“It won’t do, Jolly,” he says, in a half whisper, “you really mustn’t express your ideas upon this subject. It isn’t business-like to speak of your opinion against that expressed by a possible customer. You’ll have to get case-hardened, like I had to. We ain’t in England now, and you’ll have to close your eyes and ears to much out here. A new chum is especially the object of suspicion and dislike to many of the older colonists. ‘He’s come out to reap the harvests we have sown in labour and danger,’ they say; and consequently the figurative ‘new chum’ is hated. You can ask as many questions as you like, but don’t air your opinions on such subjects as you’ve broached to-night. You’ll find the colonists hospitable if you wink at their pet vices and sins, but act otherwise, and,—they’re the very devil. Now I’ve told you the square facts, and don’t you forget it.”
“Here’s Puttis!” cries the fat man by the window, at this instant; and the sound of several horses stamping, and the silvery jingling of bits, is soon after heard at the side of the house. Directly afterwards a small, well-made man, wearing enormous spurs (nearly a foot in length), and habilited in the semi-uniform of an Inspector of the Queensland Black Police, marches into the room. He is immediately noisily welcomed by all the men present. Mr. Jolly is, in due course, introduced to the new-comer, of whom he has heard all kinds of terrible tales since his arrival at the new township, and he cannot overcome his repugnance to the man who, he has reason to believe, is a paid butcher of defenceless women and children. He feels unable to stretch forward his hands to meet the slender white fingers extended towards him, and, pretending not to see them, bows stiffly and turns away. The bad impression he has already created is doubled in those who notice this action of the young man, and he is forthwith put down for certain as “an unmannerly, proud beggar of an Englishman.”
Inspector Puttis, as he stands talking to the men (all a head or more taller than he is), has a face that would immediately attract the attention of an artist or physiognomist.
The skin of the forehead and cheeks is pallid beneath the bronze of an open-air life. The “corrugator” muscles of the eyebrows are unusually well developed (a sign, according to Sir Charles Bell, of great power of thought and action combined with the savage and wild rage of a mere animal). The brows cover small, piercing, restless, blue-grey eyes, the lids of which are generally half-closed. The lips are thin, and kept tightly closed over brilliantly white teeth, except when talking or smiling; when expressing the latter emotion the lips are lifted so as to expose the canine teeth, which are large. The nostrils are full and slightly raised. In conversation, the Inspector’s words come short and sharp, in brief breaths of speech; and he has an uneasy way with him, as if always on the watch and impatient of inactivity. You feel, looking at him, instinctively that before you stands a man who is as incapable of a merciful action as he is of running away from an enemy,—a sharp, active, well-drilled man, who bites before he growls, and has led a life of wild exhausting excitement and danger for some years past. His black, tight-fitting jacket (ornamented with frogs) and buckskin riding breeches fit him to perfection; his leather gaiters are splashed with mud, and a dirty straw hat—the national head-dress of Queenslanders, and called by them a “cabbage-tree”—lies by him on the table. Inspector Puttis stands chatting to the men for a few minutes, and then turns to greet the little hostess as she trips in and pays her tribute of welcome and laudation to her “cousin the Inspector.” Handing him two telegrams presently, she says,—
“They came over from Nanga just after you left. As you said you’d be back I didn’t send them after you.”
“Thanks, awfully, Minta. You’ll excuse me; and—er—you gentlemen. May have to start at once. To-night. Never know. Deuce take these telegrams, I say.”
The little man bows an apology for opening the messages in their presence, and struts to the candle still burning on the piano, and tears open the first envelope. It is from the Chief-Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, and is brief and concise:—
“Proceed Cairns and Georgetown, with troop, to relieve Inspector Snaffle.”
“What the devil does this mean?” murmurs the police-officer to himself. Then a ghost of a smile plays over his face—a grim, half-hidden trembling of the nostrils and opening of the eyes—as he reads the second wire. It is signed “Lileth Mundella.”
“Want to see you at once. Palmer will see Commissioner about it. Bad news from Sydney.”