QUEENSLAND SQUATTERS “DISPERSING” ABORIGINES.

THE BLACK POLICE.

A STORY OF MODERN AUSTRALIA.

BY
A. J. VOGAN.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP BY THE AUTHOR

LONDON:
HUTCHINSON & CO.,
25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

[All rights reserved.]

TO MY READERS.

IN the following story I have endeavoured to depict some of the obscurer portions of Australia’s shadow side.

The scenes and main incidents employed are chiefly the result of my personal observations and experiences; the remainder are from perfectly reliable sources.

Arthur James Vogan.

Tauranga, New Zealand.
September 1890.

CONTENTS.

THE BLACK POLICE.

CHAPTER I.
A PENNY FOR BAD NEWS.

TAR! Ev-en’ Star! Full account o’ the fi-re!” echoes shrilly on all sides from the throats of bare-legged, paper-laden urchins, who after the manner of their kind are actively engaged in supplying the passing public of Auckland, New Zealand, with the second edition of the evening paper.

Queen Street, the principal thoroughfare of the city, is crowded at this hour of the afternoon. Business at the banks and offices is over for the day, and the hot pavements are crowded with homeward-bound pedestrians of many varieties. Pale-faced daughters of the city’s nouveaux riches are there by dozens. Many are accompanied by healthy-looking female cousins from the agricultural Waikato, and if the former do congratulate themselves at the contrast between their own gaudy plumes and their country relative’s more sober feathers, what of that? It is an odd fact too, worth mentioning, that these young ladies always require to do their shopping about this time in the day. But look at the crowd again. There stalks a stately Maori chief, with dark, tattooed, thoughtful face, surmounted with the incongruous “long-sleeved hat” of Europe. Others of his race are also there rubbing noses, and weeping with long-lost friends, or holding consultations with sharp-eyed lawyers, who, spider-like, are sucking the unfortunate natives’ ancestral estates into the insatiable and unscrupulous maws of pakeha landsharks.

On hurries the crowd, and somebody points out Auckland’s richest man. “Entirely devoted to Art,” says our informant, adding that the object of our attention “has found gin-spinning pay better than feeling the pulses of hypochondriacs.”

Bustling past comes a knot of loud-voiced, white-waistcoated mining agents. One of these turns for a moment to buy a paper. Like minnows at a worm, a shoal of newsboys make a dive at him, tumbling over each other, and crying aloud their alto battle-cry in the strange vernacular of their kind: “Star! Ev-en’ Star! Full account of the fi-re! Death of an Australian explorer!”

A young man, who with riding-whip in hand is standing close by on the curb, turns at the last sentence, and hurriedly buying a paper, glances eagerly at it.

“So it is true, after all,” he murmurs half aloud, and remains for a moment or two in deep thought. As we want our readers to know him when they meet him again, here is a brief description of Mr. Claude Angland. As he stands there before us in a loosely-fitting Norfolk jacket and Bedford cords, his dark-brown, wide-brimmed felt hat—light as gossamer—thrown back from his honest, sunburnt face, he looks the beau idéal of what an intelligent, active pioneer in a new country should be. Old ladies would call him “a fine young man to look at;” younger members of the female persuasion, although denying his right to be termed handsome, would naturally turn to him in trouble or in danger, in preference to many a more showy individual.

Our new friend does not stand long in thought; he suddenly glances again at the paper, and then at his watch, and turning on his heel is soon lost to view in the crowd.

The news that has apparently so interested the young man is in the latest telegrams’ column of the evening paper.

“(By special wire.)

“Cairns, Queensland.

“News has just been received from Georgetown confirmatory of wire sent you last week respecting death of Dr. Dyesart. Whilst exploring the country near the Mitchell river he met with a severe fall, and died three days afterwards. His sole companion, a black boy named Billy, who has accompanied him during all his later expeditions, reached Murdaro station with the news ten days since. An attempt will be made to find the body, when the boy, who was also badly hurt, is sufficiently recovered.”

In smaller type, below the telegram, a few brief editorial notes appeared eulogising the deceased explorer, and giving a short outline sketch of his life.

CHAPTER II.
ΣΚΥΤΑ’ΛΗ.

“No more by thee my steps shall be

For ever and for ever.”

N a long, ceilingless room, half kitchen and half parlour, two figures are seated near an enormous fireplace, in which a glowing heap of wood ashes illuminates that end of the otherwise somewhat gloomy chamber. One figure, that of an elderly lady, is reclining in an easy chair. Her brain is evidently busy with anxious and even painful thoughts, the object of which is made evident as she turns her moist eyes, from gazing at the scintillating wonderland amongst the embers, to glance from time to time at the form opposite to her.

The lady’s vis-à-vis at the fireside is a well-built, athletic young man, to whom we have already been introduced. In the rough garments of a working farmer, he lies sleeping there in his chair just as he came in from ploughing twenty minutes before.

The sleepy god, however, has apparently less power over the youth’s brain than his body. The twitching mouth and hands, the murmured words, show that the anima is busy, if the body is not. The sudden barking of a sharp-voiced collie outside the house presently causes the sleeper to open his eyes. They turn immediately to meet the smile of the lady opposite.

“Well, you have not had a very good sleep after all, Claude,” murmured the latter. “I think Dick is back. It was Bob’s barking awakened you.”

“Ah,” returned the still dozy young man, “that’s all right. The old chap’s rather late, isn’t he? D’you know,” he added slowly, “I’ve been dreaming about my trip to Queensland.” Here Claude rose, and, taking both the lady’s hands in his, continued, “I’ve made up my mind, mother, to run over to Queensland, and find out the particulars of Uncle Sam’s death. I’m not superstitious, but I’m sure there’s something odd about it. I’ve dreamed a dozen times since we saw that horrible telegram in the paper that poor uncle was calling me to come to him.”

“Nonsense, my boy, nonsense,” gently returned the lady, “you know we can’t spare you. It’s right you should wish to go, Claude, but we can’t spare you. It’s a fearful place, that Queensland.”

“Oh you! Mollie wouldn’t be alone. Would you, Mollie?” Claude remarked in a louder voice, as a pretty young girl tripped into the room, bearing a lighted lamp in her hands.

“Don’t be silly, Claude,” answered the fair one, smoothing down a spotless white cloth upon a table standing in the centre of the room. “Dick is back, and he’ll be so famished. Do run away and get ready for tea.”

“Oh, of course, it’s Dick is hungry now,” laughed the young man; “your poor brother is second fiddle in the domestic orchestra since the arrival of the young Irishman.” As one door bangs with the exit of the last speaker, another leading on to the verandah opens and quickly closes, showing in the interval a brief picture of fiery sunset behind dark fir-trees. A fresh figure is in the room. It is that of a jolly-looking individual, whose plan of construction, so to speak, is more inclined to squareness than height. The younger of the two women is soon helping the new-comer to empty his pockets and shoulder-bag of letters and papers, chattering all the time. “Oh, Dick, haven’t you got a letter for me?”

“Nary a one, ducky; but I’ve got an important one for Claude. D’you know, Mrs. Angland, it’s from the Queensland police. They sent it here to Inspector Goode, and he gave it to me just before I left town. Maybe now it’s something about poor Dr. Dyesart.” Here Claude re-enters the room.

“Well, old man, glad you’re back safe. How did the mare go? She was bound to be a bit skittish after the long spell she’s had. I hope you’ve had her shod? Have you any news of the Doctor?”

“Taihoa (wait a bit), old chap,” interrupts Dick, with his fingers to his ears to illustrate histrionically the pain such rapid questioning is giving him. “Why, Claude, you’re getting as bad as your sister. Here’s a letter for you, which you needn’t apologise for opening at tea. I myself beg to move that we do now partake of what our black brethren here call ‘kai,’ alias ‘tucker.’”

The little circle now gathered round the white-clothed table consists of an English lady, her son and daughter, and a friend,—a young man from northern Ireland. They had left the old country together, some four years before the time when our story opens, to settle upon a farm in New Zealand.

The youth from the Emerald Isle had, some time before leaving his native land, determined in his own mind that as long as he could settle down close to his friend Claude’s pretty sister, he would remain perfectly contented anywhere. Our friends had not been “out” long enough to feel homesick; the many novelties of life in a new country had not yet lost their charms. The rough life was almost like one long picnic. The lovely climate made up for many hardships; and if it would rain a little less at times, and if a market could be depended upon for fowls when fattened and cheese when made, the life of a New Zealand farmer was one, they all agreed, to be envied.

Claude, to the surprise of his mother, quietly finished his tea before opening the letter. There it lay by his plate in tantalising proximity to her hand, containing, perhaps, news of that poor brother of hers,—long estranged from all his family through no real fault of his or hers, to wander in a barbarous country, and die at last in the wilderness he had braved so long. Tea is cleared away, Dick and Mollie go out into the verandah,—to look at the stars probably,—and in the room the purring of the “harmless necessary cat” upon the hearthrug, and the click click of Mrs. Angland’s knitting needles, are the only sounds. Claude has taken a seat at the lamplit table, and lays the envelope, marked O. H. M. S., and bearing the Queensland postmark, before him upon the red cloth.

He feels instinctively his uncle’s presence in that letter. There is no particular sign by which an ordinary observer could tell it from a letter of ordinary importance. Yet Claude knows, and it puzzles him to think how he knows it, that an answer to his dreams is before him. The truth of the theory of animism never appeared clearer to him than at present. The envelope is addressed to Claude Angland, Care of the Superintendent of Police, Auckland, N.Z. Below this direction is a note to the effect that the writer will be glad if the aforesaid Claude Angland can be found without delay, and handed the enclosed letter and packet. Inside the envelope is a brief note from some official at Cairns, informing Claude that a small packet, enclosed, having been brought to the station of a Mr. Giles by the late explorer’s black boy, that gentleman had forwarded it to the writer, who took the present means of sending it to Mr. Angland, hoping the simple address, as copied from the packet, would find him. A few words expressive of the regret the writer, in common with all colonists, felt at the loss of such an able explorer as Dr. Dyesart closed the letter.

The packet referred to by the unknown correspondent at Cairns, whose hieroglyphic signature looked more like the shadow of a delirious spider than the name of a human being, now attracted Claude’s attention. It was about the size of a large walnut, and its outer covering consisted of a piece of soiled linen rag, tightly bound with fine fishing line. In irregular and almost illegible blue-black characters, the same address as that upon the envelope had been scrawled upon it by aid of an indelible ink pencil. The covering removed,—Claude saw at once it had at one time formed part of the lining of a coat,—an empty revolver cartridge was discovered, tightly plugged at one end with wood, the joints and cap-end being smeared over with a kind of resinous, dark-coloured gum.

Claude’s strong but trembling fingers are not long in removing the wooden stopper, and in his hands is a carefully folded piece of paper, which he recognizes on opening it as a leaf from a sketching block. The same handwriting that had attracted the young man’s attention upon the linen wrapper of the packet has covered one side of the opened paper before him.

With head on hand, Claude sits without moving aught save his eyes, poring over the letters. At last, half turning in his chair, his voice pitched in a slightly higher key than usual, he speaks:—

“Mother, here is my summons. I knew I should get one. Come and see poor uncle’s letter.”

Mrs. Angland rises quickly, and stooping over the table, her right hand on her son’s broad shoulder, gazes with filling eyes at the well-known writing on that crumpled paper lying there. The writing is small and somewhat obliterated, and from the varying character and style of the different sentences the same have evidently been written at intervals. One could easily imagine that a wounded man, who required to rest often from his task, would write such a letter.

“Read it to me, my son, I cannot.”

He reads as follows:—

“To my nephew, Claude Angland, of Auckland, New Zealand.

“I am dying before my work is completed. It rests with you to allow me to rest in peace after my death. I wish to make reparation to those I have neglected too long. I have tried to bury the past in science and in work. Your mother will explain all to you at the proper time. Come to where I now lie. You can trust Billy, whom you will remember with me in England. I believe he will get out of this. Come here alone with him, and at once. Good-bye to all. I hope you keep up your chemistry. Beware of squatters and police. This note will be hard to read, but read the whole of it.

“Samuel D. Dyesart.”

“What does he mean?” muses Claude out loud, after a pause,—inadvertently speaking as if the writer was still alive, so difficult was it to believe that the hand that had guided the pencil that traced those shaky letters was fast turning into its original dust.

Mrs. Angland comes of a practical stock, and sees the letter only as it is.

“I suppose, poor fellow,” she says, speaking slowly and softly, “he liked to think that some one he had loved in life would visit his lonely grave out there in those fearful wastes. He was very fond of you, Claude, even from the time he first saw you, a mere baby. But don’t go, Claude,” she adds beseechingly; “that horrible Queensland that has cost me a brother shall not take my son.”

“Mother,” interrupts Claude at this point, “you don’t understand what I mean. Let me read the letter to you again.” The letter is re-read. Presently Mrs. Angland breaks the silence.

“Perhaps he wants you to finish his work—his horrid exploring. God forgive me if I am wicked when I think it was wrong of your uncle to tempt you away from me. But perhaps he was wandering in his mind rather. Poor fellow, what he must have suffered! How odd of him to think of your chemistry. ‘I hope you keep up your chemistry,’” quoting from the letter. “Fancy his thinking of that when so near death.”

Claude is listening in silence; but when Mrs. Angland speaks of his uncle’s mention of chemistry, he rises quickly, and, seizing the letter, holds it to the light, and then proceeds to carefully examine the remainder of the packet, including the cartridge case, etc. He is rewarded by finding the single word that heads this chapter scratched upon the tarnished brass of the latter. “Hidden,” he murmurs, for luckily he knew a little Greek. “Hidden, what is hidden?” and falls to poring over the letter once more.

CHAPTER III.
EUREKA.

“I had a vision when the night was late.”

UTSIDE on the verandah a happy couple are sitting enjoying the hay-scented night wind as it blows in gentle gusts up the valley. Dick and Mollie are in that delightfully idiotic frame of mind known to the vulgar as “being spooney.” A great silver moon is shining down, as only a New Zealand moon can shine, over the forest-clad Hunua ranges in the distance and the neighbouring dewy pastures, where white-backed cattle can be seen resting for the night. The weird-voiced weka calls from the dark fern-hill on the right, and a couple of night-jars, called “More Pork” by the colonists, from their peculiar cry, are proclaiming at intervals their carnivorous desires from the grand Puriri tree by the stockyard. The youth and his betrothed are thinking of anything but the letter that is engaging the attention of the people indoors, and Claude’s voice calling loudly upon Dick is by no means a welcome sound.

“Dick,” comes the summons again.

“Here I am,” answers the owner of the one-syllabled cognomen. A parting squeeze, and he opens the door, and walks into the room rubbing his eyes.

“Look here, Dick,” says his friend, without raising his head from its bowed position over the letter upon the table. “Here’s the summons I expected from the poor Doctor. But it’s an enigma, I’m certain. I’m bothered if I can get at its meaning. Read it, and find out its hidden signification, there’s a good fellow.”

Dick’s face is generally a smiling placid one, but it is curious to notice how it changes, and becomes thoughtful and determined, as its owner catches sight of Claude’s knitted brows and anxious, worried look.

Both young fellows remain seated at the table in silence for a time, till Claude somewhat sharply asks,—

“Well, what do you make of it?”

“Humph,” grunts his friend, “I think I’ll postpone my decision till to-morrow.” Here he glances towards the verandah door, round the jamb of which flutters the white edge of a female’s dress. “The letter has a secret meaning I’ve little doubt. By-the-bye, I didn’t notice these figures before.”

“Oh, I did, but I don’t think they are part of the letter.”

“You bet they are, Claude. I wonder what I, cross, six, nought, double l,—or is it H?—two, nought, can mean.”

Claude leans forward, and seizing the other’s arm said, “I didn’t understand myself till you read them.”

“What do they mean then?”

“They are chemical symbols for iodine mixed with water. Yes, I₆₀H₂₀ can mean nothing else.”

Nothing more can the youths make out of the hidden meaning of the letter, if hidden meaning there was. Before long all save Claude retire to rest. That individual, believing that no sleep will come to him that night, sits in front of the fireplace, puzzling over what part iodine—if iodine is meant by the symbols—can play in unveiling the secret message that he believes lies in the letter. The kerosene lamp is turned down low; and the room, lit only from the great fireplace, becomes darker each minute. Claude, having thought his active brain tired, is almost dropping off to sleep, when a sudden noise occurring in the room causes him to spring from his chair. A few shrill squeals in the dark corner of the room denote that the cause of the disturbance is the black cat Te Kooti, who has caught a mouse. Half-a-dozen books have fallen from a shelf by the door, as evidence of her prowess. After several vain attempts to get the blind side of Mr. Mouse, the feline namesake of the Maori patriot has employed a literary ambush to aid her in her plans, and with perfect success.

“Confound the cat!” growls the awakened one; “get out of the room, you brute. Wonderful, women always will have them in the house!”

Having ejected the poor discomfited animal, who was making her way towards him to be congratulated, as usual, upon her prowess, Claude turns to pick up the fallen books.

He has replaced all but two, when he stops short, for the feel of the smooth, cold cover of one of them now in his hand has made him thoughtful again. Strange what a host of memories will crystallize into shape, one after another, in the brain, like the scintillating colours of the kaleidoscopes,—all arising from a simple keynote set buzzing by some slight passing circumstance. The book he held in his hand was a rough copy-book, so dilapidated that he had hesitated to pack it in his boxes when coming to the colony. In it, when a boy at school, he used to keep his notes upon the science lectures delivered once a fortnight to the assembled scholars. He remembered, in the semi-darkness, how fond he was of those lectures. He recollected, as if it had occurred but yesterday, that he was holding the book just in that position when, at the end of one lecture, he rose in exceeding trepidation to ask a question relative to biblical science that caused an awful hush to fall upon the schoolroom. There before his mind’s eye was the picture of the professor—who was small, and rather nervous amongst boys—as he blushed, stammered, and finally refused to answer “a foolish question,” to the delight of the boys, his pupils, and the glorification of Claude in the playground by-and-by.

Claude turns up the light, and glances through the pages covered with his long-past schoolboy scrawl. His whole attention is however presently directed to a note on a scribbled memorandum, which relates, as a fact, that iodine can be employed to determine whether certain infusoria, in water taken from a pond or ditch, belong to the animal or vegetable kingdom. “The former,” says the note, “do not contain starch and remain unaltered in colour; the latter turn blue upon coming in contact with the iodine.”

Just as the thoughts, roused by reading these words, are shaping themselves for action in Claude’s brain, a step is heard on the stairs, the handle of the door rattles, and Dick enters the room. He is in his pyjamahs, just as he has tumbled out of his bed.

“I guessed you’d be grinding away at your letter,” he roars, “so having had a bright idea I thought I would come and lend you a hand. Cryptography’s the answer to the doctor’s puzzle, and your iodine will do something towards bringing the secret to light.”

“Well, we’ll try, without wasting further time,” and Claude, going out of the room, presently returns with a wine-glass half full of light-brown liquor.

“It’s mighty strange that you should have hit on what I believe is the answer to the puzzle just as I had done the same thing.” Here the speaker pushes the manuscript book towards Dick, who, sitting on the table, is cutting some tobacco for his pipe off a rough roll of Maori-prepared leaf, called torori.

Claude now pours some of the liquid, which contains about forty per cent. of iodine, into a plate, and proceeds with some hesitation to moisten a corner of the letter with the same. Both young men watch the result breathlessly. There is no result. Claude’s face clouds over with a disappointed look; but he nevertheless plunges half the sheet beneath the surface of the liquor.

As if by magic a change immediately begins to make itself apparent upon the surface of the paper.

At right angles to the pencil writing there gradually appears, after the manner of a photographic negative that is being developed, a series of parallel lines of disjointed dots and dashes, of a faint blue colour. These markings grow stronger each minute. The letter is wholly immersed, and presently withdrawn and held to the lamp. A hitherto hidden message, written in fairly distinct blue-green characters, is now visible. It runs as follows:—

“I am writing this with rice water. Proceed at once to Sydney, see Winze and Clinskeen, Mining Agents, Pitt Street. There await you valuable papers. You can trust Winze entirely. Find Billy and take out Miner’s Right. Come up here and follow directions map other side paper. Billy does not know of reef. Obliterate your tracks. You may be watched in Sydney perhaps for other reasons. Travel incognito.”

On the other side of the paper, which had appeared blank before the application of the iodine, a roughly-drawn map now appeared, ornamented with dotted lines and arrows. From it, it appeared that if a certain direction was taken—shown by a dotted line—from a point indicated by a cross, a creek would be crossed running through a gorge. This creek followed up for a mile would be found to cut through a region marked “the golden cliffs.”

“It is plain,” remarked Claude after a few moments, “that I must first find Billy.”

“That,” replied his friend, who was smoking off his excitement, “that is clearly an important preliminary.”

CHAPTER IV.
PADDY’S MARKET.

HE newly-arrived traveller in Sydney is generally pestered by the urbane and well-meaning citizens of that London of the South by three or more questions. Until he has answered these, and done so to their satisfaction,—and the correct reply is the “Open Sesame” to their hospitable homes and hearts,—his polite inquisitors will look coldly upon him. This knowledge is worth much to those of our readers who intend visiting Sydney for the first time; and we highly recommend such persons to study what we have to say upon this highly important subject.

Many a time have we seen the learned scholar, the gallant soldier, and the wealthy globe-trotter turned back from the very gates of that Antipodean Paradise, the inner circle of Sydney society, from an inability to pass this curious test. As often we have seen the artful “new chum,” who has received a clear hint from his friends, and acted upon such, glide without exertion into the Elysium fields of Elizabeth Bay and Pott’s Point.

The principal of these questions, and the first one generally asked, is, “What do you think of our beautiful harbour?” (Time being precious in Sydney, the aspirate is seldom sounded in this case.)

The second screw of the interviewer’s mental thumb-smasher is, “What do you think of the Post-Office carvings?”

The third query is generally, “Have you been to Paddy’s Market?”

Now experience has shown us that to the first two questions the simple words “Awfully jolly, bai Jove!” especially if accompanied with a long drawl, will put the knowing if unscrupulous candidate upon his way rejoicing. That he may be able to answer the third in a satisfactory manner, we ask him to follow our story through the wastes that lie over against Cambell and Hay Streets.

It is a curious and interesting fact that no one, whatever command of language he may possess, can describe a place, or thing, successfully to another, if his auditor has never had personal experience of something similar. Who could picture up in his mind the ocean in a storm, or a cavalry charge, from a mere verbal or written description?

The best literary effort would be thrown away upon a man of no experience. Such an individual would, after reading or hearing of the glories of the sea, probably still have only a vague idea that it was in appearance something similar to an animated potato-bed of a green colour.

We trouble our readers with all this in order that they may assist us in picturing the scene we are about to describe, by conjuring up “in the mind’s eye,” one of the flaring midnight markets of the Old World,—Petticoat Lane, Seven Dials, Deptford, the more ancient parts of the Cité, Paris, or the like.

The best admirers of Sydney—and it rightly has many of these—will scarcely proclaim it as a moral city. The unlimited license granted to its youth of both sexes and every class, by the custom and habits of the community, is fraught with those dangerous elements that encourage the growth of the worst sorts of crimes. Monied and unscrupulous blackguards are to be found here, as elsewhere in the world; and nowhere can they have their fling—that every devil’s dance—to better advantage than in Sydney.

Paddy’s Market is one of the hunting-grounds of this class of individuals.

As evening draws over the city vast crowds are to be seen hurrying homeward past the glaring shops and brilliantly-lighted hotels. Now dodging red- and green-eyed steam-trams, as they screech and rumble along the handsome but narrow streets; and anon dashing in open order like frighted sheep across the bus-covered squares, the migratory sojourners of the city flock nightly outwards from the business centres.

Let us allow ourselves to be carried down George Street in the human stream “Southward Ho!” till Cambell Street is reached. Here in the slack-water of the comparatively deserted footpath of a side street we can look around us. A vacant space of ground surrounded by a white railing is on the opposite side of the way, and we become aware of a Chinese quarter being at hand from the acrid stench that reaches us from up the street.

The open square in front of us is being appropriated for the night by a noisy crowd of itinerant ragamuffin “entertainers of the public,” of various callings.

