of your hatched-up plans to curry favour.”
“I swear to you it is the truth, sir,” he whispered. “I heard them
talking it over.”
“Heard who talking it over?” I said sharply, but he was silent again.
“Be off on deck!” I cried roughly, and he turned upon me, as if he were
going to throw himself on his knees.
“What can I say, Mr. Rowan, to make you believe me?”
“Tell me who are the ringleaders.”
“I know——” he stopped short. “I can’t tell you, sir. I will not betray
them. I only tell you, to be on the watch to put the rising down.”
“Don’t you be afraid about that,” I said, with a laugh. “Now go on deck,
Nick Ninety-seven. You always were a sneak and a humbug. It’s all a
flam, and I shall be glad to get to Sydney, if it’s only to see your
back.”
He went on deck, and I walked to one of my brother officers, a sturdy
fellow named Fraser.
“Here,” I said, “Ninety-seven tells me the lags are going to rise, seize
the ship, and carry her off to an uninhabited island, to play Robinson
Crusoe.”
“Young Nick’s a humbug and a sneak,” says my mate. “They’ll have to look
sharp then, for we shall be at Sydney to-morrow before this time.”
“Then you don’t think there’s anything in it?”
“Bah! Are they going to try it on now on deck, and half a company of
swaddies facing them?”
“Likely!”
“Down below then, when they’re all locked up?”
“Not likely that.”
“It’s all gammon, mate,” he cried. “Flam to get in favour.”
“What I told him,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t report it?”
“I would if I wanted to be snubbed,” said my brother officer, with a
grin. “Ha! there goes the order for down below, and they haven’t riz,
mate. They’ll be behind the bars in five minutes. Not much flurry
to-night.”
As he spoke, a little squad of soldiers marched down and formed up on
either side of the gate, and the convicts came down singly and went
through till all were in; then the gate was shut and locked, and all was
safe for the night.
“No,” I said, in a whisper; “there’ll be no rising.”
“Not till to-morrow morning, mate, when it’s time to get up.”
As Fraser—a man I’d known for years, as one who thoroughly understood
convicts—thought as I did, I felt I was right about Nick’s warning, and
that it would be folly to go troubling those in authority over us; so I
had my meal, and at nine o’clock—one bell, as they call it on board—I
went on duty with two more; and it was only then, as I stood in the main
decks, looking about me by the light of the swinging lanterns, that I
thought of Ninety-seven again, and the impossibility of the men making
any attempt.
For there they all were safely locked up in irons; we were on duty,
three of us—Fraser, me, and another—well armed; and only a few yards off
there were the sentries with fixed bayonets, and fifty or a hundred
armed men ready to be summoned, at the slightest alarm.
“All rubbish,” I said to myself; and then it all passed out of my mind
again.
It was very hot indeed that night, and all was wonderfully still, when,
as I marched slowly to and fro, with my keys in my belt, I began
thinking of home and a certain person, and whether it wouldn’t be wise
to stay out there and ask her to join me, when, all at once, there was a
stifled sort of cry, right in forward amongst the men’s hammocks, and
this was repeated again and again, as if someone was in pain.
Then came a rustling and a low whispering, and, without recalling Nick
and his warning, I walked up to the grated door.
“What’s up there?” I said severely.
“Don’t quite know, sir,” said a man, drowsily. “Someone talking in his
sleep, I think.”
Then the smothered cries came again.
“Do you hear there?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
A voice answered from far in:—“Someone ill here, sir; Number Seventy, I
think.”
“Oh, doctor! doctor!” came feebly, from out of the darkness.
I turned away, to get a lighted lantern and speak to the two men on duty
with me.
“It’s that bad soup they had to-day,” I growled; “I knew it wasn’t fit.”
“Shall I fetch the doctor?” said Fraser.
“Not yet,” I said. “He wouldn’t like to be roused out for nothing. I’ll
go in and see.”
We warders were so strong, in the belief of our own power, that I
thought nothing of going in there with my lantern amongst that crowd of
half savage, half human beasts; and as the door was unlocked, I left my
two fellow warders on guard and went right in, between the two rows of
hammocks, towards where the moaning arose.
“Here, what’s the matter,” I said. “Who is it?”
I have a vivid recollection of the dim scene, as I asked that question.
The darkness all around, save where the faint light of my lantern shone,
showing the rows of hammocks hanging from the beams of the deck above,
the fierce countenances gleaming out for a moment and the light flashing
from their eyes, where all was silent—a peculiar hushed silence, I
remember now, as a hoarse, rasping voice came from a few feet away from
me.
