"Than an Australian squatter does of dispersing a mob of aboriginals or kangaroos," said Clovelly.
Here Mrs. Callendar spoke up briskly. "I don't know what you mean by 'dispersing.'"
"You know what a kangaroo battue is, don't you?"
"But that is killing, slaughtering kangaroos by the hundred."
"Well, and that is aboriginal dispersion," said the novelist. "That is the aristocratic method of legislating the native out of existence."
Blackburn here vigorously protested. "Yes, it's very like a novelist, on the hunt for picturesque events, to spend his forensic soul upon 'the poor native,'—upon the dirty nigger, I choose to call him: the meanest, cruellest, most cowardly, and murderous—by Jove, what a lot of adjectives!—of native races. But we fellows, who have lost some of the best friends we ever had—chums with whom we've shared blanket and tucker—by the crack of a nulla-nulla in the dark, or a spear from the scrub, can't find a place for Exeter Hall and its 'poor native' in our hard hearts. We stand in such a case for justice. It is a new country. Not once in fifty times would law reach them. Reprisal and dispersion were the only things possible to men whose friends had been massacred, and—well, they punished tribes for the acts of individuals."
Mrs. Falchion here interposed. "That is just what England does. A British trader is killed. She sweeps a native town out of existence with Hotchkiss guns—leaves it naked and dead. That is dispersion too; I have seen it, and I know how far niggers as a race can be trusted, and how much they deserve sympathy. I agree with Mr. Blackburn."
Blackburn raised his glass. "Mrs. Falchion," he said, "I need no further evidence to prove my case. Experience is the best teacher."
"As I wish to join the chorus to so notable a compliment, will somebody pass the claret?" said Colonel Ryder, shaking the crumbs of a pate from his coat-collar. When his glass was filled, he turned towards Mrs. Falchion, and continued: "I drink to the health of the best teacher." And every one laughingly responded. This impromptu toast would have been drunk with more warmth, if we could have foreseen an immediate event. Not less peculiar were Mrs. Falchion's words to Hungerford the evening before, recorded in the last sentence of the preceding chapter.
Cigars were passed, and the men rose and strolled away. We wandered outside the gardens, passing the rejected guide as we did so. "I don't like the look in his eye," said Clovelly.