The man spoke in the coolest and most determined manner, and I at once saw that any further attempt at resistance would be worse than useless.
“One word more, Mr Fellgate,” my companion continued. “If you follow me quietly and without any row, no harm will come to you. I promise you that, on my word as between gentlemen.”
This should perhaps have been completely reassuring. Nevertheless, it was with some considerable feeling of doubt and disquiet that I prepared to accompany the bushranger, for such and nothing short the man evidently was. We left the house noiselessly. The aged lady who acted for me in the capacity of housekeeper had long since retired, and our cautious footsteps did not disturb her. Outside, tethered to a rail-fence at a little distance from the house, stood two horses.
My companion then blindfolded me, and I mounted one of the two horses. This blindfolding again I did not much fancy; but caution and discretion seemed now to be my safest cue. When the bushranger had himself mounted, he caught my horse’s rein, and we started. For about a quarter of an hour we pursued the high-road at a quick walk, a jogging, uneasy half-amble, that was anything but a comfortable pace, the uneasiness seeming to be increased by my being blindfolded. Then we suddenly diverged from the highway, and in a little had entered the bush, as I could easily judge from the fall of my horse’s feet on the soft sand-track. I should have mentioned that the night was a very dark one, without either moon or stars.
We rode on for the best part of a couple of hours, very few words passing between us. I knew the time to be about that length afterwards; but in reality it seemed much longer to me, partly, perhaps, from the fact of my being blindfolded; partly, without doubt, from the whole conditions of my ride being in no sense what could be called lively or inspiriting.
At the end of two hours, then, my leader suddenly tightened my rein, and we drew up. He bade me descend, which I did, still with the bandage on my eyes. The next moment my friend had removed the handkerchief which he had used for blindfolding me, when a strange sight met my eyes. I was standing in the middle of a small clearing in the heart of the forest. The darkness was lit up by half-a-dozen flaming torches and the light of a small fire, round which five or six men were reclining on the short sparse grass. The man nearest the fire at once caught my attention. He was about the middle height, and of a very active and well-proportioned figure; black-bearded, with particularly bright and alert eyes, and of not an unprepossessing cast of features. A few minutes’ scrutiny of the man confirmed me in my identification of him. He was no other than my correspondent of the past three months—the notorious bushranger who had been harrying the country right and left for nearly two years, levying black-mail on all whom he encountered without the slightest respect to persons or dignities—the redoubtable outlaw, Frank Gardiner. Various portraits of the man were abroad throughout the country, all sufficiently like to enable me to recognise the original, now that he was before me.
All the men, from the leader downwards, were armed to the lips, so to speak; and as the light of the fire and the wavering torches gleamed from the bright steel of the carbines and pistols to the bronzed faces of the highwaymen, tanned almost black by constant exposure to a semi-tropical sun, I could not but be reminded of the old familiar stories of Italian banditti and the old pictures one had seen of the same.
The leader of the gang was the first to speak. “Good-evening, Mr Fellgate; or rather, good-morning. You recognise me, I daresay?”
“Yes; I think I do.”
“From the several flattering portraits of me that are about, eh? I wonder you do recognise me from them, that’s a fact. If ever I catch that blackguard of a photographer who has so abominably burlesqued me in those pictures, I engage to make it lively for him!”