The gold trail, a romance of the South seas

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Maquart 9

II. The Man Without Imagination ... 19

Chapter I

T"\ AY was breaking over the Domain, glorious, gauzy with mist, warm and blue.

The larrikins and loafers, drunkards and unemployed who had spent the night on the grass were scratching themselves awake. Houghton on a seat had ceased yawning and stretching himself. He was talking to a stranger, a man slightly over the middle age who had slept beside him, and who was now making his toilet with a bit of comb, running it through his hair and his grizzled beard and talking all the time in an easy, garrulous, voluminous manner, more suggestive of long intimacy than of total unacquaintanceship.

Houghton, who had awoken surly and stiff and out of temper with the world, was sitting now with his arm across the seat back, his legs crossed, and his foot swinging, listening to the other who was making the conversation, and wondering vaguely what manner of man he might be. He had never seen any one at all like him.

“And the strangest thing,” went on the gentleman 9

IO with the comb, “is the fact that the off-scourings of the city sleep in this splendid place, fill their lungs with good air and wake refreshed, whilst the prosperous folk sleep in dog holes — bed rooms, if you like the term better — and wake half poisoned by their own effluvia. But don’t think I am a crank. Oh, dear, no. When I am well off, I am just as tough to common sense as the rest of humanity. I sleep in a bed room, eat too much, drink too much, and smoke too much ; but between whiles as now, for instance, when I am driven to the simple life I enjoy it, and I get a glimpse of what might have been if men had stuck to tents instead of building houses. Freedom, air, light, simplicity, great open spaces — those are the things that make life. Yes, sir, those are the things that count.”

“You have been about the world a lot?” said Houghton.

The other, having finished his toilet, was now regarding his boots with a critical eye; one of them showed a crack where the upper met the sole at the instep. He made this crack open and shut like a mouth for a moment, viewed it with his head on one side, and then said:

“Almost all over the place. North, south, east and west, doing almost everything that has got excitement in it. Living, you may say — that’s the word. How old may you be, if it’s not an impertinent question? Twenty-three, and you are English, I can see that. You belong to the class they call in England the gentleman class, and you’re out here sleeping with old rovers like me and all that hoggery over there n on the grass in the Domain of Sydney, without maybe more than a shilling in your pocket. Well, I was like you once, and if you keep on as you are going, you’ll maybe one day be like me. Look at me. I am forty-seven years of age, or maybe forty-eight, for I’ve always gone by dead reckoning — and I haven’t lost a tooth, I could digest an ostrich, I haven’t a care in the world and I’m always alive because I’m always interested. I have made three fortunes and lost them. Now do you think I set out to make those fortunes with a view to sitting down on the Hudson or on Nob’s Hill or in the city of Paris or London and enjoying them? I never had a view to that. I never had a view to a palace and a fat woman covered in diamonds for a wife, and sons and daughters and all such like. No, sir, I fought for money for the fight of the thing. Money ! I love it; it’s my dream ; I hunt for it like a pig for truffles, but when the durned thing is in my hands it turns to lead if I don’t use it to make more, and that’s what breaks me. For I’m like this, lucky as you like when I’m on the make adventuring in out-of-the-way places, but unlucky as Satan when I’m speculating. For instance, I made a big pile over the Klondyke and lost every cent in the wheat pit at Chicago.

“I was going about Chicago on my uppers same as I’m going about Sydney now, had to accept a loan to get away, then I bought an island.”

“You bought an island?”

