t, and reached the Australian
Eldorado on Saturday at about noon. Approaching the field from the north,
they were bailed up on the edge of wide lagoon fringed with gum-trees and
scrub by a party of men on horseback.

'Halt!' cried the leader.

'What's the matter now?' said Mike.

'I demand all arms and ammunition you may have about you.'

'Then I'm hanged if you'll get them!'

'For the use of the forces of the republic of Victoria,' continued the
leader.

But we're goin' to join the rebels.'

'That's all right. You'll be given arms in the stockade. Peter Lalor has
been elected chief of the insurgents. I have his warrant here for my
action. Arms are badly needed. We can take no chances.'

The mates conferred, and after examining the warrant signed by the rebel
leader, resolved to comply with the demand.

'Has there been any fighting?' asked Jim.

'A bit of a shindy with the swaddies in Warrenheip Gully, and an attack
on the troopers at the Gravel Pits. Nothing really serious. The Imperial
troops were drawn up under arms at our big meeting on Bakery Hill on the
29th. The flag has been floated, the men have taken the oath under it,
and are now drilling within the stockade on Eureka.'

'We are none too soon.'

'Not a moment.'

The five men had only their revolvers and a stock of cartridges; these
they handed over to the emissary of the 'republican forces,' and
continued their journey with eager feet, greatly elated. Ballarat was at
this time the centre of the feverish interest the Victorian gold
discoveries had excited throughout the world. Men were digging fortunes
out of the prodigal earth with a turn of the hand. The Gravel Pits,
Golden Point, Bakery Hill, Specimen Hill, Canadian Hill, White Hills,
White Flat, and half a dozen other local rushes, were in the height of
their amazing prosperity; economists were gravely considering the
possibility of this tremendous output reducing gold to the status of a
base metal, and Main Road seethed with life.

Done's experiences on Forest Creek and at Jim Crow and Simpson's Ranges
had not prepared him for the stormy exuberance of Ballarat. This was the
largest, most populous, and most prosperous of all the fields. In a
little over two years' time the population of a large town had overrun
the Bush, swept the trees from the face of the earth, and had dug at and
torn and tortured the wide fields till the landscape resembled a great
cemetery where thousands of open gra