yawning fireplace, where a camp-oven, suspended over the grey embers,
is frizzling forth the vapoury flavour of “salt-junk,” and after
lighting his pipe proceeds to tell Claude what he has found out from
the stockmen. This, to condense the lengthened yarn of the old miner,
is just what Billy related of himself, in our presence, to the old
“hatter” Weevil in the lonely jungle cave.
“He’ll coome back here, I tell ye. For note ye, lad, he camped as
long as he could at Murdaro, till they made him clear.”
“Yes, I believe he was waiting there for me,” responds Claude.
“Now, mind ye,” continues the digger, gesticulating with his
maize-cob pipe, “mind ye make every nigger round know that yer wants
to find Billy, and ye’ll hear of him soon, like enough. Now the more
ye gets known here the safer fur ye, so wait here till the men get
back. Ye can pitch ’em a song after supper and ride home with the
head stock-keeper. He’ll be going up to ‘Government House’ to-night.
Moon rises ’bout nine.”
Half an hour before sundown a dust cloud that has been slowly
travelling for the last two hours across the plain, in the direction
of the out-station, reaches its destination. It is now seen to be
caused by the feet of a small “mob” (herd) of cows and unbranded
calves. These, after much yelling and an accompanying—
“Running fire of stockwhips,
And a fiery run of hoofs,”
are at last forced down a funnel-shaped lane between two wide fences,
called “wings,” into the receiving yard of a large stockyard near the
house.
Not long afterwards the head stock-keeper and his two white stockmen
appear; and the former, after being introduced to Claude, and having
indulged in a very necessary wash, sets the example, which is soon
followed by the other men, of proceeding to work upon the evening
meal. This is placed upon the table by two dark-skinned nymphs, whose
airy costume consists chiefly of one old shirt and a pair of smiles
between them.
The position these girls occupy in an establishment where all are
bachelors may be guessed, and Claude learns, before the meal is over,
that they are under the “protection” of the white stockmen, having
been “run down” for this purpose some months previously.
“Run away!” laughs one of the stockmen, skilfully supplying his mouth
with gravy by means of his knife-blade, as he repeats a question put
to him by Angland before answering it. “Run away! No, I rayther
think as ’ow Nancy was the last gal as will ever try that game agin.
The black beggars know what they’ll get for trying the speeling
racket here. Short and sharp’s our motter on this here station,” the
speaker adds, as his savoury knife-point disappears half down his
gullet.
Upon Claude expressing a wish to hear about Nancy’s ultimate fate,
the men become reticent; but Claude learns afterwards on good
authority that the unfortunate girl was overtaken whilst attempting
to return to her tribe, and was flogged to death before the other
native station-hands, “_pour encourager les autres_.”
After the whites have done their meal, the black stockmen are handed
their “rations,” which consist of the broken viands from the table,
and such pieces of “junk” as have become tainted. The whole amount
does not seem very much for the eight “boys” after their hard day’s
work in the saddle, and when they have further sub-divided it with
their relatives at the black camp close by, their earnings for the
day must appear very small indeed.
Selfishness is unknown between relations amongst aborigines. There is
no _meum et tuum_. A hunter’s spoil or a “boy’s” earnings are given
away immediately upon his return to camp; and the individual who has
obtained the good things generally keeps less than his own proper
share, being complimented upon this by the women in a low chant or
grace during the eating or cooking of the food.
It seems probable, however, that if the right of purchasing their
liberty was permitted to the station blacks, and each “boy” was
allowed his _peculium_, as instituted by Justinian, the first
anti-slavery emperor of Rome, this unselfish division of each day’s
wage would soon become out of fashion. It is, perhaps, in order to
encourage this virtuous practice of their station slaves that the
Australian squatters have never followed the example set them by the
ancient Romans.
The head stock-keeper, whose name is Lythe, but who is generally
known upon the station as “the Squire,” is a very different kind of
man to his two stockmen. These individuals belong to a much lower
type of humanity, and are apparently without any education whatever,
save a superficial knowledge of horses and cattle.
Born of good parentage in an English “racing county,” Lythe is a
fair average sample of a certain class of men not very uncommon
in up-country Australia. Life’s chessboard has been with him an
alternating record of white, glowing triumphs, and black disgrace
of wild, feverish saturnalia and rough toiling at the hardest kinds
of colonial work. A wild boyhood, a wilder time at Sandhurst, a
meteoric existence as Cornet in a lance regiment,—with the attendant
scintilla of champagne suppers, racehorses, and _couturières_,—and
then he slipped on to a “black square” and became a “rouseabout” on
an Australian run. Presently he rises again, by making for himself
a bit of a name as a successful “overlander” or cattle-drover, and,
becoming rich, moves “on to the white.” He is a squatter, takes
up-country, loses all, and then becomes an irreclaimable tippler.
“Black square” again, and here he is, working hard to “knock up”
another cheque,—a well-educated, useful member of society when free
from liquor; a wild, quarrelsome savage from the time he reaches the
first “grog-shanty” on his way “down south,” till he returns “dead
broke” to “knock up another cheque” at the station.
Claude’s hosts at the little out-station—who, like most Australian
colonists, are as hospitably minded as their means will allow them
to be—do all they can to render his visit to their rough home as
agreeable as possible. They even indulge him with a few bush songs,
whilst the after-supper pipe is being smoked. One of these, sung in a
voice gruff and husky with shouting to the cattle all day, to the air
of a well-known nautical ditty, is descriptive of the first “taking
up” of the Never Never Land, and has a taking chorus, concluding
thus:—
“Then sing, my boys, yo! ho!
O’er desert plains we go
To the far Barcoo,
Where they eat Ngardoo,
A thousand miles away.”
At nine o’clock “the Squire” and Claude say good-bye to the others,
and mounting their horses, which have been brought up to the house
across the dewy, moonlit pastures by a pair of attendant sprites,
proceed leisurely in the direction of the head-station.
Around the riders stretches the tranquil indigo and silver glory
of a marvellous phantasmagoria, painted by earth’s cold-faced
satellite. And accustomed to the softer beauties of a New Zealand
moonlight night, Claude cannot help exclaiming to his companion upon
the strange, phantom-like appearance that all the familiar objects
around him appear to have put on beneath the argent rays. Even that
most unpoetical object, the stockyard, where the imprisoned cattle
are roaring impatient of restraint, seems, with its horrid carcase
gallows, all dressed with a silvery, mystic robe of light, as if
transformed into a spectre castle, filled with moaning, long-horned
beings of another world.
“Yes, that is so,” returns Claude’s companion, when our young friend
has remarked the curious features of the scene before him. “What you
notice is just what is the chief characteristic of an Australian
moonlight scene. The only real poet Australia’s ever had was Lindsay
Gordon. He was an Englishman, by-the-bye, and he has the same sort
of weird touch running through all his poems. But it isn’t so much
to my mind,”—the speaker rubs his chin thoughtfully,—“it isn’t that
the moonlight is different here to what it is elsewhere, I fancy,
so much as it is that Nature herself puts on an outlandishly-awful,
God-forsaken, ghastly kind of rig-out, when left to herself in these
wilds.”
“That’s very true,” responds Claude, looking at the dreary scene of
broken sandstone cliff and dead forest through which their horses are
picking their way.
“Now, really, Mr. Angland, what a devilish nightmare of a place this
‘outside’ country is. Look at those ghostly, white-stemmed gums. I’ve
heard those trees groan like dying men when there was hardly a breath
of air moving. Why, there! you can hear them for yourself now. And,
like all their kind, at midday they cast no shadow; and therefore
might well be considered bewitched, if we went by the old standard
of ancient European justice, that considered this infringement of the
natural laws the very earmark of Satan’s cattle. Look at our deserts,
our old volcanoes, our fishes that run about on the shore like mice,
our rivers of sand, and—but we need not go farther than our wild
animals. What artist—Griset, Doré, or any one else—ever conceived a
more impish brute than the dingo, or a more startling caricature of a
deer with grasshopper’s legs than we find in the kangaroo?”
The dree wail of some neighbouring dingoes upon the distant hills
comes as a sort of unearthly murmur of acquiescence, as the speaker
closes his remarks.
“Why, really,” remarks Claude, laughing quietly, “now that you point
it out, there is really something curiously nightmare-like about
Australian nature.” He adds after a pause, “You would be a grand hand
at telling a ghost story.”
The two men canter over a smooth piece of country in silence; and
when their horses have again come within easy speaking distance, “the
Squire” asks Claude if he would like to hear a ghost yarn.
“I’m touchy, rather,” goes on “the Squire,” “on the subject of this
the only ghost that I have ever seen; and I give you warning you
mustn’t scoff at me for believing in it. I haven’t told any one about
it since,—well, it don’t matter when. You’re not in a hurry to get to
the station, I suppose?”
“Oh, the yarn, by all possible means!” assents Claude.
But his companion does not hear the reply to his question, for as
he loosens the flood-gates of his memory there rushes vividly
before his mind a long-forgotten scene, like a weird picture from a
magic lantern, shutting out all external things,—a scene of moonlit
rock and dark, gloomy trees, of sleeping cattle, of wild and awful
midnight terror.
But it is only for an instant. Then he pulls himself together, and
half unconsciously lifts his hand to wipe away the cold dew that even
the memory of that fearful night has called forth upon his brow.
“You must know then,” commences “the Squire,” after the manner of
Master Tommie in “Sandford and Merton,” “that, like most new chums
in Australia, I wandered about a good deal over this great, sunburnt
island before ever I settled down as head stock-keeper at Murdaro.
During part of that time I followed the calling of an overlander.
An ‘overlander,’ Mr. Angland,—for, as you haven’t any of the breed
in New Zealand, I’ll explain what that is,—is Queensland-English
for a long-distance drover; and a rough, hard life it generally is.
Cattle have to be taken long distances to market sometimes from these
‘up-country’ runs. I have taken several mobs of ‘fats’ (fat bullocks)
from the Never Never Land to Sydney,—a distance of about fifteen
hundred miles.
“Now, when my story begins I was ‘boss’ of a road-party taking fat
cattle down to Sydney from Contolbin station on the Lachlan. In
fine weather, when there’s plenty of grass or herbage, and water
every twenty miles or so, a drover has rather a jolly time of it,
after he’s trained the cattle to camp properly, take it altogether:
an open-air life, with just enough exercise to make him enjoy his
‘tucker’ (food). But, like most lines of life, there are more
bitters than sweets connected with the ‘overlanding’ profession.
Sometimes there’s no water for forty, fifty, perhaps ninety miles at
a stretch,—for instance, on the Birdsville and Kopperamana track,—and
keeping awake for days and nights together, you must push on (with
the sun at 120° in the shade, sometimes) taking your cattle, at their
own pace, along the _Parakelia_-covered sand-hills till the next
water-hole is reached. And at other times there is too much water,
and it is a case of swimming rivers every few miles, or else sitting
down for a stream to run by for a few weeks,—riding through mud,
sleeping on mud, drinking mud, and eating it too, for the matter of
that, for weeks at a time. I’ve done that at the Wyndham crossing
of the Cooper more than once. But on the particular trip I am going
to refer to, the weather was more what you, as an Englishman, will
understand better than most Australians, for it had been snowing hard
for several nights in succession upon the Swollowie Mountains, over
which our road, from Orange to Bathhurst, lay, and the air was almost
as cold and chilly as it ever is in the old country.
