was proposed we should search. This, so soon as we had reached the spot
where my master had appointed to meet me, and where, as already
mentioned, he had evidently been, we began to do, whooping and hallooing
at the same time to attract his attention should he be anywhere within
hearing.
For a long while our searching and shouting were vain. At length one of
my companions, who had entered a tangled patch of underwood which we had
not before thought of looking, suddenly uttered a cry of horror. We ran
up to him, and found him gazing on the dead body of our master, who lay
on his face, transfixed by a native spear, which still stood upright in
his back. It was one of those spears which the aborigines of New South
Wales use, on occasion, as missiles, and which they throw with an
astonishing force and precision.
Such, then, was the end of this cruel man; and that it exceeded his
deserts can hardly be maintained.
Luckily for me, my period of service with my late master was at this
time about out. A few days more, and I became entitled to my ticket of
leave. For this indulgence I applied when the time came, and it was
immediately granted me for one year. On obtaining my ticket I proceeded
to Sydney, as the most likely place to fall in with some employment. On
this subject, however, I felt much at a loss; for not having been bred
to any mechanical trade, I could do nothing in that way. Farming was the
only business of which I knew anything; and in this, my father having
been an excellent farmer, I was pretty well skilled. My hope, therefore,
was, that I would find some situation as a farm overseer, and thought
Sydney, although a town, the likeliest place to fall in with or hear of
an employer. On arriving in Sydney, I proceeded to the house of a
countryman of the name of Lawson, who kept a tavern, and to whom I
brought a letter of introduction from a relative of his own who had been
banished for sedition, and who was one of my fellow-labourers in the
last place where I had served. On reading the letter, Lawson, who was a
kind-hearted man, exclaimed--
"Puir Jamie, puir fallow; and hoo is he standin't oot?"
I assured him that he was bearing his fate manfully, but that he had
been in the service of a remorseless master.
"Ay, I ken him," said Lawson. "A man that's no gude to his ain canna be
gude to ithers."
"You must speak of him now, however, in the past tense," said I.
"Mr.----- is dead."
"Dead!" exclaimed Lawson, with much surprise. "When did he die?"
I told him, and also of the manner of his death.
"Weel, that is shockin'," he remarked; "but, upon my word, better
couldna hae happened him, for he was a cruel-hearted man." Then,
reverting to his relative, "Puir Jamie," he said; "but I think we'll
manage to get Jamie oot o' his scrape by-and-by. I hae gude interest wi'
the governor, through a certain acquaintance, and houpe to be able to
get him a free pardon in a whily. But he maun just submit a wee in the
meantime."
"But anent yoursel, my man," continued Lawson, "what can I do for ye?
Jamie, here, speaks in the highest terms o' ye, and begs me to do what I
can for ye; and that I'll willingly do on his account. What war' ye bred
to?"
I told him that I had been bred to the farming business, and that I
should like to get employment as a farm overseer or upper servant, to
engage for a year.
"Ay, just noo, just noo," said honest Lawson. "Weel, I'll tell you what
it is, and it's sae far lucky: there was a decent, respectable-looking
man here the day, a countryman o' our ain--and I believe he'll sleep
here the nicht--wha was inquirin' if I kent o' ony decent, steady lad
who had been brocht up in the farmin' line. I kenna hoo they ca' the
man, but he has been in my house, noo, twa or three times. He's only twa
or three months arrived in the colony, and is settled somewhere in the
neighbourhood o' Liverpool--our Liverpool, ye ken, no the English
Liverpool. He seems to be in respectable circumstances. Noo, if he comes
to sleep here the nicht, as I hae nae doot he will, seein' there's nae
coach for Liverpool till the morn's mornin'--I'll mention you till him,
and maybe ye may mak a bargain."
I thanked Lawson for his kindness, and was about leaving the house, with
a promise to call back in the evening, when he stopped me, and insisted
on my taking some refreshment. This, which consisted of some cold roast
fowl and a glass of brandy and water, I readily accepted. When I had
partaken of his hospitality I left the house, repeating my promise to
call again in the evening. The interval, knowing nobody in Sydney, I
spent in sauntering about the town.
