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

of another world than he did when he stood up and faced the men that night. Most of them were smoking, and soon after the meeting began the hall was filled with a thin, bluish haze. It veiled the crowd below him, blurred the shapes and outlines of the men sitting close together along the benches, most of them wearing their working clothes, faded blueys, or worn moleskins, with handkerchiefs red or white round their throats. Their faces swam before John Armitage as on a dark sea. All the weather-beaten, sun-red, gaunt, or full, fat, daubs of faces, pallid through the smoke, turned towards him with a curious, strained, and intent expression of waiting to hear what he had to say.

Before making any statement himself, Mr. Armitage said he would ask Mr. Andrew M’Intosh, who had come with him from America some time ago to report on the field, and who was one of the ablest engineers in the United States of America, to tell what he thought of the natural resources of the Ridge, and the possibilities of making an up-to-date, flourishing town of Fallen Star under conditions proposed by the Armitage Syndicate.

Andrew M’Intosh, a meagrely-fleshed man, with squarish face, blunt features, and hair in a brush from a broad, wrinkled forehead, stood up in response to Mr. Armitage’s invitation. He was a man of deeds, not words, he declared, and would leave Mr. Armitage to give them the substance of his report. His knees jerked nervously and his face and hands twitched all the time he was speaking. He had an air of protesting against what he was doing and of having been dragged into this business, although he was more or less interested in it. He confessed that he had not investigated the resources of Fallen Star Ridge as completely as he would have wished, but he had done so sufficiently to enable him to assure the people of Fallen Star that if they accepted the proposition Mr. Armitage was to lay before them, the country would back them. He himself, he said, would have confidence enough in it to throw in his lot with them, should they accept Mr. Armitage’s proposition; and he gave them his word that if they did so, and he were invited to take charge of the reorganisation of the mines, he would work wholeheartedly for the success of the undertaking he and the miners of Fallen Star Ridge might mutually engage in. He talked at some length of the need for a great deal of preliminary prospecting in order to locate the best sites for mines, of the necessity for plant to use in construction works, and of the possibility of a better water supply for the township, and the advantages that would entail.

The men were impressed by the matter-of-factness of the engineer’s manner and his review of technical and geological aspects of the situation, although he gave very little information they had not already possessed. When he sat down, Armitage pushed back his chair and confronted the men again.

He made his position clear from the outset. It was a straightforward business proposition he was putting before men of the Ridge, he said; but one the success of which would depend on their cooperation. As their agent of exchange with the world at large, he described the disastrous consequences the slump of the last year or so had had for both Armitage and Son and for Fallen Star, and how the system he proposed, by opening up a wider area for mining and by investigating the resources of the old mines more thoroughly under the direction of an expert mining engineer, would result in increased production and prosperity for the people of the Ridge and Fallen Star township. He saw possibilities of making a thriving township of Fallen Star, and he promised men of the Ridge that if they accepted the scheme he had outlined for them, the Armitage Syndicate would make a prosperous township of Fallen Star. In no time people: would be having electricity in their homes, water laid on, rose gardens, cabbage patches, and all manner of comforts and conveniences as a result of the improved means of communication with Budda and Sydney, which population and increased production would ensure.

In a nutshell Armitage’s scheme amounted to an offer to buy up the mines for £30,000 and put the men on a wage, allowing every man a percentage of 20 percent profit on all stones over a certain standard and size. The men would be asked to elect their own manager, who would be expected to see that engineering and development designs were carried out, but otherwise the normal routine of work in the mines would be observed. Mr. Armitage explained that he hoped to occupy the position of general manager in the company himself, and engaged it to observe the union rates of hours and wages as they were accepted by miners and mining companies throughout the country.

When he had finished speaking there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that John Lincoln Armitage had made a very pleasant picture of what life on the Ridge might be if success attended the scheme of the Armitage Syndicate, as John Armitage seemed to believe it would. Men who had been driven to consider Armitage’s offer from their first hearing of it, because of the lean years the Ridge was passing through, were almost persuaded by his final exposition.

George Woods stood up.

George’s strength was in his equable temper, in his downright honesty and sincerity, and in the steady common-sense with which he reviewed situations and men.

He realised the impression Armitage’s statement of his scheme, and its bearing on the life of the Ridge, had made. It did not affect his own position, but he feared its influence on men who had been wavering between prospects of the old and of the new order of things for Fallen Star. In their hands, he could see now, the fate of all that Fallen Star had stood for so long, would