The Tale of Timber Town

As he sat in his office, glancing over the invoices of the wrecked Mersey Witch, and trying to compute the difference between the value of the cargo and the amount of its insurance, there was a knock at the door, and Benjamin Tresco entered.

“How d’e do, Tresco? Take a chair,” said the man of business. “The little matter of your rent, eh? That’s right; pay your way, Tresco, and fortune will simply chase you. That’s been my experience.”

“Then I can only say, sir, it ain’t bin mine.”

“But, Tresco, the reason of that is because you’re so long-winded. Getting money from you is like drawing your eye-teeth. But, come, come; you’re improving, you’re getting accustomed to paying punctually. That’s a great thing, a very great thing.”

“To-day,” said the goldsmith, with the most deferential manner of which he was capable, “I have not come to pay.”

“Mr. Tresco!”

“But to get you to pay. I want a little additional loan.”

“Impossible, absolutely impossible, Tresco.”

“Owing to losses over an unfortunate investment, I find myself in immediate need of £150. If that amount is not forthcoming, I fear my brilliant future will become clouded and your rent will remain unpaid indefinitely.”

The fat man laughed wheezily.

“That’s very good,” he said. “You borrow from me to pay my rent. A very original idea, Tresco; but don’t you think it would be as well as to borrow from some one else – Varnhagen, for instance?”

“The Jews, Mr. Crookenden; I always try to avoid the Jews. To go to the Jews means to go to the dogs. Keep me from the hands of the Jews, I beg.”

“But how would you propose to repay me?”

“By assiduous application to business, sir.”

“Indeed. Then what have you been doing all this while?”

“Suffering from bad luck.” The ghost of a smile flitted across Benjamin’s face as he spoke.

“But Varnhagen is simply swimming in money. He would gladly oblige you.”

“He did once, at something like 60 per cent. If I remember rightly, you took over the liability.”

“Did I, indeed? Do you know anything of Varnhagen’s business?”

“No more than I do of the Devil’s.”

“You don’t seem to like the firm of Varnhagen and Co.”

“I have no reason to, except that the head of it buys a trinket from me now and then, and makes me ‘take it out’ by ordering through him.”

“Just so. You would like to get even with him?”

“Try me.”

“Are you good in a boat, Tresco?”

The goldsmith seemed to think, and his cogitation made him smile.

“Tolerably,” he said. “I’m not exactly amphibious, but I’d float, I’d float, I believe,” and he looked at his portly figure.

“Are you good with an oar?”

“Pretty moderate,” said Tresco, trying to think which end of the boat he would face while pulling.

“And you’ve got pluck, I hope?”

“I hope,” said the goldsmith.

“To be plain with you, Tresco, I’ve need of the services of such a man as yourself, reliable, silent, staunch, and with just enough of the devil in him to make him face the music.”

Benjamin scratched his head, and wondered what was coming.

“You want a hundred pounds,” said the merchant.

“A hundred and fifty badly,” said the goldsmith.

“We’ll call it a hundred,” said the merchant. “I’ve lost considerably over this wreck – you can understand that?”

“I can.”

“Well, Varnhagen, who has long been a thorn in my side, and has been threatening to start a line of boats in opposition to me, has decided, I happen to hear, to take immediate advantage of my misfortune. But I’ll checkmate him.”

“You’re the man to do it.”

“I hold a contract for delivering mails from shore. By a curious juncture of circumstances, I have to take out the English mail to-morrow night to the Takariwa, and bring an English mail ashore from her. Both these mails are via Sydney, and I happen to know that Varnhagen’s letters ordering his boats will be in the outgoing mail, and that he is expecting correspondence referring to the matter by the incoming mail. He must get neither. Do you understand? – neither.”

Tresco remained silent.

“You go on board my boat – it will be dark; nobody will recognise you. Furthermore I shall give you written authority to do the work. You can find your own crew, and I will pay them, through you, what you think fit. But as to the way you effect my purpose, I am to know nothing. You make your own plans, and keep them to yourself. But bring me the correspondence, and you get your money.”

“Make it £200. A hundred down and the balance afterwards. This is an important matter. This is no child’s play.” The subtle and criminal part of Benjamin’s mind began to see that the affair would place his landlord and mortgagee in his power, and relieve him for evermore from financial pressure. To his peculiar conscience it was justifiable to overreach his grasping creditor, a right and proper thing to upset the shrewd Varnhagen’s plans: a thought of the proposed breach of the law, statutory and moral, did not occur to his mind.

