Edward Dyson - The Gold Stealers

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THE GOLD STEALERS

By
Edward Dyson

CHAPTER I.

THE schoolhouse at Waddy was not in the least like any of the trim State
buildings that now decorate every Victorian township and mark every
mining or agricultural centre that can scrape together two or three
meagre classes; it was the result of a purely local enthusiasm, and was
erected by public subscription shortly after Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., arrived
in the district and let it be understood that he did not intend to go
away again. Having discovered that it was impossible to make anything
else of Mr. Joel Ham, Waddy resolved to make a schoolmaster of him. A
meeting was held in the Drovers' Arms, numerous speeches, all much more
eloquently expressive of the urgent need of convenient scholastic
institutions than the orators imagined, were delivered by representative
men, and a resolution embodying the determination of the residents to
erect a substantial building and install Mr. J. Ham, B.A., as headmaster
was carried unanimously.

The original contributors were not expected to donate money towards the
good cause; they gave labour and material. The work of erection was
commenced next day. Neither plans nor specifications were supplied, and
every contributor was his own architect. Timber of all sorts and shapes
came in from fifty sources. The men of the day shift at the mines worked
at the building in the evening; those on the four-o'clock shift put in an
hour or two in the morning, and mates off the night shift lent a hand at
any time during the day, one man taking up the work where the other left
off. Consequently--and as there was no ruling mind and no general
design--the school when finished seemed to lack continuity, so to speak.
As an architectural effort it displayed evidence of many excellent
intentions, but could not be called a brilliant success as a
whole--although one astute Parliamentary candidate did secure an
overwhelming majority of votes in Waddy after declaring the schoolhouse
to be an ornament to the township. The public-spirited persons who
contributed windows, it was tacitly agreed, were quite justified in
putting in those windows according to the dictates of their own fancy,
even if the result was somewhat bizarre. Jock Summers gave a bell hung in
a small gilded dome, and this was fixed on the roof right in the centre
of the building, mainly for picturesque effect; but as there was no rope
attached and no means of reaching the bell--and it never occurred to
anybody to rectify the deficiency--Jock's gift remained to the end merely
an ornamental adjunct. So also with Sam Brierly's Gothic portico. Sam
expended much time and ingenuity in constructing the portico, and it was
built on to the street end of the schoolhouse, although there was no door
there, the only entrance being at the back.

The building was opened with a tea-fight and a dance, and answered its
purpose very well up to the time of the first heavy rains; then studies
had to be postponed indefinitely, for the floor was a foot under water. A
call was made upon the united strength of the township, and the building
was lifted bodily and set down again on piles. When the open space
between the ground and the floor was boarded up, the residents were
delighted to find that the increased height had given the structure quite
an imposing appearance. Alas! before six months had passed the place was
found to be going over on one side. Waddy watched this failing with
growing uneasiness. When the collapse seemed inevitable, the male adults
were again bidden to an onerous public duty; they rolled up like
patriots, and with a mighty effort pushed the school up into the
perpendicular propping it there with stout stays. That answered
excellently for a time, but eventually the wretched house began to slant
in the opposite direction. Once more the men of Waddy attended in force,
and spent an arduous half-day hoisting it into an upright position, and
securing it there with more stays. It took the eccentric building a long
time to decide upon its next move; then it suddenly lurched forward a
foot or more, and after that slipped an inch or two farther out of plumb
every day. But the ingenuity of Waddy was not exhausted: a few hundred
feet of rope and a winch were borrowed from the Peep o' Day; the rope was
run round the schoolhouse, and the building was promptly hauled back into
shape and fastened down with long timbers running from its sides to a
convenient red-gum stump at the back. Thus it remained for many years,
bulging at the sides, pitching forward, and straining at its tethers like
an eager hound in a leash.

It was literally a humming hot day at Waddy; the pulsing whirr of
invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the
flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs
were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning
in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring:
to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted
weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters flickering in
the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted was the wide stretch
of brown plain, dotted with poppet legs and here and there a whim, across
the dull expanse of which Waddy seemed to peer with stupid eyes.

