The Story of the Treasure Seekers
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E. Nesbit >> The Story of the Treasure Seekers
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11 This etext was created by Jo Churcher, Scarborough, Ontario
(jchurche@io.org)
The Story of the Treasure Seekers
by E. Nesbit
Being the adventures of the
Bastable children in search of a fortune
TO
OSWALD BARRON
Without whom this book could never have been written
The Treasure Seekers is dedicated in
memory of childhoods identical
but for the accidents of
time and space
CONTENTS
1. The Council of Ways and Means
2. Digging for Treasure
3. Being Detectives
4. Good Hunting
5. The Poet and the Editor
6. Noel's Princess
7. Being Bandits
8. Being Editors
9. The G. B.
10. Lord Tottenham
11. Castilian Amoroso
12. The Nobleness of Oswald
13. The Robber and the Burglar
14. The Divining-rod
15. 'Lo, the Poor Indian!'
16. The End of the Treasure-seeking
CHAPTER 1
THE COUNCIL OF WAYS AND MEANS
This is the story of the different ways we looked for treasure, and
I think when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy
about the looking.
There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the
treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how
beastly it is when a story begins, "'Alas!" said Hildegarde with a
deep sigh, "we must look our last on this ancestral home"' - and
then some one else says something - and you don't know for pages
and pages where the home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything
about it. Our ancestral home is in the Lewisham Road. It is
semi-detached and has a garden, not a large one. We are the
Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. Our Mother is
dead, and if you think we don't care because I don't tell you much
about her you only show that you do not understand people at all.
Dora is the eldest. Then Oswald - and then Dicky. Oswald won the
Latin prize at his preparatory school - and Dicky is good at sums.
Alice and Noel are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my
youngest brother. It is one of us that tells this story - but I
shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will.
While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet
you don't. It was Oswald who first thought of looking for
treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things. And
directly he thought of it he did not keep it to himself, as some
boys would have done, but he told the others, and said -
'I'll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always
what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.'
Dora said it was all very well. She often says that. She was
trying to mend a large hole in one of Noel's stockings. He tore it
on a nail when we were playing shipwrecked mariners on top of the
chicken-house the day H. O. fell off and cut his chin: he has the
scar still. Dora is the only one of us who ever tries to mend
anything. Alice tries to make things sometimes. Once she knitted
a red scarf for Noel because his chest is delicate, but it was much
wider at one end than the other, and he wouldn't wear it. So we
used it as a pennon, and it did very well, because most of our
things are black or grey since Mother died; and scarlet was a nice
change. Father does not like you to ask for new things. That was
one way we had of knowing that the fortunes of the ancient House of
Bastable were really fallen. Another way was that there was no
more pocket-money - except a penny now and then to the little ones,
and people did not come to dinner any more, like they used to, with
pretty dresses, driving up in cabs - and the carpets got holes in
them - and when the legs came off things they were not sent to be
mended, and we gave UP having the gardener except for the front
garden, and not that very often. And the silver in the big oak
plate-chest that is lined with green baize all went away to the
shop to have the dents and scratches taken out of it, and it never
came back. We think Father hadn't enough money to pay the silver
man for taking out the dents and scratches. The new spoons and
forks were yellowy-white, and not so heavy as the old ones, and
they never shone after the first day or two.
Father was very ill after Mother died; and while he was ill his
business-partner went to Spain - and there was never much money
afterwards. I don't know why. Then the servants left and there
was only one, a General. A great deal of your comfort and
happiness depends on having a good General. The last but one was
nice: she used to make jolly good currant puddings for us, and let
us have the dish on the floor and pretend it was a wild boar we
were killing with our forks. But the General we have now nearly
always makes sago puddings, and they are the watery kind, and you
cannot pretend anything with them, not even islands, like you do
with porridge.
Then we left off going to school, and Father said we should go to
a good school as soon as he could manage it. He said a holiday
would do us all good. We thought he was right, but we wished he
had told us he couldn't afford it. For of course we knew.
Then a great many people used to come to the door with envelopes
with no stamps on them, and sometimes they got very angry, and said
they were calling for the last time before putting it in other
hands. I asked Eliza what that meant, and she kindly explained to
me, and I was so sorry for Father.
