Read Ebook: The Harmsworth Magazine Vol. 1 1898-1899 No. 6 by Various

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Ebook has 1276 lines and 70628 words, and 26 pages

A STORY TO BE READ TO CHILDREN.

BY GEO. A. BEST.

"Wake up, Lessels!" said Stanley, in a hoarse whisper, shaking his younger brother as he spoke. "I've got a grand idea!"

"Gimme a little bit then," answered Lessels, drowsily. "You had some of my chocolate cweam last night."

"You goose! Don't you know what an idea is?" retorted the elder boy, disdainfully. "It isn't anything to eat. It's a notion."

"Then you can have it all yourself," remarked Lessels, indifferently.

"Would you like a thousand pounds to spend on caramels and chocolate?" asked Stanley. "And a golden guinea to put in the bank till you are a man?"

"Don't speak so loud, you little duffer, or you'll get nothing at all!" interrupted the elder boy. "Just get out of bed at once, and dress yourself without dropping anything. We're off to Klondyke!"

"Off to what?"

"Klondyke--a place where you dig money out of the ground like coals. Big lumps of solid gold, what'll buy a whole shopful of toys, and tons of best London mixture and marzipan. See?"

"What about washin' our faces an' bweakfast?"

"Miners never wash themselves, silly; and they don't have proper breakfasts till they've made their pile."

"What's a miner, an' who's a pile?" asked Lessels, chasing himself across the room backwards to attach his braces to a rear button which was apparently running away.

"A miner's a man who digs gold up and washes it in a cinder-sifter," explained Stanley. "And he shoots everybody who comes near him except his pard. I'm off to Klondyke to be a miner before dada awakes, and you've got to be my pard."

"Who'll I shoot?" asked Lessels, with a defiant glare.

"Everybody but me," answered Stanley, condescendingly. "We'll want my best sixpence-ha'penny gun; several sticks of lead pencil to shoot; two spades; a cinder-sifter; an umberrellar to sleep under; our nightshirts; a loaf of bread, and a big knife."

"Shall we take Desmond in the mail cart?" asked the four-year-old "pard," innocently. "Desmond, an' a packet of sherbet, an' my toy engine, an' a chair to sit on, an' the kitchen lamp, an' our bed, an' a few other fings to eat?"

"Babies and toys must be left at home," snapped the miner. "And how do you think we can carry a bed along? We must hunt for crabs to eat with our bread, and shoot birds and catch fish. Our Klondyke is really the beach, for I heard dada say last night that Southend was a regular Klondyke, as gold had been found on the sands. What a good job we live close to Southend, isn't it?"

"Hadn't we better tell dad we're going, an' get a penny to spend?" suggested the long-headed Lessels, ignoring his brother's question.

"A penny to spend!" echoed the elder boy, scornfully. "We'll have fifty thousand golden sovereigns to spend before this day week; and dad will forget to whack us when we buy him a new house, and a carriage with two horses and a footman, and an ounce of tobacco. And mamma shall have four splendid servants, and a sealskin jacket, and a bottle of scent, and a bicycle, and a new box of hairpins! I'm quite ready now, are you?"

Lessels answered with a somewhat doubtful nod, and the children crept silently downstairs. The kitchen door was successfully unbolted after a table and chair had been mounted by the intrepid Stanley, and the necessary materials for the outfit were rapidly collected from the neighbourhood of the washhouse.

"I'll carry the umberellar, gun, and knife," whispered Stanley. "You can fetch along the cinder-sifter and the other things."

"I don't like to touch the shinder-sifter: it's got nasty worms and snails on," protested Lessels, whimpering. "An' if I can't carry the gun I shan't go, so there!"

"I've a great mind to put a lead pencil through you, you great baby!" hissed the miner, furiously. "You're a nice pard for a man to have, to be sure! Don't forget that my gun is loaded, and I'm not going to stand any nonsense, so just do as you're told. If you're afraid of a worm, what are you going to do when conger eels, sea serpents, and octopussys attack us?"

"Fight 'em to deaf!" answered the "pard," growing suddenly cheerful at the prospect of encountering large game. "Is the octopussy like other cats?"

"It isn't a cat at all; it's a fish like a large spring onion with eyes in, and hundreds of roots which are all alive," explained Stanley, as the expedition moved slowly across the first field.

