Along one of the many densely-wooded spurs of Cape Conway, which rears
its bold front from out the pale green waters of Repulse Bay, a young
girl was riding a wild-eyed, long-maned and sweating bay filly, which,
newly broken in, had been making the most frantic efforts to unseat its
rider, whose dark brown hair, escaping from under the light Panama hat
she wore, had fallen down upon her shoulders.
At the summit of the spur there was an open grassy space, free of
timber, and commanding a view seaward, and along the coast north and
south for many miles. Here the girl drew rein and dismounted, deftly
whipped her hair into a loose coil, quickly took off the saddle, placed
it, seat down, upon the ground so that it might dry under the hot sun,
and then slipping the bit from the horse's mouth, let the animal graze
with loose bridle.
“There, my fractious young lady,” she said, “you can feed, and as you
feed, I hope you will consider the error of your ways, and give up any
more attempts to buck me off. You ought to know me better by this time.”
From a leather saddle-bag she took out some slices of beef and damper,
and leisurely began to eat, her dark brown eyes dreamily scanning the
blue sea before her, and then resting on the green, verdured hills of
Whitsunday Island, away to the northward, with little beaches of shining
white nestling at the heads of many a quiet bay, whose shores were
untrodden, except by the feet of the black and savage aborigines
inhabiting the mainland. Far out to sea, and between Whitsunday Passage
and the Great Barrier Reef, the white sails of five pearling luggers
were glinting in the sun as they sailed northward to the scene of their
labours in the wild waters of New Guinea and Torres Straits.
“I wonder how many of those on board will return,” mused the girl aloud
as she watched the little vessels--which looked no larger than swans.
“How many will come back rich, how many disappointed and yet not
undaunted, ever hopeful, ever daring, ever eager to sail once more, and
face danger and death; death day by day and night by night for two long
weary years. And yet--oh, I wish I were a man. I believe I am a man--a
man in heart and will and strength of mind and body, and yet a woman.
And for father's sake I ought to have been born a boy.” She sighed,
and leaning her chin on her hand gazed longingly at the tiny fleet and
wished she--a man--were at the tiller of one of the luggers, listening
to the tales of the bronze-faced, bearded pearl-shellers; tales of
mighty pearls worth thousands of pounds, of fierce encounters with the
treacherous savages of New Guinea, and the mainland of Australia; of
fearful hurricanes and dreadful dangers ashore and afloat, and then
peaceful, happy days of rest in the far-away isles of Eastern Polynesia;
before the newly-discovered beds of pearl shell in Torres Straits lured
them away from the calm seas and palm-clad atolls of the Paumotus and
Manahiki and Tongarewa.
The grazing filly suddenly raised her shapely head and pricked up her
ears, and listened; and, in an instant, the girl sprang up and took a
Smith and Wesson revolver from her saddle. The blacks about Repulse Bay
and Whitsunday Passage had an evil reputation, and many an unfortunate
stockman or digger had been slaughtered by them when camped in apparent
security; even within a few score miles of such towns as Bowen and
Mackay.
With the filly she listened, and then smiled as she heard the sound of a
horse's feet coming along the track through the scrub. In a few moments
horse and rider appeared, and the girl slipped her weapon into the
pocket of her short riding skirt.
“How do you do, Miss Fraser?” cried the newcomer as he jumped off his
horse and hurried up to her with outstretched hand and an eager light
in his eyes; “this is a pleasant surprise. I was on my way to see your
father, and when riding along the beach below caught sight of your filly
feeding on the bluff. I knew that it could be no one but you who would
camp here, so instead of going on to Fraser's Gully, I turned off; and
here I am.”
“And I am very glad to see you, Mr Forde,” said the girl, as she shook
hands; “now, will you have something to eat? I have plenty of Fraser's
Gully fare here--beef and damper--and I've tea and sugar in my
saddle-bag.”
“So have I. And now, whilst I light a fire, tell what brought you here
to-day? To look at the sea--the 'ever treacherous sea'--I suppose, and
'wish you were a man,'” and the speaker smiled into the brown eyes.
“You are very rude, Mr Forde; the rudest clergyman I ever met Certainly,
I've only met three in my life, but then----” Here the brown eyes lit up
laughingly. “They were different from you.”
“I have no doubt about it,” and the man laughed like a boy, as taking up
some dead sticks he broke them across his knee. “But you haven't told me
how it is I am so fortunate as to find you here--fifteen miles off the
track to Fraser's Gully.”
“Oh! the old story. Some of our horses are missing, and I have been
trying to pick up their tracks.”
Forde, with an earnest look in his blue eyes, looked up from the fire he
was kindling, and shook his head gravely. “You should not venture so far
away, Miss Fraser. How can you tell but that whilst you are trying to
pick up the horses' tracks that the blacks about Repulse Bay are not now
engaged in picking up yours?”
“Oh, I am not afraid of any of the myalls{*} about Whitsunday Passage
and Repulse Bay, Mr Forde. I really believe that if I rode into one of
their camps they would not bolt. Poor wretches! I do feel sorry for
them when I know how they are harried and shot down--so often without
cause--by the Native Police. Oh, I hate the Native Police! How is it,
Mr Forde, that the Government of this colony can employ these uniformed
savages to murder--I call it murder--their own race? Every time I see
a patrol pass, I shudder; their fierce, insolently-evil faces, and the
horrid way they show the whites of their eyes when they ride by with
their Snider carbines by their sides, looking at every tame black with
such a savage, supercilious hatred! And their white officers--oh,
how can any man who pretends to be a gentleman, and calls himself a
Christian, descend to such an ignominious position as to lead a party
of black troopers? If I were a man, and had to become a sub-inspector of
Native Police, I would at least blacken my face so as to hide my shame
when I rode out with my fellow-murderers and cutthroats.”
