“Thanks awfully,” he went on. “I have no idea who you are, but I should like awfully to shake hands with you; unfortunately, I haven’t a hand at liberty — feel.”
What Denis felt was a coil of rope, and another, and another, as he ran his hand up and down.
“Tied up!” he whispered.
“And robbed,” added the complacent young man.
“Of much?” asked Denis, getting out his knife.
“Only the result of five months’ hard labour on Bendigo; only my little all,” the young man murmured with a placid sigh. “But it might be worse: they sometimes truss you up with all your weight on your neck, and then you can’t make yourself heard if you try. Isn’t there a fire somewhere behind me?”
“A good way off there is.”
“It’s not so far as you think. I heard them light it. But it would be just as well not to let them hear us.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Denis, as he worked a flat blade between the young man’s middle and the rope; whereupon Doherty put in his first word in an excited whisper.
“Don’t you savvy? They’re the blokes what done it, mister!”
“Exactly,” said the mild young man. “And that’s about all I know of them, though I’ve been in their company all day. But my name is Moseley; you might make a note of it, in case anything happens. My father’s Rector of Much Wymondham, in Silly Suffolk — as you might expect from his imbecile son.”
“I don’t see where the imbecility comes in, much less what can happen now,” said Denis, encouragingly; as he spoke, he loosened the severed coil, and the late captive stumbled stiffly into the open.
“I ought to be ashamed to own it,” he went on in whispers, squatting in the grass to bend his limbs in turn, “but I met these chaps on the way into town — with my poor little pile, heigho! — and took them for father and son, as they professed to be. I thanked Providence for putting me in such respectable hands, and stuck to them like a leech till they lured me out here to camp with the result you found. As for nothing happening now, they swore they’d murder me if I uttered a sound; they’ve camped within earshot to be handy for the job; and I give them leave to do it, if I don’t get even with them now.”
Doherty rubbed his hands in glee; but Denis was quite unprepared for this spirited resolution, voiced as it was in the spiritless tone which distinguished the other young man; and he asked Moseley whether he was armed.
“I should be,” was the reply, “but they took my pistol with my pile, confound them.”
“Then how on earth do you propose to get even with them?”
“Oh, I may wait till the blackguards are asleep; I shall steal a squint on them presently, and then decide. But don’t you fellows bother to stay. I’m awfully obliged to you as it is.”
It did not require this generous (and evidently genuine) discharge to retain their services to the death. In Denis the Celt had long been uppermost, and, like Doherty, he was in a glow for the glowing work. Apart from that, Denis was rather fascinated by the rueful humour and the chuckle-headed courage of a temperament at once opposite and congenial to his own.
“Either we stand by you, Moseley,” he muttered, “or we all three run for it; and I’ll be shot if we do that just yet! Luckily, one of us can supply the firearm, and the other can use it if the worst comes to the worst.”
Doherty was already at his pack. The polished oak case shone in the starlight like a tiny tank, until the lid stood open and its contents gave a fitful glitter. Wadded bullets, percussion caps and a powder-horn had baize-lined compartments to themselves; in their midst lay a ponderous engine with a good ten inches of barrel. Denis was some time capping and loading it in all five chambers, while one companion watched with languid interest, and the other in silent throes of triumph.
A minute later they were all three creeping on the fire, like Indian scouts. The two rascals sat over it still. One had his back turned to the advancing enemy; and it was so broad a back that they caught but occasional glimpses of his vis-a-vis, who had a rather remarkable face, pale, shaven, and far more typical of the ecclesiastic than of the footpad.
“That’s the dangerous one,” whispered Moseley. “The other beggar’s twice his age.”
“Wait, then,” said Denis— “what a hawk he looks! Hadn’t we better work right round and take them in his rear?”
“As you like,” said Moseley, light-heartedly.
