CHAPTER XXI.
FATE’S AVENGING HAND.
“Thou hast said well; for some of you there present,
Are worse than devils.”
The Tempest.
AKING advantage of the storm whose parting fusillade has left Claude hors de combat for the time being, Manager Browne’s “rounding-up” party, under the skilful generalship of Inspector Puttis and Sub-Inspector Morth, has completely invested the native village upon the rocky promontory.
It is made up of strange constituents, this murderous shooting party. Squatter J.P.’s are there; youthful “rouse-abouts,” some of these youngsters only a few years released from the sanctified thraldom of a Christian home in the old country; reckless, godless stockmen; a colonial legislator, who has made a name by howling for separation from England; and numerous blacks, oiled, naked, and anxious for their work to begin.
There, in the darkness, around the unconscious villagers, amongst wet, dripping rocks and slimy brushwood, crouches a bloodthirsty circle of Native Constables, naked, save for a cartridge-belt and a red band round the head, and armed with Snider carbines and tomahawks; and with them are a number of no less sanguinary white men.
Regardless of the majestic fury of the roaring elements overhead, of the heavy, drenching rain, of dangerous snakes and poisonous thorns, and with the fierce, sweet love of slaughter warming each individual’s heart with its terrible excitement, the cruel cordon has shrunk its wreath of death nearer and nearer around its slumbering prey; and now some thirty pair of eyes are watching the small glimmer of the black camp-fire, and thirty fingers itch to pull the smooth, cold triggers against which they rest.
On all sides is the noisy dropping of water from the leaves, and occasionally a dead bough, sodden with moisture, and thus suddenly grown heavy, breaks from its parent tree, and crashes through the underwoood with startling echoes.