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The Story of the Treasure Seekers

E >> E. Nesbit >> The Story of the Treasure Seekers



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 _somethinmg_.' 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
underneath, 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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