‘Their last prize,’ continued Hayston, ‘was a dreadful sight! Pah! I
can hardly bear to think of it now.’ As he spoke, his face darkened,
and a look of rage, concentrated, lurid, pitiless, passed over his
features, transforming their whole expression into that of a demon—an
avenging Azrael; his whole countenance suddenly passed from a state of
smiling, even fascinating courtesy, to that of murderous wrath—deadly,
implacable, consuming.
‘They paid the penalty?’ said Carteret.
‘Yes! They were triced up to the yard-arm—two and two—a trial was
dispensed with—Uncle Sam having passed a special ordinance with regard
to such cases. The sharks had gathered around after the first corpses
were dropped. It was a calm: they were torn in pieces almost as soon
as the breath was out of their bodies. That the sea which had been
crimsoned many a time with the blood of their innocent victims, should
now be stained with their own, was only just retribution. Too
merciful, of course; but we can’t go back to the methods of the Middle
Ages—more’s the pity! And now let us change the subject. “Land ho!”
as an old captain of mine in the West Indies used to say when he heard
the dinner bell.’
The melodious sound of a silver temple-gong announced the service of a
meal as perfect in its way as anything arranged on salt water can be.
The wines, of the choicest French and Spanish vintages, were such as
few ‘Amphitryons où l’on dîne’ have the privilege of presenting to a
guest. The turtle soup would have tempted an alderman to change his
religion. But once previously had Carteret tasted such Madeira as
followed it. The fish, the prawn curry, the beautiful crested pigeons
of the islands, guinea-fowls in size, pheasants in delicacy of
flavour—without pursuing the detail, it may be assumed from Carteret’s
testimony, then and afterwards, that a jury of _gourmets_ would have
been hard set to decide in favour of any naval competing function of
the day. The dry champagne which followed the hock was of a known,
accredited _crû_, but did not tempt Carteret to do more than
reasonable justice to it. He had no intention of measuring strength of
brain against his entertainer; more particularly with a vitally
important stake on the cards. At a comparatively early hour he
discussed with Hayston the more binding terms of the agreement, and
argued them out, clause by clause, before they parted for the night.
Not wholly satisfied with the propriety of concluding the affair after
dinner, moderate as had been his potations, Carteret deferred the
signing and sealing of the final instrument till noon on the
following day. Which was at once agreed to.
Captain Hayston, indeed, expressed his intention of sailing for
foreign parts on the morrow. Thus, if all preliminaries were completed
at mid-day, he would be free to lift anchor, and taking advantage of
the breeze off the land would initiate action. Doubtless he had
intelligence agents on whom he could rely—agents ‘steady of heart, and
stout of hand’ as ever served king or minister, and who dared not play
him false. When, therefore, the _Leonora_ shook out her topsails and
stood off the land, a point or two to the south of west, shaping a
course for the crimson afterglow of the fading sunset, there were ten
thousand of Carteret’s dollars in the double-handled casket of the
slaver Leon Gonzales, late master of the _Pedro Torero_—also in the
private escritoire an order for five hundred pounds, payable on demand
by the firm of Robert Towns and Co., Fort Street, Sydney, endorsed by
Oppenheimer Brothers, of Suva, Fiji.
If the course was altered at midnight, and shaped to one which would
bring them close to Molokai, where the eventful dash and relief
expedition would be carried out, who was to be the wiser?
* * * * *
The night, for which they had watched for nearly a week, was almost a
calm—but overclouded, and dark as a wolf’s throat. The proverbial
hand, when held before the face, was invisible.
