“Well, Lizzie, how does the Ocho Rios country strike you?” and Gerrard
pulled up his horse under the grateful shade of a great Leichhardt tree
standing on the bank of a clear, sandy-bottomed creek.
“I think it is beautiful, Tom, almost tropical, especially anywhere near
the sea,” and Mrs Westonley jumped lightly from her horse. “Are we going
to spell here for awhile?”
“Yes. Here come Jim and Mary with the pack-horse, and as it is past
twelve, we'll have our dinner, rest an hour, and then take the beach way
home.”
Eight months had passed since Mrs Westonley and Mary had come to Ocho
Rios, and they had been eight months of work and happiness to them all,
for the fortunes of Gerrard had changed greatly, and he was now in
a fair way of becoming a prosperous man again. The numerous gold
discoveries had brought a great inrush of diggers, and cattle for
killing were now worth four times the price they had been a year before.
He had built his new house, which was ready and actually furnished when
his sister and Mary arrived at Somerset, where he had met them. Together
they had ridden across the peninsula, through the dry, parched-up
bush so lately devastated by fire, and when Ocho Rios was reached, the
country was certainly looking at its worst, as he had mentioned in
his letter. But since then glorious rains had fallen, and no one not
acquainted with the marvellous changes produced by copious rains in a
tropical land, would believe that the shady Leichhardt tree under which
Gerrard and his sister were camped had four months previously been
withered and scorched by the great fire which had swept across the
peninsula.
The name of “Ocho Rios” had been given to the station by the man who
had first taken up the block of country for a cattle-run. He was an
ex-Jamaican sugar planter, whose estate had been situated in the Ocho
Rios (Eight Rivers) district of that beautiful island; and who had
been ruined by the emancipation of the negroes in 1838. And, as his new
possession was in the vicinity of eight small creeks flowing westward
into the Gulf of Carpentaria, he had given it the same name.
“How far are we from the sea now, Uncle Tom?” asked Mary, as she and Jim
rode up leading the pack-horse.
“About seven miles or so. Ever seen mango trees, Mary?”
“No, Uncle Tom, but Aunt Lizzie has, and says that mangoes are lovely.
She ate some at Point de Galle, when she was a little girl going to
England. Didn't you, Aunt?”
Mrs Westonley smiled, and looked at Gerrard inquiringly, wondering what
had made him ask the question. He had a way of “springing” pleasant
surprises upon people. When she came to the new bark-roofed house at
Ocho Rios, she had never expected to find anything but the common chairs
and tables, usually to be seen on cattle stations in the Far North.
Certainly Tom had told her in his letter that he had bought “some decent
furniture” at Port Denison, and she had smiled to herself, thinking
of what the difference would be between her ideas and his of what was
“decent furniture.” And her heart had gone out to him when she--then
knowing what she had not dreamt of before, that he was a ruined man--saw
what he had bought for her out of his slender purse.
“Tom,” she had cried, “why did you go to such expense? And that piano
too! I shall hardly have the heart to play upon it, knowing what----”
“You are going to play to-night after dinner. That piano will become
famous. It is the first thing of the kind ever seen on Cape York
Peninsula. You should have seen the skipper of the pearling lugger
at Somerset stare when he saw the thing swing out of the hold of the
_Gambier_. It will be a great thing for you and Mary.”
“Indeed it will, Tom. For her sake alone I must rejoice.”
Four months after his return to the station Gerrard was delighted to
receive a visit from Douglas Fraser and Kate. They, with Sam Young,
and the rest of Fraser's old hands, were on one of the new rushes about
ninety miles from Ocho Rios, and were, Fraser said, doing very well,
together with some fifty other white diggers, and several hundreds of
Chinese. Amongst other news the ex-judge told Gerrard something that had
pleased him greatly.
“You'll be glad to hear that Adlam is thoroughly recovered,” he said, “I
saw a paragraph about him in a Brisbane _Courier_, two months old, which
the new sub-Inspector of Black Police gave me last week. The poor fellow
had a most marvellous escape.”
