THE GERM GROWERS.
THE GERM GROWERS.
An Australian Story of Adventure and Mystery.
BY
ROBERT EASTERLEY and JOHN WILBRAHAM.
“His ...
Prosequitur dictis portaque emittit eburna.”
MELBOURNE:
MELVILLE, MULLEN, & SLADE.
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
1892.
[_All rights reserved._]
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preliminary 1
CHAPTER I.
Disappearances 6
CHAPTER II.
The Red Sickness 13
CHAPTER III.
At Sea 26
CHAPTER IV.
Overland 36
CHAPTER V.
Among the Blacks 58
CHAPTER VI.
Left Alone 86
CHAPTER VII.
The Cars 97
CHAPTER VIII.
Signor Davelli 131
CHAPTER IX.
The Seed Beds 167
CHAPTER X.
Leäfar 202
CHAPTER XI.
Escape 233
Conclusion 267
THE GERM GROWERS.
PRELIMINARY.
When I first heard the name of Kimberley[1] it did not remind me of
the strange things which I have here to record, and which I had
witnessed somewhere in its neighbourhood years before. But one day, in
the end of last summer, I overheard a conversation about its geography
which led me to recognise it as a place that I had formerly visited
under very extraordinary circumstances. The recognition was in this
wise. Jack Wilbraham and I were spending a little while at a hotel in
Gippsland, partly on a tour of pleasure and partly, so at least we
persuaded ourselves, on business. The fact was, however, that for some
days past, the business had quite retreated into the background, or,
to speak more correctly, we had left it behind at Bairnsdale, and had
come in search of pleasure a little farther south.
[Footnote 1: In North-west Australia.]
It was delicious weather, warm enough for light silk coats in the
daytime, and cold enough for two pairs of blankets at night. We had
riding and sea-bathing to our hearts’ content, and even a rough kind
of yachting and fishing. The ocean was before us—we heard its thunder
night and day; and the lakes were behind us, stretching away to the
promontory which the Mitchell cuts in two, and thence to the mouth of
the Latrobe, which is the highway to Sale. Three times a week a coach
passed our door, bound for the Snowy River and the more savage regions
beyond. Any day for a few shillings we could be driven to Lake Tyers,
to spend a day amidst scenery almost comparable with the incomparable
Hawkesbury. Last of all, if we grew tired of the bell-birds and the
gum-trees and the roar of the ocean, we were within a day’s journey
of Melbourne by lake and river and rail.
It was our custom to be out all day, but home early and early to bed.
We used to take our meals in a low long room which was well aired but
poorly lighted, whether by day or night. And here, when tea was over
and the womenkind had retired, we smoked, whenever, as often happened,
the evening was cold enough to make a shelter desirable; smoked and
chatted. There was light enough to see the smoke of your pipe and the
faces of those near you; but if you were listening to the chatter of
a group in the other end of the room the faces of the speakers were so
indistinct as often to give a startling challenge to your imagination
if you had one, and if it was accustomed to take the bit in its teeth.
I sometimes caught myself partly listening to a story-teller in the
other end of the room and partly fashioning a face out of his dimly
seen features, which quite belied the honest fellow’s real countenance
when the flash of a pipelight or a shifted lamp revealed it more
fully.
Jack and I were more of listeners than talkers, and we were usually
amongst the earliest who retired. But one evening there was a good
deal of talk about the new gold-field in the north-west, and a
keen-looking bushman who seemed to have just returned from the place
began to describe its whereabouts. Then I listened attentively, and at
one point in his talk, I started and looked over at Jack, and I saw
that he was already looking at me. I got up and left the room without
a sign to him, but I knew that he would follow me, and he did. It was
bright moonlight, and when we met outside we strolled down to the
beach together. It was a wide, long, and lonely beach, lonely to the
very last degree, and it was divided from the house by a belt of scrub
near a mile wide. We said not a word to one another till we got quite
near the sea. Then I turned round and looked Jack in the face and
said, “Why, man, it must have been quite near the place.”
“No,” said he, “it may have been fifty miles or more away, their
knowledge is loose, and their description looser, but it must be
somewhere in the neighbourhood, and I suppose they are sure to find
it.”
