LEAVING THE VALLEY.
For an instant the two lads lay where they had stumbled together on the
bank, but the next they sprang to their feet and rushed to the edge of
the cliff, and kneeling down looked over. For a few seconds the roar of
the great volume of escaping water and the heavy rolling of the rocks
and stones borne along in its current boomed in their ears, but this
soon ceased, and only the usual noise of the falling cascade could be
heard. The pool could not be refilled, as the opening on the far side
of it had not been closed up again, and through this gap the stream
flowed out into its old, worn channel.
Four of the _myalls_ lay dead and mangled among the stones beneath the
fall, and the body of one lay jammed across the opening in the rocks,
through which the water flowed, with his long black hair streaming in
the current like a dusky weed. One man only remained alive, and he was
bruised and cut and bleeding. He was dragging himself slowly and with
difficulty out of the rushing stream, and was evidently so badly hurt
that he could hardly stand.
"Oh, Alec, isn't it awful?" said Geordie, with a shudder, as he looked
down. "And to think that we have killed those five men."
"It was in self-defence; they would have murdered us without
hesitation."
"Yes, I know. But I wish I were at home; I have had enough of death."
"Let us go down and see what we can do for the one fellow that is
left."
So saying, the boys descended from the cliff. Both of them were greatly
affected at the work they had had to do in self-defence; they were not
hardened to the sight of death, and to have thus swept five strong men
from life into the black and unknown sea of death was very terrible to
them. George, who was more emotional than his brother, was very pale;
the intense excitement and enormous physical strain that he had
undergone in the last few moments had quite unnerved him. He could
hardly walk, but he made a determined effort and pulled himself
together. Perhaps what did more to restore him to his usual state, than
his own determination to be himself, was the sight that he and Alec saw
as soon as they reached the foot of the cliff.
The one half-stunned _myall_ that was still alive had managed to get
out of the stream, and was hurrying, as fast as his wounded condition
would let him, towards the valley, and close behind him was Murri in
full pursuit with _waddy_ in hand. They could see at a glance that
Murri meant killing this man. They both of them shouted at the top of
their voices to stop him, and, rather to their surprise, he stood
still. He probably thought that Alec and George wished to kill the man
themselves, for as Alec came up to him he handed him his _waddy_, and
said--
"Along um side o' head, bail um top, yo hit him."
All that Alec vouchsafed in reply was--
"Get out of the way, you brute; I am not going to kill the man."
It was very evident that the _myall_ thought very much the same way as
Murri, for as Alec and George caught him up, just round the bend of the
gully, he turned on them savagely like a wounded animal at bay, meaning
to sell his life as dearly as possible. The ground was covered with
sand and loose shingle just there, for after storms the swollen stream
swept over it. The Wyobree was a plucky fellow, for although badly hurt
and weakened by loss of blood, by great drops of which, indeed, he
could be traced all the way from the waterfall, he showed a bold front,
and manfully offered fight. The boys could not help admiring his savage
valour as, thus weakened, he stood up to his two foes.
The lads could see that they would be unable to make him believe they
meant him no harm, so, not giving him time to strike a blow, they
sprang on to him from both sides at once and easily overpowered him. He
struggled and kicked and fought as long as he could, but the boys held
him down without difficulty until Murri came up, whom they made tell
the _myall_ that they would not hurt him.
"What must we do with the creature now that we've got him? I can't see
why you didn't let him quietly sneak off," said George.
"If we had not caught him he would have been home in no time, and we
should have had the whole tribe on to us before we knew where we were."
"But we don't want to take home prisoners of war as well as plunder,"
said Geordie, with a nod of his head towards the end of the gully where
the gold was.
"I know we don't, but we will keep this gentleman--pretty fellow, isn't
he?--till we have caught the horses and are quite ready to start, and
then we can let him go."