“I never shall forget the sight that poor old Sanko, one of my native
boys, was when he came off the middle watch, the first night we
reached the high country. Sanko was a ‘white-haired boy’ when he came
off watch to call me that morning, and no mistake about it, although
his waving locks and beard had been as black as night the day before.
“No, Mr. Angland, he hadn’t seen a ghost! You’re a bit too fast.
“But he _had_ seen something strange to him, and that was a fall
of snow. And when he poked his head in at the door of the ‘fly’
(tent) and called me, his good-humoured, hairy face was white with
snow crystals. He really gave me a kind of ‘skeer,’ as our American
cousins call it, for a moment. He looked like the apparition of some
one I had known in life. I thought I was dreaming at first; and I had
had fever a little while before, and was still rather weak from its
effects. I mention this because the scare Sanko gave me may have made
a more lasting impression upon me than I thought at the time, and
had something to do with what happened the next night. All I did at
the time, however, was to tell Sanko not to call the next watch, as
the cattle would not shift in the snow. And rolling myself up in my
blankets, I was soon asleep again.
“One of the greatest hardships of cattle droving is the watching
necessary at night. All sorts of things may occur to frighten them;
and when that does happen, off they rush, a resistless flood of mad
animals, into the darkness, breaking each other’s necks and legs, and
the remainder getting lost. Cows that want to return to where they
dropped a calf will sometimes start a mob. The cunning brutes will
watch you as you ride past them on your ‘night horse’ on your way
round the mob, and then slink off into the shadows, and be miles back
along the track by daylight. A thunderstorm is also a frightful cause
of mobs stampeding. But the worst thing to be dreaded by the drover
is a deliberate attempt to frighten the cattle by cattle-thieves,
or ‘duffers,’ as we call them, who used in my time—there’s little
of it done now, I believe—sometimes to steal the larger part of
a travelling herd by this means. Well, the plan of these midnight
robbers is to watch till your horses have wandered a bit from the
camp, and then, getting amongst them, slip their hobbles and drive
them quietly away. Then, knowing you can do nothing to stop them, the
rascals proceed to startle the cattle by shouting, a gun-shot, or
some such means; and you are lucky if you get half your horses, let
alone half your cattle, back again.
“It is necessary to tell you all this in order that you may
understand my ghost tale.
“These mountains we were coming to, as I knew, had been the scene of
several exploits of this kind, and it made me anxious to get through
by daylight. There was a very rough lot of Cornish miners working
on the hills, in the Icely goldmines; and, rightly or wrongly, we
drovers mostly used to put these midnight stampedes down to these
‘Cousin Jacks.’ But some of the older cattle-men upon the road,
and all the inhabitants of the (then) sparsely peopled district,
declared that these occurrences were due to no human interference.
They said that the gorge in the mountains, that I should have to
pass through to-morrow with my cattle, was haunted by the spirit of
a murdered man, whose corpse was ‘planted’ where he had fallen many
years since, with the knife of a treacherous mate still sticking in
his ribs. It was this deceased gentleman’s nightly constitutionals
that were supposed to account for the various disastrous rushes
of mobs of cattle in the mountain glen during past years. I had
often heard it used as an argument, in favour of those who upheld
the spectre-theory, that the camp horses had been found still
hobbled after these rushes,—an oversight of which no experienced
‘cattle-duffer’ would be guilty. Well, I felt rather anxious about
the matter, but as I had arranged my stages so as to camp at the foot
of the ranges that night, I thought I should be able to push on over
the fatal pass before the next sun went down.
“You may imagine my annoyance then, on the morning when Sanko poked
his ‘frosty paw’ into my tent, to discover that the snow would delay
our progress for some hours. The creeks would be ‘big’ till midday,
and there were several reasons why I could not camp another night
where I was. I determined, therefore, to push on and try my luck.
“The sun blazed out, and the white, patchwork mantle on the blue-grey
hills disappeared as if by magic. But the Fates were against us.
First our horses did not turn up till late; then the cows we had
with us kept on getting bogged in the muddy billabongs, and had to
be hauled out. And what with one delay and another, I saw the sunset
redden the cliffs before us as we crossed Chamber’s Creek and entered
the pass, and knew that I must camp my cattle there for the night,
and no help for it.
“Leaving my men to bring on the cattle and horses, I pricked my spurs
into my steed’s sides, and made him scramble up the stony track; and,
after half an hour’s search, found a good place to camp the cattle
in a narrow part of the gorge, between two cliffs of gnarled and
distorted rock. There was plenty of long grass, and the melting snow
had left puddles of water all round amongst the rocks, that in the
evening light looked like so many pools of blood.
“Soon the cattle arrived, and I was glad to see that, tired with
their scramble up the mountain-side, they were evidently contented
with their camp, and seemed likely to remain quiet all night.
“‘Not so bad after all,’ I said to myself, as I rode back to our
camp-fire, after seeing the cattle safely put on camp.
“But the words were hardly out of my mouth when I noticed, in the
twilight, a little fence of rough-split shingles, up against the
cliff, exactly opposite the cattle. It was the grave of the murdered
man. I knew it from having had it so often described to me. We must
be then located exactly on the spot where, six years before, a mob of
cattle had suddenly been seized with maddening terror, and stampeding
over the drover’s camp, killing two men in their wild rush, had been
lost entirely from that day to this.
“Well, there was no help for it, so I turned my horse’s head from the
solitary corner in the rocks and rode on towards our fire. Was it
fancy or what? I know not, but as I left the grave behind me I heard
a sound like a low moan. It was followed by a low, plaintive cry
overhead, in the air.
“‘Well, this is a creepy kind of place,’ I thought to myself, ‘but I
won’t tell the other fellows my fears, but just double the watches
to-night.’
“I saw at a glance, however, on reaching the camp, that my four white
companions had evidently learned of the close proximity of the grave,
and knew the history connected with it. And the black ‘boys’ had,
contrary to custom, made their fire close to ours, a change that I
thought it policy not to notice.
“‘Now then, Sanko,’ said I to that worthy, after supper, ‘you and
Merrilie sit down alonger yarraman (horses) till I come.’
“The two ‘boys’ went off unwillingly enough,—another unusual thing
that I, also, pretended not to observe. Then, knowing that no one
would attempt to interfere with the cattle for an hour or two, I lay
down by the blazing _mulga_-branches for a short nap, before sitting
up for the rest of the night.
“I had not been asleep ten minutes, I suppose, before I woke to find
Sanko tumbling off his horse by my side in his hurry to speak to me,
and could see he was in a great state of terror about something.
“‘Mine no like it sit down longer horses,’ he grumbled, gaspingly,—his
eyes rolling excitedly, as he turned his head right and left over
his shoulders, as if in fear of something behind him. ‘Too much the
devil-devil all about. Him yabba-yabba, and make it the walk about
longer _minga_ (grave) longer white beggar. Mine no like um.’
“I saw that it would be useless to try and get him to go back
alone, and there was evidently something that required watching. I,
therefore, sent all the whites and blacks off to guard the horses,
keeping one of the former with me to mind the cattle. Telling the
latter to follow me ‘when he was girthed-up,’ I left him by the fire,
and commenced to ride slowly round the cattle, who were mostly lying
down and contentedly chewing their cud-suppers. The silver light of
a true Australian Alpine starlit night made the bare cliffs above
stand out on either hand with an almost phosphorescent contrast to
the dark indigo shadows at their feet. One could almost imagine that
the rugged rocks had absorbed a certain amount of sunlight during
the preceding day, and were now themselves light-giving in a small
degree,—after the fashion of those life-buoys that I’m told they
cover now with a sort of luminous paint. The light of our camp-fire
warmed to colour a few projecting rocks and the trunks of the smooth,
white-stemmed gums, and now and then the soft, purring sound of
far-off falling water came up the glen; no other sound but from the
chewing cattle, and all was quiet so far.
“Suddenly my horse stopped short, with outstretched neck and pricked
ears; then suddenly wheeling round would have dashed into the middle
of the cattle, if I had not checked him in time. I could not see
anything to frighten him, and the cattle were not alarmed; they,
happily, apparently saw nothing strange. Then I noticed that we were
close to the grave. It was in deep shadow, but I could not look at
it comfortably over my shoulder, and, do what I could, my trembling
night-horse would not face in that direction.
“There was nothing for it; so, as I could not finish my patrol in
that direction, I turned and rode round the cattle the other way. By
the fire, on my return to the camp, I found my fellow-watcher Charley.
“‘Look here, boss,’ he said excitedly, ‘there’s some beggar trying to
duff the cattle, and make them string this way, so I thought I’d wait
here till you returned.’
“‘Did you see any one?’ I asked.
“‘Well, I believe as how I did; but this moke got that skeered, and
well—I didn’t know how many there might be, and——’
“It was no time to expostulate with Charley for his cowardice and
negligence, so simply saying ‘Follow me!’ I turned and rode towards
the grave. The place seemed awfully weird in the starlight, and you
could make out little besides the white-backed cattle here and there
amongst the shadowy trees, and the great pile of rocks towering
upwards on either hand. The air was very cold and my feet felt dead
against the icy stirrup-irons. As before, I could not get my horse
to pass in front of the grave; that was now in such deep shadow that
nought of it could be seen.
“Charley’s horse would not come so near as mine, and both of them
trembled and snorted with terror; and every moment tried to wheel
round and escape from the awful Something that they were watching.
“We sat in our saddles and listened, but there were no sounds but
from the reposing cattle, and the squeaking, here and there, of the
branches overhead, rubbing one upon another, as a passing breeze
swept sighing by.
“Presently the horses became less excited; then, for the first time
that night, I was able to get my animal past the grave. I rode round
the cattle followed by Charley.
“‘You’re right, there are duffers about,’ I said; and, telling him to
keep a sharp look-out till I returned, I hurried off, as fast as the
darkness would allow, and, finding the men looking after the horses,
presently returned with one of them. We all watched together for an
hour; and then hearing nothing I ‘turned in,’ telling the men to call
me when the morning star rose. They did so, and fearfully cold it was
when I turned out. I was very glad to hear the watchers report that
nothing had happened to disturb the cattle.
“‘Them blessed duffers hev found as ’ow we’re too wide awake fur em,’
said one of the men,—who, I found out afterwards, had slept nearly
all through his watch.
“I felt now that the risk of losing my cattle was over for that
night, at any rate, and, mounting, rode down to them. Nothing
disturbed the first part of my lonely watch; and I rode round the
cattle more asleep than awake, I confess, for half an hour or so,
when my steed, this time a very steady old night-horse, suddenly
showed signs of uneasiness, and I found we were by the grave again.
“I pulled up, and, sitting firm with both hands on the reins and head
thrust forward, listened intently. The pale light of the morning star
was creeping over the face of the tall rocks. Its light would soon
penetrate the shadows at their foot, and reveal the something in the
darksome corner of the cliffs.
“All of a sudden there was a little rattle, as of tumbling pebbles,
in front of me; and then the sound as of a sack or heavy piece of
drapery being dragged over the low split-shingle fence that I knew
was there, but could not see. A moment more, and a low, hollow moan
came from just where the grave was situated.
“I bit my lip to make sure I was awake, and then, straining my eyes
into the darkness, I could just distinguish something, what I could
not make out, moving slowly towards me from the shadows.