After a long and painful march over a plain covered with thistles and long grass, succeeded by a dense jungle, the heavily laden "prospectors" reached the beach at a lonely spot some miles to the westward of Southend pier. Here the umbrella tent was erected, the gun reloaded, and the mining utensils carefully unpacked. The loaf was thoughtfully wrapped up in a nightshirt to preserve it from the effect of sun and salt water.

"We must stake out our claim at once," said Stanley, producing four clothes pegs from his pocket, and sticking one at each corner of a four-sided diagram hastily scratched on the sand with a spade. "All miners have to do this before they've been in Klondyke five minutes. And we must put up a notice that this claim belongs to us, so as to keep other gold hunters off. See?"

"Then we shan't have nobody to shoot," protested Lessels, in a disappointed tone.

"Dig up some sand, pard, and fling it into the cinder-sifter while I write out the caution in blue pencil," said Stanley. "And when all the sand has run through call me to pick out the gold."

And after seeing the first spadeful of sand fall into the sieve, the elder miner rapidly produced a notice worded as follows:--

"This is our clame. Tresspasers will be persecuted and shot. Vissitors are requested not to tuch the nugets."

"Anybody reading that warning won't dare to come within a mile of us," remarked the author, proudly, as he attached the notice to the ferrule of his "tent." "Any luck, pard?"

"Any what, Stan?"

"Luck--I mean have you found anything?"

"I've got a kwab, an' a cockle shell, an' an old shoe, an' a ginger-beer bottle," replied Lessels, with a yawn. "The bottle's got some beer left in, an' I'm very thirsty. Shall we have a dwop?"

"That isn't ginger-beer, it's sea water!" cried Stanley, warningly. "If you drink ever so little you'll go mad, and smash things and shoot yourself! Then I shall have to bury you in the sand, and put a wooden cross over your head, so that I can show dada where I left you."

"My head aches, an' I'm getting thirsty," protested the hard-working pard.

"You 'ave got gold fever, that's all!" said Stanley, impatiently. "All miners suffer from gold fever, but it doesn't often kill 'em. If we both work hard for a few minutes p'r'aps we'll find a tiny nugget that we can change for real ginger-beer and buns at the store. We'll have a splendid evening at the store after our day's work is done. All the boys will be there, and we'll drink more than is good for us, and fight and play poker."

"The worst of you is you're so silly!" interrupted the elder boy, shaking the cinder-sifter vigorously as he spoke. "You never think anything's real that you can't see. When people get to know that there's millions of pounds under these sands there'll be cheap two-and-sixpenny excursion trains, full of wild miners, arriving here every few minutes."

"Will there be anything to eat an' dwink?" demanded the hot and thirsty pard, anxiously.

"Tons of it!" answered the senior digger, enthusiastically. "We shall use sweets an' sugar sticks for bullets, an' wash ourselves in real ginger beer. Miners always spend their money like that. They waste what they can't eat, and wash their faces in drink when they've had more than is good for them. It's a splendid life, isn't it, Lessels?"

"Which?" asked the pard, doubtfully.

"What's the use of explaining things to a fellow like you?" snapped Stanley. "Haven't I told you all about it?"

Lessels retired to the shelter of the tent without attempting to reply to either of these questions, and slowly divested himself of his shoes and socks.

"Paggle," replied Lessels, pointing to the incoming tide, which was rapidly approaching the camp.

"Paddle!" echoed Stanley. "What sense is there in paddling before we've found a single ha'porth of gold? Hallo! Come here, quick!" he continued, excitedly, as something large and hard rolled from side to side of the sieve. "Oh, Lessels! I've found a monster nugget! Come and help me lift it out. Hurrah!"

"Wait till I get my sock off," replied Lessels, indifferently. "Is it weal gold?"

"Of course it is, you little duffer! Never mind your sock!" roared the excited miner. "It's a large, square nugget--yellow, and broken in two. I wonder who's stole the other half."

"Looks like a bwick," remarked the pard, suspiciously, after carefully surveying the find. "An' it isn't clean an' bwight like weal money."

"I tell you it's a nugget," replied the lucky miner, in a tone which was intended to put an end to all argument on the subject. "Keep the gun loaded; I guess we'll have some robbers along presently."

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