"Bless you, bless you!" cried he, with a violence more horrible than his curses, "you warm my heart, you _are_ a pal. What a head-piece you have got! ---- you, Smith, have you nothing to say? Isn"t this a dodge out of the common?"
Now for the last minute or two Crawley"s eyes had been fixed with a haggard expression on a distant corner of the room. He did not move them; he appeared hardly to have the power, but he answered, dropping the words down on the table anywhere.
"Ye-yes! it is very inge-nious, ah!"
mephisto. "We must buy the turpentine directly; there is only one store sells it, and that shuts at nine."
brutus. "Do you hear, Smith? hand us out the blunt."
Crawley. "Oh, ugh!" and his eyes seemed fascinated to that spot.
brutus (following Crawley"s eye uneasily). "What is the matter?"
Crawley. "Lo-o-o-k th-e-r-e! No! on your right. Oh, his tail is in the fire!"
brutus. "Whose tail? don"t be a fool!"
Crawley. "And it doesn"t burn!! Oh, it burns blacker in the fire!--Ah, ah! now the eyes have caught fire--diamonds full of h.e.l.l. They blast!
Ah, now the teeth have caught light--red-hot nails. The mouth is as big as the table, gaping wider, wider, wider. Ah! ah! ah!"
brutus. "---- him; I won"t stay in the room with such a fellow, he makes my blood run cold. Has he cut his father"s throat in a church, or what?"
Crawley (shrieking). "Oh, don"t go; oh, my dear friends, don"t leave me alone with IT. My dear friends, you sit down right upon it--that sends it away." And Crawley hid his face, and pointed wildly to whereabouts they were to sit upon the phantom.
brutus. "Come, it is gone now; was forced nearly to squash it first, though, haw! haw! haw!"
Crawley. "Yes, it is gone. Thank Heaven--I"ll give up drinking."
brutus. "So now fork out the blunt for the turps."
Crawley. "No! I will give no money toward murder--robbery is bad enough.
Where shall we go to?" And he rose and went out, muttering something about "a little brandy."
brutus. "The sneak--to fail us at the pinch. I"ll wring his neck round.
What is this? five pounds."
mephisto. "Don"t you see the move? he won"t give it us, conscience forbids; but, if we are such rogues as take it, no questions asked."
"The tarnation hypocrite," roared brutus, with disgust--hypocrisy was the one vice he was innocent of--out of jail, mephistopheles stole Crawley"s money, left for that purpose, and went and bought a four-gallon cask of turpentine.
brutus remained and sharpened an old cutla.s.s, the only weapon he had got left. Crawley and mephistopheles returned almost together. Crawley produced a bottle of brandy.
"Now," said he to mephistopheles, "I don"t dispute your ingenuity, my friend, but suppose while we have been talking the men have struck their tent and gone away, nugget and all?"
The pair looked terribly blank--what fools we were not to think of that.
Crawley kept them in pain a moment or two.
"Well, they have not," said he, "I have been to look."
"Well done," cried mephistopheles.
"Well done," cried brutus, gasping for breath.
"There is their tent all right."
"How near did you go to it?"
"Near enough to hear their voices muttering."
"When does the moon rise, to-night?"
"She is rising now."
"When does she go down?"
"Soon after two o"clock."
"Will you take a share of the work, Smith?"
"Heaven forbid!"
CHAPTER LXXV.
IT was a gusty night. The moon had gone down. The tents gleamed indistinct in form, but white as snow. Robinson"s tent stood a little apart, among a number of deserted claims, some of them dry, but most of them with three or four feet of water in them.
There was, however, one large tent about twenty yards from Robinson"s.
A man crept on his stomach up to this tent and listened. He then joined another man who stood at some distance, and whose form seemed gigantic in the dim starlight. "All right," said the spy, "they are all fast as dormice, snoring like hogs; no fear from them."
"Go to work, then," whispered brutus. "Do your part."
mephistopheles laid a deep iron dish upon the ground, and removed the bung from the turpentine cask, and poured. "Confound the wind, how it wastes the stuff," cried he.
He now walked on tiptoe past Robinson"s tent and scattered the turpentine with a bold sweep, so that it fell light as rain over a considerable surface. A moment of anxiety succeeded; would their keen antagonists hear even that slight noise? No! no one stirred in the tent.
mephistopheles returned to the cask, and, emboldened by success, brought it nearer the doomed tent. Six times he walked past the windward side of the tent, and scattered the turpentine over it. It was at the other side his difficulties began.
The first time he launched the liquid, the wind took it and returned it nearly all in his face, and over his clothes. Scarce a drop reached the tent.
The next time he went up closer with a beating heart, and flung it sharper. This time full two-thirds went upon the tent, and only a small quant.i.ty came back like spray.
By the time the cask was emptied, the tent was saturated. Then this wretch pa.s.sed the tent yet once more, and scattered a small quant.i.ty of oil to make the flame more durable and deadly.
"Now it is my turn," whispered brutus. "I thought it would never come."