The _Leonora_, miles away at nightfall, had glided closer to the land
and lay off and on. The dropping of an anchor near the forbidden shore
would, of course, have aroused suspicion. The crew, with Bill Hicks at
the steer oar, had been carefully chosen. The whale-boat, which, for
reasons of his own, the Captain of the _Leonora_ always had on board,
was reliable on any sea, and against any of the winds of heaven. The
crew was composed of Rotumah islanders, perhaps the best men—except
those of Norfolk Island—in rough water or wild gale that the South
Pacific breeds. They may have had a general idea of the nature of the
service in which they were engaged, but were merely told that they
were to pull quietly to the beach near a rocky point, where a post
stood in the sand, with a small lantern attached to it. There they
would see a man, wrapped in a cloak. As soon as the boat grounded, he
would walk towards them. They were to run to meet him, lifting him
carefully into the boat, as he had been ill. Then to pull their
d—dest. Bill Hicks would see to that; and the quicker they got back to
the brig the surer they would be of a tot of rum all round, and a
pound of tobacco. But, if they valued their skins, they were not to
come back without their passenger. It is not improbable that they were
aware of the object and circumstances of the secret service. But—
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s but to do and die.
The crew of the _Leonora_ had, before now, been in affairs where
certain shipmates had lost the ‘number of their mess.’ Such experience
was nothing new to them. ‘It was all in the day’s work’—one man came
back safe and sound, the other ‘went to Davy Jones.’
* * * * *
Nothing could have been more propitious: the silent, moonless night;
the sleeping ocean, dark, waveless—unillumined save by the
phosphorescence caused by a leaping fish—the sombre surface in Stygian
repose. The _Leonora_ had approached the dread island long after dark,
gradually getting closer by long ‘boards.’ For a while the low
rhythmic murmur of the unresting surge was the only sound which broke
the strange silence, almost oppressive in its completeness. Then, as
the boat left the ship’s side noiselessly, and, rowed with muffled
oars, approached the shallows of the beach, a weird confused lament,
as of wails, moans, and cries of pain, rose through the murky air.
Such was the outcome of periodical seizures, with torturing,
lancinating pains, which, towards the later hours of the night, occur
with dreadful regularity in advanced or hopeless cases. As they
increased in distinctness one might have observed a movement as of
shuddering fear among the crew, who peered eagerly through the gloom,
beyond which lay the dim white beach, with a fringe of plumy palms
beyond. Straining his eyes, the quartermaster in the bow observed dark
forms wandering, as it appeared to him, along the seashore. Their gait
was slow and faltering; with weak, tremulous steps they seemed as
though doubtful of their ability to reach the point from which to
survey the ocean—to look, if better was not to be had, upon the
highway to freedom, and that outer world, from which they had been
severed once and for ever. They might well have passed for a company
of gibbering ghosts on the bank of that dark Lethean stream where
earthly joys and sorrows cease.
As the strange band neared the shore, the cries, the moaning,
unintelligible chorus seemed to deepen in intensity, and once a scream
as of agony unendurable rent the air.
‘Hell’s gate open now, I guess,’ said Hicks; ‘and these are Old Nick’s
beach-combers sent to say, “How’d yer like to come to this afore yer
time’s up?”’ Here his voice altered at once. ‘Look out, you Maori
Jack! here’s our passenger.’
As he spoke, a tall man in a cloak dashed into the sea, and rushed
towards the boat, wading above the waist, and holding up his arms
beseechingly, while at the same time several of the others made as
though to prevent him leaving their party. With a hoarse cry the Maori
seized him, and almost lifting him up, dragged him into the boat,
while the bow oar descended on the skull of the leading pursuer, who
fell back, recovering himself with difficulty. There was no further
attempt at capture. ‘Give way, men!’ shouted Hicks; ‘pull for the brig
as if she was an eighty-barrel whale.’
The strange passenger sank down as if exhausted, and made no remark or
gesture. As the boat foamed up to the _Leonora’s_ side, a rope-ladder
was let down, up which he—helped by the Maori’s strong grasp—climbed
in safety. Once on the deck, he seemed to revive, and commenced to
thank the Captain effusively. But he declined converse. ‘You will find
refreshment in your cabin, señor! The steward will direct you. It will
be better to defer explanations until the morning. Manuel’ (this to
the mulatto), ‘see that this gentleman has all that he requires for
the night. Adios!’