“To speak more truly, I bought the lease of one. You can buy islands, mind you, and if you knew the Pacific as I do, you’d open your eyes at the trades that have been done over islands in these seas. There’s Ten Stick Island, for instance, in the New Hebrides. It’s nothing much of a place, just a rock sticking up out of the sea. You Britishers wanted a target for gun practice, and they bought the durned thing for ten sticks of tobacco from the Chief who owned it. At one time big fortunes were made by fellows who came along and picked up islands and stuck to them, shell lagoons and copra islands; but nowadays the governments have all closed in on everything bigger than a mushroom, even bits of places like Takutea and God-forsaken mud banks like Gough Island have their owners. Well, the island I came to negotiate for was in the New Hebrides. It was valuable because its top part was one solid block of guano. An old whaler captain brought news of it to me. I met him in a bar just off a cruise. ‘But where’s the use,’ said he. ‘It belongs to the Australian Government, and at the first wind of guano they’ll close down on it.’ That was four o’clock in the afternoon, and by four o’clock next day I had got a syndicate together, and not long after we had a lease of the place for ten years for almost nothing. And when we got to the place to work it, it was gone, nothing but a vigia left. Islands go like that. Kingman Island and Dindsay Island and a hundred others have ducked under, leaving only a reef a’wash or leaving nothing. Well, there we were - — done, with long faces and empty purses Gim-

me a match.”

He took out a pipe and some tobacco wrapped up in a scrap of the Sydney Bulletin. Houghton supplied him with a match and he began to smoke.

Houghton was young for his years. He had left Oxford without a degree to spend two thousand pounds which came to him on his majority. A woman had helped him to spend the two thousand and had died of galloping consumption, leaving him broken and heart-broken at the same time, without a profession, with expensive tastes and no earthly means of making money save with his hands.

And you cannot make money with your hands in England, so he came to the Colonies, fell in with some bar acquaintances, risked his last penny on a horse race and lost. He had rooms in Sydney and some gear, but he could not pay his rent, he owed for board and lodging, and for the last two days had been living from hand to mouth. No one need starve in Sydney, it is the most tolerant city towards loafers in the world, not that Houghton was a loafer; he was just a man without a job.

He sat looking at the other for a moment, then he said, “My name is Houghton. I’m English, as you say. What are you — American ?”

“No, sir,” replied the stranger, “there’s no American about me. I’m the most thoroughbred mongrel that ever crawled on God’s green footstool and jumped for scraps. Macquart is my name. Simon Macquart, a prospector by nature and profession, and as you see me sitting here talking to you I don’t look much, maybe, but I’m out after a fortune. A dead sure thing. Money enough to make a dozen men rich.”

He stopped short and puffed at his pipe, his eyes fixed away towards the sea as though the fortune had suddenly materialised itself and were visible. His profile seen like this hinted at a character both daring and predatory. Remember that a man’s essential character is exhibited in his profile more surely than in any other outline or combination of outlines, and the character of Macquart spoke loud at that moment as he sat with the pipe firmly clenched between his teeth and his eyes straining towards the distance.

“What is it?” said Houghton, “a mine?”

“Mine!” said the other, returning from his thoughts. “Oh, lord, no! It’s a proposition, and this very morning I am going to lay it before one of the biggest bugs in Sydney. I’ve been carrying it about in my skull for a matter of two years, always hoping to be able to find money of my own to work

it with Couldn’t. Laid hold of it first up

there, Borneo way — never mind exactly where, reached Portuguese Timor and sounded one of the biggest men there, a Dutchman, he only laughed at me — d — d ijit. I was so broke there that I had to help lading ships with copra — they’ve taken to growing cocoanut palms in Timor. Then I took a voyage to ’Frisco for my health, in the foc’s’le. Had no luck in ’Frisco and drifted to Valdivia. There I nearly had a chance in a loose way of business; started a faro table with a Spaniard, and was piling up the chips when my partner scooped the pile and the police did the rest. Lord, I never was so beat as that time. I got a boat that took me to Liveri5 pool. I did not want to go to Liverpool a bit, but the boat did and as I was one of the hands I had to go with her.”

He tapped the dottle out of his pipe against his boot heel, and as he did so Houghton caught a glimpse of the fluke of a blue anchor tattooed on his wrist and exposed by the stretching of his arm. It was the only thing about the man suggestive of the fact that he had been a sailor.

