The Golden Dream, Robert Michael Ballantyne [e books free to read .TXT] 📗

of quartz, the size of a hen's egg, in which rich lumps and veins of gold were embedded.

"May I niver!" shouted the Irishman, starting up, and throwing away his pipe in his excitement, "av it isn't a nugget. Hooray! where's the pick!"

Larry overturned the Chinaman, who sat in his way, darted into the tent for his pick and shovel, and in five minutes was a foot down into the earth.

He came upon a solid rock, however, much to his chagrin, a few inches further down.

"Faix I'll tell ye what I'll do," he said, as a new idea struck him, "I'll dig inside o' the tint. It 'll kape the sun an' the rain off."

This remark was made half to himself and half to Ah-wow, who, having gathered himself up, and resumed his pipe, was regarding him with as much interest as he ever regarded anything. As Ah-wow made no objection, and did not appear inclined to volunteer an opinion, Larry entered the tent, cleared all the things away into one corner, and began to dig in the centre of it.

It was fortunate that he adopted this plan: first, because the rainy season having now set in, the tent afforded him shelter; and secondly, because the soil under the tent turned out to be exceedingly rich--so much so, that in the course of the next few days he and the Chinaman dug out upwards of a thousand dollars.

But the rains, which for some time past had given indubitable hints that they meant to pay a long visit to the settlement, at last came down like a waterspout, and flooded Larry and his comrade out of the hole. They cut a deep trench round the tent, however, to carry off the water, and continued their profitable labour unremittingly.

The inside of the once comfortable tent now presented a very remarkable appearance. All the property of the party was thrust into the smallest possible corner, and Larry's bed was spread out above it; the remainder of the space was a yawning hole six feet deep, and a mound of earth about four feet high. This earth formed a sort of breast-work, over which Larry had to clamber night and morning in leaving and returning to his couch. The Chinaman slept in his own little tent hard by.

There was another inconvenience attending this style of mining which Larry had not foreseen when he adopted it, and which caused the tent of our adventurers to become a sort of public nuisance. Larry had frequently to go down the stream for provisions, and Ah-wow being given to sleep when no one watched him, took advantage of those opportunities to retire to his own tent; the consequence was, that strangers who chanced to look in, in passing, frequently fell headlong into the hole ere they were aware of its existence, and on more than one occasion Larry returned and found a miner in the bottom of it with his neck well-nigh broken.

To guard against this he hit upon the plan of putting up a cautionary ticket. He purchased a flat board and a pot of black paint, with which he wrote the words:

"MIND YER FEET THARS A BIG HOL," and fixed it up over the entrance. The device answered very well in as far as those who could read were concerned, but as there were many who could not read at all, and who mistook the ticket for the sign of a shop or store, the accidents became rather more frequent than before.

The Irishman at last grew desperate, and, taking Ah-wow by the pig-tail, vowed that if he deserted his post again, "he'd blow out all the brains he had--if he had any at all--an' if that wouldn't do, he'd cut him up into mince-meat, so he would."

The Chinaman evidently thought him in earnest, for he fell on his knees, and promised, with tears in his eyes, that he would never do it again-- or words to that effect.

One day Larry and Ah-wow were down in the hole labouring for gold as if it were life. It was a terribly rainy day--so bad, that it was almost impossible to keep the water out. Larry had clambered out of the hole, and was seated on the top of the mud-heap, resting himself and gazing down upon his companion, who slowly, but with the steady regularity of machinery, dug out the clay, and threw it on the heap, when a voice called from without--

"Is this Mr Edward Sinton's tent?"

"It is that same," cried Larry, rising; "don't come in, or it'll be worse for ye."

"Here's a letter for him, then, and twenty dollars to pay."

"Musha! but it's chape postage," said Larry, lifting the curtain, and stepping out; "couldn't ye say thirty, now?"

"Come, down with the cash, and none o' yer jaw," said the man, who was a surly fellow, and did not seem disposed to stand joking.

"Oh! be all manes, yer honour," retorted Larry, with mock servility, as he counted out the money. "Av it wouldn't displase yer lordship, may I take the presumption to ax how the seal come to be broken?"

"I know nothin' about it," answered the man, as he pocketed the money; "I found it on the road between this an' Sacramento, and, as I was passin' this way anyhow, I brought it on."

"Ah, thin, it was a great kindness, intirely, to go so far out o' yer way, an' that for a stranger, too, an' for nothin'--or nixt thing to it!" said Larry, looking after the man as he walked away.