“My horse swerved round just at this moment, and when I got him
back to his old position nought could I see. I confess I was really
alarmed now. Old stories of ghosts and wraiths, which I had been
accustomed to consider so much childish rubbish, rushed through
my brain, do what I would to keep calm. I pulled myself together,
however, sufficiently to determine to wait and see the up-shot of it
all. Then the thought struck me that it might only be duffers after
all, and nothing supernatural; and I could not overcome the idea that
some one was aiming a gun at me in the darkness in front. I rode back
once more to the camp-fire, and by that time felt pluckier again, and
was thoroughly ashamed of myself. I then took up my position before
the grave, determined to find out, single-handed, the cause of all
the trouble.
“The blessed star of morning had risen fast since my last visit,
and I could now see the outline of the tumble-down fence around the
lonely resting-place of the murdered bushman. My horse was trembling
as before, but with spur and knee I got him to within thirty feet of
the grave.
“The starlight crept more and more into the mysterious corner. I sat
and waited.
“Then suddenly I felt my hair raise the ‘cabbage-tree’ upon my head,
and my skin broke into a cold sweat, for there I could see a curious
something lying upon the mound, a something that had not been there
last evening. Every moment the light grew stronger, and I sat in a
helpless state of terror as I became aware of the figure of a man
sitting on the grave, with awful, sorrowful face turned towards me,
and bright, unearthly eyes looking into mine.
“The apparition was that of a man below the average height, and was
apparently wrapped round, as far as I could make out, in a grey,
soft, filmy kind of cloak. It was the rotten remains of the blanket
in which he had been buried. He moved not, but sat in awful silence
gazing into my very soul.
“My horse trembled violently, but remained rooted to the spot. Then
the figure rose slowly, and with eyes still fixed on mine began
creeping, or rather gliding, noiselessly towards me.
“Oh, horror! I tried to shout; I could not. My tongue was dry and
useless. The awful figure came slowly, slowly on. It was crouching
now as if to spring upon me. Oh, heavens! Would nothing save me from
that fearful, ghastly face, those awful eyes, that came nearer,
nearer mine?
“There I sat in a kind of trance, watching the _thing_ as it silently
approached.
“Then suddenly an awful cry of agony burst forth close by my side;
and from the air above, and from the dark wood behind, moans, groans,
and hysterical bursts of laughter, shrill and blood-curdling, came in
thick and bewildering succession.
“I nearly fainted. And, as the figure came on, and reached a spot
where the early morning light fell upon it, I saw that it was a
little, harmless animal of the sloth species, called a bear by
Australian settlers. Others of its kind were barking and groaning
their curious morning cries all round me upon the branches.”
“The Squire” having terminated his story, Claude expressed his
appreciation of its merits, and then the two men cantered their
horses the remainder of the way to the station.
Here, after bidding his companion “Good-night,” young Angland
discovers that it is long past eleven o’clock; and a black boy, who
runs out to take his horse, informs him that the young ladies have
retired to rest, also that Mr. Giles has not yet returned home.
So, after partaking of some supper which lies waiting his appearance
upon the dining-room table, Angland goes out on to the verandah,
feeling somehow more inclined for a thoughtful half-hour with a
Manilla, beneath the stars, than to go to bed at once.
He sits there puffing, thinking first of Billy, then of Glory, and
lastly of “the Squire’s” ghostly experiences.
“Spot,” he calls presently to the fox-terrier, who was sitting near
him, in the flood of light that streams forth from the hall door,
when he first lighted his cigar. “Spot, I wonder how you’d behave, if
you saw a ghost?”
Spot, however, instead of prancing up to be petted, as he usually
does when strangers take any notice of him, pays no attention to
Claude’s remark. So the smoker lazily turns his head round to see if
the dog is still there. There stands Spot, having been apparently
disturbed by something, looking down towards the dark end of the
verandah, with his knowing little head cocked on one side.
“I wonder what he sees,” thinks Claude; “the cat, I suppose.” But
turning his eyes in the direction of the dog’s inquiring gaze, the
young man becomes grimly aware of the fact that he and the dog are
not alone upon the shadowy portico. Seated in one of the great
cane-chairs, his widely opening eyes descry a dimly visible figure.
It remains silent and motionless.
Claude has studied Professor Huxley’s “Physiology,” and remembers
the celebrated case of the plucky “Mrs. A.” and her spectral
annoyances. But notwithstanding all this, on seeing the unexpected
apparition near him, the young man exhibits one of those interesting
automatic actions, attributable to what scientists, we believe, call
“spontaneous activity,”—in other words, sits up with a start.
But before Angland has time to investigate matters, or even indulge,
were he so minded, in any of those eye-ball-pressing experiments
recommended by dry fact physiologists to all wraith-pestered persons,
Spot had taken the initiative, and with perfect success.
He runs forward, wagging his tail, and jumps up against the chair in
which is seated the mysterious figure.
“Oh my!” exclaims a musical girl’s voice, the tones of which
make Claude’s heart beat as blithely as an excursion steamer’s
paddle-wheel.
“Wherever——Oh! Spot, is that you? Why, you quite frightened me, I
declare.”
Then the sound of a dear little yawn is heard in the darkness, and
soon afterwards Miss Glory Giles makes her appearance, and on seeing
Claude motions to him to be quiet and refrain from speaking.
“Oh, Mr. Angland, I’ve been waiting up to see you, and I really
believe I’ve been asleep,” whispers the young lady. “Here, come with
me. Be as quiet as you can; for goodness’ sake, don’t let _her_ hear
us.”
Claude rises obediently; and, overcome with surprise, is
unresistingly led out into the darkness on to the dried-up lawn in
front of the house by his charming escort.
“Oh! hide that horrid light of your cigar, please,” Glory suddenly
exclaims, in a low, excited voice. “Somebody might see us. It’s too
dreadful to think of.”
Then, with her warm, balmy breath fanning her admirer’s cheek and her
little hands clutching at his arm, she pants out to Claude the story
of the intercepted letter.
“I’ve never liked her,” Glory exclaims with pretty anger, as she
finishes her account of the discovery of her cousin’s plot; “but
she’s dreadfully clever and strong-minded, and poor papa couldn’t get
on without her, I do believe. But read this paper: it’s a copy of
the letter. She did not sign it. Ain’t she cute? Meet me at the new
stable before breakfast to-morrow; I go there every morning to see my
mare Coryphée groomed. But I mustn’t wait. Good-night!”
The little figure flits away like a fairy ghost into the
darkness—silently as a moth—and is gone.
When Claude presently opens the paper that Miss Giles has given him
in his own room, he finds the following words scratched upon it in
pencil, in a school-girl’s unformed hand:—
COPY OF HER LETTER.
“_Burn this directly you have read it. He is here, and is on the
eve of discovering all. Send him the message we agreed upon at
once; to-morrow, if possible to arrange matters so soon. Delay is
dangerous. Burn this NOW._”
CHAPTER XVI.
LILETH’S DISAPPOINTMENT.
“Le jour de Gloire est arrivé.”
_Marseillaise._
It is much later than Claude’s usual hour for rising when he opens
his eyes upon the morning following his midnight interview with Miss
Giles. And he remains in a sort of half-dormant condition, listening
to the sound of a rich contralto voice singing a martial air, to the
accompaniment of a piano, at the other end of the house.
The young man dreamily endeavours to make out the words of the song,
but cannot. Though when it draws to a conclusion he is surprised to
hear, as he fancies, in the chorus or refrain a poetical reference to
the Christian name of the young lady who has honoured him with an
appointment at the stables for that morning. Claude, thus curiously
reminded of his engagement, is not long in making his toilet and
finding his way to the trysting-place; but discovering that Glory
has not yet put in an appearance there, he returns to the house, and
looks in at the drawing-room door to discover who the fair singer may
be.
There he finds Miss Mundella seated at the piano. She looks up as
she hears the intruder’s footsteps, and, seeing Claude, smiles
ingenuously upon him, holding out to him a perfectly modelled hand,
and apologising for her absence the previous day.
Lileth is really glad to see Angland, and, odd as it may appear,
admires him considerably, although she intends to wipe him out of
her way at the earliest opportunity. She feels quite sorry now, as
she looks up at him, not for his own sake,—far from it,—but because
she thinks what a much more agreeable cavalier he would make than
the flap-eared Mr. Cummercropper, who at present fetches and carries
for her. And after the manner of the soldiers of opposing armies,
who fraternise together during a temporary armistice ere they again
fly at one another’s throats, so Lileth is just as glad to enjoy a
conversation with her intended victim, as she would be with any other
young man who came up to her standard of excellent parts, and these
youths were very scarce visitors at Murdaro.
“I hope I have not disturbed you with my playing,” Miss Mundella
remarks, noticing as she does so the hesitation with which Angland
takes her hand. “I generally practice a little of a morning before
breakfast. Are you fond of music?”
“Very fond,” answers Claude, gazing with a mixed feeling of
admiration and dislike at the proud, calm features of the fair object
of his suspicions, as she bends over the music lying on the chair
beside her.
“Is it possible such a girl can be a heartless criminal, or at least
an abettor?” he asks himself, “or are appearances against her only?”
Then, to break the rather awkward silence, Claude speaks about the
song he had heard when he awoke, and requests her to oblige him by
singing it once more. Without any foolish affectation of hesitation
she immediately complies.
“It is an almost forgotten piece of music nowadays, at least amongst
English people,” Lileth says. “I am rather fond of it, probably
because it suits my voice.” Then with perfect skill, her splendid
face grandly eloquent with the military spirit engendered by the air
and words, Miss Mundella sings the grand “Chanson de Roland” of the
great Napoleon’s time:—
“Soldats français, chantez Roland,
L’honneur de la chevalerie,
Et répètez en combattant
Ces mots sacrés,
Ces mots sacrés:
Gloire et Patrie!
Gloire et Patrie!”
“Rather an elastic kind of patriotism was that of Rouget de Lisle,”
observes Miss Mundella laughingly as she finishes, her eyes sparkling
and cheeks warm with the _verve_ she has put into her song; “most
of his _chansons_ are charmingly spirited, and he is credited with
fifty I think; but there are some thoroughly imperialistic, others
republican, and others again legitimist,—all got up for the occasion.”
“Yes,” answers Claude, as the inspiriting music, combined with the
fascination of Miss Mundella’s presence, renders that young man
gradually oblivious of his suspicions, “and he was rather fond of
annexing other people’s musical ideas, if the German critics are
to be believed. You know they say he got his grand Marseillaise
hymn from a Deutscher named Holzmann, some time before he wrote his
impromptu masterpiece _chez_ Baron Dietrich.”
“I have never heard that sin laid to his charge before,” remarks
Lileth, striking some sonorous chords upon the keys as she speaks.
“Are you great on musical anecdotes? I dote on them.”
“Oh no. I know little or nothing upon the subject. I’m really afraid
I couldn’t tell you even Mendelssohn’s surname, if you asked it,
correctly. But I remember about Rouget because I saw the house when I
was at Strasbourg, and more particularly because it was there I heard
a very good story, that in my opinion eclipses anything in the way of
French wit I’ve ever heard before or since.”
“Oh, will you repeat it to me?”
“Well, I’m rather a bad hand at a story,” responds Claude, “but I
will try to give you a general idea of the joke, which was attributed
either to Rouget de Lisle himself or to some relative of his. I
daresay it has been put in the mouths of many other notables as well.