“From that I worked back to New York,” he went on, “and from New York here and there till I arrived in the old Colony, always with an eye on my proposition and another eye out for a suitable man to lay it before. I was near giving up when I fell in with a likely chap, a gentleman born; met him in a bar on Market Street, cottoned to him at oilce, just as I’ve done to you, gave him a whisper of what was in my mind and set him alight with it. He’s in the swim here though he hasn’t much money of his own. Bobby Tillman’s his name, and he’s going to lay me and my proposition before a likely man this very morning; eleven o’clock’s the hour. If we can fix things up, Tillman is the man to collect the hands for the job and find a likely vessel; he’s in with all the waterside. Money is useful in a thing like this, but it’s the men that pull it through; get the wrong ones and you’re done.”

“Look here,” said Houghton,. “I don’t know what this job of yours may be, and I don’t want to be inquisitive, but it seems adventurous and you seem to want men. Would there be any show for me in it?”

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“And why not?” asked Macquart, “if you’re game for roughing it. ’Pears to me I’ve been telling you a lot of things I wouldn’t have told to a casual stranger. Well, it’s just because I seem to cotton to you. Mind now, and don’t be flying away with things, building up on a treasure venture as if there was a fortune for every one in it; there’s not that. There’s the chap with money to be considered, there’s me and there’s Tillman. But you’d have your share and you’d see things, and maybe you’d be better off than on any job likely to turn up in Sydney. Can you handle a boat?”

“I’ve done a good deal of yachting in a small way.”

Macquart laughed.

“That’s the English all over,” said he, “bred up in idleness and sport, and then, when the pinch comes, in out-of-the-way places the sport helps them through. And I suppose you know the which end of a gun?”

“Yes, I’m a fair shot.”

“You’ll do all right. Oh, I reckon you’ll do all right, if we can only collar the bug with the money, which is my business, though maybe you can help a bit in that, too. I’m not much to look at, but your clothes are all right; you only want a wash and a brush up to be the English gentleman new to the colonies. There’s nothing like a bit of good appearance to help a deal through. Tillman is good enough, but he’s a bit off the handle. His father was a big marine store-dealer and he died worth a good deal; left his pile to Bobby, who spent half of i7 it and was choused out of the rest — or nearly so, for he’s got a bit left, not much but enough to keep him

idle Well, shall we get a move on? I’m going

to a place I know for some breakfast — have you any money?”

“Two shillings,” said Houghton, without any shame in stating the fact of his destitution.

“Well, keep your money in your pocket. I’ll pay. I have a tick at the place I know. You’ll want something for drinks, maybe, and I expect by to-night we’ll be a durned sight better off if I can touch this chap with the money.”

They left the Domain and entered the city. The morning was now blue and blazing, the streets brilliant with sunlight, and Houghton, walking beside Macquart, felt a wonderful uplift of mind and spirit.

Macquart was practically a tramp, though better dressed than the ordinary hobo; a man without money or home or prospects, yet of such an extraordinary personality that in his companionship all these details of life seemed of little account. This dreamer of wealth had the power of inspiring others with his dreams — or his disease. With him something wonderful was always going to happen, a sure thing that would shower gold on himself and his companions. Given a man with a grain of imagination and placed long in the company of Macquart, and that man would be lost — or at least his money would be lost, but at least he would have had excitement for his money, fabulous dreams of wealth, and the vision of a gorgeous future.

Houghton was under this spell now. Macquart is had told him quite definitely that his — Houghton’s — share in the Venture would be small; that did not matter, the Venture was the main thing, the atmosphere of romance and new life that Macquart was able to cast around him without any effort, the spirit of youth he was able to conjure up to assist in his infernal projects.