There are the usual Try-yer-weight, Balm-of-Gilead, and Try-afore-yer-buy rascals, and others of like kidney. These, with the dirty evangelists of Kings-of-Pain and Quack-doctors, are busy erecting various machines and tables for the night’s work. The place is busy with moving figures and the Norse-alphabetical rappings of twenty hammers, and gay with the crowd-attracting glories of red paint and bright brass-work. The gloaming gradually sinks into night, and flaring lamps appear in all directions; and four long buildings, that during the week have formed the Covent Garden of Sydney, begin to light up as the numerous stall-holders within commence business. Most of these are Jews of the lower classes; but here and there the child-like smile of a quarantine-flag-coloured follower of Confucius, or the merry, black, oily face of an African, breaks the monotony. At one stall half-a-dozen under-sized Chinamen are fingering some shoddy clothes; at another a “young man from the country” is hurriedly purchasing some indecent photographs from a dealer in church pictures and altar decorations, looking around him nervously the while, lest “his people” should see him. Close by, a lump of human flesh, in black oily ringlets and an astoundingly ample dress of vivid green, is showing off the glories of a ruby-coloured velvet skirt to two fragile “daughters of the public” by holding it against her majestic base. Near this last group, seated upon the only empty show bench within sight, are two men. One, enveloped in a long, light dust-coat, and wearing a fashionable light-felt hat, looks to the casual observer like what he once was, namely, a gentleman. His companion is a short, thick-set fellow, with the ever-restless eyes of a detective or a criminal. His otherwise stolid-looking features are those that mark him at once as a foreigner, probably a Wurtemburger. As far as can be made out, as he sits in the shadow, he is more anxious to avoid notice than is his companion, and is dressed in a suit of dark-coloured tweed. Both are apparently watching for somebody they expect in the column of men, women, and children, as with the orderly manner, characteristic of a Sydney crowd, it dawdles its long length past.

“I know he left the hotel, and I know he’s not been able to see the firm to-day,” whispers the man in the dust-coat, rising and striking a match upon his pants, and proceeding to light a cigarette. “I slung him a moral yarn or two about Paddy’s Market that’ll fetch him along.”

“Why you not bring ’im mit you?” growls his companion.

“Because, my dear sir, if anything should happen to the young man, and I had been seen in his company, I might find it awkward; d’ye see, Grosse?”

The last speaker continues, after knocking the ashes off his cigarette with a delicate little cane he held in his gloved hands,—

“When I see him I’ll touch your arm. Clear out then at once. And when you see us again—at, you know where—don’t attempt to act if you don’t hear me whistling ‘Killaloo.’”

Here he of the cigarette whistled a bar of that melody for the benefit of his accomplice.

The two men continue for some time sitting moodily watching the faces of the crowd, till the one in the tweed clothes abruptly rises, and, pulling his hat well over his eyes, slouches off. His companion shortly after leaves his seat, and, settling his collar, strolls off in the opposite direction. His walk is slow and deliberate, and as his lack-lustre eyes gaze alternately right and left upon the busy stalls, more than one remark about “swell attire” reaches his ear. His face, however, remains a perfect blank, until he meets the eye of a gentleman going the other way, when it becomes suffused with the smiles and beams of gratified pleasure.

A few words of recognition pass between the two and they join company, and pushing onward are lost to our view. The latest arrival, as our readers have no doubt guessed, is the hero of this story. Regardful of all his uncle’s instructions, save that clause concerning the risk he ran by using his own name in Sydney, he has just met a casual but delightful acquaintance, who is stopping at the same hotel that he has put up at. But before we follow the pair let us try and learn a lesson from, or rather philosophize over, the human panorama before us.

One of the first things that would strike a thoughtful observer of the habitués of Paddy’s Market are the number of young people to be seen there,—that is, persons under twenty-one years of age. Of course anywhere in the Australian colonies, save, perhaps, in some parts of Tasmania, the balance of population will be found to be in favour of youth rather than age, but here there are far more than one would expect to meet at such a place and at such an hour, for it is past eleven o’clock.

Numbers of these young people are pale-faced girls of tender age, who, earning their own livelihood at the big warehouses or millinery establishments of the city, laugh at the discipline of home (too often far away “up-country”), and are rapidly following that easy path that, with ever-increasing declivity, will likely land them ultimately amongst the unfortunates of the pavements. The “pals” of these young damsels are also there by scores. Most of these have been “turned out” after one general pattern; and, to use another mechanic’s term, are chiefly “wasters.” The same disgusting, unnatural, and unhealthy manikin appearance surrounds all of them. There is hardly any sight more pitiful to behold than these youthful bodies, that have never known the youth which Coleridge describes as “the body and spirit in unity.” These little weak-eyed, weak-kneed, man-like creatures are mostly addicted to sham meerschaums, “flash ties,” and “blunderbuss” cut trousers, the bell-bottoms of which cover nearly the whole of their high-heeled “number nineteens.”

Why, for the sake of these unhappy chickens of Hers, does not fair Liberty—who is fast being dethroned in Sydney by her sly bastard-sister License—wake up, and let some paternal edict become law that will make it a State concern to watch over these truly “fatherless and motherless bairns”?

“The childhood,” said Milton, “shows the man, as morning shows the day.” What will Australia’s day be like with all this wealth of youth, that should one day form the voting and the thinking power of the rising Republic of the South, wasting its sweetness upon the tobacco-and-gin-stained wilderness of vice and idleness in all her cities? Who that knows Sydney is not also aware of the fact that these merry, over-dressed companions of these miserable little “market-toffs” fall an easy prey before the devilish machinations of the foul prowler and her client-slaves of appetence? Each girl—womanlike—vies with her work-fellows in extravagance of dress, destroying the beautiful architectural lines of “Nature’s divine building” with her uneducated idea of a perfect vestis forensis. If her legitimate exertions and the pocket money of her “pal” is insufficient for her purpose, other persons, whose business it is to do so, come forward to show her other means of obtaining the necessary funds, and the mischief is done.

The colony of New South Wales is badly in want of wives and mothers, and cries out ceaselessly to the older countries that she cannot give to every man a wife. Yet here are her own flesh and blood, female forms of which she need not be ashamed, all hurrying down the sewer of crime, like drowning butterflies, to rot in the foul slums and gutters of the capital.

As democracy grows used to her new-born powers, perhaps the people will cease to toy with the bright but keen-edged weapons of responsibility, and turn to guard their boys and girls. At present, however, and that is what concerns the object of this book, Sydney is a gigantic bait-pond where the wealthy debauchee can luxuriously roll in sin, and feed, shark-like and unchecked, upon the daughters of the colony.

But to return to Claude, and the delightful acquaintance he has made. Our hero, having discovered that he must wait a few days in Sydney before starting northwards to prosecute the object of his journey, has become fidgety and impatient. It is so annoying that he cannot begin his work at once; and he is only too glad to find any means of passing the intervening time. As the two men stroll along, Claude’s companion discourses eloquently to him upon the scenes around them, and Claude, walking silent and thoughtful at his side, feels grateful to him for doing all the talking.

“You have no idea, my dear fellow,” rattles on the young man in the grey coat, “you can’t have the slightest idea of the growing tendency which the unlimited freedom of the youth of this colony encourages towards the doctrine of Free-love.

“We see the lower orders here,” gracefully waving his cane, “and, mind you, the ‘lower orders’ is not a synonymous term with that of ‘poorer classes,’ as in the older countries. And which of the young people here to-night looks forward to marriage as more or less of a certainty, as people do in the older countries? Even in the parent-land the new doctrine is growing in strength. Here, I assure you, the girls dread marriage, and simply because it curtails that freedom of life, of following their own inclination, that passion that is bred in their bones, and was the holiest creed of their parents.

“Only a wealthy husband, who is not likely to be too uxorious or too particular, will be endured in a few years. Do we not see it already in some of the States of America? Steady fellows like you may call the new doctrine simply open sin. But after all, what is sin? What but the breaking of certain unstable laws, that change and give way to others, as the nations that made them clamber painfully upwards towards the attractive light of freedom. Divorce is becoming every day more common, and easier to obtain. Every day home life is more and more exposed, and is fading away before the searching bull’s-eye of the unsympathetic paper-reading public. The beauties of home, that suited our mutton-headed fathers, are departing; and the price—marriage—is too much nowadays to give for what is often everybody’s property, as much as that of the unfortunate and foolish purchaser. But, as I said, you can see here the lower orders of the people. If you can judge the mind from the exterior body, you will acknowledge I am right in my deductions. And now, if you have no objection, we will visit another place I want you to see, where we can study those human fowls that roost upon the second perch from the ground. Are you agreeable?”

“Oh, I’m in your hands entirely,” replies Claude. His companion smiles grimly,—turning his head away, for they are passing under a lamp. “It’s only too good of you to take the trouble of entertaining a dull country-fellow like myself. Where do you propose taking me to next?”

“Oh, it isn’t far, and I’ll take you a short cut. I want you to see a skating-rink. You’ll see lots of human moths there, and very pretty specimens of lepidoptera some of them are, fluttering, or rather rolling, round the lamp of sin. These rinks are little more or less than places of assignation.”

The young men have left the whirring, noisy, lamplit crowds of Paddy’s Market during this conversation, and are making their way westward to George Street. The air is hot, and steamy with the butyric odours of a Saturday-night crowd. Crossing the wide rattling thoroughfare just mentioned, with its thousands of lights, and busy streams of thundering omnibuses and cabs, Claude and his companion push their way across the pavement,—crowded with purchasing humanity,—and find themselves suddenly in a new world. It is in this locality that one of the few nests of ancient rookeries that still remain in Sydney exists,—a menace breathing the foul odours of vice and sickness upon the rest of the city. Stately warehouses are, bit by bit, pushing these plague spots out of existence, and in a few more years they will happily be swept away. Here is before us an example of Dr. Johnson’s saying “that men are seldom better employed than when making money,”—commerce successfully waging a war of extermination against those fortresses of the city’s criminal population. A few gas lamps here and there, at long intervals, make the dark dreariness of the blank wall, and lightless broken windows of the tumble-down houses, more complete. Black, suspicious-looking alleys and lanes slink off to nowhere in particular from unexpected corners to right and left of the midnight passer-by, as if fearful of being noticed.

At the end of the dark silent street, by the flickering light of a solitary broken lamp, Claude reads, upon the dirty wall of a house, a notice to the effect that a collar-maker had once lived there. That he or any one else existed there now, and was within call, was hardly to be imagined, so lonely did the spot appear to be,—no lights at the windows, no sign of life, and no sound save the lessening roar of the great, hot, artery of traffic fast being left behind.

The two men walked quickly on, their hollow footsteps echoing over the broken pavements, and then another and still darker lane is crossed, surrounded by still more tumble-down wooden tenements. The place is a wilderness, long deserted, surely, by mankind; only peopled by ghostly cats, and half-starved supernatural dogs, that, at the sound of footsteps, slink off like shadows into fetid drains, or through broken doors and fences, under cover of the blackness beyond.

“Where the dickens are you taking me to?” presently asked Claude,—the sound of his voice making quite a pleasant relief to the dead silence around.

“Oh! we’re quite near to Liverpool Street now,” replies his companion. “It’s a dreary neighbourhood, this; is not it? By Jupiter, it’s warm walking too! I’ll take my coat off.” The speaker stops for a moment, and, divesting himself of his dust-coat, hangs it doubled over his left arm.

“There,” he cries, a few steps further on, pointing with his cane, “there are the lights of the rink.” At this moment the two men left the shadowy lane, and felt under their feet the surface of a well-kept street, a pleasant change after the broken ways they had just traversed. Above where they stand, and about a quarter of a mile off, the blue-white radiance of several electric lights show the location of the famous cosmopolitan rink.

The street they are in terminates as such some twenty feet from where they stand, and, changing to a well-paved road, rises upwards, on a wide, serpentine viaduct built upon arches, to the dim building-clad hill before them. A low wall has been built on either side to prevent passengers from falling off upon the pavement below. On the right hand side of the viaduct is a large cobble-stoned yard, covered with hundreds of boxes, crates, and empty barrels of all kinds. It is part of the railway goods station, and is at one point some twenty-five or thirty feet below the road upon the arches.

The faint earth-tremors of moving trucks and carriages, and the distant whirr of machinery, announces that there are persons not very far-off. But, save for a hansom cab that dashes by the spot, it is almost as lonely as the slums just left.

“We’ll soon be there,” says Claude’s companion, who, glancing up the viaduct, has caught sight of a short, stout figure, as it passed under one of the few lamps above, coming slowly down the footing.

“I can hear the music, too, I declare,” he adds presently, as they reach the highest and darkest part of the incline overlooking the railway yard below. “Do you know the air? It’s Killaloo.”

Claude’s friend ceases speaking, and whistles a bar or two of the well-known song. Just then a short lame man is seen hobbling out of the darkness towards them, leaning upon a stick. He passes, and it is odd to notice how he at once becomes cured of his infirmities. At the same instant Claude’s companion exclaims, “A fire, by Jove!” and points towards a distant glare in the sky. Immediately afterwards he quickly steps backward, and seizing his light overcoat in both hands suddenly, with great dexterity flings it over his companion’s head, so as to completely muffle any attempted cry. Claude’s head is turned in the direction indicated by his companion, when he feels his arms suddenly pinioned behind. At the same instant some rough kind of drapery is dragged tightly over his head. He gasps for breath, and with the sudden anger of a surprised and wounded tiger dashes himself backward on his unseen foes. His frantic efforts are unavailing; and before his half-dazed senses have properly taken in his terrible situation, he feels himself raised by four strong arms upon the parapet of the viaduct. The fearful truth flashes through his reeling brain. His whole body breaks out into suddenly alternating hot and icy sweats. He vainly tries with struggling feet and back-bound hands to save himself. It is but for an instant. The next moment he feels his back upon the sharp edge of the coping stones. The hot blood surges through his brain in a red, wild, lurid, ever-increasing rush. Then he suddenly turns cold. His back overhangs the wall! He is resting upon nothing! He is falling!

CHAPTER V.
THE SELVAGE EDGE OF CIVILIZATION.

UR next act in the drama before us begins with the foot-lights still turned down low, for another night scene is to be enacted. It is the new township of Ulysses. Some six or seven thousand miners are crowding into the one long, irregular street of a new Queensland “gold rush” township. For it is the night of the week,—pay-day night; with Sunday for an idle to-morrow on which to get sober.

The new field of Ulysses—some sixty miles from the famous copper mines of Reid’s Creek—is, like many of the later Queensland gold fields which have been within an easy distance of railway communication with the coast, quite a different affair to the old rushes of an earlier date, or even the modern Croydens and Kimberleys of the far north. As such it is worth sketching. Rapid means of transportation, cheap fares, and double-leaded notices in the daily southern papers have brought hosts of town-bred men and boys to compete with the professional miner.

The difference between these two classes of workers is immense. Now the reader can take it as a gospel truth that of the various classes of men who earn their bread with the sweat of their brow, those who follow the profession of the practical miner are amongst the noblest specimens of humanity. Mind you, we do not mean the labourers, who, by hundreds, earn their 6s. to 10s. per day in the great Wyndham “stopes” or upon the hot “benches” of Mount Morgan. Nor do I intend you to mistake for the real article the half digger, half speculator, who haunts the grog-shanties at night, and spies for chances to make some “unearned increment” from the whisky-wagging tongues of the true workers on the field. The professional jumper of claims too, who figures more often in the Warden’s court than the “m drives” and “cross-cuts” of the field, is another individual that no one experienced in mining camps would long mistake for a bonâ fide Queensland miner.

Watch the latter at his work. Look at him toiling over perhaps hundreds of miles of semi-desert to the dreary, flat waste, covered with stunted box or quinine trees, where the white quartz glares back at the red-hot sun across the dusty plain. Burnt by the scorching heat all day; watching midst the dangers of desperate starving natives, poisonous snakes, and unguardable fever all night; thankful if he can fill and boil his pint pot three times a day with the foul drink that goes by the name of water in the interior,—he toils on to the golden goal.

Once there, his active brain and stalwart arms send the stunted forest reeling with flashing axe-strokes. The mushroom village of blue-gum bark and branches springs up in a purple-brown crop around the red and yellow trenches, and “whips” and “poppet heads” rise in due course.

Geologist, mineralogist, carpenter, blacksmith, hunter, surgeon, and cook, the true prospecting and working miner, who has “followed the diggings” since the Canoona rush or the Palmer field excited the mining world, is a veritable Admirable Crichton. He is a true, iron-bound, walking edition of practical receipts. Open-handed when “on a patch;” frugal and level-headed when a “slide” or “fault” has taken his golden “leader” out of sight; quick to take offence at an intentional insult, and as quick to “Put your hand there, pard,” if in the wrong,—this character may be summed up in the expressive words used by a miner to us, when describing a brother of the pick: “He’d lend you a fiver if you harsked him, and he’d fight you for a bob if he thought it b’longed to him.”

The “towneys,” as I have hinted, muster very strong at Ulysses, and as a consequence the rowdy element swamps the steady miners, such as we have just described, right out of sight. The Warden of the new field has only just arrived, and is toiling night and day to arrange affairs into workable form out of the chaos of matters before him.

He is “underhanded,” to use a nautical expression, as is always the case, and is powerless to act, as he could and would act, were he not—besides being Police Magistrate, Warden, Senior-constable Surveyor, Clerk of Petty Sessions, etc., etc.—also general adviser to the field upon every conceivable subject.

Let me draw you a rough outline sketch, in black and white, of a “pay-day Saturday night” at Ulysses.

The long, straggling collection of dwellings, that has not yet crystallized into a town proper, and which is now emerging from the “bark-humpy” to the “iron” age, begins to look more lively than ever, as evening with its lighted windows and moving lanterns shows that business is commencing with the influx of miners from the surrounding claims. Troops of “larrikins,” who think, because they wear muddy clothes and get drunk, they must be rough-and-ready miners, begin to perambulate the muddy street, in a state of body more or less bordering upon intoxication. Crowds of picturesquely-rough characters now collect round the gaming-tables, shooting-tables, and other attractions, over and around which flare great oil lamps, minus shade or glass. Every shot, every throw of the dice, every action of every actor upon the busy scene, gives rise to strings of filthy oaths,—so profane, so disgusting, that to any one but a man long acclimatised to them a feeling of extreme nausea would result.

Darker grows the evening and larger the crowd; oaths, blasphemy, and yells that would make a Red Indian blush with envy hurtle through the hot, close night air.

Wilder grows the feverish excitement, born of bad whisky and worse beer, till, words growing tame, blows are resorted to. A curious and interesting if disgusting spectacle is Ulysses on a Saturday night.

All around are wretched creatures wallowing in the much-trampled mud, like so many spirit-preserved beings,—half hog, half man. From the open door and windows of the foul-smelling, brilliantly-lighted “shanty” just at hand, a Babel of filthy and excited language roars and roars, as if an opening to “the murky pit” were close by, and the voices of the damned had reached our ears.

Crowds of men and boys jostle each other as they pass amidst the flaring lights and dusky shadows of the much-peopled ways, and near us a couple of tipsy, blear-eyed rowdies are doing the only useful thing they have done this day, in attempting to destroy each other with fist, foot, and teeth. Round them a vile crowd, mostly composed of lanky, big-piped, beardless, weakly-looking, youthful, would-be miners are exchanging bets, in language as idiotic as obscene.

Darker grows the night and later the hour; the majority of the crowd are either reposing in the mud or have staggered to their tents and “humpies,” out of reach of the robbers, male and female, who begin to slink about, like those horrible beings who haunt the fields of battle to prey upon the spoils of the honoured dead. Woe betide the sinner who lies down to sleep off his drunken fit in an Ulysses street after sundown if he has money upon him.

The main “street” is now abandoned by the gamblers, three-card-trick men, and other blacklegs of like nature, and now wretches, who disgrace the name of white men, and who would never have dared to show themselves upon the older fields of the colony, are to be seen offering miserable, frightened native women to the loafers round the “shanties.”

One o’clock comes, and only select parties of soakers still make night hideous with their songs.

Outside the “gins” (native women), drunken and howling, are screaming out obscene remarks to each other and passers-by in broken English; and scenes take place that make the observer almost fancy himself viewing one of those horrible December orgies of Ancient Rome, rather than a scene in a civilized township of an English colony.

But let us ring up a change of scene.

In another part of the embryo township, a few hundred yards along the main “street,” the Queensland Federal Banking Company has erected a small, curiously-constructed edifice of galvanised iron and sheets of bark. Competition is immense amongst the Queensland banking concerns to establish the first branch upon a new gold-field. On a new “rush” taking place, information as to the likelihood of its turning out a “wild cat” (or failure) or not is obtained as rapidly as possible. The manager at the nearest township receives a wire from the head office; and next morning some unhappy wight, who likely enough has just been married, or was to have taken unto himself a wife in a few days, is ordered off at perhaps two hours’ notice to administer to the commercial comfort of the rough selvage of humanity at Devil’s Gap, or Three Gin Gulch, five hundred miles from anywhere, and situated in a dreary desert. He starts actually not knowing what part of the country he is going to, till he opens his sealed instructions at the railway station or wharf.

The remarkable little building to which we have referred is about the size of a ticket-taker’s office at a small theatre. Upon its front elevation, and overhanging it at each end, hangs a wooden-framed sheet of linen, upon which is painted the name of the bank whose branch it is. But we must go behind the bank-buildings to where stands the “most desirable residence” upon the field. It is a travelled house this; and has seen more than one “rush” before. With tongued and grooved sides screwed securely to studs and plates, the house can be taken to pieces and removed a few hundred miles by a bullock team, and put up again, not much the worse for wear.

It is like rising from the lower regions to that “ethereal beyond,” which is the appointed permanent location, so say the poets, of all “good niggers,” to leave behind the scenes we have just described, and saunter up to the quiet deserted end of the town, and hear through the darkness the chinkle chankle of a real piano. Through the windows we catch a glimpse of a lady (the only one within, perhaps, a hundred miles), in a cool, white dress, indulging her husband, the bank manager, and a few select sojourners upon the field, with the latest waltz from Melbourne. Inside the cottage—which stands on wooden blocks, surmounted with snake-and-ant-foiling tin plates—are seated some half-dozen men, listening to the music and chatting by turns. All are dressed in white, with crimson or yellow sashes round their waists, save one,—a new “chum,” lately from Albion’s cooler climes, whose idea of what is due to the lady of the “house” makes him appear in a suit of dark tweed, as the nearest approach to evening dress his travelling baggage can afford him. The conversation, as the piano ceases its rather raspy vibrations, reopens upon a subject that had commenced to be discussed earlier in the evening,—the treatment of the aborigines by the settlers.

“Yes, it must appear strange to you,” says a dark-eyed, brown-haired man, leaning back in his cane-chair, and looking at the ceiling of unpainted canvas, “it must appear to you rather strange that such scenes can occur in what people are pleased to call a Christian land. But remember, my dear Mr. Jolly, you are a ‘new chum,’ and don’t understand our ways yet.” After a pause he continued: “I was one myself once, by Jove.”

“If you mean by a ‘new chum,’” replied the young gentleman rather hotly,—whose appearance in dark clothes has already attracted our attention,—“if you mean by that, that I’m an Englishman, I’m only too glad to acknowledge——”

“Now don’t fall out, you two boys,” roars a big, burly, perspiring, jolly-faced, elderly man, who is sitting by the open window, “it’s much too hot to quarrel. Morton’s only trying to get a rise out of you. All new-comers here talk like you do at first. Now as I’m a little bit older than you are, Mr. Jolly, I’ll just give you a friendly bit of advice. Don’t take offence, if I say you are airing your opinions in an incautious manner. You ought to allow that we ‘old chums’ know more about the way to treat the niggers than you can. You raise,” continued the speaker, who is the pushing proprietor-editor of the new-born local gazette, ladling an ant out of his glass of lager-beer, “you raise the old indictment of wholesale slaughter of the black population by the white Christians who have seized upon their lands. It is the ancient story of midnight murder, treachery, bloodshed, hypocrisy, cruelty, and immorality, which has been told in every land where the Englishman——”

“I deny that,” interrupts Mr. Jolly.

“Well, to please you,—the, er, European has come in contact with and dispossessed a feeble population. The men by whom these outrages,—confound the brute! (this to a gecke, or climbing lizard, that has fallen off the ceiling on to the speaker’s pate),—the men by whom these outrages are perpetrated are members of that race which, with all respect for Mr. Jolly’s favourable and patriotic opinions of his countrymen, claims to be the protector of the oppressed all the world over; and the tale of their atrocities is identical with the tales which—when the scene was laid in Bulgaria instead of Australia—roused the whole Anglo-Saxon race to an outburst of virtuous wrath and holy reproach. It is a story, on a smaller scale,” continued the speaker, taking a fresh cigar from a box near him and lighting it, “on a smaller scale, of India over again.”

“No!” jerks out the dark-coated youth.

“But it is,” snaps Mr. Editor-Proprietor. “The tragedy which the British alleged Christian enacted in Jamaica, Burmah, Egypt, and a hundred other scenes of massacre, and which the same snuffling Christian will continue to enact so long as he is strong enough to kill, and some one else is weak enough to be killed——”

Here the speaker paused, and, taking a glass of lager at a gulp, spat out of the window, and looked round, cigar in mouth, at the young man who had been the cause of his lengthy speech.

“Well, you surprise me, Mr. Brown,” says the latter, in answer to that gentleman’s stare, “and that’s all I’ll say further. I was prepared to find some excuses presented for such atrocities, as, for example, hot-blood, revenge, etc., but not on the lines you have laid down. You will excuse me if I take your remarks to mean that you are expressing your constituents’ opinions, not your own, when you say that no man would attempt to protect the helpless, unless he had selfish motives in view, or was a fool.”

