The Gold Seekers (12 page)

“Timothy—William and Dodie’s eldest son,” Jessica put in, with obvious pleasure. “They will be as delighted by this news as I am, Justin.”

But with less reason, Justin thought. Young Timothy Broome had been one of Captain Keppel’s mids in the Maeander, which had called at Sydney the previous February, so his family had seen him comparatively recently. Justin’s brother, William, now owned some twenty thousand acres of land in the new state of Victoria—land he had acquired by running his sheep on it in the exercise of what were known as squatters’ rights, for which the government required only nominal payment.

“And George De Lancey,” Justin observed. “He hasn’t seen Francis for several years.” He finished his reading of the letter, which concluded with an enthusiastic description of the Galah, and observing with concern the weariness in his wife’s small face, he carried the letter over to her and offered gently, “We’ll leave you now, shall we, my dearest? Try to sleep for a little while. And then perhaps Jenny might persuade you to eat.”

“Don’t worry,” Jenny said. “I’ll see that she does, Dad. But I don’t believe she will need too much persuading after Red’s news, will you, Mam?”

The letter in her hand, Jessica managed an answering smile, and leaving the two women together, Justin took his son’s arm and led the way downstairs to the small room he used as an office.

“Let’s take a drink together, Johnny,” he invited, “so that I may hear your news. When did you get back from Goulburn?”

“Oh, I was back in Sydney before noon,“Johnny told him. “My trip proved a complete waste of time. But …” He accepted the glass of brandy his father had poured for him and raised it in salute. “Your very good health, sir. However,” he went on, “something of momentous interest did occur, and I’ve been anxious to tell you about it. When I returned to the office, there was a fellow by the name of Hargraves—Edward Hammond Hargraves—waiting to see me. He’s an interesting fellow—very tall and stout, with a luxuriant black beard. He used to farm at Gosford, he told me, but hied him off to California to join the American gold rush. He failed to strike it rich, but he claims to know all there is to know about gold-seeking.”

“And do you think he does?” Justin questioned.

“Yes, Dad, I do—he struck me as pretty truthful. And his story is that he realized there was a strong similarity between the country beyond Bathurst and in the Macquarie River valley and the goldfields of California.” Johnny shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned. “He came back here to prove the point, and he claims to have done so. … Anyway, he produced a few specks of gold dust, which he told me he’d shown to Secretary Deas Thomson.”

Justin’s interest was suddenly kindled. “Did he tell where he found the dust?”

“Beyond saying it was in the Macquarie River area, he didn’t. He’s hoping for financial reward from the government. That was why he went to see Thomson, from whom—”

“From whom,” Justin put in, “he received no encouragement?”

Johnny eyed him thoughtfully. “Exactly so. How did you guess, sir?”

“Because,” Justin answered, “more years ago than I care to remember, Rick Tempest and I found alluvial gold at Pengallon when we were in partnership there… .” Memory stirred, and he recalled vividly the events that had followed their discovery.

Rick had found the nuggets in the riverbank, but within hours of his having done so, the two of them had been subjected to a murderous attack by a gang of convict escapers. Rick had been shot and severely wounded before help had arrived.

“We reported our find to Governor Macquarie,” Justin added. “And as I had anticipated—and repeatedly warned Rick—His Excellency very wisely insisted that it was not to be made public. He had the terms of our lease altered, so as to exclude mineral rights in it for twenty years.” He frowned, hearing again in memory Lachlan Macquarie’s voice and seeing, too, the dismay that had been mirrored in the Governor’s face when he had been informed of Rick’s discovery.

“God in heaven!” he had exclaimed. “If word of this should be allowed to spread, the consequences could be disastrous! The convicts could not be controlled. There would be mass escapes, and every escaper would be up in the mountains, in the new grazing lands, searching for gold. And not only the convicts—free men, too, the settlers, men of the garrison. The colony would swiftly become ungovernable… . The people would starve if they were permitted to sounder the bounties of nature in a wild quest for gold. I cannot run the risk of it. “

Those who had followed Governor Macquarie at the helm of the colony’s destiny had shared this view, Justin reminded himself—and rightly so. He started to enlarge on the subject but then broke off, realizing that Johnny—a well-informed journalist—needed no convincing.

