THEY TAKE AN OATH.
The dreams of the adventurers were troubled. Their minds went over the
recent tragedy, of which they had been the unwilling and unexpected
witnesses.
They heard again the low groaning of the departing storm, saw the wicked
glare of the sheet lightning, the darkness, and the deed.
At times either lad would start up and murmur in his sleep; but they were
young and healthy, and it was not till the sun rose high overhead that
they awoke.
The morning was cool, bright, and lovely.
Tom suggested a swim before breakfast.
They stripped and dived out of the boat, and paddled round, and then they
went ashore and boiled their billy in the scrub, and had breakfast.
Dave had commandeered two or three bottles of home-made jam from the farm
cupboard, and they had enough bread to do for the meal.
After breakfast, Tom called a council.
“Look ’ere,” he began, “I reckon we better go an’ explore this island
for a start. If she turns out all right we’ll stay on, and make it our
headquarters till we see what happens.”
Tom, on a good sleep and a well-filled stomach, was already forgetting
the tragic event of the night before. Not so Dave, who was younger, and
probably less hardened.
“But,” he argued, “what about the people that’ll be goin’ up an’ down the
river lookin’ for the cove that did the murder?”
“Nobody knows he did a murder except you an’ me,” responded Tom, “an’ we
ain’t goin’ to tell till the trial. Then we’ll come up in court an’ be
put in the box, an’ swore.”
“What box?” asked Dave. “Do they put you in a box?”
“Of course; the witness-box, you coot.”
“I don’t want to go in no box,” replied Dave. “What’s it like?”
“Something like a hen-coop,” exclaimed Tom, cheerfully inventing. “You
got to put your tongue out through a hole and kiss the book.”
“What book?” asked Dave, innocently.
“Why, the Bible, you fool.”
“What do they make you kiss it for?”
“Why, to take an oath, you ass.”
“What is an oath?” asked Dave.
“Callin’ God to strike you dead if you tell a lie,” exclaimed Tom
reverently. “You don’t want to tell no lies when you’re on your oath.
There was a cove in Bourke who was struck dead in the witness-box.”
“Where’s Bourke?” queried Dave, who happened to be in a more than usually
inquiring mood that morning.
“Bourke,” replied Tom, scratching his head; “Bourke! Oh, Bourke’s away up
in Northern Queensland somewhere. It’s so ’ot all you’ve got to do is to
put your eggs in a pan, and lay the pan out in the sun to fry ’em.”
Both boys were silent for a while thinking. Then Dave spoke.
“Don’t you think we better give up piratin’?” he asked.
“What for?” queried Tom.
“Well it don’t look lucky!”
“Of course, it ain’t lucky. It never is lucky; not at first; but after
you get properly goin’ it’s all right. When we get a proper pirate ship
an’ a crew——”
“Crew!” exclaimed Dave, “where we goin’ to get ’em?”.
“You leave that to me. Dave Gibson; I’m runnin’ this show; you just
got to do what you’re told, and don’t you talk no more about goin’ an’
giving’ evidence in this murder case. When the time’s ripe I’ll be there,
and you kin come along an’ back me up.”
“I’ll back you up,” replied Dave, promptly. “I’ll say anything you say;
I’ll swear it, too.”
“Y’see, it’s this way,” Tom explained confidentially, “we might get into
a bit o’ trouble ourselves about the boat an’ one thing an’ another, an’
if we was to come forward jist at the right time an’ tell the true story
about the murder, we’d be let off, an’ maybe get a reward, too, or get a
billet in the Government, or somethin’.”
“What’ll they do to the cove?” asked Dave.
“Hang ’im!” replied Tom, emphatically. “By gosh, if I thought they
wouldn’t, you wouldn’t catch me goin’ an puttin’ ’im away!”
“Why?”
“Why, ain’t you got no sense at all? Suppose he got off. D’you think it
’ud be safe for you an’ me to stay round anywhere?”
“No,” said Dave, candidly, “I’ll be hanged if I do!”
“Look ’ere,” said Tom, “we better not talk about this any more till we
got to.”
“How’s that?” asked the junior pirate. “Why bettern’t we?”
“Because,” replied Tom, looking into the scrub, “trees ’as got ears.
We’ll have to take a oath not to do it.”
“We ain’t got no Bible,” ventured Dave.
“Pirates don’t always take a oath on the Bible,” explained Tom. “They
take some oaths, ’specially oaths like this, on a knife.”
Dave turned a trifle pale.
“It sounds horrid,” he said.
“So it is,” observed Tom, “but it’s got to be done. ’Ere, you take the
knife an’ ’old the pint towards me an’ swear.”
