Sleep did not come very readily to Nic's eyes that night, and he looked
very heavy and thoughtful at breakfast time next morning.
"How thankful I shall be when your father comes home, my dear!" said
Mrs Braydon.
"A bag of flour would be the best thing," said Nic to himself.
"I know, of course, my dear, that you are doing wonders," continued Mrs
Braydon, looking uneasily at her son, and misinterpreting his heavy look
into showing annoyance at her remark. "Both the girls and I are
astonished at the rapidity with which you have taken up this wild farm
life, and gone on with it as if you had been working for years; but we
cannot help longing to see your father back to take the management and
give us that feeling of protection which we miss."
"I ought to have guessed it at once," muttered Nic.
"Is anything the matter, Nic?" said Hilda.
"Matter? No. Why?"
"You seem so dull, and you are not eating your breakfast."
"Oh yes, I am," cried the boy, with forced merriment; and he rapidly
attacked the meal and made mother and sisters more uneasy by eating
tremendously and talking rapidly at the same time about how glad he
would be to have the doctor back.
Soon after breakfast Nic went to the storehouse and filled a bag with
meal, carrying it afterwards to the stable.
"I suppose one of the horses is ill," said Hilda. "Nic has been to
fetch some flour to make it a mash."
"Then that's what made him so anxious and thoughtful at breakfast time,"
cried Mrs Braydon. "Poor boy! it worried him. He wants to get it well
again before your father's return."
Janet said nothing, but attributed it to the right reason--that her
brother was troubled about the convict--and she trembled in her longing
to ask him, but did not dare.
Meanwhile Hilda had her thoughts; and the consequence was that Nic grew
angry, as he busied himself about the place, going here and there
looking after the men, inspecting the cattle, and carefully watching
that no tasks were being left undone.
"I never saw anything like it," he said to himself: "go where I will
it's just as if some one was watching me. They surely cannot suspect
anything."
Then, too, four or five times, when he had made up his mind to start,
old Sam or Brookes or his mother wanted him about some matter. But
still it was yet good time in the morning, when, taking his gun, the
mounted Sorrel, slung the big bag of meal across the saddle-bow and rode
out.
"You will not be late, my dear?" cried Mrs Braydon. "Oh no, mother;
back in good time." Then to himself, "Don't--pray don't ask me which
way I'm going."
"It must be for some bullock at a distance," said Mrs Braydon, as she
thoughtfully noted the bag across the saddle-bow, the fine sacking
having now assumed an hour glass shape, at which Janet gazed curiously,
feeling puzzled, though she could not have told why.
"At last!" muttered Nic, as he pressed his horse's sides and rode off,
feeling very guilty, and yet bright and exhilarated, quite confident too
of having solved a problem, though he was doubtful still as to whether
he would be able that night to write down mentally QEF.
He cast an eye to left and right to see if he were being watched, but
every one seemed to be busy over his or her affairs, and he began to
think that his start was exciting no interest whatever, when he saw
Brookes crossing the big field beyond the garden.
But the man did not turn his head in Nic's direction; and the next
minute, after forcing himself not to look round, the boy had placed the
trees between them, and cantered away quite out of sight of the house,
keeping down in a hollow leading toward the fern gully, as if going to
visit some cattle on the other side of the hills lying to the
south-east. As soon as he was beyond those hills he bore away to the
north, as if making for the Wattles; and when a mile or so in that
direction he bore to the left again for some distance, and then made for
the west--just the very opposite direction to that which he had taken in
starting.
The morning was delightful as he rode on, now in the full sunshine, now
in shade; and the feeling of exhilaration which came over him seemed to
be shared by his horse, which began to dance about and strain to get
away for a swift gallop.
A word or two always checked it, and the beautiful creature, whose satin
skin glistened in the sunshine, playfully tossed its head and ambled on.
"Nobody can have imagined which way I was coming," thought Nic; and
then, "Bother the old flour!" he said, half aloud; "how it works through
the bag! Why, Sorrel, your back will be as white as my knees. Woa!"
