By the Great Horn Spoon!

For the first time ever, Jack and Praiseworthy throw their arms around each other, and Praiseworthy finally calls Jack “Jack,” not “Master Jack.” They stake their claim with posts, one of them being Praiseworthy’s tattered umbrella. For days, the pair work their claim, amassing more and more gold. They think of Arabella back in Boston, and how thrilled she’ll be when they hand her all this wealth. One night, Praiseworthy gazes into the fire he prepared, and wonders if Arabella is thinking of him—but ultimately chides himself.

One morning, word comes that Cut-Eye Higgins has broken out of his jailhouse, by pulling out the nails with his dental forceps. Praiseworthy doubts his near-hanging has taught him any lessons, but believes he’ll eventually meet his fate for a different crime. Meanwhile, after two weeks of arduous work, the pair’s mine is finally exhausted: They are richer by “eleven heavy pouches of gold dust—worth a fortune in San Francisco” (184). It is almost August 15, the date of Praiseworthy’s boxing match with the Mountain Ox in Hangtown. As the pair depart with their gold, Praiseworthy leaves his tattered umbrella staked into the ground by their exhausted claim.

At Hangtown, festive crowds await, and the streets are strung with bunting, as if for a national holiday. The Mountain Ox emerges from a restaurant, grinning confidently. This is Praiseworthy’s first glimpse of his opponent, and the champion of Grizzly Flats has “a neck like the stump of a tree” and a chest “as big around as a flour barrel” (186). The two opponents square off against each other. Remembering the book from Arabella’s library, and his long hours of shadowboxing, Praiseworthy easily dodges each of the Mountain Ox’s powerful but clumsy swings. Between these misses, Praiseworthy uses the strength he’s built up during his months of digging to pepper his opponent’s face with a steady stream of left jabs.

As the sun begins to set, Praiseworthy, who’s barely expended himself and remains untouched by a single blow, delivers a final right cross, which knocks out his weary opponent. The crowd goes wild: The “fair name” of Hangtown has been saved. Jack glows with pride, and almost pities the fallen brawler from Grizzly Flats.

Mindful that time is running out for Arabella to pay her debts, Jack and Praiseworthy board a coach for Sacramento City, where they can catch a steamboat to San Francisco. However, Praiseworthy, though always thinking of Arabella, finds himself thinking of Boston less and less. He wonders if Arabella would like to live in California, and considers what his life would be like if he weren’t a butler, “but that was unthinkable” (192).

In Sacramento, Jack and Praiseworthy board a steamship to San Francisco. The captain, who hopes to beat his own speed record, orders his engineers to stoke the boiler past its limit. Less than a mile from San Francisco’s Long Wharf, the boiler explodes, sinking the ship. Jack and Praiseworthy, weighed down by the bags of gold dust and four-shooters tied to their belts, must cut their belts loose to escape drowning. All the gold is lost, but as they pull themselves out of the water, penniless as the day they first arrived in California, they console themselves that they are at least alive and healthy. 

On the Long Wharf, Jack and Praiseworthy notice the Lady Wilma, eerily deserted of its captain and crew. They later learn that the crew deserted to dig for gold in the hills, but the cats from Peru are still there, and have been eating the ship’s food stores and breeding. There are kittens everywhere, and Jack puts one in his coat to take with him. Jack and Praiseworthy run into Mr. Azariah Jones, the Yankee trader, who tells them that over 200 ships sit rotting in the harbor, abandoned by their crews. He also says San Francisco is plagued by rats. Just recently, he auctioned off a cat for 15 dollars. This gives Jack an idea.

Telling Jones to announce a new auction, he and Praiseworthy return to the Lady Wilma with a couple of sacks. At the auction, bids for Jack and Praiseworthy’s cats go high, and they come away with almost 400 dollars. Walking along the Long Wharf to look for a ship that will take them home, Jack sees, to his amazement, Aunt Arabella and his two sisters Constance and Sarah, who have just gotten off a boat. After a tearful reunion, from which Praiseworthy stands back discreetly, Arabella tells them that, as soon as she read Jack’s farewell note about going to San Francisco, she sold her house in Boston.

When Sarah asks if Jack and Praiseworthy found any gold, Jack says they found plenty, but doesn’t explain further. Arabella asks Praiseworthy what became of his bowler, coat, and umbrella, and he says they’re gone. He proposes marriage to Arabella, and she tearfully accepts, adding, “I thought you’d never ask” (205). The couple discusses returning to the goldfields, which Arabella says will slowly become “a place for women and children” (205). Praiseworthy says he might take up the study of law, a calling for which he sees a bright future in this rough-hewn land. As the couple makes their plans for the future, walking arm in arm up the Long Wharf, Jack and his sisters beside them, “They looked very much like a family. They felt like a family. They were a family” (206).