‘Adios, indeed!’ thought the passenger, who had seen strange things in
strange countries, and had picked up Spanish in his wanderings. ‘I
feel bewildered for the present; I must clear my brain with sleep, if
possible; I have had little enough for the last fortnight.’
The breeze off the land by this time had slightly freshened. Sail was
made ‘alow and aloft,’ and as the wavelets commenced to strike and
fall off from her bows with increasing volume, the graceful _Leonora_
swept smoothly yet rapidly on her course, at a rate of speed which, if
there had been pursuit, gave little chance of her being overhauled.
What an awakening it was for Alister Lilburne when, after a night of
soundest sleep, he realised that he was many a league from that Isle
of the Lost!—was again free, safe, unhampered by rules and hateful
regulations such as are found necessary for semi-penal communities.
The morning breeze, the roseate dawnlight, the lapping wave which
kissed his cabin-side, the sea-birds’ cry,—all these were separate and
distinct joys and sensations which he recognised with a thankfulness
too deep for words. When the Japanese steward shortly afterwards,
bowing with Oriental humility, proposed to conduct him to a bath-room,
and, at the same time, displayed a complete Spanish military uniform,
he began to feel once more a resemblance to the man that he used to
be, as also a newborn desire to learn how and by whom this change in
his affairs had been brought about. Change? Yes! the change from a
living grave—a hopeless, despairing existence—doomed to vegetate on
the accursed isle till death released him from a state of mental
torture all but unendurable. Weekly to witness the long-hoped-for,
prayed-for opening of the prison gate for a fellow-victim. But only by
the warder Death, or through a merciful alternative—the utter
dethronement of reason.
The purifying process complete, and the costume of the hidalgo donned,
from which not even the sombrero, with sweeping feather, was absent,
his island garments were made into a bundle, loaded with a ringbolt,
and cast into the deep. His attendant then informed him that the
Captain hoped to have the pleasure of meeting Don Carlos Alvarez at
breakfast, at his convenience. Feeling partly like an actor in private
theatricals, partly like a man in a dream, he followed Manuel to the
smaller cuddy, where fruit and coffee, with a most appetising
breakfast, were already set forth.
‘I have the honour to salute Don Carlos Alvarez, who has joined my
vessel at Santa Cruz and desires a passage to Norfolk Island. Is it
not so?’ said the Captain, speaking in Spanish, with formal and
impressive courtesy.
‘A vuestro disposición, Señor Capitan!’ answered the passenger in the
same language. And, indeed, as he surveyed himself in one of the
mirrors which, in massive silver frames, ornamented the apartment, he
found it difficult to believe that he was not the haughty hidalgo with
whom the tales of the Spanish main had made all students familiar.
‘I have to thank you,’ he continued, still speaking in more or less
pure Castilian, ‘for my life—for the recovery of my liberty, and all
things that men hold most dear. Believe me, I await only the time when
I may translate my feelings into deeds, to prove them true. But I
would further beg you to add to my obligation, heavy as it is, the
reasons for your thus interesting yourself in the affairs of a
stranger.’
‘That we have not met before, I am aware,’ answered Hayston. ‘My
action is not wholly disinterested, you may probably guess; still, a
man’s friends may intervene in his affairs—and to some purpose.’
‘Friends!’ said the stranger. ‘How many is an outcast likely to
have—outcast of God and man—may He pardon me for the thought!—in that
Gehenna from which your skill and courage have rescued me? And if
there be, by a miracle, so much as one left to him, who once had many,
what power can he have had?’
‘The power of the golden key,’ said the sea-rover, looking around, as
he spoke, upon wave and sky, as the freshening breeze sent the gay
bark on her course with increased speed. ‘With a magic force in the
background, weather like this, and such a water-witch as the _Leonora_
under his foot, why should you, should any man, despair? Exile,
sickness, wounds—losses, shipwreck, imprisonment,—everything but the
rope or the axe, which ends all things, have fallen to my lot. But I
never lowered my flag, and see where it flaunts in the breeze now!