Swinging round on her chair at the piano, the pretty, little, fragile hostess, who is a young woman of twenty, but who looks at least twenty-five years old, eyes the debaters with an amused and rather satirical face.

“Well,” she says, interrupting the somewhat heated conversation, making a pretty little moue, “what’s the good of talking about those horrid blacks? Augh! I hate them. And I ought to know, for I’m a squatter’s daughter; and my father had to shoot more niggers when he first took up the Whangaborra country than any man in Queensland has.”

The young black-coated philaboriginist turns his head, and looks with mute wonder at the fair young advocate of human slaughter.

“What’s wanted here is a Black war like they had in Tasmania,” continues the fair pianist. “Wait till you’ve been amongst our squatters awhile, and you won’t think more of shooting a nigger than of eating your tucker.” The speaker laughs a silvery little laugh, and all her audience, save one, smile in acquiescence. “What are the blacks? They’re only horrid thieves, and are worse than wild animals, and murdered poor old Billy Smith, only a couple of weeks ago, at Boolbunda.”

“Yes,” growls a stern-faced man with dark hairy face and coal-like eyes, a mine manager on the Mount Rose line of reef, “and many’s the time I said to Billy, ‘They’ll close in on you, my boy, some day.’ How he used to laugh when I told him he oughter carry a shooting-iron! ‘They know me too well,’ he’d say, ‘and this too,’ and he’d clap his hand on his coiled-up stockwhip on the saddle. ‘Many’s the yard of black hide I’ve taken off with my bit of twist here.’ But they got him at last, the black devils! Poor Billy; he was a rough sort, but he was true as a level, was Billy.”

“Did they send the ‘boys’ out?” drawls out a languid youth, who has been silent so far.

“Yes, rather!” answers the bright little hostess, with a curious steely gleam in her grey eyes, clasping her tiny hands together on her lap, as a child does when excited with delight or anticipated pleasure. “Yes, rather! Inspector Puttis, my cousin, you know, was at Gilbey’s station at the time when the news came in. And you bet he gave them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.”

“Did he catch the murderers?” asks the unfortunate Mr. Jolly innocently, immediately wishing, on noticing the half-hidden sneer on all the faces present, that he had kept quiet.

“Catch the murderers?” the little lady in white repeats, with a grin that spoils for the instant her pretty face. “No, indeed. We don’t go hunting round with sleepy Bobbies here, and summonses and such rubbish.” A murmur of applause rises from the cigar-holding lips of the auditors. “No! Cousin Jack I guess cleared off every nigger from the face of the earth within forty miles of the place. At least, if he didn’t, he ought to. They’re a horrid nuisance, and besides, it’s a long time since they’ve given the ‘boys’ a chance of doing anything.”

The irrepressible new chum however is not satisfied.

“But they’re awfully useful as servants, ain’t they?” he asks.

“Yes, if they’re trained young. You saw that girl of mine, when you were pretending to admire my baby this morning.” And the fair speaker smiles a smile of great sweetness upon Mr. Jolly, as she remembers his unfeigned praise of her child. “Well, she comes from a bad lot of Myall blacks near Cairns. The police have cleared them all out now. Inspector Young gave her to me. One of his sergeants got her at a ‘rounding-up’ about three years ago, before I was married. She was only about six years old then, and had got her leg broken above the knee with a bullet. She’d have got away then, he said, but the dogs found her in a hollow log. He saved her,” continued the lady, in the same tone of voice that a sportsman’s daughter in England would have employed when speaking of one of a litter of foxhounds, “he kept the dogs off her and saved her, because she looked such a strong, healthy little animal. But all this reminds me that Jack Puttis, the Inspector, you know, said he’d call in here to-night, if he could get so far. So I’ll just go in and see about supper.” Rising, the active, fragile speaker trips away, leaving the rather stolid brain of the young Englishman slowly recovering from the shock it has received. His preconceived notions—“young-man notions,” if you like—of woman as a gentler, diviner creature than man, and worthy of the worship of the ruder sex as the citadel of mercy and holiness of thought and action, have received a blow that they will never quite recover from. His thoughts flash back to a line in the “Civilization” of Emerson: “Where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman,” and he feels sick and disgusted.

A grave-looking young man, who has sat in silence watching the face of the heretical new chum expounder of the doctrine of Mercy, now leans forward and touches his shoulder.

“It won’t do, Jolly,” he says, in a half whisper, “you really mustn’t express your ideas upon this subject. It isn’t business-like to speak of your opinion against that expressed by a possible customer. You’ll have to get case-hardened, like I had to. We ain’t in England now, and you’ll have to close your eyes and ears to much out here. A new chum is especially the object of suspicion and dislike to many of the older colonists. ‘He’s come out to reap the harvests we have sown in labour and danger,’ they say; and consequently the figurative ‘new chum’ is hated. You can ask as many questions as you like, but don’t air your opinions on such subjects as you’ve broached to-night. You’ll find the colonists hospitable if you wink at their pet vices and sins, but act otherwise, and,—they’re the very devil. Now I’ve told you the square facts, and don’t you forget it.”

“Here’s Puttis!” cries the fat man by the window, at this instant; and the sound of several horses stamping, and the silvery jingling of bits, is soon after heard at the side of the house. Directly afterwards a small, well-made man, wearing enormous spurs (nearly a foot in length), and habilited in the semi-uniform of an Inspector of the Queensland Black Police, marches into the room. He is immediately noisily welcomed by all the men present. Mr. Jolly is, in due course, introduced to the new-comer, of whom he has heard all kinds of terrible tales since his arrival at the new township, and he cannot overcome his repugnance to the man who, he has reason to believe, is a paid butcher of defenceless women and children. He feels unable to stretch forward his hands to meet the slender white fingers extended towards him, and, pretending not to see them, bows stiffly and turns away. The bad impression he has already created is doubled in those who notice this action of the young man, and he is forthwith put down for certain as “an unmannerly, proud beggar of an Englishman.”

Inspector Puttis, as he stands talking to the men (all a head or more taller than he is), has a face that would immediately attract the attention of an artist or physiognomist.

The skin of the forehead and cheeks is pallid beneath the bronze of an open-air life. The “corrugator” muscles of the eyebrows are unusually well developed (a sign, according to Sir Charles Bell, of great power of thought and action combined with the savage and wild rage of a mere animal). The brows cover small, piercing, restless, blue-grey eyes, the lids of which are generally half-closed. The lips are thin, and kept tightly closed over brilliantly white teeth, except when talking or smiling; when expressing the latter emotion the lips are lifted so as to expose the canine teeth, which are large. The nostrils are full and slightly raised. In conversation, the Inspector’s words come short and sharp, in brief breaths of speech; and he has an uneasy way with him, as if always on the watch and impatient of inactivity. You feel, looking at him, instinctively that before you stands a man who is as incapable of a merciful action as he is of running away from an enemy,—a sharp, active, well-drilled man, who bites before he growls, and has led a life of wild exhausting excitement and danger for some years past. His black, tight-fitting jacket (ornamented with frogs) and buckskin riding breeches fit him to perfection; his leather gaiters are splashed with mud, and a dirty straw hat—the national head-dress of Queenslanders, and called by them a “cabbage-tree”—lies by him on the table. Inspector Puttis stands chatting to the men for a few minutes, and then turns to greet the little hostess as she trips in and pays her tribute of welcome and laudation to her “cousin the Inspector.” Handing him two telegrams presently, she says,—

“They came over from Nanga just after you left. As you said you’d be back I didn’t send them after you.”

“Thanks, awfully, Minta. You’ll excuse me; and—er—you gentlemen. May have to start at once. To-night. Never know. Deuce take these telegrams, I say.”

The little man bows an apology for opening the messages in their presence, and struts to the candle still burning on the piano, and tears open the first envelope. It is from the Chief-Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, and is brief and concise:—

“Proceed Cairns and Georgetown, with troop, to relieve Inspector Snaffle.”

“What the devil does this mean?” murmurs the police-officer to himself. Then a ghost of a smile plays over his face—a grim, half-hidden trembling of the nostrils and opening of the eyes—as he reads the second wire. It is signed “Lileth Mundella.”

“Want to see you at once. Palmer will see Commissioner about it. Bad news from Sydney.”

The message that the Inspector holds in his hand is from his fiancée of six months’ standing; and he smiles to himself as he thinks how lucky he is in having appropriated a girl who is clever enough to bend even the Commissioner of Police himself to her purposes.

There are numbers of odd matches arranged every year, and this is one of them. Neither Inspector Puttis nor Miss Mundella, to whom we shall introduce our readers presently, have ever pretended for an instant that either of them were “soft enough” (as the lady once expressed it) to be in love with the other. The one, a dark-haired girl of the Diana type of beauty, who could carry a room full of ordinary people to her wishes with a flash of her magnificent brown eyes and a word from her haughty, firm-set mouth; the other, a determined man, who had climbed through sheer hard work (work that few would care to undertake, and, thank God, still fewer to carry out) to a good position, and from which he meant to climb still higher.

“We can help each other to our mutual advantage, Mr. Puttis,” Miss Mundella had said, when the preliminaries of the arrangement between them were being discussed.

Although we shall introduce this young lady personally to our readers shortly, it is perhaps best to preface that ceremony by a few preliminary remarks.

Miss Mundella, since returning to Australia, some five years before the date of our story, after receiving a European education at London and Paris, has resided with her uncle, a Mr. Wilson Giles. Highly educated, and with the reputation of being a large heiress, Miss Mundella, at the time she left school, was a girl whose lot in life seemed to have been cast in pleasant places. But a change came o’er the spirit of her dream. Her bright châteaux d’Espagne were rudely broken up by the unforeseen ruin of her father, and his subsequent death. This gentleman—a member of an old Jewish family in England—was a successful squatter for some years in Queensland. Suddenly, to the surprise of his friends, and the indignant anger of his relations in the old country, he married a Christian lady. A complete rupture with his own people ensued; and he shortly afterwards became nominally a member of the Church to which his wife belonged. From this period ruin seemed to dog his steps; and finally, whilst his daughter was still in Europe, a series of bad seasons placed his name upon the list of bankrupts. Overcome with the weight of his afflictions, which were suddenly added to by the loss of his wife, Mr. Mundella paid the only debt left in his power to liquidate,—that of Nature. He left two children behind him, a son and a daughter; to the former we have already introduced our readers, in “mufti,” in Paddy’s Market.

A professional visit to the uncle’s station in Northern Queensland throws Inspector Puttis and Miss Mundella into each other’s company. The two individuals both find in the other those strongly ambitious views for the future that is their own bosom’s god. One meeting leads to others; and the arrival of Billy at the station with the deceased explorer’s letter gives Miss Mundella the opportunity of indulging in a scheme for placing herself, by means of her fiancé, in as enviable a position as that occupied by herself when she left school, as the wealthy young heiress.

But we have left our friends waiting for supper and the Inspector to finish his telegrams too long, and must hurry back. The well-drilled little man offers his arm to his fair cousin, and the pair lead the way to the next room.

Whilst the company are seating themselves the Inspector attracts his cousin’s attention, and whispers hurriedly,—

“Will you do me a favour?”

“Anything I can, Jack.”

“Is it likely you’ll be stationed here for a few months?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a young friend of mine—a great chum. Made an awful mess of it. Hurt a man down south. Want him out of the way for a month or two. Vous savez?”

“Is that all?” answers the little hostess with a gay laugh. “Send him up here. If he ain’t too handsome, so as to make Bob wild, he can stop here. As for being out of the way, there’s plenty of that lying around here.”

“Thanks, awfully, I’ll wire him to-morrow.”

CHAPTER VI.
TWO ESCAPES: A FALL AND A RISE.

“Sweet Puck,

You do their work; and they shall have good luck.”

UR fourth chapter left our hero, like Mahommed’s coffin, “twixt earth and heaven.” Luckily, however, for our story, if not for Claude, Providence dipped her umpire’s flag, after merely a momentary hesitation, to the first-named of the opposing attractive forces, with the result that marvellously little harm happened to the chief actor in the tragedy.

We mentioned the empty boxes, crates, and barrels lying in cumbersome confusion about the stony seclusion of the railway yard. It was the presence of certain of these husks from the city’s great dinner-table that saved Claude Angland’s life.

Some good fairy, early in the afternoon previous to the assault upon the viaduct, had whispered into the grimy little ears of one of the numerous shock-headed waifs of the neighbouring alleys to play at building houses with the smaller cases in the yard.

It was a glorious idea. And the diminutive owner of the aforesaid shock-headed and dirty oral appendages got the credit of it, and was unanimously elected master-mason by his juvenile compatriots of the gutter. How do we know how often this same good fairy raises us humans above our natural level, for her own good ends, whilst we are fondly priding ourselves upon our specially gifted brains, and natural superiority to our fellow-men?

But see! The ragged troupe frisks noisily to the yard. The corners of the sorrowful little mouths forget to turn downwards for a time, and the tear-stained, dirty cheeks wrinkle up with mirthful lines. Shouts of glee, and the usual noisy revelry of happy urchindom, echoes back from the grim, dark, smoky arches. The tiny workers gradually build up, under the unfelt gentle influence of some wonderful directive power, a pyramid of perilous construction, about ten or twelve feet in height.

Little did those baby builders, under the mystic architect, know for what purpose their labours were invoked. The work is completed, and the little tools of Providence, tired with their game, move and pass out of our story, leaving their structure to fulfil its appointed duty.

Now the would-be murderers come into view, and commit their crime, as described in Chapter IV., as far as their power will permit them; and decamp forthwith, so much the more soul-soiled than they were before.

Instead, however, of Claude’s body coming down upon the pavements with a fall of some thirty feet, as poor human ingenuity had intended, our young friend fell upon the yielding, unstable erection of cases, barrels, and the like, and was saved from serious injury. Save that he received a severe shock, and remained for a time unconscious from the combined effects of partial asphyxiation,—for the overcoat still remained round his face,—and a slight blow upon the back of the head, he was really, but for a few bruises and cuts, little the worse for his adventure.

Only a crash, followed by the brief tattoo of falling boxes, signalled the occurrence through the silent, still dark air. The night-watchman upon the premises, who alone heard the noise besides the two would-be assassins, awoke with a start, and had time to call down the curse of the Immortal Jove upon “them blank, blank larrikins” before he again fell into his well-earned and peaceful repose. By-and-by the cool, early morning harbour breezes arrive and aid Nature to bring Claude back to the world and consciousness. Gradually, even before he is quite himself again, his arms, working on their own account, have freed themselves from the loosely-tied line that has hitherto bound them together.

He moves his head at last. The muffling overcoat falls partly off, and his strong lungs eagerly suck in their full supply of life-giving oxygen in a series of sob-like gasps. Consciousness dawns upon him, and he realizes his position and feels his bruises. It is some time, however, before he can move his limbs, he is so stiff; but he does at last, and sits up on the edge of a broken crate.

All is silent. It is still dark, and he cannot at first make out where he is. One thing is certain, he must wait for more light ere he can make a move comfortably. Presently, with the instinct of a smoker, he feels for his pipe and matches, and solaces his lonely reflections by puffing peace-bringing, but unseen, clouds of fragrant smoke from his lips, and sits waiting for daylight to appear. A dead stillness is all around, broken only by the sound of a far-off steamboat’s droning whistle from time to time, the rumble of a distant vehicle, or the occasional silver chiming hour-bells from some clock-tower close at hand. Looking upward from where he sits, Claude can see the dark mass of the viaduct standing out against the sky; and, not knowing of the children’s pyramid of boxes, for it had utterly collapsed after performing its appointed duty, wonders with a shudder how he could possibly have escaped as he has done. Why should these men have attempted to destroy him? His uncle’s warning, which he now remembers in conjunction with his late experience, seems to show that some mystery attaches to the work he has to do, and that the late explorer had reason in telling him to travel incognito. He thinks of how nearly, through his own carelessness, he might have been now a shattered corpse; he pictures his mother’s grief, and half-rising utters an exclamation of impatience against himself out loud. As he does so, he hears a slight noise near him, and becomes aware that he is not alone amongst the boxes, that, like the ruined sarcophagi of some Babylonian graveyard, are just visible piled around him. The soft regular sound of snoring reaches his ears, and comes from a corner close by. Claude listens for a few minutes, and tries to guess what kind of animal is the cause of those tender nasal notes. He quickly determines that the midnight music does not proceed from the vibrating mucous membrane of a man, nor is it a drunken snore. It is either that of a woman or a child. But who is it sleeping out here to-night without roof-cover, in this wealthy city? And why does she or it do so?

A mixed feeling of curiosity and compassion makes him determined to solve the mystery: so, lighting a match, he painfully scrambles towards the sleeper, making as little noise as possible. His search is soon rewarded by finding a little ragged body curled up upon some paper-packing in a corner. It is that of a small-limbed boy-child of about eight years, clothed in a torn, dirty linen shirt and ragged trousers,—the latter innocent even of the traditional single brace of street-arabism. The little sleeper is resting face downwards, on his left side, and a thin little bare arm is hugging the dark matted coat of a well-fed puppy, which nestles close to the child’s bosom. Claude gets but a brief sight of all this before another match is needed, the noise of striking which causes both the boy and dog to awake,—the former putting up his arm, as if instinctively to ward off a blow, even before he quite opens his eyes.

“Well, youngster, what are you doing here?” asks Claude, oblivious of the fact that the same question might with equal right have been put to himself. “Don’t be afraid, I sha’n’t hurt you.”

“I hain’t a’ doin’ o’ nothin’, mister,” whimpers the child, in a hoarse dry tone. “Them Star boys collared me ticket, an I’ll get (sob), I’ll get dollied if fayther cotched me back at ’ome without a thick ’un fur ’im.”

“Well, jump up, youngster, and show me the way out of this place, and I’ll get you another ticket,” Claude says kindly, not knowing in the least what a “ticket” may be, or for the matter of that “Star boys” either. “I’ve lost my way here, and,” giving the boy a coin, which that diminutive creature immediately put in his mouth, as the only safe pocket available, “and I hope you’ll be able to sleep at home to-morrow night.”

“Oh, I’ll show er the way, mister,”—here the “arab” made a noise like ough, much after the style of a Red Indian’s expression of surprise. “Guess yer’d better not let ald Sandie cotch yer lightin’ matchers ’ere,” he continued in the same hoarse whisper, looking slyly at Claude out of the corners of his eyes, as our hero strikes another light.

Then taking the aforementioned shaggy-coated puppy carefully up, and placing it in straddle-legged wonder upon his poor thin pointed shoulder, the little guide bobs away into the gloom, his bare feet moving quietly over the boxes, and his dirty shirt forming a sort of sartorial “pillar of fire” leading the way out of the wilderness of the yard. Painfully and slowly Claude scrambles after the diminutive ghostly form in front of him, and at last finds himself once more in Liverpool Street. The boy stands there under a gas lamp, his pup in his arms, but edges off into the road, as if in suspicion of Claude, as the young man hobbles forward. “Now, youngster, could you get me a cab, d’you think?”

“If yer’ll mind er pup,” the hoarse-voiced baby skeleton replies, after hesitation for a minute, and then, like a spirit, he silently and suddenly disappears. Claude is glad to sit down on the curb, and has only waited a few moments when the well-known regular pulsation of an approaching policeman’s walk is heard upon the viaduct. Presently the form of a splendidly-built sub-inspector of city police, in forage-cap and cloak, and holding a riding-whip in his hand, appears, and comes to a halt where Claude is seated.

“What’s up, mate?” asks a powerful but musical bass voice.

Claude has had time to think what answer he will make in case of being questioned, and has decided that his would-be murderers had better go free for the time being, than let a police inquiry retard his search for his uncle’s body; so, turning his head a bit, he lets loose the first lie he has used since a boy at school: “I’m waiting for a cab; have sent a boy for it. I got knocked down by a cab or something an hour or two ago, maybe more, and have been sitting down in the yard there till just now.”

“You don’t know who ran you down?”

“Haven’t the faintest notion. I’m not much hurt, and it was my own fault.”

“Ah! it was you then lighting matches just now in there?”

“It was I. I found a boy sleeping in the yard, and have sent him for a cab. Will he have far to go?”

“To the Town Hall, sir. Were there many boys camped in the yard?”

“Only saw one,—said he had been robbed by ‘Star boys,’ whatever they may be, and was afraid to go home. By-the-bye, Inspector, if you’re not in a hurry, may I ask you something about these youngsters one sees about the streets here? Haven’t had an opportunity before. Am a stranger in Sydney. I think you have more ‘street arabs’ here, as we used to call them in England, than ever I remember seeing in London, or any of our large towns at home.”

“Well, sir, fact is, I can’t spare much time now, but you can come round with me some night if you like. I’m a Londoner, and can tell you that you’ll see all the old familiar scenes in Sydney of houseless beggars, and starving children driven out into the streets by drunken parents, and suchlike, camping around where they can find the softest pavements. But you’ve hit it when you notice the number of ‘larrikins,’ we call them. We’ve got a larger percentage of youthful criminals amongst our bad classes than at home; and it’s a growing percentage, more’s the pity.”

“Well,” observes Claude, “I’ve always been interested in these subjects; and I guessed what you’ve just confirmed, namely, that parental supervision is almost a dead-letter here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered the Inspector, stroking his splendid flaxen beard, and glancing up and down the road, that was now lightening up with approaching sunrise. “Yes; it’s a fact youthful crime is increasing here, faster than it used to do in past years. It is my opinion that the Government will have to look after the children altogether before long, just as it schools them now. The parents wouldn’t or couldn’t see to the schooling business, and the State had to step in and do it. The Government will have to look after the young people altogether pretty soon, if we are not to have a nation of criminals growing up around us.”

“Well, Inspector, from a professional point of view, you don’t object to a decent sprinkling of criminals amongst the population, I suppose?” laughed Claude; but he continued gravely, “I’m very glad to have met you, and sincerely hope to have a chat with you again.”

The subject Angland has broached is a favourite one of the sub-inspector’s, moreover, he is anxious to know who Claude is. So he determines to wait a few minutes longer.

“Thank you, sir,” he goes on, acknowledging Claude’s compliment. “One word more: the parents here, if they can spare threepence a week for schooling their children, pack them off there to get them out of the way, and Sunday Schools are in favour chiefly as a means of getting a quiet afternoon. The kids are bundled off to school; whether they go there or not is another thing.”

“Now that boy I found amongst the barrels, how does he get a living? Does he go to school?”

“Oh, he’s a newspaper boy, likely enough,” replies the police-officer. “He told you about his ticket, didn’t he? The boys get a dozen papers for 9d., and on handing over that sum to the publisher they receive a ticket, which, when presented at another part of the paper office, brings them the required number of ‘Evening Newses,’ or ‘Stars,’ as the case may be.”

“These boys? Well, they’re a class really worth study, sir. That is, if you’re fond of such things. They’re a wild, untamable herd of free-lances, that’s what they are.”

“I suppose there’s a large army of them?”

“Yes. And I suppose nearly half of them are on their own hook, and many of them combine the professions of loafer, thief, and larrikin with their legitimate calling. They’re bright lads,—have to be,—with any amount of courage, and hard as nails. They’re worth protecting; and they should be, by the newspaper proprietors or the Government. But here’s your cab, sir, I think. Any time you like, you’ll find me at the ‘Central,’ or my whereabouts if I’m away. My name? Sub-Inspector Chime, at your service, sir. Good-night.”

The cab rattles up. Claude bids adieu to his small guide, and leaves him with more silver in his mouth than it has ever held before. Then our hero gets back to his hotel, and finds himself so far recovered next day as to be able to set forth for a stroll in the evening. It is not long before the genus Newsboy forces itself upon his notice, and he sets to work to study them carefully. Who that has done so has not been amply repaid? A new class established in the community by the necessities of an advancing civilization,—a class composed, for the most part, of neglected youth, whose useful services to the needs of the public are recompensed by starvation wages and ill-usage. Of course there are many bad ones amongst these newsboys,—these poor, little, ragged, dirty-faced, barefooted arabs of our colonial streets,—but on the whole they are wonderfully honest, hard-working little souls. Amongst the best of them are the paid boys in the employ of some one who has purchased the sole right of street sale of certain thoroughfares or parts of thoroughfares.

Let the unattached newspaper boy, who, finding trade slack amongst the idlers at his own particular corner, come poaching upon a preserve. In such a case, the reception of a yellow ant which has fallen upon a black ant camp, or the welcome of a stranger dog in a country town by the local canines of the place, is tepid, compared with the fever heat of combined patriotism shown by the “regular boys” in driving off the intruder. Throwing papers and petty jealousy to the winds, the unwary invader is soon hurried over the frontier.

