‘That camp scene, before the moon rose, was one only to be found in a new land. The Paroo, unlike the Warrego, is not famed for heavy timber; still immense eucalypti border lagoons like the Tthulajerra. After our spare and simple meal I felt indisposed to sleep. I lighted my pipe, and, stretched on my rug, lay long in thought and reverie. The blazing camp fires illumined the silent giants of the wilderness from root to topmost branch. In the firelight the smooth white bark of the limbs and stem had a deathlike appearance, in keeping with the gruesome feelings naturally engendered by a “man-hunt.” I could scarcely restrain myself from peopling the ghastly outspread limbs with hundreds of victims. I thought I saw before me the African “death-tree,” while the black figures of the naked troopers, flitting from fire to fire, favoured the illusion. They seemed to be awaiting the fall of the hideous fruit, and the furnishing forth of the feast. Mr. Bothwell, not being anything beyond a very practical and efficient Government officer, had gone to sleep. He was a good doer, and sleeping was no trouble to him. When the moon rose the morbid fancies were dispersed, and as the last dark form sank down seemingly into the earth I slept.
‘After catching and destroying Hutkeeper about five hundred times, and being murdered by that relentless savage in every conceivable manner, I awoke, about 4 A.M., to find that a thick impenetrable fog lay nearly o’er “wood and wold.” I replenished the dying fire, and not feeling inclined to sleep more, sat silent and brooding till the fog lifted, and one by one the shrouded forms came forth from the shadowy veil, like lost years through the mists of memory.’
‘And yet people say there is no romance in a new country!’ exclaimed Mr. Neuchamp, who, the best of created listeners, from his largely developed gift of sympathy, had eagerly drunk in every word, so manifestly enjoying the narration that Brandon, an imaginative and poetical though generally reserved man, had been unconsciously stimulated into a fuller development of the surroundings of his weird tale than under ordinary circumstances he would have thought possible. ‘No poetry? No dramatic position? What a picture for an artist: a solitary figure in that gray silent dawn, by a dim smouldering fire; the careless savage troopers; the tranquil officer, calm but remorseless as a Roman centurion!’
Brandon continued, musingly—
‘Tree after tree stands forth, slowly, as if painted by an invisible artist upon a canvas of mist. The foreground is quickly filled in. Small tumuli appear. The troopers swathed, all deathlike, in their blankets. Then a horse is traced on the murky easel; then another. Clink, clink, go the chains which fetter their feet.
‘“All aboard!” I shouted, at length casting away the phantasmal creation. “The busy babbling and remorseless day” is again born, for us and for all mankind, in this south land. Up spring the troopers. Bothwell arose, but kept his position until scorched out of it by the heaped-up fire. Breakfast was concluded, and the horses stood saddled and ready, as the sun rose.
‘A different disposition of the forces was made for this day’s work. The troopers separated into three pairs—Bulldog and Jerry followed the trail through all its deviations; Bloomer and Tangerine skirted on either flank, keeping about a hundred yards from the presumed line and the same distance ahead of Bulldog and Jerry; Mayboy and Tiger rode a quarter of a mile in advance of the party.
‘The system was this: The couple on the trail ensured its being neither lost nor overlooked; the skirters, by riding straight on either side, picked up the tracks when any deviation was made. Whoever “cut” the trail whistled, when the other three quickly closed on him, and resumed their places from that point. The two in advance sought to cut the tracks some distance ahead; when they did so a whistle, low but clear, brought those in the rear forward in a canter to start afresh from the new point. By this method of economising eyesight, as the signals followed each other in quick succession, the ground was covered much more quickly than if the trail had been traced through all its sinuosities.
‘The inspector and I followed at easy distance our sable sleuth-hounds—a pack without huntsman or whipper-in. They had this advantage over their canine comrades: their casts were made in advance. Was an unusually difficult tract of country encountered, where “scenting” was slow, the advance-guard could ride beyond it, pick up the trail on more favourable ground and signal their comrades. Miles of rocky ridges were crossed, when the only guide to the silent avengers of blood was a stone turned over, the print of toe or heel on the scanty sand or gravel collected between the boulders. At times, merely a tiny white flake dropped from the fire-barks, carried in the coolimans to prevent the tell-tale fall of ashes, betrayed the pursued.
‘Still eager, tireless, almost joyous, rode forward the death-band on the faint footsteps of the hunted savage. Hutkeeper, thus fleeing, would surely know that he had staked his life, and lost it, when he permitted his wild nature to overcome him. He would know that many hours would not elapse before men of his own race would be on his trail—better trackers and more tireless than his tribe. But onward he fled, still ascending the range, knowing that the two ends of the trail were coming together only too surely. No white man can ever know what thoughts passed through the brain of the doomed old heathen during that long, hopeless flight.