as close together as the cells in a great honeycomb, and into the shafts and out of them bobbed hurrying, eager creatures.  The whirring of windlasses, the clatter of nail-keg buckets, the incessant calls, ‘Look up below!’ and the distinct ringing of hammer on anvil, blended into a quaint symphony of labour.  The swish, swish, swish, of the wet dirt in the cradle-hoppers and the rattling of the tailings thrown from the shovels providing an unvarying substratum of sound.  There were tents everywhere, large and small, dotting the distance, but clustering into a township of canvas to the right of the Creek, and over the scene floated a faint mirage, so that the whole field and all in it quivered in the warm ascending air, the gauzy effect aiding the idea of stagy unreality.

At the first sight of the lead Mike threw his hat into the air and cheered wildly.  Another party coming in were beating their jaded horses to a run, the men jumping beside the team mad with joy, shouting like maniacs.  On all hands were the waggons and drays unloading by tents not yet fully erected.  The men who were not busy at their claims or puddling, cradling or panning-off dishes by the creek, were breathlessly engaged upon the work of getting their canvas houses into order and be stowing their goods; newcomers passed unheeded, however boisterous.

‘Before tea we’ll have our pegs in here, Jim,’ said Mike joyfully.

They had been walking since two hours before daybreak, but elation possessed them to the exclusion of all thought of fatigue.  The sight of the field of action set Jim’s sinews twitching; he longed for the strife, and found some difficulty in restraining himself from running with the preceding party pell-mell on to the creek.  But he had nothing of the gold-seeker’s fever in his blood; the thought of amassing a fortune had merely occurred to him:  it was the free, strong, exhilarating life that stirred him most deeply.

Burton discovered an old acquaintance in a sooty blacksmith perspiring copiously over an open-air forge, and the mates left their swags in his tent and hastened to the high-walled, square tent occupied by the warden of the field to secure their licenses.  Here Jim had his first taste of officialdom in Australia, and he did not like it.  The tent was thronged with miners eager to secure their papers; they were met with cold-blooded intolerance by a class of officials often bred to their business in the infamous convict system, and now incapable of putting off their tyrannous insolence in the faces of free men.  Several foot police—­Vandemonians from the convict settlements—­were stationed in the tent to enforce the mandate of Commissioner McPhee, or any understrapper who might resent the impatience of a digger, and order him to be propelled into the open on the toe of a regulation boot.  The new hands bore the indignities carelessly, but the experienced diggers came up to the rough counter grimly and silently, conveying in their attitude Some suggestion of a reckoning almost due.  They under stood all the injustice and flagrant abuse the licenses implied, the new chums did not.