“Oh! Mr. Rowan, sir, it’s me—Seventy, sir—Bird, sir—I’m dying,
sir—poison, sir.”
“Here, let’s look at you,” I said. “Don’t make that row, man.”
“Haggony, sir—Doctor, sir—an—oh—_make it hot_!”
“Hah! You dog!”
I tried to say more, but the words were choked in my throat, for when,
lantern in hand, I bent over the convulsed face, as its owner writhed
heavily in his hammock, two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat,
I was twisted as it were down upon the deck, and Bird wrenched himself
round over me, saying in a hoarse voice to drown my struggles and
gurgling attempts to cry for help,
“Can’t help kicking, sir. It’s haggony! but I’m a bit better, sir, thank
ye, sir. No, sir, I don’t want the doctor, sir.”
All this and more, repeated, as if in mockery over my distorted face, as
the ruffian gripped my throat with all his force, while above the
singing in my ears and his words, I could hear that something was going
on at the door where I had left my two fellow warders, but what I could
not tell.
All I knew was, that I tried hard to throw the ruffian off my chest as
he knelt upon me, that my senses were departing fast, that Bird would be
hung for my murder, and that I was dying of strangulation.
Then, as if it were part of a dream, I saw the men racing out to attack
and murder the sentries, and make the vessel their own.
“All through my neglect,” I thought, as there were a thousand lights
dancing before my eyes; and then, almost at my last, there was a violent
concussion, a savage snarl, a cessation of the compression at my throat,
and a tremendous struggle going on upon me in the dark.
[Illustration:
“Two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat.”
]
“Get hold on him, some of you,” came to my singing ears in a fierce
growl, as the struggle went on. “Quick! D’yer hear? We shall have ’em
all at us directly. Now then. Quick! You _will_ have it, then.”
There was a dull thud and then a groan, followed by a couple of shots
outside, one following the other; shots which even then, half dead as I
was, gave me a sensation of relief, for I knew they had been fired by
the first sentry and the next to spread the alarm.
Almost at the same moment, I felt a warm gush of something flooding my
face and neck, and with a moan a man fell back across me, as I lay
listening to the rush of feet. Then came loudly, “Now for it, lads!”
There was another rush, and, sounding distant and strange now, as I lay
half suffocated, I heard a fierce yelling, and above it in commanding
tones,
“Halt! Surrender!”
But the rushing and yelling continued; there was the sound of blows, and
then twice I heard loudly the order “Fire!” followed by a rattling
volley; shrieks and groans; the scuffling rush of bare feet, and the
clink of irons; and it seemed to me, that the convicts were running back
to their hammocks.
Then all seemed to be blank till I was awakened by the glare of lanterns
in my eyes, and someone said,
“Here’s Arthur Rowan, sir.”
“Dead?” said a voice, which I knew to be that of one of the officers.
I answered the question myself in a husky voice, with the word seeming
to tear its way out of my throat.
“No.”
“Thank God, my lad! We thought they’d done for you.”
I got a sight now of glittering bayonets, and through the foul powder
smoke, I caught glimpses of the faces of convicts looking over the sides
of their hammocks.
“Turn that man over,” said the same voice I had heard before, as two men
took charge of me. “Dead, I think. Who is it?”
“Ninety-seven,” said one of the warders, and it seemed to be Fraser.
“Oh! Did you stab him, Rowan?”
“No, sir,” I said feebly.
“Humph! someone has. Twice. Look sharp, my lads, or he’ll bleed to
death. To the doctor.”
As fortune had it, I was carried out, and laid down on the deck, just as
the doctor rose, from where he had been on one knee by a figure at my
side.
“Carry him out, my lads; he’s past my help. One of you shot pretty
truly.”
I looked beside me, and caught a glimpse of the dead man. It was Dick
Bird, shot dead as he tried to escape.
“Now you,” said the doctor. “Where’s all this blood from?”
“Not mine,” I whispered, half strangled.
“Humph! Whose then? One more.”
This was as another man was carried along, and laid on my other side.
“Eh?” said the doctor. “Stabbed, eh? How was this?”
“Number Seventy, sir—Bird—knifed him. It was a dodge,” said Fraser.
“Dodge, eh?” said the doctor, whose hands were busy with tourniquets and
bandages. “Rum sort of dodge! What do you mean?”
“The men had planned to rise, sir, and that Bird was the ringleader.
