“Victoria by the Grace of God,” read the old man, by the flickering firelight. “Victoria by the Grace of God, eh? Well, see here,” he continued, solemnly putting the summons in the fire and watching it blaze, “if Victoria by the Grace of God wants me, she can send for me—send a coach and six for Patrick Henry Considine, late Patrick Henry Keogh! And then I mightn’t go! There’ll be only one thing make me go where I don’t want to go, and that’s a policeman at each elbow and another shovin’ behind. I’d sooner do a five-stretch than take Peggy back again. And that’s the beginning and the end and the middle of it. And now I’ll wish you good night.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE SAVING OF CONSIDINE.
At grey dawn all the camp was astir. Hugh looked from under his mosquito-net, and saw old Considine over the fire, earnestly frying a large hunk of buffalo meat. He was without a trouble in the world as he turned the hissing steak in the pan. Two black gins in brief garments—a loin cloth and a villainously dirty pyjama-jacket each—were sitting near him, languidly killing the mosquitoes which settled on their bare legs. These were Maggie and Lucy, but they had degenerated with their surroundings. Tommy Prince was oiling a carbine, and one of the shooters was washing his face at a basin formed by scratching a small hole in the ground and pressing a square of canvas into the depression.
The Chinese skinner was sitting on a log, rubbing a huge butcher’s knife on a sharpening stone. Away up the plain the horses, about thirty or forty in number, were slowly trooping into camp, hunted by a couple of blackfellows, naked except for little grass armlets worn above the elbow, and sticks stuck through their noses. When the horses reached the camp they formed a squadron under the shade of some trees, and pushed and shoved and circled about, trying to keep the flies off themselves and each other.
Hugh walked over to Tommy Prince at his rifle-oiling, and watched him for a while. That worthy, who was evidently a true sportsman at heart, was liberally baptising with Rangoon oil an old and much rusted Martini carbine, whose ejector refused to work. Every now and then, when he thought he had got it ship-shape, Tommy would put in a fresh cartridge, hold the carbine tightly to his shoulder, shut his eyes, and fire it into space. The rusty old weapon kicked frightfully, after each discharge the ejector jammed, and Tommy ruefully poked the exploded cartridge out with a rod and poured on more oil.
“Blast the carbine!” said Tommy. “It kicks upwards like; it’s kicking my nose all skewwhiff.”
“Don’t put it to your shoulder, you fool,” said one of the shooters; “it’ll kick your head off. Hold it out in one hand.”
“Then it’ll kick my arm off,” said Tommy.
“No, it won’t; you won t feel it at all,” said the shooter. “Your arm will give to the recoil. Blaze away!”
“What are you up to with the carbine?” said Hugh.