“Very well,” I said, putting down the brush; “I will not paint you to-day.” After that I had very little trouble with her, for the sight of the paint-pot made her as good as gold.
Bett-Bett loved polishing the silver, particularly the biscuit-barrel, which she called “little-fellow billy-can belonga biscuit.” One morning we were busy with it on the verandah, when a shout from the lubras of “Goggle Eye come on” made Bett-Bett scurry round the house like a young rabbit. It was always like this, and I began to wish the blacks would be less particular about falling in love with their relations.
As he came along, I saw he had a headache, for he had his wife’s waist-belt round his head. It is wonderful how quickly a wife’s belt or hair-ribbon will charm away a headache. It only fails when she has been up to mischief of any sort. Of course when a lubra’s belt does not cure her husband, he knows she has been naughty, and punishes her as she deserves. The lubras say that the belts do not always speak the truth, but the men say they do. Whichever way it is, they are mean, horrid tell-tales.
I told Goggle Eye I was sorry for him, and as he really looked ill, I gave him a dose of Epsom salts to help the belt-cure, and to save Mrs. Goggle Eye, the Queen, from a beating. He took it, and then sitting down under the verandah, nursed his head in his hands—a poor forlorn old king! As he sat with his back to me, I saw a peculiar mark on his shoulder that I had not noticed before, and wondered what it meant.
All blackfellows have thick, ugly scars up and down and across their bodies and limbs, but Goggle Eye had more than most men.
He told me once that he had made a great many of them himself with a stone knife. After his first corrobboree he had cut himself a good deal to show the tribe that he was a man now, and not afraid of pain. Of course when any near relatives had died, he had cut himself all over his arms and thighs, to let the Spirit know that he was truly and properly sorry. Whenever a blackfellow dies, all his friends cut themselves a little, but his near relations gash themselves terribly, because if the Spirit thinks they are not sorry enough, he will very likely send Debbil-debbils along to punish them for their hardness of heart.
After a good long “cry cry,” the wise men say that the Spirit is satisfied—I don’t know how they tell—and then everybody rubs hot ashes into the wounds. This heals them very quickly, but it makes the scars into big ugly weals that will never fade away.
Goggle Eye would talk about this as often as I liked to listen, but whenever I asked him the meaning of the marks on his back or shoulders, he always answered, “Nuzzing,” and either changed the subject or walked away.
Now when a blackfellow says “Nuzzing” like that, it simply means that he is not going to tell, for when he really does not understand the meaning of a law or custom, he answers:
“All day likee that,” which means that his fathers did it, and so must he, even if he has forgotten why.