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where he became the overseer of a large sugar factory. There, not only did he learn the hard way, after a couple of mutinies, how to administer large gangs of indentured Indian labor, but he also taught himself how to mend recalcitrant machinery. Then in 1852 a ship had arrived at Port Louis with news of the discovery of gold in Australia, and his dreams of riches were triggered again. Entranced by wild tales of “immense fortunes made in a few days; of ingots of gold, weighing fifty and a hundred pounds,” Raynal gave up his job and bought passage on “an ill-found little brig” bound for Melbourne.
    Arriving at Port Philip in April 1853, he found Melbourne in a frenzy, with thousands of men desperate to get inland to the diggings. However, Raynal had the sense to realize that if he was to establish himself successfully, he should learn to speak English first. So he joined the crew of a steam packet that plied between Port Philip and Sydney, New South Wales, which should have been a good decision, as seamen were soscarce at the time that he should have been able to command a good wage. However, misfortune seemed to be his constant lot, as he brooded now from his crouched position by the campfire on Auckland Island.
    Within weeks the packet ship had been wrecked, and a miserable night of clinging to wreckage convinced him yet again that a life at sea was not for him. Rescued and put on shore in Melbourne, he headed for the diggings—to find that lack of English was the least of his problems. Digging and panning for gold was hard labor, worse than what the most hardened convicts endured. Raynal obstinately persevered. Like a half million other hopefuls, he wandered from one gold strike to another, dressed in the prospectors’ uniform of checked woolen shirt, breeches, knee-length boots, and a sunhat woven from stiff dried leaves—the ubiquitous “cabbage-tree hat” of the Australian goldfields. All his belongings were carried in a pack on his back; he worked out how to pitch a tent, and build a hut, and construct a stretcher if he did not want to sleep on the ground; when wet firewood wouldn’t catch, he learned how to make a pair of bellows so he could get his mutton cooked. Sheep were abundant on the goldfields, and kangaroos could be turned into stew, but otherwise he had been forced to rely on an indigestible damper made out of water and flour.
    He learned to become a good shot—not just to kill game for dinner but for self-defense too. Because this was the so-called golden age of Australian bush ranging, Raynal, like most of the men on the goldfields, carried a revolver and a double-barreled shotgun. That was the same gun that was out of reach—back in his chest on the wrecked schooner, he thought now, and with that reminder of their situation, he was gripped by a terriblesick panic: “How and when should I escape from this island, hidden in the midst of the seas, and lying beyond the limits of the inhabited world? Perhaps, never! A violent despair overmastered me,” he wrote later. “I felt my heart swell; I was almost suffocated; tears which I could not restrain filled my eyes, and I wept like a child.”
    He was saved by his faith. François Raynal was a very pious man, having experienced a revelation his first night at sea, on December 23, 1844, at the age of just fourteen years and five months. As the land on the horizon disappeared, and “the limitless sea surrounded me; the celestial vault was for the first time displayed before my eyes in all its vastness; I was plunged everywhere into the Infinite.” Young François was overwhelmed with awe and wonder—“my soul was penetrated with a grave and solemn enthusiasm, the thought of the Supreme Being—of the Author and Lord of the universe—was present to my spirit.” Since then, his religion had been a constant support, and in this moment of crisis, just as many times in the