The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

feet and looked about her as usual. She was in a place quite different from any she had seen hitherto. At her back stretched an orange-grove—there was no mistaking it, for the trees, planted evenly in rows, were laden with thousands of oranges, ripe and unripe, while the waxy white blossom with its golden heart still grew in clusters among the glossy dark leaves, sending its perfume out with the warm wind far and near. Before her, divided from the grove by a narrow, roughly fenced road, Mollie saw a wide, undulating plain, its surface covered somewhat scantily with coarse grass and occasional clumps of bracken. There were gum trees, large and small, their thin blue-green leaves hanging limply from the grey boughs, and throwing but little shade on the ground beneath. Some distance away a creek wound between wide banks of shingly sand and low boulders. At the nearer end a gum tree had fallen across the stream and had been left to form a crossing. Mollie thought it did not look a very inviting bridge to cross on a dark night.

It looked hot out there in the open. Mollie turned back to the orange-grove, cool and inviting, and had almost decided to explore in that direction, when the sound of voices fell upon her ear, and, turning again, she saw a group of children crossing the scrub land in front. In spite of wide hats and sunbonnets they were easily recognizable. The boys were walking in front and carried spades and pickaxes over their shoulders; the two girls were loitering along behind, and carried between them a large round article which might be a tub, a cradle, or a sieve. They were heading for the creek, and, as Mollie watched, Hugh lifted his hand and pointed towards the fallen log.

“Dick and Jerry are first to-day, and they have got over without any help from me,” Mollie said to herself, with a tinge of jealousy, which, however, she quickly got rid of—jealousy not being part of a Girl Guide’s equipment. She put her hands up to her mouth in the way she had seen the Australians do, and shouted “Cooo-eeeeeee!”, with a creditably sustained shrill note at the end. Her call brought the children to a standstill, and they waited for her to join them.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“We are going to dig for gold,” Prudence answered, as they started again. “Hugh says there is gold in the river-bed. The boys dig, and we sift the diggings in this cradle, which rocks in the water so that all the dirt runs out and the gold stays in—at least, it would if there were any to stay. Last year we dug for ever so long, but never got any gold at all. We found some pretty crystals, though.”

“I found a purple one just like an amethyst,” Grizzel joined in; “but Mr. Fraser said it wasn’t. Then I found a white one like a diamond, and a green one. I polished them with all my might, but I lost them except the green one. I hid it in a tree like the person who shot an arrow into the air, only my tree is a gum instead of an oak. I expect it is there still unbroke if it hasn’t been stolen by a magpie or a blackie.”

When they reached the creek the boys laid down their tools, and Hugh studied the lie of the land with an intent expression.

“We’ll begin about here,” he decided presently. “Last year we dug higher up, but I shouldn’t wonder if gold silts downwards and collects in a hollow. This is about the hollowest place I have found yet. The soil in these old alluvial beds is often auriferous,” he went on; “Mr. Fraser says this was once quite a respectable river, but years of dry seasons shrank it up. It will never go quite dry, because there is a good spring up there, and that is why he chose this place for his oranges. Irrigation is absolutely necessary for an orange-grove.”

“Are we allowed to eat the oranges?” Dick asked anxiously, as a breath of scented wind blew across him.

“Oh yes—as many as we like. But we must dig first,” Hugh replied firmly, lifting his spade as he spoke and planting it upright in the sandy soil. “First we must peg out our claims. There’s a good deal of luck about gold-digging, of course, but you’d better look round and choose your own spot.”

After some consideration the children decided to throw in their lot with Hugh, who was the only one among them who knew what gold looked like in its raw state.

“You can keep half and the rest of us will go shares in the other half,” Dick suggested, quite forgetting in his interest that Time-travellers cannot carry profits with them on their travels. The plan sounded fair, however, so they agreed to it.

“It is possible that we may not find gold,” Hugh said, as he marked out a square within which to begin operations; “but we are pretty sure to find something. Australian soil is extraordinarily rich in products. I should think it must be about the richest soil in the world.”

“I hope it won’t be ants,” Prudence said nervously. “I do hate ants.”

“Aunts!” exclaimed Jerry, not understanding Prue’s Scottish-Australian pronunciation. “Why the dickens should we find aunts in a river-bed? Do they all drown themselves out here? Aunts can be jolly nice too—or jolly nasty, according to circs.”

“They’re always nasty here,” Grizzel said emphatically, “I never met a nice ant in my life. They bite like red-hot nippers.”

“Bite! Oh, I see,” said Jerry, “you mean black aunts,” vague memories of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Aunt Chloe floating in the back of his brain. “I thought you meant white aunts. I didn’t know that aborigines were as fierce as all that.”

“I have never seen any white ants here,” said Prudence, who called the native Australians blacks when she spoke of them and a-borry- jines when she read about them. “Uncle Jim says there are a great many in India, and they eat his books.”

