Do You Dare? Eureka Boys Page 4

  ‘But I don’t please,’ said Jack. ‘In fact, I’m asking you to make your apology to Mrs Shanahan.’

  ‘What?’ scoffed Nockles. ‘The day I apologise to someone like her is the day Hell freezes over.’

  Mrs Shanahan wiped her hands nervously on her apron. ‘Please, Mr Jack, don’t concern yourself, not on my account –’ she began.

  ‘An apology is quite definitely in order, my dear Mrs Shanahan,’ said Jack, ‘and I shall see that you get one.’

  As he spoke, Henry saw him open up his dallong and begin, very gently, to unwind Lola from around his neck.

  Nockles had turned back to Mrs Shanahan. Now he thumped his boots on the table. ‘We want those nobblers, now!’ he shouted. His small eyes swivelled around the tent. ‘What are you all gawking at?’

  Lola moved quickly. She slipped from Jack’s shoulders. She slithered down his arm. In seconds she had started to coil herself around Sergeant Nockles’s left leg and was moving upward.

  Henry stared. Frank kicked him under the table, and put a finger to his lips. He was almost choking with the effort of trying not to laugh.

  Nockles hadn’t realised yet what was happening. But when Lola reached his lap, his eyes bulged with terror.

  ‘Aaaaargh!’ he screamed. ‘Help! Get it off me! Thomas, you great galoot – help me!’

  ‘Ooh, it’s moving, ooh, I can’t,’ wailed Constable Thomas, stumbling away. ‘Get a bucket of water, someone,’ he ordered. ‘Throw a bucket of water over it!’

  ‘Hurry up, damn it!’ said Nockles.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jack. ‘I’m afraid you are making far too much noise, Sergeant. You are frightening the animal. And unfortunately, when this kind of snake is alarmed, it will tighten its grip.’

  Sergeant Nockles’s face was starting to go purple. ‘Help me,’ he whispered as Lola wrapped herself around his shoulders.

  ‘Of course,’ said Jack. ‘Perhaps you’d consider a deal? Lola, you naughty girl, please stop licking the Sergeant’s face.’ A crowd had gathered around the table, and Jack turned to them. ‘Snakes smell through their tongues, you know,’ he said. ‘I wonder what Lola is smelling now?’

  ‘Yes, a deal, yes,’ whispered Nockles. ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘Very well,’ Jack said. ‘I must first ask you to apologise very humbly to Mrs Shanahan for your rude outburst.’

  ‘I apologise,’ moaned Nockles. ‘I most humbly apologise.’

  ‘And now that Hell has frozen over,’ said Jack, ‘you must allow Mrs Shanahan to run her business without let or hindrance. In fact, you will leave her alone entirely, and you will tell your fellow troopers to do likewise.’

  ‘I promise, I promise. Aaargh, it’s around my neck,’ Nockles muttered hoarsely. He coughed, and tears came into his eyes. ‘I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Splendid,’ Jack murmured. He winked at Henry and Frank. ‘Then I believe our business, to which there are many witnesses, is concluded.’

  He reached out, took Lola’s head in one hand, and with the other carefully unwound her. ‘There you are, my dear chap,’ he said to Nockles.

  Sergeant Nockles stood up, shook himself, and strode out of the tent with Constable Thomas. They were followed by loud applause. ‘Have three cheers for Happy Jack,’ yelled someone. ‘Hip, hip, hoorah!’

  Mrs Shanahan was laughing so hard that tears were running down her face. ‘Oh, Mr Jack, thank you,’ she said. ‘It was that good to see him brought down a peg or two.’

  ‘It was a pleasure,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t entirely trust him to keep his promise, but it will take him a while to recover his usual blustering character, I feel.’

  ‘And then,’ Henry said quietly to Frank, ‘he’ll have us in the gun good and proper. He won’t forget this in a hurry.’

  ‘No,’ Frank replied. ‘But, begorrah, it was worth it!’

  When Henry walked down the main road a few days later, looking for work, he saw a poster stuck up outside the Gold Office. PUBLIC MEETING, it said in big thick black letters. There was a lot of writing underneath it, but Henry knew it would take him too long to work it out. He hurried along to Mr Hunter’s pharmacy, sure that Frank could tell him what was going on. And there he saw another poster, right in the middle of the shop window.

