“Sleepe after toyle, Port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre,
Death after life,
Doth greatly please.”
Spenser’s “Fa?rie Queene.”
 "I
T was there he fell, boss. He struck right on top of them gibbers (stones). I caught at him, and fell too,—there’s the mark where I struck the mud by the broken stem of that cooliebar there.”
 
It is Billy who is speaking, as, with tears in his eyes, and his affectionate heart overflowing with genuine 339 grief, he looks up at the rugged cliffs and points out to Claude and Williams the place where Dyesart met with his fatal fall.
 
On the ninth day out from Murdaro the expedition has reached the long blue line of gum-trees, towards which it has been toiling since daybreak across the desert plain. And here, at no great distance from the little water-hole, near which the horses are now being unsaddled by the rest of the party, Claude pays a first visit to the lonely mound where, beneath a protecting cairn of stones and tree-stems, his explorer-uncle has begun his long, well-earned rest. As the young man stands there in the scanty shade of she-oaks and box-trees, a thousand solemn thoughts gather around him. What strange power is it that has seemed to guard and guide his footsteps so far in the fulfilment of his appointed task? Will it pilot him to the end? And what is to be the climax of this journey? By Claude’s side is Don, who has filled out wonderfully since our hero found him a little waif upon the Sydney streets. The boy, not having been enlightened as to his parentage, still bears his old name, and Angland making more of a companion of him since Billy’s discovery, has noticed with delight that the youth, who by a strange procession of circumstances seems likely to become his brother-in-law some day, is developing a kindly disposition and an engaging manner.
 
Billy now arrives and unearths a small tin box, the contents of which Claude feels much tempted to investigate forthwith; but, acting on Williams’s advice, he postpones the operation, and determines to make the most of what remains of the day in searching for the supposed mine at the “Golden Cliffs,”—which our 340 readers will remember as being set down upon the secret map discovered by Angland on the back of his uncle’s posthumous communication. About two miles from the grave there rises, white and weird against the violet sky, a barren, isolated mountain, or rather a collection of rugged peaks. And thither, across the red, rock-strewn plain,—bounded by a phantom sea of desert mirage,—the white men and Billy proceed, and, having traversed the gentle slope that rises from the dried-up course of the river to the hill, they now stand beneath the shadow of the rocks.
 
“And you carried my uncle all the way to the water, over those gibbers, without once putting him down!” Claude exclaims, as he stands wiping the moisture from his forehead at the summit of the boulder-strewn glacis that surrounds the mount, and hears once more the story of the accident. “Why, you were hurt yourself!”
 
“When I carry the doctor I pikaued (Anglicé, carried) all I cared about in the world. ’Spose that made it easy,” Billy replies simply, and leaning his head upon his arms against a rock, he allows his exuberance of emotion caused by the painful remembrance to wash itself away in tears.
 
As Angland regards the weeping black he cannot but feel half ashamed of his own want of feeling. “Surely this is rather incongruous,” he thinks, “that Billy, who after all is only an aboriginal servant of the dead man, should thus appropriate the position of chief mourner, whilst I can look on with only a strange, solemn feeling in my heart, and certainly with dry eyes. But it seems all like a dream to me. Of course, however, with Billy it’s very different.”
 
341
 
Williams calls at this instant and disturbs the young man’s meditations.
 
“Look here, Mr. Angland!” The old miner’s short, thick thumb points to a copy of the secret map which he holds in his toil-worn hands.
 
“Here’s where we’ve got to go; follow the dotted line. Right up the gully there.” The old man points to a narrow opening in the side of the hill, not far from where they are standing.
 
“Yes, but we must find out where this place marked by the cross is, Williams,—the point of departure, you know.”
 
“It’s here, lad. The doctor knew the boy’d lead us to where the accident happened; and see, there’s the gully. A storm creek running from some hollow in the hill I take it to be.”
 
Billy meanwhile observes what is going on with some considerable surprise, for this is the first inkling he has received of the existence of a map of the hill—so carefully had Dyesart apparently guarded the secret that he wished only to reach his sister’s child.
 
The men now move on again, Williams leading, and enter a dark, gloomy defile, the walls of which, rising to a height of some eighty feet, are composed of rain-furrowed masses of hard, grey mud. Enormous flakes and slabs of transparent gypsum protrude from the sun-dried mass in places, and some of these, catching the rays of the afternoon sun, blaze and scintillate like gems of priceless value. The gorge is, in fact, just what Williams has termed it, a storm creek, and the dark cliffs of hardened clay on either hand are formed of débris which has washed down from an open basin or depression in the centre of the mount.
 
342
 
After following the watercourse upwards for two or three hundred yards, Claude and his companions find themselves in a great, crater-like valley, about three hundred yards across, grey and blasted, a picture of desolation. On all sides rise the sun-scarred domes of mud-springs of various sizes, some of which are twenty feet in height, but all appear non-active; in consequence, no doubt, of the long drought. Around the valley, across which Williams proceeds to lead the way, stopping here and there to consult his map or examine a stone, is an encircling, battlemented array of strangely weird and broken cliffs, some three hundred feet in height, of a hard, flinty rock, varying in colour from light red to pure white. At intervals along the scarped and tortured summit of the precipices strange, turret-headed peaks rise like giant sentries posted upon the heights to guard its sacred loneliness, and these, as the sun lowers in the heavens, cast protracted shadows over the silent, ghastly valley below. In many places heaps of honey-combed boulders of a kind of quartzite, which have fallen from the overhanging cliffs, form slopes that reach halfway up the walls of this wild-looking amphitheatre, and here and there the explorers have to turn to avoid the mysterious openings of vast, ancient fumaroles, whose orifices and walls are grandly blotched with black, purple, and Indian-red incrustations.
 
