself, hardly daring, and yet knowing, he must search for the answer in the mysterious no-man’s land of his subconsciousness.

Paul’s slow recovery from sunstroke was a reason for deferring explanation about the stones and for not giving them back to him, in the first instance. After Potch and Maud had seen him with the opals, Michael had intended to go at once to George and Watty and tell them his story. But the more he had thought of what he had to do, the more difficult it seemed. He had found himself shrinking from fulfilment of his intention. Interest in the new claim and the excitement of bottoming on opal had for a time almost obliterated memory of Paul’s opals.

But he had only put off telling Potch, Michael assured himself; he had only put off giving the stones back to Paul. There was no motive in this putting off. It was mental indolence, procrastination, reluctance to face a difficult and delicate situation: that was all. Having the opals had worried him to death. It had preyed on his mind so that he was ready to imagine himself capable of any folly or crime in connection with them.⁠ ⁠… He mocked his fears of himself.

Michael went over all he had done, all that had happened in connection with the opals, seeking out motives, endeavouring to fathom his own consciousness and to be honest with himself.

As if answering an evocation, the opals passed before him in a vision. He followed their sprayed fires reverently. Then, as if one starry ray had shed illumination in its passing, a daze of horror and amazement seized him. He had taken