The other contingent was camped a short distance in the rear, in an angle of the lava country, also thickly timbered.
With the lighting of the watch-fires and the routine attention to the ordinary duties of the camp, a more tranquil spirit pervaded the party. Argyll’s impatience had subsided, and, with his usual generosity, he had taken upon himself the task of making the round of the camps, and seeing that the order as to each man having his firearms ready, with a supply of cartridges, was carried out. Fred Churbett grumbled a good deal at having to take all this trouble for invisible or problematical savages.
‘By me sowl, thin, Mr. Churbett,’ said old Tom, ‘if ye had one of their reed spears stickin’ into ye for half a day, as I had wanst, you’ld never need twice tellin’ to have yer gun ready, like me, night and day. ’Tis the likes of me knows them, and if it wasn’t for Gyp Warleigh, it’s little chance some of yees ’ud have to see yer friends agin.’
‘Don’t you think he’s frightening us all?’ said Gerald O’More, with a careless laugh. ‘They must be wonderful fellows, by all accounts. They have no bows and arrows, not even wooden swords, like Robinson Crusoe’s savages. Surely they don’t hit often with these clumsy spears of theirs. Warleigh’s anxiety is telling upon his nerves.’
Old Tom glared wrathfully into the speaker’s eyes for a little space before he answered; when he did, there was an air of bitter disdain, rarely employed by the old man in his intercourse with gentlemen.
‘Sure ye don’t know the man, nor the craytures yer spakin’ about, half as well as ould Crab there. Why would ye, indade, and ye jist out of the ship and with the cry of the Castle Blake hounds still in yer ears. It’s yerself that will make the fine bushman and tip-top settler in time, but yer spoilin’ yerself, sir, talkin’ that way about the best bushman between this and Swan River, I don’t care where the other is. Take care of yerself then, Mr. O’More, when the spears begin flyin’, and don’t get separated from the party, by no manner of manes.’
‘You may depend upon me, Tom,’ said O’More, with a good-humour that nothing was apparently able to shake. ‘My hands were taught to keep my head. I have been in worse places than this.’
‘Bedad, if ye seen a blackfellow steadyin’ his womrah to let ye have a spear at fifty yards, or comin’ like a flash of lightning at ye wid only his nullah-nullah, ye’d begin to doubt if ye iver wor in a worse place.’
‘There’s something in this country that alters the heart of an Irishman,’ said O’More, ‘or I’d never hear one talk of a scrimmage with naked niggers as if it was a bayonet charge at a breach.’
‘There’s Irishmen that’s rogues. I’m never the man to deny there’s fools among them,’ said the old man sardonically. ‘Maybe we’ll know who’s right and who’s wrong by this time to-morrow. My dogs has had their bristles up all day, and there’s blacks within scent of us this blessed minit, if I know a musk-duck from a teal.’