“What are you all about,” cried a third. “Out with the dogs and after them! Make chase before it is too late!”
“A decoy! a decoy!” exclaimed the farmer. “Now I am certain that mine is a marked place. These savages have driven down the emus before them, to tempt us men out to hunt, and they are crouching near to fall on while we are away.”
He was as bold, however, as he was discerning. He left three or four men to guard the women and stock at home, and set off, as if on a sudden impulse, to hunt emus with the rest of his company, determining to describe a circuit of some miles, (including the spot whence the smoke arose) and to leave no lurking place unsearched. Frank went with him. Castle insisted on following his usual occupation on the downs, declaring himself safe enough, with companions within call, and on an open place where no one could come within half a mile without being seen. This was protection enough against an enemy who carried no other weapons than hatchets and pointed sticks, hardly worthy of the name of spears.—Harry remained, of course, with his bride.
The day wore away tediously while the home guard now patrolled the premises, now indolently began to work at any little thing that might happen to want doing in the farm-yard, and then came to sit on the bench before the door, complaining of the heat. The women, meanwhile, peeped from the door, or came out to chat, or listened for the cry of the dogs, that they might learn in which direction the hunting party was turning.
“Ellen,” said her husband, “I do wonder you can look so busy on our wedding day.”
“O, I am not really busy! It is only to drive away thought when you are out of sight.”
“Well then, come with me across the road,—just to our own cottage, and see how pretty it was made for us to have dined in to-day, if all this had not happened. Frank was there after you left it last night; and there is more in it than you expect to see.—Now, don’t look so afraid. It is no further than yonder saw-pit; and I tell you there is not a hole that a snake can creep into that we have not searched within this hour.—I do not believe there is a savage within twenty miles.—O, the baby!—Aye. I suppose it dropped from the clouds, or one of the dogs may have picked it up in the bush. ’Tis not for myself that I care for all this disturbance: ’tis because they have spoiled your wedding day so that you will never bear to look back to it.”
Ellen wished they were but rid of their black foes for this time, and then she should care little what her wedding day had been. They said that one sight of a savage in a life-time was as much as most settlers had.—She must step in passing to see what ailed the poor infant, which was squalling in much the same style as if it had had a white skin;—a squall against which Ellen could not shut her heart any more than her ears.
“I must take it and quiet it,” said she. “I can put it down again as we come back in ten minutes.”
So lulling and rocking the little woolly-headed savage in her arms, she proceeded to her own cottage, to admire whatever had been suggested by her husband, and added by her neat-handed brother.