Near the book-stall at the corner of King Street Claude finds six or seven very small newsboys. Amongst them is a little, bare-legged, fairy-like girl-child in a dirty red frock, also engaged in disposing of mental food from one of the great “Fourth-Estate” mills of the city.

The girl dodges in and out amongst the crowd that is waiting for the trams, selling her papers, quite heedless of the boys’ angry voices, which follow her with abuse. But as Claude comes upon the scene one youthful protectionist has caught the diminutive object of his wrath, and gives her several blows in the face with his open hand. No one interferes. A newsgirl getting a beating for cutting into the trade of the “regular” boys is to be seen any night in Sydney, and consequently is not worth interfering about. In this case, however, the boy goes off howling instead of the girl, the result of a cut from Claude’s cane. Angland is immediately surrounded by a contingent of youthful “regulars,” and a little hubbub of flat-toned voices rains upon him—

“What er you a-hittin of ’im fur?”

“The gent’s mad cos ’is gurl hain’t met ’im!”

“Yah, you wid the stick; ’it a man yur hown size!”

Claude of course does not heed the abuse, but firmly impresses upon the erring lad he had chastened that if he touches the girl again he will thrash him soundly.

“Hain’t ’e got er right ter ’it ’er?” shrieks a catfish-mouthed manikin, resting his head against an adjacent verandah-post, as street-curs sometimes do when they howl. “Hain’t ’e got er right ter ’it ’er? She’s ’is sister.”

This evidence in favour of the accused is hailed with a cackling chorus of approval by the remainder of the boys, amidst which Claude takes the girl aside to question her a bit.

She informs him, in better English than the boys employ, that she must sell two dozen “Stars” and “Nooses” before she can go home.

“How long will that take you to do?”

“Ten o’clock; p’r’aps a bit later; p’r’aps a bit hearlier.”

“Have you any parents?”

“Dunno, mister. Mother hired me out er to Missus Bowen a year ago. I live at Woolloomooloo Bay. Buy a ‘Noose,’ sir?”

“And if you don’t sell all your papers, what then?”

“Guess I’d get a lickin’, or p’r’aps have ter sleep in er yard.”

“Was that your brother hit you?”

“Dunno, sir. He’s got ter look after me. That’s all I know. Buy a ‘Star,’ sir? Mother Bowen has three gurls as sells papers. ‘Star,’ sir? ’ere you hare. Jack, he’s got ter look arter two gurls, and Johnnie, that’s he, he looks arter another down the Royal Arcade.”

“How old are you?”

“’Bout ten, sir.”

“Do you go to school? Can you read?”

“No, sir. I hain’t swell enough. I used ter, when huncle sended me, but the missus at the school, she said, ‘Yer a dirty little gal, yer are,’ that what she said. ‘Yer a dirty little gal, and yer must get a tidy gownd afore yer come agin.’ I hain’t been since, sir. Buy a ‘Noose’?”

“Of course I will,” and Claude buys all her papers, straightway returning them to her. Then he walks down Elizabeth Street, and seeing two gruesome juveniles with large mouths and shock heads, who are howling out “Even’ Noose! Even’ Noose!” he gets them to come into a tea-shop and have a feed.

Seated at the clean, white-topped table, Claude is glad to recognize one of the boys as his little friend in need of the night before. The motherly dark-eyed mistress of the tea-shop, in reply to a question put to her, smiles kindly on the trio, and wagging her head slightly, with the air of knowing more than she cares to tell, says, “They know me well enough. Don’t you, boys?”

“Er yes, missus,” from both.

“Do they come here for their meals, then?” asks Claude with surprise.

“They’re always coming in, sir, and saying, ‘Missus, are yer got er stale bun?’ and sometimes they buy a cup of cocoa on a cold night.”

“Is that all they get to eat, d’you think?”

To the casual observer, the boys look as if food was a rarity rather than a regularly recurring feature in the day’s landscape.

“Well, sir, I sees a lot of them, and I don’t think they get more than breakfast at ’ome and a bun, or a stale roll during the afternoon, which they call supper, poor things. They lie long abed of a morning, I believe, and have their breakfast at half-past nine or ten,—they’re up so late, you know.”

The dark-eyed ministering female trots off, and Claude watches the dirty smudged faces of his little guests, as the rolls and sweet tea disappear. They eat but little, however, and that very slowly.

Of the two boys only one, Claude’s friend, possesses a hat, or rather the remnants of one. The happy possessor of this ghastly semblance of a chapeau has carefully removed it on coming into the shop; and our hero notes his well-formed head, and falls to musing over the probable future of the owner. Neither of the little craniums before him is that of a weak or poor intellect, and the faces would be beautiful if the shadows of sorrow, hunger, and neglect were but removed. The dirty, unkempt, elfin locks are growing vigorously around a brain clearly worth cultivating,—an active brain that will expend a vast amount of energy in the world, for weal or for woe, as its budding inclinations are directed. The boys answer Claude’s questions promptly, and to the point. They are little business-men with no time to waste. One tells how he sells three dozen papers a day “fur me bruther;” the other is working on his own account.

Says the hatless youth: “I sells ‘Nooses,’ sir, an’ I ’ave ter give one er ter me mother, and one er ter me sister.” He continues: “I sells more ‘Sunday Times’ ner ‘Nooses.’ I gets a dozen ‘Times’ fur a thick ’um and a narf, and I sells em fur three shillin’.”

“And if you don’t sell your papers?”

“I’ll get a hidin’, that’s all.”

“Does your father whack you?”

“No, mother does the lickin’.”

“Does your father do any work?”

“Mostly no, mister. He ain’t much out of the ’ouse. He’s a wool-packer, an’ he’s mostly out of work.”

“How old are you and your friend there?”

“I’m ten, Don’s ’bout nine.”

It is the same old story which one can get repeated from hundreds of children in the busy Sydney streets. Another phase of the utter neglect to which the parents of the poorer classes consign their children, to the danger and trouble of the State. Grim old London cannot show, in proportion, so many unhappy human fledgelings slaving and starving through the dusty streets,—driven out to work for their parents’ gin money, or hired out to slave-drivers with the same end in view.

Claude listens with a tear of sympathy in his eyes as the boy aged ten tells how he has “runned hisself two year,” and mostly “sleeps out er nights” by the Circular Quay. And how he would like to go to school, but has not a coat to go in, nor a threepence a week to spare to invest in education. Then the children get fidgety, and the dark-eyed, kind-hearted shop-woman, with true feminine intuitiveness, whispers to Claude that they “want to join their mates.” And so off they go, each gravely saying, “Thank ye, sir,” and each pocketing his shilling in his capacious mouth, but neither showing any capability of pleasure nor of gratification. Claude wishes them “good-night,” and finishes up the evening with a visit to the Circular Quay at twelve o’clock, and there finds a solitary policeman standing under one of the wonderful electric lights, who shows him where to look for the newsboys sleeping out.

“But don’t you go a-questioning of ’em, hif you don’t want to get mobbed by them blessed larrikins,” was the constable’s last good-night.

Not much hunting is required. Down amongst the cases, the barrels, the timber, and the great iron water-pipes, Claude counts over ninety boys camping out. He wisely follows the policeman’s advice, however, and does not disturb their slumbers, and goes home more puzzled with Sydney than ever.

CHAPTER VII.
MESSRS. WINZE AND CLINSKEEN.

“So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”

HE firm of Messrs. Winze and Clinskeen, Mining and Stock Agents, of Pitt Street, Sydney, is known as well, if not better, in “outside” wilds as even in Sydney. The establishment is one of those remarkable outcomes of Australian push and enterprise that are to be found in these colonies and nowhere else in the world. The office before us is the focussing-point of two great fields of operations,—mining and stock-raising. In the ground-glass case in the office—dedicated, as a black letter notice on the door informs us, to Mr. Clinskeen, the station-business partner—a subtle brain is directing the business affairs of fifty large stations a thousand miles away, comprising a total area of perhaps 50,000 square miles. Any hour of the day you may drop in at the office, and you are sure to find somebody from the “Far North” closeted with the keen-eyed, courteous, military-looking old gentleman and his shorthand clerk in the little glass case aforesaid. Tall, slim, darkly-bronzed men, in well-cut clothes and be-puggeried light-felt hats, come there and drawl out their ideas about “fats,” stores, capital, artesian-bores, and the like, whiffing long cigars meanwhile, and everlastingly “nipping” from the decanter of “three star” upon the table. One of these bowed out, perhaps the “boss-drover” of a mob (herd) of fat cows, which has lately arrived from the north in Sydney, enters, with his dirty, rough, cabbage-tree hat in his hand. He has a jolly, brown-red face, and has come to get his “accounts squared up.” He is a bit “breezy” just now, for he has already begun to “knock down his cheque” (spend his money); but he sobers up under the keen “no nonsense” glance of Mr. Clinskeen in little less than no time. He is not quite happy, to tell the truth, about these same accounts. Thoughts will enter his head about that beast that disappeared mysteriously about the time he had to wait with his cattle near Swindle’s grog-shanty, at Parakelia Creek, for five days, whilst his black boys tracked some of his pack-horses that had wandered away. His mind is not quite easy either about his enormous butcher’s bill; for Mr. Clinskeen knows something about the awkward mistakes that will arise sometimes with drovers, in mixing up their own private grog account with the “rations expenses’ list.” However he has got down with only a loss of one and a half per cent. of his “O. B. Fours,” and his business being soon dispatched to his satisfaction, he goes away as contented as may be. Jew money-lenders, hydraulic engineers, stock-inspectors, patentees of “ear-marking” machines, come and go, and then more squatters. The flow of business through that little glass office is never ceasing.

On the opposite side of the clerk’s outside office is Mr. Winze’s special apartment. “His claim,” he calls it, for he it is that conducts the mining part of the affairs of the firm, and he is thoroughly professional in speech as well as action. Born a “Cousin Jack” (a Cornishman); working for his living when nine years old in the submarine levels of a great, rambling tin mine on the ragged sea-front of the Old-land; educating himself by the light of flaring tallow-dips, whilst the moisture of the mine walls fell upon his book; the noisy man-engine creaking mournfully by his side, and the sea roaring far up above his head, he has fought his way through life; and, by means of Australian gold fields and Cornish pluck, is now one of the wealthiest and most respected of Sydney’s citizens. He does not see so many visitors in his little sanctuary as his business-brother Mr. Clinskeen does, over the way; but it is through his far-sightedness and practical knowledge of mining that the firm has amassed the capital that his partner can lend to such advantage to their run-holding clients. Mr. Winze is sitting, as our curtain rises, at his paper-strewn table. He is a powerful-looking, squarely-built, elderly gentleman, with magnificent, dark-brown eyes, and well-formed head covered with thick iron-grey hair. The expression of his face shows that much of the youthful fire remains; and although over sixty years of age, he is really younger in many respects than some of the town-bred, thirty-five-year-old clerks in his own office. By the side of the mining partner is an open iron deed-box, from which he takes several pink-ribboned bundles of papers. He reads rapidly through some of them, glances at others, taking notes meanwhile; then, glancing at a clock upon the wall opposite, turns towards the corner of the room where his lady type-writer is seated, and informs her, with a kindly smile, that he will not require her presence till three o’clock. Left to himself, he stretches himself, and letting his gold pince-nez fall upon his broad chest, with a shake of his head, proceeds to fill and light his “thinking pipe,” as he calls it.

“Disengaged, sir?” at this instant says a red-headed clerk, opening the door after first knocking on the glass. “Mr. Angland, sir.”

“Oh, how d’ye do, Angland? Come in; right to time to a minute. Easy to see your heart’s in the work you’ve undertaken. Sit down over there, that chair’s more comfortable. This other one is an old mate of mine, let me tell you. It has a history. I made it myself from the ‘sets’ that gave way in the O’Donaghue, when what we thought was the ‘hanging-wall’ caved in, and showed us the true reef again, and a nice little fortune too on the other side of a ‘horse.’

“Can I offer——no? You’re almost an abstainer. So much the better. Well, I’ve thought out your matters carefully,—and when I say that, knowing, as you do, that your uncle was the nearest approach to a brother I ever had, and that his wishes are sacred to me, I think you’ll believe me.” Pointing to the table with a paper-knife made from a piece of silver-kaolin from Broken Hill, he continued, after a pause, “I’ve just been going through his papers again, so as to be well posted up against your coming. Now, to drive right into the subject,—and perhaps you’d better not interrupt me till I ‘clean up,’—to go right ahead, I propose that you leave for the north at once. That you go to Cairns, in company with a tough old practical miner that I’ll introduce you to,—a ‘hatter’ who knows a lot about that part of the coast range. You’re not safe here, evidently. This little arch-business the other night showed that; and, almost teetotaler as you are, you may possibly be helped, nolens volens, to a drop too much—excuse the joke—that will leave you not worth ‘panning out.’ It’s no use your travelling under an assumed name now. You’ll be watched, likely, in any case; and I intend to hedge you round in a better and different way. You shall be a public character to a small extent. You shall go under the distinguished auspices of the Royal and Imperial Ethnological and Geological Society of Australasia.

“Plain Mr. Brown, or John James, Esq., may disappear; and it’s too late to look for traces of either when missed. It’s very different, let me tell you, with an accredited explorer of the Royal and Imperial—excuse the rest. He is under the eyes of the public wherever he goes; and there is much protecting virtue in the words ‘Royal and Imperial,’—and this is especially the case here, in republican Australia. Odd, ain’t it? Now you have trusted me because poor old Sam, your uncle, told you to do so; and you mustn’t object to my old miner friend going with you. If the poor old boy has kept something good up there, in the mining way, for you, you wouldn’t be able to do things properly without an old hand to teach you the ropes and dodges. If you went by yourself you’d be shadowed and tracked down, safe ‘as a Cornishman’s set.’ How about money? Ah! that’s all right; but if you do want any, draw on me to any amount.”

Claude murmured an expression of thanks.

“Not at all,” continued Mr. Winze, rising, “and now you’ll come and take lunch with me, and afterwards we’ll interview the scientists.”

After lunch, seated in a corner of the splendidly appointed smoking-room of the “only” club in Sydney, Claude’s new friend and ally discloses to him the past history of the late explorer.

“Now, all you know about your uncle, you say, is that you thought him ‘the grandest fellow you ever met;’ that you saw little of him when he visited London in 1878, with his native boy Billy, whom you are to find; that his time was much taken up with lecturing and seeing old friends; and that the late Dr. Angland, your father, and he did not quite hit it altogether. Both seemed to respect each other, but they didn’t combine well. You’ll see the same sort of thing every day,—first-class fellows, who respect each other’s good qualities, but haven’t enough in common in thoughts or prejudices to become friendly. Will fence with each other in a friendly, but stilted conversation, but won’t amalgamate any more than sickened silver will with gold on a badly managed battery-table. Well, the main reason of the—antipathy, I suppose we must term it in this particular case—I’ll explain. Have you a match? Have used all mine. Burn more matches than tobacco, I verily believe. Your uncle and your mother were the only children of a wealthy London merchant of the old school,—a man whose word was as safe as a Bank of England note; punctilious to a fault; and who, from what Sam used to tell me, would have died of horror, I verily believe, if he had lived to see the modern way of conducting business affairs. He was one of those straight-laced, horribly exact men of the last generation; one who never traded beyond his capital, and never owed a ha’penny. Old Mr. Dyesart would have turned his only son out of his house, I believe, if he had found him borrowing sixpence on an I.O.U. or promissory note. Sam was brought up on these lines, and inherited all the best points of his father’s character. He was, however, of a speculative turn. When he became a partner in his father’s business he developed a taste for big things, and at first rather startled the steady old clerks in the tumble-down offices in Fenchurch Street. I recollect his telling me how he took up the trade in maize from America which commenced after the last Irish famine, and did splendidly. Things went on well, and the old gentleman and his aged clerks felt more confidence in Sam in regard to his speculations, the vastness of which often caused his father at first to storm at his son, and afterwards to admire him more than ever. Then bad years came, and Sam’s Australian wheat connection drew him into various ‘wild cat’ ventures in Queensland sugar plantations and gold mines, and before long the credit of the old-established firm was in danger. He did not tell his father, and hoped to tide over the bad time, and anxiously searched for an opportunity to recover himself.

“With all this trouble on his shoulders, he still,—he was ever the same,—he still could think, feel, and work for others. He was indeed, as you say, ‘a grand fellow.’ As one of the ‘great unpaid,’ he was exercising his official position of Justice of the Peace for some little country town near London where he lived, when a young girl was brought before him one day charged with being an immoral character and without means of support. She told a pitiful tale. She was from Australia, she said, having left all a year before to follow the fortunes of a young libertine, who, as traveller for the soft-goods firm by whom she was employed, had come in contact with and ruined her. He had been commissioned by his firm to buy for them in the chief manufacturing towns of England, and, having been already seduced by him in Sydney, the girl had no alternative—or desire either, if you ask me—but to accompany him to Europe when he told her to do so. After a brief sojourn in London he deserted her; gave her the slip. Without money, friends, or much of a character, left helpless in the great city of a strange land, and afraid to write to her parents, she fell into the ranks of the wretched ‘necessary evils of the pavement.’ Now instead of passing over this girl’s story with an incredulous smile, as most J. P.’s would have done, he communicated through his agents with the girl’s parents,—no, it was the girl’s brother, a gold miner,—and, paying her passage, packed her off back to Sydney again. The girl never reached home, but died on the voyage, of consumption, I think Sam said, contracted by the fearful life she had led in London. You’ll see why I mention this matter by-and-by. Soon after this, Sam saw what he thought was at last a chance of winning back his losses. It proved a ‘duffer.’ This, with other mining speculations, proved to be the straw to break the business back of the old firm; and, happy only in the thought that his father had been spared the shock and disgrace of the collapse by quietly dying beforehand, Sam Dyesart left for Australia,—‘To cure my wounds with the hair of the dog that bit me,’ he used to say, for he turned gold miner, and was pretty lucky all through. His sister, your lady-mother, was engaged to be married to your father, young Dr. Angland, just about the time the final crash came. Although wooing your mother as an heiress worth £20,000 or more, his affection—with honour let it be remembered of him—his affection knew no change when he found her penniless. He must have been a very good fellow. But it appears that he had all along warned Sam of the risk he was running in dabbling in mining matters, and when the crash came rather crowed over Sam I fancy. At any rate, a tremendous row ensued. Sam forbade his sister to marry the doctor. The doctor stuck to his colours, however, and the marriage took place, Sam being absent from the wedding. Then, just after you were born, I think, having wound up his affairs, Sam started for this country, promising his sister before he went that he would return her dowry to her with interest some day. A number of years afterwards, when Sam was my mate upon the West Coast diggings in New Zealand, a stranger arrived in the camp, and came to our ware (house) one night and asked if Mr. Dyesart was at hand. You didn’t hear many surnames on the camp, I can tell you, and Sam was generally known as ‘Doctor,’ from the surgical knowledge he possessed, and the fact of his being ever ready to nurse anybody who might be sick. The visitor turned out to be the brother of the girl Sam had tried to save. It appears that, upon hearing of his sister’s disgrace and death, he set to work and saved up his wages till he could go to England. There he traced out the girl’s destroyer; and finding him, left him a helpless cripple for life. The avenger was arrested, and served a term of, I forget how many, years’ imprisonment, to which he was sentenced by a judge who pointed out, in the usual cold-blooded style, ‘that the girl had her remedy against her seducer,’ and that the law did not recognize the righteousness of a brother’s anger against the destroyer of his only sister. But the object of this long yarn, which has apparently not bored you so much as it has tired me, is that the faithful brother,—I forget his name now, ‘Solemn Jim’ the boys used to call him,—Jim met with an accident a few months after he found Sam, and on his death-bed told your uncle some cock-and-bull yarn of a regular bonanza of a gold-bearing reef, situated somewhere in the Queensland desert country. It was the belief in this imagined ‘second Mount Morgan,’—the outcome of a feverish imagination and a wish to repay your uncle for his goodness to the sister, and nothing more, I verily believe,—it was this that kept Sam flying round the country like a Cooper’s Creek ‘brumbie’ (wild horse) of late years, for he did not know the exact spot to look for his gold mine in, as Jim had turned up his toes in the middle of the directions how to find the reef.”

“Do you know what the directions were, Mr. Winze?” asks Claude.

“Nothing about it, save that the reef was firmly believed in by your uncle, and he expected of late to find it on the Great Coast Range, in Northern Queensland. Now I’ve told you all I know. My pump of recollection ‘sucks,’ as the engineers say. No more to be had of personal reminiscences. But I’ve still one thing to add,—had almost forgotten it, although to my mind most important of the lot. I’ve reason to believe that, contrary to his usual custom, your uncle has either invested in some large speculation up north or has loaned a considerable amount to some one. I say contrary to his usual custom, for he did not inform me of it. It strikes me that this is the secret of his calling you to his grave. Now, as I am appointed sole executor under his will, which will have to be proved upon your return, it is part of my duties to find out what has become of the missing money. The singular silence upon this point maintained by him is odd; but I think that your friend of the Royal, who took you to see the rink so obligingly, but who carelessly dropped you on the way, could point out the answer to what we want to get at.”

The two men rise to go, and soon they are crossing Hunter Street, on their way to the rooms, or rather room, of the Royal and Imperial E. and G. S. of A. Claude, so far from feeling inclined to murmur “Ich bin langeweilig”—as an illustrious person did on a similar occasion—at the loquacity of the old gentleman at his side, has been intensely interested in all he has heard. The evident affection also the narrator had for the memory of the best points in the character of his “old chum Sam” reflected Mr. Winze’s own goodness in its expression; and the young man respects him accordingly, and is ready to follow his directions. Our friends arrive at the Society’s room, and on the way the mining agent has sketched its history for Claude’s benefit.

This august body, like many of the institutions of New South Wales, is unique in its way; it belongs to a class of scientific associations whose parallel is to be found nowhere outside the Australian colonies. To understand the Society’s present position, one must be aware that the most prominent trait of the practical, pushing, nervous brains that are rolling Australia’s “old chariot along” is the instinctive readiness with which any object likely to facilitate the upward march of the individual is seized and made use of, to be thrown aside when it has served the purpose of the climber.

“Advance Australia,” yells Mr. Corn-stalk (N. S. Wales), John Chinaman Crow-eater, Esq. (South Australia), or hot-headed Master Banaana-boy (Queensland); but really they mean “Advance Australian,” which Australian is the particular ego of each individual shouter of the national motto.

Let a thing be untried or unknown, then America or Europe must test it. It will hardly have a chance in Australia of a fair trial. But once an idea has proved itself a good one, an invention has been found labour-saving, an actor has crowded the houses of New York or London, and the hero-worshippers of Sydney and Melbourne become frantically enthusiastic over the new matter, man, or thought brought to their notice. It was through this latter kind of forcing growth that the humbly-useful, plain Geological Society (no Royal and Imperial then) of Sydney—which was originally composed of real lovers of science—suddenly burst into the green-leafed glory of public recognition, with a real live Governor of the Colony as patron.

Science is a tender plant in many respects, and requires plenty of room in which to expand and throw out its ever-increasing tendrils. You cannot assist it by tying its budding branches to the regal fence with ribbons and parchment charters. Indeed, the healthful circulation of the life-giving chlorophyll is dependent on freedom. Second only in harmfulness to the dank shadows of the Church is the hot blaze of Imperial glories on the tender shootlets. Science is impatient of both.

About 1884 great public interest was awakened by an attempt of the “man of blood and iron” to annex the whole island of New Guinea. Germany’s Chancellor for once in his life made a mistake. He had calculated upon the surprise, supine, peace-at-any-price restfulness of the English Colonial Secretary, but he was frustrated by the prompt pluck of the Premier of the Queensland Ministry, Sir Thomas McIlwraith. Some of the business-men subscribers of the Society—who had joined to oblige their scientific friends, wives, or sons—saw in the excitement caused by the New Guinea question the tide in their affairs that, taken at the flood, was to lead them on to promotion in their business and social worlds. They got elected on the executive of the Association; worked upon the feelings of the newspaper proprietors till copious “notices” of the Society appeared in “our columns;” got anybody and everybody who knew, or pretended to know, anything of New Guinea to read papers before the members; and, after judiciously waiting till the public were well advertised of the existence of the Society, suddenly proclaimed that an expedition would be despatched to the Dark Island, and proceeded to obtain contributions towards the same. Dinners and conferences follow, with the Governor himself yawning at the end of the committee-room table; and then, as a finishing touch of the picture, came the gilding of “Her Majesty’s gracious permission” to add the prefix Royal and Imperial to the little Society’s scientific cognomen. The energetic councillors soon received the rewards of their energy; their plan to robe themselves in the reflected glories of the English scientific societies, by building a dazzling looking-glass association on the lowly foundation of an already established body of thinkers, met with perfect success. Plain Mr. Orkshineer became John Orkshineer, Esq., F.R.G.S., and Hon. Treasurer Royal and Imperial Ethnological and Geological Society of Australasia, and found himself rubbing shoulders, at conversaziones and soirées, with a far better crowd in which to enlarge his clientage than he could have dared to show himself in heretofore; and Mr. Lionel E. Gentlydon, the gay and handsome—but, alas! briefless—barrister, met sixteen solicitors’ daughters at one scientific garden-party, where he spread his peacock’s tale of new-born glories as Hon. Sec. of the R.I.E.G.S.A. He has never since regretted his far-sighted policy in climbing up by the scientific ladder, which he had helped to ruin on his way up. The original and true naturalist members of the Society are, as is generally the case, quiet men who dislike all this tinsel and glitter, and they retire more and more into the shade. The New Guinea expedition goes; the brave explorers employed find their provisions composed of damaged and unsaleable articles got rid of by advertising firms, whose names appear before the public as Donators to the Expedition Fund. Even the steam-launch, which must be their home for many months, has long been condemned as useless by her owners, and is obtained for the Society, at an enormous sum per month, through the kindness of one of the shipping-agent members of the Council.