“There may be some bother about the seals of the bags,” said the merchant, “but we’ll pray it may be rough, and in that case nothing is simpler – one bag at least can get lost, and the rest can have their seals damaged, and so on. You will go out at ten to-morrow night, and you will have pretty well till daylight to do the job. Do you understand?”

Benjamin had begun to reflect.

“Doesn’t it mean gaol if I’m caught?”

“Nonsense, man. How can you be caught? It’s I who take the risk. I am responsible for the delivery of the mails, and if anything goes wrong it’s I will have to suffer. You do your little bit, and I’ll see that you get off scot-free. Here’s my hand on it.”

The merchant held out his flabby hand, and Tresco took it.

“It’s a bargain?”

“It’s a bargain,” said Tresco.

Crookenden reached for his cheque book, and wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds.

“Take this cheque to the bank, and cash it.”

Tresco took the bit of signed paper, and looked at it.

“Fifty?” he remarked. “I said a hundred down.”

“You shall have the balance when you have done the work.”

“And I can do it how I like, where I like, and when I like between nightfall and dawn?”

“Exactly.”

“Then I think I can do it so that all the post office clerks in the country couldn’t bowl me out.”

But the merchant merely nodded in response to this braggadocio – he was already giving his mind to other matters.

Without another word the goldsmith left the office. He walked quickly along the street, regarding neither the garish shops nor the people he passed, and entered the doors of the Kangaroo Bank, where the Semitic clerk stood behind the counter.

“How will you take it?”

The words were sweet to Benjamin’s ear.

“Tens,” he said.

The bank-notes were handed to him, and he went home quickly.

The digger was sitting where Tresco had left him.

“There’s your money,” said the goldsmith, throwing the notes upon the table.

The digger counted them.

“That’s only fifty,” he said.

“You shall have the balance in two days, but not an hour sooner,” replied Tresco. “In the meanwhile, you can git. I’m busy.”

Without more ceremony, he went into his workshop.

“Jake, I give you a holiday for three days,” he said. “Go and see your Aunt Maria, or your Uncle Sam, or whoever you like, but don’t let me see your ugly face for three solid days.”

The apprentice looked at his master open-mouthed.

The goldsmith went to the safe which stood in a corner of the shop, and took out some silver.

“Here’s money,” he said. “Take it. Don’t come back till next Friday. Make yourself scarce; d’you hear?”

“Right, boss. Anythin’ else?”

“Nothing. Go instanter.”

Jake vanished as if the fiend were after him, and Tresco seated himself at the bench.

Out of a drawer immediately above the leather apron of the bench he took the wax impression of something, and a square piece of brass.

“Fortune helps those who help themselves,” he muttered. “When the Post Office sent me their seals to repair, I made this impression. Now we will see if I can reproduce a duplicate which shall be a facsimile, line for line.”

CHAPTER XII

Rock Cod and Macaroni

The small boat came alongside the pilot-shed with noise and fuss out of all proportion to the insignificance of the occasion.

It was full spring-tide, and the blue sea filled the whole harbour and threatened to flood the very quay which stretched along the shore of Timber Town.

In the small boat were two fishermen, the one large and fat, the other short and thick.

“Stoppa, Rocka Codda!” cried the big man, who was of a very dark complexion. “You son ’a barracouta, what I tella you? Why you not stoppa ze boat?”

“Stop ’er yourself, you dancin’, yelpin’ Dago.”

“You calla me Dago? I calla you square-’ead. I calla you Russian-Finna. I calla you mongrel dogga, Rocka Codda.”

The Pilot’s crew, standing at the top of the slip, grinned broadly, and fired at the fishermen a volley of chaff which diverted the Italian’s attention from his mate in the boat.

“Ah-ha!” His voice sounded as shrill as a dozen clarions, and it carried half-a-mile along the quay. He sprang ashore. “Hi-ya!” It was like the yell of a hundred cannibals, but the Pilot’s crew only grinned. “You ze boys. I bringa you ze flounder for tea. Heh?” In one moment the fat fisher was back in the boat, and in another he had scrambled ashore with a number of fish, strung together through the gills. Above the noise of the traffic on the quay his voice rose, piercing. “I presenta. Flounder, all aliva. I give ze fish. You giva” – with suddenness he comically lowered his voice – “tobacco, rumma – what you like.” He lay the gift of flounders on the wooden stage. “Where I get him? I catcha him. Where you get ze tobacco, rumma? You catcha him. Heh?”