“I do not know,” said I; and after a pause I added, “Jack, it seems to
me they might pass all over the place and see nothing of what we saw.”
“God knows,” he muttered, and then he sat down on a hummock of sand
and I beside him. Then he said, “Why have you never told the story,
Bob?”
“Don’t you know why, Jack?” I answered. “They would lock me up in a
madhouse; there would be no one to corroborate me but you, and if you
did so you would be locked up along with me.”
“That might be,” said he, “if they believed you; but they would not
believe you, they would think you were simply romancing.”
“What would be the good of speaking then?” said I.
“Don’t speak,” he repeated, “but write, _litera scripta manet_, you
will be believed sometime. But meanwhile you can take as your motto
that verse in Virgil about the gate of ivory, and that will save you
from being thought mad. You have a knack of the pen, Bob, you ought
to try it.”
“Well,” said I, “let it be a joint concern between you and me, and
I’ll do my best.”
Then we lit our pipes and walked home, and settled the matter in a
very few words on the way. I was to write, but all I should write was
to be read over to Jack, who should correct and supplement it from his
own memory. And no account of anything which was witnessed by both of
us was to stand finally unless it was fully vouched for by the memory
of both. Thus for any part of the narrative which would concern one of
us only that one should be alone responsible, but for all of it in
which we were both concerned there should be a joint responsibility.
Out of this agreement comes the following history, and thus it happens
that it is told in the first person singular, although there are two
names on the title-page.
CHAPTER I.
DISAPPEARANCES.
Before I begin my story I must give you some account of certain
passages in my early life, which seem to have some connection with the
extraordinary facts that I am about to put on record.
To speak more precisely, of the connection of one of them with those
facts there can be no doubt at all, and of the connection of the other
with them I at least have none.
When I was quite a boy, scarce yet fifteen years old, I happened to be
living in a parish on the Welsh coast, which I will here call
Penruddock. There were some bold hills inland and some very wild and
rugged cliffs along the coast. But there was also a well-sheltered
beach and a little pier where some small fishing vessels often lay.
Penruddock was not yet reached by rail, but forty miles of a splendid
road, through very fine scenery, took you to a railway station. And
this journey was made by a well-appointed coach on five days of every
week.
The people of Penruddock were very full of a queer kind of gossip, and
were very superstitious. And I took the greatest interest in their
stories. I cannot say that I really believed them, or that they
affected me with any real fear. But I was not without that mingled
thrill of doubt and wonder which helps one to enjoy such things. I had
a double advantage in this way, for I could understand the Welsh
language, although I spoke it but little and with difficulty, and I
often found a startling family likeness between the stories which I
heard in the cottages of the peasantry three or four miles out of town
and those which circulated among the English-speaking people in whose
village I lived.
There was one such story which was constantly reproduced under various
forms. Sometimes it was said to have happened in the last generation;
sometimes as far back as the civil wars, of which, strange to say, a
lively traditional recollection still remained in the neighbourhood;
and sometimes it seemed to have been handed down from prehistoric
times, and was associated with tales of enchantment and fairyland.
In such stories the central event was always the unaccountable
disappearance of some person, and the character of the person
disappearing always presented certain unvarying features. He was
always bold and fascinating, and yet in some way or other very
repulsive. And when you tried to find out why, some sort of inhumanity
was always indicated, some unconscious lack of sympathy which was
revolting in a high degree or even monstrous. The stories had one
other feature in common, of which I will tell you presently.
I seldom had any companions of my own age, and I was in consequence
more given to dreaming than was good for me. And I used to marshal the
heroes of these queer stories in my day-dreams and trace their
likeness one to another. They were often so very unlike in other
points, and yet so strangely like in that one point. I remember very
well the first day that I thought I detected in a living man a
resemblance to those dreadful heroes of my Welsh friend’s folk-lore.
