We followed hard after, however, and managed to keep them in sight, until presently they broke into full speed and disappeared in the timber. They had sighted the game they were after, whatever it was. We rode in the direction they had taken, but, not seeing them, we pulled up to listen if they gave tongue. They did not, but somebody else did, without mistake; for we all at once heard most vociferous cries of distress from a human voice. We galloped up as fast as possible, and arrived just in time to save from destruction 'old man Toby,' one of our head-station blacks, who was walking quietly along when, he happened to hear the rush of the dogs behind him. He had instantly made for a tree, but was too late; for Rush, a dog lately brought from Melbourne, who was young, and unused as yet to blacks, sprang up as if he would tear him down. Old Toby, however, managed to keep on his feet, and resisted most gallantly. He had his yam-stick in his hand (a pointed stick used for digging up a small edible root which grows on the plains), and with this he met the rushes of the dogs, jobbing them with the sharpened end, and tearing them as badly as they had torn him. It was wonderful, during the half-minute or so that we were galloping up, to witness the coolness and dexterity, and, above all, the agility the old fellow displayed in avoiding the bounds the dogs made at him; while leaping to one side to avoid the onset of one, he would meet the other with a dexterous prod of his insignificant-looking weapon, which would send it sprawling with a wound in its side.
The stock-whips soon brought the animals to their senses; and we found, upon examining them all, that the dogs were the worst off for the encounter; for one had an eye wounded, and the other had a very ugly tear in his flank, which required to be sewn up.
CHAPTER III.
THE NIGHT ATTACK.
One evening, about ten days after our ride, I was sitting in the hut with young Harris. I had been engaged in cleaning my own gun, as well as a rifle belonging to the superintendent, who had ridden over on the previous day to the Edward River, and was expected home that night. While the barrels were drying before the fire—which occupied the centre of a hearth extending nearly the whole breadth of the hut—I put on my hat and walked down to the miamis of the blacks, two or three families of whom the superintendent allowed to camp in his paddock; the main body he kept at a distance. Old Toby's wounds were fast healing, a circumstance he seemed rather to regret, as he had been pensioned by three substantial meals daily from the kitchen, and was getting quite sleek and fat. I went from fire to fire, chatting with the occupants, Jimmy and Billy who, with their lubras, occupied two of them.
Polly and Kitty were two fine young women. One had a picanniny about twelve months old; the other a little boy of four or five years. The latter was coiled up fast asleep; but the other was kicking and sprawling in his mother's arms, while Jimmy, its father, on the other side of the fire, sat gravely cutting away at a boomerang he was fashioning, now and then stopping to notice the child, which was crowing at him, or to say, in an insinuating tone to me, 'Doc, doc! you carry 'moke um bacca?' Billy sat at the second fire close by, busy in preparing a new pipe he had got, and making it fit for black fellows' use. This process consisted in rubbing it thickly with fat, and tying a greasy rag round it, and burning it in the ashes. At the third fire were my old patient Toby, and two lads of eighteen or nineteen respectively, named Pothook and 'little Toby,' to distinguish him from 'old man Toby,' who was either his father or grandfather, I could not make out which.
The miami where these last were was at some little distance from the other two, and I thought I saw a fourth figure; but when I came up I found only the old man and the lads. I asked where the other man was, but they denied that any other man had been there. I could see, however, they were lying, and believed that, from the glimpse I had got, it was Bobby Peel, although he was without his European clothing, and had on a 'possum-skin cloak. I had distinctly seen his face by the light of the fire, as I quietly approached from the huts across the grass of the paddock; and, although I had not met him since the day of our first interview, his features were too strongly impressed upon my memory for me to forget them. I found shortly afterwards that he had excellent reasons for keeping out of the way.
After staying some time, and having my pockets emptied of the tobacco which was in them, I left and strolled on to the river. As I drew near its margin I heard a slight splash, as of a turtle startled by my step, and throwing itself into the water; but all was quiet when I reached it; no cry of duck or other waterfowl broke the stillness of the night; and the stream itself, fifty or sixty feet in depth, flowed on silently. The banks were very steep, and the surface of the water was some four yards beneath the level where I stood. There were no trees growing anywhere near; but the dead trunks of several left by former floods projected above the water, or rested against the banks, where, in the dim light, they resembled so many huge antediluvian reptiles. The opposite side of the river, which was 100 yards wide, was an island formed by an ana[[1]] branch, which left the main stream four miles above the paddock, and joined it again just below it. As I stood looking down on the dark waters, and up and down the reach, and observed that the blacks' fires were less than fifty yards off, I could not help thinking how easily their enemies, if still in the neighbourhood, could, under cover of the river banks, steal unawares upon them. I little thought that in the deep shade beneath the very spot I was then standing on, in the water at my feet, and with their heads concealed behind one of the tree trunks on the margin, already lay hidden the murderous band who, twice baffled, had stolen back for their revenge.
[[1]] Ana branch is a channel which, leaving the main stream above, again joins it below. These ana branches are very characteristic of Australian rivers, often forming networks of creeks, which supply vast tracks of country, back from the main stream, which would otherwise be destitute of water.
As I walked past them on my way back to the hut, the blacks began one of their monotonous chants, to which the two women beat time with sticks, which they struck together, their eyes sparkling and white teeth glistening in the firelight, as they shouted a merry 'Good-night, doc, doc,' to me.