The expedition returns, scientifically successful in spite of all the disadvantages of jobbery and bad management, and the round of dinners, speech-making, and festivities is begun again. Meanwhile the unhappy explorers—several of whom are quite incapacitated by sickness and the hardships they have undergone—wait in vain for their wages for months; when it is discovered that the Society is financially ruined. The business-men have sucked what they wanted out of the Association, and now the older members come forward, and are trying to rejuvenate the dried husk when Claude is first introduced to their notice by Mr. Winze. We have perhaps trespassed too long already upon the subject of the Society, or we would indulge in a sketch of the Executive Council, as the members thereof sit round the little table in the shady room with the map-covered walls. Suffice it, however, to say that the genial old mining agent, having long been a member of the Society, briefly introduces Claude. He points out that he is a scientifically-inclined young man, who is about to visit on business some property of his in Central-Northern Queensland, and that Mr. Angland is willing to collect information and data upon such subjects as the Council may suggest, without cost to the Society, in return for being accredited as its representative. The President welcomes and thanks Claude, and half an hour afterwards he says good-bye to Mr. Winze, having successfully accomplished the first item in the programme laid out for him by his new friend.

Claude feels light-hearted, and is intensely interested in the work before him; and he proceeds to make a few purchases of such scientific instruments as he may require in his new rôle of explorer,—a couple of aneroids, maximum and minimum thermometers, and the like. Then he sends word from a messenger-boy office for his little friend of the arches to be ready to start with him next day,—for Angland has taken his little guide of the arches under his wing entirely. Don’s parents have readily agreed to part with him to Claude, upon receiving a few greasy, crumpled pieces of paper issued by a local bank; and so altered has the child become, in the last few days, that the old expression, “his own mother wouldn’t know him,” would have actually been the case had that bedraggled, whisky-sodden lady taken the trouble to go and look at him. The general “cleaning and refitting” the youngster has undergone by Claude’s orders have so changed him that even our hero can hardly believe that his little henchman is the same child that piloted him out of the railway yard. By the advice of Mr. Inspector Chime, Don has been placed under “police supervision,” namely, at the home of a suburban constable; and here, in a week, by the motherly care of Mrs. Peeler, he has developed into a bright, good-looking little fellow, with an intense desire to become a policeman, and a large capacity for food. His pup has improved with its master, and now shows—the matted coat being treated with carbolic soap—all the points of a well-bred brown retriever. For Claude has wisely arranged that the development of the child’s good qualities should suffer no arrest, even for an instant, by being separated from the only object he has as yet learned to show unselfish kindness to.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE BLOODY SKIRT OF SETTLEMENT.

“I had always heard the Indian (North American) spoken of as a revengeful, bloodthirsty man. To find him a man capable of feelings and affections, with a heart open to the wants and responsive to the ties of social life, was amazing.”—From the Memoirs of Henry R. Schoolcraft, the hero-explorer of “Garden of the West” fame.

OR the purposes of our narrative we must turn back in our portfolio of Australian reminiscences, and present to our readers a sketch of an event that took place sixteen years previous to the date of the commencement of our story.

An August evening is sealing up in long red rows of clouds another day of the year of 1873. The scene before us is the heart of the weird “Never, Never Land,” so-called by the earliest pioneers from the small chance they anticipated, on reaching it, of ever being able to return to southern civilization. Eight hundred miles in a direct line nor’-north-west from Sydney on the sea-board, and over fifteen hundred miles by the dreary ways a traveller must follow, the sand-hills, clay-paws, and low sandstone prominences of the district, now called the country of the Upper Mulligan, was still a terra incognita to Europeans on the aforementioned evening. It is true those ill-fated heroes, Burke and Wills, had passed through it twelve years before; but, poor fellows, they were hurrying southwards for the relief that came too late, and had no time to take much notice of the country. Night is coming on, with that gloamingless presumption that is mentioned as one of the oddities of the new land by most new chum visitors to tropic Australia, in their epistolary offerings to friends in the old country. The crimson clouds just above the horizon flash out brighter than before, as the sun sinks its lower edge behind the dim grey-blue line of dreary sand-hills. The earth grows darker suddenly, and the bosom of the piece of water in the foreground, is led and fringed with graceful lignum bushes, and backed by a picturesque outline of broken sandstone cliffs, becomes lighter by contrast as all else merges into purple shadows. Native companions (a large kind of crane) croak hoarsely high overhead, as they follow the sun westward, across the violet expanse of sky, to their feeding grounds by the salt lakes; large buzzards, called turkeys by the Australian settlers, come out to wrangle over grubs by the water’s side; mosquitoes rise in shrill-voiced, murmuring clouds to address the night-feeding fauna of the locality, vice swarms of persistent house-flies retired, the latter having now festooned themselves in countless myriads upon the zigzag branches of the Gidea scrub around; dingoes are slinking by, like the guilty shadows of departed thieves, to the dark, slippery mud-pools, where the overflow of the water-hole (a small lake left in an intermittent river’s bed) has formed a broken, snake-haunted swamp; and all the life of the half-desert country around this part of the Parapee (now Mulligan) river gathers to enjoy the moisture, the comparative coolness, and the food-producing qualities of this Australian oasis.

Westward across the dreary salt pans, were we to follow the pelicans and native companions in their evening flight, we should find bitter lakes, with dazzling fringes of snowy salt, and strange—and, according to native legend, Cunmarie-haunted—mound springs. There, also, in the neighbourhood of the rocky Gnallan-a-gea Creek and sand-locked Eta-booka, we may find the wondrous Pitchurie plant (of the poisonous order of Solanacea). Growing here, and nowhere else in Australia (at the time we write of), the location of this valuable native drug, with its lanceolate leaves and white flowers,—that fires the warrior, soothes the sufferer, and inspires the orator,—was shrouded by the cunning protectionist inhabitants of the wilds with the grimiest, most mysterious surroundings their medicine men could possibly invent. Black boiling lakes, Cerberus-like portiers, half man, half emu, and devils of the most uncivil type were supposed by the natives of other districts to guard this sole source of revenue, in the shape of boomerangs and red ochre, of the Paree and Mudlow country.

Eastward a matter of twenty miles from the water-hole are the castellated “spires and steeples” of a long range of flint-crowned sandstone hills, whose débris has covered the intervening country with an almost unbroken “dressing” of glaring yellow and red brown stones, or “gibbers.” If we were to follow the river bed southwards we should come upon magnificently grassed flats, now covered with the shorthorns of various squatter-kings.

On the sandy summit of a mass of brittle, broken sandstone, overlooking the water-hole, is the chief camp of the aboriginal inhabitants of the district. The father of this little hamlet—if we can honour the collection of beehive-like, mud-coiffured gunyahs by that name—belongs to the strong class-family, or totem, of the Mourkou (ignana-lizards); and, food being plentiful, enemies scarce, and no death-avenging troubles on hand, the little community is happy and contented on this winter evening, as the sun goes down. The smoke from the camp-fires curls up fearlessly from the tree-studded flat below the village, setting the More-Porks (night-jars of Australasia) coughing in the branches; and the peaceful though monotonous chants of infant-suckling mothers come with a soft lullaby murmur upon the ear. There is something very soothing about these native Yika-wimma (literally, milk songs), although we have heard them facetiously likened to the buzz of a meat-tin-imprisoned blow-fly; but, anyhow, their effect on a quiet evening like this is perfectly in sympathy with the spirit of the surroundings. Presently some twenty male natives, naked almost as the day they were born, collect round one of the fires, and proceed to discuss the merits of sundry lizards, fish, and bandicoot which have been roasted on the embers. The menu also includes two varieties of potato-like roots,—Kylabra, a rather rare climbing plant, and that yellow-flowered “praty” of the interior, Tintina. The women sit patiently waiting for their turn to come, each watching her particular lord, much as a brown-eyed collie does his master, but scarcely ever ceasing their droning song. Now and then their patience is rewarded by a morsel being flung to them; and by-and-by, at a few words from the village-father—there is no real chief in these truly socialistic circles—the men gather round him to hold a consultation of some importance, the “ladies” immediately proceeding to do justice to what remains of the dinner. The men now gathered round the white-haired old native are mostly athletic-looking fellows, whose dark, naked skins, freshly polished with the fragrant fat—to an aboriginal’s olfactory ideas—of the ignana, shine in the firelight like the dark oaken carvings of saints in an Antwerp cathedral during midnight mass. The younger men and the boys (derrere), who keep at a respectful distance, and have eaten their meal apart from the fully-initiated males, are far from bad-looking as a rule. Ceaseless fun and joking, with occasional tale-telling, is going on amongst the youths; and presently they skip off into the shadows of the wurleys (huts) on the hill, where one of their number tells the oft-repeated native yarn of the “Crow and the Parula Pigeon,” amidst the shrieks of laughter of his delighted audience as they open their white-ivoried jaws in merriment at his imitations of the car-car, car-car, of the feathered rascal of the story.

The middle-aged men have the usual distinctive characteristics of all Australian aborigines,—the slightly-made, calfless leg; the brilliantly-expressive yet bloodshot eyes; the short, flat, “tip-tilted” nose and strongly emphasized corrugator muscles of the forehead. They wear their hair generally in a matted collection of wiry curls, cut so as to fall round their heads in the modern high-art fashion; but some, having need of materials for fishing-net and line making, are cultivating their locks into cone-shaped elevations, by means of bands of grass. All of them stalk, rather than walk, as they move about, with long, from-the-hip strides that remind one of Harry Furniss’ caricatures of Irving. And what is particularly noticeable is, that the hunted-thief look one nearly always sees on the face of the average “station boy” (squatter’s aboriginal servant) is absent.

“What does the father of my mother’s sister, Pirruup, the clever sandpiper, think of these warnings, of these warnings?” chants one of the men, addressing the grey-haired patriarch, who sits a little apart from the rest, all being now squatting on their hams around the fire. “Shall Deder-re-re, of the duck-haunted Bindiacka water-hole, tell us once more of the strangers he saw, so that all may hear?”

Only two of the men have yet heard the important news brought by their red-ochre trader on his return home an hour before, so with the eagerness of children they wait open-eyed for the sage’s answer. Gazing heavenwards, where the stars are fast appearing at their brightest, the old man sits blinking his cunning old whiteless eyes, without apparently having heard the question. Upon his shrivelled, old, monkey-like features, lit by the fitful, dancing glare of the flames, nature has written a long history of privations, of weary trackings and watchings, and of savage battles. Yet there is something decidedly picturesque about him, and even admirable; for there is a certain air of dignity, command, and superior knowledge that makes itself manifest in all his movements.

After a somewhat lengthy silence, broken only by the laughter of the boys, and the distant, musical howling of far-off dingoes, the old man turns his head towards a young man, wearing the Yootchoo, or “string of barter,” and murmurs, “Yathamarow” (you may speak).

All the men present are busy plaiting hair, scraping the thigh-bones of emus for dagger-making, and the like; but they cease their work as their trader, who has the distinctive red-ochre marks upon his body that show his profession, begins to speak.

“Three are the moons that have broken, as the Nerre (lake-shells) break upon the wave-beaten shore, since I departed for the land of the Dieyerie, for the land of the Yarrawaurka. The sun is hot. The birds fly only in the shade. After two days water is needed by the man who carries a weight.” The speaker proceeds, in a roundabout way, to notify to his hearers that, partly through want of water and partly by fear, he had not cared to follow up a certain discovery he had made,—of approaching strangers.

“They travelled slowly,” he continued, gesticulating, and glancing round as his growing excitement fired the faces of his audience with reflected interest.

“Their heads were ornamented with the white moongarwooroo of mourning, but worn differently to ours. Their skin is covered with hair like the Thulka (native rodent), and they carry the fire-sticks of the southern people in their hands. Their women are large as sand-hills, and bent double with the weight of their loading,—their black hair sweeping the sand, and their resemblance to emus in the distance being great.”

We are bound to pause again, to explain that the natives of the interior have often told us they mistook the first-comers’ horses for their women, as they carried the packs, the females of a native party on the march always taking the part of porters. This will explain the ochre trader’s error.

A general conversation follows for a time, when the red-marked native cries,—

“Listen! I have learned a new Wonka (song).” Then commencing to mark time with his nodding head, and tapping an accompaniment with two carved boomerangs, he commences to chant the following verse:—

“Pooramana, oh poor fellows,

Oro Tora Tona, cooking,

In the embers savoury morsels,

Came the strangers, Plukman holo

Bum, Bum.”

An impromptu chorus here came in from all the men present of—

“Paramana, oh poor fellows,

Bum, Bum.”

With the ready appreciation of Australian aboriginals, all those present took in immediately the significance of the above words, and saw in them the singer’s wish to warn his brethren that the approaching strangers were of the same kind as those mentioned in his song. As, however, the difficulty of true translation and the obscureness of the meaning may puzzle our white readers and prevent them culling the poet’s idea, we will explain that the trader had, in these terse lines, pictured how some poor black fellows, having obtained some savoury morsels, were cooking the same over the fire, when the dreaded strangers surrounded and destroyed them by means of smoke-emitting fire-sticks, that made a great noise, the imitation of which formed the chorus of the song “Bum, Bum.”

There is a cessation of the song, and a feeling of insecurity saddens each face, for it is only before whites, and the natives of other and possibly hostile districts, that the stolid, expressionless physiognomy, sometimes mentioned as characteristic of the American Indian, is seen in Australian aborigines.

The old man has taken a plug of a tobacco-like compound from behind his ear and is chewing it, growing excited meanwhile. He is seeking for inspiration from a sort of hasheesh, formed of the dried and powdered leaves of the Pitchurie mixed with the ashes of the Montera plant.

The author of the didactic dialogues of Thebes, the old world expounder of some of the theories of modern psychology, if he could revisit the earth and wend his way to Central Australia, would there find some of his ideas, or rather the ghostly semblance of them, passable as religious coinage amongst the old men of the tribes. Grand old Cebes taught that man had a sort of life of apprenticeship before he entered upon this world’s stage, and could (if pure of heart) sometimes take counsel in times of perplexity by looking backward into his sinless anterior existence.

One of the virtues that the native drug Pitchurie is supposed to possess when used by the old men is the opening up of this past life, giving them the power and perquisites of seers.

To return to the old man and the camp. All the men watch him, waiting for him to speak. The boys, meanwhile, having tired of story-telling, are playing at Beringaroo over a large fire they have started. This game is performed with boat-like toys formed out of the leaf of the Aluja, warmed and pinched into shape. Flung upwards with a sharp twirl, imparted to it with the first and second fingers, concave side downwards, over the blazing fire, the plaything mounts with the draft, spinning rapidly, till it meets the cooler air, when it descends, only to mount again, still whirling in hawk-like circles. Shouts of applause reward the player whose toy keeps longest on the wing.

“Let the big fire be extinguished!” comes the word of command from the old man, uttered in a low voice. Then the speaker rises, and stretching out his arms towards the west, with the saliva caused by the chewing process running from his mouth upon his white beard and tawny chest, he commences to speak. The boys’ fire has been quickly subdued, and men, women, and children watch the figure of their “guide, philosopher, and friend.”

Slowly, at first, come the words; the old man’s voice growing louder and more excited towards the end of his speech, which is a kind of address to his patron-, or birth-star, in this case that of the Evening, or Lizard’s eye:—

“Amathooroocooroo, Star of approaching night, Kow-wah, thou risest, dilchiewurruna, from the sun’s camping-place.

“Boonkunana boolo, Thy shining head ornamented with gypsum,

“Is slowly ascending o’er Waieri, the sand-hills.

“Aumin thieamow, Remain and tell us, Purrurie, what see you, Ooyellala, beneath you?

“The red-ochre hunters, Wolkapurrie.

“The braves who have carried Murulyie, the red-ochre, hither, Wilchrena, are fearsome!”

Here the men and women burst in with a chorus of one word, dwelling on the last two syllables:—

“Muracherpū-nā, We are groping in the dark.”

The old singer continues:—

“Quiet is wathararkuna, the south wind; but gna-pou kouta,

“The noise of the waters reaches us.

“The ko-ning-chteri, the noisy gnats,

“Chaudachanduna kuriunia, are whispering over the spinifax (spiny grass).”

Chorus: “Muracherpū-nā.”

“Thou dancest as kintallo, the shrimp,

“As o’er Kuldrie, the salt-lake, thou risest.

“Kouta, the waves, koolkamuna, dance round you,

“Apoouna, Apoouna, bathing thy face.

“Murieami mungarina, farewell, thou silent one!

“Mungamarow mungara, let my soul speak!”

Chorus: “Mungamarow mungara!”

As the last vibrations of the chorus die away, the aged vocalist suddenly turns, and, filled with the spirit of prophecy, cries aloud in a different tone of voice, “The strangers are coming,” and then proceeds to march rapidly up and down beneath the Walke trees, his limbs quivering with excitement, and his staring eyeballs almost flashing with the wild madness of intoxication.

“I hear them crush the Yedede with their feet,” he howls. “No more shall our women gather the food-seed of Warrangaba.” Then stopping, and raising his arms, he continues in a lower tone: “High above my head soars the hawk Kerrek-i, laughing as he smells the slaughter.” Then mournfully, as he goes on with his promenade: “No more shall the emu seek the Nunyakaroo for its young ones. Both the Yeraga and Galga, will disappear from the land. What does Tounka, the crayfish, whisper in the waters of Palieu? Why does Mol-la, the crab, cry Kow-wah! come here! Kow-wah! come hither?”

The old man goes on marching and gesticulating, as he continues his prophetic lament; and the frightened boys, huddling together near the women, have ceased to laugh, and can hardly breathe with terror. The mothers hug their fat little offspring closer to their breasts, and dismay is pictured on all faces save that of the travelled bearer of the dreadful news. He had already owned to feeling timid, when two days since he found himself alone in the proximity of the dreaded white-faced devils from the south, of whose cruelty and far-reaching lightnings he had heard account on his travels. But he is with his friends and brethren now, he thinks, and besides, the new-comers will not arrive at the village yet awhile, perhaps not at all. The white-faced ones were not always victorious either; he had heard of a party of them, who had been on a slave-making expedition, being attacked, and their prisoners rescued, at Congabulla Creek, to the south-east. To-morrow the signal fires could be lighted, and the whole tribe collected for a grand consultation upon the subject of the invaders. Three hundred braves could surely defy the handful of approaching Purdie (locusts). The Pulara (women who collect the braves and hunters together) should start at day break. Just as the thinker’s meditations gave birth to a more hopeful view of things, the old prophet of evil ends his harangue from sheer exhaustion, and sinks theatrically upon the sandy soil, lying there motionless in a state of coma.

Nearly every emergency produces its hero. Stepping forward into the open space before the other natives, bold-hearted Deder-re-re, of the red stripes, expresses aloud his hopes and plans, and winds up with a kind of nasal chant, that only a few of his audience—wonderful linguists as most of them are—can understand, as it is of southern origin, and in the language of the Warangesda tribe of New South Wales. The words have, as in most native songs, a hidden meaning,—a double entendre,—and in this case they are intended to illustrate the fact that a tribe is safest when its members are collected, or “rolled together,” much after the manner of the fable of the bundle of sticks. The song sung and explained has a visibly cheering effect upon all. At the risk of being tiresome, we place the words before our readers, with a fair translation of it, as another example of Australian aboriginal poetry:—

“Chūul’yu Will’ynu,

Wallaa gnorææ

Chillæ binuæ aa gna,

Kinūnæa gnūuraæ jeeaa

Chiæba-a gnūtata.”

Chorus: “Kirrægirræ, kirrægirræ Leeaa gna.”

TRANSLATION.

“The porcupine has fiery spikes,

Burning like the fire-stick,

Surely some one is pinching me,

Softly, as a sister pinches her brother,

But I am safe, safe beyond danger

Grinning, grinning, grinning, are my teeth.”

The men now begin to discuss the matter in hand in a low voice, the old patriarch still lying upon the ground meanwhile; and a strange, wild group they form in the firelight, as they squat round in various attitudes. The women and boys now retire to the hut-crowned hill above the river flat. The heavenly peacefulness of the night scene, with the star-spangled sheet of water lying silent in its dark fringe of verdure; the purple dome above, pierced with the golden eyes of native deities; and the tremulous cries of various night-prowling birds and beasts, softened and sweetened by distance,—all seems in curious contrast to the anxious faces of the little community.

A woman wearing the Bilpa forehead ornament of kangaroo teeth is sitting at the door of one of the gunyahs on the hill, with a child in her arms. The hut, which is exactly like all the others in the group,—and for the matter of that all within two or three hundred miles,—is built of sticks, which have been stuck into the ground at the radius of a common centre, and then bent over so as to form an egg-shaped cage, which is substantially thatched on top and sides with herbage and mud. The door, on opening, faces the least windy quarter, namely, the north. Reclining against the portal is the satin-skinned native mother, who, dark as night, has the beautiful eyes, teeth, and hair of her race. She is gazing at the fat little man-animal on her lap by the light of an anti-mosquito fire-stick which she gracefully holds above her, and the group would form as beautiful a model as any artist could wish for to illustrate that affectionate adoration for their offspring which is the pleasing attribute of most mothers, civilized or uncivilized, all over the world. A slenderly formed boy, of about eight years of age, kneels by her side, amusing his baby brother with a toy boomerang that he has that day won as a prize, in the throwing game of Wuæ Whuuitch , with his fellows. The woman is singing the chorus of the chant with which the villagers have that day welcomed the returning ochre trader, her husband:—

“Mulka-a-a-a-wora-a-a,

Yoong-arra-a-a Oondoo-o-o

Ya Pillie-e-e-e Mulka-a-a-a

Angienie,

Kooriekirra-a-a ya-a-aya.”

TRANSLATION.

“Put colour in the bags,

Close it all round,

And make the netted bag

All the colours of the rainbow.”

But leaving the peaceful village for a time, let us turn our mental night-glass towards a point four miles down the river’s course. Here the stream, having left the rocky, sandstone country, rushes its spasmodically flowing waters, from time to time, between banks of alluvial mud. A rank growth of various herbs, rushes, and fair-sized gum-trees has arisen here from the rich soil, whose fertile juices are more often replenished by the river than that farther afield. It is very dark below the branches; but if the meagre starlight could struggle in sufficient quantity between the pointed leaves, we should be able to see upon the water’s brim a strange mark in these solitudes, the footprint of a horse’s hoof,—the first of its kind that has ever refreshed its parched and grateful throat in the little billabong before us.

The ochre-hunter was in error when he calculated the speed at which the strangers were approaching his village. He had seen only the pack-train, which was proceeding leisurely to Palieu water-hole. The invaders were squatter-explorers pushing northwards in the van of that great red wave of European enterprise that, set in motion by the land fever of the “Seventies,” burst with a cruel and unbridled rush over the native lands lying north of the Cooper and Diamentina rivers.

Delighted with the Mitchell-grass and salt-bush country which the party had discovered a few days before, four of their number were now making a flying trip round in order to ascertain the extent of the “good country.” Hearing from their trained native scouts of the village on the rocky water-hole, they have decided to disperse the dwellers therein after the usual fashion, that still obtains in Australia when land belonging to and inhabited by the weaker aboriginal race is being taken up.

A consultation is being held by the four whites in the shadow of a group of native plum-trees. The two scouts, both armed with Snider carbines, stand close by, and answer the questions put to them from time to time in the strange pigeon-English taught them by their masters. Each carries a tomahawk in the cartridge-belt that, fastened round his dark, oily waist, forms his only article of clothing.

“Well, it’s too dashed early to go near them beggars yet, by least three hours,” says one of the white men at last.

“And yet,” he adds to himself, “it’s risky not to get the job done, for if that blank, blank Englishman got scent of what I’m really after in pushing up here, he’d try his best to let the black devils escape. We’ll go back,” he adds aloud, with a curse, “to the old-man sand-hills by the clay-pan, where I sent Jackie back with the pack-horses. It won’t do to stop here, or the black devils, curse ’em, will drop on us, you bet. So we’ll retire and doss down for a couple of hours’ camp—say till one o’clock. Take us an hour to reach the beggars; half-past two’s the time to catch ’em sleeping.”

