The grass and flowers on the sea-wall had grown a foot and a
half--quite tropical they looked.
'Well?' said Edward.
'What's the matter wiv everyfink?' said Gustus. 'We must both be a bit
balmy, seems ter me.'
'What's balmy?' asked Edward.
'Off your chump--looney--like what you and me is,' said Gustus. 'First I
sees things, then I sees you.'
'It was only fancy, I expect,' said Edward. 'I expect the grass on the
sea-wall was always like that, really.'
'Let's have a look through your spy-glass at that little barge,' said
Gustus, still holding the glass. 'Come on outer these 'ere
paving-stones.'
'There was a box,' said Edward, 'a box I found with lots of jolly things
in it. I laid it down somewhere--and----'
'Ain't that it over there?' Gustus asked, and levelled the glass at a
dark object a hundred yards away. 'No; it's only an old boot. I say,
this is a fine spy-glass. It does make things come big.'
'That's not it. I'm certain I put it down somewhere just here. Oh,
_don't_!'
[Illustration: 'Look!' he said, 'look!' and pointed.]
He snatched the glass from Gustus.
'Look!' he said, 'look!' and pointed.
A hundred yards away stood a boot about as big as the bath you see Marat
in at Madame Tussaud's.
'S'welp me,' said Gustus, 'we're asleep, both of us, and a-dreaming as
things grow while we look at them.'
'But we're not dreaming,' Edward objected. 'You let me pinch you and
you'll see.'
'No fun in that,' said Gustus. 'Tell you what--it's the
spy-glass--that's what it is. Ever see any conjuring? I see a chap at
the Mile End Empire what made things turn into things like winking. It's
the spy-glass, that's what it is.'
'It can't be,' said the little boy who lived in a villa.
'But it _is_,' said the little boy who lived in a slum. 'Teacher says
there ain't no bounds to the wonders of science. Blest if this ain't one
of 'em.'
'Let me look,' said Edward.
'All right; only you mark me. Whatever you sets eyes on'll grow and
grow--like the flower-tree the conjurer had under the wipe. Don't you
look at _me_, that's all. Hold on; I'll put something up for you to look
at--a mark like--something as doesn't matter.'
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a boot-lace.
'I hold this up,' he said, 'and you look.'
Next moment he had dropped the boot-lace, which, swollen as it was with
the magic of the glass, lay like a snake on the stone at his feet.
So the glass _was_ a magic glass, as, of course, you know already.
'My!' said Gustus, 'wouldn't I like to look at my victuals through that
there!'
* * * * *
Thus we find Edward, of the villa--and through him Gustus, of the
slum--in possession of a unique instrument of magic. What could they do
with it?
This was the question which they talked over every time they met, and
they met continually. Edward's aunt, who at home watched him as cats
watch mice, rashly believed that at the seaside there was no mischief
for a boy to get into. And the gentleman who commanded the tented camp
believed in the ennobling effects of liberty.
After the boot, neither had dared to look at anything through the
telescope--and so they looked _at_ it, and polished it on their sleeves
till it shone again.
Both were agreed that it would be a fine thing to get some money and
look at it, so that it would grow big. But Gustus never had any
pocket-money, and Edward had had his confiscated to pay for a window he
had not intended to break.
Gustus felt certain that some one would find out about the spy-glass and
take it away from them. His experience was that anything you happened to
like was always taken away. Edward knew that his aunt would want to take
the telescope away to 'take care of' for him. This had already happened
with the carved chessmen that his father had sent him from India.
'I been thinking,' said Gustus, on the third day. 'When I'm a man I'm
a-going to be a burglar. You has to use your headpiece in that trade, I
tell you. So I don't think thinking's swipes, like some blokes do. And I
think p'r'aps it don't turn everything big. An' if we could find out
what it don't turn big we could see what we wanted to turn big or what
it didn't turn big, and then it wouldn't turn anything big except what
we wanted it to. See?'
Edward did not see; and I don't suppose you do, either.
