A Bid for Fortune, Guy Boothby [easy books to read TXT] 📗

The worthy old gentleman seemed really distressed at this news. He shook his head, and I heard him murmur:

“Poor Jim! Poor Jim!”

Then, turning to me again, he took my hand.

“This makes our bond a doubly strong one. You must let me see more of you! How long do you propose remaining in England?”

“Not very much longer, I fear. I am already beginning to hunger for the South again.”

“Well, you must not go before you have paid us a visit. Remember we shall always be pleased to see you. You know our house, I think on the cliff. Good day, sir, good day.”

So saying, the old gentleman accompanied me downstairs to his carriage, and, shaking me warmly by the hand, departed.

Again I had cause to ponder on the strangeness of the fate that had led me to Hampshire⁠—first to the village where my father was born, and then to Bournemouth, where by saving this young man’s life I had made a firm friend of a man who again had known my father. By such small coincidences are the currents of our lives diverted.

That same afternoon, while tacking slowly down the bay, I met the Marquis. He was pulling himself in a small skiff, and when he saw me he made haste to come alongside and hitch on. At first I wondered whether it would not be against his father’s wishes that he should enter into conversation with such a worldly person as myself. But he evidently saw what was passing in my mind, and banished all doubts by saying:

“I have been on the lookout for you, Mr. Hatteras. My father has given me permission to cultivate your acquaintance, if you will allow me.”

“I shall be very pleased,” I answered. “Won’t you come aboard and have a chat? I’m not going out of the bay this afternoon.”

He clambered over the side and seated himself in the well, clear of the boom, as nice-looking and pleasant a young fellow as any man could wish to set eyes on. “Well,” I thought to myself, “if all Peers were like this boy there’d be less talk of abolishing the House of Lords.”

“You can’t imagine how I’ve been thinking over all you told me the other day,” he began when we were fairly on our way. “I want you to tell me more about Australia and the life you lead out there, if you will.”

“I’ll tell you all I can with pleasure,” I answered. “But you ought to go and see the places and things for yourself. That’s better than any telling. I wish I could take you up and carry you off with me now; away down to where you can make out the green islands peeping out of the water to port and starboard, like bits of the Garden of Eden gone astray and floated out to sea. I’d like you to smell the breezes that come off from them towards evening, to hear the ‘trades’ whistling overhead, and the thunder of the surf upon the reef. Or at another time to get inside that selfsame reef and look down through the still, transparent water, at the rainbow-coloured fish dashing among the coral boulders, in and out of the most beautiful fairy grottoes the brain of man can conceive.”

“Oh, it must be lovely! And to think that I may live my life and never see these wonders. Please go on; what else can you tell me?”

“What more do you want to hear? There is the pick of every sort of life for you out there. Would you know what real excitement is? Then I shall take you to a new gold rush. To begin with you must imagine yourself setting off for the field, with your trusty mate marching step by step beside you, pick and shovel on your shoulders, and both resolved to make your fortunes in the twinkling of an eye. When you get there, there’s the digger crowd, composed of every nationality. There’s the warden and his staff, the police officers, the shanty keepers, the blacks, and dogs.

“There’s the tented valley stretching away to right and left of you, with the constant roar of sluice boxes and cradles, the creak of windlasses, and the perpetual noise of human voices. There’s the excitement of pegging out your claim and sinking your first shaft, wondering all the time whether it will turn up trumps or nothing. There’s the honest, manly labour from dawn to dusk. And then, when daylight fails, and the lamps begin to sparkle over the field, songs drift up the hillside from the drinking shanties in the valley, and you and your mate weigh up your day’s returns, and, having done so, turn into your blankets to dream of the monster nugget you intend to find upon the morrow. Isn’t that real life for you?”

He did not answer, but there was a sparkle in his eyes which told me I was understood.

“Then if you want other sorts of enterprise, there is Thursday Island, where I hail from, with its extraordinary people. Let us suppose ourselves wandering down the Front at nightfall, past the Kanaka billiard saloons and the Chinese stores, into, say, the Hotel of All Nations. Who is that handsome, dark, mysterious fellow, smoking a cigarette and idly flirting with the pretty bar girl? You don’t know him, but I do! There’s indeed a history for you. You didn’t notice, perhaps, that rakish schooner that came to anchor in the bay early in the forenoon. What lines she had! Well, that was his craft. Tomorrow she’ll be gone, it is whispered, to try for pearl in prohibited Dutch waters. Can’t you imagine her slinking round the islands, watching for the patrolling gunboat, and ready, directly she has passed, to slip into the bay, skim it of its shell, and put to sea again. Sometimes they’re chased⁠—and then?”

“What then?”

“Well, a clean pair of heels or trouble with the authorities, and possibly a year in a Dutch