Ralph Devenish sat up smoking for an hour when the bottle was empty and his companion gone. He was much the more temperate man of the two, but patience was not one of his virtues, though it had become a necessity of his protracted suit. That only left him with less than ever for the ordinary incidents of life, and his experience as a digger had not made Devenish more patient. He had been as lucky at the start as Dent had been unlucky. In these few weeks he had actually netted some three hundred pounds sterling, out of a chain of shallow workings whereby he and others had been tracing the Gravel Pits Lead down its course: only within the last day or two had the lead run into a drift of water which had flooded all the holes and completely damped Ralph's ardour. It was pronounced impossible to sink through this drift without the tiresome operation known as "puddling"; and that proved far too heroic a measure for Ralph Devenish, who was only happy when washing his two or three ounces a day. So one morning he was counting on making his three hundred up to five at least, and by the following night he had found out when the next ship sailed from Melbourne. It was at this juncture that Rackham brought word of a contrary turn in the affairs of Denis. The untimely news checked all Ralph's plans. He was not at all inclined to leave his rival with the ball at his feet, and nothing to stop him but the capricious persecution of a corrupt constabulary. Ralph might have blushed to put it so even to himself, but that was his actual attitude as he sat smoking into the small hours, and so Jewson stole in and found him in the end. Ralph was not startled; the steward was regularly the last abed; but now his boots were yellow with fresh dust, and the perspiration showered from his peaked cap as he took it off. "Where have you been?" asked Ralph, raising a morose face to stare. "I thought you might like an extra drop to-night," replied the steward, winking and grinning as he produced a bottle, "so I've been getting you another of these from where the lieutenant gets 'em. You don't do your fair share, Captain Devenish, sir, and you may want to when you've heard my little report." "Report of what?" asked Devenish. But the steward would only chuckle and shake a wicked skull until the grog was served out and the pair seated, pannikin to pannikin, on either side of the packing-case that did duty for a table. "I heard what you were talking about, you see," began Jewson, wiping the gray moustache from which the dye had almost disappeared. "You generally do." "And you generally know it, so where's the harm? But when I hear you talking about the second mate that was," continued the steward, showing a whole set of ill-fitting false teeth, "I do more than hear--I listen--and listen I will whenever I catch his cursed name!" "Well?" "Well, sir, it's right." "What's right?" "What the lieutenant was telling you. He's fallen on his feet this time. I've been to see."