On the approach of evening, I again returned to Lawson's. He was
standing in the doorway when I came forward.
"Come awa, lad," he said, with a glad face, on seeing me. "Your frien's
here, and I hae been speakin' to him aboot ye, and he seems inclined to
treat wi' you. But he's takin' a bit chack o' dinner 'enoo, sae we'll
let him alane for twa or three minutes. Stap ye awa in there to the bar,
in the meanwhile, and I'll let him ken in a wee that ye're here."
I did so. In about ten minutes after, Lawson came to me, and said the
gentleman up stairs would be glad to see me. I rose and followed him.
We entered the room, the worthy landlord leading the way. The stranger,
with his elbow resting on the table, was leaning his head thoughtfully
on his hand when we entered. He gazed at me for an instant wildly; he
sprang from his chair; he clasped me in his arms. I returned the
embrace. Reader, it was my own father!
"Davie, my son," he exclaimed, so soon as his surprise and emotion would
permit him to speak, "how, in the name of all that's wonderful, has this
come about? Where are you from? how came you here? and where on earth
have you been all this weary time, since you left us?"
It was several minutes before I could make any reply. At length--
"I have much to tell you, father," I said, glancing at the same time
towards Lawson, who stood with open mouth and staring eyes, lost in
wonder at the extraordinary scene, which he yet could not fully
comprehend.
Understanding, however, the hint conveyed in that look, the worthy man
instantly quitted the apartment, leaving us to ourselves. On his doing
so, I sat down at table with my father, and related to him the whole
history of my misfortunes, without reserve or extenuation.
The narrative grieved and distressed him beyond measure; for, until I
told him, he had no idea I stood before him a convicted felon; his first
impression naturally being that I had come to the colony of my own free
will.
Unlike all others, however, he, my poor father, believed implicitly my
assertions of entire innocence of the crime for which I had been
transported. But he felt bitterly for the degrading situation in which I
stood, and from which neither my own conscious innocence nor his
convictions, he was but too sensible, could rescue me in so far as
regarded the opinion of the world.
Having told my father my story, he told me his. It was simply this--the
story of hundreds, thousands. Tempted by the favourable accounts he had
heard and read of Australia, he had come to the resolution of
emigrating; had, with this view, sold off at home; and here he was. He
added that he had obtained a grant of land, of about 500 acres, in the
neighbourhood of Liverpool, on very favourable terms; that although he
had not found everything quite so suitable or so well-ordered as he had
expected, he had no doubt of being able to do very well when once he
should have got matters put in proper train. He said he had already got
a very good house erected on the farm, and that although their situation
for the first two or three months was bad enough, they were now pretty
comfortable; and he hoped that, with my assistance--seeing, as he
interpolated with a faint smile, I had just cast up in the nick of
time--they would soon make things still better.
"Your poor mother, Davie," continued my father, recurring to a subject
which we had already discussed--for my first inquiries had been after
that dear parent, who, I was delighted to learn, was in perfect good
health, although sunk in spirits in consequence of long mental suffering
on my account,--"Your poor mother, Davie," he said, "will go distracted
with joy at the sight of you. Her thoughts by day, her dreams by night,
have been of you, Davie. But," he added, seeing the tears streaming down
my cheeks, "I will not distress you by dwelling on the misery you have
occasioned her. It's all over now, I trust, and you will compensate for
the past. Neither will I say a word as to the folly of your conduct in
flying your father's house as you did. You have paid dearly for that
false step; and God forbid, my son, that I, your father, should add to
the punishment. You are, I perceive, too sensible of the folly to render
it necessary. So, of that no more."
Of that folly I was indeed sensible--bitterly sensible; and could not
listen to the calm, rational, and kind language of my father, without
looking back with amazement at the stupidity of my conduct. It now
seemed to me to have been the result of utter insanity--madness. I could
neither recall nor comprehend the motives and impulses under which I had
acted; and could only see the act itself standing forth in naked,
inexplicable absurdity. Recurring again to the circumstances which had
led to my present unhappy position, and which were always floating
uppermost in my father's mind--
"That scoundrel, Digby," he said, "must have been at the bottom of the
mischief, Davie. It must have been he who put the spoon into your
pocket. What a fiendish contrivance!"
