The Tale of Timber Town

“I desire to give evidence!” cried the disturber of the proceedings. “I wish to be sworn.”

With his clothes in tatters and earth-stained, his boots burst at the seams and almost falling to pieces, his hair long and tangled, his beard dirty and unkempt, thus, in a state of utter disreputableness, he unflinchingly faced the Court; and the crowd, forgetful of the prisoner, Judge, and jury, gave its whole attention to him.

Beckoning with his hand, the Judge said, “Bring this man forward. Place him where I can see him.”

The Police Sergeant led the would-be witness to the space between the dock and the jury-box.

“Now, my man,” said the Judge, “I imagine that you wish to say something. Do you wish to give evidence bearing on this case?”

“I do, Your Honour.”

“Then let me warn you that if what you have to say should prove frivolous or vexatious, you will be committed for disturbing the Court.”

“If what I have to say is irrelevant, I shall be willing to go to gaol.”

The Judge looked at this ragged man who used such long words, and said sternly, “You had better be careful, sir, exceedingly careful. What is your name?”

“Benjamin Tresco.”

“Oh, indeed. Very good. T-r-e-s-c-o-e, I presume,” remarked the Judge, making a note of the name.

“No, T-r-e-s-c-o.”

“No ’e’?”

“No, Your Honour; no ’e’.”

“Benjamin Tresco, of what nature is the evidence you desire to give?”

“It tends to the furtherance of Justice, Your Honour.”

“Does it bear on this case? Does it deal with the murder of Isaac Zahn?”

“It does.”

“Would it be given on behalf of the Crown, or on behalf of the prisoner?”

“I can’t say. It has no bearing on the prisoner, except indirectly. It affects the Crown, perhaps – the Crown always desires to promote Justice.”

“Let the man be sworn.”

So Benjamin was placed in the box, and stood prominent in his rags before them all. After he had been sworn, there was a pause; neither the prosecution, nor the defence, knowing quite what to make of him.

At length the counsel for the Crown began, “Where were you on March the 3rd, the supposed day of the murder of Isaac Zahn?”

“I don’t keep a diary. Of late, I haven’t taken much account of dates. But if you refer to the date of the thunderstorm, I may state that I was in my cave.”

“Indeed. In your cave? That is most interesting. May I ask where your cave may be?”

“In the mountains, not far from the track to Canvas Town.”

“Dear me, that’s very novel. When you are at home, you live in a cave. You must be a sort of hermit. Do you know the prisoner?”

“Slightly.”

“Did you meet him in your cave?”

“No; but there I saw the men who ought to be in the dock in his stead.”

“Eh? What? Do you understand what you are saying?”

“Perfectly.”

“Perfectly? Indeed. Have you come here to give evidence for the Crown against the prisoner at the bar?”

“I have nothing to do with the prisoner. I have come to disclose the guilty parties, who, so far as I am aware, never in their lives spoke two words to the prisoner at the bar.”

“Your Honour,” said the bewildered barrister, “I have nothing further to ask the witness. I frankly own that I consider him hardly accountable for what he says – his general appearance, his manner of life, his inability to reckon time, all point to mental eccentricity, to mental eccentricity in an acute form.”

But the counsel for the defence was on his feet.

“My good sir,” he said, addressing the witness, with an urbanity of tone and manner that Benjamin in his palmiest days could not have surpassed, “putting aside all worry about dates, or the case for the Crown, or the prisoner at the bar, none of which need concern you in the slightest degree, kindly tell the jury what occurred in your cave on the day of the thunderstorm.”

“Four men entered, and from the place where I lay hid I overheard their conversation. It referred to the murder of Isaac Zahn.”

“Exactly what I should have imagined. Did you know the four men? Who were they? What were their names?”

“I knew the names they went by, and I recognised their faces as those of men I had met in Timber Town.”

“Tell the jury all that you heard them say and all that you saw them do in the cave?”

“I had returned from exploring a long passage in the limestone rock, when I heard voices and saw a bright light in the main cave. For reasons of my own, I did not desire to be discovered; therefore, I crept forward till I lay on a sort of gallery which overlooked the scene. Four men were grouped round a fire at which they were drying their clothes, and by the light of the flames they divided a large quantity of gold which, from their conversation, I learned they had stolen from men whom they had murdered. They described the method of the murders; each man boasting of the part he had played. They had stuck up a gold-escort, and had killed four men, one of whom was a constable and another a banker.”