And once a long, blue paper came; a policeman brought it, and we
were so frightened. But Father said it was all right, only when he
went up to kiss the girls after they were in bed they said he had
been crying, though I'm sure that's not true. Because only cowards
and snivellers cry, and my Father is the bravest man in the world.
So you see it was time we looked for treasure and Oswald said so,
and Dora said it was all very well. But the others agreed with
Oswald. So we held a council. Dora was in the chair - the big
dining-room chair, that we let the fireworks off from, the Fifth of
November when we had the measles and couldn't do it in the garden.
The hole has never been mended, so now we have that chair in the
nursery, and I think it was cheap at the blowing-up we boys got
when the hole was burnt.
'We must do something,' said Alice, 'because the exchequer is
empty.' She rattled the money-box as she spoke, and it really did
rattle because we always keep the bad sixpence in it for luck.
'Yes - but what shall we do?' said Dicky. 'It's so jolly easy to
say let's do something.' Dicky always wants everything settled
exactly. Father calls him the Definite Article.
'Let's read all the books again. We shall get lots of ideas out of
them.' It was Noel who suggested this, but we made him shut up,
because we knew well enough he only wanted to get back to his old
books. Noel is a poet. He sold some of his poetry once - and it
was printed, but that does not come in this part of the story.
Then Dicky said, 'Look here. We'll be quite quiet for ten minutes
by the clock - and each think of some way to find treasure. And
when we've thought we'll try all the ways one after the other,
beginning with the eldest.'
'I shan't be able to think in ten minutes, make it half an hour,'
said H. O. His real name is Horace Octavius, but we call him H. O.
because of the advertisement, and it's not so very long ago he was
afraid to pass the hoarding where it says 'Eat H. O.' in big
letters. He says it was when he was a little boy, but I remember
last Christmas but one, he woke in the middle of the night crying
and howling, and they said it was the pudding. But he told me
afterwards he had been dreaming that they really had come to eat H.
O., and it couldn't have been the pudding, when you come to think
of it, because it was so very plain.
Well, we made it half an hour - and we all sat quiet, and thought
and thought. And I made up my mind before two minutes were over,
and I saw the others had, all but Dora, who is always an awful time
over everything. I got pins and needles in my leg from sitting
still so long, and when it was seven minutes H. O. cried out - 'Oh,
it must be more than half an hour!'
H. O. is eight years old, but he cannot tell the clock yet. Oswald
could tell the clock when he was six.
We all stretched ourselves and began to speak at once, but Dora put
up her hands to her ears and said -
'One at a time, please. We aren't playing Babel.' (It is a very
good game. Did you ever play it?)
So Dora made us all sit in a row on the floor, in ages, and then
she pointed at us with the finger that had the brass thimble on.
Her silver one got lost when the last General but two went away.
We think she must have forgotten it was Dora's and put it in her
box by mistake. She was a very forgetful girl. She used to forget
what she had spent money on, so that the change was never quite
right.
Oswald spoke first. 'I think we might stop people on Blackheath -
with crape masks and horse-pistols - and say "Your money or your
life! Resistance is useless, we are armed to the teeth" - like
Dick Turpin and Claude Duval. It wouldn't matter about not having
horses, because coaches have gone out too.'
Dora screwed up her nose the way she always does when she is going
to talk like the good elder sister in books, and said, 'That would
be very wrong: it's like pickpocketing or taking pennies out of
Father's great-coat when it's hanging in the hall.'
I must say I don't think she need have said that, especially before
the little ones - for it was when I was only four.
But Oswald was not going to let her see he cared, so he said -
'Oh, very well. I can think of lots of other ways. We could
rescue an old gentleman from deadly Highwaymen.'
'There aren't any,' said Dora.
'Oh, well, it's all the same - from deadly peril, then. There's
plenty of that. Then he would turn out to be the Prince of Wales,
and he would say, "My noble, my cherished preserver! Here is a
million pounds a year. Rise up, Sir Oswald Bastable."'
But the others did not seem to think so, and it was Alice's turn to
say.
She said, 'I think we might try the divining- rod. I'm sure I
could do it. I've often read about it. You hold a stick in your
hands, and when you come to where there is gold underneath the
stick kicks about. So you know. And you dig.'