No man can influence without himself being influenced; no man can make others feel what he does not feel himself. Macquart’s whole-hearted enthusiasm in pursuit of his own ideals, his genuine joy in their pursuit, and his abandonment to imagination were the factors no doubt of his success. The old clothes that covered this walking romance were forgotten by them who read him, the dubious morality hinted at in his physiognomy was passed over; the fact that he was a walking parable on Poverty was unheeded — he showed men Fortune, talked of her as his mate, and made them believe.

He made me believe in him, and despite reverses, despite losses, despite the extraordinary happenings here to be set down, I believe in him still. He had without any manner of doubt the true scent for gold and success, a scent faultless when uncrossed and unspoiled by his imagination.

He led the way past the post-office and town-hall, of which splendid buildings he seemed as proud as any Sydneyite, and then, expatiating on the palms growing in front of the latter building, on the tramway traffic of the streets and the general prosperity of the city, led on down a bye-way to the doors of the modest-looking cafe where he possessed a tick.

Chapter II

THE MAN WITHOUT IMAGINATION T ten o’clock, Macquart leading the way, they

-*■ entered Lamperts’ bar at the corner of Holt Street. Lamperts’ is the most extensive and expensive place of its kind in Sydney, and that is saying a good deal. After and before a race-meeting it is crowded, and it is said that more money is made and lost here than on the Wool Exchange. Here you may meet a great many notabilities, from the men who write and draw for the first paper in the Eastern Hemisphere to the man who has won the .

Lamperts’ has known Phil May, his pictures are on the walls; and it was towards a young gentleman contemplating one of these pictures that Macquart now advanced.

Tillman, for it was the redoubtable Bobby Tillman himself, turned at the footstep of the other, recognised him and taking his cigarette from his mouth gave him greeting.

Tillman looked about eighteen, he was in reality twenty-seven; fresh complexioned, clean-shaved, and well-dressed in a suit of blue serge, wearing a straw hat on the back of his head and his hands in his trousers’ pockets, he was a typical “boy.”

Every race-course knew him, every bookmaker had made money out of him; he had spent a little fortune on dissipation, yet he remained to all intents and purposes quite fresh, innocent, and young.

Houghton took a liking at once to this new acquaintance, and having been introduced by Macquart as, “My friend, Mr. Houghton, just arrived from England,” found himself leaning against the bar counter, a soft drink at his elbow and his attention entirely occupied by Tillman, who was talking to Macquart yet including him in the conversation.

“What I like about you is your punctuality,” he was saying. “A man who doesn’t keep his appointments is a man who, ten to one, doesn’t keep his word. Well, here’s to you.”

“Here’s to you,” said Macquart; “and how about the business?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tillman. “I saw Curlewis again last night and reminded him. We are to be at his office at eleven sharp; he’s interested and that’s the great thing. Does your friend know anything of the affair?”

“Enough to make him want to lend a hand,” replied Macquart, half turning towards Houghton. “He can’t put any money into the thing ”

“Not a cent,” cut in Houghton, with a laugh.

“But he’s a yachtsman,” went on Macquart, “and a good shot and used to roughing it — just the man we want.”

“Good Lord! I should think so,” said Tillman enthusiastically. “Blow the money; a good man is better than riches in an affair like this; strength in the after guard is what we want and chaps that

THE MAN WITHOUT IMAGINATION it aren’t afraid of the weather. Houghton, I’ll be glad to have you with us.”

“I’ve told him that the pay won’t be great as viewed in proportion to the takings,” said Macquart.

“There you go,” cried the enthusiastic Tillman, “talking of pay as if you were going to open a friedfish shop. What comes to us will be shared in proportion to what we do or what we put into the business. You see, in a safe land show it’s all very well talking of salaries, but in an affair where we all risk being eaten by fishes or chewed by tigers, shares is a better word than salaries.”

The word “tigers” made Houghton look up.

“There aren’t any tigers,” said Macquart; “tree cats and leopards, nothing worse.”

“I don’t want to ask too many questions,” said Houghton, “or make you give the show away before you want to, but would it be too much to ask where we are going?”