Bah! the Spaniard’s solace is the guitar; I must send for mine, and
sing you one of my favourites,’ and here he trolled out the opening
verse of ‘Yo soy contrabandista!’ ‘Gad! how the muleteers and
smugglers of the Pyrenees used to dance and yell to the music! The
very thought makes me young again.’ Here he sprang forward, raising
his lofty head with a gesture of defiance, as if claiming to be the
master of his own destiny, and daring a world in arms to subdue his
will or shape his course in life. His eyes glowed with the light of
battle—his upper lip curved in scorn—his vast frame seemed to grow in
form and stature, as he stood there, towering above his companion, and
presenting the contrast of a mediæval mail-clad knight alike to squire
and pages as to the leathern-jerkined yeomen of the ranks.
The passenger looked on him with eyes of admiration, as he stood,
grand in the possession of unmatched strength—flushed with the triumph
of successful enterprise, and glorying in his daring—the daring which
had, so many a time and oft, carried him through perils and desperate
encounters, to which this last one was but child’s play.
‘And now,’ said Hayston, taking the passenger’s arm, ‘let us walk the
deck, while I tell you how I became possessed of your history, and was
persuaded to mix myself up in your affairs. Can you call to memory the
name of a friend who would be likely to be reckless of money and time
spent in effecting your release?’
‘Of course—there is Lytton Carteret—my wife’s cousin—sincerely
attached to her, and an early friend of mine—but I have not heard of
him for years. He was said to have been travelling in the East.’
‘That is so. He informed me that he had nearly reached Lhassa, but had
been turned back by a guard of Thibetan soldiers.’
‘Then he has returned? And where is he now?’
‘He is awaiting the return of the brig _Leonora_ at Apia harbour,
where he hopes to meet Don Alvarez—now on his travels in the South
Pacific.’
‘Then he knows of my having left——?’
‘Nukuheva, let us say—rather a fashionable resort just now—Lord
Pembroke and a friend were staying there for some months lately.’
‘A light breaks in on me. Of course I could hear nothing in that
inferno, out of the world and the world’s life. Do I guess aright that
it was he that——?’
‘Yes! Señor Alvarez; it was he that engineered this little _coup_ of
ours. He had made a _pasear_ to Easter Island, where he happened on
William H. Hayston, master mariner—whom he met once at the Hokianga,
New Zealand—and it came into his head that he might take a hand in
this deal. Dollars, of course, were necessary, and he planked down
handsomely. Made money in some place in West Australia, I think.’
‘But, Captain Hayston, it is my _right_ to pay everything which this
affair has cost. I shall have funds when I arrive in England. My
credit, indeed, is good at this moment in Lombard Street—I insist——’
‘In this charter party, I only know Lytton Carteret, and must decline
to mix up business with Señor Carlos Alvarez, or any friend or
relative. It can be settled with him only after I fulfil my contract;
but, until then, I must decline—much as it grieves me—to consider you
in any other capacity than as my _passenger_. From that time forward
we shall be friends, I trust?’
‘Have it your own way, Captain Hayston,’ said Lilburne, inwardly
smiling at the idea of the buccaneer, as he was often held to be,
being scrupulous about extra payment for service rendered. ‘In all
other respects I shall always regard you as a friend in need, to be
trusted in fair weather or foul, to my life’s end.’ Here he grasped
the Captain’s sinewy hand, and shook it with a fervour commensurate
with the importance of the occasion.
‘Buon amigo—malo adversario,’ replied Hayston. ‘We shall be unlikely
to meet again; though, but for hard luck, and the mystery of fate,
you and I, and your friend—a man whom I honour and respect from the
bottom of my heart—might have been comrades to our lives’ end.’
‘And why not now? Surely it is not too late—why not change your
career? Why not uproot the ties and habits of early youth—atone for
the mistakes—crimes, if you will—of a reckless manhood?—retrace the
downward path—repent in sackcloth and ashes—a white sheet, if you
like.’
‘Fancy “Bully” Hayston in a white sheet!’ The absurdity of the
situation seemed to strike him, and he laughed till the tears came
into his eyes. ‘No,’ and a sad, stern look came over his changeful
brow—‘what says Byron, whom I used to read in my youth?
‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.
But still we love even in our rage,
And haunted to our very age
With the vain shadow of the past,
As is Mazeppa to the last!’
* * * * *
Once more the course was changed—another forty-eight hours would bring
the _Leonora_ to Apia harbour. Here the erstwhile Spanish Don would
be landed. The identification of Alister Lilburne with the
Spanish-speaking, Spanish-garmented Alvarez would be difficult, if not
impossible.
All that the crew—discreet of their kind—knew, or could testify to,
was, that a Spanish-speaking individual had been on board their vessel
for a few weeks, and had left them at Norfolk Island. They had heard
that he had come from Sydney, and was going back as soon as he could
get a ship. Had he come from Molokai? They did not know. In fact, the
four Rotumah men had been carefully prevented from showing themselves
on shore, and the rest of the crew had been _advised_ by Bill Hicks to
recognise no one, and to notice nothing outside of the ordinary cruise
of their voyage. They had shipped a cargo of copra at Ponapé, and
declined to answer any questions save such as related to island
produce.
* * * * *
Carteret was always reticent as to the route by which he and Lilburne
made their way to West Australia—landing at Albany from a German
cargo-boat, and parting at Perth. It was discovered after Lilburne had
been on board the _Leonora_, that the white mark, more or less
circular, on account of which he might so easily have lost his life,
as well as his liberty, had no more to do with leprosy than with
scarlet fever. It was simply the remains of a cicatrice, resulting
from an Arab spear-wound received in one of his desert wanderings in
early life. The skin had contracted, after the healing process was
complete, and, as often happens, had lost its original colour and
shape. Hayston himself—who had taken a medical course in his
University days, and was no mean practitioner in the department of
wounds, and surgical matters generally—after a minute examination
pronounced it to be free from the remotest likeness to the earlier
stages of the disease. Not satisfied with this, he called a
quartermaster, who had lived on every island in the South Pacific, and
had acquired a reputation as a successful medicine-man among the
sailors and beach-combers.
‘Take a look at Don Carlos Alvarez here, Ben!’ said Hayston. ‘What
d’ye make of it? Any Molokai business about it?’
‘No more than there is about this, Captain!’—pointing to a scar upon
his brawny chest, right in the centre of a tattooed mermaid’s bosom,
that marine enchantress being represented as smiling seductively upon
a shipwrecked mariner. ‘That was a touch I got at the Navigators, when
the natives nearly cut us off—a close thing it was, Captain. But it
healed up wonderful—and there it is—white enough too. I suppose those
cranks at Tahiti would have boxed me up with the other poor devils if
I hadn’t taken French leave—in a native canoe. But I gave ’em leg-bail
for it, and here I am to-day, as sound as a roach, and as good an A.B.
as there is in the fleet.’
‘That will do, Ben, I am satisfied; you have been two years in the
_Leonora_, so your case is proved, at any rate. The fact is, señor,
that there was such a scare about the disease when first the native
Councils at Honolulu began to legislate, that they went to the other
extreme in suspected cases; thinking it better that a few should be
wrongfully imprisoned than that infection should run riot over the
whole island. To this day, however, medical men are not agreed on the
subject of contagion.’
Of course Mrs. Lilburne had been advised by letter from time to time
of the possibility of her husband’s release. What such hope and
expectation meant to these hardly entreated lovers may be imagined. In
her case, she was supported by an unshaken faith in the goodness of
God. The belief in which she had been reared had for years furnished
her with support and consolation, even in a state of exile,
loneliness, and comparative poverty. Was it for her to doubt that He
would make a way for her to escape from that lamentable position, when
it pleased Him to put a period to her misery? If she was wretched,
lonely, forsaken, placed by fate among the sick and the dying, was it
for her to repine—to despair? Day by day she saw the strong perish
before her eyes—the young and fair—the hopeful and the indifferent.