  He found Frank sweeping the floor of the shop while Mr Hunter worked at the back in his dispensary. ‘The boss has decided the place needs a proper spring clean,’ he said. ‘Care to help me? It’s worth half a crown to you.’

  ‘All right.’ Henry moved out of the way of a broomful of dust and bits of rubbish. ‘Frank, what does that poster say? There’s a public meeting about something, but I can’t read it all.’

  ‘I thought you’d have heard,’ Frank said. ‘There’s going to be a meeting today about the Bentleys’ trial for murder. It’ll be held on the exact spot where James Scobie was killed, the very same spot. Just think, Scobie’s ghost might be there, all misty white, listening.’ He put down the broom and waved his arms at Henry. ‘Woo-oo-ooh!’

  Henry took no notice. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I mean, why is there going to be a meeting?’

  ‘Don’t you know anything? Everyone’s talking about it. Bentley’s off the hook. He’s as guilty as blazes, and so’s his wife, but the magistrate let them off scot free. The trial was a joke.’

  Frank always tried to sound important, Henry thought. ‘I knew that,’ he lied. ‘At least, I knew they got let off. Why did you say the trial was a joke?’

  Frank swished a big pile of rubbish out into the street and came back into the shop. ‘There wasn’t even a jury. The magistrate just popped up and said the Bentleys were innocent. Everyone knows that’s not true. Jack says he’d like to have the magistrate’s guts for garters. Me too, except I’d give him a good roasting first.’

  ‘But if the Bentleys are guilty, why did the magistrate say they weren’t?’

  Frank rolled his eyes. ‘Think about it, Henry. They’re all mates. The traps and the magistrate go to the Eureka Hotel every night and get treated like kings, free drinks and all. That’s why it wasn’t a fair trial.’ He threw Henry a scrubbing brush. ‘Here. The counter’s sticky. It needs a good clean.’

  Henry remembered the promised half crown. Dipping the brush in a bucket of soapy water, he started to scrub. ‘Will you go to the meeting, then?’

  ‘You couldn’t keep me away. With any luck, there’ll be trouble.’

  Henry stopped scrubbing. ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘What d’you think?’ Frank’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘Fighting in the streets! The diggers against the traps! The poor against the toffs! Us downtrodden Irish against you high-and-mighty English!’

  ‘That’s not fair – I’m not high and mighty at all. If it comes to that, we’re worse off than you.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Sir High-and-Mighty.’

  Henry hurled the scrubbing brush at him.

  ‘Ouch! Poo, this brush stinks like hair oil.’ Frank sniffed at it. ‘And so do you.’

  ‘You stink, you . . . potato-eater.’

  Frank aimed the brush at him. ‘Not so bad as you, you Brummie lime-juicer.’

  They grinned at each other.

  ‘Boys, boys,’ said Mr Hunter, returning to the front of the shop. ‘I pay you to work, not indulge in horse-play.’ He looked at them over his half-moon glasses. ‘Are you talking about the meeting? Anyone who cares about justice should be there.’

  ‘You want to come to the meeting, so?’ said Frank to Henry. ‘It’s twelve o’clock sharp.’

  Henry knew he shouldn’t go. He knew, sure as eggs, what Father’s reaction would be. ‘No, I should get back to help on the claim,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only for an hour,’ Frank urged him. ‘Ma and Bridget and the little ones are going. Jack’ll be there, too.’

  Henry thought about it for as long as it took him to get the scrubbing brush back. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come.’

  Henry had never seen so many peo
ple all at once. Just about everyone who lived in Ballarat was at the meeting – men, women and children. Some of the children were playing catch-chasey around their parents’ legs. The grown-ups were talking together, but not many were smiling.

  Henry was sweating from the heat but a little cold feeling of worry made him shiver. He hadn’t told Father he’d be late coming back to the claim, and he’d get a thrashing for sure. He flinched, almost feeling the thwack of the belt already. Once again he’d have disappointed his father and made him angry. And what for? It wasn’t as if he cared about James Scobie, or the Bentleys.

  ‘There’s traps everywhere,’ Frank said loudly, an inch away from Henry’s ear. ‘They’re expecting trouble, and they’ll get it.’ Frank had swung his youngest brother, baby Joseph, up on his shoulders. Mrs Shanahan stood next to him with Bridget and Michael.