“There was a grand wedding taking place at the parish church, and the
charming bride, all blushes and lace-veil, was tremblingly signing
her name in the register, when, horror of horrors, she upset the
contents of the ink bottle over her wedding robes! All the vestry
was in a commotion directly, and the little bridesmaids were like to
faint when they saw the horrible black stains destroying the spotless
purity of the bridal vestments. What a bad omen! Worse than spilling
the salt at the breakfast. Everybody was about to rush forward to
commiserate with the unhappy bride.
“But De Lisle’s relative, or somebody else’s relative, as the case
may be, stepped forward, and, smiling on the woeful faces, took all
the sting out of the accident; he even turned the mishap into the
cause of much merriment, with a singularly happy _bon mot_:—
“‘_Mais c’est tout naturel_,’ he said, ‘_aussitôt que mademoiselle
est arrivé au port, elle a jeté l’ancre_.’”
When Claude ceases speaking, Lileth shows her appreciation of his
anecdote with a low, musical laugh. Then, taking advantage of the
opportunity afforded her, she proceeds to give Angland a good dose of
the kind of music that she observes has effect upon him; hoping that
in the intervals of playing, by a skilfully conducted conversation,
to worm a little useful information from him as to his plans, as he
warms to her fascinations and becomes confidentially inclined.
“Yes,” she says, as Angland finishes a gay description of the little
concert given in his honour by the stockmen at the out-station the
night before,—“yes, some of these men have naturally really splendid
voices. Always in the open air, and wearing no heavy coats to confine
their chests, it is not to be wondered at that they have good lungs,
at any rate. Miners I know are proverbially good singers. I have
heard several at different times. Your late uncle sang very well, I
believe, for example. Have you heard, by-the-bye, anything of his boy
Billy yet?”
“No,” replies Claude, “and I am very anxious to get on with my
uncle’s——I mean, to find my uncle’s grave. But as Billy is not here,
and I can’t very well get on without him, I suppose I can’t do better
than wait here for a time, as Mr. Giles so kindly pressed me to do,
and see if the boy turns up.”
An independent observer, noticing the looks of admiration with which
Angland was regarding the young lady by the piano, would hardly have
imagined that an immediate withdrawal from her company was what he
chiefly desired.
“Oh, pray, Mr. Angland,” says Lileth, turning towards Claude, and
concentrating upon him all the will-power that a rapid glance of her
glorious eyes can convey, “do not desert us just yet. It is such a
pleasure to have an agreeable, educated man to converse with again.
Any one who has travelled, and who knows about something besides
horses and cattle, is quite a _rara avis_ up here, I can assure you.
I shall miss you very much when you have to go,” adds Miss Mundella,
with a sigh.
Claude bows his acknowledgments of the compliments paid him, and
the young lady continues speaking in a low voice, looking demurely
downwards, and playing _pianissimo_ meanwhile that bewitching
Cavatina love-spell of Donizetti’s:—
“Believe me, I somehow feel a very great deal of interest in your
search. It is so brave, so honourable, of you to take all this
trouble merely to visit the grave of your relative. I fancy few men
would care to do that for an uncle nowadays.”
Now it is one of the strange things “that no fellar can understand”
how most of the best men one meets in every-day life will hasten
to repudiate any assertion crediting them with an honourable or
unselfish motive for any action they may have performed. It is just
as if such a reason for a deed was something to be really ashamed of.
It is an odd but undeniable fact that men often take considerable
trouble to make themselves out to be worse than they really are. So
Claude, following the general rule, immediately endeavours to prove
that he is not so good-hearted—therefore, in a worldly sense, so
foolish—an individual as Miss Mundella would imagine. In fact, he
swallows the encomiastic bait held out to him by that young lady.
“I am really afraid,” he exclaims, “that I cannot claim that it is
all affection, on my part, that brings me up this way to search
for my uncle’s grave. I must confess that there are more mercenary
considerations mixed up with my sublimer motives than you kindly
would credit me with.” And here we have to record a serious mistake
Lileth made. For, instead of keeping her quarry under the gentle
thraldom of her music, and the attractive warmth of manner which was
really more natural to her than her usual appearance of coldness,
Miss Mundella began to excuse this “mercenary motive” of Claude’s to
him in her ordinary conversational tones.
Instantly he awakes, as it were, from the sweet confidential mood
into which he has drifted, for the peculiar notes (_timbre_) of
Lileth’s voice have again called up the viaduct scene to his memory;
and Miss Mundella can tell by the altered manner in which he speaks,
as he rises with some feeble excuse for quitting her side, that she
has somehow scared him for the nonce.
But she has gained one little piece of information: which is, that
Claude is aware that something advantageous to himself awaits the
successful accomplishment of his expedition. “It must be the P. Ns.”
she thinks, as she leans backward on the sofa after he has left her.
And at breakfast Lileth makes another and rather disconcerting
discovery,—namely, that Claude and Glory have some secret
understanding between them. And although those young people do all
in their power to conceal the same from the dark-browed mistress of
the house, her keen glances soon pierce their transparent natures,
and she becomes cognisant of the fact, also, that their secret is
antagonistic to herself.
* * * * *
It is towards evening that Claude, who has been away on horseback all
day, returns to the head-station, and is lucky enough to find Glory
Giles by herself upon the verandah.
“Is that Don, the newspaper boy, you told me about?” that young lady
asks, looking at the small, comical figure, who, on the top of a
tall, lank mare, is holding Angland’s horse by the station gate.
“Yes,” answers Claude, “and I will introduce him to you some day
before long. You’ll find him a first-class youngster. But I can’t
spare the time to do so now, for, Miss Giles,” lowering his voice,
“_for I’ve found Billy_, and of course I start directly on my
search.”
“But the false message?” asks Glory, rising, and looking anxiously up
at the young man’s face.
“I have received Puttis’s kind invitation also,” Claude replies, with
a smile. “Let me tell you all about it.”
Angland sits down by Glory’s side, and, hardly taking his eyes off
her sad, anxious little face for an instant, notices, with some
relief, that the news of his departure is really unpleasant to his
fair companion.
“Soon after breakfast,” he continues, “that rascal Carlo came to me,
and told me something in a mysterious sort of way, which I at length
made out to mean that a ‘wild fellow black fellow’ had brought me
something. I followed Carlo to the black camp,—I guessed I could not
come to grief only a couple of hundred yards from the station,—and
found a ‘boy’ there, who handed me a piece of crumpled paper,
upon which was scrawled some words. They were these, as near as I
remember: ‘You can trust this boy. He bring you to me.’ It was signed
‘Billy.’”
“Ah!” cries Glory excitedly, and casting a swift glance down the
passage towards Lileth’s room, “and what did you do?”
There is something so charmingly attractive in the warm interest
which Glory evinces in what Claude is narrating, and her sweet
little face blushes so prettily with her emotion, that it is only by
exerting all his self-command that Angland can restrain himself from
clasping the little form beside him in his arms.
Angland, however, instead of acting thus, and at once destroying the
good opinion Glory has of him, does just the reverse of it, and
withdrawing his eyes from the bewitching object of his affections, he
goes on speaking:—
“I noticed at once that the black who’d brought the letter had a
red ribbon tied round his forehead,—which I have often seen police
and station ‘boys’ wearing, as a mark to distinguish them from the
wild natives who may be about. I also thought that the messenger
seemed to be putting on a good bit of ‘side’ for a warragal, and
I hardly expected that Billy would be hiding at a station, and
employ a station-hand as his Mercury. So, remembering the letter
you intercepted, I guessed that the ‘boy’ must be a police ‘boy’
_in mufti_. So, after reading the note, I thought I would test the
messenger by pretending that the letter, which I was sure he could
not read, was a message from Puttis. ‘Here,’ I said, holding out
the piece of paper, ‘Mr. Puttis say you take me to him. Which way
inspector sit down?’
“The black looked up at me rather sulkily, I thought, as if undecided
how to answer; then, after a moment’s consideration, he mumbled,—
“‘’Spector Puttis him sit down longer Bulla Bulla ’tation!’
“‘All right,’ I said, ‘you wait here till I come back.’”
“And then?” asks Glory.
“Then I rode off to see my old miner, Williams, and asked his advice.
When I got to the out-station I found him most jubilant, for, what
do you think?—he had found Billy. Yes, little Joe, acting under
Williams’s orders, had been scouring the country with coloured
handkerchiefs, which he gave to all the niggers he could find. Each
of these had a small message to Billy, telling him where to find me,
written upon it.
“Billy saw one of these messages, and——But I mustn’t say anything
further about it, Glory,—I mean Miss Giles,—for Williams made me
solemnly promise I wouldn’t do so to any one.”
“He was quite right,” remarks Glory. “Give him my compliments, and
tell him that I think him ever so clever, and hope you’ll bring him
here when you return.” Then after a pause she looks up and asks
Claude a question, with her bewitching little head held sideways
towards him, for her admirer’s ardent gaze has somewhat disconcerted
the little, golden-haired maiden.
“May I ask one thing more? You won’t mind telling me _that_, will
you?”
“What is it?” responds Claude, who, to tell the truth, would have
gone near breaking his promise with Williams if Glory had demanded
him to do so.
“I want to know how you know that it was really Billy that you have
found?”
“Well, because I’ve seen him. We both, in fact, mutually recognized
each other, although, as I told you, it is about ten years since
I saw Billy in England. He, moreover, showed me an old scar I
remembered upon his leg. He looks in very poor condition, poor
fellow.”
“Mr. Angland,” says Glory gravely, “I will try and find out why poor
Dr. Dyesart’s boy was hunted from here. Papa says, as I told you,
that Billy told one of the boys here that he had killed your uncle,
and that Billy ran away when he found that the boy had told papa.
But papa must have been mistaken. It is all part of some horrible
plan of Lileth’s.” Then standing up, and giving her tiny right hand
to Claude, who holds it as if it were a precious piece of fragile
crockery, she continues in a pleading tone of voice:—
“You must not think papa had anything to do with that letter I got
from Carlo either. Will you try, just for my sake, to believe that
papa had nothing to do with driving away Billy and writing that
letter? My papa is rough, and I know you think he’s cruel to the
niggers,—so did I when I first came up here for a visit, but I didn’t
notice it after a while. But he’s really very good at heart; he
really is.”
Glory speaks very earnestly; but suddenly, as she remembers that her
father was present when Miss Mundella bound her to secrecy about the
photograph, her voice falters, and she hesitates whether she ought
to tell Claude all or not. But Angland interrupts her thoughts by
speaking.
“If your father was the worst fellow going, and had kicked me out of
the house, instead of treating me very hospitably, as he has done,
I would forgive him, and vote him first-class, because of his being
your father. And now ‘good-bye’ till I return.”
Claude finds the dreaded moment of separation, now that it has at
last arrived, harder even than he had anticipated. There is a curious
lump in his throat that renders the farewell words difficult of
expression.
Glory, on her part, although she bravely endeavours to appear the
cheerful, laughing creature as Claude knew her first, in order to
ease his pain at parting, is not successful in carrying out this
innocent piece of deception. And, to tell the truth, Claude, although
grieved to see her sadness, which this affected cloak of gaiety does
not conceal from the eyes of her lover, yet cannot help taking
comfort to himself therefrom. For man’s love is a more selfish
sentiment than it is generally regarded to be, and differs in this
respect especially from woman’s, which, if more eccentric in its
taste, is certainly more thoroughly disregardful of self-interest
than that of the other and more practical sex.