And they had decided on this when quite another decision was rendered imperative by the younger robber suddenly bounding into the air and flinging something from him with an oath. For one cold instant the three imagined they were caught. They had halted unwisely, where there was little cover, some fifty yards from the fire and perhaps a hundred yards from Moseley’s tree. It became immediately apparent that there was only one thing to be done.
“Why, it’s more than half silver!” the rascal shouted, white with rage. “It’s a cursed fake; he’s got the rest somewhere else — I’ll hack his head off for this!”
A clump of bushes lay nearer the fire than the crouching trio. “Run for them!” whispered Denis, and led the way with his nose between his knees. They reached the cover just in time. The man passed within a yard of them. His mate remained squatting over the fire.
“Now you take this,” said Denis, handing Jimmy a length of the cut rope which he had brought with him, “and you this,” giving Moseley the Deane and Adams. “Now both follow me — like mice — and do exactly what I tell you.”
So they crept up to the fire in the formation of an isosceles triangle.
“Where are you? Where’s your tree? If you don’t answer I’ll carve your head off!” they heard one ruffian threatening with subdued venom in the distance; his voice was at its furthest and faintest when Denis leaped on the other from behind and nipped an enormous neck with all ten fingers.
“I’m not going to choke you, but you’ll be shot dead if you make one sound. Here, Moseley, stick it to his ear. You understand, do you? One sound. There, then; now you’ll be gagged. Jimmy, the rope.”
Denis felt rather sorry for his man as he went to work; he was such an elderly miscreant, so broad and squat (rather than obese), as one who had been pressed like a bale of wool. But he held his peace with stolid jowl until gagged by a double thickness of the rope that soon held him hand and foot.
“Now for your mate,” said Denis. As he spoke, the fellow could be heard shouting that their bird was flown; thereupon the three withdrew behind trees. “And remember,” said Denis, who went last with the revolver, “if you make a sign to send him back you’ll be the first.”
They had not a minute to wait. Their second victim came back cursing their first for sitting so unmoved over the fire. Denis peeped and saw the lean, ascetic face advancing white-hot with passion; in the last ten yards he stopped, suspicious, but not yet of the truth, for the untended fire had declined to a mere red and white remnant in his absence.
“Good God, man, are you dead?” he cried, and then came running at the thought. At the same instant Denis stepped from behind his tree.
“Throw up your hands before I fire!”
And up they both went, but one barked and flashed on the way, and the ball whispered in Denis’s ear as he took deliberate aim and shot the scoundrel down.
“Take care!” he shouted to the others, rushing up. “I aimed low. He isn’t dead. Don’t trust him an inch!”
But the man had been drilled through the sciatic nerve, and he leaped where he lay like a landed fish. He had let fall the pistol in his pain, and Moseley had the pleasure of picking up his own.
“Has anybody any brandy?” asked Denis, for the wounded man looked ghastly, writhing in the starlight, and he was bearing his torments without a word; but when Moseley produced a flask, and Denis held it to him, the unbeaten brute only seized the opportunity of snatching at the revolver in his other hand.
“The blackguard!” piped Doherty, as Denis disengaged without a shot. “I’d finish him for that!”
>
“No, you wouldn’t, Jimmy; but if he wants to grin and bear it, why, he’s welcome — till they come for him! Come on, Moseley,” added Denis, as that placid person characteristically took his time, under the gagged man’s nose, over his stolen belongings. But in a few moments the three were off at the double, and in a few more the contents of a third revolver followed them without effect.
“I expected that,” said Denis as they ran. “But what a fine villain! Not a word in his pain. Educated man, I should say.”
“Mean to put the police on ‘em to-night or in the morning?” called Moseley, with languid interest, as he jogged along last.
“Not at all,” said Denis.
“Not at all?” panted Doherty.
“We want to get to the diggings, not to cool our heels in this nice place. We’ve winged one and taught them both a lesson, and wasted quite enough time on such carrion as it is.”