There was a young fellow whom I knew, about five or six years my
senior, and so just growing into manhood. His name, let us say, was
James Redpath. He was well built, of middle height, and, as I thought,
at first at least, quite beautiful to look upon. And, indeed, why I
did not continue to think so is more than I can exactly say. For he
possessed very fine and striking features, and although not very tall
his presence was imposing. But nobody liked him. The girls especially,
although he was so good-looking, almost uniformly shrank from him. But
I must confess that he did not seem to care much for their society.
I went about with him a good deal at one time on fishing and shooting
excursions and made myself useful to him, and except that he was
rather cruel to dogs and cats, and had a nasty habit of frightening
children, I do not know that I noticed anything particular about him.
Not, at least, until one day of which I am going to tell you. James
Redpath and I were coming back together to Penruddock, and we called
at a cottage about two miles from the village. Here we found a little
boy of about four years old, who had been visiting at the cottage and
whom they wanted to send home. They asked us to take charge of him and
we did so. On the way home the little boy’s shoe was found to have a
nail or a peg in it that hurt his foot, and we were quite unable to
get it out. It was nothing, however, to James Redpath to carry him,
and so he took him in his arms. The little boy shrank and whimpered as
he did so. James had under his arm some parts of a fishing-rod and
one of these came in contact with the little boy’s leg and scratched
it rather severely so as to make him cry. I took it away and we went
on. I was walking a little behind Redpath, and as I walked I saw him
deliberately take another joint of the rod, put it in the same place
and then watch the little boy’s face as it came in contact with the
wire, and as the child cried out I saw quite a malignant expression of
pleasure pass over James’s face. The thing was done in a moment and it
was over in a moment; but I felt as if I should like to have killed
him if I dared. I always dreaded and shunned him, more or less,
afterwards, and I began from that date to associate him with the
inhuman heroes of my Welsh stories.
I don’t think that I should ever have got over the dislike of him
which I then conceived, but I saw the last of him, at least Penruddock
saw the last of him, about three months later. I had been sitting
looking over the sea between the pier and the cliffs and trying to
catch a glimpse of the Wicklow Mountains which were sometimes to be
seen from that point. Just then James Redpath came up from the beach
beyond the pier, and passing me with a brief “good morning,” went away
inland, leaving the cliffs behind him. I don’t know how long I lay
there, it might be two hours or more, and I think I slept a little.
But I suddenly started up to find it high day and past noon, and I
began to think of looking for some shelter. There was not a cloud
visible, but nevertheless two shadows like, or something like, the
shadows of clouds lay near me on the ground. What they were the
shadows of I could not tell, and I was about to get up to see, for
there was nothing to cast such a shadow within the range of my sight
as I lay. Just then one of the shadows came down over me and seemed to
stand for a moment between me and the sun. It had a well-defined
shape, much too well defined for a cloud. I thought as I looked that
it was just such a shadow as might be cast by a yawl-built boat lying
on the body of a large wheelbarrow. Then the two shadows seemed to
move together and to move very quickly. I had just noticed that they
were exactly like one another when the next moment they passed out of
my sight.
I started to my feet with a bound, my heart beating furiously. But
there was nothing more to alarm the weakest. It was broad day. Houses
and gardens were to be seen close at hand and in every direction but
one, and in that direction there were three or four fishermen drawing
their nets. But as I looked away to the part of the sky where the
strange cloudlike shadows had just vanished, I remembered with a
shudder that other feature in common of the strange stories of which I
told you just now. It was a feature that forcibly reminded me of what
I had just witnessed. Sometimes in the later stories you would be told
of a cloud coming and going in an otherwise cloudless sky. And
sometimes in the elder stories you would be told of an invisible car,
invisible but not shadowless. I used always to identify the shadow of
the invisible car in the elder stories with the cloud in the later
stories, the cloud that unaccountably came and went.
As I thought it all over and tried to persuade myself that I had been
dreaming I suddenly remembered that James Redpath had passed by a few
hours before, and as suddenly I came to the conclusion that I should
never see him again. And certainly he never was again seen, dead or
alive, anywhere in Wales or England. His father, and his uncle, and
their families, continued to live about Penruddock, but Penruddock
never knew James Redpath any more. Whether I myself saw him again or
not is more than I can say with absolute certainty. You shall know as
much as I know about it if you hear my story to the end.