Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/99

Rh you told me the other day," he began very earnestly when we were fairly on our way. "I want you to tell me more about Australia and the life you lead there, if you will?"

"I'll tell you all I can with pleasure. But you ought to go and see the places and things for yourself. That's better than any telling. I wish I could take you up and carry you off with me now; away down to where you can make out the green islands peeping up out of the water, to port and starboard, like bits of the Garden of Eden gone astray and floated out to sea. I'd like you to smell the breezes that come off from them towards evening, to hear the "trades" whistling overhead, and the thunder of the surf breaking on the reef. Or at another time to get inside that selfsame reef and look down through the still, transparent water, at the rainbow-coloured fish dashing among the coral boulders, and into the most beautiful fairy grottoes the brain of man can conceive."

"Oh, it must be lovely! And to think I may live my life and never see these wonders. Please go on; what else can you tell me?"

"What more do you want to hear? There is the pick of every sort of life for you out there. Would you know what real excitement is? Then I shall take you to a new gold rush. You must imagine yourself setting off for the field, with your trusty mate marching step by step beside you, pick and shovel on your shoulders, and both resolved to make your fortunes in the twinkling of an eye. When you get there, there's the digger crowd, composed of every nationality. There's the warden and his staff, the police officers, the shanty keepers, the blacks, and dogs.

"There's the tented valley stretching away to right