Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕

might just as well have good cooking and reasonable comfort as the other thing,” he used to say. “Circumstances may have prevented us from being honest that’s no reason why we should be slovenly and barbarous in our habits as well.”

So we had everything snug enough and orderly at the cave. There was plenty of room;every man had his cabin and sleeping place to himself, partitioned off with slabs neatly enough. Dad was always a neat, tidy kind of man, so everything was kept shipshape and man-of-war fashion. Our hut-keeping and cooking were a deal better than many a squatter had to put up with then.

Next morning at sunrise we turned to at the line I’d marked out, put in a trench outside, and worked in towards the old fig-tree. We’d done a good two hours’ work, when all of a sudden the ground got easy to dig, and we knew that it must have been moved before.

“Here we are, Dick,” says Jim, after a bit driving away with the pick, like a good ’un, scooping out the soil. “There’s something hard here and no mistake.” The pick sounded again and again. What should it be but a big, rough-made, wooden box, most like a sailor’s, put together by a man who never served his time as a carpenter.

We were a good while before we could hoist it out. It wasn’t like the other, full of papers, we could see. There were strong hide handles at each end, mouldy, but sound enough for us to lift its weight with. It was padlocked, but before I could make a try at opening the lock Jim smashed the staple with the axe and lifted the lid.

First there was a double fold of tarred canvas so as to keep away all moisture, and the places between the boards plugged with oakum, and tarred too. When we pulled up this, we saw a number of canvas bags, very strongly stitched, and on each of them was marked 5 lb. We opened the first bag, all carefully tied up it was too, and sure enough it was all gold; some coarse, some fine, some with quartz, some with black sand, but all pure gold. The real thing and no mistake. Gold!

We had seen too much of it at the diggings to be mistaken, and we felt we knew enough in a general way to go digging on our own hook. All the bags were one weight, and filled in the same way. There were just ten of them. In one corner we found a brassbound, very neat-worked writing desk; on the outside the letters D D W. There was a small gold watch and chain, a lock of brown hair, and a few women’s rings⁠—one of them looked good⁠—and a few other nicknacks.

Besides the gold there were a whole lot of other bags with bits of rough metal and things like that in them. That was what made the box so heavy: all labelled and marked very careful, but when we saw they weren’t gold we didn’t bother much about them. There wasn’t anything else that looked likely except the desk;it was light, but full of letters and papers, so we made up to bring it in to Starlight, or let him come out to see it, whichever suited best. We should find out by it the old man’s real name, his reasons for living and dying in this lonely place, so far from everything and everybody in the world⁠—in his world⁠—and all his other secrets, if he had any. Some of them might be useful to us; some of them mightn’t. Anyhow, we’d like to know all about him, and as he’d left us the gold, or as good, we felt as if we’d do anything for him that he might have left word about in his last days. But the gold; it wasn’t a thing exactly to be left knocking about, even in the Hollow; so we took a bag each with us to show dad and the others, and covered up the big box again.

Of course we found ways and means to get the bags and afterwards the box and desk with the papers safe into the cave, when Starlight took a regular two or three days to overhaul them, and pick out those that he thought we’d care most to know about.

First of all he found out that his name was Dominick Devereux Wharton, the Honourable Mr. Wharton too, a younger son of Lord Wharncombe’s, of Wharncombe Abbey. He had married, seemingly, against the wishes of his family, and being very fond of travelling and botany and geology (that’s what he had down in the paper, Starlight said) he made up his mind to come out to the unknown land of Australia, where he could hunt up new plants and strange birds and animals, and live away (he said) from people that despised his tastes as much as he despised their opinions. Starlight used to read all this out to us; some of it we caught the sense of, and part, of course, we didn’t, being too learned and high-flown for the like of us. But we caught the hang of it in a general way, and thought what a flat he was if he liked moving about after rocks and plants better than taking it easy in his own country, and that country England. However, we knew other men, Jim said, that had been fools, and why not him? Besides, he had a wife that had followed him that he cared more for than anything under the sun ten times over. And he was fond of her, if ever a man was of a woman. Time after time, Starlight read out bits where he talked about her as if there wasn’t any other woman in the world, least ways not for him. I suppose there’s men that feel that way now and then. Women, I know, do; but it’s mighty seldom