Claude, on his part, feels that what he would like to say to the
golden-haired girl, that glances at him with such tender blue eyes,
would not offend, perhaps not even surprise, his _inamorata_. But
Angland has a gentleman’s strict notions of propriety and integrity,
and having already decided in his own mind that he has no right to
speak those words that hover on his lips till his present mission is
fulfilled, he refrains from doing so.
Of course, whilst transmitting this fact in our history to paper,
we feel that our hero will appear very foolish to certain of our
readers. He, however, acted as he considered correctly, according to
his lights, and no man can blame another for doing that; although
they can pity his mistaken ideas of right and wrong to their heart’s
content, if they feel so disposed.
“Good-bye, Miss Giles,” he says at last, huskily; “for the service
you did me the other night I can never repay you. There is only one
thing I would like you to do, and that is, I have no time to write to
my mother now before starting, if anything should stop us coming back
again from the wilds, would you mind writing to her? It would comfort
her to hear from some one whom I’ve spoken of already in my letters
to her.”
Then he is gone, and Glory, returning to the house, enters her own
room and “breaks down.” Lileth, hearing her cousin sobbing in the
next room, and having been apprised of the arrival of the false
messenger, smiles to herself as she guesses that Claude has started
for his last appointment on earth, and mentally congratulates
herself upon the successful beginning her scheme has made. But she
is somewhat astonished and disconcerted on presently being informed
by Carlo that Inspector Puttis’s messenger is awaiting Claude’s
return. Inquiries made of Glory through the door of her room—for
having a sick headache that young lady does not appear at the
dinner-table—only elicit the fact that Angland has departed, having
requested Miss Giles to convey his compliments and adieu to Mr.
Giles and Miss Mundella.
Before retiring to rest Lileth indites a long letter to Inspector
Puttis, of which the following is part:—
“Your letter plan has missed fire. The boy you sent was somehow
suspected by A., and Carlo tells me that he heard your boy confess
to A. that you had sent the letter. You can do what you like with
your boy, of course, but I hope you will remove all chance of his
again denouncing you. I shall send Carlo to you next week, when I
hope you will be able safely to dispose of him. Carlo and your boy
are both too dangerous now to be about. A. has started, and I had
Carlo out after them, and he tracked them some miles towards the
Flat Top ranges. He believes that Billy is with them, as they are
travelling on the track of some blacks who arrived on the run from
the hill country yesterday. Come over here as soon as you finish your
western patrol, but beware what you say before Glory Giles; she is
not so foolish as she looks, and met A. down south. The two are great
compatriots.”
CHAPTER XVII.
EN AVANT!
“Boot and saddle, see the slanting
Rays begin to fall,
Flinging lights and colours flaunting
Through the shadows tall.
Onward! onward! must we travel?
When will come the goal
Riddle I may not unravel
Cease to vex my soul.”
ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.
After leaving Murdaro “Government House,” Claude, in company with
his little follower Don, was not long in rejoining his party at the
out-station. Here he found the pack-horses all ready, and Williams
and Billy just concluding a lengthy confabulation as to the best
route to follow. So, there being nothing to delay the immediate
departure of the expedition, a start was called, and some twenty
miles travelled before darkness necessitated a camp for the night.
It is now three o’clock A.M. The chorus of crickets that has thrilled
through the warm night air since sunset is gradually dying into the
solemn stillness of the darkest hour that goes before the dawn.
The stars overhead throb with a clearer light than heretofore, and
when some eccentric or sleepless insect breaks the hushed mantle of
shadow resting upon the world with disturbing squeak or chirp, the
ear jumps and strains into the deep, black silence with an intensity
that is almost painful.
Now, through the dark aisles of ebon-stemmed gum-trees, the first
white stain of morning begins to blot out those stars near to the
horizon, and high above the topmost branches of the tall, gaunt trees
the pure lustre of the morning star heralds the day.
Round the grey embers of the camp-fire, upon which remains the
impress of last night’s damper, the figures of the party lie
motionless in their tossed coverings of red and blue blankets, and
nearby stands the billy, containing sodden tea-leaves, where the
last man on watch drained the cold tea ere turning in.
Each man’s saddle is his pillow, and beyond is a vague litter of
pack-saddles, bags, and snaky-looking surcingles; amongst which Don’s
retriever pup keeps guard against the prowling, cowardly dingoes,
whose blinking eye-stars have circled the camp during the dark hours.
Suddenly the hush of night seems broken by the brisk chirping of a
small pied-tit, called by Australians a shepherd’s companion, and,
as if in response to the volatile little creature’s busy notes,
the morning breeze comes with a soft, murmuring rush, and flutters
through the long, pendant gum-leaves as if fair Nature was softly
sighing ere she awoke to the heat and toil of another tropic day.
Claude, whose anxiety makes him a light sleeper, is roused by this
peaceful _réveille_ and opens his eyes, and then, raising himself
upon his elbow, he throws off the blanket that has encompassed
him during the night and is now wet with dew, and looks around.
In a semi-circle by the camp-fire lie his companions, their limbs
outstretched in various unstudied positions of utter repose, and over
there, against the widening band of eastern grey, he can see the
black form of old Williams, who, mounted and armed, is taking the
last watch.
Although only a short time in Australia, Angland has already
travelled over two hundred miles with horses through the bush,
and has consequently already experienced some of the vicissitudes
inseparable to that mode of progression,—straying horses and such
“chances of the night” amongst them.
So his first thoughts are common to all equestrian travellers through
the interior wilds, namely, “Where are the horses? Shall we be able
to break camp early, or must we track some of the brutes back to the
last camp?”
But Claude is relieved from much anxiety on that score by reason of
the watches that have been kept during the night; so he proceeds
to finish a hurried toilet and afterwards awaken his slumbering
companions.
There is always a great deal of vexation, and often danger, in
waterless country, attending the loss of horses whilst travelling
in the bush, and we pause in our narrative to remark upon a certain
marvellous faculty possessed by many Australian bushmen of long
experience.
During many years, often for months at a time, these men have
listened anxiously for the sound of their horses’ or bullocks’
bells,—at sundown when they turned in, during their wakeful
moments through the night, and with redoubled anxiety in the early
morning. It is therefore hardly surprising, taking all this into
consideration, that these men gradually get into the habit, if we can
correctly designate the new-born power by that term, of still being
able to hear the bells, even when fast asleep, in which they resemble
Erckmann-Chatrian’s murderous innkeeper, in _The Polish Jew_. But
what is far stranger, having done so they can remember all about it
next morning; in which they differ from those gifted somnambulistic
individuals one reads about who write poetry and solve difficult
problems during their slumbers.
Many bushmen will wake up out of the deepest sleep if their bells
wander too far away, or if these cease their jangling for too long
a period; but those “old hands,” who are the particular object of
these remarks, will be able in the morning to tell you as much about
the wanderings that the horses have made during the previous hours
of darkness, as if they had been watchfully awake all night; will
unhesitatingly state to the “boys,” when these youths go horse
hunting in the morning, where Bob, with the “condaminer” bell, has
got to, and which direction Boco, with the goat-bell, took with his
part of the mob, when the horses began to feed at two o’clock.
It is still dark when Claude gives the usual bush signal for all
hands to wake up, by shouting out “Daylight!” Little Don gives
Angland a wide, steady look, till, his wits gathering themselves
together, he repeats the word interrogatively, and after sleepily
rubbing his eyes, proceeds to put on his boots, thus completing his
attire.
Far away across the dark plain, upon the bush-fringed edge of
which the party have camped, the faint tinkling of several of the
horse-bells can be heard,—blessed sounds; and, more to the left,
the thump, thump, of the big “frog” bell on Claude’s horse Charlie.
Another hour and the buzz of the awakened insect world will drown all
sounds more than a few hundred yards away, and therefore it behoves
those who perform the matutinal horse-hunting duties of a caravan,
such as that which Billy is about to pilot across the desert, to
imitate the policy of the proverbial “early bird,” ere the daily
plague of flies have made their noisy appearance.
So whilst Claude and Williams are preparing breakfast, Billy and the
two boys are away after the horses; and these animals, being all
good campers, are soon rounded up and unhobbled, and come racing in
towards the smoke of the camp-fire, biting and kicking, as if they
highly appreciated the delightful feeling of being rid once more of
those horrible gyves of chain and leather.
“Say, boss, I want to speak to you bime-by,” Billy observes
to Claude, after breakfast, as he leans across the saddle of a
pack-horse to give a finishing pat to one of the pack-bags before he
tightens up the surcingle.
Claude nods a signal that he has heard the remark, from where he is
fixing a bunch of hobbles to another horse’s neck, and presently
intimates that he can give the black youth his attention, by begging
him to “fire away.”
“You know, boss, I was very sick gin I come up to station,” Billy
observes in a slow, sulky sort of voice.
“Yes, I expect you were pretty bad when you’d finished your journey
from my uncle’s grave,” replies Claude.
“I bin tell you yesterday,” the dark youth goes on, “all about the
wild fellows’ camp where I stay; where I come from three days ago.”
“The village where you’ve lived since the old digger you were with
got killed? Yes, I remember about it. Are we near to it?”
“Yes, boss. Now I think this way. I was very sick when I get this far
from where I plant the doctor, and I wonder sometimes if I able to
pick up my pad (tracks) after all this time. I remember country near
grave; not this way. You see, I was very sick this end of the stage.”
“I understand, Billy; but what has that to do with the wild fellows’
camp?”
“Just see here, boss, I think I better go to black camp and get two
boys—one won’t come without a mate. These people very good at the
track. They find my old pad, and bime-by, when I come to country I
know, boys come back. You like?”
“All right, Billy,” complies Claude, “but will you be able to get the
blacks to come? They won’t like to leave the ranges, especially to go
along with white folk. And I don’t blame them, either.”
“Well, you see, boss, the doctor, he bin to their camp two, no three
time, and they like him. He very good to them. When the old hatter
get killed by them cussed Kalkadoones, I think to myself, I make
tracks back to this camp, and by-and-by doctor’s friends come along
and I hear of them.”
“And I’m very glad you had the ‘savez’ to do so,” responds Claude,
patting Billy on his shoulder.
The black’s eyes brighten at the praise given him by the master to
whom he has begun to transfer those dog-like affections lately left
objectless by the death of Dr. Dyesart.
“The wild fellow,” he continues, “bin very glad to see me when I come
along. There was _komorbory tuck-out_ (plenty of food). I tell them
doctor was dead, and me like to live with them for a time.”
“Can you talk their language, Billy?”
“No, boss, but there was two runaway boys with them. One, he come
from down Boulia way,” the speaker waves his black arm towards the
south-west. “This boy speak my language a bit, and I bin mining with
the doctor in his country and know his——” the speaker hesitates for
want of a word, and then gives a number of flourishes with his hands,
to express to Claude the masonic-like manual signs by means of which
the members of some tribes are able to communicate with each other,
to a great extent, without speaking.
“Well, get these boys if you can,” interrupts Claude; “but don’t you
think you can do without them?”
“No, I think it good to get the boys,” replies Billy quietly but
firmly.
“How long will you be away,” asks young Angland, slightly expressing
by the tones of his voice the annoyance he feels at this fresh
detention.