'Oh,' said Dora suddenly, 'I have an idea. But I'll say last. I
hope the divining-rod isn't wrong. I believe it's wrong in the
Bible.'
'So is eating pork and ducks,' said Dicky. 'You can't go by that.'
'Anyhow, we'll try the other ways first,' said Dora. 'Now, H. O.'
'Let's be Bandits,' said H. O. 'I dare say it's wrong but it would
be fun pretending.'
'I'm sure it's wrong,' said Dora.
And Dicky said she thought everything wrong. She said she didn't,
and Dicky was very disagreeable. So Oswald had to make peace, and
he said - 'Dora needn't play if she doesn't want to. Nobody asked
her. And, Dicky, don't be an idiot: do dry up and let's hear what
Noel's idea is.'
Dora and Dicky did not look pleased, but I kicked Noel under the
table to make him hurry up, and then he said he didn't think he
wanted to play any more. That's the worst of it. The others are
so jolly ready to quarrel. I told Noel to be a man and not a
snivelling pig, and at last he said he had not made up his mind
whether he would print his poetry in a book and sell it, or find a
princess and marry her.
'Whichever it is,' he added, 'none of you shall want for anything,
though Oswald did kick me, and say I was a snivelling pig.'
'I didn't,' said Oswald, 'I told you not to be.' And Alice
explained to him that that was quite the opposite of what he
thought. So he agreed to drop it. Then Dicky spoke.
'You must all of you have noticed the advertisements in the papers,
telling you that ladies and gentlemen can easily earn two pounds a
week in their spare time, and to send two shillings for sample and
instructions, carefully packed free from observation. Now that we
don't go to school all our time is spare time. So I should think
we could easily earn twenty pounds a week each. That would do us
very well. We'll try some of the other things first, and directly
we have any money we'll send for the sample and instructions. And
I have another idea, but I must think about it before I say.'
We all said, 'Out with it - what's the other idea?'
But Dicky said, 'No.' That is Dicky all over. He never will show
you anything he's making till it's quite finished, and the same
with his inmost thoughts. But he is pleased if you seem to want to
know, so Oswald said -
'Keep your silly old secret, then. Now, Dora, drive ahead. We've
all said except you.'
Then Dora jumped up and dropped the stocking and the thimble (it
rolled away, and we did not find it for days), and said -
'Let's try my way now. Besides, I'm the eldest, so it's only fair.
Let's dig for treasure. Not any tiresome divining-rod - but just
plain digging. People who dig for treasure always find it. And
then we shall be rich and we needn't try your ways at all. Some of
them are rather difficult: and I'm certain some of them are wrong
- and we must always remember that wrong things -'
But we told her to shut up and come on, and she did.
I couldn't help wondering as we went down to the garden, why Father
had never thought of digging there for treasure instead of going to
his beastly office every day.
CHAPTER 2
DIGGING FOR TREASURE
I am afraid the last chapter was rather dull. It is always dull in
books when people talk and talk, and don't do anything, but I was
obliged to put it in, or else you wouldn't have understood all the
rest. The best part of books is when things are happening. That
is the best part of real things too. This is why I shall not tell
you in this story about all the days when nothing happened. You
will not catch me saying, 'thus the sad days passed slowly by' - or
'the years rolled on their weary course' - or 'time went on' -
because it is silly; of course time goes on - whether you say so or
not. So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting parts - and in
between you will understand that we had our meals and got up and
went to bed, and dull things like that. It would be sickening to
write all that down, though of course it happens. I said so to
Albert-next-door's uncle, who writes books, and he said, 'Quite
right, that's what we call selection, a necessity of true art.'
And he is very clever indeed. So you see.
I have often thought that if the people who write books for
children knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell
you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I
was reading the story and you were writing it. Albert's uncle says
I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces,
and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I
wonder other authors have never thought of this.
Well, when we had agreed to dig for treasure we all went down into
the cellar and lighted the gas. Oswald would have liked to dig
there, but it is stone flags. We looked among the old boxes and
broken chairs and fenders and empty bottles and things, and at last
we found the spades we had to dig in the sand with when we went to
the seaside three years ago. They are not silly, babyish, wooden
spades, that split if you look at them, but good iron, with a blue
mark across the top of the iron part, and yellow wooden handles.