"In the meantime we'll take him to the humpie and bandage the poor
beggar's head up. That cut would have knocked most men over, but these
black fellows do stand pain wonderfully. Come along, old ugly," said
Geordie, putting his hand under the man's arm and helping him to rise.
Between them, and followed by the wondering Murri, they led the _myall_
to the humpie, and George, who felt all right again directly that there
was anything for him to do, managed to tie up the gash on the side of
the man's head, from which a great stream of blood was pouring. He was
not particularly clever at that sort of work, and the bandage was
doubtless a clumsy one, but it stopped the bleeding, and that was the
main point.
The utter ingratitude and treachery of these Australian _myalls_ were
shown very brutally by this fellow whilst George was doing what he
could for him. Having dropped one of the strips of the flannel shirt he
had torn up for bandaging, Geordie stooped to the ground to pick it up,
and the _myall_ instantly aimed a deadly blow at the back of his head
with a short, heavy _nullah_, which the boys had not removed from his
girdle, and which he snatched from his thigh. But Alec, who was
standing by his left hand side, saw the movement of his hand, and
before the blow could descend he had struck the man to the earth with
one blow of his fist.
"You infernally ungrateful brute!" he shouted, livid with passion at
the dastardly fellow.
"Good gracious, Alec, whatever's the matter?"
"Why, this black demon tried to beat your brains out the instant you
stooped down. I believe Murri is right after all. I've a good mind to
put a bullet through his wicked head."
"Oh, no, you haven't. Loose him, Murri," for that worthy fellow had
pounced on him and was nearly throttling him with his hands. "You know
what they are well enough; they are born and bred and live in treachery
and cunning. They are like dingoes or snakes in that respect."
"Yes, and deserve equally to be shot with those beasts."
"But they are men, remember."
"Well, I wouldn't lay another finger on him if I were you. Let the
brute bleed."
"Very well," said George, composedly, sitting down, for he knew
perfectly well that he only had to wait a minute for Alec to cool for
him to think very differently.
After a moment or two had passed without a word from either, during
which the _myall_ sat sullenly and silently with the blood flowing
from his wound, Alec said, in rather an ashamed voice--
"I say, Geordie, we can't let that beggar bleed to death."
George sprang up with a glad face.
"I knew you thought so. I only said 'very well' because I was sure of
it, and because I can't bear to act as though I thought I were a better
fellow than you, old man. Come on, give us the bandage."
George very soon had completed his surgical work, and the wounded man
sat without offering to move hand or foot, having failed in his one
attempt at vengeance.
"Give him a billy of water to drink, and then tie his feet together
with this strap and his hands behind his back, so that he can't get
away whilst we are catching the horses."
Murri carried out Alec's instructions, tying the knots with much
vindictiveness, grumbling to himself all the time that it would be
better to kill the fellow at once and save all this bother. The
antipathy that all partly civilised Australian natives feel for those
that are still quite wild and savage is one of the strangest results of
their progress, and it was this feeling on Murri's part that prompted
him to urge the killing of the _myall_ upon the boys.
Leaving the wounded man safely bound in the humpie and in the care of
Como, who had returned from the hiding-place to which he had flown at
the approach of the _myalls_, the boys and Murri went down the valley
in search of the horses. It took them some little time to find them,
for, although they all were hobbled, they had managed to ramble to a
good distance, and having been without work for the last week or ten
days, and having had plenty of good feed all the time, they were all
rather wild and difficult to overtake. It would have taken them a much
longer time had not Alec caught a glimpse of Amber, and calling to him
by name the docile animal recognised his voice, and came shambling up
to him as quickly as his shackled feet would let him move.
Alec took the hobble from the horse's feet, having first put on his
bridle, which he had brought with him for the purpose, and lightly
sprang on to Amber's back.
"Hurrah! I feel I am myself again now that I have a horse between my
legs. I've never been so long without mounting a horse since I first
learned to ride."
"Don't sit grinning there, then, but just head the other horses round
towards the end of the gully and let me have one too."
