“No, very few. Two or three families, I believe. They used to be in one of the aboriginal settlements, and sometimes they go back there in the cold weather; but they won’t stay there when the spring comes, and they say two or three camp in the hills all the year round. Sometimes they come down to Atholton and hang about the township for a week or two begging for food and old clothes; but they are a perfect nuisance, and they’d steal your very clothes-lines! So everybody hunts them, and after a while they clear out.”
“Do they come out here?”
“It’s a bit far from the township for them to come much,” Mrs. Archdale answered. “One young darkey, who calls himself Braggan Dudley, visits us occasionally, and tries to sell us very badly-made boomerangs; and his old mother makes rush baskets rather well. I buy the baskets, and scorn the boomerangs. But last time Mr. Braggan came he helped himself to one of Jack’s hats. Unfortunately for him, Jack happened along at the moment, and made things lively for him with his stock-whip; so I don’t fancy we shall see much of the gentleman in future. Not that you can tell—they have cheek enough for anything.”
“I hope we’ll run across some of them,” Jean said. “I haven’t seen any Australian blacks.”
“Don’t get excited over the prospect,” Mrs. Archdale told her. “They may have been worth seeing when they dressed in paint—not that they often wore so much as that!—and roamed the forest before the white people came; but in their present state of half civilization they are as miserable a set as you could imagine. I haven’t met any that are not whining, thieving, pitiful creatures—filthy beyond imagination, too, most of them. There used to be a woman in the ranges of a rather better type—she had been employed as a housemaid on one of the stations, and had learned some decent ways, though, of course, she ran off and married a blackfellow. But she must have gone back to one of the settlements, I fancy; at any rate I haven’t heard anything of her for two years or more. I’d like to know what became of Black Lucy; she wasn’t at all a bad sort.”
Mr. Linton, arriving with the boys at an early hour, had more to say on the subject of the blacks.
“Green—the storekeeper—tells me it won’t be safe to leave our camp unprotected,” he said. “Those wandering natives are a perfect nuisance—there’s nothing they won’t steal. That ends Master Billy’s chance of getting to the top of the peak. He’ll have to stay and mind camp, poor chap. Still, he’ll think himself terribly important, and if any of his dusky brethren should come along he’ll quite enjoy hunting them off; so he’s not altogether to be pitied.
“Was the hotel bad?” Norah inquired.
“Don’t allude to the hotel!” Wally said. “We’ve had a busy night, and we’re all soured—and sore!”
“Oh, you poor souls!” Norah said. “Did they feed you decently?” At which Jim and Wally gave vent to a simultaneous groan, charged with bitter recollection.