as extraordinary that
he hadn't the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second
bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other
bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them.
He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the
last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a
sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a
deep shaft, and finding gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I'm
right off the line again.

'Old Pinter', Ballarat digger--his theory on second and other bottoms
ran as follows:--

'Ye see, THIS here grass surface--this here surface with trees an' grass
on it, that we're livin' on, has got nothin' to do with us. This here
bottom in the shaller sinkin's that we're workin' on is the slope to the
bed of the NEW crick that was on the surface about the time that men was
missin' links. The false bottoms, thirty or forty feet down, kin be said
to have been on the surface about the time that men was monkeys. The
SECON' bottom--eighty or a hundred feet down--was on the surface about
the time when men was frogs. Now----'

But it's with the missing-link surface we have to do, and had the
friends of the local departed known what Dave and Jim were up to they
would have regarded them as something lower than missing-links.

'We'll give out we're tryin' for the second bottom,' said Dave Regan.
'We'll have to rig a fan for air, anyhow, and you don't want air in
shallow sinkings.'

'And some one will come poking round, and look down the hole and see the
bottom,' said Jim Bently.

'We must keep 'em away,' said Dave. 'Tar the bottom, or cover it with
tarred canvas, to make it black. Then they won't see it. There's not
many diggers left, and the rest are going; they're chucking up the
claims in Log Paddock. Besides, I could get drunk and pick rows with the
rest and they wouldn't come near me. The farmers ain't in love with
us diggers, so they won't bother us. No man has a right to come poking
round another man's claim: it ain't ettykit--I'll root up that old
ettykit and stand to it--it's rather worn out now, but that's no matter.
We'll shift the tent down near the claim and see that no one comes
nosing round on Sunday. They'll think we're only some more second-bottom
lunatics, like Francea [the mining watchmaker]. We're going to get our
fortune out from under that old graveyard, Jim. Y