“I come back with boys to-night or to-morrow. ’Spose you camp next
water-hole—’bout twenty miles. I tell Joe all ’bout it last night. He
knows place; he bin there.”
“But, Billy!” exclaims Angland, as a thought suddenly strikes him.
“Look here, if white fellow send ‘boys’ to track us they will see
your track up to village. You’ll get your friends up there into
trouble if you don’t mind what you’re about.”
“All right, boss,” replies Billy, smiling a smile of superior wisdom;
“you see it bime-by.”
Both men have for the last half-hour been cantering after the rest
of the party, who, with the pack-horses, are on in front. Presently
Claude’s companion signifies his desire that they should proceed
less quickly, and then, pulling his horse into a walking pace, Billy
throws his reins over his steed’s head, and holds them out to Claude.
Our hero takes them, and looks on in silence, wondering what the
black youth is about to do. Sitting sideways on the quiet animal
he is riding, Billy next proceeds to divest himself of his boots
and hat, which he fixes firmly to the dees of his saddle, and then
producing a pair of queer, mitten-like objects made of emu-feathers,
he fastens them securely upon his feet. He now motions Claude to lead
his horse under a big gum-tree that stretches its great branches
over the cattle track they are following, and suddenly rising into
a kneeling position upon his saddle, he clutches a branch above his
head, and lifts himself clear of his horse into mid-air.
“Me leave no track into bush this way,” the black cries from his
perch, his dark face covered with a big, oily, triumphant smile, and
Claude, turning his head as he rides on, sees Billy swinging from
tree to tree, like some great anthropomorphic ape, into the heart of
the dark forest on his right.
Angland has heard of the feather slippers used by the natives of some
parts of Australia when particularly anxious to abstain from leaving
any dangerous trail behind them during their peregrinations, but
Billy’s are the first he has seen. And on catching up to Williams,
and telling him of the method in which the black youth has taken
his departure, the old miner spins Claude so many interesting yarns
about the ingenious devices employed by the aborigines to avoid being
hunted down by their native or foreign foes, that he determines to
get up an exhibition of some of them when his pilot returns with the
two new auxiliaries.
But, leaving little Joe to lead the rest of the party on to the
next water-hole, let us follow the dark-skinned Billy on his way
to the village. This young man has learned a good deal about the
kind of country he is now traversing during the last few weeks,
and, moreover, he has journeyed to his friends’ hamlet more than
once before from about the same point where he has just entered the
forest. So he wends his way in a fairly straight course, and is not
more than three hours doing the seven miles of rough travelling that
has to be got over before he reaches the vicinity of the _Myall_
camp. After leaving the forest at the foot of the wild range, his
way lies for the greater part up the dried-up bed of a mountain
torrent, that has cut its way during countless ages through the
enormous mass of grey granite of which the mountain is composed. High
above the dark boulder-strewn path of the storm-stream, the grim
old cliffs rise on either hand, their broken fronts decked here and
there with clinging tufts of herbage, and crowned with overflowing
wealth of perennial vegetation of the dark forest on their summits.
Here and there the out-crop of a quartz reef stretches across the
path with great, teeth-like projections of white, flinty rock, and
now and again the brown face of what is a waterfall after the rains
necessitates a bit of climbing. At last the traveller reaches the
crown of the watershed, and follows the rocky ridge of the range
northwards for a couple of miles. The forest, that has hitherto
consisted chiefly of various kinds of _eucalypti_, some of which give
off an almost overpowering odour much resembling peppermint, now
changes its character suddenly, for here is the edge of the basaltic
“top-dressing” that covers the bigger lines of ranges, lying to the
eastward, with its characteristic vegetation.
Billy, arrived at this point, sits down to rest awhile near a
mound of stone chips, which is the sole monument remaining of a
past generation of aborigines who once had a stone-axe manufactory
here. A number of “wasters” and half-finished adzes, made of
basalt, are lying about, and at a future day, no doubt, will grace
some museum, when the old chip-heap has been discovered by some
prowling ethnologist. Over Billy’s head swings the flat nest of a
king-pigeon,—built, as is usually the case, on the extreme end of
a bough,—and thousands of beautiful insects, notably some gigantic
green and day-flying moths, are making their erratic, aërial
promenades through the glades bordering upon the gloomy jungle.
No white man’s eye could have detected the slightest sign of the
track that Billy now commences to follow, but to an aboriginal it
is a fairly clear one. Here and there an overturned stone, a broken
twig, or a crushed leaf make it patent to the young man that some one
has passed this way towards the village only a short time before.
This is a cheerful sign for Billy, knowing as he does that so great
is the fear that his friends the villagers have of being discovered
by the neighbouring squatters, that it was highly probable they might
have shifted their camp upon his leaving for the station. Presently
the traveller stops and glances at a palm-leaf that is lying across
the almost invisible track he is following. It has apparently fallen
there naturally, but the black understands its signification, and
immediately alters his course. And after a rough scramble down the
precipitous sides of a densely scrubbed ravine, he comes to where he
can hear the sound of voices below him. Creeping like a snake amongst
the dank, humid undergrowth, Billy gets near enough to recognize the
sounds as proceeding from the vocal chords of a party of the friends
he has come to interview. So he begins a low guttural chant to
apprise those beneath him of his arrival.
“_Kolli! kolli!_” (Hush! be silent!) one of the talkers ejaculates,
and the talking ceases immediately. Soon afterwards, without
heralding her approach by the slightest noise, a woman stands before
our black friend, clad only in the undress costume of her native
shades; and after a few brief words of recognition have passed
between her and the new-comer, the former returns to her people
below, and reporting “all serene,” a united chorus of welcome invites
Billy to descend to them.
Had a civilized European been present at the meeting in the merry
woods, and had he been able to have understood the meaning of Billy’s
opening chant and the reply chorus, he might have been forcibly
reminded of certain of the musical dramas of the old world.
The happy, beribboned peasant of the operatic stage has for years
borne the brunt of many facetious remarks, simply because he cannot
indulge even in the most commonplace conversation without surrounding
his words with a shroud of fascinating trills. Yet here in the
Australian woods and plains we find the untutored savage, like the
wild birds round him, doing the same kind of thing, and much given to
confabulatory chants and choruses. It truly would seem quite within
the bounds of possibility that ere the joyous dwellers in Arcadia had
relinquished their independent notions and simple acorn diet before
the incoming flood of European civilization, they really did “carry
on” in the harmonious manner in which they are represented to us
to-day by the gifted authors of modern opera.
But whilst we have been thus sadly digressing from our story Billy
has climbed down to the aboriginals in the gully below, and finds
he has been following up a hunting party that, having been out all
the morning, is now on its way home. Half-a-dozen men, armed with
_womeras_, spears, and _nulla nullas_, stand waiting for him to
appear. Most of them are resting on one leg, the sole of one foot
being pressed against the inside of the other leg at the knee joint,
after the local method of “standing at ease,” their spears or a
neighbouring branch being used to keep their bodies in a state of
equilibrium. One of the men, the runaway station boy spoken of by
Billy to Claude, who belongs to the former young man’s _Mordu_, or
class-family, steps forward and welcomes the new arrival by embracing
him. Then, after a few guttural ejaculations, the party forms Indian
file and proceeds villagewards; three or four women carrying the
hunters’ game, which consists of a couple of rock-wallaby and a few
bandicoots, bringing up the rear.
As the natives get into the vicinity of the village, they take every
precaution to leave no track behind them, and each individual enters
the thicket in which the little collection of _gunyahs_ is ensconced
by a different route.
It is quite remarkable how the inhabitants of these scrub hamlets
manage to travel to and from their habitations, for years sometimes,
without leaving anything like a beaten track which might attract the
notice of a passing foe.
The huts comprising the village into which the hunters are now
entering are of the universal pattern affected by Australian
aborigines throughout their great island home. Their form resembles
that of a half-spread mushroom or a very squat beehive. But instead
of being plastered over with red or yellow clay, as are the domiciles
of the natives of the open country, these gunyahs are simply but
securely thatched with palm-leaves.
This common type of dwelling is worth notice as being rather
remarkable. One might have expected to have found that the present
race of Australian natives, who are unmistakably the descendants of
Papuan immigrants, who have intermarried with an inferior and puny
aboriginal race, would have copied the well-built houses of their
near neighbours and relatives the New Guinea blacks. Both races of
people have the same name for the land they inhabit, calling each
Daudée, and many of their marriage laws and religious ordinances show
a common and probably Indian origin,—the occasional worship of the
crocodile (_Sebara_) and snake being a case in point.
Possibly these small houses were necessitated by the absence of the
bamboo, which supplied their foreign ancestors with such splendid
building material. And the form of the dwellings may have originally
been devised to imitate the spinifax-crowned mounds so common upon
the sand-hills of the plain country, for to combine the advantages of
an elevated position and one of comparative obscurity in a village
would be a distinct gain to a community in a savage land from the
increased protection they would afford.
A few shrivelled old crones, who are sitting scraping and scratching
themselves at the entrances to their several residences, commence
a low howl of welcome upon seeing the good things brought by the
returning hunters, and presently other men and women appear upon
the scene—the latter carrying their fat, bright-eyed offspring
in elegantly shaped wicker-baskets, which are made so as to be
conveniently carried in the hollow of the back by bands of plaited
grass passed round the forehead. Several brilliantly painted shields
for use in native _boorers_ (tournaments) and wooden dishes are
scattered about, and a curiously carved stick—a sort of almanac,
which is the property of the old man or father of the village—stands
in front of a large gunyah at one end of the semi-circle of
dwellings. A meal is now prepared by the younger women, consisting
chiefly of such dainties as the roasted flesh of wallabys and a
big kind of carpet-snake, which has been preserved till tender by
being kept under water for some days, with a few side-dishes of
grasshoppers, roasted grubs, wild-figs (_yanki_), and various kinds
of berries; and these delicacies being consumed, Billy proceeds
to disclose the object of his visit. Whilst speaking, however, he
judiciously distributes some brilliantly coloured handkerchiefs
to the male villagers, who are chewing an aromatic kind of resin,
obtained from a scrub tree much resembling the kauri (_dammara_) of
New Zealand. After a great amount of talk, in which the women join
at times, one of the runaway station boys and a tall, long-legged
_Myall_ finally agree to return with Billy, and the old father of the
little community brings the business to a close by observing, “_Vai
mollie moungarn_,”—intimating thereby that the sun is fast declining
towards the mountain tops, and that the men had better start at once.
A touching scene of parting now takes place between the men who are
about to join Claude’s party and their families. Again and again,
when on the point of marching off, do Billy’s recruits return to
fondle their children once more before leaving, and it is only by
the promise of fabulous wealth—a blanket and tomahawk apiece—that the
two blacks are at length persuaded to tear themselves away.
Australian aborigines have always a great affection for their
children; these seldom cry, and are never beaten, or indeed
corrected, save when breaking any of those sacred laws, regarding the
mysteries of which we shall presently speak, in which case terrible,
even diabolical, punishment ensues.
It is nearly sunset when at length the three men set off, and after
some rough travelling in the dark a clear spot in the jungle is
reached, where they rest till the moon rises, when they again push on.
The grey hours of the next morning see Billy and the two other blacks
arrive at Claude’s camp, some time having been spent towards the end
of their journey in removing all signs of their tracks where they
left the bush.