The nag stopped short, and Nic stood at the edge of a glade dotted with
clumps of acacia in full bloom, everything seeming to be covered with
tiny golden balls.
"Why, you two wretches, how dare you come hunting?"
Nic sat like a statue among the trees watching, as he saw the two
collies suddenly come into sight about five hundred yards away and then
run among the low growth for which they were making.
"Well, it won't matter," he said. "They can't tell tales. But they may
come again and show some one the way. I'll send them back."
He pressed his horse's sides, and walked it toward where the dogs had
disappeared, putting up a flock of the tiny zebra paroquets, which flew
a little distance to another tree.
"Poor fellows! I should like to give them a good run," he said to
himself; "but it's best not. I suppose I'm doing something very
unlawful, but the law did wrong to that poor fellow, and I feel as if I
must help him. Oh, what a thick-headed noodle I am not to have thought
of it before! Why, I remember quite well now all he said about it.
Hullo! what are those? They must be the great hawk parrots old Sam
talked about. Bother the birds! I've got something else to think of
to-day. Why, there goes another of those great iguana things! Where
did the dogs go?"
He had ridden on slowly, startling bird and lizard, and completely lost
trace of the collies, when all at once he heard a smothered growl in a
dense patch close at hand.
"They've found a snake," he said to himself, cocking his piece. "I
mustn't have them bitten."
He pressed forward, peering in amongst the bushes, passing some young
clean-stemmed trees; and as he rode unconsciously by one, a nude black
figure, neatly ornamented with two or three stripes of white pipeclay on
its breast, pressed close up to the tree holding a spear erect, and, as
the horse passed, moved so exactly round that the tree was kept between
it and Nic.
That tree did not appear to be thick enough to hide the black, but so
cleverly did the man move that Nic saw nothing, though he was not ten
yards away; and the black would have been unnoticed if it had not been
for the action of the dogs, which suddenly charged out playfully, one
going one side, the other the other, and then stopping barking at a
respectful distance from the tree.
"You vagabonds!" cried Nic; "how dare you come! Here, what have you
found? Fetch it out!"
Rumble dashed forward barking; and Nic noted that the dogs did not look
excited or angry, but playful, and as Rumble charged on one side Tumble
made a bound forward on the other.
"It must be a 'possum," thought Nic; but he altered his mind the next
moment, for he saw a spear come forward with a poke on one side of the
tree, and then drive at the second dog on the other.
Nic lowered the gun and moved round toward the other side cautiously;
but the black edged himself along, as he did so cleverly keeping the
tree still between them, and would have continued to keep himself in
hiding if it had not been for the dogs, which, encouraged now by their
young master's presence, made a playful dash together at the black's
legs, and made him bound from the tree to keep them at bay with his
spear.
"Why, Bung! You?" cried Nic, who felt considerably relieved, while the
dogs now scampered around, barking and leaping as if at the end of a
game of hide-and-seek. "What are you doing here, sir?"
The black grinned, and, supporting himself on one leg by help of his
spear, made playful clutches at the delighted dogs with his right foot,
whose toes worked about as he used it as if it were a great awkwardly
shaped hand.
"_R-r-r-ur_!" growled the dogs together, as they now justified their
names, and blundered over one another in a make-believe attempt to bite
and worry the foot; Nic looking on amused as they threw themselves down,
rolling over and grovelling along on their sides and backs to get close
up and feel the black's toes tickle them, and catch hold of their shaggy
hair.
"Why don't you speak, sir? Why are you not at work?" cried Nic.
"Little White Mary say, `Bung, go along see master.'"
"What! did my sister send you?"
The black nodded and laughed.
"Then just you go back, sir, directly, and take those dogs with you."
"Little White Mary say come along," persisted the black.
"I don't care what any one said," cried Nic. "Be off back."
"Little White Mary say, `Gun no shoot--mumkull.'"
"Put down that spear," cried Nic, who now pointed the gun at Bungarolo,
who replied by striking an attitude, holding his spear in a graceful
position as if about to hurl it at the boy's head.
"No mumkull Bung?" cried the black.