Rock Cod, having made fast the boat, was now standing beside his mate.

A sailor picked up the flounders, and, turning back the gills of one of them, said, “Fresh, eh, Macaroni?”

The bulky Italian sidled up to the man. “Whata I tell you? Where I catcha him? In ze sea. Where you catcha ze tobacco? In ze sea. What you say? Heh?” He gave the sailor a dig in the ribs.

By way of answer he received a push. His foot slipped on the wet boards of the stage, and into the water he fell, amid shouts of laughter.

As buoyant as a cork, he soon came to the surface, and, scrambling upon the stage, he seized a barracouta from the boat, and rushed at his mate. “You laugha at me, Rocka Codda? I teacha you laugh.” Taking the big fish by the tail, he belaboured his partner in business with the scaly carcase, till the long spines of the fish’s back caught in the fleshy part of his victim’s neck. But Rock Cod’s screams only drew callous comment from his persecutor. “You laugha at your mate? I teacha you. Rocka Codda, I teacha you respecta Macaroni. Laugha now!”

With a sudden jerk Rock Cod obtained his freedom, though not without additional agony. He faced his partner, with revenge in his wild eyes and curses on his tongue. But just at this moment, a stoutly-built, red-faced sailor pushed his way through the Pilot’s crew, and, snatching the barracouta from the Italian, he thrust himself between the combatants.

“Of all the mad-headed Dagoes that God A’mighty sent to curse this earth you, Macaroni, are the maddest. Why, man, folks can hear your yelling half the length of the quay.”

“Looka!” cried the Italian. “Who are you? Why you come ’ere? Rocka Codda and Macaroni fighta, but ze ginger-headed son of a cooka mus’ interfere. Jesu Christo! I teacha you too. I got ze barracouta lef’.”

He turned to seize another fish from the bottom of the boat, but the sight of two men fighting on the slip with barracoutas for weapons might detract too much from the dignity of the Pilot’s crew. The Italian was seized, and forcibly prevented from causing further strife.

“D’you think I came here to save Rock Cod from spoiling your ugly face?” asked the red-haired man. “No, siree. My boss, Mr. Crookenden, sent me. He wants to see you up at his office; and I reckon there’s money in it, though you deserve six months’ instead, the pair of you.”

“Heh? Your boss wanta me? I got plenty fisha, flounder, barracuda, redda perch. Now then?”

“He don’t want your fish: he wants you and Rock Cod,” said the red-headed man.

“Georgio” – the Italian was, in a moment, nothing but politeness to the man he had termed “ginger” – “we go. Ze fisha? – I leava my boat, all my fisha, here wit’ my frien’s. Georgio, conducta – we follow.”

Accompanied by the two fishermen, the red-headed peacemaker walked up the quay.

“What’s the trouble with your boss?” asked Rock Cod. “What’s ’e want?”

“How can I tell? D’you think Mr. Crookenden consults me about his business? I’m just sent to fetch you along, and along you come.”

“I know, I understanda,” said the Italian. “He have ze new wine from Italia, my countree – he senda for Macaroni to tasta, and tell ze qualitee. You too bloody about ze neck, Rocka Codda, to come alonga me. You mus’ washa, or you go to sell ze fish.”

“Go an’ hawk the fish yourself,” retorted Rock Cod. “You’re full o’ water as a sponge, an’ there’ll be a pool where you stand on the gen’leman’s carpet.”

Wrangling thus, they made their way towards the merchant’s office.

While this scene was being performed at the port of Timber Town, Benjamin Tresco was in his workshop, making the duplicate of the chief postmaster’s seal. With file and graver he worked, that the counterfeit might be perfect. Half-a-dozen impressions of the matrix lay before him, showing the progress his nefarious work was making towards completion.