“Mean to say you don’t know?” cried Tillman.

“Not in the least.”

“Well, you take the biscuit. You do, indeed. By George, that’s the spirit I like, ready to sign on, maybe for Hades, without a question!”

Mr. Tillman did not say Hades. I doubt if his classical knowledge included the meaning of the word. He clung to the Anglo-Saxon, and Houghton laughed.

“I’d just as soon sign on for there as stay in Sydney without a cent in my pocket,” said he, “and it couldn’t be hotter.”

“Well, it’s not far from here we are going,” said Tillman. ‘‘It’s up north.”

“New Guinea,” put in Macquart.

“Up a river in New Guinea to find something that’s there,” said Tillman. “You’ll hear it all

when Macquart spins his yam to Curlewis

Well, shall we be going? It’s some way from here, and it’s no harm to be a bit before time.”

He led the way out of the bar and they passed down the street, Tillman saluting nearly every second person they met. He seemed to be a wellknown character and the greetings he received — so Houghton fancied — spoke of amiability and goodfellowship rather than high respect. Houghton’s interest in this strange budding venture was concentrated now less on the main than the immediate objective. How would Curlewis receive his irresponsible visitor? How would he receive the seedy Macquart? He felt himself to be a fifth wheel in this ramshackle chariot so boldly setting out on the road to riches, and outside the wool broker’s office he frankly said so, suggesting that he should wait in the street till the interview was over.

Mr. Tillman would have none of that. He declared Houghton’s presence to be an indispensable factor in the proceedings. He was one of the “crew,” well, why should he skulk in the street whilst the others were putting in hard work?

“Hard work — by Gad, all the rest will be nothing to this — raising money, why, it will be more like lifting it. I tell you, we have to carry this chap by assault; he’s as good as they make them, but y’see they made him a business man and that’s the worst sort. However, we’ll do it, if only Screed isn’t there. Screed’s his partner, hard as nails, no ideas about anything but wool Well, come on.”

They entered the building, found Curlewis’ office, and were ushered right into the great man’s private room.

Curlewis was standing with his back to the empty stove. He was a joyous and opulent-looking young man of some thirty years, immaculately dressed, easy-going, an optimist and enthusiast by birth, judging from all appearances. Houghton, at sight of this gentleman, felt his spirits rising. Here was surely a man to further adventure, or, at least, not to cast cold water on the adventurous.

He scarcely noticed a mean-looking man like a clerk seated at the desk near the window, till he heard Curlewis say in answer to Tillman: “Oh, Screed won’t be disturbed by you; he’s busy with his letters and he has no ears or eyes for anything else. Chatter away as much as you like. Be seated, gentlemen. Well, now, this proposition of yours; let’s hear it. Go into the thing right from the beginning so that I may have the lie of the whole matter, and take your time over it so that you may miss nothing important I’m not busy this morning.”

“Ay, but I am,” said Screed, in a half-grumbling voice.

“Well, then, shall I take them into another room?” replied his partner. “You said talking didn’t interfere with you.”

“Neither does it. I was only telling these gentlemen that Curlewis and Screed aren’t so short of business that both partners can indulge in a fool’s holiday whenever it suits their pleasure.”

Houghton thought he had never in all his life met, heard of, or imagined a more unpleasant person than Screed. Hard, material and practical, a living ledger, soulless as an inkstand, with no more imagination than a ruler. Houghton fancied him sitting there, placed by Fate as a living antithesis to the opulent, easy-going, imaginative Curlewis.

He saw in Screed the rock on which their venture might split, and he hated Screed accordingly.

But Tillman was talking now:

“Well,” said he, “we’ll get to business, then, at once, and if this is a fool’s holiday, maybe we’ll prove we’re not such fools as we look.”

