The Peril Finders Part 11

"Horrible," replied the boy, laughing.

"Never mind; you understood it. Look here, gentlemen, there's a fine chance here for a fortune, and I say, have a try for it, and take me with you to help, share and share alike. I'll work with you, fight for you, and share all the trouble like a man. It's worth the try, and I think so much of it that if you say downright that you won't go I shall see if I can find a trusty mate, and go myself. There, that's all."

Griggs threw himself back on his seat so as to get his back square against the wall, tilting the stool on two legs, and looked sharply round the table, and then at Wilton, who had risen and come round to him to offer his hand.

The American looked at the long brown fingers and then up in their owner's face.

"What's that for?" he said. "Want me to shake, and then go home, because you're tired of me?"

"No," cried Wilton fiercely. "It's for you to give me yours. I say you're right, Griggs. The place must be found, and I'll go with you to work and fight, and through thick and thin, for I believe in you as a true man. I'll go with you, and we'll find the treasure or come back, worn out, to die."

"Not we!" cried the American, seizing Wilton's hand in his strong grip.

"I'm with you, to stick to you, Mister Wilton, like a brother man. I'm ready to start with you to-morrow, if you like, if the doctor here will hand over that dockyment.--Any more going on?"

The two boys sprang to their feet and looked at their fathers, who spoke as one man. "Sit down, boys!" they cried.

"Why, you rash young reprobate," cried the doctor. "Do you mean to tell me that you'd go off on this mad journey without asking my leave?"

"No, father, of course not. Ned wouldn't either without Mr Bourne's consent; but I want to go with old Griggs, who has always been such a good fellow to us, and I feel sure you and Mr Bourne both mean to go too."

"What makes you say that, sir?" cried the doctor sternly.

"Oh, first because Mr Wilton's going, and you'd neither of you like him to go without you."

"Any other reason, sir?"

"Yes, father. It seems to me that as we are going away to make a fresh start, it would be much better to go in search of this treasure than to be sailing straight back to England, not knowing what we should do when we got there."

"Oh, that's what you think, is it, sir?" said the doctor.--"By your leave, Bourne!--Now, Master Ned, pray what do you think about it all?"

"Oh," cried the boy addressed, speaking to the doctor, but looking hard and searchingly in his father's face, "I want to go with Chris, of course, and I think just the same as he does. Why, it would be grand, Mr Lee. We should have no end of adventures, and see the beautiful country."

"And the dismal desert. Why, you romantic young dreamer! You'll never see a place south of here half so beautiful."

"But what's the good of its being beautiful if we can't live upon it?"

"Then you'd be glad to go?"

"Oh yes, sir," cried Ned.

"Humph! Well, Bourne, it seems then that you and I will have to go back to England empty and alone."

"No, you won't, father," said Chris quickly. "I shouldn't go without you went too."

"And I shouldn't either, father," said Ned huskily, as he went and stood behind his father with his hands resting on Bourne's shoulders.

"Here, I wish you two young fellows had held your tongues," said Griggs roughly, "because it's like filling a man full of pleasure, and then making a hole and letting it all out again. But it's all right, lads, and thankye all the same. No, you can't go away and leave your two dads; it wouldn't be right, and you couldn't expect to prosper if you did. But I wish they'd think as we do, and say they'd go and chance it.

Raally, doctor, and raally, Mr Bourne, I'd go to bed and sleep on it.

P'r'aps you'd feel a bit different in the morning. What do you say?"

The doctor was silent for a few moments, gazing full in the American's face, the latter receiving the look without blenching.

"Let me see, Mr Griggs," he said; "I've known you nearly four years, haven't I?"

"Four years, four months, doctor, and that's just as long as I've known you."

"Yes," said the doctor, at last. "Bourne, what do you say to all this-- shall we go and sleep on it?"

The two boys caught hands and gazed hard at Ned's father, who was also silent for a few moments, before he drew a deep breath and said firmly--

"Yes, Lee, old friend, I say let us go to rest now, think deeply, and as we should, over what may mean success or failure, and decide in the morning what we ought to do."

"Shout, boys," cried Griggs, springing up. "Not one of your English hoo-roars, but a regular tiger--_ragh_--_ragh_--_ragh_! That's your sort. They mean to go."

"Yes, Griggs, old neighbour," said the doctor; "in spite of all the terrible obstacles I can see plainly in our path, I feel that to-morrow morning my friend and I will have made up our minds that this is too great a thing to give up easily, and that we shall decide to go."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

ALL FOR GOLD.

It was not until the doctor rapped sharply at the wooden part.i.tion that separated the boys' from the men's quarters at the shanty, that the murmuring buzz ceased. "Look here, you two," he said; "if you don't want to sleep we do, so just be quiet. It's somewhere about one o'clock, and when getting-up time comes you'll want to sleep."

"All right, father," said Chris, in a very wakeful tone; "we won't talk any more."

But they did, in a whisper, for something in the way of recrimination began.

"It was all your fault," said Ned. "I wanted to go to sleep hours ago, but you would keep beginning again about the bothering old chart."

"Oh come, I like that!" replied Chris. "Who kept on wondering whether we should meet Indians, and whether they scalped people now!"

"Well, yes, I did say something about that. Only fancy, though, how horrid!"

"Shan't! We're to go to sleep. I say, though, Ned; think we shall really get away from this bothering old hoeing and weeding and killing blight?"

"Can't think: I'm nearly asleep."

"Oh, what a thumper! You're as wide awake as I am."

_S-n-n-o-r-r-r-e_!

"Gammon!"

"Oh!" and a sudden jump.

"What's the matter?"

"You stuck a pin into my leg."