“That was how they described them?”

“That is so. The two remaining murdered men they did not describe as to profession or calling.”

“You say that you had previously met these fiends. What were their names?”

“They called each other by what appeared to be nicknames. One, the leader, was Dolly; another Sweet William, or simply William; the third was Carny, or Carnac; the fourth Garstang. But how far these were their real names I am unable to say.”

“Where did you first meet them?”

“In The Lucky Digger. I played for money with them, and lost considerably.”

“When next did you meet them?”

“Some weeks afterwards I saw two of them – the leader, known as Dolphin, or Dolly, and the youngest member of the gang, named William.”

“Where was that?”

“On the track to Bush Robin Creek. I had come out of the bush, and saw them on the track. When I had hidden myself, they halted opposite me at a certain rock which stands beside the track. From where I lay I heard them planning some scheme, the nature of which I then scarcely understood, but which must have been the sticking-up of the gold-escort. I heard them discuss details which could have been connected with no other undertaking.”

“Would you know them if you saw them again?”

“Certainly.”

“Look round the Court, and see if they are present.”

Benjamin turned, and looked hard at the sea of faces on the further side of the barrier. There were faces, many of which he knew well, but he saw nothing of Dolphin’s gang.

“I see none of them here,” he said, “but I recognise a man who could bear me out in identifying them, as he was with me when I lost money to them at cards.”

“I would ask you to point your friend out to me,” said the Judge. “Do I understand that he was with you in the cave?”

“No, Your Honour; I knew him before I went there.”

“What is his name?”

“On the diggings, he is Bill the Prospector, but his real name is William Wurcott.”

“Call William Wurcott,” said the Judge.

William Wurcott was duly cried, and the pioneer of Bush Robin Creek pushed his way to the barrier and stood before the Court in all his hairiness and shabbiness.

Tresco stood down, and the Prospector was placed in the box. After being sworn according to ancient custom, Bill was asked all manner of questions by counsel and the Judge, but no light whatever could he throw on the murder of Isaac Zahn, though he deposed that if confronted with the visitors to Tresco’s cave, he would be able to identify them as easily as he could his own mother. He further gave it as his opinion that as the members of the gang, namely, Sweet William and his pals – he distinctly used the words “pals” before the whole Court – had drugged him and stolen his money, on the occasion to which Tresco had referred, they were quite capable, he thought, of committing murder; and that since his mate Tresco had seen them dividing stolen gold in his cave, on the day of the thunderstorm, he fully believed that they, and not the prisoner at the bar, were the real murderers.

All of which left the minds of the jury in such a confused state with regard to the indictment against the prisoner, that, without retiring, they returned a verdict of Not Guilty, and Jack left the Court in the company of Rose, the Pilot, and Captain Sartoris.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The Way to Manage the Law

It may have been that the Prospector’s brief appearance in Court had roused the public spirit latent in his hirsute breast, or it may have been that his taciturnity had been cast aside in order that he might assume his true position as a leader of men; however that may have been, it is a fact that, on the morning after the trial, he was to be seen and heard haranguing a crowd outside The Lucky Digger, and inciting his hearers to commit a breach of the peace, to wit, the forcible liberation of a prisoner charged with a serious crime.

“An’ what did ’e come for? – ’e come to see his pal had fair play,” Bill was exclaiming, as he stood on the threshold of the inn and faced the crowd of diggers in the street. “’E proved the whole boilin’ of ’em, Judge, law-sharks, police, an’ bum-bailies, was a pack of fools. He made a reg’lar holy show of ’em. An’ what does ’e git? – Jahroh.”

Here the speaker was interrupted by cries, approving his ruling in the matter.

“He come to give Justice a show to git her voice ’eard, and what’s ’e find? – a prison.” Bill paused here for effect, which followed immediately in the form of deep and sepulchral groans.

“Now I arsk you, ain’t there plenty real criminals in this part o’ the world without freezin’ on to the likes of us? But the Law’s got a down on diggers. What did the police know of this Dolphin gang? Nothing. But they collared Mr. Scarlett, and was in a fair way to scrag ’im, if Justice hadn’t intervened. Who have you to thank for that? – a digger, my mate Tresco. Yes, but the Law don’t thank ’im, not it; it fastens on to the very bloke that stopped it from hangin’ the wrong man.”

