THE WURLEY IN THE ROCKS
And yet there is no refuge
To shield me from distress.
Except the realm of slumber
And great forgetfulness.
—Henry Kendall.
QUICK as they were, the black woman was quicker.
She was lying full length on her face when Norah’s startled voice rang out across the camp. Almost with the first word she was on her feet, twisting to an erect position with a quick movement curious in one so ungainly. Like a flash, also, the child was running to her, screaming with sudden terror. The gin caught her up with a swift clutch, and in three strides had gained the shelter of the scrub.
“Oh, Wally, run!” Norah cried.
But Wally was running. His long legs took him across the grass so swiftly that he seemed to gain the scrub almost at the same instant as the lubra. Behind him came Jean and Norah, scarlet with excitement. They pulled up sharply.
There was no sign of any one. The spring that had its source near the plateau trickled out at the side, and the scrub grew more densely than anywhere else. It seemed to have swallowed up their quarry. Not even a broken or trembling branch or a mark in the bushes told where she had gone. They listened, their hearts thumping heavily.
Then, from the left, came the sound of a breaking twig, and Wally turned in its direction, and went crashing through the undergrowth, the girls at his heels. For a moment he feared that he was on the wrong track; then, with a great throb of relief, he caught a glimpse of a faded red print skirt, and ran wildly on.
Once he looked back with a quick call.
“Don’t get bushed if we miss each other. I’ll coo-ee!”
“Right!” Norah had no breath for more.
They ran madly through the scrub, dodging, twisting, scrambling among the saplings and bushes. The stones were the worst; they cropped out of the ground, often with a coating of dry lichen or dead leaves disguising their outlines, and it was almost impossible to dodge them, running at top speed, in the gloom of the trees. A dozen times the pursuers tripped and went sprawling over the unseen and unyielding obstacles, only to pick themselves up, bruised and shaken, to run harder than ever, to make up for lost time.
The black gin always kept before them. Sometimes they caught a glimpse of her red skirt, and once Wally saw her across a little cleared space, fleeing silently, with the child clasped to her breast; but generally she was out of sight, and they could only follow her by sound. She ran with all the stealthy cunning of her race, her bare feet making little noise when contrasted with the crashing of her pursuers, who shouted to her loudly and unavailingly to stop. Nor did she ever run in a straight line—like a hare she twisted and doubled, though always as if she had some definite end in view, for, despite her tortuous course, she always kept to the same direction. The child uttered no sound; the woman ran as though she had no burden.
Norah fell behind presently; not only was the pace too much for her, but she feared to leave Jean, who was lagging far in the rear. She waited for her to catch up, and they jogged on together, listening anxiously for Wally’s voice.
Wally had set his teeth, suddenly indignant at being outpaced for so long by a woman—“a black one at that!” he uttered, forgetting that no woman, save a black one, would have had the slightest chance of keeping ahead. The pride of the schoolboy, to whom none of his mates had been able to show the way on the football field, surged up in him, and he flung himself forward, shouting. He knew he had lost sight of Norah and Jean—and they must not be left to run the danger of getting “bushed.” The chase must end.
He was gaining yard by yard—the pad of flying bare feet came closer and closer. Then he heard a heavy fall, and a loud, piteous cry—a child’s cry—that sent the honest blood surging to his heart. He was almost upon the black woman as she picked herself up, clinging to the child—and then she doubled suddenly, twisting herself through a gap between two great boulders. Not quite quickly enough; had the boy been a dozen yards further off he might never have seen where she disappeared. But he was on her heels, following. Then he knew that the chase was over.
They were in a tiny triangular space, nearly filled by a “wurley” formed by roofing in the stones with boughs, and leaving a few upright ones as a doorway. The boulders hemmed it in. The place was hardly larger than a dog kennel at Billabong—searchers might have passed it a hundred times, never guessing that there was any space left among the masses of rock. It had evidently been inhabited a long while, for the ground was beaten hard, and it reeked with the “blackfellow” odour that is worse than the majority of smells. The black gin dived into the tiny hut, and faced about; Wally could see her fierce eyes gleaming—could hear her breath, loud, panting gasps. He was panting himself; the “Coo-ee!” he uttered, turning towards the direction where he had last seen the girls, quavered a little. He sent it echoing through the bush twice before an answer came. Then the boy’s heart gave a throb of relief as Jean and Norah came into view.
“Got ’em!” he said, indicating the “wurley” with a jerk of his hand. “Moses! can’t that lady run! I’d like to enter her for the Oaks! Are you girls all right?”
They nodded.
“Is it—is the kiddie——?”
