Well, we'll do our share of yacker, mister," said a man named Dick
Scott.

"And I'll do mine. As soon as I am fit some of you must lend me a couple
of horses, and I'll ride down to the Bay.{*} I daresay I can get all
that we want there in the way of machinery without my going or sending
to Brisbane for it."

* The present city of Townsville, then always called "The
Bay," it being situated on the shores of Cleveland Bay.

On the following morning work was started by the six men, the landlord
of the public-house agreeing to cook for all hands for the first week,
while Grainger and the black boy (though the former was still very weak
from recurrent attacks of ague) tried numberless prospects from all
parts of the heaps of tailings. At the end of a week the miners began to
raise some very likely-looking stone! and Grainger, finding some jars
of muriatic acid among the stores belonging to the battery, made some
further tests of the tailings with results which gave him the greatest
satisfaction. He, however, said nothing about this to his new mates,
intending to give them a pleasant surprise later on in the week before
he left on his journey to the coast.

At six o'clock one evening, just as the men were returning from the
claim for supper, Jacky, the black boy, was seen coming along the track
at a fast canter. He had been out looking for some cattle belonging to
Jansen the landlord, which had strayed away among the ranges.

"What's the matter, Jacky?" asked the men, as the boy jumped off his
horse.

"I bin see him plenty feller Chinaman come along road. Altogether
thirty-one. Close to now--'bout one feller mile away, I think it."

CHAPTER III ~ JIMMY AH SAN

Consternation was depicted on the faces of the men. And they all began
to question Jacky at once, until Grainger appeared, and then the black
boy gave them farther particulars--the Chinamen, he said, were all on
foot, each man carrying two baskets on a stick, but there were also five
or six pack-horses loaded with picks, shovels, dishes, and other mining
gear.

"Curse the dirty, yaller-hided swine!" cried Dick Scott, turning
excitedly to Grainger. "What's to be done? They've come to rush the Flat
again; but, by thunder! I'll be a stiff 'un afore a Chow fills another
dish with wash-dirt on Connolly's Creek."

"And me, too!" "And me, too!" growled the others angrily, and Grainger,
as he looked at their set, determined faces, knew they would soon