Alec Law could ride a horse bare-backed almost as comfortably as he
could a saddled one, and he cantered off after the other horses,
sitting erect and graceful as easily and naturally as though his feet
were in stirrups. Geordie looked after him admiringly as he rode along
in the sunshine; he might fairly have compared him with those Greek
horsemen who live for ever in the marble of the Parthenon frieze had he
ever seen or known anything of those most beautiful and gracious of
riders, but, unfortunately, he was quite ignorant of them and of Greek
art, too, so the opportunity for a beautiful simile was lost.
As the three other horses were all hobbled, Alec easily overtook and
turned them, and a short time after Amber had given himself up to his
proud servitude they were all bridled and led to the humpie. There the
boys tied them up whilst they completed their preparations.
There was little to be done in the way of packing, for their luggage
was of the scantiest description, and nearly all the carefully hoarded
provisions were exhausted. Still, there were the nine shot bags of gold
to be tied up somehow and secured to the saddles of the horses, for
although the pack saddle was almost empty they could not load the one
horse with all the great weight of gold.
"I'm blessed if I know what to tie up the mouths of these bags with.
Here is every one of them gaping and showing his golden teeth, and we
can't carry them like that," said Geordie.
"Oh, here's the infant Solomon at fault at last!" said Alec, addressing
an imagined audience. "I am glad that there is some one thing you have
forgotten, most sapient brother; I don't feel quite so small as I
should have done had you remembered everything we wanted, down to bits
of string. Nay, be not thus cast down," he went on, theatrically, for
his spirits had risen to a high pitch again now that things were
successful once more. "What a pity that the lovely Murri doesn't wear
stays, we might have used the laces."
"The infant Solomon, as you cheekily call him, is himself again," said
Geordie, with a sudden laugh, as Alec's words suggested an idea to his
quick wit, "and thus he reasserts his supremacy over Alexander, the
dullest of his subjects." And then, as Alec did not understand him, he
explained, "The _myall's_ kangaroo sinew girdle, you old muff."
Returning to the humpie for the purpose, they took the unfortunate
captive's girdle from him without the least hesitation and returned to
the fall. They had taken the dead bodies of the men from the water and
laid them in the shadow of the cliff, and all of them still had their
belts on, but a strange feeling, they did not quite know of what,
prevented the lads from robbing the dead.
The tough sinew which they obtained by untwisting the _myall's_ belt
answered their purpose admirably, and with it they succeeded in
securely tying and sewing up the mouths of the bags. They loaded the
pack-horse with six of these precious little sacks, and secured one on
to each of the other horses. The rest of their packing, when this most
important part was finished, only took them a few minutes, and, taking
a last look round to see that they had left nothing behind them, and as
a sort of farewell to the place where so much had happened to them,
they mounted their horses. Before they left the humpie for the last
time, they untied the _myall_, who had never once moved from the
position in which they had placed him, and told him he might go.
Looking half ashamed of himself, as young folk do if detected in a
kindness, Alec gave the black fellow a strong knife that he always
carried with him, and said apologetically to Geordie as he did so--
"I know it is silly of me, but you know I was such a brute to the
fellow just now."
George had pretended not to see what his brother was doing, but when he
spoke to him he said,
"Don't make excuses, old fellow. Give him what you like. We're taking
thousands of pounds worth of gold away with us, and I can't help
feeling a bit that it is their property somehow."
The _myall_ said nothing as he took the knife, and hardly deigned to
look at it; but the last thing the boys saw of him, as they rounded a
bend in the valley, was that he was carefully examining his new
possession.
The sun was high in the heavens, for it was some time past noon, as,
laden with the gold they had come to seek, and in the gaining of which
they had endured so much, they left the Whanga valley. Ten days before
this they had ridden into the valley worse than penniless, because so
much in debt; and now they were leaving it with gold enough to pay off
all they owed and to put the run in thoroughly good order.