Here there arose yells of derision, and one digger, more vociferous than his fellows, was heard to exclaim, “That’s right, ole man. Give ’em goss!”

The crowd now stretched across the broad street and blocked all traffic, in spite of the exertions of a couple of policemen who were vainly trying to disperse Bill’s audience.

“Now I want to know what you’re goin’ to do about it,” continued the Prospector. “All this shoutin’ an’ hoorayin’ is very fine, but I don’t see how it helps my mate in the lock-up. I want to know what you’re goin’ to do!”

He paused for an answer, but there was none, because no one in the vast assembly was prepared to reply.

“Then,” said the Prospector, “I’ll tell you what. I want six men to go down to the port for a ship’s hawser, a thick ’un, a long ’un. I want those men to bring that there hawser, and meet me in front of the Police Station; an’ we’ll see if I can show you the way to manage the Law.”

The concourse surged wildly to and fro, as men pushed and elbowed their way to the front.

“Very good,” said Bill, as he surveyed the volunteers with the eye of a general; “you’ll do fine. I want about ten chain o’ rope, thick enough and strong enough to hold a ship. Savee?”

The men detailed for this special duty answered affirmatively, seized upon the nearest “express,” and, clambering upon it, they drove towards the sea amidst the cheering of the crowd.

The Prospector now despatched agents to beat up all the diggers in the town, and then, accompanied by hundreds of hairy and excited men, he made his way towards the lock-up, where the goldsmith, who had been arrested immediately after Scarlett’s trial, lay imprisoned. This place of torment was a large, one-storied, wooden building which stood in a by-street facing a green and grassy piece of land adjacent to the Red Tape Office.

By the time that Bill, followed by an ever increasing crowd, had reached the “station,” the men with the hawser arrived from the port.

No sooner were the long lengths of heavy rope unloaded from the waggon, then deft hands tied a bowline at one end of the hawser and quickly passed it round the lock-up, which was thus securely noosed, and two or three hundred diggers took hold of the slack of the rope.

Then was the Prospector’s opportunity to play his part in the little drama which he had arranged for the edification of Timber Town. Watch in hand, he stepped up to the door of the Police Station, where he was immediately confronted by no less a person than the Sergeant himself.

“’Day, mister,” said Bill, but the policeman failed to acknowledge the greeting. “You’ve got a mate of ours in here – a man of the name of Tresco. It’s the wish of these gentlemen that he be liberated. I give you three minutes to decide.”

The infuriated Sergeant could hardly speak, so great was his anger. But at last he ejaculated, “Be off! This is rioting. You’re causing a breach of the peace.”

“Very sorry, mister, but time’s nearly up,” was the only comment that the Prospector made.

“I arrest you. I shall lock you up!”

Bill quickly stepped back, and cried to his men. “Take a strain!” The hawser was pulled taut, till it ticked. “Heave!” The building creaked to its foundations.

Bill held up his hand, and the rope slackened. Turning to the Sergeant, he said, “You see, mister, this old shanty of yours will go, or I must have my mate. Which is it to be? It lies with you to say.”

But by way of answer the Sergeant rushed at him with a pair of handcuffs. Half-a-dozen diggers intervened, and held the Law’s representative as if he had been a toy-terrier.

The Prospector now gave all his attention to his work. “Take a strain!” he cried. “Heave!” The wooden building creaked and cracked; down came a chimney, rattling upon the iron roof.

“Pull, boys!” shouted the Prospector. “Take the time from me.” With arms extended above his head, he swayed his body backwards and forwards slowly, and shouted in time to his gesticulations, “Heave! Heave! Now you’ve got her! Altogether, boys! Let her ’ave it! Heave!”

The groaning building moved a foot or two forward, the windows cracked, and another chimney came down with a crash. Bill held up his hand, and the hawser slackened.

“Now, mister,” he said, addressing the helpless, struggling Sergeant, “when’s my mate a-comin’? Look sharp in saying the word, or your old shed’ll only be fit for firewood.”

At this point of the proceedings, a constable with an axe in his hand issued from the tottering building; his intention being to cut the rope. But he was immediately overpowered and disarmed.

“That fixes it,” said the Prospector. “Now, boys; take a strain – the last one. Heave, all! Give ’er all you know. Altogether. Heave! There she comes. Again. Heave!”

There was a crashing and a smashing, the whole fabric lurched forward, and was dragged half-way across the road. Bill held up his hand.