We wasted a little time getting them dusted, because the girls
wouldn't dig with spades that had cobwebs on them. Girls would
never do for African explorers or anything like that, they are too
beastly particular.
It was no use doing the thing by halves. We marked out a sort of
square in the mouldy part of the garden, about three yards across,
and began to dig. But we found nothing except worms and stones -
and the ground was very hard. So we thought we'd try another part
of the garden, and we found a place in the big round flower bed,
where the ground was much softer. We thought we'd make a smaller
hole to begin with, and it was much better. We dug and dug and
dug, and it was jolly hard work! We got very hot digging, but we
found nothing.
Presently Albert-next-door looked over the wall. We do not like
him very much, but we let him play with us sometimes, because his
father is dead, and you must not be unkind to orphans, even if
their mothers are alive. Albert is always very tidy. He wears
frilly collars and velvet knickerbockers. I can't think how he can
bear to. So we said, 'Hallo!' And he said, 'What are you up to?'
'We're digging for treasure,' said Alice; 'an ancient parchment
revealed to us the place of concealment. Come over and help us.
When we have dug deep enough we shall find a great pot of red clay,
full of gold and precious jewels.'
Albert-next-door only sniggered and said, 'What silly nonsense!'
He cannot play properly at all. It is very strange, because he has
a very nice uncle. You see, Albert-next-door doesn't care for
reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he
is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped, and you just
have to put up with it when you want him to do anything. Besides,
it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you
are yourself. It is not always their faults.
So Oswald said, 'Come and dig! Then you shall share the treasure
when we've found it.'
But he said, 'I shan't - I don't like digging - and I'm just going
in to my tea.'
'Come along and dig, there's a good boy,' Alice said. 'You can use
my spade. It's much the best -'
So he came along and dug, and when once he was over the wall we
kept him at it, and we worked as well, of course, and the hole got
deep. Pincher worked too - he is our dog and he is very good at
digging. He digs for rats in the dustbin sometimes, and gets very
dirty. But we love our dog, even when his face wants washing.
'I expect we shall have to make a tunnel,' Oswald said, 'to reach
the rich treasure.' So he jumped into the hole and began to dig at
one side. After that we took it in turns to dig at the tunnel, and
Pincher was most useful in scraping the earth out of the tunnel -
he does it with his back feet when you say 'Rats!' and he digs with
his front ones, and burrows with his nose as well.
At last the tunnel was nearly a yard long, and big enough to creep
along to find the treasure, if only it had been a bit longer. Now
it was Albert's turn to go in and dig, but he funked it.
'Take your turn like a man,' said Oswald - nobody can say that
Oswald doesn't take his turn like a man. But Albert wouldn't. So
we had to make him, because it was only fair.
'It's quite easy,' Alice said. 'You just crawl in and dig with
your hands. Then when you come out we can scrape out what you've
done, with the spades. Come - be a man. You won't notice it being
dark in the tunnel if you shut your eyes tight. We've all been in
except Dora - and she doesn't like worms.'
'I don't like worms neither.' Albert-next-door said this; but we
remembered how he had picked a fat red and black worm up in his
fingers and thrown it at Dora only the day before. So we put him
in.
But he would not go in head first, the proper way, and dig with his
hands as we had done, and though Oswald was angry at the time, for
he hates snivellers, yet afterwards he owned that perhaps it was
just as well. You should never be afraid to own that perhaps you
were mistaken - but it is cowardly to do it unless you are quite
sure you are in the wrong.
'Let me go in feet first,' said Albert-next-door. 'I'll dig with
my boots - I will truly, honour bright.'
So we let him get in feet first - and he did it very slowly and at
last he was in, and only his head sticking out into the hole; and
all the rest of him in the tunnel.
'Now dig with your boots,' said Oswald; 'and, Alice, do catch hold
of Pincher, he'll be digging again in another minute, and perhaps
it would be uncomfortable for Albert if Pincher threw the mould
into his eyes.'
You should always try to think of these little things. Thinking of
other people's comfort makes them like you. Alice held Pincher,
and we all shouted, 'Kick! dig with your feet, for all you're
worth!'