So Gustus went on to explain that teacher had told him there were some
substances impervious to light, and some to cold, and so on and so
forth, and that what they wanted was a substance that should be
impervious to the magic effects of the spy-glass.
'So if we get a tanner and set it on a plate and squint at it it'll get
bigger--but so'll the plate. And we don't want to litter the place up
with plates the bigness of cartwheels. But if the plate didn't get big
we could look at the tanner till it covered the plate, and then go on
looking and looking and looking and see nothing but the tanner till it
was as big as a circus. See?'
This time Edward did see. But they got no further, because it was time
to go to the circus. There was a circus at Dymchurch just then, and that
was what made Gustus think of the sixpence growing to that size.
It was a very nice circus, and all the boys from the camp went to
it--also Edward, who managed to scramble over and wriggle under benches
till he was sitting near his friend.
[Illustration: Far above him and every one else towered the elephant.]
It was the size of the elephant that did it. Edward had not seen an
elephant before, and when he saw it, instead of saying, 'What a size he
is!' as everybody else did, he said to himself, 'What a size I could
make him!' and pulled out the spy-glass, and by a miracle of good luck
or bad got it levelled at the elephant as it went by. He turned the
glass slowly--as it went out--and the elephant only just got out in
time. Another moment and it would have been too big to get through the
door. The audience cheered madly. They thought it was a clever trick;
and so it would have been, very clever.
'You silly cuckoo,' said Gustus, bitterly, 'now you've turned that
great thing loose on the country, and how's his keeper to manage him?'
'I could make the keeper big, too.'
'Then if I was you I should just bunk out and do it.'
Edward obeyed, slipped under the canvas of the circus tent, and found
himself on the yellow, trampled grass of the field among guy-ropes,
orange-peel, banana-skins, and dirty paper. Far above him and every one
else towered the elephant--it was now as big as the church.
Edward pointed the glass at the man who was patting the elephant's
foot--that was as far up as he could reach--and telling it to 'Come down
with you!' He was very much frightened. He did not know whether you
could be put in prison for making an elephant's keeper about forty times
his proper size. But he felt that something must be done to control the
gigantic mountain of black-lead-coloured living flesh. So he looked at
the keeper through the spy-glass, and the keeper remained his normal
size!
In the shock of this failure he dropped the spy-glass, picked it up, and
tried once more to fix the keeper. Instead he only got a circle of
black-lead-coloured elephant; and while he was trying to find the
keeper, and finding nothing but more and more of the elephant, a shout
startled him and he dropped the glass once more. He was a very clumsy
little boy, was Edward.
'Well,' said one of the men, 'what a turn it give me! I thought Jumbo'd
grown as big as a railway station, s'welp me if I didn't.'
'Now that's rum,' said another, 'so did I.'
'And he _ain't_,' said a third; 'seems to me he's a bit below his usual
figure. Got a bit thin or somethink, ain't he?'
Edward slipped back into the tent unobserved.
'It's all right,' he whispered to his friend, 'he's gone back to his
proper size, and the man didn't change at all.'
'Ho!' Gustus said slowly--'Ho! All right. Conjuring's a rum thing. You
don't never know where you are!'
'Don't you think you might as well be a conjurer as a burglar?'
suggested Edward, who had had his friend's criminal future rather
painfully on his mind for the last hour.
'_You_ might,' said Gustus, 'not me. My people ain't dooks to set me up
on any such a swell lay as conjuring. Now I'm going to think, I am. You
hold your jaw and look at the 'andsome Dona a-doin' of 'er griceful
barebacked hact.'
That evening after tea Edward went, as he had been told to do, to the
place on the shore where the big stones had taught him the magic of the
spy-glass.
Gustus was already at the tryst.
'See here,' he said, 'I'm a-goin' to do something brave and fearless, I
am, like Lord Nelson and the boy on the fire-ship. You out with that
spy-glass, an' I'll let you look at _me_. Then we'll know where we are.'
'But s'pose you turn into a giant?'
'Don't care. 'Sides, I shan't. T'other bloke didn't.'