  ‘This is the beginning, my covies,’ Jack said, taking off his hat and fanning his face with it. ‘There’ll be no stopping us now.’

  Men stood on boxes and spoke loudly so the crowd could hear them. They said the hotel was a place where criminals were protected by officials in the Government Camp. They spoke of the unfairness of life on the diggings. They asked everyone to revolt against the rottenness of a system that ignored the rights of a poor man like James Scobie and protected rich people like the owners of the Eureka Hotel.

  ‘Justice isn’t something to be bought by those who can afford it,’ said one of the speakers. ‘It’s a basic right! There should be one law for everybody.’

  ‘What about the poxy mining licence?’ shouted a digger in the crowd. ‘Where’s the justice there? It don’t matter if you find a ton of gold or nothing, we all have to pay the same. And we don’t even have a vote!’

  ‘Votes for miners!’ yelled another voice.

  The noise from the crowd grew louder. It was like a storm brewing, Henry thought. Everyone had forgotten about James Scobie. They were angry about other things. It was the unfairness of the way diggers were treated that was upsetting them most.

  As the last speaker finished talking, a hot blustery wind sprang up, swirling dust and twirling hats off heads. It seemed to make people even angrier. The crowd started to move in a giant wave down the Melbourne road, towards the Eureka Hotel.

  Henry and the others moved with it.

  ‘There must be several thousand here,’ Jack said. His sunburnt face was redder than ever. ‘What we see here, my covies, is the power of the people.’

  A short, bearded man climbed onto a window ledge of the hotel and held up his hands for silence.

  ‘That’s Mr Rede, the Gold Commissioner,’ Frank told Henry. ‘Would you look at his shifty eyes, now? He’s in a panic, you can tell.’

  ‘Order, please,’ yelled the Commissioner. ‘Order! Calm down, my friends. Think what you are doing.’

  ‘We ain’t your friends,’ jeered a voice, ‘and you ain’t ours, ya great nincompoop.’

  People began to boo. A stone flew through the air. The Commissioner ducked, and then held up his hands again. ‘Order, my friends! Order, please!’ An egg landed in his beard, another on his waistcoat. After that there was a storm of eggs and stones and bottles, pieces of brick, potatoes, lumps of wood.

  ‘Hang Bentley!’ yelled a woman behind Henry. ‘String the murderer up from his own lamp post!’

  ‘Burn the hotel!’ The cry came from down the front, and it was taken up around the crowd. ‘Burn it! Burn it!’

  The crowd now seemed twice the size it had been. Henry looked around. Suddenly he felt afraid. He didn’t want trouble, not the way Frank did. He was already in enough trouble at home. Or he would be when Father found out where he was.

  Small bands of police moved in. Henry could see the blue of their uniforms at the outer edge of the crowd. Several troopers came from inside the hotel and stood on the verandah. That made the crowd angrier than ever. ‘Get the traps out of here,’ yelled someone. ‘It’s them what’s started it all.’

  ‘Get rid of the government,’ yelled someone else. ‘Send the useless beggars back home to England.’

  ‘We demand to have the vote,’ bellowed a huge Irishman with a black beard. ‘Diggers have rights!’

  The crowd took it up. ‘Diggers’ rights! Diggers’ rights!’

  Frank put down baby Joseph, picked up a stone, and hurled it at a street lamp outside the hotel. Henry watched with horror and fascination as the glass of the lamp shattered.

  The crowd roared its approval.

  ‘That’s my boy,’ shouted Mrs Shanahan, punching the air. ‘Give ’em one for the grog-sellers!’

  Stones were flung at windows. As the windows broke and glass crashed into the street there were more cries of ‘Burn the hotel!’

  People surged into the building and began to smash it to pieces.

  Clothes and furniture, crockery and silver and crystal were thrown from its windows. Somebody started a bonfire, and books and clothes were tossed into the flames. The grand piano was pushed out into the street and heaved on to its side.

  In all the shoving and jostling, Henry was pushed towards the bowling saloon, a long canvas building next door to the hotel. He looked around for Frank’s red head, or Mrs Shanahan’s black bonnet, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  Several men started ripping at the canvas walls of the bowling saloon. Then a tall person in a long fur cloak stuffed a pile of newspapers underneath the canvas. He gave the papers a last kick, and struck a match. The crowd around him cheered him on, shouting and laughing.

  ‘Jack!’ Henry yelled. ‘Jack, what d’you think you’re doing?’