“He shammed ill, and poor Rowan went to help him, to see what was wrong
before calling you. Then Bird caught him by the throat and was
strangling him, when this poor fellow, Ninety-seven—Nick—out here for
picking pockets, went to Rowan’s help. He had warned us just before
dark, but we thought it a flam; and now, when he tried to save my mate,
Bird turned upon him and stabbed him.”
“And got his deserts the next moment, eh?” said the doctor, quietly, as
he tied his bandages tightly. “Well, Master Ninety-seven has got two
terrible stabs, but we must save Ninety-seven’s life. Pickpocket, eh?
Not he. The man’s a hero.”
I did not hear any more then, for everything swam round me
mistily—faces, bayonets, officers, epaulets—and when I opened my eyes to
see clearly, I was lying in a bed in Sydney Infirmary, and the first
question, I asked of the hospital nurse, was,
“Is Ninety-seven dead?”
“No. There he lies across the ward. The doctor says he’ll get well.”
I’d had quite a touch of fever and been queer for days, but from that
hour I rapidly got well, though for many months my voice was as good as
gone.
It was in April, when I left the hospital without seeing Nick. He’d been
taken away to the convict infirmary, and it was in December that I saw
him again.
In the meantime, while I lay in hospital, I had heard from Fraser, my
mate, all I didn’t know about the men getting out after knocking down
and trampling on him and the other; but the sentries had fired, and at
the alarm the guard turned out, and as the men refused to surrender,
fired twice and drove them back.
I said that my voice was as good as gone, but it was strong enough for
me to report all I knew, to those who took my evidence at my bedside;
and I can tell you, I laid it on pretty thick over poor Nick, for I was
mad with myself for doubting the poor fellow, who nearly lost his life
in trying to save that of one, who had behaved to him like a brute.
The consequence was, that Ninety-seven was sent up the country, as what
they used to call an assigned servant, those being well-behaved men, to
whom a chance was given to redeem the past.
[Illustration:
“Went up the country in a bullock wagon.”
]
Three days before Christmas, I, Arthur Rowan, having leave of absence,
went up the country in a bullock wagon, pretty well laden with Christmas
cheer for a present, though the best present of all I was carrying in my
breast.
How I did laugh as I went up, for I felt real happy, and it did seem so
comic.
Here it was just upon Christmas, and me with the plums and peel and
things for a pudding, while the sun shone down so hot, I was nearly
cooked meat myself, when on Christmas Eve I walked up to the shingle and
bark squatter’s house, all amongst the gum and ti-trees.
There was a laughing jackass on the ridge, a tame ’un, and a great lame
kangaroo, and a big long-legged emu stalked about along with the
chickens, as I removed the rail fence, where the man, who drove me,
stopped to hitch on his bullocks.
But I could see no more for staring at a tall, manly-looking brown
fellow in shirt and trousers, though wearing his shirt so open, that I
could see a great red scar at the side of his neck.
“Well, Nick, my lad,” I said in my husky voice.
“Mr. Rowan,” he cried, and he quite reeled. “Don’t say I’m to go back to
the prison.”
“But I do say it, my lad,” I cried, “and at once. Leastwise, we’ll keep
Christmas first. I’ve brought some tackle in the dray.”
He didn’t answer me, but I heard him groan,
“And I was so happy here.”
“Happier than at home, dear lad?” I said.
“What? Home?”
“Ay, and sorry I shall be to see you go, though I wouldn’t believe you
once.”
“Then you’ve brought me news?”
“Yes, lad, this,” I cried, slapping a blue paper into his hand. “They
let me bring it; me, the man whose life you saved.”
He stared at me, as if he could not hear a word, and his face looked
blank and strange.
“Nick, lad, don’t you hear me? I tell you, it’s a free pardon—in the
Queen’s name, though, hang me! if I believe you did that wrong.”
“A pardon!” he cried, “for me!” and he tore the paper open and tried to
read; then I saw him stagger, but he recovered himself, sank down on his
knees, and held the paper to his lips.
“Thank God!” he gasped; and then in a wild, hysterical voice—
“Nan, Nan, my darling! At last—at last!”
ARTHUR ROWAN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVE THE FIFTH.
SOME EVIDENCE OF ALFRED CURRAN, NEWS PAPER REPORTER, CONCERNING A PAIR
OF TRUE LOVERS.
_By MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED._
Christmas Eve! Strange that that letter should have reached me to-day.
_In medias res_ was always my journalistic motto. Plunge straight into
the heart of your subject, and don’t bore your readers with
preliminaries.
I was thinking of Nan when Jem Starr, mail-man, rode up to the
bachelors’ quarters this afternoon, and chucked the mail-bag on the
veranda at my feet.
