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 hole. Then, one had
died of dysentery, contracted from working constantly in water up to
his middle; another had been nabbed in a manhunt and clapped into the
"logs." And finally, but a day or two back, the three men who completed
the nightshift had deserted for a new "rush" to the Avoca. Now, his pal
had gone, too. There was nothing left for him, Long Jim, to do, but to
take his dish and turn fossicker; or even to aim no higher than washing
over the tailings rejected by the fossicker.

At the thought his tears flowed anew. He cursed the day