The Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard

Author:Katharine Susannah Prichard
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Opal mines and mining -- Australia -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2021-03-21T16:58:09+00:00

III

Ly­ing un­der the coole­bah at mid­day, after they had been bur­row­ing from the shaft for about a week, and Mi­chael was talk­ing of clear­ing mul­lock from the drives, Potch said:

“I’m go­ing to sink an­oth­er hole, Mi­chael—high­er up.”

Mi­chael glanced at him. It was un­usu­al for Potch to put a thing in that way, without a by-your-leave, or feel­er for ad­vice, or per­mis­sion; but he was not dis­turbed by his do­ing so.

“Right,” he said; “you sink an­oth­er hole, Potch. I’ll stick to this one for a bit.”

Potch began to break earth again next morn­ing. He chose his site care­fully, to the right of the one he had been work­ing on, and all the morn­ing he swung his heavy pick and shov­elled earth from the shaft he was mak­ing. He worked slowly, dog­gedly. When he came on sand­stone he had been three weeks on the job.

“Ought to be near bot­tom­ing, Potch,” Roy re­marked one day to­wards the end of the three weeks.

“Be there today,” Potch said.

Paul buzzed about the top of the hole, un­able to sup­press his im­pa­tience, and call­ing down the shaft now and then.

Potch be­lieved so in this claim of his that his be­lief had raised a cer­tain amount of ex­pect­a­tion. His re­port, too, was go­ing to make con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ence to the field. The Crosses had done pretty well: they had cut out a pock­et worth £400 as a res­ult of their sink­ing, and it re­mained to be seen what Potch’s new hole would bring. A good pro­spect would make the new field, it was reckoned.

Potch’s pro­spect was dis­ap­point­ing, how­ever, and of no sen­sa­tion­al value when he did bot­tom; but after a few days he came on a streak or two of prom­ising col­ours, and Mi­chael left the first shaft they had sunk on the coole­bah to work with Potch in the new mine.

They had been on the new claim, with noth­ing to show for their pains, for nearly two months, the af­ter­noon Potch, who had been shift­ing opal dirt of a dark strain be­low the steel band on the south side of the mine, uttered a low cry.

“Mi­chael,” he called.

Mi­chael, gou­ging in a drive a few yards away, knew the mean­ing of that joy­ous vi­bra­tion in a man’s voice. He stumbled out of the drive and went to Potch.

Potch was hold­ing his spider off from a sur­face of opal his pick had clipped. It glittered, an eye of jet, with every light and star of red, green, gold, blue, and amethyst, leap­ing, dan­cing, and quiv­er­ing to­geth­er in the red earth of the mine. Mi­chael swore rev­er­ently when he saw it. Potch moved his candle be­fore the chipped corner of the stones which he had worked round suf­fi­ciently to show that a knobby of some size was em­bed­ded in the wall of the mine.

“Looks a beaut, doesn’t she, Mi­chael?” he gasped.

Mi­chael breathed hard.

“By God—” he mur­mured.

Paul, hear­ing the mur­mur of their voices, joined them.

He screamed when he saw the stone.

“I knew!” he yelled. “I knew we’d strike it here.”

“Well, stand back while I get her out,” Potch cried.

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