"I have always thought so, father," I replied; "and on my trial ventured
to hint it, as I also did to the turnkeys and jailers; but although none
said so directly, I saw very clearly that all considered it as a
ridiculous invention--a clumsy way of accounting for a very plain fact."
My father now proposed that I should start with him on the following
morning, per coach, for Liverpool, from which his farm was distant an
easy walk of some six or seven miles. On the following morning,
accordingly, after having duly acknowledged our worthy host's kindness,
we took our seats on the outside of the coach, and were soon whirling it
away merrily toward our destination.
During our journey, it gave both my father and I much painful thought
how we should break the matter of my unhappy position to my mother. It
would be death to her to learn it. At first we thought of concealing the
circumstances altogether; but the chances of her hearing it from others,
or making the discovery herself when she was unprepared for it, through
a hundred different means, finally determined us on communicating the
unpleasant intelligence ourselves; that is, my father undertook the
disagreeable task, meaning, however, to choose time and circumstance,
and to allow a day or two to elapse before he alluded to it.
Having arrived at Liverpool, we started on foot for my father's farm.
Should I attempt it, I would not find it easy to describe what were my
feelings at this moment, arising from the prospect of so soon beholding
that dear parent, whose image had ever been present to my mind, whose
kind tones were ever sounding in my ears like some heart-stirring and
well-remembered melody. They were overpowering. But when my father,
after we had walked for about an hour, raised his stick, and, pointing
to a neat farm-steading on the slope of a hill, and on the skirt of a
dense mountain forest that rose high behind it, said, "There's the
house, Davie," I thought I should have sunk on the ground. I had never
felt so agitated, excepting in that unhappy hour when I stood at the bar
of the Old Bailey, and heard sentence of transportation awarded against
me. But I compare the feelings on these two occasions only as regards
their intensity: in nature they were very different indeed. On the
former, they were those of excruciating agony; on the latter, those of
excessive joy. As we approached the house, I descried one at the door.
It was a female figure. It was my mother. I gasped for breath. I flew
over the ground. I felt it not beneath my feet. I would not be
restrained by my father, who kept calling to me. My mother fixed her
gaze on me, wondering at my excited manner--wondering who I could be;
all unconscious, as I could perceive by her vacant though earnest look,
that I was her son--- the darling of her heart. But a mother's eye is
quick. Another moment, and a shriek of wild joy and surprise announced
that I was recognised; in the next, we were in each other's arms, wrapt
in a speechless agony of bliss!
My father, whom I had left a long way behind, came up to us while we
were locked together in this silent embrace, and stood by us for a few
seconds without speaking a word, then passed quietly into the house,
leaving us to ourselves.
"My son, my son!" exclaimed my mother, so soon as the fulness of her
feelings would allow of utterance, "you have been cruel, cruel to your
mother. But I will not upbraid you. In seeing you again--in clasping you
once more to my bosom--I am repaid a thousandfold for all you have made
me suffer."
With what further passed between us, I need not detain the reader.
The tender expressions of a mother and son meeting under such
circumstances as we met, being the language of nature, the embodiment of
feelings which all ran conceive, there is no occasion for dilating on
them in my particular case. I pass on to other things of more general,
or at least more uncommon interest.
The first day of my arrival at my father's farm was passed entirely
within doors in social communion, and in bringing up that arrear of
interchange in thought and feeling which our separation for so long a
period had created.
On the following day I commenced work with my father; and although I
had done my duty faithfully by both the masters I had served since I
came to New South Wales, I soon found the difference between compulsory
and voluntary labour.
In the former case I certainly wrought diligently, but as certainly not
cheerfully. There was an absence of spirit that quickly gave rise to
listlessness and fatigue, and that left the physical energies weak and
languid, in the latter case, it was far otherwise. Toil as I might, I
felt no diminution of strength. I went from task to task, some of them
far harder than any I had yet encountered, with unabated vigour, and
accomplished with ease double the work I ever could get through with
when in bondage.