Turning to one of his boys, he asks,—

“How many black beggars sit down alonger camp, Bingerie?”

Bingerie, who has been close to the village that our readers have just left, and on business not altogether unconnected, as country newspapers would say, with the proposed slaughter of its inhabitants, murmurs huskily in reply,—

“Mine bin think him plenty black fellow sit down longer camp. Big fellow mob. Plenty little beggar, plenty pickaninnie all about gunyah.” The speaker’s black face wrinkles up into a cruel, Satan-like grin, as he touches the tomahawk in his belt, the two actions boding no good for the said pickaninnies if he gets them in his clutches. Then glancing with cunning, obsequious eyes at his master’s face, to try and catch through the darkness a facial expression of approval, he continues, “Mine see um plenty gin, plenty little beggar gin (little women, i.e., girls); mine catch um, by’m-bye.”

The white men laugh at this, and the “boss,” flinging a stick of “station-twist” to the black imp before them, gives him some directions.

“Well, Bingerie, you black devil, there’s some ’baccy for you. Now, you see that fellow star,” point-to that part of the heavens where the constellation of Orion’s belt was looking down from the calm Australian sky upon the group of explorers,—“you see one, two, three fellow star. All the same star longer brandy bottle.”

“Me know,” murmurs the black “boy,” with a smile of pleasant recollections crossing his attentive features for an instant.

“White fellow go alonger gunyahs, when three fellow star catch ’em that fellow branch. Big fellow hoot then, eh! you black limb of Satan, you!”

The black “boy”—all aboriginal male servants of Australians are called “boys,” regardless of the age to which they have attained—regards the overhanging branch, and, mentally gauging the time it will take for the stars indicated to reach it on their track westward ho! across the heavens, grunts “Me know,” and slinks off as noiselessly as a cat after sparrows, and presently reappears with another attendant sprite, both of them being mounted on wiry little horses, and leading the steeds of the rest of the party.

“Now, Jim,” says the man who has previously spoken to one of the others, as they ride over the sound-deadening sand, “we’ll have a camp for a couple of hours, and then we’ll proceed to give these cursed niggers something to let ’em know we’re not to be trifled with. Curse their black hides, I’ve tried kindness, and I’ve tried the other thing; but curse me if it ain’t less trouble to clear ’em off first thing,—I’ve always found it so, instead of having to shoot ’em in compartments afterwards.” He laughs a short, hard, hac! hac! as he finishes, to which his companion responds with,—

“My trouble’s about shooting of ’em hither way, curse their livers; all in the day’s work. Safe to light up yet, capting?”

“Not yet,” replies the “boss;” “round the sand-hill it’ll be all right,” and soon the party emerging from the brushwood, where a dark, spinifax-covered sand-hill overhangs an empty water-hole, pipes are lit, and the horses given in charge of the “boys;” the whites lying down for a spell, for they have ridden many weary miles that day.

Let us return to the village. Whilst we have been away, two braves have arrived at the water-hole with a message-stick for the head man of the village from the Eta-booka branch of the tribe. This curious means of communication consists of a piece of wood about five inches long—the half of a split length of a small branch. On the flat side a number of transverse notches have been cut with some rather blunt tool, probably a flint-knife. The larger cuts denote the names of men and places; the smaller are symbols of sentences. The message, which is soon read, is to the effect that Eta-booka people have seen the white strangers whose approach has alarmed the Paree-side villagers; and finishes by proposing a “meeting of the clans” for the next day. A reply message is determined on, manufactured, and despatched by the trusty runners, who start homewards with rapid feet, happy in the possession of a small piece of ochre each, with which they intend to beautify themselves at the “full dress” meeting to be held.

The thought of combination and safety on the morrow now sends the villagers, tired with the excitement of late events, to their gunyahs on the hill; and soon slumbering, they do not see the fateful fall of myriads of Ditchiecoom aworkoo, shooting stars, that takes place at one o’clock. Deder-re-re is restless, however, in his smoke-filled wurley; and, half awake, dreams he is on one of his distant expeditions, and that the southern night-owl is screeching to its mate, as it flits past him on its ghostly wings. Suddenly he wakes. He listens, with upraised head. Yes, there is no mistaking it; the cry he heard in his dreams comes to his ears once more. Creek-e-whie, creek-e-whie, this time from the back of the hill. It is answered by a somewhat similar call from the water-hole below. A southern bird up here; and two of them. Trained hunter-warrior that he is, Deder-re-re takes in the situation in an instant. Foes are at hand, probably the dreaded white devils; and are surrounding the camp, signalling their position to each other, before the final attack, by imitating the cries of a night-bird. Smiling to himself at the foolish mistake of the enemy in using the note of a bird foreign to the district, he prepares for action. A touch and a whispered word to the wife of his bosom, and he slinks out of the gunyah, crawling on noiseless hands and knees to warn his fellows in the other huts. His sharp sense of hearing, made doubly powerful now that all his savage heart holds dear is in peril, distinguishes the crushing of branches close by. Only white men could be the cause of that, he instinctively guesses. A passing dingo or emu would brush by the branches, and a black foe would make no noise whatever. It is too late for resistance. He must alarm the camp openly and effectively at once, and perhaps his loved ones may escape in the general excitement. A bright idea, heroic as ingenious, suddenly strikes him. If he can get the enemy down by the river flat to chase him, and at the same time make noise enough to wake his brethren, perhaps the majority of the latter will be able to reach the water-hole, their only chance of escape, through the gap thus formed in the circle of foes. With a fearful yell, he therefore springs to his feet, and bounds down the rocky side of the hill, sending a rattling avalanche of stones all round him as he goes, and reaches the flat below. Here the white “boss,” having arranged his men, is taking up his position for potting the black fellows as they make for the water, as his long experience in taking up “new country,” and knocking down the inhabitants thereof, has taught him they are sure to do. The cool-headed white man hears Deder-re-re’s yell, and can just see him as he bounds past the smouldering fire towards him. A snap-shot rings through the air, and the black fellow, springing upwards, falls dead upon the red-hot embers, crushing and fanning them into a sudden blaze, that shows the dark, flying forms of the villagers rushing towards the water-hole. Now ring the short, sharp carbine shots through the still morning air! Now whistling swan-shot from fowling pieces buzz through the falling leaves! Wild shrieks, deep groans, the scream of frightened birds, the plunge of swimmers in the water, and all the fearful turmoil of a night surprise! Where lately the silent brushwood hooded over its dark image in the lake, the leaves blush ruddily with the sudden blaze of bursting stars of flame, as the white men fire upon the swimmers in the water-hole.

Then comparative quiet again. The opening scene in the act of bloodshed is almost as soon over as begun, and then the fearful work of despatching the wounded commences. The whites leave this job to their black accomplices, and retire to the gunyahs on the hill, to mount guard over those who are giving the coup de grâce to the unfortunate wretches writhing on the flat below. Well do they know that their “boys” will miss no opportunity of painting those already dripping tomahawks of a still deeper tint. Brought from a far-off district, and believing it to be perfectly legitimate for them to kill their black brethren if belonging to another tribe, their savage natures, moreover, trained to the awful work, they glory in a scene like this. The rapid and sickening thud, thud of their small axes, right and left, at last ceases as the early blush of dawn begins to break behind the weird hill to the eastward. The mangled bodies of some thirty men, women, and children lie here and there amongst the broken bushes and half-burnt gunyahs; and the wild duck skimming down on to the once more placid bosom of the little lake, rise again with frightened squeaks on seeing the ghastly objects on its red-frothed banks.

“Didn’t do so badly,” says the white man whom the others address as “boss,” as he looks down from the rugged hill. “Got more than half the black devils. But I’ll bet their friends won’t come near this water-hole, at any rate, for a few years to come. No spearing of ‘fats’ here, when they come down for a ‘nip.’” Then turning his jolly, sensual face towards one of the other men, as they shoulder arms and prepare to return to their horses, he asks, with a laugh, “What did you do with the little gin you caught?”

“Give her ter Nero (one of the ‘boys’) when we was tired of each other. She’s begun a long ‘doss’ (sleep),” he continues, with a grin that puckers up one side of his cruel face, winking at the “boss” at the same time with a bloodshot eye; “guess she’s tired with the fun she had. Saw her lying precious still jess now, heac! heac!”

The two other white men are gone on in advance a little bit with the “boys,” being glad to quit the place. Now that the excitement is over, they begin to find it unpleasant. They have not seen enough frontier service with squatters yet to harden their hearts sufficiently to joke at the scene of a holocaust, although when the water-hole is left behind a mile or two their fast succumbing consciences will be asleep.

“Yarraman (horses) come this way,” suddenly cries one of the boys, and throwing himself upon the ground to listen adds, “Two fellow Yarraman (two horses) come pretty quick.”

The white party stand altogether on the flat, listening, for a few minutes, and then the less perfect auditory organs of the whites can distinguish the “property, property, property” of approaching horsemen. A couple of minutes more, and a rattle of brittle stones, followed by a brief plunging in the narrow part of the swamp close by, and two horsemen appear upon the grassy flat, and, bending upon their horses’ necks to avoid the branches, ride through the shadows at a walking pace towards the men on foot. The first of the new-comers to appear in view is a black “boy” of the conventional type, save that he is better clothed than the usual station native, and wears a scarlet handkerchief, placed turbanwise, upon his head.

“I’ll be hanged if I wasn’t right about that blank Britisher!” says the “boss,” angrily, out loud, as the second rider comes into view. “Why couldn’t the beggar leave this part of the work to me if he doesn’t like to do it himself, not go poking his nose after me wherever I go. But I don’t care a cursed shake of a possum’s tail if the beggar ‘props’ or not at it.” He openly affirms his feeling of nonchalance, but in his heart he feels very uncomfortable,—which, seeing that the new-comer is his partner, who is to supply the necessary funds for stocking the new run with cattle, and for wages, rations, and fencing wire; and, moreover, since an important contract between them has just been broken by himself, his irritation is natural. “Curse me,” he murmurs to himself, biting his lower lip, “if I’d waited till he’d got accustomed to what the other fellows will do when they take up the country round us, and he found the niggers coming for beef on his own run, he’d soon have been the same as all of us.”

The white rider comes up to the group. The broad brim of his dirty, white felt hat, turned up in front, so as not to obscure his view, shows the stern and severe face of a man of about forty-five. He holds a revolver in his sword hand, is spare of form and sinewy, and wears a thick brown beard. The bosom of his grey shirt flaps opens as he moves; and the long stirrup leathers he uses show at once that he has learned riding elsewhere than in Australia.

“Morning, Sam,” says the “boss,” as the horseman pulls up, “anything wrong at Bindiacka?”

The other men look on curiously, as if they expected a wordy warfare and were waiting for the first shot.

“Have not come from the camp,” answers Dyesart, for it is our hero’s uncle that is eyeing his partner keenly as he replies to the latter’s question.

“I had a look round the big flat to the eastward after I left you yesterday. Came across a friendly lot of natives at a place,” pointing to his “boy,” “Saul says they call Narrabella. Coming back cut your tracks. Lost them on the ‘gibbers’ (stones) last night. What have you been doing up here? No row with the natives, I hope? Heard rifle shots early this morning.”

“We camped here last night,” replies the last speaker’s partner, turning to avoid the keen eyes fixed upon him; “niggers attacked us, if you want to know.”

“You camped here, leaving your horses and tucker (food) behind,” sneers Dyesart, disgusted with the palpable lie.

He continues after a moment,—

“Well, I’ll find out for myself what’s been your game. I’m afraid I can guess what has happened.” He rides past without another word into the arena of death, where a few crows are already at work upon the bodies. Dyesart has seen many awful sights in his time, and is expecting one now, but the scene overpowers him for a minute with mingled feelings of horror, pity, and indignation.

Speaking a few words to Saul, who is an educated “boy” he had obtained from the good missionaries of Rillalpininna on his way up from Adelaide, he fastens the horses to a tree, and proceeds on foot to examine the wounds and positions of the corpses.

“A night surprise,” he says to himself; “I thought as much. The third of the sort I have seen in two years, and yet those smiling squatters one meets down south swear through thick and thin these things occur only in the imagination of the missionaries. What cowardly devils!” he adds aloud, as he stands before the body of the pretty young mother of Deder-re-re’s children. One dark, shapely arm still clasps the baby form; the other, crushed and mangled with attempting to ward off the blows of some weapon, rests upon the gory, horror-stricken face. Both the woman’s skull and that of her child have been smashed in with axe blows. Over each body in turn the sinewy form of “Doctor” Dyesart bends, as he searches for any wounded that may still be alive for him to succour. But the work has been too well done. Thirty yards away the boss’s black boys are peering over the rocks, wondering what he is doing. Dyesart is so different to the other white men that have come within their ken. On the road up, his curiosity with regard to rocks and stones, and his perennial kindness to them and all the other “boys,” has often much amused them. Presently one of these “boys” spies out a body amongst the rocks he has not noticed before. It is that of a young boy,—the one that played with his baby brother, as it lay in its mother’s arms, last night. The child’s thigh-bone has been broken by a snider-bullet, which has torn a frightful hole in the limb’s tender flesh. He is alive and conscious. But with the firm nerves that he has inherited from his hardy ancestors, he lies motionless, feigning death, though his soul is racked with agony and fear, and his mouth is dry and burning with a feverish thirst. Saul is helping his master in the search, and sees the movements of the other “boys,” as they proceed to despatch the victim they have hitherto overlooked. A hurried sign to “Massa Sam,” and the long barrel of a “Colt” rests for an instant on a steady left arm. Then the combined noise of a yell and a revolver shot breaks the silence, followed by the ping of a bullet and the whir of rising crows. Dyesart has shown his wonderful skill with small arms on many a gold-field, but he never felt more satisfied with his shooting powers than on this occasion. The bullet, hitting the black boy’s uplifted tomahawk, hurls it from his half-dislocated wrist, and poor Deder-re-re’s son still breathes. The wounded boy is attended to, and then the question of what to do with him arises. He can scarcely be left behind, for his friends will hardly venture back to the water-hole for many days. In the meantime the horrible dingoes, crows, and ants would leave little of the original youth. Dyesart, too, wants a “boy” (as his nephew did long afterwards), as he must return Saul to the little mission station before long. So, after fastening a long branch to the child’s side and injured limb as a splint, and fixing it securely with well-trained fingers by means of strips torn from his saddle-cloth and Saul’s gaudy head-gear, Dyesart makes the little black body look like a newly “set up” skin in a taxidermist’s laboratory. Little Deder-re-re, junior, who will figure in future in these pages as Dyesart’s “boy” Billy, is then placed upon the saddle in front of Saul; and the waterbags being filled and suspended from the horses’ necks, the two riders proceed across the dreary sand-hills towards the junction of two wet-season creeks, where the explorers’ camp and “station” preliminaries have been established. It is late in the evening when the two horsemen, having been delayed by their wounded burden, reach the white tents, where the “boss” and his subordinates have previously arrived; and after a silent meal of damper and duck, Dyesart says a few words to his partner, as the whites sit round the fire smoking.

“I am returning south to-morrow,” he begins. “As it is no use, I suppose, telling fellows like you what I think of your cowardly last night’s work, all I’ll say is that I feel justified in withdrawing from the arrangement we made between us about taking up land. When a man finds he’s made a contract with another fellow who doesn’t carry out his part of the arrangements, he’s right in getting out of it.”

“I don’t want to shirk my part of the agreements,” growls the “boss.”

“Part of the contract,” calmly continues Dyesart, “between us was that all collisions with the natives were to be avoided if possible,—I quote correctly, don’t I?”

“Curse me if I know or care,” comes the muttered reply.

“And that no ‘dispersing,’ ‘rounding-up,’ or employment of the Native Mounted Police was to be allowed on any new country we should take up. You have broken this part of the contract several times, I believe, but this time once too often. I return south immediately, and if you try to hold me to my agreements with you,—but no, I don’t think you’ll be such a fool as that. Yon fellows have made me more orthodox than I was, at any rate,” he says, rising; “I never believed really in a material hell till to-day, but now I’m sure there must be one for such cowardly devils as you are.”

Next day Dyesart leaves, with his “boys” and horses, without bidding farewell to the others of the party, who, though they wouldn’t confess it for the world, are sorry to lose him with his jolly songs and genial temperament.

And this was how Dyesart obtained his faithful henchman Billy. He had the little savage educated with white children in New Zealand, where the natives have equal rights with the Europeans, and he flourished into a bright, trustworthy young scholar, like one of those that any of the half-dozen struggling mission stations of Australia can produce, in refutation of the popular Australian saying that the aborigines “are mere animals, and should be treated as such.”

Billy accompanies his preserver on all his later wanderings through the Australian wilds; and lastly, after laying the remains of his beloved master beneath the soil, he starts off across the desert with the treasured message, which when delivered in safety to the nearest white man, he sinks unconscious and exhausted upon the ground. Billy thus becomes one of the main instruments of Providence whereby our hero is set upon his journey and these pages written.

We close this chapter with a saying of the late explorer’s that expresses his views on a somewhat mooted point: “The true definition of civilization, it seems to me, is a state of social unselfishness, combined with useful learning. Knowledge and works that are antagonistic to this state of society, I do not believe to be properly designated as civilized.”

CHAPTER IX.
MURDER, MADNESS, AND MELODY.

“On him attends the blue-eyed martial maid.”

—Homer’s Odyssey.

N board the swift coastal steamer Eidermere, as she cuts through the tepid waters of the Molle passage with her knife-like stem, on her way to the northern Queensland ports. The coral-reef-sheltered expanse of waters is quite oily in appearance, perfectly calm is its mother-of-pearl surface, which, crimson, blue, and yellow with evening tints, reflects a perfect topsy-turvy picture of the purple, pine-covered, pointed islets and grand, shadowy hills of the mainland, that make this spot the most charming point upon the Australian coast.

There is really no excuse for even the most susceptible sufferer from mal de mer on board to remain below. Consequently the whole “contingent” of passengers, saloon and steerage, are lolling about on deck in various easy attitudes, enjoying the ever-changing beauties of the glorious sunset picture before them, and revelling in the comparative coolness of the hour.

On the raised “first-class” end of the vessel the usual specimens of humanity one always sees on board a passenger-steamer, in whatever part of the world you travel, are present. The over-dressed, noisy bagmen of wine and spirit houses are there; the quiet, canny representative of a pushing “Glascy” soft-goods manufacturer; two or three Jewish mine-owners; a sprinkling of Scotch storekeepers; an Irish doctor; a German innkeeper; and a select circle of long-limbed members of those upper circles who belong to the genus termed in Australian parlance “silver-tailed,” in distinction to the “copper-tailed” democratic classes.

Here a thin-faced clergyman, on the way to his missionary labours amongst the Papuans, stands by his fresh, young Victorian wife, pointing out to her the various “outward and visible signs” that they have at last entered the tropics, as the trembling screw hurries them past lazy-looking turtles, long rows of algæ seed, and occasional broken branches of mangrove and pandanus.

Over there the courteous captain of the ship, dressed in spotless linen suit, is pointing out to a lady passenger “the identical spot on that particular island, my dear madam, on the dark red rocks that lift themselves out of the deep water, where Captain Cook landed in 1770.” The gallant skipper, who is a well-known antiquary and geologist, proceeds to promise he will some day show his fair friend—who, by-the-bye, does not appear very interested—the cairn erected by the same wonderful navigator near Cooktown, and lately discovered by himself.

Down near the forecabin a few greasy-looking stewards are dawdling over the job of emptying overboard sundry trayfuls of débris from the saloon tea table, enjoying meanwhile the fresh air, ere the “boss” shall call them back into the stuffy atmosphere of their principal sphere of labours.

“Golly!” says a small boy to one of these marine waiters, as the former stands on tiptoe to look over the bulwarks, “Golly! but them kiddies round the news office, guess they’d give ’alf of their papers fur that lot o’ grub you chucks away, mister.”

Without waiting to see if his remark is understood or even noticed, Don—for it is Claude’s little friend—dives down, and, seizing a fat brown puppy that is lolling against his legs, lifts it up to see “them gooses” that are skimming past the ship. Above the group, on the saloon deck, is Claude, leaning against one of the boats, and trying to listen to a dark, elderly man, dressed in a “slop”-made grey suit and soft felt hat, as he spins him a yarn of the Palmer diggings, commencing,—

“’Spose you’ve heard of poor Jack Straw, who was killed by the natives under his waggon?” etc.

Claude, to tell the truth, is neither interested in the tale nor the scenery; and when the former is finished, and the historian has been dragged off to take a hand at “cut-throat” euchre, our young friend relapses into a reverie.

Eager as he was to follow out the instructions of his dead uncle until the steamer reached Brisbane, he cannot disguise from himself the fact that since that day his enthusiasm has greatly cooled. Something happened during the few hours he spent on shore in the capital of Queensland which has disturbed his set purposes considerably. Struggle as he may, he feels a longing he can hardly understand to return to Morecombe Bay,—a mysterious tugging at his heart strings that grows stronger as the steamer rattles its way northwards. Any lady readers who may honour these pages with their perusal will already have guessed correctly that young Angland has been attacked with the same sort of complaint that caused sorrowful young Werther to make such an egregious stupid of himself in Göethe’s marvellous histoirette.

A pretty girl has flattered his vanity by apparently particularly admiring him, and, man-like, he cannot help feeling that she shows a sense above all other girls in so doing. The birth of love in man is generally after this fashion. True admiration, whether signalled by word or smile, is the expression of adoration by an inferior to a superior being. And as man’s hereditary instincts teach him unconsciously to wish to succour and protect the weaker of his immediate species,—for it is probably owing greatly to this desire that the human race has worried its way along to the front seat in creation,—the usual predilection strong men (physically or otherwise) have for mating with weak women, and vice versâ, is easily explained.

So Claude develops at first a simple desire to shield this forlorn maiden. He feels somehow that she must be forlorn, although he does not,—and he feels ashamed to own it, even to himself,—he does not even know her name. She may be engaged to marry a man who will not appreciate her. What a sickening feeling comes over him at the thought. What a pity the days of the duello are over, and all that kind of thing. Surely she could never have looked into anybody’s soul before, as she did into his, with those deep blue orbs,—those eyes that have floated before him day and night since his little Brisbane adventure; her little dimpled face, flushed with excitement and pretty pursed-lipped anger, as he first saw it; or that angel look of mute entreaty as those glorious eyes shot burning arrows into his brain as he turned to her assistance, that would have spurred him to any rashness, much less knocking down a clumsy lout of a drayman. Yes, permanently nailed upon the wall of his mind’s photographic studio is the sunlit picture of the neatly dressed petite figure, with the halo of golden hair, that held out a tiny, faultlessly-gloved hand to him as she said good-bye, and, thanking him for his service, left him half-stupefied with a last glance of those glorious eyes.

This is Claude’s first affair, and one must not be too hard on him. Some men take love easily, as others do the measles. Some young fellows, on the contrary, have their best natures all over one grand eruption, which leaves their soul’s cuticle marked for ever, for good or bad, as the circumstances of the case direct. But really the spooney season is a more important time in a young man’s life than it is generally considered. For there is little doubt that men (who have “felt the pain”) look at womankind during the remainder of their lives through spectacles that are coloured rosy or grey, according to their happy or miserable experiences of “the sex,” as represented by the particular cause of their première grande passion. But instead of stating our own opinions upon a matter that every healthy subject diagnoses for himself or herself in his or her own way, we had better proceed to state at once that Claude had been “hard hit,” and that the “pleasing punishment” was given under the following circumstances.

On the afternoon of the S.S. Eidermere’s arrival at Brisbane, where she had to stay a few hours, Claude landed, and proceeded townwards from the region of great, busy wharves, behind which noisy steam-cranes were rattling and puffing at the cargoes of sundry vessels. At the gates of the steam-ship’s company’s yard the usual crowd, that always congregates in similar places to prey upon the freshly-arrived and perhaps sea-sick passengers, was there in force. Porters, cabmen, van-drivers, runners, and nondescript loafers of various sorts jostled each other and fought for the luggage of the travellers. Pushing his way through these, he soon found himself in the comparatively quiet neighbourhood of the public gardens, and was just about to enter them when he heard a great “how d’ye do” close at hand. This was occasioned by the dusty scuffling of two dogs, one of which was shrieking as only a small dog can shriek when in fear of immediate disintegration at the hands, or rather teeth, of a larger canine animal. Above all rose hoarse yells of delight from a circle of the city’s gamin who were enjoying the scene. Claude would have proceeded on his way, after turning his head to ascertain the cause of the uproar, but for a sight that attracted his sudden attention.

