Robbery Under Arms, Rolf Boldrewood [early readers .TXT] 📗

We had our innings in the talking line; Jim and Maddie made noise enough for half-a-dozen. Starlight let himself be talked to, and didn't say much himself; but I could see even he, that had seen a lot of high life in his time, was pleased enough with the nonsense of a couple of good-looking girls like these—regular bush-bred fillies as they were—after being shut up in the Hollow for a month or two.

Before we'd done a couple of travellers rode up. Jonathan's place was getting a deal more custom now—it lay near about the straight line for the Turon, and came to be known as a pretty comfortable shop. Jonathan came in with them, and gave us a wink as much as to say, 'It's all right.'

'These gentlemen's just come up from Sydney,' he said, 'not long from England, and wants to see the diggings. I told 'em you might be going that way, and could show 'em the road.'

'Very happy,' says Starlight. 'I am from Port Phillip last myself, and think of going back by Honolulu after I've made the round of the colonies. My good friends and travelling companions are on their way for the Darling. We can all travel together.'

'What a fortunate thing we came here, Clifford, eh?' says one young fellow, putting up his eyeglass. 'You wanted to push on. Now we shall have company, and not lose our way in this beastly “bush”, as they call it.'

'Well, it does look like luck,' says the other man. 'I was beginning to think the confounded place was getting farther off every day. Can you show us our rooms, if you please? I suppose we couldn't have a bath?'

'Oh yes, you can,' said Maddie; 'there's the creek at the bottom of the garden, only there's snakes now and then at night. I'll get you towels.'

'In that case I think I shall prefer to wait till the morning,' says the tall man. 'It will be something to look forward to.'

We were afraid the strangers would have spoiled our fun for the evening, but they didn't; we made out afterwards that the tall one was a lord. They were just like anybody else, and when we got the piano to work after tea they made themselves pleasant enough, and Starlight sang a song or two—he could sing, and no mistake, when he liked—and then one of them played a waltz and the girls danced together, and Starlight had some champagne in, said it was his birthday, and he'd just thought of it, and they got quite friendly and jolly before we turned in.

Next day we made a start, promising the girls a nugget each for a ring out of the first gold we got, and they promised to write to us and tell us if they heard any news. They knew what to say, and we shouldn't be caught simple if they could help it. Jim took care, though, to keep well off the road, and take all the short cuts he knew. We weren't quite safe till we was in the thick of the mining crowd. That's the best place for a man, or woman either, to hide that wants to drop out of sight and never be seen again. Many a time I've known a man, called Jack or Tom among the diggers, and never thought of as anything else, working like them, drinking and taking his pleasure and dressing like them, till he made his pile or died, or something, and then it turned out he was the Honourable Mr. So-and-So, Captain This, or Major That; perhaps the Reverend Somebody—though that didn't happen often.

We were all the more contented, though, when we heard the row of the cradles and the clang and bang of the stampers in the quartz-crushing batteries again, and saw the big crowd moving up and down like a hill of ants, the same as when we'd left Turon last. As soon as we got into the main street we parted. Jim and I touched our hats and said good-bye to Starlight and the other two, who went away to the crack hotel. We went and made a camp down by the creek, so that we might turn to and peg out a claim, or buy out a couple of shares, first thing in the morning.

Except the Hollow it was the safest place in the whole country just now, as we could hear that every week fresh people were pouring in from all the other colonies, and every part of the world. The police on the diggings had their own work pretty well cut out for them, what with old hands from Van Diemen's Land, Californians—and, you may bet, roughs and rascals from every place under the sun. Besides, we wanted to see for ourselves how the thing was done, and pick up a few wrinkles that might come in handy afterwards. Our dodge was to take a few notes with us, and buy into a claim—one here, one there—not to keep together for fear of consequences. If we worked and kept steady at it, in a place where there were thousands of strangers of all kinds, it would take the devil himself to pick us out of such a queer, bubbling, noisy, mixed-up pot of hell-broth.