Jerry looked bewildered. “Of course there’s lots of ‘em in India,” he said, “but I never heard of them eating books.”

“I expect your uncle means that they devour novels,” suggested Mollie.

“No, he doesn’t. He says they eat a tunnel through all his books from one end to the other. And they stuff up the keyholes.”

“Your uncle’s aunts must be quaint old birds then,” Jerry said unbelievingly.

“But they aren’t birds at all, they’re ants,” cried Grizzel.

A loud cackle from Hugh, whose grin had been growing wider and wider, now interrupted the discussion: “Ho, ho, ho! One of you is talking about aunts—your Aunt Maria—and the other is talking about ants—the beasts that go to the sluggard,” he exploded. “You are a pair of muffs! He, he, he!”

“‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard’,” Mollie quoted slowly. “Oh— Jerry—”

It took them some time to recover from this little misunderstanding. “Next time I see Aunt Mary—bites like red-hot nippers—oh dear!”

“Well, come on and dig now,” Hugh ordered at last, twisting a cord neatly round his last peg as he spoke. “If you go on laughing like that you’ll soon begin to cry, and this mine will never get started.”

Thus adjured they rolled up their sleeves and set to work. Pickaxes were of no use in that sandy soil. The boys used their spades, and the girls carried the turned-up sand to the creek, washing it with the utmost care in the cinder-sifter. But their efforts met with no success. Neither gold nor anything else, except pebbles, rewarded their toil.

“It’s always like that,” Hugh said at last, sitting down on the edge of the hole they had dug. “Gold is the most gambly stuff imaginable. We know a lady who was as poor as a washerwoman one day, and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn’t know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She was an old maid, so naturally there wasn’t much she wanted. You never know who is going to be rich and who poor, with a goldmine. Some of these pebbles are quite valuable,” he continued, running a handful of shingle through his fingers, “there are amethysts and opals and topazes in some river beds. I have never found one myself, but I’ve picked up some pretty good crystals.”

“I think I’ll go and look for mine,” said Grizzel. “I hid it in a tree near here. I am tired of gold-digging, and my feet are hot. I shall dabble them in the creek and eat an orange.”

She got up as she spoke and went off towards a particularly gaunt-looking tree. Its trunk had split open, showing a hollow large enough to hold several people; for some distance around its roots protruded through the ground like old bones. Grizzel disappeared into the hollow trunk, whence she presently emerged with an air of triumph. “I’ve got it safe and sound. Now I’m going to get an orange.”

Jerry eyed the orange-grove lovingly. Digging is thirsty work.

“Let’s all go,” said Hugh. “Orange juice is one of the most restorative things in the world; if we eat enough we will be ready to make a fresh start in half an hour or so. Very likely we shall have better luck next time.”

It was hot, and the change from the glaring sunshine into the cool dampness of the orange-grove was very pleasant. The beautiful fruit hung invitingly from the branches with a colour and fragrance unknown to London shops. There were many varieties, and the Australian children wandered critically from tree to tree.

“I’m not sure whether I like navels or bloods best,” Hugh remarked, “but perhaps on the whole, for pure refreshment, navels.”

He stopped, as he spoke, before a tree on which grew oranges larger than the London children had ever seen in their lives—immense, smooth, opulent-looking globes of rich golden yellow. For a time silence reigned, while six people covered themselves with juice, “Like the ointment that ran down Aaron’s beard,” Grizzel said, and the ground in the neighbourhood assumed an auriferous hue that made the inventor sigh.

“I wish we could find a place where nuggets lay about like that,” he said rather pensively; “it would be awfully jolly.”

“It would be,” agreed the others, “most awfully jolly.”

“I think I’d as soon have oranges as gold,” Grizzel said reflectively, looking down at the peel-strewn earth. “Think how nice it would be if you were in the very middle of a scorching desert, and dying of thirst like the men in Five Weeks in a Balloon, to find a lovely orange tree covered with juicy oranges. It would be nicer than finding gold.”

“You do talk silly slithers,” Hugh said derisively. “Who ever found a beautiful orange tree in the middle of a desert? You might find gold and bribe an Arab to give you water.”

“You might find an orange tree in an oasis,” Grizzel said huffily. “I am going to bathe my feet in the creek. Go and look for your old gold. You won’t find it.”

“All right, Carroty-cross-patch. You won’t get any if we do,” Hugh replied politely.

“Don’t want it, Goggle-eyed-guinea-pig.” Grizzel got up and walked off, her sunbonnet dangling down her back and her red curls waving over her head. No one took any notice of these little amenities. No one remembered that the ointment which ran down Aaron’s beard was like brethren dwelling together in unity—a good and pleasant thing. They were all brothers or sisters