“Oh! it’s nothing!” he said, trying to laugh. “A black fellow’s spear merely grazed my side, though had not Polly swerved at that moment it would have stuck into her neck.”
“It is a mercy, my boy, that it did not strike you in the back,” said Mrs Hugh Berrington, examining the wound, which she thought far more severe than Paul was inclined to suppose it.
“I had been looking after some cattle which had strayed from one of the herdsmen, a new hand,” he said, “when I suddenly found myself close to a mob of strange blacks, the very same, I suspect, Harry and I met with when hunting up Old Bolter. Knowing the imprudence of trusting myself among them, I immediately turned my horse’s head and galloped off, but not until several spears had been hurled at me. I felt one pop through my clothes, but I thought that it had given me only a slight scratch. On reaching Jenkins’s station, wishing to warn him of the vicinity of the black fellows, I looked about everywhere, but could not find him, and therefore came on that information might be sent to the police without delay, in order that they might proceed in search of the strangers and drive them away. Before returning home I found Mr Hayward, who, with Harry, has gone over to Ogilvie to give information of the blacks being in the neighbourhood.”
“But what if they should come here while our husbands are away?” exclaimed Mrs Berrington, trembling with alarm.
“I am here, and this slight hurt won’t prevent me from defending you,” exclaimed Paul, feeling not a little indignant at his aunt’s remark, “and there are Reginald, and Hector, and Sandy, and the other men will be back before long.”
“And we can fight too,” exclaimed Janet. “I know how to fire a pistol, so does Mary.”
“What a fearful state of things!” ejaculated Mrs Berrington.
“Oh, aunt, you’ll soon get accustomed to it,” said Janet, who often spoke very like Harry.
“I hope that we shall not be reduced to such extremities,” said Aunt Emily. “But where are Reginald and Hector?”
“I saw Reginald at our hut; I told him to come on here in case he might be wanted, but as to Hector, I do not know where he is.”