“They all kept quiet concerning the possibility of a gold find here, Dad. Brisbane, Darling, Gipps—Strzelecki found gold-bearing quartz near Hartley, and Sir George Gipps swore him to silence, and he did the same when the parson William Clarke went prospecting along Cox’s River and the

Wollondilly. And then there was that shepherd, the fellow they called Old Yorky—Hargraves knew about him; he admitted as much. In fact, I suspect he headed for the creek where Yorky’s hut used to be, when he started his search. It’s near Guyong, where he told me he stayed—he’s a friend of the widow Lister, who keeps the hostelry there. And there’s no doubt that Yorky did light on a sizable nugget.” Johnny shrugged in a resigned gesture. “Dad, I fear it will not be possible to keep quiet about the gold any longer, whatever Deas Thomson said or whatever Governor Fitzroy tries to do. Hargraves isn’t going to be easily silenced, and besides, he’s not the only man who’s come back here from California. They’re returning in droves … and they’re not the best of characters, some of them. It’s said that the authorities in San Francisco threw them out.”

Justin inclined his head in agreement. “You’re right, Johnny. I had occasion to board one of their vessels this forenoon—the brig Banshee, registered in ‘Frisco. The owner appeared to be a gentleman—he claimed to have been a major in the British Army—but the bunch he had with him was a singularly unpleasant lot. Two of them had served time on Norfolk Island, and they all had come from the Californian diggings. The major—I believe he said his name was Lewis—told me that he had struck it rich in the American fields. But he was evasive concerning his reasons for coming here.”

“I wonder whether he knows Edward Hargraves,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “I gathered, from what Hargraves said to me, that he talked pretty freely to anyone who would listen when he was at the Californian diggings. It seems he was convinced before he left Sydney that the country in the Macquarie Valley was gold-bearing, and that he went to California only to prove his theory—and now he reckons he’s done so.”

Justin regarded his son anxiously over the rim of his glass. “Is the Herald likely to print his story?”

“Not yet,” Johnny answered. “I’m to investigate further. I suggested to Mr. Hargraves that he should take me to where he made his discovery, but he wasn’t at all keen on that suggestion—even when I offered him a guarantee of complete secrecy. I think he’ll wait until he knows how the Governor reacts when Deas Thomson passes on his letter. Not to put too fine a point on it, Dad, but Hargraves is looking for financial reward and maybe some sort of government appointment. Unlike the British major you speak of, he barely covered his expenses in California and his passage home. If there is gold in our Blue Mountains, he wants the credit for having found it.”

“But you intend to investigate further?”

Johnny’s tanned face lit with a boyish grin.

“I aim to, yes, and the paper’s keen that I do. Hargraves let slip that he has a couple of lads sniffing around the creeks in the Macquarie Valley—young Lister and a boy named William Tom. Hargraves showed them how to pan for gold. They constructed what he calls a cradle rocker, on the Californian pattern, before he left them. And he seemed quite certain that they would find enough gold to convince the government.”

“Does he know what you’re proposing to do?” Justin asked. He set his glass down, conscious of a feeling of deep dismay at the prospect of Hargraves’s discovery being confirmed. Like Governor Macquarie all those years ago, he feared the consequences of such a discovery. When he put his anxieties into words, Johnny gravely nodded his agreement.

“I know, sir, and I hope to heaven Hargraves is wrong! Indeed, I’ll do all I can to disprove his claim. To judge by the situation brought about in California, a gold rush is the last thing we want here.” Johnny hesitated. “I’d planned to start for Guyong tomorrow, but … there’s Mam. I’ve been away for only a couple of weeks, but I—Dad, I was shocked to see the difference in her even in that time. Did Dr. Munro —” He gulped. “Did he say—”

Justin caught his breath on an unhappy sigh. The boy had noticed, of course; it was inevitable that he would—and Jenny, too. He could not keep the sad truth from them; they both had a right to know, little as he relished telling them. He shrank from admitting it to himself, but … “Munro says that there’s nothing more he can do for her, Johnny,

except try to relieve her pain. It’s—oh, devil take it, lad, it’s just a matter of time, he says.”

“Did he give you any idea of how much time?” Johnny demanded, tightlipped.

Justin shook his head. “He cannot tell. It could be weeks; it might be longer.”

“I hope to God Red gets here in time!”

