“Ah, my dear young friend! and so thou hast brought me these fish—ombres chevaliers, we call them in France. Are they not beautiful! What do you call them in England?”
“I have never been in England, Father; so I cannot tell you. And never before have I seen fish like these. They are new to me.”
“Ah, indeed, my son,” and the old Marist smiles as he motions me to a seat, “new to you. So?... Here, on this island, my sainted colleague Channel, who gave up his life for Christ forty years ago under the clubs of the savages, fished, as thou hast fished in that same mountain stream; and his blood has sanctified its waters. For upon its bank, as he cast his line one eve he was slain by the poor savages to whom he had come bearing the love of Christ and salvation. After we have supped to-night, I shall tell thee the story.”
And after the Angelus bells had called, and as the cocos swayed and rustled to the night breeze and the surf beat upon the reef in Singâvi Bay, we sat together on the verandah of the quiet Mission House on the hill above, which the martyred Channel had named “Calvary,” and I listened to the old man's story of his beloved comrade's death.
As Longmuir and I lay on our blankets under the starlit sky of the far north of Queensland that night, and the horse-bells tinkled and our mates slept, we talked.
“Aye, lad,” he said, sleepily, “the auld padre gave them the Breton name—ombre chevalier. In Scotland and England—if ever ye hae the good luck to go there—ye will hear talk of graylin'. Aye, the bonny graylin'... an' the purple heather... an' the cry o' the whaups.... Lad, ye hae much to see an' hear yet, for all the cruising ye hae done.... Aye, the graylin', an' the white mantle o' the mountain mist... an' the voices o' the night... Lad, it's just gran'.”
Sleep, and then again the tinkle of the horse-bells at dawn.
CHAPTER XVIII ~ A RECLUSE OF THE BUSH
The bank of the tidal river was very, very quiet as I walked down to it through the tall spear grass and sat down upon the smooth, weather-worn bole of a great blackbutt tree, cast up by the river when in flood long years agone. Before me the water swirled and eddied and bubbled past on its way to mingle with the ocean waves, as they were sweeping in across the wide and shallow bar, two miles away.