The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit

  Produced by Jo Churcher

  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 butfor 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 Ithink when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy about thelooking.

  There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about thetreasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know howbeastly it is when a story begins, "'Alas!" said Hildegarde with a deepsigh, "we must look our last on this ancestral home"'--and then some oneelse says something--and you don't know for pages and pages where thehome is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it. Our ancestral homeis in the Lewisham Road. It is semi-detached and has a garden, not alarge one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. OurMother is dead, and if you think we don't care because I don't tell youmuch 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 Latinprize at his preparatory school--and Dicky is good at sums. Aliceand Noel are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my youngestbrother. It is one of us that tells this story--but I shall not tell youwhich: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is goingon you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don't. It was Oswaldwho first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of veryinteresting things. And directly he thought of it he did not keep itto himself, as some boys would have done, but he told the others, andsaid--

  'I'll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always whatyou do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.'

  Dora said it was all very well. She often says that. She was trying tomend a large hole in one of Noel's stockings. He tore it on a nail whenwe were playing shipwrecked mariners on top of the chicken-house the dayH. O. fell off and cut his chin: he has the scar still. Dora is the onlyone of us who ever tries to mend anything. Alice tries to make thingssometimes. Once she knitted a red scarf for Noel because his chestis delicate, but it was much wider at one end than the other, and hewouldn'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; andscarlet was a nice change. Father does not like you to ask for newthings. That was one way we had of knowing that the fortunes of theancient House of Bastable were really fallen. Another way was that therewas no more pocket-money--except a penny now and then to the littleones, 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 inthem--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, andnot that very often. And the silver in the big oak plate-chest that islined with green baize all went away to the shop to have the dentsand scratches taken out of it, and it never came back. We think Fatherhadn't enough money to pay the silver man for taking out the dents andscratches. The new spoons and forks were yellowy-white, and not so heavyas 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 hisbusiness-partner went to Spain--and there was never much moneyafterwards. I don't know why. Then the servants left and there was onlyone, a General. A great deal of your comfort and happiness depends onhaving a good General. The last but one was nice: she used to make jollygood currant puddings for us, and let us have the dish on the floorand pretend it was a wild boar we were killing with our forks. But theGeneral we have now nearly always makes sago puddings, and they arethe watery kind, and you cannot pretend anything with them, not evenislands, like you do with porridge.

  Then we left off going to school, and Father said we should go to a goodschool as soon as he could manage it. He said a holiday would do us allgood. We thought he was right, but we wished he had told us he couldn'tafford it. For of course we knew.

  Then a great many people used to come to the door with envelopes withno stamps on them, and sometimes they got very angry, and said theywere calling for the last time before putting it in other hands. I askedEliza what that meant, and she kindly explained to me, and I was sosorry for Father.

  And once a long, blue paper came; a policeman brought it, and we wereso frightened. But Father said it was all right, only when he went upto 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 snivellerscry, and my Father is the bravest man in the world.

  So you see it was time we looked for treasure and Oswald said so, andDora said it was all very well. But the others agreed with Oswald. So weheld a council. Dora was in the chair--the big dining-room chair, thatwe let the fireworks off from, the Fifth of November when we had themeasles and couldn't do it in the garden. The hole has never beenmended, so now we have that chair in the nursery, and I think it wascheap 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 becausewe always keep the bad sixpence in it for luck.

  'Yes--but what shall we do?' said Dicky. 'It's so jolly easy to saylet'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 ofthem.' It was Noel who suggested this, but we made him shut up, becausewe knew well enough he only wanted to get back to his old books. Noelis a poet. He sold some of his poetry once--and it was printed, but thatdoes not come in this part of the story.

  Then Dicky said, 'Look here. We'll be quite quiet for ten minutes bythe clock--and each think of some way to find treasure. And when we'vethought we'll try all the ways one after the other, beginning with theeldest.'

  'I shan't be able to think in ten minutes, make it half an hour,' saidH. O. His real name is Horace Octavius, but we call him H. O. because ofthe advertisement, and it's not so very long ago he was afraid to passthe hoarding where it says 'Eat H. O.' in big letters. He says it waswhen he was a little boy, but I remember last Christmas but one, he wokein the middle of the night crying and howling, and they said it was thepudding. 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 youcome to think of it, because it was so very plain.

  Well, we made it half an hour--and we all sat quiet, and thought andthought. And I made up my mind before two minutes were over, and Isaw the others had, all but Dora, who is always an awful time overeverything. 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 thanhalf an hour!'

  H. O. is eight years old, but he cannot tell the clock yet. Oswald couldtell the clock when he was six.

  We all stretched ourselves and began to speak at once, but Dora put upher hands to her ears and said--

  'One at a time, please. We aren't playing Babel.' (It is a very goodgame. Did you ever play it
?)

  So Dora made us all sit in a row on the floor, in ages, and then shepointed at us with the finger that had the brass thimble on. Her silverone got lost when the last General but two went away. We think she musthave forgotten it was Dora's and put it in her box by mistake. She was avery forgetful girl. She used to forget what she had spent money on, sothat the change was never quite right.

  Oswald spoke first. 'I think we might stop people on Blackheath--withcrape masks and horse-pistols--and say "Your money or your life!Resistance is useless, we are armed to the teeth"--like Dick Turpinand Claude Duval. It wouldn't matter about not having horses, becausecoaches have gone out too.'

  Dora screwed up her nose the way she always does when she is going totalk like the good elder sister in books, and said, 'That would bevery wrong: it's like pickpocketing or taking pennies out of Father'sgreat-coat when it's hanging in the hall.'

  I must say I don't think she need have said that, especially before thelittle 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 anold gentleman from deadly Highwaymen.'

  'There aren't any,' said Dora.

  'Oh, well, it's all the same--from deadly peril, then. There's plentyof that. Then he would turn out to be the Prince of Wales, and he wouldsay, "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 doit. I've often read about it. You hold a stick in your hands, and whenyou come to where there is gold underneath the stick kicks about. So youknow. And you dig.'

  'Oh,' said Dora suddenly, 'I have an idea. But I'll say last. I hope thedivining-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 befun pretending.'

  'I'm sure it's wrong,' said Dora.

  And Dicky said she thought everything wrong. She said she didn't, andDicky 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 tableto make him hurry up, and then he said he didn't think he wanted toplay any more. That's the worst of it. The others are so jolly ready toquarrel. I told Noel to be a man and not a snivelling pig, and at lasthe said he had not made up his mind whether he would print his poetry ina 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 tohim that that was quite the opposite of what he thought. So he agreed todrop 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 aweek in their spare time, and to send two shillings for sample andinstructions, carefully packed free from observation. Now that we don'tgo to school all our time is spare time. So I should think we couldeasily earn twenty pounds a week each. That would do us very well. We'lltry some of the other things first, and directly we have any money we'llsend for the sample and instructions. And I have another idea, but Imust 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 youanything he's making till it's quite finished, and the same with hisinmost thoughts. But he is pleased if you seem to want to know, soOswald said--

  'Keep your silly old secret, then. Now, Dora, drive ahead. We've allsaid except you.'

  Then Dora jumped up and dropped the stocking and the thimble (it rolledaway, 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 plaindigging. People who dig for treasure always find it. And then we shallbe rich and we needn't try your ways at all. Some of them are ratherdifficult: and I'm certain some of them are wrong--and we must alwaysremember 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 Fatherhad never thought of digging there for treasure instead of going to hisbeastly office every day.