“Now, Sergeant, have you had enough, or do you want the whole caboose pulled across the paddock?”

But the answer was given by a constable leading a battered, tattered, figure from the wrecked building.

It was Benjamin Tresco.

Led by the Prospector, the great crowd of diggers roared three deafening cheers; and then the two mates shook hands.

That affecting greeting over, Benjamin held up his hand for silence.

“Gentlemen, I thank you,” he said. “This is the proudest day of my life. It’s worth while being put in limbo to be set free in this fashion. I hardly know what I’ve done to deserve such a delicate attention, but I take it as a token of good feeling, although you pretty near killed me with your kindness. The Law is strong, but public opinion is stronger; and when the two meet in conflict, the result is chaos for the Law.”

He pointed to the wrecked building, by way of proof; and the crowd roared its approval.

“But there’s been a man worse man-handled than me,” continued the goldsmith, “a man as innocent as an unborn babe. I refer to Mr. Scarlett, the boss of the Robin Creek diggings.”

The crowd shouted.

“But he has regained his liberty.” Benjamin’s face shone like the rising sun, as he said the words. “I call upon you to give three cheers for Mr. Jack Scarlett.” The response was deafening, and the roar of the multitude was heard by the sailors on the ships which lay at the wharves of Timber Town.

From the mixed crowd on the side-path, where he had been standing with Cathro and Mr. Crewe, Scarlett stepped forward to thank the man who by his intervention had delivered him from obloquy and, possibly, from death. Immediately the diggers marked the meeting, they rushed forward, seized Scarlett, Tresco, and the Prospector; lifted them shoulder high, and marched down the street, singing songs appropriate to the occasion.

At the door of The Lucky Digger the procession stopped, and there the heroes were almost forcibly refreshed; after which affecting ceremony one body-guard of diggers conducted Scarlett to the Pilot’s house, and another escorted Bill and Ben to the goldsmith’s shop. But whereas Scarlett’s friends left him at Captain Summerhayes’ gate, the men who accompanied Tresco formed themselves into a guard for the protection of his person and the safety of his deliverer.

When Scarlett walked into the Pilot’s parlour, he found the old sailor poring over a pile of letters and documents which had just arrived by the mail from England.

“Well, Pilot, good news, I hope,” said Jack.

“No,” replied the gruff old seaman; “it’s bad – and yet it’s good. See here, lad.” He pushed a letter towards Jack, and fixed his eyes on the young man’s face.

“I had better not read it,” said Jack. “Let Miss Summerhayes do so.”

“I’ve no secrets from you, lad. There’s nothing in it you shouldn’t know; but, no, no, ’tain’t for my dar’ter’s eyes. It’s from my brother’s lawyers, to say he’s dead.”

“What, dead?”

“Yes, died last January. They say he had summat on his mind; they refer me to this packet here – his journals.” The Pilot took up two fat little books, in which a diary had been kept in a clear, clerkly hand. “I’ve been looking them through, and it’s all as clear as if it had been printed.”

Scarlett sat down, and looked at the old man earnestly.

“I’ve told you,” continued Summerhayes, “how I hated my brother: you’ve heard me curse him many a time. Well, the reason’s all set down in these books. It worried him as he lay sickening for his death. To put it short, it was this: He was rich – I was poor. I was married – he was single. He had ships – I had none. So he gave me command of one of his tea-clippers, and I handed over to his care all I held dear. But I believed he proved unworthy of my trust. And so he did, but not as I thought. Here in his diary he put down everything he did while I was on that voyage; writing himself down blackguard, if ever a man did. But he owns that however base was his wish, he was defeated in the fulfilment of it. And here, as he was slowly dying, he puts down how he repents. He was bad, he was grasping, he was unscrupulous, but he wasn’t as bad as he wished to be, and that’s all you can say for him. I bury my resentment with his body. He’s dead, and my hatred’s dead. To prove his repentance he made his Will, of which this is a certified copy.”

The Pilot handed to Jack a lengthy legal document, which had a heavy red seal attached to it, and continued, “To my dar’ter he leaves the bulk of his money, an’ to me his ships. There, that ends the whole matter.”

Jack read the deed while the Pilot smoked.

“You’re a rich man, Captain Summerhayes,” said he, as he handed back the document to its owner.

“If I choose to take the gift,” growled the Pilot.

