"It was just as you was swep' overboard," explained the mate. "You didn't hear it; and if you had it wouldn't've been no use without the boat; but I was goin' to tell you to stand out to sea like I did; and you might as well, don't you see? Drawn your pay at the agent's yet?" he added as Denis was turning away.
"Not yet; that's what I've come for; but I only got here to-night."
"Ah," said the chief, "I have! I wish I was you!" And Denis left him with the tears in his eyes.
Outside the marquee a crowd had collected, and with reason, for in the centre stood a blacksmith with a shod horse whose four hoofs he was displaying in turn; and it was shod with pure gold, which he rubbed with a leather until the horseshoes shone again in the glare of the naked flame that lit the entrance to the booth. Denis knew it must be Bullocky's steed, and they had not to ask a question to gather that it was.
"How about the dark side now?" whispered Doherty, slipping an arm through his hero's as they walked away.
CHAPTER X
THIEVES IN THE NIGHT
Where they were to sleep was now the question. Doherty, who had still some sovereigns in his pocket, was strongly in favour of good beds at any reasonable price; but this did not commend itself to the son of the dales, whose hard head was always less sanguine for the day than for the far event. Dent was to draw his due next day; he was not very certain how much there would be to draw. He had assured Mr. Merridew that he had plenty of money, when he was really at his last gold piece. The squatter, on the other hand, had insisted on giving each adventurer a pair of blankets with his blessing; with these in tight rolls about their shoulders, they had made their march; and Denis now announced his intention of sleeping under a tree in his as soon as he had found the bed for Doherty. Their first quarrel nearly ensued. The boy had to shed a tear before Denis would hear of anything different; and then they had to find their tree.
After a fright from a spurred police cadet with drawn sabre, who threatened the pair with a five-pound fine apiece for attempting their ablutions in the Yarra, back they went across the river to the chartered squalors of Canvas Town; but instead of keeping as before to the main streets of tents, struck off at a tangent for the nearest open country. And this led them through worse places still; now wading knee-deep in baleful filth, and now through its moral equivalent in the most rampant and repulsive form. In these few dark minutes they saw much misery, more selfishness, and very little decency indeed. Jim slipped his hand through Denis's arm with a timidity that spoke volumes in his case; and Denis drew his deepest breath that day when the lights lay all behind them, save a single camp-fire far ahead in the bush.
Dent and Doherty were wandering toward this light, neither actually intending to go so far, nor yet knowing quite how far they would go, when a mild voice hailed them from under just such a tree as should have met their needs.
"I say," it said, "you fellows!"
"Hullo?" cried Denis, stopping in his stride.
"Steady!" returned the voice in an amused undertone. "Mum's the word--if you don't mind coming nearer."
The pair stole up to the tree. A slight young man stood against the trunk in the shaded starlight; it was his voice that conveyed his youth; they could barely see him at arm's length.
"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.