The small dog evidently belonged to a young lady, who, alone and unprotected amongst the crowd of roughs, was courageously but injudiciously trying to save her tiny four-footed dependent by beating the big dog with her parasol. Hurrying up to her assistance, Angland saw a burly, red-faced man, apparently the owner of the large animal, step forward and roughly snatch the fair one’s weapon of attack from her vigorous little hands, giving vent to his indignant feelings at the same time by expressing his intentions of “seein’ fair play,” and “lettin’ no blessed gal hurt ’is dawg.” Claude just saw the little figure with clasped hands, and heard the faltering appeal for help to the brutal bystanders, as he burst through the crowd. To him, accustomed to wild-boar hunting in the dark Hunua ranges near his home, the job of making a fierce pig-dog “take off” from its quarry had often been an every-day occurrence when training his canine hunters. It was comparatively an easy work to choke the big, over-fed cur, and make it let go its hold of the little ball of palpitating floss beneath it in the dust. To give the large dog a sounding kick that lifted it half-a-dozen yards away, whence it slunk off homewards, was the next act; and the whole thing was done ere the disappearing mongrel’s master could recover from his open-mouthed surprise. Claude was stooping to pick up the young lady’s dishevelled pet, when he saw the red-faced man “coming for him,” and was just in time to receive that gentleman’s most prominent features upon his own large and rather bony left fist. Angland knew that in a row with those modern mohocks, Australian larrikins, you must “hit to kill,” as Dick, his old home chum and “tutor in pugilism,” used to call it. So, following his defensive blow with one of attack, he instantly brought his right fist forward, so as to knock loudly on that thinner portion of his adversary’s skull which is situated just above the approximation of the jaw and ear, dropping him as neatly as the proverbial bullock. The crowd of roughs around, who would have half-killed and afterwards robbed our hero if he had been worsted in the encounter, drew back on seeing the big man fall, and respectfully made way for Claude, as, holding the little dog in his arms, he escorted the lady to whom he had been thus curiously introduced into the gardens, where she sank trembling on one of the seats.

“Oh, how good of you! How brave of you! I can’t thank you enough! Oh, I didn’t know what to do! Poor Fluffy, you’re not hurt much, my darling, are you?” (this to the dog). “You know I’d just landed from the ferry-boat, and I wanted to go to the post-office; and I’m always afraid of those horrible men and their nasty dogs when I come over. Poor little doggie,” as the worsted ball of a creature continues to wail softly. “How can I thank you!” And all the while the sweet little smiles, that were impartially divided between the dog and the man, were working a state of havoc in Claude’s heart, the completeness of which even the larrikins could hardly have imitated upon the young man’s body.

If the young lady had been plain, or even a little less enchanting, Claude would probably have found out a good deal about her in no time. But the bright little maiden, with the golden hair and dark, melting eyes, bewildered him with suppressed emotion, and when she prayed that he wouldn’t think her ungrateful if she said he mustn’t come with her further than the post-office, and then when they arrived there tripped off, after giving his hand a timorous little pressure with her tiny fingers, he felt as if he had just learned what heaven was and had lost all chance of it for ever.

He was inclined to rush madly after her and ask sundry questions, but by the time his thoughts had arranged themselves for action, his goddess had disappeared, and a white-shako’d policeman was watching him suspiciously with gin-and-watery eyes, as a possible slightly inebriated stranger whom he could drag to durance vile.

So Claude walked vaguely about the town (noticing nothing of it), vainly hoping all the while to see her once more, and, barely catching his boat, became surly for the rest of the evening.

“Turning in” early, he dreamed a lot of kaleidoscopic nonsense about fighting red-faced men with small-gloved hands, who changed into laughing-eyed girls and scraggy clogs by turns, and finally burst into pieces, looking like minute larrikins, with a noise resembling the rattling of the rudder-chains, whose jangle overhead awoke him every morning.

And this was how it came about that our young friend wasted his time and opportunities of learning about the wonderful land he was approaching from his fellow-passengers, and remained for a few days in an almost perpetual state of reverie, consisting of alternate pleasing remembrances and self-objurgations at not having ascertained “her” name. His “maiden meditations,” however, daily became fewer and farther between, and the particular one that cost him the loss of his mate’s yarn, and most of the lovely scenery that lies between Whitsunday Island and the mainland, was abruptly brought to a close by the Irish doctor aforesaid, who, having been a quondam associate of Claude in New Zealand, came to re-open a subject of conversation between them that had interested our hero considerably before the Brisbane catastrophe.

“Well, me boy, is it brooding over the mimery of the dusky daughters of fair Ohinemuri ye’ve left far behind you in far Zealandia, you are, or has some Australian rose

“Put your ring on her finger

And hers through your nose”?

And the gay, dapper little Dublin licentiate winds up his bit of good-natured banter with a piece of impromptu verse, as he seats himself by Claude’s side.

Why is it that Irish doctors are, as a class, the most fascinating of men? Is it because in addition to their attractive mother wit and natural kindness of heart, their glorious profession makes them also better judges of mankind than the ordinary outside barbarian, by teaching them the “why” of human sayings and doings, where every-day folk only observe the “how”? We don’t know. But at any rate, Dr. Junelle, as a representative of the class, was just the right man in the right place to charm Claude out of his moody thoughts.

Noticing immediately, with quick medical eye, from the slight flush of confusion that rises on Claude’s face, that his carelessly thrown conversational fly has hooked the real cause of the young man’s thoughts, he proceeds to cover his mistake by plunging at once into the theme that he knows will interest his friend. Dr. Junelle has travelled through a great deal of the little-known and less-populated districts of Australia called generally the “outside” country. Whilst moving amongst the frontier settlers of these parts, as the medical referee of one of the great assurance associations, he had ample opportunity for studying the effect of some of the wildest forms of bush-life upon the human mind and body, and has made an especial study of hereditary characters developed by the offspring of Australian backwoodsmen.

“I’ve got a bit of news for you, my dear fellow,” he continues; “in troth, that’s the reason I’m after bothering you this minute. Did you happen to notice that tall young fellow who joined us at Mackay? Sure it’s himself that’s standing there with his swately embroidered forage-cap stuck on the north-east end of his face, wid a military air an’ no mistake. You did, eh? Well, and he’s an officer in the Corps I was telling you about. I’ll introduce you by-and-by, if it’s to your liking. He’ll be glad to give my Royal Geologist here any information he can, but don’t you go indulging in any of the caustic remarks about his profession that you did to me when I told you some of my experiences of the work of the Black Police. No, cushna machree, remember the swate little Irish melody, ‘Tha ma machulla’s na foscal me,’ which, being translated literally, means nothing at all but ‘I’m ashlape and moinde ye don’t thread on me tail.’ For it’s myself that knows what power and influence these same gentlemen have in the north, and our friend over there would pay any grudge he had against you on your humble servant, that’s me. Now it’s live and let live, say I, although I am a doctor, and I’m after making a fortune as soon as ever I can, me boy, and then, hey! for the bosky dells of scrumptuous New Zealand, and divil a bit I’ll pine any longer in this confounded tropical climate.”

“Well, doctor,” answered Claude, laughing, “I’ll be just real glad, as our American friends say, to have a chat with the hero of a hundred fights over there, and I’ll promise I won’t offend him. I don’t expect all these inspectors are the savage, Nero-like demons you and Williams make out. He looks quiet enough, in all conscience. By-the-bye, do you really mean to settle down in our tight little island of the south some day or other?”

“You can lay your last dime on that, me boy, an’ sure I won’t be long before I’m there, if the spalpeens don’t spoil me honest fields of labour for a year or two by going in for those cursed Saxon innovations that no medical man with an honest pride in the rights of his profession likes to see about him,—drainage and temperance. But, nonsense aside, just to show you that ‘it’s the truth I’m telling you’ when I say the officers of the Black Police,—or Native Mounted Police, as the Corps is officially termed,—that these fellows hold a good deal of social power up north, I’ll spin you a yarn if you’ll promise you’ll not go off to sleep. It’s all about a quandary a friend of mine—a Dublin man—was put in, and how he had to knock under to the powerfully persuasive police of his district.

“At a mining township not far from that ‘rocky road to Dublin’ you will have to follow, I expect, on your way up-country, there used to be a lot of natives employed about the houses of the miners. There were ‘batteries,’ or something of the kind, in the place that employed a lot of men, and some twenty natives used to come into town every morning and work as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the miners’ wives. These niggers were as quiet and well-behaved as any in the colony, barring one I’ve got at home myself, who’s always up to some divilmint. And they were all as well-known as the bodagh on me father’s own estate, which, botheration! was left to me uncle instead when me gran’father died. Now one day—all this happened about five years ago—an inspector of Black Police rides up to the town, all alone but for his regiment of ‘black boys,’ who came up some time after, and, showing a warrant for the arrest of certain blacks for murder of a stockman, asked, as politely as you please, of the townsfolk if they could inform him where these unauthorized vivisectionists were at present to be found. Divil a one of them was known in the place. But the good gentleman wasn’t going to be beaten, and with the admirable zeal that had made an inspector of him determined not to return home with hands full of nothing. So my noble sends his ‘boys’ round the township, and they catch all the aboriginals who haven’t run away the moment they saw the red-and-blue uniforms, and these were three or four ‘buck’ niggers, a very old chap, some native women, and a child or two. All these, mind you, Angland, were as well-known, and better, than the Maoris that help you with your maize at home.”

“Didn’t the miners object?”

“Yes, they did, but only a few men were about, the rest being at work. Those whites about the place showed the inspector that the natives he’d collared were working in the township at the time of the murder, but it was no good. Unfortunately, the local J.P., who was the owner of the batteries and mines in the vicinity, and had made himself objectionable to the police of the district by doing his best to preserve the natives of the place, was absent, and no one liked to take the responsibility of making a stand against the law in the matter. So the niggers were hauled off. This was bad enough, sure, but the bitter part was to follow. I must stop for a moment to go on to tell you that it’s a divil of a bother to bring home a conviction of murder against an aboriginal, through some of the judges having decided that it is illegal to try a man in a language of which he doesn’t know a single decent word, barring a few swear words he’s heard used by bullockies, and drovers, and the like. So, finding this lion in the path of justice, the artful protectors of the public have hit upon another plan for arriving at the same desired end.”

“What is that?” asks Claude.

“Sure the idea is ‘just grand,’ as my Scotch gardener says, and as easy to carry out as falling off a greasy log, and that’s as nate as it’s convanient. The plan is to let the prisoner have a chance of escaping when taking him to gaol, and promptly perforate him with bullets if he takes it or not.”

“But that wouldn’t work long. Too many witnesses, doctor. Sure to leak out some day.”

“Not at all, me boy. The gentleman in charge, who is so anxious to save the Crown the expense of the trial, it’s just himself that knows what he’s about. His squad of ‘boys’ is composed of black fellows from various parts of Australia, who belong to different tribes, or factions, to tip it a rale Irish simile. On the top of a downright lovely, natural animosity for each other, which is only restrained by discipline, these savages wearing the Government livery have been trained to commit every sort of atrocity at a word from their ‘Marmie,’ as they call the ‘boss.’ Should a ‘boy’ misbehave himself, turn rusty because he receives a flogging, or otherwise fail to please his master, that gentleman doesn’t trouble to rason wid him; he has only to wink, as you may say, and it’s a case of ‘off wid his head,’ for his black comrades are only too glad to be allowed to steal behind the bocaun of a boy and leave him pulseless, all alone wid himself behind a bush. These ‘boys’ are the only witnesses. But to come home to me story. The prisoners were marched off in an iligent line, or tied to a line, it don’t much matter, and three miles outside the town they were neatly despatched, and left to amuse the crows and ants.”

“But what did the townsfolk do?”

“Oh, they waited till the boss of the place came back, the J.P. I’ve been telling of, and that was the same afternoon. They told him all about it. Holy poker! there was the divil to pay, an’ no mistake. ‘Dripping mother!’ he cried, ‘I’ve never had a single instance of throuble wid the darkies of the place.’ And then he went on to say, and he was telling the truth, mind ye, that he had been there, off and on, ever since he came, the first white man, to the district. And he told the miners how he feared the retaliation of the friends of the murthered creatures, and the consequent vendetta warfare that would ensue. And then the whole township, headed by the J.P., went out together by themselves, and found the place where the murtherers had left their victims; but divil a bit of them did they diskiver, barring their bodies stuffed so full of bullets, I’ve bin told, that you couldn’t see them but for the wounds outside.

“Well, a message was presently despatched to the resident magistrate of the nearest town.”

“And with what result?” asks Claude.

“Nothing, save but that the artful police thereupon sent some of their ‘boys’ at night, who quietly burned the bodies to prevent identification. Next day the coroner arrives, all dhrookin wid heat, for he’d hurried a bit to oblige the J.P., who was a powerful man and commanded a lot of votes, and, moreover, was a ‘bit of a lad’ when vexed. Now my friend, the doctor that this tale’s about, was a young man, just commencing practice, at the time, in the next town, and he was sent as an independent man, and one who was family doctor of the gentleman who might get hanged over the matter, to see the bones and identify them as human. Before he left home, however, the Black Police officials ‘got at him.’ ‘You’re a young man in this same district,’ they said, ‘and you’re not the gentleman to be afther taking the part of the black divils against your old friends you’ve just come to live amongst, let alone the fact that you’re our district-surgeon, and the same for the City Police. And isn’t your bread and butter dependent on the squatters and settlers round, who call us to do their dirty work for them and clean off the natives? Divil a one of the same but would shut you out if you interfered wid one of us. So, doctor asthor,’ they said in conclusion, ‘see what you can do to help poor Dash out of the mess, for it’s yourself will be called as a truthful witness at the inquest.’

“Well, this young friend of mine went and pleaded that he could not tell if the bones were human remains or not, and the inquiry consequently dropped through.”

“And did the inspector get off scot-free?”

“Well, not quite; ‘though very like it,’ as Mr. Pecksniff used to say. The J.P., as I said, was an influential man, and did his best to get the murderers punished. The inspector got sacked till the elections were over, just to keep our J.P. and the newspaper folk quiet. The ‘black boys’ too were brought to trial, but were released on the ground that they could not understand English, although they’d been years in the force, and English was the only medium employed in their conversations with each other, and their instructions and commands were always given in that language.”

“Well, doctor, that incident rather reflects on the judges of the colony. But although I confess I can’t altogether believe that such cruelty and gross miscarriage of justice does often happen in Queensland, yet what you say just bears out what Williams, my mining friend, says.

“He was on the Palmer gold-field, before it was the Palmer, you know, and he tells me that the blacks were safe enough to travel amongst till the settlers began to drive them from their water-holes and steal their women. Why, two fellows and himself travelled from Rockhampton to where Cooktown is now without any trouble from the natives, three years before the Palmer broke out.”

“Yes, that’s thrue for ye, but the older school of diggers were a mighty different lot to the rough lads that followed them. Many’s the yarn I’ve had with the old boys in the accident ward, for it’s there they open their hearts, as well as their mouths, for their medical attendant to pry into. But the species is growing scarce, me bhoy, and one may ask wid the swate poet,—

“‘Why is this glorious creature found,

One only in ten thousand?’”

And here the doctor forsakes the light Irish tone he has hitherto assumed, which he calls his “visiting voice,” and calmly settles down to smoke a cigar and answers his old friend’s questions in a prosaic English conversation; honouring Claude, as he does but few, by throwing aside, for the nonce, those scintillating surroundings of synonyms that, like the gay flag at the live end of a lance, are generally employed by the doctor’s countrymen in shielding the true point of their remarks from view. He continues, after a thoughtful pause:—

“After the first prospectors came those of whom Burns might have been thinking when he sang,—

“‘Man’s inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn.’”

“Well, doctor, it’s true I haven’t seen much of miners yet, but the only two I know are of the old school, and they certainly deserve the encomium you borrowed from Wordsworth. But, by-the-bye, I wanted to ask you, do you remember that surveyor telling us about the permission given to a man, I forget his name, some years since, by the Queensland government, to shoot any aboriginal he came across, because his family had all been massacred by some tribe whose land they had taken? Was it a fact or a yarn of our friend’s inventive powers?”

“Not a bit of it; true as logic, and not the only case. Frazer was the man’s name who had the permission given to him. Why, I travelled up here only two years since with a fellow who had a similar sort of ‘license to kill.’ He was going to some part of the Gulf” (of Carpentaria) “to revenge his brother’s death by killing all the blacks he might come across. This Frazer went about for years shooting all and every native he could see, ‘station boys,’ warragals, or town blacks,—he was not very particular. It became a kind of mania with him; and at last, having killed a favourite boy of some influential squatter, there was a bit of trouble over it, and he had to leave off further sacrificing to the Manes of his people, except out of the way of newspaper folk.

“I once knew an inspector of police, who’s dead now, who asked my advice professionally about himself. He said that after some years of this man-hunting, he found himself suffering from a growing morbid desire to kill everything alive he saw. He was distracted with an idea that haunted him, that he might be unable to restrain himself some day,—‘run amuck’ amongst the townsfolk or his own family; become a new kind of Helene Iegado, in fact.”

“That’s an admirable peg, doctor, to hang a sensational tale on,—a man haunted by the spectre of murder that he has raised himself, and which he fears will some day make him turn his assassin’s knife against his own beloved.”

“Oh, the disease is well-known,—a phase of that called cerebral hyperæmia,” continued the doctor; “but it is rarer in the more civilized countries than elsewhere. I consider the mere fact of an educated, civilized man being able to continue to act the part of wholesale exterminator of human beings, at so much a month, is a prima facie sign of insanity of the type Sir Henry Parkes mentioned the other day to a deputation that waited upon him. Wonderful man, Sir Henry, knows everything. Have you seen him?”

“Yes, but what did he say to the deputation? He didn’t call them lunatics to their faces, did he?”

“Not exactly, though he did so in a roundabout way. No, the deputation was composed of a number of good, soft-hearted, but also soft-headed, old fogies, who wanted to obtain a reprieve for the late-lamented murderer Hewett. ‘Sir ’Enry,’ as the Bulletin calls him, received them kindly, but sensibly refused to accede to their request, saying, ‘There are few persons save scientific inquirers who are aware of the number of people who take delight in acts of deliberate cruelty.’ I think it is Dr. Marshall Hall, no, it’s Andrew Winter, on ‘Insanity,’ says:—”

“‘It is the sustained departure from the normal condition of mind and mode of life which should suggest a grave suspicion of impending insanity. When we find a modest man become boastful, a lover of truth transmitted into an habitual liar, a humane individual suddenly become cruel, etc., we may be sure there is mental disturbance of a very severe character.’”

“Well, how about our friend over there, doctor? It’s too dark now to look at him, but our young inspector doesn’t seem to me either particularly mad or cruel.”

“No, not yet, Angland, but I’d bet a thrifle, if I had it, that he hates his work. At present he’s only a ‘sub,’ and if he’s wise he’ll not stick to it. No, he’s not got the cruel facial-lines yet on his ‘boyish front.’”

“Whilst you’re on the subject of ‘hatred, murder, and all uncharitableness,’ will you tell me about the hereditary part of the business? Does a child always inherit the bloodthirsty proclivities of its parents, say, in the case of the father having been forced by circumstances to become a member of the Black Corps?”

“No, not always. It would be rough on the coming race of young bush-reared Australians if that was the case. But as the history of an animal is the history, to a great degree, of the race to which it belongs, as Darwin says, only he puts it in rather a better way, young humans have generally more or less savage instincts. Dr. Hammond, the great authority upon neurology, declares, in a paper upon the Whitechapel murders, that ‘a desire to kill exists, to a greater or lesser extent, in the mind of every human being without exception.’ Now civilization is the counteracting force. Parents living in the backwoods of Australia, and accustomed to few of the restraints of civilization and plenty of scenes of slavery and slaughter, are hardly likely to train their offspring in the paths of gentleness and peace.”

“You think there is more in a child’s associations and home training in determining its character than in its parentage?”

“My experience of children I have seen grow into men certainly points to that conclusion. But it is a somewhat difficult subject on which to gather reliable data, for in nine cases out of ten the child’s parents are inculcating their own ideas of right and wrong into their youngster during the years its expanding brain is most sensitive to permanent impressions. What an ordinary observer might put down to hereditary characteristics of the individual, may thus merely be due to tuition and example.”

“You think the guardians of youngsters, then, more responsible for their children’s sins than is generally supposed?”

“Well, the young of well-bred men and animals—I mean by that of parents whose ancestors have long been trained in and for certain purposes and habits—have possibly less inclination to revert to the original or wild type; but what a lady friend of mine in Auckland said to me once upon a case in point very well expresses my opinions. This lady told me that the mother of Hall called upon her once, bringing the afterward notorious poisoner with her, he being then a child. The youngster was a very spoilt child, and made a great disturbance at first; but by-and-by he became quiet, and left the room where the ladies were seated, to the great relief of both of them. Presently, on Mrs. Hall leaving, the two ladies went to look for the boy, and found him sitting on the lawn quietly watching the agonies of my friend’s ‘harmless, necessary cat,’ all of whose paws he had carefully disarticulated with a small axe. My lady friend in telling me the incident said, ‘I was very shocked, of course, but I can’t say I was very surprised, for he was a thoroughly spoilt boy, and allowed to follow his own inclinations entirely; any child almost would become bad and cruel under those circumstances.’ I believe, on the whole, she was right in her reasoning.”

“And does this murdering of natives still go on, doctor? I can’t really get my mind to believe it?”

“Come here, Angland, to the light from the captain’s cabin, and read this.”

The doctor hereupon takes a South Queensland newspaper from his pockets. Claude reads as follows in the Thargomindah Herald, of date May 30th, 1889:

“(From our Correspondents.)

“THE RECENT MURDER BY BLACKS.

“In connection with the recent murder of Edmund Watson, and the attempted murder of James Evans, by blacks at Pine Tree Station, in the Cook district, it has been ascertained that the weapons used were a knife and axe, which were supplied by a station black boy. The perpetrators were caught next day. Every station on the Peninsula is contributing men to give the blacks a lesson.”

“The perpetrators, who were station-hands, were caught next day, as the telegram says, but I suppose the excuse for the slaughter of the whole tribe will not be missed.”

“Well, they don’t believe in Buddha’s assurance that ‘With mercy and forbearance shalt thou disarm every foe,’ up here, evidently,” says Claude, as the two men descend the companion ladder on their way to “turn in.” Down below, an impromptu concert is being given by a cluster of young men round the piano at the end of the saloon, and the performers, who are mostly smoking, turn round constantly for refreshments to the interesting collection of bottles and glasses on the table behind them. A grand finale chorus, composed of a conglomeration of “Ballyhooly” and “Finnegan’s Wake,” is just coming to a close, and the gifted accompanist, being only six bars behind the leading tenor, is hurrying up to be “in at the death” when Dr. Junelle’s, entrance is noticed.

A shout of recognition hails his appearance, and he is forthwith hauled off to the piano, where a dozen voices press him to “name his pison.” Having refreshed himself with a foaming glass of “Irish Liminade,” he protestingly complies with the loudly expressed desires of the company, and throwing himself into the spirit of the fun around him, as only an Irishman can do, at a moment’s notice, forthwith bursts into melody.

“An’ mind you handle your tongues at the chorus, bhoys, for I’m afther thinkin’ it’s me own will want breathing time betwane the varses, the kays are that sticky wid lime juice and tobacco.”

Striking a few preliminary chords to silence the “bhoys” who are all shouting for different songs, the doctor forthwith “trates” the company to the following thoroughly “up-country” song, well-known in Northern Queensland, which goes to the ancient air of “The King of the Cannibal Islands.”

“THE QUEER WAYS OF AUSTRALIA.

“Dick Briggs, a wealthy farmer’s son,

To England lately took a run,

To see his friends, and have some fun,

For he’d been ten years in Australia.

Arrived in England, off he went

To his native village down in Kent,—

’Twas there his father drew his rent,

And many happy days he’d spent.

No splendid fine clothes on had he

But ‘jumper ’n boots up to the knee,

With dirty Sydney ‘cabbage-tree,’—

The costume of Australia.

Chorus.

“Now when a fellow takes a run

To England for a bit of fun,

He’s sure to ’stonish every one

With the queer ways of Australia.

“Now Dick went home in this array;

His sister came out, and did say,

‘No, we don’t want anything to-day,’

To her brother from Australia.

Cried he, ‘Oh, don’t you know poor Dick?’

They recognized him precious quick;

The ‘old man’ hugged him like a brick.

And there was feasting there that night,

For Richard was a welcome sight,

For each one hailed with great delight

The wanderer from Australia.

Chorus.

“The blessèd cattle on the farm

Regarded Dick with great alarm;

His swearing acted like a charm

When he gave them a ‘touch’ of Australia.

He could talk ‘bullock’ and ‘no flies,’

And when he bless’d poor Strawb’r’y’s eyes,

She looked at him with great surprise

As out of her he ‘took a rise.’

‘Fie, fie,’ his mother said one day,

‘What naughty, wicked words you say.’