"Not if you run off back," cried Nic. "If you don't I'll pepper you."
"No pepper Bung, no mumkull. Baal shoot gun. Little White Mary fellow
say Bung come."
"You go back home," cried the boy, following him up.
"Little White Mary say--"
"Go home."
"Little--"
"Will you go, sir? Here, Rum--Turn! Run him home."
The dogs made a rush, and the black darted off, but a hundred yards away
ran behind a tree, where the dogs hunted him out.
"Home!" roared Nic, and the black darted on again, Nic riding after him
again and again, till, satisfied that the black was really making for
the station, followed by the dogs, he made a circuit in among the trees,
and rode hard for a time, altering his course at last, and not pausing
till he was close up to the precipitous edge of the huge gorge.
Here the boy dismounted in a patch of rich grass surrounded by mighty
trees, hobbled his horse, removed the bit, which he hung to the saddle,
and then paused to think.
"He's here somewhere," the boy said to himself, "but the thing is
where."
He was not long coming to the conclusion that the convict had devoted
himself during his shepherding tours to hunting out some place where he
could descend the terrible precipice into that glorious valley far
below, where there were sheep and cattle, plenty of water, and no doubt
wild fruits to enable him to subsist.
"And if he found his way down, why shouldn't I?" said Nic, with a little
laugh. Then, shouldering his gun, he dived in among the trees and
wattle scrub which lay between him and the edge of the precipice, with
the intention of keeping cautiously along it, first in one direction and
then in the other, till he found traces of some one having climbed down.
Two hours' work convinced him that he had undertaken a task that might
have made Hercules sit down and scratch his ear, for it promised to be
hard enough to equal any of the celebrated labours of that mythic
personage. Nic had toiled on in one direction only, forcing his way
through thorns, tangles, and over and between rocks, pausing from time
to time, whenever he came to an opening, to gaze across the tremendous
gap at the glories of the rock wall opposite, or to look shuddering down
into the beautiful paradise thousands of feet below, where the tints of
green were of the loveliest hues, and he could see the cattle calmly
grazing, mere dots in the natural meads which bordered the flashing
waters seen here and there like lakes, but joined possibly, for the
trees shut out broad stretches of the river in the vale.
For a time he would lie there, resting and listening to the whistling
calls of birds whose names he did not know, to the shrieks of parrots,
and now and then catch sight of what seemed to be tiny fragments of
paper falling fluttering down, till he saw them turn, and knew that he
was gazing at cockatoos.
Then, after yielding to the fascination of peering down into the awful
depth, he would turn suddenly away, for a cold chill would run through
him as he experienced the sensation as of something drawing him
downward, and he would creep yards distant and sit there wiping the
perspiration from his face.
He soon recovered, though, and once more continued his search for a way
down.
"It is as if it would take years," he said to himself; "but I don't
care, I shall come again and again and keep on trying. I will find it,"
he said half aloud, as he set his teeth in dogged determination, and for
another hour he struggled on, till, feeling utterly exhausted, he seated
himself at the edge of the precipice at a point where he could divide
the bushes and look down. Here, only a few yards away, he saw that
there was a broad shelf some fifty feet below, and along it a mere
thread of water trickled to a lower edge and disappeared, leaving among
the stones amidst which it had meandered patch after patch of richest
green, showing its fertilising power.
That water was tempting in the extreme, for his mouth was dry; he was
faint, and he knew by the position of the sun that he had been
struggling through the dense growth for hours without refreshing
himself, though all the time he had a cake of damper in his pocket,
keeping the powder-flask company.
If he could get down there, he thought, he might have half an hour's
rest, and then tramp back to where he had left Sorrel, and ride gently
home in the cool of the evening.
"And come again." For come again he would till he had found poor
Leather, "unless," he said to himself with a shudder, "he has fallen
down this terrible place."
And yet it was not terrible, he thought the next moment. It was grand,
glorious, lovely, and the shelf below him, with its water, more tempting
than anything he had ever seen before.
