Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/444

 trouser-pockets, mostly without being opened. A few only inspect their contents, and gaze for a second upon the crisp bank-notes and handful of silver. Some of the sums thus paid are not small—gangers and other minor officials receiving as much as twelve and thirteen shillings a day; the ordinary pick and shovel men, eight. Overtime is paid for extra, which swells the amount received. One payment for fencing sub-contractors exceeded eighty pounds. Sixteen hundred pounds, all in cash, came out of the superintendent's wallet that day.

I noticed the men for the most part to be under thirty, many of them almost boyish in appearance. They were cleanly in person, well dressed and neat for the work they have to do, well fed, and not uncomfortably lodged considering the mildness of the climate. One and all they show grand 'condition,' as is evidenced by the spread of shoulder, the development of muscle, with the lightness of flank observable in all. As to nationality they are pretty evenly divided; the majority are British, but an increasing proportion of native-born Australians is observable, I am told. With regard to pre-eminence in strength and staying power the home-bred English navvy chiefly bears the palm, though I also hear that the 'ringer' in the pick and shovel brigade is a Hawkesbury man, of Cornish parents, a total abstainer, and an exemplary workman.

With such a monthly outflow of hard cash over a restricted area, it may be imagined what a trade is driven by boarding-house keepers and owners of small stores. The single men take their meals at these rude restaurants, paying from 18s. to £1 per week. The married men live in tents or roughly-constructed huts in the 'camps' nearest to their work.

I fear me that on the day following pay-day, and perhaps some others, there is gambling and often hard drinking. The money earned by strenuous labour and strict self-denial during the month is often dissipated in forty-eight hours. The boarding-house keepers are popularly accused, rightly or wrongly, of illegally selling spirits. Doubtless in many instances they do so, to the injury of public morals and the impoverishment of the families of those who are unable to resist the temptation. A heavy penalty is always enforced when proof is afforded to the satisfaction of justice; but reliable evidence of this peculiar infraction of the law is