'P'r'aps,' said Edward, cautiously, 'it only works by the seashore.'
'Ah,' said Gustus, reproachfully, 'you've been a-trying to think, that's
what you've been a-doing. What about the elephant, my emernent
scientister? Now, then!'
Very much afraid, Edward pulled out the glass and looked.
And nothing happened.
'That's number one,' said Gustus, 'now, number two.'
He snatched the telescope from Edward's hand, and turned it round and
looked through the other end at the great stones. Edward, standing by,
saw them get smaller and smaller--turn to pebbles, to beach, to sand.
When Gustus turned the glass to the giant grass and flowers on the
sea-wall, they also drew back into themselves, got smaller and smaller,
and presently were as they had been before ever Edward picked up the
magic spy-glass.
'Now we know all about it--I _don't_ think,' said Gustus. 'To-morrow
we'll have a look at that there model engine of yours that you say
works.'
[Illustration: It became a quite efficient motor.]
They did. They had a look at it through the spy-glass, and it became a
quite efficient motor; of rather an odd pattern it is true, and very
bumpy, but capable of quite a decent speed. They went up to the hills in
it, and so odd was its design that no one who saw it ever forgot it.
People talk about that rummy motor at Bonnington and Aldington to this
day. They stopped often, to use the spy-glass on various objects. Trees,
for instance, could be made to grow surprisingly, and there were patches
of giant wheat found that year near Ashford that were never
satisfactorily accounted for. Blackberries, too, could be enlarged to a
most wonderful and delicious fruit. And the sudden growth of a fugitive
toffee-drop found in Edward's pocket and placed on the hand was a happy
surprise. When you scraped the pocket dirt off the outside you had a
pound of delicious toffee. Not so happy was the incident of the earwig,
which crawled into view when Edward was enlarging a wild strawberry, and
had grown the size of a rat before the slow but horrified Edward gained
courage to shake it off.
It was a beautiful drive. As they came home they met a woman driving a
weak-looking little cow. It went by on one side of the engine and the
woman went by on the other. When they were restored to each other the
cow was nearly the size of a cart-horse, and the woman did not recognise
it. She ran back along the road after her cow, which must, she said,
have taken fright at the beastly motor. She scolded violently as she
went. So the boys had to make the cow small again, when she wasn't
looking.
'This is all very well,' said Gustus, 'but we've got our fortune to
make, I don't think. We've got to get hold of a tanner--or a bob would
be better.'
But this was not possible, because that broken window wasn't paid for,
and Gustus never had any money.
'We ought to be the benefactors of the human race,' said Edward; 'make
all the good things more and all the bad things less.'
And _that_ was all very well--but the cow hadn't been a great success,
as Gustus reminded him.
'I see I shall have to do some of my thinking,' he added.
They stopped in a quiet road close by Dymchurch; the engine was made
small again, and Edward went home with it under his arm.
It was the next day that they found the shilling on the road. They could
hardly believe their good luck. They went out on to the shore with it,
put it on Edward's hand while Gustus looked at it with the glass, and
the shilling began to grow.
'It's as big as a saucer,' said Edward, 'and it's heavy. I'll rest it on
these stones. It's as big as a plate; it's as big as a tea-tray; it's as
big as a cart-wheel.'
And it was.
'Now,' said Gustus, 'we'll go and borrow a cart to take it away. Come
on.'
But Edward could not come on. His hand was in the hollow between the two
stones, and above lay tons of silver. He could not move, and the stones
couldn't move. There was nothing for it but to look at the great round
lump of silver through the wrong end of the spy-glass till it got small
enough for Edward to lift it. And then, unfortunately, Gustus looked a
little too long, and the shilling, having gone back to its own size,
went a little further--and it went to sixpenny size, and then went out
altogether.
So nobody got anything by that.
And now came the time when, as was to be expected, Edward dropped the
telescope in his aunt's presence. She said, 'What's that?' picked it up
with quite unfair quickness, and looked through it, and through the open
window at a fishing-boat, which instantly swelled to the size of a
man-of-war.