"I must get down," he said; and going farther along he sought for a
means, but had not far to go, for he soon grasped the fact that this
shelf was only some eighty or a hundred feet off the top, which had
slipped a little and then stopped. It had broken away, gone down some
fifty feet, and then been checked.
While as he gazed down at the old edge of the precipice, and over it
into the gorge below, he could hear the soft, whistling, humming trickle
of the water, and it increased his eagerness. He must get down, he
thought--but how? There were no overhanging boughs, no roots which had
forced their way between cracks in the rock and gone on down and down
searching for the moisture of that tiny rill which went over the edge to
its present depth; and there were no stout bushes growing in the side
beneath him. All there was clean, broken-away stone, which could only
be descended by stepping from projection to projection, while if any one
slipped--
"Well, what if he did?" said the boy contemptuously, as he gazed down:
"he would, at the most, only get a few scratches and bruises. Here's
the best spot, and I'm going down."
Without further hesitation he laid down his gun, turned upon his breast
and lowered his legs, found footing easy to get upon a ledge, and
lowered himself more and more till he was at the full stretch of his
limbs, when a horrible thought occurred to him: suppose, when he jumped
down upon that broad shelf formed by a sliding of the rock till it was
checked by some inequality, his weight should be sufficient to start it
going again, and he should be carried with it backward into the gulf.
"What nonsense!" he thought; "why, my weight upon it will be no more
than that of a fly;" and he lowered himself a little more, found it
harder, moved to the right, and got on to a firm ledge, and from that to
another, and was soon half-way down.
There he came to a stop, for he could find neither foot nor hand hold;
and there he was at last, spread-eagled against the perpendicular rock,
unable to go down, and, upon determining to go up instead, utterly
unable to retrace his steps.
"Oh, this is absurd," he thought, and looking sidewise, he saw a little
projection which seemed as if it would do then, feeling that if he
stopped longer in his cramped position he would be less able to act, he
measured the distance with his eyes, gathered himself together, made a
clumsy spring, got a foot on the projection, but missed the crevice into
which he meant to thrust his right hand, and went scrambling and sliding
down the other five-and-twenty feet, to come into a sitting position on
the broken stones, scratched, bruised, and uttering a loud groan of
pain.
"Oh my bones!" he cried, with a laugh and a wince of pain, as he began
to rub himself; and then, as he looked up, a sudden chill struck him,
for, he said to himself:
"Why, it's like a trap. I can never get up there again. I ought to
have looked farther before I leaped."
He limped a little as he stood up, and his arms both required a rub,
especially about the elbows; but while he performed these little
comforting offices he was not idle, for he carefully inspected the
shelf. Escape on the one side did not seem possible, for it was over
into the gorge; the other side, a curve, was one nearly perpendicular
wall of rock, along which he walked from where he stood to the ends at
the edge of the precipice and back.
"It is a regular pitfall," thought Nic; and then, determined to make the
best of things, he lay down upon his chest over the clear murmuring
water, lowered his lips, and took a long, deep, delicious draught of the
sparkling fluid.
"That's refreshing," said the boy to himself, and he came to a sitting
position on the warm stone, took out his piece of bread cake, and looked
up at the wall facing him, as he broke off a morsel of damper.
"Doesn't look so high as it did before I had that drink," he said, with
a laugh. "Not half so high; and by the time I've eaten my bread it will
only look half as high once more. Pooh! I can climb up. Cake's good."
He sat munching away contentedly enough now, stopping from time to time
for a fresh draught of water; and as he ate and drank he forgot the
awkwardness of his position in wonder and admiration of the mountain
precipice before him, and at last crept to the edge of that upon which
he had been seated, to obtain another look down into the mighty gorge.
"Ah, it's very grand," he sighed; "but it's time I climbed out of this."
He started, for he heard a sharp double click, like the cocking of a
gun, and looked up behind at the edge from which he had descended.
"Cricket or grasshopper," he thought; and then he felt, to use a
familiar old saying, as if his blood ran cold; for a slight movement at
the top had caught his attention, and he found himself gazing at the
muzzle of his gun, so foreshortened that there seemed to be no barrel--
nothing but a round hole, and behind it a glittering eye.