Things couldn't have dropped in more lucky for us than they did. In this way. Starlight was asked by the two swells to join them, because they wanted to do a bit of digging, just for the fun of it; and he made out he'd just come from Melbourne, and hadn't been six months longer in the country than they had. Of course he was sunburnt a bit. He got that in India, he said. My word! they played just into his hand, and he did the new-chum swell all to pieces, and so that natural no one could have picked him out from them. He dressed like them, talked like them, and never let slip a word except about shooting in England, hunting in America and India, besides gammoning to be as green about all Australian ways as if he'd never seen a gum tree before. They took up a claim, and bought a tent. Then they got a wages-man to help them, and all four used to work like niggers. The crowd christened them 'The Three Honourables', and used to have great fun watching them working away in their jerseys, and handling their picks and shovels like men. Starlight used to drawl just like the other two, and asked questions about the colony; and walk about with them on Sundays and holidays in fashionable cut clothes. He'd brought money, too, and paid his share of the expenses, and something over. It was a great sight to see at night, and people said like nothing else in the world just then. Every one turned out for an hour or two at night, and then was the time to see the Turon in its glory. Big, sunburnt men, with beards, and red silk sashes round their waists, with a sheath-knife and revolvers mostly stuck in them, and broad-leaved felt hats on. There were Californians, then foreigners of all sorts—Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks, Negroes, Indians, Chinamen. They were a droll, strange, fierce-looking crowd. There weren't many women at first, but they came pretty thick after a bit. A couple of theatres were open, a circus, hotels with lots of plate-glass windows and splendid bars, all lighted up, and the front of them, anyhow, as handsome at first sight as Sydney or Melbourne. Drapers and grocers, ironmongers, general stores, butchers and bakers, all kept open until midnight, and every place was lighted up as clear as day. It was like a fairy-story place, Jim said; he was as pleased as a child with the glitter and show and strangeness of it all. Nobody was poor, everybody was well dressed, and had money to spend, from the children upwards. Liquor seemed running from morning to night, as if there were creeks of it; all the same there was very little drunkenness and quarrelling. The police kept good order, and the miners were their own police mostly, and didn't seem to want keeping right. We always expected the miners to be a disorderly, rough set of people—it was quite the other way. Only we had got into a world where everybody had everything they wanted, or else had the money to pay for it. How different it seemed from the hard, grinding, poverty-stricken life we had been brought up to, and all the settlers we knew when we were young! People had to work hard for every pound they made then, and, if they hadn't the ready cash, obliged to do without, even if it was bread to eat. Many a time we'd had no tea and sugar when we were little, because father hadn't the money to pay for it. That was when he stayed at home and worked for what he got. Well, it was honest money, at any rate—pity he hadn't kept that way.

Now all this was changed. It wasn't like the same country. Everybody dressed well, lived high, and the money never ran short, nor was likely to as long as the gold kept spreading, and was found in 10, 20, 50 pound nuggets every week or two. We had a good claim, and began to think about six months' work would give us enough to clear right away with. We let our hair grow long, and made friends with some Americans, so we began to talk a little like them, just for fun, and most people took us for Yankees. We didn't mind that. Anything was better than being taken for what we were. And if we could get clear off to San Francisco there were lots of grand new towns springing up near the Rocky Mountains, where a man could live his life out peaceably, and never be heard of again.

As for Starlight he'd laid it out with his two noble friends to go back to Sydney in two or three months, and run down to Honolulu in one of the trading vessels. They could get over to the Pacific slope, or else have a year among the Islands, and go anywhere they pleased. They had got that fond of Haughton, as he called himself—Frank Haughton—that nothing would have persuaded them to part company. And wasn't he a man to be fond of?—always ready for anything, always good-tempered except when people wouldn't let him, ready to work or fight or suffer hardship, if it came to that, just as cheerful as he went to his dinner—never thinking or talking much about himself, but always there when he was wanted. You couldn't have made a more out-and-out all round man to live and die with; and yet, wasn't it a murder, that there should be that against him, when it came out, that spoiled the whole lot? We used to meet now and then, but never noticed one another except by a bit of a nod or a wink, in public. One day Jim and I were busy puddling some dirt, and we saw Sergeant Goring ride by with another trooper. He looked at us, but we were splashed with yellow mud, and had handkerchiefs tied over our heads. I don't think mother would have known us. He just glanced over at us and took no notice. If he didn't know us there was no fear of any one else being that sharp to do it. So we began to take it easy, and to lose our fear of being dropped on at any time. Ours was a middling good claim, too; two men's ground; and we were lucky from the start. Jim took to the pick and shovel work from the first, and was as happy as a man could be.

After our day's work we used to