The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West

As a Commissioner of Goldfields, and Police Magistrate, in New South Wales, it is hardly necessary to say that Arnold Banneret’s pay was not conspicuously in advance of the necessaries of life. Necessaries which may be thus catalogued: a couple of decent ride-and-drive horses, a light, much-enduring buggy, clothes and books, boots and shoes, bread and butter, for half-a-dozen growing boys and girls—with an occasional trip to the seaside, and a regularly recurring doctor’s bill; while the Rev. Mr. Wilson’s quarterly accounts for the eldest boy’s board and tuition had also a knack of turning up inconveniently soon, as it appeared to paterfamilias, after his departure to school.

He was leaning against the corner of the police barrack, having just returned from a long official ride with Inspector Falcon, revolving the question of ways and means, or else the conflicting evidence in a knotty, complicated mining case, upon which he had reserved his decision. He had invested all the money he could spare (this was before the latest mining Act) in a promising claim, which had turned out worthless. His tradespeople, usually forbearing, had suddenly disclosed monetary pressure—requiring to be relieved by cash payment. Altogether, the outlook was overclouded—there was even a presage of storm and stress.

The Inspector had departed to dress for dinner, invited thereto by a wandering globe-trotter, known to his family in England. The Commissioner’s clerk, newly married, had gone home to his wife the moment the clock struck four—indeed, a few minutes earlier.

It was growing late; the minor officials had retired to their several quarters. His horse was finishing the corn which had been graciously ordered for him by the Inspector, and, strange to say, though in the centre of a populous goldfield, a feeling of loneliness and silence, almost oppressive, commenced to manifest itself.

He was about to bridle his horse, and depart for his home, a few miles distant from the goldfields ‘township’ of Barrawong, where ten thousand miners with their families, tradespeople, officials, and camp-followers generally, had made provisional homes, when his eye was attracted by a man at some distance, walking slowly towards him. A footsore tramp, evidently—‘remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.’ As he approached, Banneret’s experienced eye told him that the man before him had been ill—probably short of food—had broken down on the road, and was now straining every nerve to get to town, probably to be admitted into the Public Hospital, so often a haven of rest and refreshment to the invalid wayfarer. When the ‘traveller,’ as a nomadic labourer is termed in Australia, came up to the barrack, the Commissioner was shocked at his emaciated appearance and deathlike pallor. His hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes proclaimed a struggle with weakness, dangerously protracted. His patched and threadbare garments told a tale of want and absolute poverty, rare in this land of careless plenty and comparative extravagance. It appeared as if the succour might even now come too late, as to sailors stricken with that mysterious malady of the sea, which decimates long-exiled crews, landing them only to die, with the scent in their nostrils of the freshly turned loam. As he came within a few paces of the Commissioner, he staggered and almost fell. That official sprang forward and caught him by the arm. ‘Why, Jack Waters!’ he said—‘I should hardly have known you. What have you been doing to yourself?’