“What are you talking about?” asked young Mayne sharply.
“It is not the white men’s camp that is burning, but our own. It is clear that our brethren have not come, as we had hoped. There are over seventy of the miners, and you are but eighteen. They will massacre you.”
“Ride on, and hold your stupid tongue,” said the sailor. But the redskin suddenly struck his horse across the withers and would have galloped away, but that Dr. Campbell made a deft spring and managed to seize the thong that did duty for a bridle.
“Thanks, Doctor.—Now, my man, you get down and march with the rest.”
Mayne turned to his sailors. “Can any of you lads manage a leather jib-sheet?”
“Ay, ay; let me have her, please, sir,” volunteered a young seaman. The guide was made to dismount and the sailor began to lead the horse in the rear. After a few minutes the Indians resumed their talk among themselves again and—evidently taking courage from the careless demeanour of the bluejackets—began to handle their tomahawks more or less jubilantly, as though waxing eager to be at their enemies; so much so that the two officers held a muttered debate. They had come out here to make peace; but if these savages once saw themselves backed by resolute and well-armed white men, they would never rest till they had butchered as many of the diggers as possible. It was a trying position for a young man who would be held responsible for whatever evil might happen; and Mayne, though he had gone through the Crimean War 269 with distinction, gaining his first lieutenant’s step in the Sea of Azov, was still only a lad of twenty-two.
“What would you do?” he asked.
“Disarm the jolly lot, straight away,” said Campbell, who was his senior by a few years.
Mayne halted his men, explained the position to them, and told the Indians what he and his colleague had decided; and they, with many grunts of dissatisfaction, gave up their arms on condition that they should be restored if necessary for self-defence.