“Which you must, or else see an immense sum of money go into the maw of Chancery.”

“Chancery be smothered! Ain’t there my dar’ter Rose?”

“Yes, but she couldn’t take the ships except at your wish or at your death.”

“Then she shall have ’em.”

“Nonsense, Pilot. You know now that your brother never wronged you unpardonably. You own that in a large measure you misjudged him. Now then, place your unfounded charge against his evil intention, and you are quits. He tried to square himself by leaving you half his wealth, and you will square yourself with him by accepting his gift. If you don’t do that, you will die a worse man than he.”

The Pilot was silent for some time, and drummed the table with his fingers.

“I don’t like it,” he complained.

“You must take it. If you don’t, you will drag before the public a matter that must grieve your daughter.”

“All right, I’ll take it; but I shall hold it in trust for my gal.”

“That is as you please.”

“But there’s one good thing in it, Jack. Sartoris! Rosebud! Come here. There’s a gentleman wants to see you.”

Rose Summerhayes and the shipless Captain, when the Pilot opened his mail, had retired to the kitchen, in order that the old man, who was evidently upset by his news, might digest it quietly. They now reappeared, looking half-scared lest the heavens had fallen on the Pilot.

They were astonished to see him radiant, and laughing with Jack.

“Now, my gal and Captain Sartoris, sir, I’ve got a little matter to clear up. I own there was a problem in them letters as almost bamfoozled me. I confess it almost beat me. I own it got the better of me considerably. But this young man, here – stand up, Jack, and don’t look as if you’d stolen the sugar out of the tea-caddy – this young man, my dear, pulled me through. He put it to me as plain as if he’d bin a lawyer an’ a parson rolled into one. The difficulty’s overcome: there’s nothing of it left: it don’t exist.”

Sartoris’ eyes opened wider and wider as he gazed in astonishment at the Pilot, who continued, “Yes, Sartoris, you well may look, for I’m goin’ to tell you something you don’t expect. You are to have another ship. I have letters here as warrant me in saying that: you shall have command of another ship, as soon as you land in England.”

“D’you mean to say your brother has forgiven the wreck of The Witch? You must be dreaming, Summerhayes.”

“Probably I am. But as soon as you reach home, Sartoris, there’s a ship waitin’ for you. That ends the matter.”

He turned abruptly to Scarlett.

“There’s something I have to say to you, young feller. My gal, here, came to me, the night before last – when some one we know of was in a very queer street – she came to me, all of a shake, all of a tremble, unable to sleep; she came to me in the middle of the night – a thing she’d never done since she was six years old – an’ at first I thought it was the hysterics, an’ then I thought it was fever. But she spoke plain enough, an’ her touch was cool enough. An’ then she began to tell me” —

“Really, father,” Rose exclaimed, her cheeks colouring like a peony, “do stop, or you’ll drive me from the room.”

“Right, my dear: I say no more. But I ask you, sir,” he continued, turning to Scarlett. “I ask you how you diagnose a case like that. What treatment do you prescribe? What doctor’s stuff do you give?” There was a smile on the old man’s face, and his eyes sparkled with merriment. “I put it to you as a friend, I put it to you as a man who knows a quantity o’ gals. What’s the matter with my dar’ter Rose?”

For a moment, Jack looked disconcerted, but almost instantly a smile overspread his face.

“I expect it arose from a sudden outburst of affection for her father,” he said.

But here Sartoris spoilt the effect by laughing. “I suspect the trouble rose from a disturbed condition of the heart,” said he, “a complaint not infrequent in females.”

“An’ what, Cap’n, would you suggest as a cure?” asked the Pilot; his eyes twinkling, and his suppressed merriment working in him like the subterranean rumbling of an earthquake.

“Cast off the tow-rope, drop the pilot, and let her own skipper shape her course” – this was the advice that Sartoris gave – “to my mind you’ve been a-towin’ of her too long.”

“But she’s got no skipper,” said Summerhayes, “an’, dear, dear, she’s a craft with a deal too much top-hamper an’ not near enough free-board to please me, an’ her freight’s valued at over fifty thousand. Where’s the man, Sartoris, you’d guarantee would take her safely into port?”

The two old sailors were now bubbling with laughter, and there were frequent pauses between their words, that their mirth might not explode.

“There was a time,” said Sartoris, “there was a time when I’d ha’ bin game to take on the job meself.”