The sound of the firing caused the frightened horses to rear and kick, knocking down the men who had seized their bridles and almost stopping the coach.
The check, however, was only momentary, and as the horses plunged forward again some of the more excited strikers, who, with wild curses, had endeavoured to climb the side of the coach to get at Mr. Hardy, were flung back into the roadway.
The panic-stricken horses in their mad struggles had dragged the coach across the road, and nearly over the side of the bridge into the creek below, but the driver, applying his whip freely, soon had his team under control again, and, scattering the crowd to right and left, the flying coach crossed the bridge, followed by a volley of sticks, bottles, and stones. Mr. Hardy, crouching low over the seat, was struck with such violence by a brick on the left shoulder that he at first thought it was fractured, but happily he escaped further injury. With the horses maddened and excited, the coach dashed at a furious pace along the short stretch of road to Forbes, where it drew up at a small hotel. The coachman was white to the lips from the strain, and the inside passenger alighted trembling with fright, while Mr. Hardy confesses that he felt more than a little shaky.
A large crowd soon collected, anxious to learn the cause of the excitement, and the hotel-keeper, when he heard the driver’s story, promptly dragged Mr. Hardy indoors, telling him, if he valued his life, to keep out of sight. The presence of the police prevented an attack being made on the place, and when things had quietened down a little our artist was able to slip out unnoticed. After another coach ride, this time a peaceful one, he made his way back by rail to Sydney.
In the end the unionists gained the day at Burrowang, going back to work on their own terms, and thus virtually ending the strike throughout New South Wales.
“THE FLYING COACH CROSSED THE BRIDGE, FOLLOWED BY A VOLLEY OF STICKS, STONES, AND BOTTLES.”
Mr. Inglis Sheldon-Williams is an artist with a grievance. He complains that, although he has travelled a great deal and roughed it in various parts of the world—and for so young a man his record is remarkable—he has not met with a single first-class adventure of a really hair-raising nature. That he ought to have done so is an obvious fact, he says, and, indeed, on several occasions he has been perilously near as much excitement as would last any man a lifetime. In fact, it may be said that he has been out looking for trouble most of his life, and he is to be accounted lucky in that he has never found it.
Early in his career he emigrated to Canada, where for some years he lived the rough-and-tumble life and endured the manifold hardships that fall to the lot of a farmer in the back-woods. At the call of art, however, he returned to England to study, but with the longing for adventure strong upon him he later enlisted in the Imperial Yeomanry and took part in the South African Campaign, where he saw some considerable amount of fighting.