“At last!” cries Claude exultingly, as, a few hours afterwards,
he takes a parting survey of last night’s camp, to make sure that
nothing has been left behind; “at last I am really _en route_!”
The rest of the party are gone on in advance. The neighbouring
water-hole looks up at the white-hot sun above it with its thousand
eyes of water-lilies in their gorgeous robes of white, yellow,
crimson, and violet. On the low trees round about numbers of large
crows—those scavengers of the wilds—are croaking their harsh cries
of impatience: “Augh, augh, ah-h-h-h.” These sable rascals are never
absent from an Australian traveller’s camp, and appear like magic
when he lights his billy fire. Hardly has Claude mounted to ride
after his companions, when the crows swoop down by the cold ashes
to fight and squabble over the odds and ends that lie about. At two
o’clock arrives the hottest time of the day,—it is really as warm
as any living thing can stand with safety,—and as the expedition
crawls along over the burnt-up, reddish soil of the plain, upon which
withered tufts of various kinds of coarse grass appear at intervals,
Claude feels certain that he has never been in such a thirsty-looking
place before. Everything around, trees, grass, and all, looks as if
fashioned out of brown paper and sprinkled with dust.
A few dark-brown kites—similar to those that Angland has seen some
years previously at curious Cairo and barren Aden—sit panting
with open beaks on the hot branches of the stunted quinine and
gutta-percha trees, too overcome by the heat even to move as the
party rides by, almost within arm’s length of them. The country round
about, as the horsemen get well out into the plain, is almost a dead
flat; the only difference in level being the long, wide, gentle rises
which, like ocean waves, cross the shimmering expanse of heated earth
from east to west, at distances apart of about a couple of miles.
Every kind of animal life is gradually left behind as the travellers
push on; not even a kite, or a “gohanna,” as old Williams calls the
ignana-like lizards that are generally common throughout the bush, is
to be seen. The weary horses wade patiently through the dust, which
is so fine that it rises into the air on the slightest provocation.
The horizon is a level circle of monotonous, grey-brown tree-tops;
the middle distance sunburnt, reddish clay, grass that reminds one
of the harmless, necessary doormat, and dusty tree-stems; and
the immediate foreground is hidden in clouds of dust, so fine, so
penetrating, that Claude feels his throat to resemble the interior of
a lime-kiln before half the day’s journey is done.
This desert country, however, is left behind by the time the dull-red
sunset has begun to tinge the pillar of dust raised by the horses of
a lovely rose colour, and at last a _détour_ is made from Billy’s
old tracks in order to reach a water-hole known only to the _Myall_
(native) pilots. And Claude blesses his black friend Billy, in his
heart, for having procured the guides, as he sees the horses prick
their dust-covered ears, and liven up as they sniff the refreshing
odour of the little mud-surrounded pool of dirty liquid.
The next few days’ travelling are monotonous in the extreme.
Sometimes the party toil over red deserts, whose sterile surfaces
offer hardly a mouthful, even of withered grass, for the horses,
and where no water can be found with which to refresh the suffering
animals. For the country has suffered from a continual drought for
two years or more, and the moist mud which still remained in the
water-holes that Billy luckily came across, on his late journey to
Murdaro Station, has all disappeared.
At other times the horses pick their stumbling way over rough and
semi-mountainous tracts of country, that stretch on all sides in an
apparently interminable and dreary treeless waste. Here and there,
however, little patches of far better country are traversed, where
water and dried but highly nutritious herbage is to be found. On
arriving at one of these oases when the expedition has been nearly
a week “out,” Claude, acting by his friend Williams’s advice,
determines to spell his horses for a day, and camps by a rocky pool,
fringed with a feathery belt of dark she-oaks. Close by rises a
flat-topped little bit of light-red sandstone covered with euphorbia
trees, and, upon the morning after his arrival, Claude proceeds to
explore this elevation, taking with him the runaway station boy, who
can speak a little broken English, and has introduced himself to
Angland by the name of General Gordon.
The view that meets Claude’s eyes from the summit of the scalloped
and overhanging sandstone cliffs well repays the trouble he has taken
in scrambling up their tawny sides. Numerous other fortification-like
projections are to be seen on all sides standing up, like weird
islands, above the surface of the haze-bounded expanse of rolling
desert.
He sits down and drinks in the weird, harmonious picture of
desolation before him, and, as he does so, some lines of Pringle, the
explorer-poet of South Africa, float into his memory:—
“A region of emptiness, howling and drear,
Which man has abandoned from famine and fear;
Which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
With the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save the poisonous thorns that pierce the foot.”
Then glancing downwards over the little patch of verdure round the
solitary water-hole, where the grey smoke of the camp-fire and
the colour and commotion amongst the moving men and horses formed
a little gem of life in the vast setting of deathlike stillness
around, Claude’s thoughts take a serious turn, and he enters into
conversation with his companion General Gordon, with the idea of
discovering if the aboriginal mind has any notions of a Supreme Being
as conceived by Europeans. But although the black has been amongst
station civilization for some years, and has even been interviewed by
a clergyman of the Church of England upon the subject of his soul,
his answer is hardly satisfactory:—
“Yes, boss, mine know alle ’bout Gord. Missionary him bin tell me,
‘Gord alle same ole man sit down longer sky.’ Missionary tell me
_budgeree_ (good) you yabber (say), yabber, ‘Give it to-day mine
damper, give it to-day mine tuck-out.’ Mine bin yabber, yabber,
plenty long time; oh, plenty long time. But,” added the speaker in a
sulky voice, evidently disgusted with the treatment he had received,
“but _bale_ (not) mine get it tuck-out, bale mine get it lillie bit
tuck-out.” General Gordon turns to catch and swallow a grasshopper,
and then, shaking his woolly mat of hair, further expresses his
opinions, in the following remarkable language: “Bale mine think it
Gord sit down longer sky. No good de ole man. Him only like it white
fellow; no like it poor black beggar.”
Claude ventures to calm the ruffled feelings of the General by
suggesting that in a future life black fellows may possibly have a
better time of it.
“Yes, boss,” excitedly exclaims the “boy,” his face altering from
an expression of injured worth to one of perfect faith in his noble
existence. “Yes, bime-by mine bin kick out” (By-and-by I die).
The speaker points eastwards, as his race often do when speaking of
dying. “Bime-by me kick out, then me jump up white beggar. Me jump up
stockman. _Budgeree_ (very good), mine like it.”
Claude tries to conceive what the General finds in life worth living
for when he can look forward with pleasure to a future life as a
stockman, which, in common with most station blacks, he evidently
firmly believes in.
Our young friend unconsciously follows the lines of reasoning laid
down long since by a celebrated wit, when he finally concludes that
it is probably the same with blacks as with whites, in that, “By the
time the emptiness of life is discovered, living has become a fatal
habit.”
Old Williams now joins Claude upon the hill-top, and, looking
carefully round about him on the ground as if in search of something
he has dropped, presently deposits himself upon a chocolate-coloured
block of sandstone with a grunt of satisfaction.
“Mind where ye sit doone, lad,” he observes to Angland, through
clenched teeth, which hold a grimy old maize-cob pipe; “this hill is
just the very place for snakes.”
The words are hardly uttered, when the black boy, who is standing
behind the white men, suddenly ejaculates a guttural exclamation, and
dashes his _nulla nulla_ (a three-foot club of heavy wood) down upon
a small branch-like object, lying on a ledge of rock close to where
Claude’s feet are resting.
“A cussed death-adder, by all that’s blue!” exclaims Williams, as
both men start up, and bending over the cliff observe a little
light-brown serpent that is writhing on the rocks below.
“A narrer squeak you’ve had of it, my son,” the old miner observes,
wiping his brow with the back of his hairy hand. “If you’d happened
to move your foot, it would have been a case of death in less than
twenty minutes. There ain’t no cure for their bite.”
General Gordon, acting under orders from the elder white man, now
fetches the snake from where his well-directed shot had thrown it,
and Claude shudders slightly as Williams, pointing to the crushed
remains of the dangerous reptile,—which is only about two feet in
length,—proceeds to direct his friend’s attention to a curious
horn-like projection which sticks out from the tail end of the
hideous, slug-like body.
“Some say that this ’ere’s got a poison fang in it, but I don’t
believe it,” the old miner observes. “It’s against Nature for the
warmint to have a sting at each end. It can do all’s fair with the
fangs it’s got at its business end, I take it.”
Claude nods his acquiescence.
“This ’ere horn is just for helping the devils to jump. They move
when they’re skeered jest like them yellow grubs in a cheese. And I
believe they use this prong to catch hold of, just like this.”
The speaker, to exemplify his meaning, takes a springy stem of dry
grass between his finger and thumb, and, bending the two ends towards
each other, allows the fragments to fly off into the air.
The black boy, who has been watching this object lesson in ophiology,
roars with delight at the ingenious method Williams has employed to
explain the snake’s mode of progression.
“Hah! hah! _Illa perrachie_ (the snake) him make it the buck, alle
same little fellow _waddy_” (woodie: piece of wood, stick).
By which remark Claude infers that the native, whose experience
amongst snakes must of course be very great, fully endorses the old
miner’s theory; although, had our young friend known the polite
readiness which most aboriginals manifest for corroborating anything
affirmed by a white man in their presence, it is questionable whether
he would have placed as much reliance upon General Gordon’s evidence
as he did.
It is now getting too warm for the men to sit or stand still, for
there is no wind; indeed, not the slightest movement of the air.
So Claude and his companions rise and stroll across the hot, flat
fragments of rock towards the other side of the table-topped hill.
Here and there a lively lizard or an emerald snake attracts the eye
for an instant, but little else of interest is to be seen. Presently,
however, Angland stands in amazement before a level expanse of rock;
for he is apparently upon a sandy sea-shore, from which the waves
that left those ripple marks have but just now ebbed away. He can
almost imagine that he hears the surf still rippling over those
almost red-hot stones at his feet, so recent does everything appear.
Here lie numerous shells of the succulent and delicious _pipi_, at
the sight of which Claude’s memory flashes back to many a delightful
picnic in the land of the Maori; star-fish, echina, seaweed,
cockle-shells, and mussels, or rather their ghostly semblance in
hard, brown silica, are scattered around on all sides where the last
wave left them.
Clambering down the other side of the hill, where a fall of rock has
recently occurred, Claude finds in the geological section thus formed
an open page in which to read the history of the country. At a little
distance below the surface of the old sea-bed, volcanic dust is mixed
with the grains of silica that form the rock,—drab-coloured dust,
such as fell at Krakatoa and Tarawera. This gradually gives place
in the lower strata to a volcanic conglomerate, composed chiefly
of rounded masses of felsite, ferruginous clay, burnt to a cinder,
and silicious, iron-stained nodules. The old sea-beds have long ago
received the red-hot ejecta from some great eruption, and then, the
land rising, gradually pushed back the ocean. Next come the centuries
during which the resistless sea rolls again over the land, and once
more retiring the waves cut much of the old ocean bottom away, and
leave the flat-topped, island-like hills as the travellers see them.