"Well, now," he continued, re-entering the tent, and seating himself again on the top of the mud-heap, while he held the letter in his hand at arm's length, "this bates all! An' whot am I to do with it? Sure it's not right to break the seal o' another man's letter; but then it's broke a'ready, an' there can be no sin in raidin' it. Maybe," he continued, with a look of anxiety, "the poor lad's ill, or dead, an' he's wrote to say so. Sure, I would like to raid it--av I only know'd how; but me edication's bin forgot, bad luck to the schoolmasters; I can only make out big print--wan letter at a time."

The poor man looked wistfully at the letter, feeling that it might possibly contain information of importance to all of them, and that delay in taking action might cause irreparable misfortune. While he meditated what had best be done, and scanned the letter in all directions, a footstep was heard outside, and the hearty voice of Captain Bunting shouted:

"Ship ahoy! who's within, boys!"

"Hooroo! capting," shouted Larry, jumping up with delight; "mind yer fut, capting, dear; don't come in."

"Why not?" inquired the captain, as he lifted the curtain.

"Sure, it's no use tellin' ye _now_!" said Larry, as Captain Bunting fell head-foremost into Ah-wow's arms, and drove that worthy creature-- as he himself would have said--"stern-foremost" into the mud and water at the bottom. The captain happened to have a haunch of venison on his shoulder, and the blunderbuss under his arm, so that the crash and the splash, as they all floundered in the mud, were too much for Larry, who sat down again on the mud-heap and roared with laughter.

It is needless to go further into the details of this misadventure. Captain Bunting and the Chinaman were soon restored to the upper world, happily, unhurt; so, having changed their garments, they went into Ah-wow's tent to discuss the letter.

"Let me see it, Larry," said the captain, sitting down on an empty pork cask.

Larry handed him the missive, and he read as follows:--

"San Francisco.

"Edward Sinton, Esquire, Little Creek Diggings.

"My Dear Sir,--I have just time before the post closes, to say that I only learned a few days ago that you were at Little Creek, otherwise I should have written sooner, to say that--"

Here the captain seemed puzzled. "Now, ain't that aggravatin'?" he said; "the seal has torn away the most important bit o' the letter. I wish I had the villains by the nose that opened it! Look here, Larry, can you guess what it was?"

Larry took the letter, and, after scrutinising it with intense gravity and earnestness, returned it, with the remark, that it was "beyant him entirely."

"That--that--" said the captain, again attempting to read, "that-- somethin'--great success; so you and Captain Bunting had better come down at once.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, Yours faithfully, John Thomson."

"Now," remarked the captain, with a look of chagrin, as he laid down the letter, folded his hands together, and gazed into Larry's grave visage, "nothin' half so tantalisin' as that has happened to me since the time when my good ship, the _Roving Bess_, was cast ashore at San Francisco."

"It's purvokin'," replied Larry, "an' preplexin'."

"It's most unfortunate, too," continued the captain, knitting up his visage, "that Sinton should be away just at this time, without rudder, chart, or compass, an' bound for no port that any one knows of. Why, the fellow may be deep in the heart o' the Rocky Mountains, for all I can tell. I might start off at once without him, but maybe that would be of no use. What can it be that old Thompson's so anxious about? Why didn't the old figur'-head use his pen more freely--his tongue goes fast enough to drive the engines of a seventy-four. What _is_ to be done?"

Although Captain Bunting asked the question with thorough earnestness and much energy, looking first at Larry and then at Ah-wow, he received no reply. The former shook his head, and the latter stared at him with a steady, dead intensity, as if he wished to stare him through.

After a few minutes' pause, Larry suddenly asked the captain if he was hungry, to which the latter replied that he was; whereupon the former suggested that it was worth while "cookin' the haunch o' ven'son," and offered to do it in a peculiar manner, that had been taught to him not long ago by a hunter, who had passed that way, and fallen into the hole in the tent and sprained his ankle, so that he, (Larry), was obliged to "kape him for a week, an' trate him to the best all the time." The proposal was agreed to, and Larry, seizing the haunch, which was still covered with the mud contracted in "the hole," proceeded to exhibit his powers as a cook.

The rain, which had been coming down as if a second flood were about to deluge the earth, had ceased at this time, and the sun succeeded, for a few hours, in struggling through the murky clouds and pouring a flood of light and heat over hill and plain; the result of which was, that, along the whole length of Little Creek, there was an eruption of blankets, and shirts, and inexpressibles, and other garments, which stood much in need of being dried, and which, as they fluttered and flapped their many-coloured folds in the light breeze, gave the settlement the appearance--as Captain Bunting expressed it--of being "dressed from stem to stern." The steam that arose from these habiliments, and from the soaking earth, and from the drenched forest, covered the face of nature with a sort of luminous mist that was quite cheering, by contrast with the