CHAPTER XXXVI.
AN EARTHQUAKE, A COLLIERY EXPLOSION, AND AN ADVENTURE.
So the Captain, the Colonial Secretary, and the small midshipman left the station and went on board again, disappearing from this history for evermore.

The others all went home and grew warlike, arming themselves against the threatened danger; but still weeks, nay months, rolled on, and winter was turning into spring, and yet the country side remained so profoundly tranquil that every one began to believe that the convicts must after all have been drowned, and that the boat found by sagacious Blockstrop had been capsized and thrown bottom upwards on the beach.

So that, before the brown flocks began to be spotted with white lambs, all alarm had gone by.
Only four persons, besides Mary Hawker herself, were conversant of the fact that the Bushranger and George Hawker were the same man.

Of these only three, the Doctor, Major Buckley, and Captain Brentwood, knew of his more recent appearance on the shore, and they, after due consultation, took honest Tom Troubridge into their confidence.
But, as I said, all things went so quietly for two months, that at the end of that time no one thought any more of bushrangers than they would of tigers.

And just about this time, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, having finished my last consignment of novels from England, and having nothing to do, determined to ride over, and spend a day or two with Major Buckley.
But when I rode up to the door at Baroona, having pulled my shirt collar up, and rapped at the door with my whip, out came the housekeeper to inform me there was not a soul at home.