“One struggle more and I am free,” muttered the goldsmith. “The English seals, I happen to know, usually arrive in a melted or broken condition. To restore them too perfectly would be to court detection – a dab of sealing-wax, impressed with a key and sat upon afterwards, will answer the purpose. But this robbing business – well, it suits my temperament, if it doesn’t suit my conscience. Oh, I like doing it – my instincts point that way. But the Sunday-school training I had when a boy spoils the flavour of it. Why can’t folk let a lad alone to enjoy his sins? Such a boy as I was commits ’em anyway. An’ if he must commit ’em and be damned for ’em, why spoil both his lives – at least they might leave him alone here. But they ain’t practical, these parsonic folk.” He rose, and took a white, broken-lipped jug from a shelf, and drank a deep draught. “Water,” he murmured. “See? Water, air, sunshine, all here for me, in common with the parson. P’r’aps I shall lack water in limbo, but so, too, may the parson – anyway he and I are on the same footing here; therefore, why should he torment me by stirring up my conscience? He has a bad time here and – we’ll grant this for the sake of argument – a good time afterwards. Now, I’ve got to have a bad time with old Safety Matches down below. Why, then, should the parson want to spoil my time here? It looks mean anyway. If I were a parson, I’d make sure I had a good time in this world, and chance the rest. Sometimes I’m almost persuaded to be converted, and take the boss position in a bethel, all amongst the tea and wimmen-folk. Lor’, wouldn’t I preach, wouldn’t I just ladle it out, and wouldn’t the dears adore me?”

Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the door. Instantly the spurious seals and the fraudulent matrix were swept into the drawer above the apron of the bench, and Benjamin Tresco rose, benignant, to receive his visitors.

He opened the door, and there entered the red-headed sailor, who was closely followed by Rock Cod and Macaroni.

Tresco drew himself up with dignity.

“This is quite unexpected,” he said. “The honour is great. Who do I see here but Fish-ho and his amiable mate? It is sad, gentlemen, but I’m off flounders since the Chinaman, who died aboard the barque, was buried in the bay. It is a great misfortune for Fish-ho to have dead Chinamen buried on his fishing-grounds, but such is the undoubted fact.”

“You need have no fear on that score, mister,” said the red-headed sailor. “They’ve not come to sell fish. Speak up, Macaroni.”

“We come to tella you we come from Mr. Crookendena. We come to you accepta ze service of Rocka Codda and Macaroni.”

For one brief moment Tresco looked perplexed. Then his face assumed its usual complacence. “Are you in the know, too?” he asked of the seaman.

“All I know is that I was told to pilot these two men to your shop. That done, I say good-day.”

“And the same to you,” said Tresco. “Happy to have met you, sir, and I’m sorry there’s nothing to offer you in the jug but water.”

“There’s no bones broke anyway,” replied the sailor as he edged towards the door. “But if you’ll say when the real old stingo is on tap, I’ll show you how to use the water.”

“Certainly,” said Tresco. “Nothing will please me better. Good afternoon. Sorry you must go so soon. Take great care of yourself. Good men are scarce.”

As the door closed behind the sailor the goldsmith turned to the fishermen.

“So you were sent to me by Mr. Crookenden?”

“That’s so.” It was Rock Cod who answered. “He give us the price of a drink, an’ says he, ‘There’ll be five pound each for you if you do as Mr. Tresco tells you.’ We’re a-waitin’ orders; ain’t that so, Macaroni?”

“Rocka Codda spik alla right – he understanda ze Inglese. I leave-a it to him.”

“You are good men in a boat, I have no doubt. Very good.” The goldsmith pursed his lips, and looked very important. “Mr. Crookenden has entrusted me with a mission. You row the boat – I carry out the mission. All you have to do is to bring your boat round to Mr. Crookenden’s wharf at ten o’clock to-night, and the rest is simple. Your money will be paid you in the morning, in full tale, up to the handle, without fail. You understand? Five pounds a piece for a few hours’ hire of your boat and services.”

“We catch your drift all right,” said Rock Cod.

“But, remember” – the goldsmith looked very serious – “mum’s the word.”

“I have ze mum,” said Macaroni. “I spik only to Rocka Codda, he spik only to me – zat alla right?”

“Quite so, but be punctual. We shall go out at ten o’clock, wet or fine. Till then, adieu.”

“Ze same to you,” said the Italian. “You ze fine fella.”

“Take this, and drink success to my mission.” Tresco handed them a silver coin.

“That part of the business is easy,” remarked Rock Cod. “But as to the job you’ve got in hand, well, the nature o’ that gets over me.”

“All you’re asked to do is to row,” said Tresco. “As to the rest, that lies with me and my resourcefulness. Now git.”

Benjamin opened the door, and pushed the fishermen out.

“Remember,” he said, as they departed, “if I hear a word about the matter in the bar of any hotel, our bargain is off and not a cent will you get for your pains.”

“Look ’ere, cap’n.” Rock Cod turned suddenly round. “We passed you our word: ain’t that good enough?”

“My trusty friend, it is. So-long. Go, and drink my health.”