The terrible fever of camps and crowds spared neither age nor sex. Who
was she, that she should be specially protected? Rather ought she to
be thankful that she was in a position to help the helpless, to
succour the dying, to cheer the terrified soul, on the verge of ‘the
undiscovered country,’ with the vision of a serene and glorified
hereafter.
So she possessed her soul in patience, finding in unrelaxing, even
more zealous devotion to her duties that relief from painful thought
which ever accompanies conscientious adherence to duty. In vain her
friends adjured her not to neglect her own health. She persisted in
‘working herself to death,’ as they averred, to the last day—when she
went off, carrying the blessings and prayers of the whole community
with her. The German boat would be at Perth on an appointed day, when
she trusted to coach and train service to enable her to meet her
long-lost, despaired-of husband. Over his transports, her tears and
sobs of joy when she rushed into the arms of the lover of her youth,
the husband of her choice—raised, as she felt, from the dead—saved,
too, from a death of lingering agony, of gradual, yes! loathsome,
offensive decay, we may not dwell.
Of their feelings, on an occasion so rare, so unique, in fact, as
their reunion under uncommon, even improbable circumstances, only
those who have experienced partings—absences—even remotely resembling
them, may faintly conceive: the almost incredible change from the dark
despair, which invaded every waking moment, which robbed sleep of its
healing power—all existence of its zest and flavour, while only the
faintest glimmer of hope appeared in life’s dungeon to warn off the
man from suicide, the woman from that negative existence which would
have invited the fell disease among the victims of which she
ministered daily, nightly. How many instances had she witnessed among
the early workers of the goldfields! Some were unsuccessful at the
first onset. Fortune eluded them. Hope deserted the unstable
worker—the impoverished wife: the next stage was a pallet in the
crowded hospital, all too soon to be followed by the requiem dirge and
the funeral train. The environment was depressing, but, encircled by
sickness, oft-times alone with death at the midnight hour, no terrors
ever caused Elinor Lilburne to swerve for one moment from the
undoubting faith of her youth, or to shake her trust in God. ‘Though
He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,’ had been a light to her path.
And now the Supreme Ruler of events had manifested His loving mercy,
in redeeming both body and soul, and preserving husband and wife for
a newer Eden, and the enjoyment of their immortal love.
At the first discussion of ways and means, Lilburne was in favour of
at once returning to England, of taking up their old life among
friends and relatives. Somewhat to his surprise his wife gently, but
no less firmly, dissented from the plan.
‘No, Alister,’ she said; ‘it would be ungrateful, ungenerous even, to
quit hurriedly a spot where I have been sheltered, welcomed, and
provided for; where I have found friends in the hour of need, nobly
sympathetic in their treatment of a stranger. Nowhere could I have met
with greater kindness, or assistance more delicately offered.’
‘But surely a mining camp, as I understand this Pilot Mount, or
whatever it is called, must necessarily be a rude, uncivilised place.’
‘You must not say that, Alister, unless you wish to hurt my feelings.
In the first place, it is now a city, with a population of sixty
thousand people, employed in mines which have paid a million and a
half sterling in dividends within the last few years—besides having as
inhabitants a larger proportion of high-minded, accomplished, and, in
a sense, distinguished people, than many places in the old country, of
greater size and apparent importance.’
Her husband took her hand, and smiled indulgently. ‘Indeed!’ he
answered, ‘I was not aware that I was on delicate ground. I ought to
have made allowance for colonial experience. Isn’t that what they call
it? And they must have been people of superior merit, to have
appreciated my darling during the years of exile. I feel impatient to
make their acquaintance.’
‘It will not be difficult to do that; only you mustn’t run away with
the idea that the inhabitants are all alike, and have no degrees of
social rank. However, you will see when we arrive. I should not be
surprised if you found goldfields life less disagreeable than you
expected.’
‘But you don’t ask me to stay there?’
‘You shall do exactly as you wish. Have I not always been an obedient
wife? But I wish to make you acquainted with a strange and unfamiliar
phase of colonisation, closely bearing on the well-being of the
Empire, about which I know you are an enthusiast.’