From within the school were heard alternately, with the regularity of a
mill, the piping of an old cracked voice and the brave chanting of a
childish chorus. Under the school, where the light was dim and the air
was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent game
of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there, it was
damp; great clammy masses of cobweb hung from the joists and spanned the
spaces between the piles. The place was haunted by strange and fearsome
insects, too, and the moving of the classes above sent showers of dust
down between the cracks in the worn floor. But those boys were satisfied
that they were having a perfectly blissful time, and were serenely happy
in defiance of unpropitious surroundings. They were 'playing the wag,'
and to be playing the wag under any circumstances is a guarantee of pure
felicity to the average healthy boy.

Probably the excessive heat had suggested to Dick Haddon the advisability
of spending the afternoon under the school instead of within the close
crowded room; at any rate he suggested it to Jacker McKnight, commonly
known as Jacker Mack, and now after an hour of it the boys were still
jubilant. The game had to be played with great caution, and conversation
was conducted in whispers when ideas could not be conveyed in dumb show.
All that was going on in the room above was distinctly audible to the
deserters below, and the joy of camping there out of the reach of Joel
Ham, B.A., and beyond all the trials and tribulations of the Higher
Fifth, and hearing other fellows being tested, and hectored, and caned,
was too tremendous for whisperings, and must be expressed in wild
rollings and contortions and convulsive kicking.

'Parrot Cann, will you kindly favour me with a few minutes on the floor?'

It was the old cracked voice, flavoured with an ominous irony. Dick
paused in the middle of a throw with a cocked ear and upturned eyes;
Jacker Mack grinned all across his broad face and winked meaningly. They
heard the shuffling of a pair of heavily shod feet, and then the voice
again.

'Parrot, my man, you are a comedian by instinct, and will probably live
to be an ornament to the theatrical profession; but it is my duty to
repress premature manifestations of your genius. Parrot, hold out!

They heard the swish of the cane and the school master's sarcastic
comments between the strokes.

'Ah-h, that was a beauty! Once more, Parrot, my friend, if you please.
Excellent! Excellent! We will try again. Practice of this kind makes for
perfection, you know, Parrot. Good, good--very good! If you should be
spoiled in the making, Parrot, you will not in your old age ascribe it to
any paltry desire on my part to spare the rod, will you, Parrot?'

'S'help me, I won't, sir!

There was such a world of pathos in the wail with which Parrot replied
that Dick choked in his efforts to repress his emotions. The lads heard
the victim blubbing, and pictured his humorous contortions after every
cut--for Parrot was weirdly and wonderfully gymnastic under
punishment--and Jacker hugged himself and kicked ecstatically, and young
Haddon bowed his forehead in the dirt and drummed with his toes, and gave
expression to his exuberant hilarity in frantic pantomime. The rough and
ready schoolboy is very near to the beginnings; his sense of humour has
not been impaired by over-refinement, but remains somewhat akin to that
of the gentle savage; and although his disposition to laugh at the
misfortunes of his best friends may be deplorable from various points of
view, it has not been without its influence in fashioning those good men
who put on a brave face in the teeth of tribulation.

'Gee-rusalem! ain't Jo got a thirst?' whispered Dick when the spasm had
passed.

'My oath, ain't he!' replied Jacker, 'but he was drunk up afore twelve.'

It is necessary to explain here that the school committee, in electing
Mr. Ham to the position of schoolmaster, compelled him to sign a formal
agreement, drawn up in quaint legal gibberish, in which it was specified
that 'the herein afore-mentioned Joel Ham, B.A.,' was to be limited to a
certain amount of alcoholic refreshment per diem, and McMahon, at the
Drovers' Arms, bound himself over to supply no more than the prescribed
quantity; but it was understood that this galling restriction did not
apply to Mr. Ham on Saturdays and holidays.

The noises above subsided into the usual school drone, and the boys under
the floor resumed their game. It was an extremely interesting game,
closely contested. Each player watched the other's actions with an alert
and suspicious eye, and this want of confidence led directly to the boys'
undoing; for presently Dick detected Jacker in an attempt to deceive, and
signalled 'Down!' with an emphatic gesture. 'Gerrout!' was the word
framed by the lips of the indignant Jacker. Haddon gesticulated an angry
protest, and McKnight's gestures and grimaces were intended to convey a
wish that he might be visited with unspeakable pains and penalties if he
were not an entirely virtuous and grievously misjudged small boy.

'It's a lie,' hissed Dick; 'it was down!

'You're another--it wasn't!

''Twas, I tell you!'

'Twasn't!

'Gimme my knife; I don't play with sharps an' sneaks.'

'Won't!'

Gimme it!

