“Poor Tom had jist breath enough left to say ‘Black Swan,’ an’ then the blood bubbled out er his mouth, an’ he was dead, an’ his brother a-blubberin’ over him like a gal over her sweetheart. I let him blubber for a bit to ease hisself, but he was ser long about it that I gives him a nudge with my foot. ‘Come,’ says I, ‘Fred, git up—that ain’t no good,’ says I.
“‘No,’ says he, jumpin’ up, ‘that ain’t no good—but you hear me, Tom!’ An’ then he clinched his fist like the playactors, an’ swore that, if he iver cotched Black Swan, he’d cut him in two with a cross-cut saw.
“‘Sarve him right,’ says I, ‘but there ain’t much chance er that.’
“Black Swan was a black divil we’d called so ’cos of his gallus long neck. Wal, we cotched Tom’s horse, and Fred took the corpse back on it to the station, and buried his brother close ahind our hut. I can’t say I relished that azactly, nor the way Fred ’ud go an’ sit by the grave arter sundown, mumblin’ to hisself as if he was silly. He’d been a jolly chap afore that—not half as jolly as Tom, though. The hut was like a dead place when he was gone. All that Fred seemed to care about was to get a pop at the blacks. Wal, one day when we’d had a scrimmage with ’em, Fred hit Black Swan in the knee. He was a-hoppin’ off, boohooin’ like a babby, a one leg, but Fred was down on him in no time. I ’spected he’d blow his brains out right off, an’ have done wi’ him. But Fred knocked him down with the butt-end er his gun, an’ tied his hands an’ feet, an’ lugged him back to our hut, an’ kicked him into the skillion ahind.
“‘What are you going to do with that poor divil, Fred?’ says I, when we was havin’ our smoke arter supper.
“‘Niver you mind,’ says he.
“Wal, it worn’t no business o’ mine, an’ so I turned in. Next mornin’ the black was gone, an’ Fred didn’t show. Then I guessed what was up, an’ told the cove. Him and me rode down to the place where poor Tom was skewered, an’ there, right afore the grass tree, was the black, lashed atween two planks, an’ sliced through as neat as you’d cut a sangwidch. Fred niver showed arter that, an’ I worn’t sorry to be rid er his company, though, arter all, it were on’y a black feller.”
Prince Chummy was far less affected by this horrid story than Harry and Donald were. There is not much love lost between black fellows of different tribes; the tribes are not united by any feeling of common patriotism; but native Australian lads have the same kind of liking for the blacks that a young squire has for his peasant foster-brother.
“The cowardly English cur!” cried Harry, indignantly. “If they’d fought fair with spears and womeras, the Englishman would precious soon have cut his lucky.”
But before he left his brother’s station, Harry had learnt to think somewhat more harshly of the blacks.