Joe, in reply, grins fondly up at his friend and owner,—his white teeth glistening under the starlight as he answers, “Me know,”—and, taking a match from his pocket, proceeds to explain what to his mind appears to be the correct solution of the cause of meteoric phenomena. Striking his match and pretending to light an imaginary pipe, and putting on a slyly grave countenance, which in the darkness, however, is lost upon Claude, the boy says,—
“Me think great, big, one Master,”—pointing to the heavens,—“Him want um smoke um pipe. Strike um matche,”—acting the process meanwhile,—“and puff, puff,”—pretending to smoke. Then Joe makes a movement with his hand, and drops the match slowly to the ground, which, with its bright, smouldering end, gives a remarkably faithful representation of a shooting star on a very small scale.
Claude has often been struck before with the “smartness” of his diminutive henchman, and many a weary hour has the boy enlivened with his grotesque sayings and doings. But Angland is particularly interested in this last piece of evidence of Joe’s histrionic powers,—the more so since it is the first time the youth has expressed a belief in a supreme “great, one Master.” But just in order to prove that the aboriginal mind—as represented by the little specimen of the race that is now following Claude in his midnight march round the slumbering men and horses—is practical, as well as theoretical, perhaps we may be excused if we linger, for a moment, to relate another comical little instance of Joe’s ingenuity. It happened when Angland and his companions were on their way to Murdaro, and amused our hero a good deal at the time.
Little Joe, upon becoming “by right of purchase” one of Claude’s goods and chattels, had been presented with a suit of slop-made clothes and a tiny pair of boots. These latter shortly disappeared. Whether the boy sacrificed them as a parting gift to one of his numerous brothers—all male blacks of the same class—family stand in this relationship to each other—when the party left Mount Silver, or whether they were stolen, as Joe stated was the case, never transpired. But, anyhow, a few days afterwards, the black urchin, who did not relish being the only one of the party to ride barefooted, chanced upon an extremely ancient pair of what had once been elastic-sided boots lying upon the site of a deserted camp, and straightway determined to appropriate them to his personal adornment. Dismounting from the tall steed he is riding, two small black feet are carefully inserted into the sun-dried derelicts, and with a grin of satisfaction Joe prepares to mount. But as he lifts his right leg over the horse’s back, the enormous boot thereon—which is absurdly too large for the diminutive limb—tumbles off upon the ground. Again and again the boy tries, with the same result. The “boss” is calling, but it will never do to leave the treasure behind. Joe has no string to fasten it upon his foot, but he soon solves the problem. Running round to the other side of his steed, he seizes the stirrup-iron and securely jambs this into his prize; then mounting, he places his foot therein, and joins the other riders, looking very proud and haughty, with the dilapidated old leather coffins swinging at his horse’s girths, in ludicrous contrariety to the spindle-like shanks which, decked with short white trousers, rise from them.
The next afternoon Claude finds an opportunity, as old Williams and he ride side by side behind the trackers, to tell his friend of Billy’s discovery concerning Don’s supposed parentage.
“I bathed with the boys myself this morning,” Angland says, “and took the opportunity of checking what Billy told me about the mark on the youngster’s shoulder. It’s there safe enough.”
“You didn’t tell the boy about all this, nor Billy neither?” inquires Claude’s companion.
“No, of course. I don’t intend Don to know anything about it at present, and I told Billy to keep mum about it.”
“Ah! it’s what I call a rum yarn now,” remarks Williams, as he muses over what he has just heard. “If it had been any one else nor you had found the boy, I’d have said they had salted him against the chance of making a rise out of old Giles.”