So Albert-next-door began to dig with his feet, and we stood on the
ground over him, waiting - and all in a minute the ground gave way,
and we tumbled together in a heap: and when we got up there was a
little shallow hollow where we had been standing, and
Albert-next-door was under- neath, stuck quite fast, because the
roof of the tunnel had tumbled in on him. He is a horribly unlucky
boy to have anything to do with.
It was dreadful the way he cried and screamed, though he had to own
it didn't hurt, only it was rather heavy and he couldn't move his
legs. We would have dug him out all right enough, in time, but he
screamed so we were afraid the police would come, so Dicky climbed
over the wall, to tell the cook there to tell Albert-next-door's
uncle he had been buried by mistake, and to come and help dig him
out.
Dicky was a long time gone. We wondered what had become of him,
and all the while the screaming went on and on, for we had taken
the loose earth off Albert's face so that he could scream quite
easily and comfortably.
Presently Dicky came back and Albert-next-door's uncle came with
him. He has very long legs, and his hair is light and his face is
brown. He has been to sea, but now he writes books. I like him.
He told his nephew to stow it, so Albert did, and then he asked him
if he was hurt - and Albert had to say he wasn't, for though he is
a coward, and very unlucky, he is not a liar like some boys are.
'This promises to be a protracted if agreeable task,' said
Albert-next-door's uncle, rubbing his hands and looking at the hole
with Albert's head in it. 'I will get another spade,' so he
fetched the big spade out of the next-door garden tool-shed, and
began to dig his nephew out.
'Mind you keep very still,' he said, 'or I might chunk a bit out of
you with the spade.' Then after a while he said -
'I confess that I am not absolutely insensible to the dramatic
interest of the situation. My curiosity is excited. I own that I
should like to know how my nephew happened to be buried. But don't
tell me if you'd rather not. I suppose no force was used?'
'Only moral force,' said Alice. They used to talk a lot about
moral force at the High School where she went, and in case you
don't know what it means I'll tell you that it is making people do
what they don't want to, just by slanging them, or laughing at
them, or promising them things if they're good.
'Only moral force, eh?' said Albert-next-door's uncle. 'Well?'
'Well,' Dora said, 'I'm very sorry it happened to Albert - I'd
rather it had been one of us. It would have been my turn to go
into the tunnel, only I don't like worms, so they let me off. You
see we were digging for treasure.'
'Yes,' said Alice, 'and I think we were just coming to the
underground passage that leads to the secret hoard, when the tunnel
fell in on Albert. He is so unlucky,' and she sighed.
Then Albert-next-door began to scream again, and his uncle wiped
his face - his own face, not Albert's - with his silk handkerchief,
and then he put it in his trousers pocket. It seems a strange
place to put a handkerchief, but he had his coat and waistcoat off
and I suppose he wanted the handkerchief handy. Digging is warm
work.
He told Albert-next-door to drop it, or he wouldn't proceed further
in the matter, so Albert stopped screaming, and presently his uncle
finished digging him out. Albert did look so funny, with his hair
all dusty and his velvet suit covered with mould and his face muddy
with earth and crying.
We all said how sorry we were, but he wouldn't say a word back to
us. He was most awfully sick to think he'd been the one buried,
when it might just as well have been one of us. I felt myself that
it was hard lines.
'So you were digging for treasure,' said Albert-next-door's uncle,
wiping his face again with his handkerchief. 'Well, I fear that
your chances of success are small. I have made a careful study of
the whole subject. What I don't know about buried treasure is not
worth knowing. And I never knew more than one coin buried in any
one garden - and that is generally - Hullo - what's that?'
He pointed to something shining in the hole he had just dragged
Albert out of. Oswald picked it up. It was a half-crown. We
looked at each other, speechless with surprise and delight, like in
books.
'Well, that's lucky, at all events,' said Albert-next-door's uncle.
'Let's see, that's fivepence each for you.'
'It's fourpence - something; I can't do fractions,' said Dicky;
'there are seven of us, you see.'
'Oh, you count Albert as one of yourselves on this occasion, eh?'
'Of course,' said Alice; 'and I say, he was buried after all. Why
shouldn't we let him have the odd somethings, and we'll have
fourpence each.'
We all agreed to do this, and told Albert-next-door we would bring
his share as soon as we could get the half-crown changed. He
cheered up a little at that, and his uncle wiped his face again -
he did look hot - and began to put on his coat and waistcoat.
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