'My goodness! what a strong glass!' said the aunt.
'Isn't it?' said Edward, gently taking it from her. He looked at the
ship through the glass's other end till she got to her proper size again
and then smaller. He just stopped in time to prevent its disappearing
altogether.
'I'll take care of it for you,' said the aunt. And for the first time in
their lives Edward said 'No' to his aunt.
It was a terrible moment.
Edward, quite frenzied by his own courage, turned the glass on one
object after another--the furniture grew as he looked, and when he
lowered the glass the aunt was pinned fast between a monster table-leg
and a great chiffonier.
'There!' said Edward. 'And I shan't let you out till you say you won't
take it to take care of either.'
'Oh, have it your own way,' said the aunt, faintly, and closed her eyes.
When she opened them the furniture was its right size and Edward was
gone. He had twinges of conscience, but the aunt never mentioned the
subject again. I have reason to suppose that _she_ supposed that she had
had a fit of an unusual and alarming nature.
Next day the boys in the camp were to go back to their slums. Edward and
Gustus parted on the seashore and Edward cried. He had never met a boy
whom he liked as he liked Gustus. And Gustus himself was almost melted.
'I will say for you you're more like a man and less like a snivelling
white rabbit now than what you was when I met you. Well, we ain't done
nothing to speak of with that there conjuring trick of yours, but we've
'ad a right good time. So long. See you 'gain some day.'
Edward hesitated, spluttered, and still weeping flung his arms round
Gustus.
''Ere, none o' that,' said Gustus, sternly. 'If you ain't man enough to
know better, I am. Shake 'ands like a Briton; right about face--and part
game.'
He suited the action to the word.
Edward went back to his aunt snivelling, defenceless but happy. He had
never had a friend except Gustus, and now he had given Gustus the
greatest treasure that he possessed.
For Edward was not such a white rabbit as he seemed. And in that last
embrace he had managed to slip the little telescope into the pocket of
the reefer coat which Gustus wore, ready for his journey.
It was the greatest treasure that Edward had, but it was also the
greatest responsibility, so that while he felt the joy of self-sacrifice
he also felt the rapture of relief. Life is full of such mixed moments.
And the holidays ended and Edward went back to his villa. Be sure he had
given Gustus his home address, and begged him to write, but Gustus never
did.
Presently Edward's father came home from India, and they left his aunt
to her villa and went to live at a jolly little house on a sloping hill
at Chiselhurst, which was Edward's father's very own. They were not
rich, and Edward could not go to a very good school, and though there
was enough to eat and wear, what there was was very plain. And Edward's
father had been wounded, and somehow had not got a pension.
Now one night in the next summer Edward woke up in his bed with the
feeling that there was some one in the room. And there was. A dark
figure was squeezing itself through the window. Edward was far too
frightened to scream. He simply lay and listened to his heart. It was
like listening to a cheap American clock. The next moment a lantern
flashed in his eyes and a masked face bent over him.
'Where does your father keep his money?' said a muffled voice.
'In the b-b-b-b-bank,' replied the wretched Edward, truthfully.
'I mean what he's got in the house.'
'In his trousers pocket,' said Edward, 'only he puts it in the
dressing-table drawer at night.'
'You must go and get it,' said the burglar, for such he plainly was.
'Must I?' said Edward, wondering how he could get out of betraying his
father's confidence and being branded as a criminal.
'Yes,' said the burglar in an awful voice, 'get up and go.'
'_No_,' said Edward, and he was as much surprised at his courage as you
are.
'Bravo!' said the burglar, flinging off his mask. 'I see you _aren't_
such a white rabbit as what I thought you.'
'It's Gustus,' said Edward. 'Oh, Gustus, I'm so glad! Oh, Gustus, I'm so
sorry! I always hoped you wouldn't be a burglar. And now you are.'
'I am so,' said Gustus, with pride, 'but,' he added sadly, 'this is my
first burglary.'