All caution had been forgotten by this time, voices were shrill, and eyes
spoke of battle. Dick made at Jacker with a threatening fist, and Jacker,
with an adroitness for which he was famous, met him with a clip on the
shin from a copper-toed boot. Then the lads grappled and commenced a
vigorous and enthusiastic battle in the dirt and amongst the cobweb
curtains.

In the schoolroom above Joel Ham, startled from a dreamy drowsiness,
heard with wonder fierce voices under his feet, the sounds of blows and
of bumping heads, and saw his scholars all distracted. The master divined
the truth in a very few minutes.

'Cann, Peterson, Moonlight,' he called, 'follow me.'

He selected a favourite cane from the rack, and strutted out with the
curious boys at his heels.

'Now then, Peterson,' he said, and he paused with artful preoccupation to
double his cane over and under, and critically examine the end thereof,
'you are a very observant youth, Peterson; you will tell me how those
boys got under the school.'

'Dunno,' said Peterson, assuming the expression of an aged cow.

The master seized him by the collar.

'Peterson, you have the faculty of divination. I give you till I have
counted ten to exert it. I am counting, Peterson.'

Very often the schoolmaster's language was Greek to the scholars, but his
meaning was never in doubt for a moment.

'Eight, Peterson, nine.'

Peterson slouched along a few yards, and kicked stupidly and resentfully
at a loose board.

'Might 'a' got in there,' he growled. 'Why couldn't you 'a' asked
Moonlight?--he don' mind bein' a sneak.'

But Mr. Ham was down on his knees removing the loose board, and for two
or three minutes after crouched at the opening like a famished yellow cat
at a rat-hole, awaiting his opportunity. Meanwhile the fight under the
school was being prosecuted with unabated fury. Dick and Jacker gripped
like twin bull-terriers, rolling and tumbling about in the confined
space, careless of everything but the important business in hand.
Suddenly Mr. Ham made his spring, and a smart haul brought a leg to
light. Another tug, and a second leg shot forth.

'Pull, boys!' he cried.

Moonlight seized the other limb, and a good tug brought the two boys out
into the open, still fighting enthusiastically and apparently oblivious
of their surroundings. Two soldier ants never fought with greater
determination or with such a whole-souled devotion to the cause. Over and
over they tumbled in the dust, clutching hair, hammering ribs, and
grunting and grasping, blind, deaf, and callous as logs; and Joel Ham
stood above them with the familiar cynical twist on his blotched visage,
twisting his cane and making audible comments, but offering no further
interference.

'After you, my boys--after you. There is no hurry, Haddon, I can wait as
you are so busy. McKnight, your future is assured. The prize ring is your
sphere: there wealth and glory await you. Peterson, you see here how
degraded that boy be comes who forgets those higher principles which it
is my earnest effort to instil into the hearts and minds of the boys of
this depraved township. Cann, my boy, behold how brutalising is
ungoverned instinct.'

But, wearying of the contest, the master made a sudden descent upon
Jacker, and tore him from his enemy's grasp. The effort brought Dick to
his feet, panting and still eager for the fray. He could not see an inch
beyond his nose, and for a few moments moved about fiercely, feeling for
his foe.

'D'you gimme best?' he spluttered. 'If you don't, come on--I ain't done
up!' Then he flung the curtain of cobweb from his eyes, and the situation
flashed upon him in all its grim significance. For a swift moment he
thought of flight, but the master's grip was on his collar.

'Blowed if it ain't Jo,' he murmured in his consternation, and yielded
meekly, like one for whom Fate had proved too strong.

The schoolmaster's white-lashed eyelids blinked rapidly for a second or
so, and he screwed his face into a hard wrinkled grin of gratification.

'Yes, Ginger, my lad,' he said genially, 'Jo, at your service--very much
at your service; and yours, McKnight. We will go inside now, boys. The
sun is painfully hot, and you are fatigued.'