And upon the last page Angland sees the sandstone rock before him
with its fossil _exuviæ_, and its surface sheltering a few miserable
euphorbias, where passing birds have dropped undigested seeds. The
poor grass struggles here and there to clothe the barren, ugly rocks,
during the few months in every two or three years when it has the
opportunity of growing. Perhaps Nature will one day add another and
a brighter chapter to this history of the wilds of central-northern
Queensland—a chapter of forest life and copious rains. It may be so;
but, at any rate, Claude, looking round him, decides that man has
come upon these deserts too soon—some five thousand years too soon.
When night falls upon the little camp beneath the rocky cliff, and
the first watch—consisting of Don and the two natives from the Myall
village—have gone on duty, Billy spreads a saddle-cloth upon a flat
stone by the camp-fire, and commences to mix some flour and water
thereon into a thick paste, preparatory to cooking to-morrow’s bread.
He has made a discovery that morning, whilst bathing in the
water-hole with the boys, and it appears to him to be such an
important one that he is rather puzzled how to act. So instead
of droning a song or keeping up a lively chatter with anybody
who happens to be near, as he usually does when at his culinary
occupations, he frowns over his work and remains silent.
The ruddy light of the hot pile of embers, that he has just fashioned
into a glowing nest for the reception of the damper that he is now
manufacturing, falls on his thoughtful face. Presently Claude notices
that Billy is strangely quiet, and, seeing his preoccupied air, puts
the cause down to one of those troubles to which all bush-cooks are
at times heir.
“What’s up, Billy, not made it wet enough?” Angland asks, referring
to the loaf the black is making.
“Oh no, boss,” answers Billy, keeping his black fingers moving in
elliptic spirals in the little crater of dough before him. A fight
is going on in the darkie’s mind as to whether he shall keep his
discovery to himself or tell Angland; in which latter case he knows
his secret will ultimately reach and render happy the man he most
hates on earth. But the young fellow’s dependent and affectionate
disposition wins in the end, and, after he has raked the last embers
over his cookery, Billy turns to Claude determined to reveal his
thoughts to his new master.
Williams is asleep at a little distance from the others, his bush
experience inclining him to take his night’s rest away from the
light of the camp-fire, that might show his outstretched form as a
tempting target for the spears of any avenging aborigines who may be
about.
“You remember, boss,” Billy begins, as he lifts a piece of glowing
charcoal with his bare fingers to light his pipe,—“you remember what
I told you about when them cussed Myall blacks killed old Weevil?”
“Yes, I think I remember all you mentioned to me, Billy,” responds
Claude. “There was something the old hatter told you when he was
dying that you said you could not understand altogether. You said,
I think, that you had missed a good deal the old man said in the
excitement of the moment.”
“That’s jest it.” The black looks sadly into the fire at the
remembrance of his old friend’s death, and then, glancing round to
see that he and Claude are alone, continues, “I had forgotten what
the old man said. Now I remember. He told me he had stolen a boy
pickaninnie of old Giles’s from Murdaro Station, long time ago.”
“You told me that much, I remember, the day after we started on this
trip.”
“Yes, I not forget that; but old man say, ‘I mark that boy on
shoulder, on near shoulder. I mark him with blue star and the front
letters of Giles’s names, W. G.’”
“Well,” inquires Claude as the last speaker pauses, “but what became
of the boy? You didn’t tell me if he told you that.”
Billy does not answer the question, but goes on puffing at his pipe,
even now undecided whether to reveal his secret. Presently, with a
sort of groan, he turns him towards his master and asks,—
“Where you get that lillie fellow Don? I think him very clever boy.”
“I got him in Sydney,” replies Claude, laughing. “Are you concocting
a plan to palm him off on Mr. Giles as his long-lost son, you rascal?”
“No, boss,” responds the dark youth thus addressed, in an injured,
pettish tone of voice that shows that his feelings are hurt by the
light way in which Claude has treated his question.
“No need to ’coct a plan. Don, he got the mark on shoulder, all the
same Weevil tell me ’bout.”
“Nonsense!” Claude ejaculates,—he is perhaps rather too much given to
making this remark when surprised,—“I know the mark you mean; it’s a
bruise he got the other day when his saddle turned round on Kittie,
careless young devil.”
“Oh, all right, boss; I ’spose I get blind now,” Billy replies in
an offended tone, for nothing insults an aboriginal more than to
distrust his keenness of vision. But his clouded expression dissolves
into a sunny grin of satisfaction, as he sees that the information he
has imparted to Angland has apparently excited a far deeper interest
in Angland’s mind than he had supposed it would.
What Claude’s first thoughts are upon learning that which seems
likely to turn out a most fortunate discovery for himself and several
other persons besides little Don may easily be guessed. He conjures
up happy pictures in his mind, that for the most part are variations
of one glorious central idea,—Wilson Giles, with weak tears of joy
dribbling down his purple countenance, presenting his golden-haired
fairy of a daughter to the man who has recovered for him his “little
Georgie.”
And if these mental sketches of our young friend’s are rather
selfish ones, and more redolent of love and Glory than of the mutual
gratification upon meeting that the long-separated father and son
will soon enjoy at his hands, it is but natural, after all, that
in Claude’s present state of mind it should be so. But cold second
thoughts and chilly doubts soon come to tone down these brilliant
visions. Then a half-conceived suspicion as to whether Billy and
Don—or perhaps Billy alone—might not have concocted the story of the
blue marks upon the boy’s shoulder duly presents itself; to flee
away, however, before the knowledge that the tattooing and subsequent
healing of the wounds produced thereby would take longer than the
whole time the two individuals concerned have known each other.
For various reasons, at any rate, Angland determines not to
investigate the subject further that night, and, as he rolls himself
up in his blankets prior to going off to sleep, he tries to call to
mind all that he has heard about the lost child.
During the second watch, which he keeps in company with his little
purchase Joe, Claude remembers that Glory had told him once about a
severe accident that happened to her baby brother not many months
before he disappeared. It had occurred when some visitor at Murdaro
head-station—who was rocking himself in one of the chairs upon the
verandah and had not noticed the approach of Mr. Giles’s tiny son
and heir—had heard a sudden scream at his elbow, and discovered that
the rocker of his chair had crushed some of the child’s tender little
toes.
“Ah, when I examine Don to-morrow morning,” Claude thinks, “I will
notice if his toes are intact. I am glad I remembered this, as it
will possibly throw some light upon the mystery.”
As Angland looks up in thought at the purple dome above him, where
“the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,” suddenly a great meteor
appears, and blazes into brightness as it comes in contact with
the world’s elastic shield of air, and then sinks with a graceful,
downwards streak of brilliant incandescence into earthly obscurity.
“What makes that fellow star fall down?” Claude asks of the owner of
the small, dark figure standing by his side, who is gazing up at the
purple-set jewels of scintillating worlds above the watchers’ heads.
Joe, in reply, grins fondly up at his friend and owner,—his white
teeth glistening under the starlight as he answers, “Me know,”—and,
taking a match from his pocket, proceeds to explain what to his
mind appears to be the correct solution of the cause of meteoric
phenomena. Striking his match and pretending to light an imaginary
pipe, and putting on a slyly grave countenance, which in the
darkness, however, is lost upon Claude, the boy says,—
“Me think great, big, one Master,”—pointing to the heavens,—“Him
want um smoke um pipe. Strike um matche,”—acting the process
meanwhile,—“and puff, puff,”—pretending to smoke. Then Joe makes a
movement with his hand, and drops the match slowly to the ground,
which, with its bright, smouldering end, gives a remarkably faithful
representation of a shooting star on a very small scale.
Claude has often been struck before with the “smartness” of his
diminutive henchman, and many a weary hour has the boy enlivened
with his grotesque sayings and doings. But Angland is particularly
interested in this last piece of evidence of Joe’s histrionic
powers,—the more so since it is the first time the youth has
expressed a belief in a supreme “great, one Master.” But just in
order to prove that the aboriginal mind—as represented by the little
specimen of the race that is now following Claude in his midnight
march round the slumbering men and horses—is practical, as well as
theoretical, perhaps we may be excused if we linger, for a moment,
to relate another comical little instance of Joe’s ingenuity. It
happened when Angland and his companions were on their way to
Murdaro, and amused our hero a good deal at the time.
Little Joe, upon becoming “by right of purchase” one of Claude’s
goods and chattels, had been presented with a suit of slop-made
clothes and a tiny pair of boots. These latter shortly disappeared.
Whether the boy sacrificed them as a parting gift to one of his
numerous brothers—all male blacks of the same class—family stand
in this relationship to each other—when the party left Mount
Silver, or whether they were stolen, as Joe stated was the case,
never transpired. But, anyhow, a few days afterwards, the black
urchin, who did not relish being the only one of the party to ride
barefooted, chanced upon an extremely ancient pair of what had once
been elastic-sided boots lying upon the site of a deserted camp,
and straightway determined to appropriate them to his personal
adornment. Dismounting from the tall steed he is riding, two small
black feet are carefully inserted into the sun-dried derelicts, and
with a grin of satisfaction Joe prepares to mount. But as he lifts
his right leg over the horse’s back, the enormous boot thereon—which
is absurdly too large for the diminutive limb—tumbles off upon the
ground. Again and again the boy tries, with the same result. The
“boss” is calling, but it will never do to leave the treasure behind.
Joe has no string to fasten it upon his foot, but he soon solves the
problem. Running round to the other side of his steed, he seizes the
stirrup-iron and securely jambs this into his prize; then mounting,
he places his foot therein, and joins the other riders, looking very
proud and haughty, with the dilapidated old leather coffins swinging
at his horse’s girths, in ludicrous contrariety to the spindle-like
shanks which, decked with short white trousers, rise from them.
* * * * *
The next afternoon Claude finds an opportunity, as old Williams and
he ride side by side behind the trackers, to tell his friend of
Billy’s discovery concerning Don’s supposed parentage.
“I bathed with the boys myself this morning,” Angland says, “and took
the opportunity of checking what Billy told me about the mark on the
youngster’s shoulder. It’s there safe enough.”
“You didn’t tell the boy about all this, nor Billy neither?” inquires
Claude’s companion.
“No, of course. I don’t intend Don to know anything about it at
present, and I told Billy to keep mum about it.”
“Ah! it’s what I call a rum yarn now,” remarks Williams, as he muses
over what he has just heard. “If it had been any one else nor you had
found the boy, I’d have said they had salted him against the chance
of making a rise out of old Giles.”
“Salted Don?” repeats Claude interrogatively, looking at the old
miner, and wondering at the strange expression he has made use of.
“What do you mean by ‘salting’ him?”
“Don’t you know what salting a mine is?” asks Williams in return.
“Well, I fancy I’ve heard that term applied to some kind of mining
swindle,” replies Claude.
“Exactly so, my lad. And after I’ve explained what ‘salting’ is,
you’ll understand what ‘salting’ a boy is.” Old Williams is never
happier than when explaining some mining term to a new hand who will
listen patiently, and, when started on such a theme,—especially if a
chance of bringing in old reminiscences occurs,—he must be allowed
time to run down. Claude has already learned this much about him, so
does not attempt to check his elderly friend when he sees him settle
down comfortably in his saddle to begin his discourse.
“Salting a mine,” Williams goes on, “is getting rayther out of
fashion; leastwise there’s a many easier ways bin invented of late
years—and safer ways too, mind ye—of making a ‘wild cat’ look like a
fust-class, boniefied speculation.”
“Well, tell me first what the old system, the ‘salting,’ was like,”
interrupts Claude, fearful that Williams will wander yet further from
his subject unless kept in the groove.