He told me to take it to the Big House and give it to the Boss. Took me
for a new chum most likely—said, he was in a hurry to yard his
horse—said, there was a chance of the river coming down with floods up
at the heads, and that it was hot enough for us to be let off a term of
purgatory. A queer independent chap is Starr.
Nan and Nick! Nick and Nan! But I was thinking of Nan more than of Nick.
Yes, it is strange there should have been in that mail-bag a letter,
asking me to tell all I knew of Nan and Nick, and of that Christmas time
at Eungella Diggings, when I was sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_.
[Illustration:
Alfred Curran.
]
Sounds grand—Sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_. It sounded grander
still, when Jessop wrote to me—I was Jessop’s cousin, you know, and he
was under promise to give me an opening if he could. He said he had
started a paper and struck gold, and that if I liked, I might come out
and run the paper, while he looked out for more gold.
Didn’t I jump at the offer, just! Didn’t I make sure, that I’d struck
gold in my line, too! Didn’t I see visions of a fortune and a coming
back to England, and a great Liberal organ started, with all the New
World go, and getting into Parliament, and all the rest!
But it wasn’t for me that destiny reserved the fulfilment of those
dreams. It was for Nan’s husband. Nan didn’t bring me luck.
Sometimes it seems to me, that she brought more bad luck than good, to
the men who loved her—all, that is, except one. And there were a good
many of them. It wasn’t her fault. But that’s how it came out in my
experience of that Christmas Eve.
Anyhow, my fortune hasn’t amounted to much. Eungella Diggings smashed
up, and Jessop smashed up, and _The Star_ smashed up, too. Things have a
way of smashing up in Australia.
And here I am, a hack reporter, glad to get a job on anything. Bush
races or bush-ranging, prize cattle, or a new cure for pleuro; “bush
naturalist” articles, or gush over an election; it is all “copy.”
Election business, it was this time. Election finished; “copy” sent in,
and a free and easy kind of invitation from one of the election
bosses—the biggest squatter in these parts—to loaf about his station and
pick up material, till the Christmas holidays are over.
I like loafing. I’m doing a story of bush life. I’m happy enough in the
bachelors’ quarters. My lady squatteress doesn’t encourage me at the Big
House, though I’m asked there for Christmas dinner to-morrow. The new
chums are “tailing” on an out-station, and the Superintendent has gone
to town for a spree.
That’s how I come to be jotting down shorthand notes of my reflections
on this Christmas Eve.
Every now and then, I drop my pen to go and take a smoke in the hammock
in the veranda, and think a little more of Nan.
I watch the Southern Cross, dipping over the mountains. I listen to the
frogs, flopping from the veranda roof on to the grass, and to the hum of
the flying ants, and the queer buzzings of the myriads of insects, and
the cry of the curlews down by the swamp. I see the heat mist rising on
the plain and the lightning zig-zagging on the horizon, west.
It makes me melancholy, a night like this. Those trumpet flowers give
out a sickly scent, and there’s a Cape jasmine creeper, twined round a
pole, that looks like a ghost. Sets one dreaming—dreaming. And there’s a
girl over at the Big House singing; and I can catch the tune and a word
here and there. It’s a singing kind of thing. It goes—
“For the old love’s sake,
For the old love’s sake!”
And I seem to see Nan. The jasmine reminds me of her, and the pointers
of the Southern Cross are like her eyes. Nan, with her pretty, pale face
and her red lips, so resolute and so sweet, and her deep, bright, dark
eyes, and her black, curly hair.
We came out to Australia together. She was a second-class passenger, and
so was I, but she kept very much to herself; and then she was in her
cabin a good bit the first part, and we didn’t get to know each other
till the voyage was getting on.
[Illustration:
“We came out to Australia together.” (_Page 158_)
]
She was all by herself, but she didn’t seem lonely; and she didn’t seem
to want to talk. I’d watch her on deck, reading and working by the hour
together, and sometimes just thinking, with a happy smile on her face.
She was a great one for reading, and she read clever books—histories and
travels and biographies, and I would even see her studying grammars and
suchlike. I wondered why she was so eager to improve herself, and I
wondered what made her look so happy.
It was seeing me usually reading, too, that made her notice me, I think,
and I contrived to make the books a means of falling into talk.
I offered to lend her one I had, that was the sequel to one of hers, and
it came about after this, that she would let me sit with her on deck,
and she said she learned things from me that none else had taught her.
But she had plenty of brains, had Nan; anyone could see that, though, of
course, I saw, too, that she had not been educated in the way girls are,
and, in fact, that she wasn’t a lady, as the saying goes.