* Wild blacks.
Her eyes, filled with tears as they were, flashed with scorn as she
spoke. The clergyman looked admiringly at her as he put his hand on her
arm.
“You must remember, Miss Fraser, that the wild blacks on this coast have
committed some dreadful murders. How many settlers, miners, and swagmen
have been ruthlessly slaughtered?”
“And how many hundreds of these unfortunate savages have been ruthlessly
slaughtered, not only by the Black Police, but by squatters and
stockmen, who deny the poor wretches the right to exist? We have taken
away their hunting grounds! We shoot them down as vermin, because,
impelled by the hunger that we have brought upon them, they occasionally
spear a bullock or horse or two! Why cannot the Government do as my
father suggests--reserve a long strip of country for these poor savages,
just a small piece of God's earth that shall be inviolate from the
greedy squatter, the miner, the sugar planter? And let the wretched
beings at least live and die a natural death.”
The clergyman's face flushed as he listened to her passionate words.
“It is, I believe, impossible to segregate the coastal tribes of the
Australian mainland. The cost of such an attempt would, in the first
place, be enormous; in the second, the people of the colony----”
“The people, Mr Forde! You mean the squatters, the sugar-planters, the
land-devouring swarm of 'Christians,' who think that a bullock's hide,
worth twenty shillings, is of more moment than the welfare of thousands
of poor, naked savages, whose country we have taken, and yet of whom
we make beasts of burden--hewers of wood and drawers of water. Oh, if I
were only a man!”
“But you are, instead, a beautiful girl, Miss Fraser.”
“Don't pay me any compliments, Mr Forde, or I shall begin to dislike
you, and work you a pair of woollen slippers like English girls do in
novels for the pale-faced, ascetic young curates, with their thin hands,
and the dark, melancholy eyes.”
Forde laughed heartily this time, and held out his own hands jestingly
for her inspection; they were as brawny and sunburned as those of any
stockman or working miner, and were in keeping with his costume, which
was decidedly unclerical. For he only wore his clerical “rig” when
visiting towns sufficiently populous for him to hold services therein.
At the present time he was clad in the usual Crimean shirt, white
moleskins, and brown leather leggings, and the grey slouched felt hat
affected by most bushmen. His valise, however, contained all that was
necessary--even to the wreck of a clerical hat--to turn himself into the
orthodox travelling clergyman of the Australian bush.
“Ah! I was only joking, Mr Forde, as you know. _You_ are not the usual
kind of 'parson.' That is why father--and everyone else--likes you.
Then, too, you can ride--I mean sit a horse as an Australian does; and
you smoke a pipe, and--oh, I wonder, Mr Forde, that you never married!
Now I am sure that Mrs Tallis admires you--In fact she told me so, and
Kaburie is a lovely station, and----”
The clergyman laughed again. “Thank you, Miss Fraser. I'm afraid I
should not have courage enough to propose to a brand-new widow even if I
was sure she would say 'yes.'” Then he added quietly, “There is only one
woman in the world for me; and I have not even dared let her know I care
for her. I want her to get to know me a little better. And then a bush
parson is not a very eligible _parti?_
“Oh! I don't see why not, though I don't think _I_ should like to marry
a clergyman.”
“Why?” He asked the question with such sudden earnestness that she
looked up.
“Oh! one would have to visit such a lot of disagreeable women, and be
at least civil to them. Take old Mrs Piper for instance. She gave
fifty pounds towards the little church built at Boorala, and made your
predecessor's life miserable for the two years he was in the district.
She told him that she strongly disapproved of single clergymen 'under
any circumstances,' and tried to make the unfortunate man propose to
Miss Guggin, who is forty if she's a day, and poor Mr Simpson was only
twenty-five.”
“No wonder he fled the country.”
“No wonder, indeed! Then there are the Treverton family at Boorala; very
rich and highly respectable, though old Treverton was a notorious cattle
duffer{*} in Victoria. Father says that Mr Treverton would have made the
patriarch Jacob die with envy. He started from Gippsland with a team of
working bullocks, six horses, and twenty-four cows and calves to take up
new country on the Campaspe River, and, in six months' journey overland,
his herd of cattle had increased to a thousand head--most of them
full-grown, and by some mysterious agency they were branded 'T' as well!
And the six horses had multiplied to an astonishing extent; from six
they had grown to fifty, all in six months! And now Joseph Treverton,
Esq., J.P., and Member of the Legislative Assembly, is one of the
richest squatters in the North, and the Misses Treverton speak of their
'papa' as 'one of the very earliest pioneers of the pastoral industry in
North Queensland, you know.'”
* Cattle stealer.
The girl's frank sarcasm delighted Forde, the more so as he knew that
what she had said was perfectly true.
“Well, it is a new country, you see, Miss Fraser, and----”
Just then the two horses raised their heads and neighed, and Forde,
going to the edge of the bluff, saw a horseman coming along the beach in
a direct line for where they were camped.
“We are to have company, Miss Fraser. There is some one riding direct
for the bluff.”