Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕
Description
Robbery Under Arms, subtitled A Story of Life and Adventure in the Bush and in the Goldfields of Australia, was published in serial form in the Sydney Mail newspaper between July 1882 and August 1883. It was published under the name of Rolf Boldrewood, a pseudonym for Thomas Alexander Browne, a police magistrate and gold commissioner.
Robbery Under Arms is an entertaining adventure story told from the first person point of view of Richard “Dick” Marston. The story is in the form of a journal written from jail where he’s waiting to be hanged for his crimes. Marston and his brother Jim are led astray as young men by their father, who made money by cattle “duffing,” or stealing. They are introduced to their father’s associate, known only as Captain Starlight, a clever and charming fraudster. After a spell in jail, from which he escapes, Marston, his brother, and father are persuaded by Starlight to operate as bank robbers and bushrangers. They embark on a life continually on the run from the police. Despite this, Dick and Jim also manage to spend a considerable time prospecting for gold, and the gold rush and the fictitious gold town of Turon are described in detail.
The character of Captain Starlight is based largely on the real-life exploits of bushrangers Harry Redford and Thomas Smith, the latter known as “Captain Midnight.”
Regarded as a classic of Australian literature, Robbery Under Arms has never been out of print, and has been the basis of several adaptations in the form of films and television serials.
This Standard Ebooks edition is unabridged, and restores some 30,000 words from the original serialization which were cut out of the 1889 one-volume edition of the novel.
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- Author: Rolf Boldrewood
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“Why, they’re in the house now, the infernal scoundrels,” says Starlight. “You stay here with the horses, Warrigal; we’ll walk up. If you hear shooting, tie them to the fence and run in.”
We walked up very quiet to the house—we’d all been there before, and knew where the front parlour was—over the lawn and two flowerbeds, and then up to the big bow-window. The others stood under an old white cedar tree that shadowed all round. I looked in, and, by George! my face burned, cold as it was. There was Moran lying back in an armchair, with a glass of grog in his hand, takin’ it easy and makin’ himself quite at home. Burke and Daly were sitting in two chairs near the table, looking a long way from comfortable; but they had a couple of bottles of brandy on the table and glasses, and were filling up. So was Moran. They’d had quite as much as was good for them. The eldest Miss Whitman was sitting at the piano, playing away tune after tune, while her eyes were wandering about and her lips trembling, and every now and then she’d flush up all over her face; then she’d turn as white as a sheet, and look as if she’d fall off the stool. The youngest daughter was on her knees by her, on the other side, with her head in her lap. Every now and then I could hear a sob come from her, but stifled-like, as if she tried to choke it back as much as she could.
Burke and Daly had their pistols on the table, among the bottles—though what they wanted ’em there for I couldn’t see—and Moran had stuck his on the back of the piano. That showed me he was close up drunk, for he was a man as never hardly let go of his revolver.
Mrs. Whitman was sitting crouched up in a chair behind her daughter, with a stony face, looking as if the end of the world was come. I hardly knew her again. She was a very kind woman, too; many a glass of grog she’d given me at shearing time, and medicine too, once I was sick there with influenza.
But Miss Falkland; I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She was sitting on the sofa against the wall, quite upright, with her hands before her, and her eyes looking half proudly, half miserable, round the room. You couldn’t hardly tell she was frightened except by a kind of twitching of her neck and shoulders.
Presently Moran, who was more than half boozed as it was, and kept on drinking, calls out to Miss Whitman to sing a song.
“Come, Miss Polly,” says he, “you can sing away fast enough for your dashed old father and some o’ them swells from Bathurst. By George, you must tune your pipe a bit this time for Dan Moran.”
The poor girl said she couldn’t sing just then, but she’d play as much as he liked.
“Yer’d better sing now,” he drawls out, “unless ye want me to come and make you. I know you girls wants coaxing sometimes.”
Poor Miss Mary breaks out at once into some kind of a song—the pitifullest music ever you listened to. Only I wanted to wait a bit, so as to come in right once for all, I’d have gone at him, hammer and tongs, that very minute.
All this time Burke and Daly were goin’ in steady at the brandy, finished one bottle and tackled another. They began to get noisy and talked a lot, and sung a kind of a chorus to Miss Mary’s song.
After the song was over, Moran swore he’d have another one. She’d never sing for him any more, he said, unless she took a fancy to him, and went back to the Weddin Mountains with them.
“It ain’t a bad name for a mountain, is it, miss?” says he, grinning. Then, fixing his black snake’s eyes on her, he poured out about half a tumbler of brandy and drank it off.
“By gum!” he says, “I must have a dance; blest if I don’t! First chop music—good room this—three gals and the missus—course we must. I’m regular shook on the polka. You play us a good ’un, Polly, or whatever yer name is. Dan Moran’s goin’ to enjoy himself this night if he never sees another. Come on, Burke. Patsey, stand up, yer blamed fool. Here goes for my partner.”
“Come, Moran,” says Burke, “none of your larks; we’re very jolly, and the young ladies ain’t on for a hop; are ye, miss?” and he looked over at the youngest Miss Whitman, who stared at him for a moment, and then hid her face in her hands.
“Are you a-goin’ to play as I told yer?” says Moran. “D’ye think yer know when yer well off?”
The tone of voice he said this in and the look seemed to frighten the poor girl so that she started an old-style polka there and then, which made him bang his heels on the floor and spin round as if he’d been at a dance-house. As soon as he’d done two or three turns he walks over to the sofa and sits down close to Miss Falkland, and put his arm round her waist.
“Come, Fanny Falkland,” says he, “or whatever they call yer; you’re so dashed proud yer won’t speak to a bush cove at all. You can go home by’n by, and tell your father that you had a twirl-round with Dan Moran, and helped to make the evening pass pleasant at Darjallook afore it was burned.”
Anything like the disgust, misery, and rage mixed up that came into Miss Falkland’s face all in a moment and together-like, I never saw. She made no sound, but her face grew paler and paler; she turned white to the lips, as trembled and worked in
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