Dave did as he was told, repeating an elaborate formula, which Tom made
up specially for the occasion.
Then Tom held the point of the knife to Dave, pressed it against where he
judged his mate’s heart to be, and swore in the same way.
“Now,” he resumed, when the vow of secrecy had been thus solemnly taken,
“that’s done, an’ it can’t be undone, an’ we better go now an’ have a
look round the island.”
“We better look out an’ get some tucker for dinner, too,” ventured Dave.
“There’s nothing left except about three inches of crust an’ an inch an’
a half o’ jam.”
“Well, we’ll whack that now, an’ start fair,” suggested Tom. “I’m as
’ungry as ole Nick.”
“So am I,” agreed Dave. “I’m ’ungry all the time.”
It was true. The free, open-air, healthy life, the exercise and the
freshness acted like a tonic. They ate like cormorants, and felt like
trained pugilists.
Care cannot dwell long at the door of youth and health, and the wild and
gloomy impressions of the previous night faded rapidly from their minds,
especially as each was under a vow to his fellow not to mention the
subject.
They took their tomahawk and bows and arrows and set out.
The island was nearly a quarter of a mile wide, and perhaps something
more than half a mile long. Neither Dave nor Tom had ever been ashore
there before, so they proceeded cautiously, arranging as they went along
that in case they were surprised by any casual resident or visitor they
should separate and make back to camp by different routes.
This scheme, Tom Pagdin announced, would be sure to put possible pursuers
off the track.
“If anybody’s lookin’ for us,” he answered, “they’ll reckon on findin’
us both together, an’ if they come acrost only one set o’ tracks they’ll
reckon it’s somebody else.”
Dave did not question the logic of this argument. He had confidence in
his senior.
They might have gone about five hundred yards when both boys stopped.
Before them, plainly visible through the scrub, was a clearing, in the
centre of which stood a deserted hut.
To make sure that there was nobody hiding there, Tom made a detour and
crawled up through the long “bladey” grass till he got quite close.
After a careful survey he stood up and beckoned Dave to come on.
“Some cove’s been doin’ a bit of cultivating an’ give it up,” he
explained.
“It’s an all-right slab house,” cried Dave, exploring round. “Got a
chimney in the kitchen an’ a old Colonial oven, set on bricks. It’s an
all-right oven only the bottom’s burned out of it.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “an’ there’s two good rooms; they’ve left a table an’ a
couple of stools. I say, we’ll take possession of this place.”
“Hooray!” cried Dave, capering round the earthen floor. “I’m on.”
“I reckon it’s all right,” said Tom, enthusiastically. “We’ll call it the
Pirates’ Camp. I reckon we could stay ’ere twelve months an’ nobody would
find us.”
“There ought to be a well round somewhere,” remarked Dave, “that we can
get fresh water out of.”
“Let’s go an’ see,” shouted Tom. “This is all-right. I reckon if we ’ad
a gun we could use the cracks in the slabs for loop holes and stand a
siege.”
“What’s a siege?” asked Dave, whose education had been neglected.
“It’s this way,” explained Tom, sitting on the kitchen table (which
consisted of the top of a packing case nailed at the corners to four
stakes driven into the ground), “a siege is like this. When one side
takes up a position—”
Just here the stakes,—which had rotted in the ground, gave out, and Tom
and the top of the table came down together.
Dave laughed. Not just ordinary laughter, either. He sat down on the
floor on his hams holding his sides and laughing, and then he laid on
his back and kicked his heels over his head and laughed, until Tom,
discovering that he had broken no bones, got up and kicked him.
And even then, every time he thought about Tom clawing the air, and the
comical look of surprise on face, he laughed again.
They went round the site of the deserted homestead exploring. There was a
well about twenty yards from the back of the kitchen, and they got a tin
and attached it to a piece of rusty fence wire and dipped up some of the
water, and it looked clear and tasted good.
“There’s plenty of wood an’ water,” said Dave, “an’ them’s the main
things.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “an’ I spot a lemon tree with a lot of lemons on it.”
Dave spotted it at the same time, and they had a race for it.
There were plenty of lemons and they filled their pockets and chewed.
Anything in the shape of fruit is edible to the Australian bush boy. Tom
and Dave thought the lemons sweet until they discovered an orange tree
soon afterwards.
They sat under the orange, and filled themselves.
The original resident had evidently gone in for planting an orchard.
There were guavas and ripe mangoes, which had run wild, some banana
trees, and a lot of pineapple plants in bearing.
They found a charm about the exploration which kept them pleasured all
the afternoon.
Their delight was complete when they discovered that they could bring the
boat right up a little creek nearly abreast of the hut, and within less
than a hundred yards of it.
