was known to his comrades as Long Jim. On hearing his mate's report he
had sunk heavily down on a log, and there he sat, a pannikin of raw
spirit in his hand, the tears coursing ruts down cheeks scabby with
yellow mud, his eyes glassy as marbles with those that had still to
fall.

He wept, not for the dead man, but for himself. This accident was the
last link in a chain of ill-luck that had been forging ever since he
first followed the diggings. He only needed to put his hand to a thing,
and luck deserted it. In all the sinkings he had been connected with, he
had not once caught his pick in a nugget or got the run of the gutter;
the "bottoms" had always proved barren, drives been exhausted without
his raising the colour. At the present claim he and his mates had toiled
for months, overcoming one difficulty after another. The slabbing, for
instance, had cost them infinite trouble; it was roughly done, too, and,
even after the pins were in, great flakes of earth would come tumbling
down from between the joints, on one occasion nearly knocking silly the
man who was below. Then, before they had slabbed a depth of three times
nine, they had got into water, and in this they worked for the next
sixty feet. They were barely rid of it, when the two adjoining claims
were abandoned, and in came the flood again--this time they had to fly
for their lives before it, so rapid was its rise. Not the strongest man
could stand in this ice-cold water for more than three days on end--the
bark slabs stank in it, too, like the skins in a tanner's yard--and
they had been forced to quit work till it subsided. He and another man
had gone to the hills, to hew trees for more slabs; the rest to the
grog-shop. From there, when it was feasible to make a fresh start, they
had to be dragged, some blind drunk, the rest blind stupid from their
booze. That had been the hardest job of any: keeping the party together.
They had only been eight in all--a hand-to-mouth number for a deep wet