He marched his captives before him into the school room and ranged them
against the wall, under the wide-open wondering eyes of the scholars, by
whom even the most trifling incident of rebellion was always welcomed
with glee as a break in the dull monotony of Joel Ham's peculiar system.
But this was no trifling incident, it was a tremendous outrage and a
delightful mystery; for the boys as they stood there presented to the
amazed classes a strange and amazing spectacle, and were clothed in an
original and, so far as the children were concerned, an inexplicable
disguise. Fighting and tumbling about under the school house, Haddon and
McKnight had gathered much mud, but more cobwebs. In fact, they had wiped
up so many webs that they were covered from head to foot in the clammy
dusty masses. Their hats were lost early in the encounter, and their hair
was full of cobwebs; sticky curtains of cobweb hung about their faces,
and swathed them from top to toe in what looked like a dirty grey fur.
Each boy had cleared his eyes of the thick veil, but so inhuman and
unheard of was their appearance that there was presently a suspicion
amongst the scholars that the master had captured two previously unknown
specimens of the animal kingdom, and consequently further astonishing
developments might be looked for.

CHAPTER II.

Mr. HAM, with wise forethought, carefully locked the door and pocketed
the key after disposing of the lads; and this was well, for Dick Haddon,
fully appreciating the possibilities of the situation, was already
plotting--plotting with every faculty of an active and inventive mind.

The master faced his prisoners, and stood musing over them like a pensive
but kindly cormorant. Mr. Joel Ham, B.A., was a small thin man with a
deceitful appearance of weakness. There was a peculiar indecision about
all his joints that made the certainty of his spring and the vigour of
his grip matters of wonder to all those new boys who ventured to presume
upon his seeming infirmities. He had a scraggy red neck, a long beak-like
nose, and queer slate-coloured eyes with pale lashes; his hair was thin
and very fine in colour and texture, strangely like that of a yellow cat;
and face, neck, and nose were mottled with patches of small purple veins.
To-day he was dressed in a long seedy black coat, a short seedy black
vest, and a pair of now moleskins, glaringly white, and much too long and
too large.

'Haddon,' said the master in a reflective tone, 'you are not looking as
neat as usual. You need dusting. I will perform that kind office
presently, and, believe me, I will do it well. Jacker, I intend to leave
you standing here for a few moments to cool. You may have noticed, boys,
that the youthful form when over-heated or possessed with unusual
excitement has not that poignant susceptibility which might be thought
necessary to the adequate appreciation of a judicious lambasting. Has
that ever occurred to you, McKnight?'

Jacker shifted his feet uneasily, rolled his body, and, knowing that
nothing could aggravate his offence, answered sullenly:

'Oh, dry up!'

Mr. Ham grinned at the boy in silence for a few moments, and then
returned to his high stool and desk. Mr. Ham never made the slightest
effort to maintain before his scholars that dignity which is supposed to
be essential to the success of a pedagogue. In addressing the boys he
used their correct names, or the nicknames liberally bestowed upon them
by their mates, indiscriminately, and showed no resentment whatever when
he heard himself alluded to as Jo, or Hamlet, or the Beetle, his most
frequent appellations in the playground. He kept a black bottle in his
desk, at the neck of which he habitually refreshed himself before the
whole school; and he addressed the children with an elaborate and caustic
levity in a thin shaky voice quite twenty years too old for him. His
humour was thrown away upon the rising generation of Waddy, and might
have been supposed to be the cat-like pawing of a vicious mind; but Joel
Ham was not cruel, and although when occasion demanded he could use the
cane with exceeding smartness, he frequently overlooked misdemeanours
that might have justified an attack, and was never betrayed into
administering unmerited cuts even when his black bottle was empty and his
thirst most virulent.

In spite of his eccentricities and his weaknesses, and the fact that he
was neither respected nor dreaded, Ham brought his scholars on remarkably
well. There were three big classes in the room--first, third, and
fifth--and a higher and lower branch of each; he managed all, with the
assistance of occasional monitors selected from the best pupils. Good
order prevailed in the school, for little that went on there escaped the
master's alert eye. Even when he drowsed at his desk, as he sometimes did
on warm afternoons, the work was not delayed, for he was known to have a
trick of awakening with a jerk, and smartly nailing a culprit or a
dawdler.

The school to-day was in a tense and excitable condition, now heightened
to fever by the two cobwebbed mysteries standing against the wall, but
the imperative rattle of Joel's cane on the desk quickly induced a
specious show of industry.

'Gable!'

The individual addressed, a big scholar in the Lower Third, was so
absorbed in the spectacle provided by Haddon and McKnight that he failed
to hear the master's voice, and continued staring stupidly with all his
eyes.

'Gable! This way, my dear child.'

Gable started guiltily, and then fell into confusion. He climbed
awkwardly, out of his seat, and advanced hesitatingly with shuffling feet
towards the master. It was now evident that Gable was not a large boy,
but a little old man, slightly built, with a round ruddy clean-shaven
face and thick white hair. But his manner was that of a boy of eight.

