One night towards the end of October I had lost all my money at the gambling school, although Moleskin had twice given me a stake to retrieve my fallen fortunes. I left the shack, went out into the darkness, a fire in my head and emptiness in my heart. Around me the stark mountain peaks rose raggedly against the pale horns of the anæmic moon. Outside the whisky store a crowd of men stood, dark looks on their faces, and the wild blood of mischief behind. Inside each shack a dozen or more gamblers sat cross-legged in circles on the ground, playing banker or brag, and the clink of money could be heard as it passed from hand to hand. Above them the naphtha lamps hissed and spluttered and smelt, the dim, sickly light showed the unwashed and unshaven faces beneath, and the eager eyes that sparkled brightly, seeing nothing but the movements of the game. Down in the cuttings men were labouring on the night-shift, gutting out the bowels of the mountain places, and forcing their way through the fastness steadily, slowly and surely. I could hear the dynamite exploding and shattering to pieces the rock in which it was lodged. The panting of weary hammermen was loud in the darkness, and the rude songs which enlivened the long hours of the night floated up to me from the trough of the hills.
I took my way over the slope of the mountain, over the pigmies who wrought beneath, fighting the great fight which man has to wage eternally against nature. Down in the cuttings I could see my mates toiling amidst the broken earth, the sharp ledges of hewn rock, and the network of gang-planks and straining derricks that rose all around them. The red glare of a hundred evil-smelling torches flared dismally, and over the sweltering men the dark smoke faded away into the rays of the pallid moon. With the rising smoke was mingled the steam of the men's bent shoulders and steaming loins.
Above and over all, the mystery of the night and the desert places hovered inscrutable and implacable. All around the ancient mountains sat like brooding witches, dreaming on their own story of which they knew neither the beginning nor the end. Naked to the four winds of heaven and all the rains of the world, they had stood there for countless ages in all their sinister strength, undefied and unconquered, until man, with puny hands and little tools of labour, came to break the spirit of their ancient mightiness.
