Fern Vale; or, the Queensland Squatter. Volume 3

by Colin Munro

Here then the party was located, anxiously waiting for the advent of the propitious event that would admit of their progression; and, on the evening we have discovered them to the reader, they were dragging out in listless idleness the remainder of an intolerably hot day, too much enervated to indulge in any exertion or conversation. While John Ferguson, who was possibly even more taciturn than his companions, was absorbed in his own gloomy thoughts, occasioned by the inauspicious result of his journey, he with his colleagues was suddenly aroused from his lethargy by a most unearthly sound in the close proximity of their camp. He instantly started to his feet, and was greeted with a burst of demoniacal laughter that made his very blood curdle in his veins.

Before him stood a being evidently human, but no more like his first prototype than Gabriel to Lucifer; a man wild and dishevelled in appearance; his eyes like balls of fire; and his face and other parts of his body, perceptible from his all but state of nudity, cut and bleeding. In the fitful light of the camp fire he had more the appearance of one of the eliminated shades of Hades than an habitant of this world. The startled and affrighted quartette, who had been interrupted by his unexpected appearance, gazed on the object with wonder, commiseration, and alarm; for his condition was speedily made palpable by his wild gesticulations and incoherent utterance. He was mad, and in that most to be deplored state of madness—delirium tremens.

John Ferguson advanced a few steps towards the man with the object of leading him to their temporary abode; but the maniac warned him off by a wave of the hand, and darted off again into the settling obscurity with the fleetness of an arrow. No human creature in such a condition could be permitted thus to rush to inevitable death by observers with any spark of Christian charity. John Ferguson and his companions felt this, and notwithstanding the darkness of the night, and the interminable nature of the bush around them, they instantly pursued the fugitive, being guided in his track by his fearful cries and yells.

The chase was tedious, and but for an accident might have been fruitless. The unnatural stimulus of madness lends powerful aid to the cartilaginous anatomy of its victims; so that, notwithstanding the evident fatigue that this wretched inebriate had sustained, his crural muscles performed their functions with even more force and facility than those of his athletic pursuers; and he continued to keep considerably in advance of them. But his course was providentially checked by a fall, that not only stopped him in his headlong career of destruction, but extinguished the treacherous spark that had stimulated his system, and then left him prostrate and perfectly paralysed. When his pursuers came up, and by the light of a "firestick" gazed upon him, they found him writhing in agony on the ground, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth, and actually biting the very dust in the intensity of his suffering. Nature could not long stand so fearful a tax as this without speedily succumbing. Reason had already been hurled from her throne by the arrogated sway of the incensed devils of debauch, and strength and consciousness had been expatriated by the usurpation; while life was all but extinguished. In this state he was borne by his rescuers back to their camp, and tended with every care they could devise; but when he awoke to consciousness, it was only to add the horrors of a raging fever to those of dementation; the more fearful on account of the inability of his attendants to afford him any assistance.

To truthfully describe his appearance, or his sufferings, as he lay rending the air with his fearful and impious imprecations, would not only be beyond our powers of portrayal, but would have none other effect than to sicken and disgust our readers. Nevertheless we feel constrained, fain as we would draw a veil over the scene, to continue our description for the furtherance of temperance and morality. The man remained for fully twenty-four hours in the state we have mentioned; when the exacerbation of his malady threatened to terminate his existence. No hope of relief could be entertained, for none was procurable in such a situation; even had the exhausted travellers been capable of seeking it. So that the wretched being's doom seemed inevitably sealed.

At this moment the Fern Vale party were startled by the sudden appearance of two others, who came seeking their comrade, and bore in their countenances almost as indelible a stamp of dissipation as that on the visage of the dying madman. From these new comers John learnt that the three had been travelling in company of a bullock dray, and being unable to proceed on their journey, through the loss of the greater portion of the team, they had all been engaged in a social wassail on some grog they had had in charge; and for a considerable period had all been more or less drunk. Their companion had been in a fit of delirium tremens for days; and while in a state of madness had suddenly gone, they knew not, nor at the time cared not, whither. But finding he did not return as they had anticipated even their besotted natures began to take alarm for his safety, and had induced them to go in search of him.

The two men now stood by the prostrate and paralysed form of their late robust companion, on whom, blunted and debased as were their own feelings, they could not gaze without emotions; and as they witnessed the glaring blood-shot eyes, rotating in their sunken and discoloured sockets, the pendent jaw which left the parched tongue protruding from the open mouth, the colourless emaciated cheeks which contrasted fearfully with the sore and livid lips, the generally wasted frame, the shaking though powerless hands imploring with the looks of distracted vision, and the ineffectual attempts to articulate the cravings for that very poison which was fast hastening a commingling of his putrid carcass with its native dust, their hearts sickened within them. They, however, knew the purport of his signs; and subdued as they were by the presence of the destroying angel, and chastened by the momentary visitations of compunction, their devotion to their idol, and their belief in its efficacies were such, that, even in the face of death, they exorcised their destroying spirit. Before their motion could be anticipated, or prevented by John Ferguson, one of the dying man's companions drew a bottle from his bosom, and applied it to the lips of the sufferer.

The taste of the exhilarating poison effected a transitory release of the bonds of death's victim. His hands clasped with a convulsive grasp the endeared destroyer of his life; and as the spirit flowed into the celiac channel of his wasted system, its consuming fire mantled his cheek with an unnatural erubescence, shot from his lustrous eyes, and imparted vigour to his inert frame. If the men's action had been noticed in time John would have no doubt prevented the drink being given, though it would have signified little; for no power on earth could have saved the victim, while possibly the draught of spirits which he had taken ameliorated his departing agonies. Be that as it may he had hardly swallowed it than fresh strength seemed to have been imparted to his frame. He then started to his feet, waved the bottle above his head with a fiendish laugh, and fell to the ground a corpse.

Can mortals ever be rescued from the fearful infatuation of drink? Can rational and sentient beings ever be brought to an abhorrence of that vile and bestial vice that equally destroys the intellect and degrades the body? or will reason ever inculcate in the mind of man the virtue of temperance, so as to use without abusing the gifts of a bountiful providence? Let an incorrigible drunkard stand before such a scene as we have attempted to describe, and for five minutes witness the agonies and death of a fellow inebriate; let his soul commune with the tortured spirit of the wretched victim of intemperance; let him witness the horrors of delirium tremens, that tear to pieces both body and life, and consigns them to the lowest depths of perdition; let him not only witness but feel the hell that burns up the very soul of the blind votaries of Bacchus; and let him witness the last struggle, the tortuous departure of the spirit, accompanied with the blasphemous ribaldry of the vile worm that, while insinuating its eliminated spirit before the judgment-seat of its Maker, dares to utter its arrogant defiance to the august and omnipotent Creator. Let him see this; tell him this is the consequence of intemperance possibly only indulged in moderately at an early stage, but growing by degrees as evil does grow, like the gathering avalanche accumulating in its downward progress until it reaches its final descent amidst universal destruction. Tell him also that a similar fate awaits every drunkard, and tell him, if he turns not away from his course of vileness, such will be his; then, if his conscience does not lead him to penitence through such a lesson, no human effort can save him.

The state of the weather, the mortification of the body, and its consequent immediate decomposition, made it imperative that no time should be lost in the interment of the corpse. The funeral obsequies were speedily performed, with little more ceremony than what would attend the burying of an animal, while nothing marked the spot where lay the bones that would in all probability be soon forgotten. The two men then took their departure, and we doubt not would soon return to their carouse; such is the quickness with which man forgets the visitations of the warning hand of God.