The joint labours of my father and myself, assisted occasionally by
hired service--for he could not endure the idea of having convicts about
him--soon put a new and promising face on the farm.
We cleared, we drained, we enclosed, and we sowed and planted, until we
left ourselves comparatively little to do--I mean in the way of hard
labour--but to await the returns of our industry.
It was some time after we had got things into this state--that is, I
think about three months after I had joined my father--that the latter
received intelligence of a band of bushmen or bushrangers having been
seen in the neighbourhood. He was assured that they were skulking in the
adjoining forest, and that we might every night expect our house to be
attacked, robbed, and ourselves, in all probability, murdered.
This information threw us into a most dreadful state of alarm; these
bushrangers, as the reader probably knows, being runaway convicts, men
of the most desperate characters, who take to the woods, and subsist by
plundering the settlers--a crime to which they do not hesitate to add
murder--many instances of fearful atrocities of this kind having
occurred.
For some time we were quite at a loss what to do; for although we had
firearms and ammunition in the house, there were only four men of us--my
father, myself, and two servant lads--while the bushrangers, as we had
been told, were at least ten or twelve in number. To have thought then
of repelling them by force, was out of the question; it could only have
ended in the murder of us all.
Under these circumstances, my father determined on applying to the
authorities for constabulary or military protection; and with this view
went to Liverpool, where the district magistrate resided.
On stating the case to the latter, he at once gave my father a note to
the commanding officer of the garrison, enjoining him to send a small
party of military along with him,--these to remain with us for our
protection as long as circumstances should render it necessary, and, in
the meanwhile, to employ themselves in scouring the adjoining woods,
with a view to the apprehension of the bushrangers, and to fire on them
without hesitation in all cases where they could not be captured.
The result was, that a party of twelve men, commanded by a sergeant,
were immediately turned out, and marched off with my father.
I was sitting on an eminence close by the house, and which commanded a
view of the road leading to and from Liverpool, looking out for my
father's return, when the party came in sight.
As they neared, I recognised the men, from certain particulars in their
uniform, a party of the--th, the regiment into which I had enlisted.
The circumstance excited some curious feelings, and awakened a train of
not very pleasing reflections.
I had never dreamt of meeting any of the corps in so distant a part of
the world; yet there was nothing more likely or more natural, a large
military force being always kept in New South Wales, and frequently
changed.
I felt, however, no uneasiness on the subject, thinking that it was not
at all probable, seeing the very short time I had been in the regiment,
and the constant accession of new men it was receiving, I should be
recognised by any of the party.
In the meantime, the party were rapidly approaching me, and were now so
near, that I could perceive the sergeant to be a tall and handsome young
man of about two or three and twenty. Little did I yet dream who this
sergeant was. I descended to meet them. We came up to each other. The
sergeant started on seeing me, and looked at me with a grave surprise
and fixed gaze. I did precisely the same by him. We advanced towards
each other with smiling faces and extended arms. "Lorimer!" exclaimed
the sergeant. "Lindsay!" I replied. It was indeed Lindsay, my old
comrade, promoted to a sergeantcy.
Our mutual astonishment and satisfaction at this extraordinary and
unexpected meeting was, I need not say, very great, although I certainly
thought I perceived a certain dryness and want of cordiality in
Lindsay's manner towards me. But for this I made every allowance,
believing it to proceed from a doubt of my innocence, if not a
conviction of my guilt, in the matter for which I had been transported.
He in short, it seemed to me, could not forget that, in speaking to me,
although an old comrade, he was speaking to a convicted felon. However,
notwithstanding this feeling on his part, we talked freely of old
stories; and as we were apart from the men, I did not hesitate, amongst
other things, to allude to my misfortune, nor to charge the blame of it
on Digby.
"Well," said the sergeant, in reply to my remarks on this subject,
"since you have mentioned the matter yourself, Lorimer, I am glad to
hear you say so--that is, to hear you say that you are innocent of that
rascally business; for, putting your assertions, so solemnly made, to
what my wife says--for she has some queer stories of that fellow
Digby--I have no doubt now of your innocence."