“Tillman,” put in Macquart, now speaking for the first time, “there’s no manner of use in blowing a man’s own trumpet in the first lines of a prospectus. Whether we’re fools or whether we’re not doesn’t matter a row of pins if the proposition is a good one. I’d a durned sight rather be led to a fortune by a fool than stick round making a living under the guide of a wise man.” Then turning to Curlewis: “I’m the head and front of this business, and looking at me you might say, ‘Here’s a nice sort of chap to come talking of fortune — why, he’s broke.’ Well, maybe I am; but if I am, it’s because I have been going about with knowledge in my head that’s worth more than the fools who won’t listen to me will ever make in business. Did you ever see a prospector who wasn’t broke till he managed to make good and hit the stuff he was after? Well, the long and the short of it is, I’m after John Lant’s treasure and I mean to lift it.”

“John Lant?” said Curlewis, tentatively.

“The same,” replied Macquart. “You don’t know who he is — or who he was, to speak more properly. Well, he was one of the chaps who used to trade from Sydney in the old days. It’s not so very long ago either, but long enough to have covered his traces. You look up the records of Sydney and see the business they used to do up there North before Borneo was properly settled down. Rubber, and wax, and trepang, and birds’ nests and rice and opium, and the Lord knows what all ; gold, too, from the upper rivers, though by all accounts not much. Anyhow, there was the trade to be had for old guns and gin, and gunpowder to be sold to the Malays that were fighting the Dutch, and sold at five hundred per cent profit.

“Then there were all sorts of side shows in the way of Barratry and Piracy and back-side ways of swindling, and Lant was up in every one of them,

every one of them Thank you, I don’t mind

if I do.”

Curlewis had taken a box of cigars from a side table, and was offering the narrator a smoke. The box was passed round and Houghton lit up cheerfully. Curlewis was evidently interested; only the infernal Screed, who evidently was a non-smoker, remained outside the charmed circle, and the occasional scratching of his pen could be heard like a comment on the words of Macquart.

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“Every one of them,” continued the Prospector, “and the tricks he didn’t find to his hand he invented; and the ones he found he embroidered on. Well, he went like that laying up the chips, till one day he had a dust up with the Dutch Government; and what he’d done I don’t know, but the Dutch Government confiscated his property. He’d invested his plunder in land at Macassar, and land in other parts owned by the Dutch. They say there was a big gambling shop in Macassar owned by him; anyhow, all his savings were under the thumb of the Dutch. You see, he’d been doing so many shady things, I expect he didn’t like to have ownings where the British Government could touch them, which proves he was a fool, for the British Government is the best friend to a chap like that who has money enough to work the law. The Dutch Government didn’t bother about the law; they knew he was a rogue and they scooped his property.

“It was when he called at Macassar with his ship that he got the news, and they impounded the ship. They impounded him and his crew, too, in an old calaboose place. He had stepped right off the blue sea into blue ruin, but that did not check Lant. He got wind in prison one day that a Dutch ship from Amsterdam had just come into the roads and that she was loaded up to her hatches with specie, to say nothing of general cargo. The Terschelling was her name. It was during the rains, and Lant and his men broke out of the calaboose that night, rowed off to the Terschelling and boarded her, shouting out

‘Customs’ to the chap that was on duty. He flung them a ladder to help them on board.

“Well, sir, I can tell you it didn’t take long for those fellows to do their work, the anchor watch being below sheltering from the rain and wind, all except the man who’d helped them aboard. They clapped the foc’s’le hatch to, stunned the look-out man and shoved him in the lee scuppers, knocked the shackle off the anchor chain and loosed the topsails, all before you could say ‘knife.’ Lant and his crew were handy men, and they had that brig away like picking a purse from a pocket, and there was nothing to chase them ; the Dutch gunboat on the Macassar station was poking about after pirate praus on the Bornean coast, and the biggest bit of piracy ever done in those waters going on right before Macassar. It all fell in like a tune, besides, no one wanted to chase them, for no one knew till the next morning when sun-up showed the Terschelling gone.