'Hold out, my young friend!' Joel commanded, with an expressive flourish
of his cane.

Gable held out his hand; his toothless mouth formed itself into a dark
oval, his eyes distended with painful expectancy, and he assumed the
shrinking attitude of the very small boy who expects the fall of the
cane. The situation was absurd, but no one smiled. Ham raised the
extended hand a little with the end of the dreaded weapon.

'You are going the right way to come to a dishonoured old age, Gable,' he
said, and the cane went up, but the cut was not delivered. 'There,'
continued the master, 'I forgive you in consideration of your extreme
youth. Go to your place, and try to set a better example to the older
boys.'

The old man trotted back to his seat, grinning all over his face, and set
to work at his book with an appearance of intense zeal; and Joel Ham
turned his attention to the prime culprits. Having marched the youngsters
from the front desk of the third class, he drew desk and form forward
into the middle of the clear space, and then beckoned to McKnight.

'Jacker, my man,' he said cheerfully, 'bring your slate and sit here. I
have a little job for you.'

Dick, standing alone, watched his mate seat himself at the desk, elated
for a moment with the idea that perhaps Jo was not going to regard their
offence as particularly heinous after all; but his better judgment
scouted the idea, and he returned to his scrutiny of the wall. There was
a weak spot near where Hector, Peterson's billy-goat, had butted his way
through on a memorable occasion, and escape was still a comforting
contingency.

The master approached McKnight with a pencil as if to set a lesson, but
this was merely a ruse; Jacker was a hard-headed vicious youth whose
favourite kick Ham wisely reckoned with on an occasion like this. To the
boy's surprise and disgust he was presently seized by the neck and hauled
forward on to the desk. His legs, being against the seat, which was
attached to the desk, were quite useless for defence, so that he was a
helpless victim under the chastening rod. It was a degrading attitude,
and the presence of the girls made the punishment a disgrace to rankle
and burn. Jacker, for pride and the credit of his boyhood made no sound
under the first dozen cuts; but his younger brother Ted, from his place
in the Lower Fifth, set up a lugubrious wail of sympathy almost
immediately, and, as his feelings were more and more wrought upon by the
painful sight, his wailing developed into shrill and tearful abuse of the
master.

'You let him alone, see!' yelled Ted, when Jacker, unable longer to
contain himself, uttered a dismal cry.

'Hit some one yer size--go on, hit some one yer size!' screamed Ted.

But Mr. Ham's whole attention was devoted to his task, and the younger
McKnight's threats, commands, and warnings were entirely ignored,
although the boy continued to utter them between his heart broken sobs.

'Mind who you're hittin'! You'll suffer for this, Hamlet, you'll see!
We'll get some one what'll show you! Rocks for you nex' Saterdee!

Ted howled, Jacker howled, but the master caned on until he thought he
had quite accomplished his duty in that particular; then he let the limp
youth slide back into his seat.

Mr. Ham returned to his high stool to rest and recuperate. Thoughout the
proceedings he had displayed no heat whatever, and when he addressed
Jacker it was with his usual bland irony.

'You should thank me for my pains, my boy, but youth is proverbially
ungrateful. You will think better of my efforts a few years hence;
meanwhile I can afford to wait for the verdict of your riper judgment,
Jacker--I can afford to wait, my boy.'

Jacker's only reply to this was a long wail expressive of a great
disgust. That outburst was too much for the already over-wrought
youngster in the Lower Fifth; starting up with a cry, Ted snatched one of
the leaden ink-wells from its cell in the desk, and took aim at the
master's head. The well struck the wall just above its mark, and
scattered its contents in Joel Ham's pale hair, in his eyes, down his
cheeks, and all over his white moles. Amazement--blind, round-eyed, dumb
amazement--possessed the school, and for a few seconds a dead silence
prevailed. The spell was broken by Dick Haddon, who discovered his
opportunity, plunged like a diver at the weak spot in the wall, went
clean through and disappeared from view. Ted McKnight, who had awakened
to the enormity of his crime at the sight of the master knuckling the ink
out of his eyes, and had gone grey to the lips in his trepidation,
looking anxiously to the right and left for a refuge, saw Dickie's
departure; jumping the desk in front he rushed at the aperture the latter
had left in the wall, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

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