Page:The Eureka Stockade.djvu/94

84 keep under control, he hates humbug and all sort of yabber-yabber. His round head of tolerable size, is of German mould, for the earnestness of his forehead is corrected by the fullness of his cheeks, and a set of moustachios is the padlock of his mouth, whose key is kept safe in his head, and his heart is the turn-key. When his breast is full, and he must make it clean, its gall will burn wherever it falls, and set the place a blazing. To keep friends with such a cast of mind, whose motto is Nelson's, you must do your duty; never mind if you sink a shicer, bottom your shaft any how. You are his enemy if you are or play the flunky; he will call you a "thing," and has a decided contempt for "incapables." Hence, his energy was never abated, though the whole legion of Victorian red-tape wanted to dry his inkstand, and smother his lamp in gaol. That there are too many fools at large, he knows, because he has travelled half the world; what he cannot put up with, is their royal cant, religious bosh, Toorak small-beer, and first and foremost, their money-grubbing expertness. Hence, now and then, his ink turns sour, and thereby its vitriol burns stronger. The Times, of which he is the founder, is the Overseer of Ballaarat, and the Dolce far niente will not prosper.

Our literary prisoner was literally insulted, and could not look with enough contempt on all those accursed asses braying (at him) ''"The Times!" "The Times!"''

I felt for him very much, and joined conversation with him in French. I state it as a matter of fact, that there and then I had the presentiment that all the spies pointed me out there, and only there and then as his accomplice. Towards ten o'clock we were ordered to fall in, in four rows. Now the Camp officials and their myrmidons were in their glory. They came to number their prey, and mark out a score of heads to make an "example" of, for the better conduct of future generations. Unfortunately for my red hair, fizzing red beard, and fizzing red moustachios, my name was taken down after the armed ruffian and the anonymous scribbler, and followed by that of the nigger-rebel.

It was odious to see honourable, honest, hard-working men made the gazing stock of a parcel of pampered perverted fools, for the fun of "a change;" to gratify their contempt for the blue-shirt and thick-boots who had dared, mucky and muddy, to come out of their deep wet holes to hamper these gods of the land in their dog's game of licence-hunting!