Adlam had indeed had a marvellous escape from a dreadful death. When the
treacherous “Snaky” Swires had heard the pop of the soda water in the
purser's cabin, he had naturally concluded that Adlam had poured it into
the glass containing the drugged brandy; but as a matter of fact Adlam
had drunk the soda water alone, for he thought he had taken quite
enough champagne--and other liquid refreshment as well--at the dinner to
MacAlister, and wanted to rise earlier than usual in the morning with a
clear head. When Pinkerton and Capel entered his cabin, he was not quite
asleep, and had turned in his berth as he heard his door close softly,
and the next instant the American had seized him by the throat, and
the Jew dealt him a blow on the temple with a slung shot. After that
he remembered nothing more. When Capel and Pinkerton dropped his
unconscious figure down into the bunker, he had rolled down the inclined
heap of coals to the bottom, where half an hour later he was discovered
by the half-drunken coal trimmers, who at once summoned the chief
engineer, and Adlam was carried to his cabin, Swires opening the door
with the duplicate key he was allowed to possess. There was nothing in
the cabin to give rise to any suspicion--everything was in the usual
order; and it was naturally concluded that the purser had fallen down
into the bunkers in the darkness, and had struck his head, or that a
heavy piece of fallen coal had inflicted the terrible blow. No doctor
was available, and for many days he hovered between life and death,
unable to speak. It was only after the steamer arrived at Somerset that
medical assistance was obtained, and that Captain MacAlister opened the
safe, and found it rifled of all the cash it had contained--the bundle
of unsigned notes Adlam had given to the bank manager within an hour
after the steamer's arrival at Cooktown. Poor Adlam, still unconscious,
was sent to Brisbane. The disappearance of Swires led to the belief that
he was the perpetrator of the robbery, but Adlam, still unable to speak,
could not give any information on the subject. Gerrard and Fraser,
however, told the captain all they knew of Captain Forreste and his
friends, and in due time they were arrested at one of the mining camps
and brought back to Cooktown, charged with being concerned in the
affair. But there was not a tittle of evidence against them, and they
were discharged.
Another matter which had pleased Gerrard was that he had heard that
Randolph Aulain with a party of three, was working the head waters of
the little creek running into the Batavia, on which both he and Gerrard
had found gold, and that they had washed out some thousands of ounces.
But Aulain's expectation of being able to secure the usual Government
reward for the discovery of a payable and permanent gold-field was not
realised; the Mining Warden had reported adversely upon it as regarded
the latter essential qualification. Gerrard felt some surprise that
Aulain had not come to see him, for the “place with a hunking big
boulder standing in the middle of a deep pool,” was only eighty miles
from Ocho Rios. But then, upon second thoughts, he concluded that the
_auri sacra fames_ had seized his friend too thoroughly in its grip--as
it always does the amateur digger, especially when he strikes upon
very rich auriferous country, as was the case in this instance. And his
surmise was correct, for Aulain was working madly to become rich and win
Kate, and had no thought of aught else.
“Here are the mangoes, Mary,” said Gerrard, as two hours after leaving
their camp under the great Leichhardt tree, the party drew rein before
a grove of fifty or more of the beautiful trees; “these escaped the big
fire. See, the clusters of fruit are almost ripe. In another week or so
they will be fit to eat, and then you'll see all the winged insects and
the 'bitiest' ants in the universe here in millions, feeding upon them.
The niggers like them too. About four years ago a mob of myalls came
here and stripped every tree, and I did not mind it very much. But two
days after that, they killed and ate two of my stockmen, and Inspector
Aulain gave them a terrible punishment.”
He stood up in his saddle, broke off a cluster of the reddening fruit,
and tossed them to Jim. “Put them in your saddle pouch, Jim, and when
we get home wrap them in a piece of damp blanket; they'll be ripe in a
couple of days. Now, come on, Lizzie, we can ride along the beach for
another five miles. I want to show you the old Dutch ship buried in the
sand. Some day I mean to dig her out, and find millions of treasure--eh,
Jim? Like the storybooks, you know.”
And then, as the first red glories of the nearing sunset spread its
blades of softened fire upon the sleeping waters of the Gulf, they
cantered along the hard, yellow sand.