“That’s my hope, too, Johnny.” Red’s letter, the fact that he was on his way—he must have sailed by now—had given Jessica such joy that perhaps … “I think she will find the strength to hold on until Red returns. I pray to God that He will give her that strength. It would mean everything in the world to her to see him again.”

“Yes, I know.” Johnny was silent for a long moment, avoiding his father’s gaze. “Do you think I ought to go to Guyong tomorrow, Dad? I’d have to be away for at least a week, ten days maybe. And I’d not want to leave her if—I mean if Mam needs me, I—” Again he hesitated. “Does she know?”

“Munro didn’t tell her,” Justin replied, his throat tight. “He made a point of it, but— God, Johnny, I believe she knows. But for all our sakes, she’ll never admit it, thinking to spare us. So you had better make your trip to Guyong, otherwise your mother might think it strange. I’ll tell Jenny— she’ll be here—and if it should be necessary, I will send for you.”

“Very well, sir.” Again Johnny lapsed into silence, and Justin rose, busying himself with the task of replenishing both their glasses, his thoughts such that he could not share them, even with his son.

Johnny broke the silence, deliberately introducing a change of subject. “Red said in his letter that he would be giving passage to a naval engineer, who’s to take over command of your dockyard, didn’t he, Dad?”

“Yes, I think he did,” Justin confirmed, his voice without expression.

“Will you mind?”

“Mind? No, not in the least.” Justin shrugged. “Mine was only a temporary command. Officially I’m on the retired list.” And it was true, he reflected—he did not mind. He minded nothing now, in the face of Jessica’s tragic illness, and in many ways it would be a relief to hand over the administration of the new naval dockyard. Damn it, he thought irritably, he was a seaman, not a—what had Red called his passenger?—a new breed of officer, a naval engineer, a steamship man. “I shall welcome it, Johnny,” he added with more feeling than he had intended to reveal.

“You have never been truly ambitious, have you, Dad?” Johnny suggested. “I mean, you were never a glory hunter.”

“What makes you think so?” Justin challenged, genuinely surprised. “I held a command at sea for most of my adult life. That was all I ever aspired to or wanted, to be honest. And my commands were all here, for which I consider myself fortunate—Their Lordships might well have appointed me to a ship on the India station or even the Mediterranean or the Channel Fleet.” Like Red, he thought, all his service might have been spent twelve thousand miles from his home, but as it was, Their Lordships had left him in Australia, probably because they had granted him his commission reluctantly and … His mouth tightened. Because the son of emancipated convicts would have proved an embarrassment to them. But Red, as the third generation—and with Admiral Stirling as his patron—had been freed of the stigma, and, his father reflected proudly, he had made a fine career.

“You could have been Governor of South Australia,” Johnny asserted with a certain belligerence. “If you wanted to—you were there with Colonel Light, the surveyor general. And I swear that you would have made a better job of it than Sir John Hindmarsh and the resident commissioner— what was his name?”

“Fisher,” Justin supplied. “But Captain Hindmarsh was a most distinguished naval officer, Johnny, with a record second to none.”

“Even so,” Johnny argued, unperturbed, “he made an appalling hash of his governorship. And after Colonel Napier refused the appointment, you were under consideration, weren’t you?”

That was so, Justin was forced to concede, although he doubted whether the British Colonial Office would have

sanctioned his appointment. In any case, like Captain Hindmarsh, he had not been able to see eye to eye with the South Australia Company’s resident commissioner. The endless quarrels over where the new state capital of Adelaide was to be sited, the confusion of land sales to the newly arrived settlers, and the fact that convict labor was barred from the colony—all this had exhausted his patience and strained his tolerance to its limit.

Johnny, Justin saw, was eyeing him in mute expectation, and he said with emphasis, “For the Lord’s sake, lad, I was well out of that appointment! Colonel Light had sound plans, and I concurred with everything he proposed. But it’s a sad fact that every new settlement in this country suffers when convict labor is excluded. Free settlers can’t be counted on to work at arduous tasks such as building roads —aye, and houses, too—or agricultural development. The first free settlers to arrive in South Australia expected to find labor readily available, and Hindmarsh had to have seamen from the Buffalo construct shelter for them!” Indeed, Justin recalled, it had taken fifteen years—and the arrival from Germany of Lutheran exiles who were willing to work—for South Australia to reach a reasonably sound financial footing.