'Couldn't it be the last?' suggested Edward.
'That,' replied Gustus, 'depends on you.'
'I'll do anything,' said Edward, 'anything.'
'You see,' said Gustus, sitting down on the edge of the bed in a
confidential attitude, with the dark lantern in one hand and the mask in
the other, 'when you're as hard up as we are, there's not much of a
living to be made honest. I'm sure I wonder we don't all of us turn
burglars, so I do. And that glass of yours--you little beggar--you did
me proper--sticking of that thing in my pocket like what you did. Well,
it kept us alive last winter, that's a cert. I used to look at the
victuals with it, like what I said I would. A farden's worth o'
pease-pudden was a dinner for three when that glass was about, and a
penn'orth o' scraps turned into a big beef-steak almost. They used to
wonder how I got so much for the money. But I'm always afraid o' being
found out--or of losing the blessed spy-glass--or of some one pinching
it. So we got to do what I always said--make some use of it. And if I go
along and nick your father's dibs we'll make our fortunes right away.'
'No,' said Edward, 'but I'll ask father.'
'Rot.' Gustus was crisp and contemptuous. 'He'd think you was off your
chump, and he'd get me lagged.'
'It would be stealing,' said Edward.
'Not when you'll pay it back.'
'Yes, it would,' said Edward. 'Oh, don't ask me--I can't.'
'Then I shall,' said Gustus. 'Where's his room.'
'Oh, don't!' said Edward. 'I've got a half-sovereign of my own. I'll
give you that.'
'Lawk!' said Gustus. 'Why the blue monkeys couldn't you say so? Come
on.'
He pulled Edward out of bed by the leg, hurried his clothes on anyhow,
and half-dragged, half-coaxed him through the window and down by the ivy
and the chicken-house roof.
They stood face to face in the sloping garden and Edward's teeth
chattered. Gustus caught him by his hand, and led him away.
At the other end of the shrubbery, where the rockery was, Gustus stooped
and dragged out a big clinker--then another, and another. There was a
hole like a big rabbit-hole. If Edward had really been a white rabbit it
would just have fitted him.
'I'll go first,' said Gustus, and went, head-foremost. 'Come on,' he
said, hollowly, from inside. And Edward, too, went. It was dreadful
crawling into that damp hole in the dark. As his head got through the
hole he saw that it led to a cave, and below him stood a dark figure.
The lantern was on the ground.
'Come on,' said Gustus, 'I'll catch you if you fall.'
With a rush and a scramble Edward got in.
'It's caves,' said Gustus. 'A chap I know that goes about the country
bottoming cane-chairs, 'e told me about it. And I nosed about and found
he lived here. So then I thought what a go. So now we'll put your
half-shiner down and look at it, and we'll have a gold-mine, and you can
pretend to find it.'
'Halves!' said Edward, briefly and firmly.
'You're a man,' said Gustus. 'Now, then!' He led the way through a maze
of chalk caves till they came to a convenient spot, which he had marked.
And now Edward emptied his pockets on the sand--he had brought all the
contents of his money-box, and there was more silver than gold, and more
copper than either, and more odd rubbish than there was anything else.
You know what a boy's pockets are like. Stones and putty, and
slate-pencils and marbles--I urge in excuse that Edward was a very
little boy--a bit of plasticine, one or two bits of wood.
'No time to sort 'em,' said Gustus, and, putting the lantern in a
suitable position, he got out the glass and began to look through it at
the tumbled heap.
And the heap began to grow. It grew out sideways till it touched the
walls of the recess, and outwards till it touched the top of the recess,
and then it slowly worked out into the big cave and came nearer and
nearer to the boys. Everything grew--stones, putty, money, wood,
plasticine.
Edward patted the growing mass as though it were alive and he loved it,
and Gustus said:
'Here's clothes, and beef, and bread, and tea, and coffee--and
baccy--and a good school, and me a engineer. I see it all a-growing and
a-growing.'
'Hi--stop!' said Edward suddenly.
Gustus dropped the telescope. It rolled away into the darkness.