"Your wife!" exclaimed I in some amazement. "In the first place, then,
you are married; in the next, how on earth, if I may ask, should she
know anything of Digby?"
"Why, man, Susan Blaikie is my wife," replied the sergeant, laughing;
"and she's not, I take it, half a dozen miles from us at this moment. I
left her safe and sound in my quarters in Liverpool not two hours ago;
and right glad will she be to see you, when you can make it convenient
to give us a call. But of that we will speak more hereafter."
Like two or three other things recorded in this little history, this
information gave me much surprise, but, like few of them, much
gratification also; as I had feared the worst for poor Susan, seeing
that she had been discharged from her situation, as I had no doubt
without a character, probably under a suspicion of being concerned with
me in the alleged robbery.
By the time I had expressed the surprise and satisfaction which Sergeant
Lindsay's communication had given me, we had reached the house, when all
conversation between us of a private nature ceased for the time.
The first business now was to set some refreshment before the men. This
was quickly done; the sergeant, my father, and I taking care of
ourselves in a similar way in another apartment. The next was to take
the immediate matter in hand into consideration. Accordingly, we three
formed ourselves into a council of war, and, after some deliberation,
came to the following resolutions:--That we should, soldiers and all,
keep closely within doors during the remainder of the afternoon; and
that as it was more than probable the bushmen would make their attack
that very night, and as it was likely they would know nothing of the
military being in the house, seeing that they always kept at a distance
during the day, or lay concealed in hidden places, we should take them
by surprise; that, for this purpose, we should remain up all night, and
place ourselves, with loaded arms, by the windows, and in such other
situations as would enable us to see them approaching, without being
seen by them.
Having determined on this plan of operations, we resumed our
conversation on indifferent matters, and thus spent the time till it was
pretty far on in the night, when Lindsay suggested that it was full time
the men were distributed in the positions we intended them to occupy.
Two were accordingly placed at each window of both the back and front of
the house, the sergeant and I occupying one,--he with one of our
muskets, and I with a rifle. It was a bright moonlight night; so that,
as the vicinity of the house was completely cleared around, to the
distance of at least 200 yards on every side, no one could approach it
without being seen; although they could remain long enough invisible,
and in safety, in the dense wood beyond, and by which the house was
surrounded on all sides but one.
The sergeant and I had thus sat for, I think, about an hour and a half,
looking intently towards the dark forest beyond the cleared ground,
when we thought we saw several small, dark objects flitting about the
skirts of the wood; but whether they were kangaroos or men, we could not
tell.
Keeping our eyes fixed steadily on them, however, we by-and-by saw them
unite, and could distinctly make out that they were approaching the
house in a body. Soon they came sufficiently near to enable us to
discern that it was a party of men, to the number of about eight or ten.
There might be more, but certainly no fewer. We could now also see that
they were armed--at least a part of them--with muskets.
Satisfied that they were the much dreaded bushrangers, of whose vicinity
we had been apprised, the sergeant hastily left the window at which he
and I had been seated, and, stealing with soft and cautious steps
through the house, visited each of his posts to see that the men were on
the alert. To each he whispered instructions to put their pieces on
cock, to go down on their knees at the window, and to rest the muzzles
of their muskets on the sill, but not project them out more than two or
three inches. He concluded by telling them not to fire a shot until they
heard the report of his musket; that then they were to pepper away as
hard as they could pelt, taking, however, a sure and steady aim at every
shot.
In the meantime the bushmen, whose advance had been, and still was, very
slow and cautious, as if they dreaded an ambuscade, had approached to
within seventy yards of the house. Thinking them yet too distant to make
sure of them, we allowed them to come nearer. They did so; but they had
now assumed a stealthy step, walking lightly, as if they feared that
their footfalls should be heard. They were led on by one of their
number; at least there was one man considerably in advance of his
fellows. He was armed with a sword, as we saw it flashing in the
moonlight.