"I order all persons who do not intend to take the oath,
to leave the meeting at once.
"Let all divisions under arms 'fall in' in their order
round the flag-staff."
The movement was made accordingly. Some five hundred armed diggers advanced
in real sober earnestness, the captains of each division making the military
salute to Lalor, who now knelt down, the head uncovered, and with the
right hand pointing to the standard exclaimed a firm measured tone:
"WE SWEAR BY THE SOUTHERN CROSS TO STAND TRULY BY EACH OTHER,
AND FIGHT TO DEFEND OUR RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES."
An universal well rounded AMEN, was the determined reply; some five hundred
right hands stretched towards our flag.
The earnestness of so many faces of all kinds of shape and colour;
the motley heads of all sorts of size and hair; the shagginess of so many
beards of all lengths and thicknesses; the vividness of double the number
of eyes electrified by the magnetism of the southern cross; was one of those
grand sights, such as are recorded only in the history of
'the Crusaders in Palestine.'
Chapter XXXVIII.
Un Bon Calcio, E La Canaglia,
Stronga Va Come La Paglia.
The drill afterwards was gone through with eagerness.
Another scene, though of a different kind all together, was going on
at a corner of the above picture.
Judas Iscariot, 'Goodenough,' was among us, in the garb of a fossiker;
he appeared to me, then, to be under the influence of drink;
so Vandemonian-like were his shouts about standing up and fighting for rights
and liberties; and burning down the camp in a blaze like the late Eureka Hotel.