“Blest if I know!” said Wally, laughing. “You said so, and so I ran. If it isn’t some one else’s youngster, then the lady in here has a mighty uneasy conscience on some other score, that’s all. But if you’ve given me that little jog-trot for nothing, young Norah——!” He broke off, endeavouring to look threatening.
“Why, I saw it laugh!” said Norah. “And it was the face of that photograph and Mrs. Archdale’s face rolled into one!”
“Never saw Mrs. Archdale with a face as black as that,” Wally rejoined. “You aren’t complimentary, Nor. Let’s have a look at them, anyway.”
But the black gin cowered back in her den, and refused to move. Persuasion and threats alike were unavailing. Finally Wally shrugged his shoulders.
“Awfully sorry to pull your house about your ears, ma’am,” he said. “But if you won’t come out, it’ll have to be. Look out, you girls—I shall stir up awful smells!”
He fulfilled his prediction as he pulled away the interlacing boughs—hygienic principles are not in vogue in an aboriginal “wurley.” It was pitifully scanty—a moment’s work sufficed to reveal the lubra and the child she grasped firmly. She tried to hold its face against her—but the baby wriggled free at the strange voices, facing the grave young faces.
Now that they were so close only a glance was needed to show that this was no black picaninny. A dark stain covered the child’s face and its legs and arms: but through it the features were those of the baby who had laughed to them from the blue wall of the little room at Mrs. Archdale’s. And there was no fear in the wide, dark eyes that met theirs—but rather an unspoken greeting, as though instinct told her that she was once more among her own kind. Norah held out her hand to her; but the black gin cowered back, holding the little body yet more closely.
“Mine,” she said; “that pfeller picaninny mine!”
“Qui s’excuse s’accuse,” said Wally, in his best French. “We never said she wasn’t, old lady—’twas your own guilty mind. That feller Mrs. Archdale’s picaninny, Black Mary.”
“Mine,” she said, sullenly, fear glowing in her eyes. “Baal you take her?”
“Baal I’ll leave her?” retorted Wally. “You give it me that picaninny, one time, quick!” He swung round at a step behind him. “Thank goodness, here’s Billy! I don’t think I’m much good at international complications.”
Billy grasped the situation in a few words. Then he addressed a flood of guttural remarks to the black gin, who shrank visibly from him, and answered him, trembling. He turned to Wally.
“That pfeller, Lucy,” he said, briefly. “She bin marry mine cousin, Dan. S’pos’n’ she have picaninny, it tumble-down (died) one-three time. So Dan he gone marry Eva.” He told the small tragedy of Black Lucy, unconcernedly, and the lubra listened, nodding.
“So that pfeller Lucy plenty lonely,” went on Billy. “Then, s’pos’n him meet li’l white picaninny down along a scrub, him collar that pfeller. That all. Every pfeller lubra want picaninny,” finished Billy in a bored voice, as if marvelling at the ways of womenkind.
There was a long pause. At last Wally spoke, hurriedly.
“Well—she knows we’ve got to take the kiddie, anyhow, doesn’t she?”
“Mine bin tell her that,” said Billy. “She bin say not.”
The black woman broke in, in a high, shrill voice.
“Not take her. That li’l pfeller, picaninny belongin’ to me.”
“Picaninny’s mother’s wanting her,” Norah said her voice pitying.
“Mine!” said the black woman, uncertainly—“mine!” She held the child closer, rocking her to and fro; and the children stared at her, not knowing how to solve the problem.
Billy had no illusions. He grasped the gin’s arm, and jerked her to her feet.
“Baal you be a fool?” he said, roughly. “S’pos’n’ p’liceman come, you bin find yourself in lock-up, plenty quick! P’lice bin lookin’ for you this long time ’cause you bin steal picaninny.”
She winced and shivered, looking at him with great stupid eyes, like an injured animal’s.
“You come and see my father,” said Norah, gently, putting one hand on her arm; and somewhat to their surprise, the gin came, making no further outcry, but holding the child to her. So they went back through the scrub. Billy led them swiftly, making but a short distance, in a straight line, of the long and tortuous race that the fugitive had led them. It seemed a very few minutes before they saw the canvas of the tent shining white through the trees, and heard voices beyond.
Quite suddenly, the black gin stopped. For a moment she held the child to her so savagely that the little thing cried out in pain. She muttered over her.
“My li’l pfeller picaninny!” she said. “Mine!” She turned to Norah.
“Mine bin good to her,” she said, thickly. “Baal mine ever beat that one!” Just for an instant she stood looking at them in dumb agony. Then she put the child down with a swift gentleness, and, turning, fled into the gloom of the Bush.