  Jack turned around. ‘I’m doing what everyone here wants to do. I’m righting a wrong. I’m the voice of the people, Henry!’

  There was no doubt of that. To the crowd Jack was certainly a hero. And he’s my friend, Henry realised. Suddenly he felt really proud of that. We’re covies, he thought, him and Frank and me.

  Of course what Jack was doing was right. This was how to get rid of the unfair licences, and crooked traps like Nockles, and poor miners being hauled off to the watch-house. You had to show that you weren’t afraid to stand up for your rights. If that meant destroying property, you just did it. You had to show that it was the people who were in charge.

  ‘Jack!’ Henry called out. ‘Jack! I understand!’ But by now the newspapers were burning fiercely, and Jack had vanished into the crowd.

  ‘Here come the Red Toads,’ a voice shouted. ‘They’re coming up the hill.’

  But the red-coated soldiers were too late to stop the fire. The wind picked it up, and in seconds it had leaped to the hotel building. The Eureka Hotel was burning. Its bright paint blistered and cracked, its windows exploded, its floors fell in.

  Henry’s ears rang with the sounds of hallooing and cheering. The heat from the flames scorched his cheeks. People threw more things into the fire – newspapers, sheets, curtains – to stoke the blaze.

  Within half an hour the hotel was a smoking pile of ashes and twisted iron.

  At last Henry spotted the Shanahans. He ran up to them, and Frank grabbed him by the arm. ‘We did it, Henry,’ he said. ‘They asked for trouble, the beggars, and we gave it to them. We taught them a lesson they won’t forget.’

  ‘We taught ’em a lesson,’ sang little Michael, swinging on his mother’s arm. ‘We taught ’em a lesson.’

  ‘Didn’t we, though?’ said Mrs Shanahan. ‘It’s a grand day, to be sure. It’s a day for the people, and it’s been a long time coming.’

  Henry felt light-headed with excitement. The crowd had won. Jack had won. The troopers, and the Commissioner, had lost. It was a victory for the miners against those who made the rules. It was what everyone on the diggings wanted.

  Then his mood changed. Not everyone. It wasn’t what his father wanted. Oh Lord. Now he’d have to tell Father why he was late, again. He said goodbye to the Shanahans and set off for the claim, running.

  It was only then that he realised Frank had never
given him that half crown, after all.

  ‘You had no business going to that meeting, Henry.’ Father scowled at him. ‘This is beyond anything. It’s bad enough that I can’t trust you to be here when I need you – but this!’

  Henry stared over the creek to where Eliza was playing hopscotch with some of the other miners’ children. How was it that Eliza never got into trouble?

  Father sat down heavily on the fallen log. ‘People like the Shanahans will drag you into trouble, and I won’t have it. The boy Frank is clearly a dangerous firebrand, and his mother is a petty criminal who runs a sly-grog tent. Not that you’d expect anything better of the Irish. Burning down a hotel, indeed! What gives them the right to destroy another man’s property? Rebels are the scum of the earth, and Irish rebels are worst of all.’

  ‘It wasn’t an Irishman who lit the fire. It was Jack, Happy Jack. I know him. He’s . . . he’s a good person.’

  ‘Who? That imbecile?’ Father frowned. ‘Surely you can see that he’s somebody you should stay well away from. He’s both mad and dangerous.’

  ‘He does have a pet snake, but he’s not mad,’ said Henry. How could he make Father understand? ‘Jack only wants things to be better for the miners, just like we do. He says he’s the voice of the people, and it’s true. Doesn’t that make it all right?’

  ‘A criminal act can never be right,’ Father said very firmly. He pulled out his clay pipe and lit it, blowing out a puff of smoke that made Henry cough. ‘Lord knows, we need some changes here on the goldfields, and like all right-minded people I believe that there should be one law for all. But that cannot be achieved by breaking the laws that exist. Mob violence achieves nothing.’ He pointed the stem of his pipe at Henry. ‘Every person who attended that disgraceful riot today is a criminal, pure and simple.’

  ‘I was there,’ said Henry. ‘And I’m not a criminal, am I?’ He knew he was taking a risk to speak to Father like that, but what did he have to lose?

  Father held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’m telling you, boy, that you join the rebels at your peril. I expect they made you go with them, didn’t they? They tried to make you believe in their cause?’