“The gold escort stuck up. Fourteen thousand ounces of gold taken. Sergeant Hawkins shot dead. The robbers safe off with their booty.”

This is the sort of thing that we were sure to see in all the papers. It would make a row and no mistake. It was the first time such a thing had been thought of, much less carried out “to rights,” as father said, “in any of the colonies.” We had the five thousand ounces of gold, safe enough, too. That was something; whether we should be let enjoy it, or what chance we had of getting right away out of the country, was quite another matter. We were all sorry for Sergeant Hawkins, and would have been better pleased if he’d been only wounded like the others. But these sort of things couldn’t be helped. It was the fortune of war; his luck this time, ours next. We knew what we had to expect. Nothing would make much difference. “As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” We were up to our necks in it now, and must fight our way out the best way we could.

Bar any man betraying the secret of the Hollow we might be safe for years to come, as long as we were not shot or taken in fair fight. And who was to let out the secret? No one but ourselves had the least notion of the track or where it led to, or of such a place as the Hollow being in the colony. Only us five were in possession of the secret. We never let any of these other men come near, much less to it. We took good care never to meet them within twenty miles of it. Father was a man that, even when he was drunk, never let out what he didn’t want other people to know. Jim and I and Starlight were not likely to blab, and Warrigal would have had his throat cut sooner than let on about anything that might be against Star light, or that he told him not to do.

We had good reason, then, to think ourselves safe as long as we had such a place to make to whenever we were in danger or had clone a stroke. We had enough in gold and cash to keep us comfortable in any other country—provided we could only get there. That was the rub. When we’d got a glass or two in our heads, we thought it was easy enough to get across country, or to make away one by one at shearing time, disguised as swagsmen, to the coast. But when we thought it over carefully in the mornings, particularly when we were a bit nervous after the grog had died on us, it seemed a rather blue look-out.