The three started the next morning at six, duly invested with their swags. Before they went they found Mrs. Henniker up, with hot tea, boiled beef, and damper. 'Just one drop at starting,--for the good of the house,' said Mick, apologetically. Whereupon the whisky was brought, and Mick insisted on shouting for it out of his own pocket. They had hardly gone a mile out of Nobble before Maggott started a little difficulty,--merely for the purpose of solving it with a master's hand. 'There ain't to be no misters among us, you know.' 'Certainly not,' said Caldigate. 'My name's Mick. This chap's name's Dick. I didn't exactly catch your'n. I suppose you've been kursened.' 'Yes;--they christened me John.' 'Ain't it never been Jack with you?' 'I don't think it ever was.' 'John! It do sound lackadaisical. What I call womanish. But perhaps it's for the better. We have such a lot of Jacks. There's dirty Jack, and Jack the nigger, and Jack Misery,--that's poor Jack Brien;--and a lot more. Perhaps you wouldn't like not another name of that sort.' 'Well; no,--unless it's necessary.' 'There ain't another John about the place, as I know. I never knew a John down a mine,--never. We'll try it, anyhow.' And so that was settled. As it happened, though Dick Shand had always been Dick to his friend, Caldigate had never, as yet, been either John or Jack to Dick Shand. There are men who fall into the way of being called by their Christian names, and others who never hear them except from their own family. But before the day was out, Caldigate had become John to both his companions. 'It don't sound as it ought to do;--not yet,' said Mick, after he had tried it about a dozen times in five minutes. Before the day was over it was clear that Mick Maggott had assumed the mastery. When three men start on an enterprise together, one man must be 'boss.' Let the republic be as few as it may one man must be president. And as Mick knew what he was about, he assumed the situation easily. The fact that he was to receive wages from the others had no bearing on the subject at all. Before they got to Ahalala, Caldigate had begun to appreciate all this, and to understand in part what they would have to do during this month, and how they would have to live. It was proposed that they should at once fix on a spot,--'peg out a claim,' on some unoccupied piece of ground, buy for themselves a small tent,--of which they were assured that they would find many for sale,--and then begin to sink a hole. When they entered Ahalala, Caldigate was surprised to find that Mick was the most tired of the three. It is always so. The man who has laboured from his youth upwards can endure with his arms. It is he who has had leisure to shoot, to play cricket, to climb up mountains and to handle a racket, that can walk. 'Darned if you ain't better stuff than I took you for,' said Mick, as the three let the swags down from their backs on the veranda of Ridley's hotel at Ahalala.