just before a heavy rain set in and
washed out every track as clean as a whistle.

Nothing in that year could keep people's thoughts long away from the
diggings, which was just as well for us. Everything but the gold was
forgotten after a week. If the harbour had dried up or Sydney town been
buried by an earthquake, nobody would have bothered themselves about
such trifles so long as the gold kept turning up hand over hand the way
it did. There seemed no end to it. New diggings jumped up every day,
and now another big rush broke out in Port Phillip that sent every one
wilder than ever.

Starlight and us two often used to have a quiet talk about Melbourne.
We all liked that side of the country; there seemed an easier chance of
getting straight away from there than any part of New South Wales, where
so many people knew us and everybody was on the look-out.

All kinds of things passed through our minds, but the notion we liked
best was taking one of the gold ships bodily and sailing her away to a
foreign port, where her name could be changed, and she never heard
of again, if all went well. That would be a big touch and no mistake.
Starlight, who had been at sea, and was always ready for anything out of
the way and uncommon, the more dangerous the better, thought it might be
done without any great risk or bother.

'A ship in harbour,' he said, 'is something like the Ballabri bank. No
one expects anything to happen in harbour, consequently there's no watch
kept or any look-out that's worth much. Any sudden dash with a few good
men and she'd be off and out to sea before any one could say "knife".'

Father didn't like this kind of talk. He was quite satisfied where we
were. We were safe there, he said; and, as long as we kept our heads, no
one need ever be the wiser how it was we always seemed to go through the
ground and no one could follow us up. What did we fret after? Hadn't
we everything we wanted in the world--plenty of good grub, the best of
liquor, and the pick of the countryside for horses, besides living among
our own friends and in the country we were born in, and that had the
best right to keep us. If we once got among strangers and in another
colony we should be 'given away' by some one or other, and be sure to
come to grief in the long run.

Well, we couldn't go and cut out this ship all at once, but Jim and I
didn't leave go of the notion, and we had many a yarn with Starlight
about it when we were by ours