Without another word the fishermen went, and the goldsmith returned to put the finishing touches to his fraudulent work.

CHAPTER XIII

What the Bush Robin Saw

The Bush Robin had a pale yellow breast, and his dominion extended from the waterfall, at the bottom of which lay a deep, dark, green pool, to the place where the rimu tree had fallen across the creek.

His life was made up of two things; hunting for big white grubs in the rotten barrels of dead trees, and looking at the yellow pebbles in the stream. This last was a habit that the wood-hen had taught him. She was the most inquisitive creature in the forest, and knew all that was going on beyond the great river, into which the creek fell, and as far away as the Inaccessible Mountains, which were the end of the world: not that she travelled far, but that all wood-hens live in league, and spend their time in enquiring into other people’s business.

The tui and the bell-bird might sing in the tops of the tall trees, but the Bush Robin hardly ever saw them, except when they came down to drink at the creek. The pigeons might coo softly, and feed on tawa berries till actually they were ready to burst, and could not fly from the trees where they had gorged themselves – as great gluttons as ever there were in Rome: but the Bush Robin hardly knew them, and never spoke to them. He was a bird of the undergrowth, a practical entomologist, with eyes for nothing but bugs, beetles, larvæ, stick-insects, and the queer yellow things in the river.

Being a perfectly inoffensive bird, he objected to noise, and for that reason he eschewed the company of the kakas and paroquets who ranged the forest in flocks, and spoilt all quietude by quarrelling and screeching in the tree-tops. But for the kakapo, the green ground-parrot who lived in a hollow rata tree and looked like a bunch of maiden-hair fern, he had great respect. This was a night-bird who interfered with no one, and knew all that went on in the forest between dark and dawn.

Then there was the red deer, the newest importation into those woods. The Bush Robin never quite knew the reason of his own inquisitiveness, and the roaming deer never quite knew why the little bird took so much interest in his movements, but the fact remained that whenever the antlered autocrat came to drink at the stream, the Bush Robin would stand on a branch near by, and sing till the big buck thought the little bird’s throat must crack. His thirst quenched, the red deer would be escorted by the Bush Robin to the confine of the little bird’s preserve, and with a last twitter of farewell, Robin would fly back rapidly to tell the news to his mate.

I had almost forgotten her. She was slightly bigger than Robin himself, and possessed a paler breast. But no one saw them together; and though they were the most devoted pair, none of the forest folk ever guessed the fact, but rather treated their tender relationship with a certain degree of scepticism.

Therefore, these things having been set forth, it was not strange that the Bush Robin, having eaten a full meal of fat white grubs, should sit on a bough in the shade of a big totara tree and watch, with good-natured interest begotten of the knowledge that he had dined, the movements of the world around him. The broken ground, all banks and holes and roots, was covered with dead leaves, moss, sticks, and beds of ferns, and was overgrown with supple-jacks, birch-saplings and lance-wood. On every side rose immense trees, whose dark boughs, stretching overhead, shut out the sun from the gloomy shades below.

The Bush Robin, whose sense of hearing was keen and discriminating, heard a strange sound which was as new as it was interesting to him. He had heard the roaring of the stags and the screeching of the parrots, but this new sound was different from either, though somewhat like both. There it was again. He must go and see what it could mean. In a moment, he was flitting beneath the trees, threading his way through the leafy labyrinth, in the direction of the strange noise. As he alighted on a tall rock, which reared itself abruptly from the hurly-burly of broken ground, before him he saw two strange objects, the like of which he had never seen, and of which his friend the wood-hen, who travelled far and knew everything, had not so much as told him. They must be a new kind of stag, but they had no horns – yet perhaps those would grow in the spring. One had fallen down a mossy bank, and the other, who was dangling a supple-jack to assist his friend in climbing, was making the strange noise. The creature upon the ground grunted like the wild pigs, from whose rootings in the earth the Bush Robin was wont to derive immense profit in the shape of a full diet of worms; but these new animals walked on two feet, in a manner quite new to the little bird.

Then the strange beings picked up from the ground queer things which the Bush Robin failed to comprehend, and trudged on through the forest. The one that led the way struck the trees with a glittering thing, which left the boles marked and scarred, and both held in their mouths sticks which gave off smoke, a thing beyond the comprehension of the little bird, and more than interesting to his diminutive mind. Here were new wonders, creatures who walked on two legs, but not as birds – the one with the beard like a goat’s must be the husband of the one who had none; and both breathed from their mouths the vapour of the morning mist.