They were now in full view of the lights of Canvas Town. Moseley, far behind, petitioned for a more civilized pace in the most strenuous tone the others had yet heard from him. And while they waited Denis returned the revolver to its rightful owner.
“I’m heartily ashamed of myself, Jimmy,” said he: “first I blame you for buying the one thing we want more than another, and then I take it from you and use it myself! But the credit’s every bit of it yours; but for you those villains would have gone scot-free with this fellow’s fortune; but for you he would be a poor man to-night, and he’s got to know it. I hope you recovered everything?” added Denis, as Moseley came up with them at his leisure, and all three proceeded toward the lights.
“I don’t know,” was the reply. “I ought to have thirty-eight pound, twelve and six, but there’s over a pound of it in silver, and you didn’t give me time to count it.”
A few paces were covered in silence; then Denis gave a grim little laugh. “So we’ve all risked our lives for thirty-eight pounds odd!”
“It was my all,” said Moseley, rather hurt. “I never said it was much, and never asked you to risk your lives.”
Denis took his arm with a heartier laugh.
“My dear fellow, we weren’t going to let you risk yours alone, and I wouldn’t undo it if I could. It wasn’t a question of amount, either; if you had told us the figure it would have made no difference. But you did say it was your pile, you know, that you were taking back to England!”
“It wasn’t much of one, certainly,” the other admitted on reflection, with his own ingenuous candour. “I am not so sure, now, that it would have paid my passage home. I never thought of that before. So you two are going up to the diggings, just as I come down?” he added rather wistfully, after a pause.
“We start to-morrow if we can.”
“Much capital, may I ask?”
“Not much more than half your pile between us, I’m afraid.”
“It needs more capital than you’d think,” said Moseley, in a pensive way.
“I dare say.”
And Denis sighed.
“Ballarat or Bendigo?”
“I thought of tossing for it.”
They were back again on the foul fringe of the sail-cloth suburb. Moseley stood still in the mud. And the bright southern stars discovered a pleasing diffidence in a wholly amiable face.
“Have you really no choice?” he asked.
“Absolutely none.”
“Well, then, I hardly know how to put it,” stammered Moseley; “but I’ve some experience, if I haven’t much to show for it; and if Ballarat would do for you — I should be sorry to turn up again in Bendigo; I’m afraid I did pretend I’d done a little better there — but Ballarat’s really the place, and if you could do with a third — well, there’s my poor little pile, it would go into the pool, and — well I don’t mind saying I should be proud, after the way you’ve stood by me to-night.”
“So should I!” cried Denis, seizing Moseley’s hand. His warm heart was touched. “So would Jimmy,” he added, for the lad was standing aloof as he always would when they were three. “It’s the natural thing, and your experience will be more valuable than even your money, not that we can take more than your share of that. Come, laddie, and give him your hand on it, too; and then for the best three beds we can afford, and three good glasses of ale to seal the partnership.”
Doherty turned to Denis rather quickly when he had shaken the new partner’s hand. “You see,” he said, “it is a case of beds, after all!”
But his tone was reproachful rather than triumphant, as though Denis might have listened to him before.
CHAPTER XI. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
The firm of Dent, Moseley, and Doherty, gold-diggers, was formally established next day, in a clump of trees a few miles out of Melbourne. Denis had experienced no difficulty in obtaining his paltry dues from the shipping agents, but even so he and Doherty could not muster twenty pounds between them. Moseley, on the other hand, was for putting in nearly double this amount, and yet only receiving his one-third of the profits. He argued that but for the others he would have had nothing to put in at all. It was long before Denis would listen to him, and Doherty took no part in the discussion. But eventually a compromise was agreed upon, and thus entered by Denis in a new pocketbook purchased for the nonce: —
October, 19, 1853.
£
s.
d.