At last Williams comes to a halt where numerous nodules of ironstone-clay litter the ground, and, turning towards Claude, places his hand upon the young man’s shoulder, and whispers in a mysterious and impressive manner “that them’s the ‘Golden Cliffs.’”
 
343
 
Stretching across the valley, and apparently barring further progress in that direction, is a dark mass of brown and purple rock, which Claude can see differs in many respects from the material of which the other cliffs already passed are composed.
 
But why “golden”? There seems nothing, as far as he can judge, to make the sombre pile—which appears to be some kind of ironstone deposit—worthy of the auriferous title bestowed upon it on the map. Claude’s heart sinks within him. He knows what a gold-bearing reef is like; he has seen plenty in New Zealand, and some also about Cairns and Mount Silver, but there is no trace of a reef here. But perhaps Williams has made a mistake. The map is examined and re-examined with the sole result of proving that the old miner has guided his companions correctly. Then Claude begins, for the first time since he started, to feel that he has been somewhat rash in going to all this trouble, risk, and expense when after all the mysterious message from his uncle may have been only the result of the feverish promptings of a brain disordered by accident, and at the same time haunted with the desire to leave something behind for that loved sister from whom he had been estranged so long.
 
Neither can our young friend gather any comfort from either of his companions, who, although far more experienced than he is with rocks and minerals, seem also puzzled and disappointed. But happy is the man who, under adverse circumstances, can gather fresh stores of energy and strength such as now come to relieve Angland from the desponding frame of mind into which the frowning, barren rocks have 344 plunged him for the moment. The memory of a loving, girlish face comes like a peaceful messenger of hope to cheer yet softly chide the heart that fails when it should be strong for her sake. And Claude remembers that, however barren his journey through the desert may prove in other ways, the strange message from the dead has been the cause of his meeting Glory, at any rate, and a deep feeling of thankfulness makes his heart glow with renewed determination and courage.
 
At the foot of the cliffs Williams and Billy are closely examining the rocks. The former, breaking off chips with a short-handled prospecting pick, bends now and again to observe a likely fragment with a pocket-lens; whilst close by the black boy is at work shovelling up the sandy soil from between the fallen fragments of stone with the blade of his tomahawk, winnowing the same cleverly from hand to hand for the canary-coloured particles of heavy metal, that, judging from the sulky look of the operator, have not yet come to reward his busy efforts.
 
“What do you make of it?” Williams turns to Angland at the question, and, carefully pocketing his lens, stands looking up at the cliff with his arms akimbo.
 
“Well I’m blowed if I know, to tell you straight, Mr. Angland. I don’t see nary a colour. Fact is, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” As the old man speaks he affectionately pats a boulder by his side. For just as an M.R.C.S. loves to meet an interesting and complicated case of human infirmity, to correctly diagnose which will redound to his credit in the scientific world, so does old Williams, enthusiastic345 prospector and geologist that he is, feel quite a warm regard for this strange mass of rock whose hidden secrets it is now his business to unravel.
 
“It might be a big kind of gozzen out-crop,—the rock’s got a lot of iron in it, there’s no doubt about that. An old mate of mine used to say,—
 
“‘Es thut kein gang so gut
Er hat einen eisernen hut.’
He was a German, but a good miner for all that, and quite right about an ‘iron hat,’ for them’s the best reefs. But,” Williams goes on as he heaves a sigh, “blest if this is a real gozzen out-crop either. And, moreover, it ain’t likely-looking to my thinking.”
 
“Well, it can’t be helped,” says Claude, watching the stalwart old miner’s face with some amusement as he stands rubbing his stubby chin, and screwing up his mouth and eyebrows, like some art-critic engaged in reviewing an enormous piece of sculpture. “I’ll carry out the instructions in the letter, and if it all turns out to be nothing,—well, I can’t help it.”
 
Both men hear a shout at this instant, and Billy, who has climbed up the cliff a little way, is seen waving excitedly to the white men, and calling to them to follow him to his elevated perch. Claude is not long in scrambling up, but he has to descend again to assist Williams, whose knees are getting a bit stiff with age, although the muscles of his arms and shoulders are as good as ever. Arrived at Billy’s post of vantage, the black proudly shows them a remarkable tunnel opening into the cliff: it has smooth, shiny walls, and is evidently not the result of human labour.
 
346
 
“Look!” the dark youth shouts, stooping and pointing to the floor of the cavern, upon which the winds of heaven have spread a thin covering of desert sand; “look!”
 
A compound exclamation of surprise and annoyance bursts from two pairs of lips, for there, stamped into the soft, yellow carpeting of silicious particles, are the marks of numerous human feet. Not those that wandering natives might have made, but boot-marks, and, what is worst of all, apparently quite fresh.
 
“Somebody been here afore us,” exclaims Williams. Claude simply looks downwards, and whistles a musical execration.
 
Billy, who stands behind, grins extensively as he sees the discomfited faces of his white companions, and hesitates for the best part of a minute before he proceeds to relieve their minds. Then he whispers huskily,&m............