'Now you've done it,' said Edward.
'What?' said Gustus.
'My hand,' said Edward, 'it's fast between the rock and the gold and
things. Find the glass and make it go smaller so that I can get my hand
out.'
But Gustus could not find the glass. And, what is more, no one ever has
found it to this day.
'It's no good,' said Gustus, at last. 'I'll go and find your father.
They must come and dig you out of this precious Tom Tiddler's ground.'
'And they'll lag you if they see you. You said they would,' said Edward,
not at all sure what lagging was, but sure that it was something
dreadful. 'Write a letter and put it in his letter-box. They'll find it
in the morning.'
'And leave you pinned by the hand all night? Likely--I _don't_ think,'
said Gustus.
'I'd rather,' said Edward, bravely, but his voice was weak. 'I couldn't
bear you to be lagged, Gustus. I do love you so.'
'None of that,' said Gustus, sternly. 'I'll leave you the lamp; I can
find my way with matches. Keep up your pecker, and never say die.'
'I won't,' said Edward, bravely. 'Oh, Gustus!'
* * * * *
That was how it happened that Edward's father was roused from slumbers
by violent shakings from an unknown hand, while an unknown voice
uttered these surprising words:--
'Edward is in the gold and silver and copper mine that we've found under
your garden. Come and get him out.'
When Edward's father was at last persuaded that Gustus was not a silly
dream--and this took some time--he got up.
He did not believe a word that Gustus said, even when Gustus added
'S'welp me!' which he did several times.
But Edward's bed was empty--his clothes gone.
Edward's father got the gardener from next door--with, at the suggestion
of Gustus, a pick--the hole in the rockery was enlarged, and they all
got in.
And when they got to the place where Edward was, there, sure enough, was
Edward, pinned by the hand between a piece of wood and a piece of rock.
Neither the father nor the gardener noticed any metal. Edward had
fainted.
They got him out; a couple of strokes with the pick released his hand,
but it was bruised and bleeding.
They all turned to go, but they had not gone twenty yards before there
was a crash and a loud report like thunder, and a slow rumbling,
rattling noise very dreadful to hear.
'Get out of this quick, sir,' said the gardener; 'the roof's fell in;
this part of the caves ain't safe.'
Edward was very feverish and ill for several days, during which he told
his father the whole story--of which his father did not believe a word.
But he was kind to Gustus, because Gustus was evidently fond of Edward.
When Edward was well enough to walk in the garden his father and he
found that a good deal of the shrubbery had sunk, so that the trees
looked as though they were growing in a pit.
It spoiled the look of the garden, and Edward's father decided to move
the trees to the other side.
When this was done the first tree uprooted showed a dark hollow below
it. The man is not born who will not examine and explore a dark hollow
in his own grounds. So Edward's father explored.
This is the true story of the discovery of that extraordinary vein of
silver, copper, and gold which has excited so much interest in
scientific and mining circles. Learned papers have been written about
it, learned professors have been rude to each other about it, but no one
knows how it came there except Gustus and Edward and you and me.
Edward's father is quite as ignorant as any one else, but he is much
richer than most of them; and, at any rate, he knows that it was Gustus
who first told him of the gold-mine, and who risked being
lagged--arrested by the police, that is--rather than let Edward wait
till morning with his hand fast between wood and rock.
So Edward and Gustus have been to a good school, and now they are at
Winchester, and presently they will be at Oxford. And when Gustus is
twenty-one he will have half the money that came from the gold-mine. And
then he and Edward mean to start a school of their own. And the boys who
are to go to it are to be the sort of boys who go to the summer camp of
the Grand Redoubt near the sea--the kind of boy that Gustus was.
So the spy-glass will do some good after all, though it _was_ so
unmanageable to begin with.
Perhaps it may even be found again. But I rather hope it won't. It
might, really, have done much more mischief than it did--and if any one
found it, it might do more yet.
There is no moral to this story, except.... But no--there is no moral.
[Illustration: Quentin de Ward.]