Tom declared that the place had been just made for a pirates’ camp. He
said he had no doubt that it was really occupied by pirates in days gone
by. It was pirates who had planted the orchard and dug the well, and
when he came to think of it, it stood to reason that they had left those
cracks in the slabs purposely, so they could stick their muskets out
through them and shoot when they were attacked. He even found traces of
gunpowder on the walls and outside, where the whitewash had fallen off,
he discovered the marks of bullets.
“Them fellars had a all right time,” said Tom; “they must ’a’ had
lashin’s o’ fights.”
“I say,” Dave asked, “was there ever any wimmen pirates?”
“No,” replied Tom, scornfully; “it wuz only men.”
“Well,” went on Dave, “there must ’a’ bin some women pirates here,
because here’s a piece of a woman’s dress an’ the busk of a woman’s
stays!”
“Where?” asked Tom, incredulously.
“Here,” replied Dave, rooting out the articles which had no doubt
appertained to the late resident’s wife or one of his grown-up daughters.
Tom examined them with the air of a detective.
“They’re women’s things,” he admitted; “but how did they get here?”
He thought a while.
“I know,” he resumed: “it was one of the beautiful captives they took
out of an Indiaman. She fell in love with the captain of the pirates an’
followed ’im through thick an’ thin. All the most beautiful captives
did. Then, when he was hard put, she saved the ship. Then the ship got
wrecked, an’ ’e swum ashore with ’is arm round ’er neck. Half of the crew
wuz drowned an’ the other half wuz saved, and they got in ’ere and built
this place an’ fortified it while they wuz buildin’ a new ship outer the
timber that wuz washed ashore. That’s how them things come to be ’ere.”
“But,” said Dave, “’ere’s a ole washin’ tub an’ a piece of washin’ board.”
“Well, couldn’t they ’ave come ashore out of the pirate’s ship?” asked
Tom.
“I didn’t know they had washtubs an’ things like that on pirate ships,”
pleaded Dave.
“Of course you don’t know—you don’t know nothin’ about these things. You
ain’t read nothin’ about ’em, but I ’ave; I’ve read stacks of books about
pirates. The ole man ’e uster make me read out of ’em, too, at nights.”
“I say!” exclaimed Dave, “we better get our swags up and bring the boat
round.”
“Yes, we better,” agreed Tom, “we got to hook round an’ pirate some
tucker, too, as soon as it grows dark.”
They went back to the landing-place and brought the boat up the creek.
Then Tom said they’d have to bake a damper with some of the flour he had
borrowed from the old man.
So he stripped a short sheet of bark off a tree with his tomahawk,
measured out about a pound of flour, wetted it, and began to roll the
damper. The paste was too thin first, and seemed to be trying to get away
from him. Dave received orders to stand by and pour on more flour gently.
And Dave let the bag slip and lost half the flour in the grass, and Tom
said, wrathfully, that he was the biggest fool of a pirate on the river,
and it seemed that he was never going to get any sense either.
At length the pirate captain evolved a sticky, stringy sheet of paste,
which looked more like variegated marble than anything else, and he raked
out the ashes and dropped it in and covered it over.
For about an hour the pirates kept raking the ashes off and covering
the damper up again, and then Tom pronounced the dish cooked. It was
afternoon, and they proceeded to have some four o’clock damper and tea.
“It’s all right damper,” said the chief architect; “only a bit burned on
the bottom. If you scrape the charcoal off the bottom, though, it’ll be
good.”
Dave absent-mindedly chipped the chunks of charcoal and cinders off the
lower side, and then he cut into the daily loaf and it cut queer. There
were streaks of dry flour, and streaks of wet dough, and what wasn’t
powder or paste was old Silurian rock.
“It don’t look none too good,” ventured Dave, doubtfully.
“It’s all right,” insisted the elder boy, “only a bit underdone in spot.”
Dave took a slice and toyed with it.
“It don’t taste like it was properly mixed up,” he said.
“Oh, it’s all right,” replied Tom. “It’s real good, I reckon, for the
first try. Shake the dry flour out, an’ cut the sticky part off and
scrape the black off the crust.”
“But it’s all dry flour an’ sticky part an’ crust,” argued Dave.
“Oh, dammit, then, throw it away!” exclaimed Tom, who had gotten a piece
in his hollow tooth. “You’re too soft for this piratin’ game, an’ the way
you whine an’ go on puts me off me feed, too.”
“Well, I’m dashed hungry,” persisted Dave.
“So’m I,” replied Tom. “We’ll take the boat an’ go acrost to the
mainland.”