Dent and Doherty
Cash
19
12
10
Moseley
“
19
14
6
“
Loan to Company
18
10
0
£57
17
4
This pocketbook, with its blue-lined sheaf of glorious possibilities, represented Denis’s one disbursement in Melbourne beyond bed, board, and the glasses of beer overnight. A rigid economy was his watchword; they must walk to Ballarat; so let their packs be light, and if kits were dearer on the diggings, they would still have saved.
Doherty agreed with every word; but as they resumed their journey, and Moseley fell a few paces behind, he reminded Denis of the nuggets which Bullocky had forced upon them at the inn.
“I said we’d keep them for luck,” replied Denis; “but, of course, I could only speak for myself; you must do what you like with yours.”
“I do what you do,” said the boy.
“And you both do well!” added Moseley, catching them up. “I’m all in favour of a fetish; that’s what I never had on Bendigo. But nuggets — decoy nuggets — set a nugget to catch a nugget, eh? That’s a fetish and a half! I suppose they’re only little bits of things? Do you mind letting me see them?”
When he did see them, he changed his tune.
“Good heavens! But these must be over a pound between them, if not getting on for three figures in the other kind of pounds; do you mean to say you had these given you? I say, I’m not sure that my affection for a fetish would hold out against one of these.”
“Well, mine will,” said Denis, smiling with set teeth. “I don’t turn presents into money, Moseley, till the devil drives!”
“But who on earth made you such presents as these?”
“Oh, a rough diamond with a beard to his middle, and a voice like a bull, who did his best to stand on his head in a bucket of champagne.”
“By Jove! I believe it must have been old Bullocky himself.”
“It was. Do you know him?”
“Know him? No one was ever yet on Bendigo without knowing old Bullocky; he’s cock of the walk in Ironbark Gully, finds gold every time, by a sort of second sight, as some of these chaps find water. Why, the first time I ever saw him he was sitting picking nuggets out of a lump of earth like plums from a pudding!”
And Moseley beguiled a mile or more with tales of the great gorilla; he had, indeed, a very passable gift of anecdote, and an easy, idle, fanciful wit which made up in rarer qualities what it lacked
in brilliance and virility. He had not a foul or an unkind word in his vocabulary; and Denis had been too long at sea to undervalue either merit. Moseley was not only a gentleman, but a man of refinement and no little charm, whose companionship might well be prized by such another at that wild end of the earth. And yet Denis forgot to listen as one entertaining tale led light-heartedly to another, for it was only the humours of the life that Moseley seemed to have absorbed.
“But I might as well save my breath,” said Moseley, with more truth than he supposed. “It’s bound to be the same on Ballarat, only more of it; the one thing I can promise you is plenty of compensation if the fetish doesn’t do his duty.”
Denis smiled without replying. “I suppose you don’t know what sort of soil it is at Ballarat?” he asked at length.
“At Ballarat?” cried Moseley, greatly amused. “Why, my dear fellow, I couldn’t tell you what sort it was at Bendigo!”
“But you were digging there five months.”
“Digging, exactly; not studying the soil.”
“They seemed to you to find it anywhere, did they?”
“Anywhere and everywhere, my dear fellow! Are you a geologist, Dent?” The question came after a pause.
“Not as yet,” said Denis; and Doherty, who had no notion what a geologist was, glanced at him sidelong as at one who could soon be it or anything else he chose.
So the time passed, and the miles were mounting up when Moseley, who ought to have known the way to a certain point, found that he had overshot it by as many miles again. It was a trying moment for the height and heat of the afternoon; but so savage was the mild Moseley with himself, so unusually animated with his contrition, that Denis slapped him on the back, and they turned back laughing to an inn where they had drunk beer a couple of hours before. This beer-drinking was an extravagance resented by Denis, yet not a point on which he cared to oppose the man who had contributed so freely to the common fund. Nothing could have been more wholesome for active young fellows, but their beer alone cost them eight and threepence the first day, bread three and six, billy-can two and six, tea and sugar two and six, and their beds at this inn six shillings. One pound two and nine-pence for the first nine miles.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 269