‘When I gets into the scrub, I hears the bell just ahead, an’ I hears, too, a few o’ them cussed birds a-strainin’ their throats, callin’ about, as if they hadn’t done enough through the night.
[55]
]‘Well, I follers the bell back’ards an’ for’ards, without seemin’ to get any nearer to the horses, till I was nigh sick o’ stumblin’ over logs; an’ o’ swearin’ what I wouldn’t do to ’em when I gets ’em, an’ o’ singin’ out for Towzer.
‘All of a suddent, the bell sounds not ten yards away in a patch o’ thick dogwood scrub, an’ as I makes off full trot, I nearly falls over somethin’ soft. Lookin’ down, I sees poor ole Towzer lyin’ there with his head caved in, and a bit o’ broken spear stickin’ in him.
‘My Colonial, mates! I tumbles fast enough then, when it were too late. Jumpin’ through the scrub to where I last heard the bell, I runs slap up agen six ugly black beasts o’ niggers, an’ one on ’em was just a-startin’ to shake the dashed bell, which was hangin’ roun’ his neck. Close to ’em lies my best horse, ole “Cossack,” dead’s a herrin’.
‘I takes it all in in a flash; an’ afore you could say “knife” I’d slung the bridle in their faces, and was makin’ tracks for the hut at the rate o’ sixty miles a hour—leastways it seemed so to me.
‘Whizz, whizz! come the spears; but the scrub was too thick, and ne’er a one touches me. Yellin’ like ole Nick, after me they tears, full split, but I show’s ’em good foot for it till I comes in sight o’ the hut, a-standin’ there so quiet-like, with the chimbly smokin’ away, an’ the door wide open.
‘Now, mates, what should make me, insted o’ rushin’ in an’ gettin’ the gun, an’ lettin’ the darkies know what [56] ]o’clock it was, rip right past the hut an’ shin up a big gum tree about twenty yards away? I can’t make out what come over me to do sich a thing. But so it were. An’ up I swarms to nearly the top limb as the murderin’ willians comes out on to the open. In another minute eight or nine others tumbles out o’ the hut, where they’d been waitin’ on chance I might git away from the fust gang, an’ they all gathers roun’ the ole gum, a-lookin’ up, for all the world like a lot o’ hungry dogs at a ’possum.
‘“Mo-poke, mo-poke!” sings out one, an’ another lot comes runnin’ up from the back scrub, just about where I should ha’ hit if the Lord hadn’t put it into my mind to take the tree for it.
‘But this pitchin’s terrible dry work, lads,’ suddenly broke off the narrator. ‘Come inside, an’ let’s have another long-sleever apiece, an’ then I’ll finish the yarn. Spite o’ them “mopokes” I’ve got a bit o’ stuff left yet.
‘Well, mates,’ went on Wilson, as the party resumed their seats, ‘the darkies throwed their spears, an’ slings their bommerangs, but it weren’t no use, I was too high up for ’em, and the nighest spear as come out of a couple o’ dozen, sticks in a good six foot below my limb. Seein’ this, one beggar gets the axe from the wood-heap. But she were old an’ blunt like her owner, ole Davies, an’ I soon see by the way they shapes as it’d take ’em a couple o’ years to fall me. For a while they niggles away at the big butt, turn an’ turn about, then jacks the contract, gruntin’ like a lot o’ pigs.