‘It is an order—as they say in India. When shall we start?’
‘Not before next week. I am not going to hurry you off. I have a
fortnight’s leave of absence, which we must spend at Perth Water. Then
I return to my post, to leave everything in order, and say good-bye to
my patients. Dear souls! what should I have done without them—or some
of them without _me_—I am proud to say.’
* * * * *
When it was bruited abroad throughout Pilot Mount, and to the West
Australian world at large, that Nurse Lilburne had gone to Perth to
meet her husband—_had_ indeed met him on the incoming _Carl Schiller_,
and was returning to resume her position at the Pilot Mount
hospital,—also, after putting everything straight, to give up her
appointment, and probably ‘go home,’ great was the excitement, general
the regrets, sincere indeed the sorrow which was openly displayed by
her more intimate friends and fellow-workers. Never would they get
such another Matron—so wise, so tender, yet so firm, and clever too as
an organiser. She had redeemed their hospital from comparative
confusion and chaos; now it was as well managed as any of the
metropolitan ones. The Health Officer, the Inspector General, the
great doctor M‘Diarmid, _every one_, had said so. And now, when it was
the pride and joy of ‘the field,’ here was her husband turning up from
nobody knew where, and, of course, to take her away with him. It was
most discouraging.
As for the local press—a journalistic flood of wonder and admiration,
congratulation and grief, poured over the bars and lodging-houses, the
hotel parlours, the stores—the churches even, and flowed and surged,
and eddied, throughout the wide regions of ‘the field’ and its
dependencies. The name and fame of Nurse Lilburne, the modern revival
of the ‘lady with the lamp,’ had spread far and wide. The
fever-stricken miner, the inexperienced tourist, the youthful
governess, the toil-encumbered matron, all owned to deep debts of
gratitude, all joined in a chorus of congratulation and heartfelt
thanksgiving. ‘Heaven had had mercy,’ said the devout. ‘It is the
Lord’s doing.’ ‘First man ever I knowed to come back from where _he’s_
been,’ said South Sea Jack.
It had not generally transpired, nor had it been thought necessary to
advertise the fact of his detention at so evil-reputed a locality. It
was generally supposed that pecuniary losses had resulted in his
trying to redeem his fortunes in South America, whence he had now
returned, having at length fallen upon a ‘bonanza’ in silver. The
environments of the country not being favourable to the habitudes of a
refined Englishwoman, it had been decided that she should make a home
in Western Australia.
She had formerly elected to take the work temporarily, as the member
of a nursing sisterhood; and coming to Pilot Mount in the worst period
of an epidemic of typhoid and pneumonia, she had accepted the position
of Matron in the newly organised hospital, partly from motives of
Christian charity, but chiefly as a means of allaying the torturing
anxiety which afflicted every waking hour, and, at times, denied her
even necessary sleep.
When it was known, indeed promulgated by the press, that Nurse
Lilburne, the devoted, the beloved, the Angel of the Lord (as the
Cornish Wesleyans called her), had in the dark hours of fever watched
by the bedside of so many a ‘Cousin Jack,’ and (as was believed) had
restored the father or husband to the weeping wife and babes, the
enthusiasm thus aroused seemed boundless, uncontrollable.
That she should permanently leave ‘the field’ was too sorrowful for
words—a public calamity, a disaster. Still, if man and wife had come
together after years of separation, who would be mean enough to put
their loss in the scale against the crowning joy of her happiness?
The situation was not new to them. Many a miner’s family, in humbler
life, had gone through the same experience. How often had they clubbed
together to help to build and furnish the modest cottage, in which the
long-separated man and wife could again set up the altar of domestic
life, and reinstate the household gods! But in this case it appeared
to the leaders—the representative men of the city and the mining
community—that an effort should be made to render the recognition of
the benefits derived from Mrs. Lilburne’s devoted, unselfish labours,
worthy of the great principle which she represented: of the invaluable
services which she had rendered to all the classes of the community,
‘without fear, favour, or affection,’ making no distinction between
rich and poor—the lowly and those of exalted station.