Nan was a lady, every inch of her, as far as Nature went; but she hadn’t
the ways of those “born.” I could see that then, having my mother and my
sisters and the dear old Rectory full in my mind. Perhaps I shouldn’t so
easily tell the difference now.
Nan didn’t make any secret of her humble beginnings. She had been a girl
in a baker’s shop, and she had been nurse in a Children’s Hospital.
I supposed that was where she picked up her gentle manners. But that
hadn’t lasted long, she said, and she had never had any time for
improving her mind. And she told me, that her only friends were in a low
walk of life.
That didn’t matter to me. I fell in love with Nan, before we had been
talking half an hour—before, indeed, we had ever spoken at all, and I
asked her to marry me, just ten days before the ship landed at
Australia.
She refused me. I hadn’t supposed she would accept me right off. In
spite of her frank cordiality where she trusted, there was a sort of
impenetrableness and stand-offishness about Nan, which always rebuffed
me. I felt somehow that she wasn’t in love with me. But I thought that
was her way. And I didn’t expect to find that she was on the eve of
being married to somebody else. And yet I might have guessed it if I
hadn’t been a fool.
That was the secret of her dreamy, happy smile—of her suppressed
excitement as the voyage neared its close—of stray allusions which,
preoccupied with my own hopes, I had totally misunderstood. I had got
the impression that she was going to join her brother in Australia; now
I found that it was her lover, who was awaiting her—her lover, whom she
hadn’t seen for seven years.
“Seven long, weary years, Mr. Curran,” she said. “Seven years of waiting
and hoping and struggling—everything, as it seemed, against us.”
Then she told me something of hers and Nick’s story; of the wrongful
accusation and unjust sentence; of its remission, and of his efforts to
earn sufficient money to pay her passage out, so that they might marry
and work together.
But people wouldn’t believe in Nick’s innocence, and in spite of what he
had done, there was a prejudice against employing him. Then, she said,
luck had been altogether against Nick.
Just when he was getting on, his little savings had been lost; and then
he had had a bad illness, and for a very long while she had heard
nothing, and had been almost wild with anxiety.
Letters had miscarried, and at one time she had almost believed that he
had forgotten her. But two years before he had written to tell her that
he had his health again, and that he would never rest until he could
make her his wife. And then had come a letter telling her, that he had
found gold and would be a rich man—a letter enclosing a sum for her
expenses to Australia.
“It seems like a dream,” she said. “I wake of nights, and I can’t
believe, that, in a little while, I shall see my Nick again. And then I
get afraid that he may be disappointed in me, and find that, while he
has risen, I have sunk. For I am only a poor girl, and I’ve led a hard
life.
“It was all right, while I was in the Children’s Hospital, and I think
they would have made almost a lady of me there; but Miss Challice died,
and her brother was removed to another place, and things went wrong, and
one day I found,” she went on, “that I was turned out without a penny in
the world.
“I don’t know how I managed. I got into a factory and worked there, and
after a bit, I got easier work, but I could never save enough to be of
any use. Ah, Mr. Curran, if you knew how Nick and I have loved each
other, and how we have looked forward to this meeting, you wouldn’t
grudge us our happiness.”
It went to my heart, and touched all the best part of me, that girl’s
way of taking my disappointment.
She seemed to think it was her fault, and that she ought to have told me
at the first.
She asked me to let her be my friend, and she asked me to go on teaching
her and helping her to be worthy of Nick.
It’s only good women that can rub it into a chap, by saying things like
that.
Help to improve her for the joy of another man—a man probably, I thought
then, not worthy to tie her shoe-strings! But I said I’d do my best to
be her friend, and I’d love her always. And I think I had a lurking hope
that the other fellow might throw her over at the last, or that she
might find she had been making a mistake.
Of course I didn’t believe all that, about the unjust sentence. I asked
her where he was, and then it seemed like a fate, that she should say
Eungella, and I told her that it was Eungella I was bound to.
She knew he was to meet her in Sydney. I knew it, too. And I shall never
forget the wonderful look on Nan’s face, as we steamed in between Sydney
Heads into the new world.
She was trembling all through her little thin body, and her red lips
were parted, and her eyes were like two shining stars set in darkness.
“Oh, how beautiful it is!” I heard her murmur; “and Nick is there.”
It _was_ beautiful: the great rugged cliffs and the sun setting over the
barren ridge of rock, and then the harbour with all its little bays
lying blue and peaceful, and the town and the forts, and the lovely
Botanic Gardens with their tropical trees and the feathery clumps of
bamboos.