Somers gave him his hand, and Jack clasped it fast, drawing the smaller man to him and putting his arm round his shoulders and holding him near to him. It was a tense moment for Richard Lovat. He looked at the dark sea, and thought of his own everlasting gods, and felt the other man's body next to his.
"Well now," he said in Somers' ear, in a soothed tone. "There's quite a number of us in Sydney—and in the other towns as well—we're mostly diggers back from the war—we've joined up into a kind of club—and we're sworn in—and we're sworn to obey the leaders, no matter what the command, when the time is ready—and we're sworn to keep silent till then. We don't let out much, nothing of any consequence, to the general run of the members."
Richard listened with his soul. Jack's eager, conspirator voice seemed very close to his ear, and it had a kind of caress, a sort of embrace. Richard was absolutely motionless.
"But who are your leaders?" he asked, thinking of course that it was his own high destiny to be a leader.
"Why, the first club got fifty members to start with. Then we chose a leader and talked things over. And then we chose a secretary and a lieutenant. And every member quietly brought in more chaps. And as soon as we felt we could afford it, we separated, making the next thirty or so into a second club, with the lieutenant for a leader. Then we chose a new lieutenant—and the new club chose a secretary and a lieutenant."
Richard didn't follow all this lieutenant and club business very well. He was thinking of himself entering in with these men in a dangerous, desperate cause. It seemed unreal. Yet there he was, with Jack's arm round him. Jack would want him to be his "mate." Could he? His cobber. Could he ever be mate to any man?
"You sort of have a lot of leaders. What if one of them let you down?" he asked.
"None of them have yet. But we've arranged for that."
"How?"
"I'll tell you later. But you get a bit of the hang of the thing, do you?"
"I think so. But what do you call yourselves? How do you appear to the public?"