‘Bless you, mother, that’s the way

We wake ’em up in Australia.’

Chorus.

“Dick went to London for a spree,

And got drunk there, most gloriously;

He gave them a touch of ‘Coo-oo-ee!’

The bush cry of Australia.

He took two ladies to the play,

Both so serene, in dresses gay;

He had champagne brought on a tray

And said, ‘Now, girls, come fire away.’

They drank till they could drink no more,

And then they both fell on the floor.

Cried Dick, as he surveyed them o’er,

‘You wouldn’t do for Australia.’”

Chorus.

Several other songs followed, and during the interval Claude makes the acquaintance of the young sub-inspector of police. He appears to be a particularly obliging kind of individual, although a little “stand-offish” till Angland explains his present position, when, as the doctor and Mr. Winze had both predicted, the words “Royal and Imperial” once more assisted him in his project. How to get the young officer to speak about his awful profession was the next question. Would he be chary about giving any information about it? But before Claude had time to puzzle himself much about arranging a plan of campaign, he was saved the trouble of sapping up carefully to the subject by the sub-inspector himself; for in response to a call for a song, he obliged the company with a “little thing of his own,” illustrative of the prowess of his Corps during a night attack by natives upon a squatter’s head-station. This, as it is a lively bit of poetry, we give in full; it was sung to the air of that best of Whyte-Melville’s hunting songs, “A day’s ride,” having been written in the same metre with that object in view.

“A NIGHT’S RIDE.

“When the evening sun is dying,

And the night winds o’er us sighing,

And the sad-voiced dingoes crying,

Where the dark hill’s shadows lay,

“Then the sounds of horses crashing,

Through the dark bush wildly dashing;

And bounding feet go pulsing past,

Quick beating on their way.

“Then on! blue coat, white shako!

Soon let your carbines rattle,

Where black Myalls are howling round

A little force at bay!

“When we reach the station clearing,

And we hear our brothers cheering,

And our rifle-shots shout answer

O’er the yells of fear and pain,

“Knees tightly press our saddles,

As we charge the mass of devils,

And flashing red ’neath burning thatch

Our sabres clear a lane.

“Right and left the black forms reeling,

And our souls fierce pleasure feeling,

As madden’d steeds and whirling blades

Beat down the cursed crew.

“Every foe has fled, and quicker

Than he came, and in the glitter

Of half-burned sheds we gather

By the dark pool’s gloomy side;

“And we pledge the panting horses,

That are standing ’midst the corpses

Of the white-ribbed, grinning devils

That have caused our midnight ride.”

This song ended and the vocalists dispersing, Claude ventures to ask the singer, “as a stranger in a strange land,” what the Corps may be and what its duties. He finds that so far from the young officer being ashamed of his profession, he evidently feels proud of his position in the Black Police. The conversation is continued next day, and before Claude says good-bye he discovers that the doctor was right in his surmise.

“Yes,” the young sub-lieutenant once said to him, when they had become somewhat confidential, “there is a good deal about the work I don’t like. The worst part is the terrible anxiety lest any one owing me a grudge should go in for proving a case against me. It is not a pleasant feeling, the noose-round-your-neck idea one has at times. I’m getting used to it, however; but there, I confess I don’t like some of the business.”

He also told Claude a curious little incident about a young “sub,” new in the force, who made a sad mistake in the first report he sent into headquarters, describing a successful “rounding-up” of a party of natives. He used the word “killed” instead of the official “dispersed” in speaking of the unfortunate natives left hors de combat on the field. The report was returned to him for correction in company with a severe reprimand for his careless wording of the same. The “sub,” being rather a wag in his own way as things turned out, corrected his report so that the faulty portion now read as follows: “We successfully surrounded the said party of aborigines and dispersed fifteen, the remainder, some half-dozen, succeeded in escaping.”

CHAPTER X.
MISS LILETH MUNDELLA AND MR. WILSON GILES.

“Where the banana grows the animal system is indolent, and pampered at the cost of the higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel.”—Emerson.

T is a blazing winter day in Northern Queensland; a morning when it is quite a pleasure to turn one’s eyes from the sun-scorched, shadowless “open country” outside to the cool, thatched verandah of “Government House” (head station-house), where Mr. Wilson Giles, the owner of Murdaro run, resides. It is particularly grateful to do so to-day, for in addition to the soft green shade of crimson-blossomed Bougainvillias and other northern floral favourites, the presence of a fair female form in a cool, light dress—that sight so dear to men imprisoned in up-country, societyless wilds—lends a double charm to the already attractive shelter from the sun’s rays. The young lady who is now to engage our attention for a brief period is Miss Lileth Mundella, to whose future hopes and ambitions we have already alluded in Chapter V. On the day in question she sits in the shelter of the verandah, slowly rocking herself in a great cane-chair, the embroidery of light and shadow cast by the motionless leaves falling in picturesque chiaroscuric effect upon her handsome, artistically-draped figure.

Miss Mundella is in deep thought, and the long, dark lashes of her half-closed eyes are turned earthwards as she gently rocks herself to and fro. In front of the low-eaved station-house, on a withered grass-plot,—a futile attempt at a tennis-lawn,—two of the house cats are bounding in turns over a small brown snake, trying to get an opportunity of breaking the angry reptile’s back with their sharp teeth. Upon the verandah a few emerald lizards are chasing the house-flies; and, looking through the passage to the quadrangle at the back of the house, where the store, bachelors’ quarters, and kitchen buildings are situated, we can see the dark-skinned, brightly-dressed aboriginal “house-gins” as they prowl about, grinning and chattering over the preparation of “tucker long a boss,” or master’s dinner. It is nearly “tiffen time,”—a term for the midday repast copied by Australians from their Anglo-Indian brethren,—and Miss Mundella, who acts as housekeeper to her uncle, having finished her light household duties for the day, is now giving herself up to her thoughts anent the scheme which so nearly concerns our young friend Claude Angland.

A casual male observer, with the average amount of discernment and experience of the fair sex, would doubtless have decided in his own mind that this young thinker, with the low forehead and dark, pronounced eyebrows, was pondering over her next new costume, or perhaps of some rival’s successes. For the young lady’s thoughts are evidently intense, and also unpleasant. But neither dress, envy, nor in fact any of those other common troubles that come to ruffle the soft feathers of ordinary maidens’ meditations, ever disturb the firm balanced mind of Miss Lileth Mundella.

“I will make myself honoured, obeyed, perhaps even loved, by means of that one talisman that has survived the ages, and can still work efficiently in this extremely practical world in which I find myself. Money alone will give me the social position which will make life worth living. I will strive to make myself rich.” This had been the young lady’s keynote of thought and action since the day when she found herself dependent upon an uncle’s generosity. Much had it marred the original beauty of her pure, æsthetic soul.

In addition to her duties as hostess and commander-in-chief over the native contingent of her widower-uncle’s household, Lileth was also his secretary.

The ladies of an up-country squatter’s family very often act in this capacity, for they are generally better educated than the ‘boss,’ and, moreover, have plenty of leisure time.

Miss Mundella was glad to find herself in this position of trust, for it afforded her the means she sought of strengthening her hands for the ambitious coup d’état, that she intended to put into practice some day. Already Giles’s niece had profited by the opportunities her secretaryship gave her, by learning far more of her uncle’s past career than that jolly-looking, selfishly-cunning, middle-aged gentleman had any idea.

Wilson Giles was afraid of his niece. A fast youth had enervated his mental powers considerably, and without knowing it, he fell by degrees nearly entirely under the almost mesmeric influence of Lileth’s dark eyes and powerful will, whilst yet he fondly half-flattered himself that he was only acting the part of the “generous relation.” The two had only had one serious struggle for supremacy: it was in reference to Miss Mundella’s brother. This young man had held a position in a southern bank for some years, but being discovered in running a nice little private discount and loan business over the “teller’s counter” at which he presided, he was forced to seek fresh fields of labour.

Lileth won the battle with her uncle, “hands down,” and her brother became a “rouse about” (apprentice on a run) at Murdaro station.

That her uncle was indebted to a large amount to the late Dr. Dyesart she knew well; she believed the two men, also, to be partners in the run. But this was one of the few things she found herself unable to pry fully into. Miss Mundella had taken charge of the letter from the dead explorer, which faithful Billy had curiously brought to the very station his late master had been so much interested in. She had, moreover, carefully opened the packet which contained the message from the dead; not from idle curiosity, but with the idea that it probably contained something that would assist her in her plans. The words of the letter she saw at once clearly pointed to three things: firstly, a reparation or gift to be made to some one through the nephew; secondly, a command to this nephew to visit the grave of the writer; thirdly, a suspicion of the honesty of squatters,—possibly a concealed distrust of her uncle Wilson Giles himself.

Miss Mundella’s first thoughts were to destroy the letter, but upon consideration she thought she saw in it a means of obtaining further command over her uncle, and so sent it on its road to New Zealand.

She must act, and act quickly, for her brother had informed her from Sydney of young Angland’s departure for the north; but before she could move in the matter she must know more of the relations that had existed between Dyesart and her uncle.

The young lady is sitting wrapped in these cogitations, oblivious of the snake-hunting cats and meteoric lizards, when we first see her, rocking herself gently under the cool and shady verandah. Presently a light step is heard in the large room whose French windows open upon Miss Mundella’s leafy retreat, and the little figure of an aboriginal girl appears, her dark limbs and cream-coloured gown making her resemble one of those composite statues of bronze and marble.

It is Dina, Miss Lileth’s special handmaiden. Caught as a child, she is the sole surviving member of a once great Otero, or tribal-family, which was annihilated by the Black Police some eight years before, at a “rounding-up” of the natives in the neighbourhood.

It is she alone, as we see her, of all the house-gins, or unpaid native women, who are employed about “Government House,” that is decorated with that insignia of civilized female servitude,—a white lace cap; and though Dina looks to-day slightly untidy, one generally sees her glossy, luxuriant locks of jetty hair as neatly stowed away beneath the natty ornament before mentioned as Phyllis of old herself could have desired.

Dina stalks slowly towards her mistress, with a grin of respectful humility wrinkling her dark, shiny face, which would be beautiful but for that excessively triangular appendage, her nose. Suddenly, however, remembering that “missie” has threatened her with a flogging if she appears before that lady without her stockings on, she sneaks off again, softly as a bat upon the wing, and presently reappears with her calfless lower limbs clothed in neat white cotton and shod with highly polished shoes.

The girl stands for some time with her arms akimbo, and her white-palmed hands resting open upon the waistband of her short gown, meekly waiting for her mistress to notice her. But Miss Mundella’s thoughts are far away. So Dina at last looks round for something with which to while away the time.

A large beetle, with tesselated-pavement back and enormous antennæ, presently attracts her attention, and squatting down the dusky maiden plays with it, till the frightened insect escapes through a joint between the floor-boards. However, she soon finds fresh amusement in the troubles of a mantis religiosa, which has foolishly attempted to cross the thin brown stream of hurrying ants that extends from the house to their mound, a hundred yards away. Dina’s childish face beams with fun as she watches the contest. She is not cruel,—few Australian natives delight in seeing pain in any form,—but she is, like many of her sex, white and black, indifferent, that is all; content to be amused, and forgetful of the suffering anything may feel so long as it pleasantly tickles her sense of the humorous. The mantis on the path by the verandah is invulnerable to the ants’ attack, save at two points,—its soft tail and long, facile neck. On the other hand, the mode of warfare employed by those tiny, insect bull-dogs, the emmets, is simplicity itself. Laying hold of whatever part of the intruder’s awkward body happens to come near them, they “freeze on,” their hind legs being used as drag-breaks to impede the mantis’s forward march. The mantis, although covered with busy foes, marches on, with that prayerful aspect—the beseeching, upturned head and pious, folded, hand-like front-legs—that has earned it its name. Ever and anon some enterprising ant ventures to attack the weak points already alluded to of this insect Achilles; then are the lately-folded mandible claws deliberately brought into play, and the enemy is crushed, even as a nut is broken in a pair of nut-crackers.

The solemn, preoccupied air of the bigger insect, and the plucky onslaught of its tiny foes, at last cause Dina to forget her state of bondage, also the august presence of her mistress, and she bursts into a merry fit of laughter. Her hilarity, however, ceases as suddenly as it commences.

“Dina, what are you doing there?” comes the clear, contralto voice of Miss Mundella.

The culprit stands before “missie” with downcast eyes and trembling figure.

“Your cap is half off your head, and your stockings are coming down. You have forgotten to tie your shoe-laces. And why have you not an apron on? Don’t you remember the flogging you received for forgetting what I told you about your coming to me in an untidy state? Be off and get yourself straight at once, and hurry that lazy Sophy with tiffen. Marmie (master) will soon be back.”

Miss Lileth always refrains from employing that foolish pigeon-English that generally obtains amongst Australian settlers in their conversations with aborigines. And she has found herself perfectly understood and implicitly obeyed since she first arrived at the station, and established her authority by having the house-gins flogged for the slightest misbehaviour, till they were thoroughly “broken into her ways,” as she pleasantly termed it.

Dina, who had come to ask her mistress for leave of absence for the next day, is afraid to do so now, and instead bursts into a theatrical cry, with her knuckles rubbing her eyes and tears rolling down her ludicrously-wrinkled face and dusky bosom. The moment the girl thinks herself out of sight, however, she is transformed into a laughing little nigger once more.

She stands in the passage giggling with all her might at the sight of the youngest house-gin, Lucy, ætat ten summers, who out in the quadrangle at the back is up to one of her favourite tricks. This consists of imitating the ungraceful waddle of that head of the culinary department, “Terrible Billy,” the old man-cook.

Poor little, large-mouthed, wriggling Lucy loves to get behind the spare, hardship-twisted, little old man as he crosses the yard, and burlesque his every action, to the delight of the black heads that appear at the doors and windows, and grin white-teethed plaudits at the little actress’s histrionic powers.

Every action of Lucy’s lithe little body, every gleam of her cunning little black eyes, was wicked to a degree. Needless to say, her powers of mimicry were perfect. Nothing escaped her active examination. To see the suddenness with which she could flash from merriment to passive stupidity when discovered in her pranks, or when Terrible Billy—a harmless, old periodical-drunkard retainer of Mr. Giles, whose awkward, stumbling gait she imitated exactly—turned round, was worth a good deal. Her bended little body shaking with bubbling merriment in her single garment of an old gown; the thin, ugly little face, against which her tiny black hands are pressed, as if to stifle the sound of her giggles, whilst she hobbles after the dilapidated old model; and then when he turns, flash! Lucy has changed as quickly into a dull, sad-looking child, who has apparently never known what laughter means, and has thoughts for nothing evidently but her work, to which she is sullenly creeping when “the Terrible” changes his position, and looks suspiciously at her with his bleared old eyes.

Dina is looking at and enjoying the fun, and quick as both she and Lucy are, they are caught by Miss Mundella, who has followed her untidy handmaid to the door.

Lileth says nothing, but rebukes the laggard Dina with a look so fraught with cruel meaning that the black girl melts into real tears this time, as her mistress returns to her seat on the verandah.

The sound of wheels is now heard approaching, and a buck-board buggy (a kind of light chaise) appears, driven by an elderly gentleman, with a very red face and very white linen suit and hat.

The trap is pulled up near the house, and the driver, taking a boatswain’s whistle from his pocket, blows a couple of shrill notes thereon, when two native boys, in dirty moleskin trousers turned up to the knee and grey flannel shirts, hasten up and take their station at the horses’ heads.

The occupant of the buggy, however, does not release the reins, but, calling up first one boy and then the other, hits each a couple of stinging cuts with his driving whip round their bare legs, and makes the recipients roar with agony.

“I’ll teach you to keep me waiting, you black beggars!” the red-faced man roars. “Couldn’t you hear me coming? Now, Tarbrush, yer’d better look out, for, swelp me, but if I have any more of your durned laziness I’ll flay you alive, like I did your cursed brother Bingo!”

“Now, look alive, and take the mare and water her,” the speaker continues in a calmer voice, “and mind you put a soft pair of hobbles on her. You can let Joe go in the horse paddock. It’s your turn, Dandie, to get the horses to-morrow, and if you keep me a minute after seven o’clock I’ll loosen some of your black hide, swelp me if I don’t.”

The speaker, who is Mr. Wilson Giles, now gets out of the trap, and taking his whip in one hand and a revolver that he always has with him in the buggy in the other, he toddles with the usual short steps of a bushman to the house, just nodding a brief “good-morning” to his niece as he crosses the verandah.

Mr. Giles is, as we have said, an elderly man, but he has rather grown old through his kind of life than the number of his years. A somewhat corpulent man too is he, with a heavy, sensual countenance, on the sides of which, in pale contrast to his scarlet face, are ragged, light-red whiskers. The expression upon this gentleman’s face before strangers is generally either a look of suspicious cunning or an affected one of jolly frankness,—the latter having once formed an ample cloak for many a mean action, but, being now worn threadbare, is less useful than its owner still fondly imagines it to be.

After copious “nips” of whisky and soda-water, Mr. Giles presently throws himself into a chair before the elegantly provisioned table, where his niece and a middle-aged gentleman have already taken their places, and immediately betrays the fact, by the impartial way in which he thrusts his knife into meat, butter, cheese, and preserves, that he is either an eccentric or an ill-educated man.

“Come outside, I want to speak to you,” he grunts to his niece, when he has finished a very rapid repast, quite ignoring throughout the presence of the third person at the table. This is Mr. Cummercropper, the store- and book-keeper of the run, who, being a new arrival in the wilds, has not yet been able to obtain that point of rapid consumption of diet at which most station folk are adepts.

“I will be with you shortly, uncle,” Miss Mundella replies, and proceeds to enter into a conversation upon music and art with the polished storekeeper, who is the very opposite of his highly inflamed “boss.”

Mr. Cummercropper is hopelessly in love with Lileth, like most of the men this young lady thinks it worth while to be civil to. It is a curious feature about Lileth’s male acquaintances that they soon become hot admirers or warm haters of the dark-eyed, haughty young lady.

“Oh, you’ve come at last, have you?” Mr. Giles says, as his niece sweeps to her chair on the verandah, and she knows by experience that his bullying air is the result of something having annoyed or puzzled him, and that probably he will end what he has to say by asking her advice. But her uncle must “blow off his steam,” as he sometimes calls it, on somebody, and a scapegoat must be found before he will become quiet enough to talk sensibly. So Lileth’s first act is to pacify her uncle in the following way.

“Before you begin,” she says, “I want you to have Dina and Lucy beaten. You had better have it done at once, because the Rev. Mr. Harley may be here this afternoon. He said he would try and do his circuit in one month this time.”

“Oh, you needn’t mind Harley,” replies Mr. Giles; “he knows better than to interfere with our ways, Lileth. Besides, he used to ‘dress’ his wife’s little gin down proper at Croydon last year. Even the squatters at the hotel he was stopping at kicked up a row about it. The servant gals told me the little nigger’s back was pretty well scored. What have the gals been doing now?”

“Oh, I don’t really think that it is worth while my going into the long exposition of household arrangements that an explanation would necessitate.”

Mr. Giles looks sideways at the calm dark eyes that are lazily looking upwards, as their owner sits slowly rocking her chair by his side.

“I’ll soon fix their hash for them,” he growls forth at last, feeling glad of the opportunity to wreak his anger on somebody. Then he whistles upon the boatswain’s call, which had once before that morning heralded a punishment, and shortly a big native appears, whose well-pronounced nasal bones proclaim him to belong to a Cape York or Torres Straits tribe. The black’s oily face is surmounted by an old cabbage-tree hat, and he wears trousers and shirt like the other boys; but he also rejoices in a pair of Blucher boots, of which he is inordinately proud.

“Here, Carlo,” says Mr. Giles, in the curious pigeon-English already referred to, “you know that um fellow waddy (that stick); him sit down alonger office (it is in the office); mine beat it black fellow (my black fellow beater). You fetch um along.” The oily face lights up with a smile of anticipation, for he it is that generally acts the part of executioner, and “combs down the gals” by Marmie’s orders when it is needed in the cause of discipline. As a member of an alien tribe, Carlo returns the hatred of the station blacks with interest.

The waddy, a long-handled “cat” of six tails, made of leather, is brought to Mr. Giles.

“Go and catch Lucy and Dina,” says that gentleman.

Both uncle and niece sit in silence till the girls arrive, the two miserable creatures having been found at the collection of huts close by, known as the native camp, where they had run to hide on seeing Carlo take the whip to the “boss.”

“Don’t move till I come back. Won’t be long,” murmurs the squatter rising, and presently the yells and screams of the two girls are heard down by the stockyard, where the boss is standing admiring their graceful, naked bodies as they writhe beneath the lash wielded by the brawny Carlo.

Mr. Giles returns quite an altered man. Either the enjoyable sight he has just witnessed, or a couple of “pegs” of whisky he swallowed medicinally afterwards, has sweetened his soul for the time being.

“Well, niece,” he said, sitting down, “I’ve done your little job. And now I want you to listen to what I’m going to tell you, and tell me what you think of it.” Miss Mundella’s handsome, white-draped figure rocks a little faster than before, but her eyes remain still fixed on the leaves above her head.

“You know, Lileth, I think,—no, I’m pretty sure you do,—that I’d have gone a ‘broker,’”—the black eyes flash a rebuke at him for the slang he presumes to use before her. “Oh, you know what I mean. I’d have had to have filed in ’85 if it hadn’t been for Dr. Dyesart turning up trumps and lending me some of the ready. Well, when the doctor died he held promissory notes of mine for nearly £20,000. D’you know, niece, why he lent me the money?”

After a short pause the speaker continued, “But I don’t know why I should tell you. Likely enough I’ll be sorry for it to-morrow.”

“If you think I can advise you, uncle, the more I know about the matter the easier can I come to a decision. That is your excuse for telling me and mine for listening to what would otherwise not interest me.”

DINA’S FLOGGING.

“Well, I suppose that’s logic, Lileth. At any rate, Dr. Dyesart, I may tell you, was once engaged to be married to my late wife, to the mother of Glory and Georgie.”

“Indeed, uncle, and how long is it since poor Aunt Mary was engaged to him?”

“Don’t exactly know. I never saw Dyesart till about five years ago—two years after the death of my poor old wom——, of your aunt.” The speaker hastily corrects his lapsus linguæ, glancing at his niece meanwhile, and continues:—

“Dyesart comes here. Glory and little George,—Lord, what I’d give to find out what’s become of my little George,” and a tear moistens the inflamed orbits of Mr. Giles,—“Glory was playing with George on the verandah here. The doctor speaks to them, and was telling Glory he was an old friend of her mother’s when I arrived on the scene. ‘My name’s Dyesart,’ said he; ‘let me speak to you in private. I had the honour of knowing the late Mrs. Giles, your wife.’”

Miss Mundella’s chair ceases rocking, and that lady’s eyes watch her uncle’s lips.

“He told me,” continued Mr. Giles, “and I will just cut what he said as short as I can, that he was a wealthy man and a bachelor; that his agents in Sydney had told him Murdaro station would probably be in the market before long; also that he had discovered that the lady to whom he had once been engaged in England had married me, the proprietor of Murdaro, and was dead. He had come up to see the place, as it was interesting to him. Well, the doctor went into a rapture over Glory,—who’s neat enough, I believe, but wasn’t a patch on little Georgie. ‘She’s like your late missus,’ he said; and then before I knew it he offered me money on loan without interest, enough to put me on my feet again.”

“It was he that gave Glory her money, then?” asks Miss Mundella, showing for the first time her interest in her uncle’s narrative.

“Yes, he did all that he did do in a real gentlemanly way, I’ll say that for him,” returned Mr. Giles, lighting one of two green-leaf cigars that Johnnie, the Chinese gardener, presents to his boss about this time every day. “Whilst I’m on the subject I may as well tell you that I find Dyesart’s death doesn’t affect Glory’s money; I’ve got a satisfactory letter from my Brisbane lawyers about that.

“Now I have told you pretty well all, Lileth. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

“Well, yes, uncle; first, how are you situated as regards funds—money matters—now? I should like to know particularly before I ask any more questions.” As she ceases speaking Miss Mundella cannot help glancing scornfully at her relative, for she sees he is afraid to ask her advice, although his object in opening up the conversation was to do this. But her look changes as the thought enters her brain, “Is this story of the money the real and sole reason of his anxiety?”

“Well, I’m tight pressed,” replies Mr. Giles, looking nervously at his niece; “that confounded spec. of mine on the MacArthur River was a stiffener for me, and for better men than me too.”

“You could not refund the money lent you by Dyesart if his executors,”—the young lady watches her uncle as she speaks, and sees that gentleman’s rather washy eyes open a little bit wider and become fixed, a sign that expresses in his physiognomy what turning pale would in most other men,—“could you refund this money if his executors were to press you to do so?”

“Jupiter! No!” gasps Mr. Giles, without an apology for the oath. Indeed, neither notice it in their interest in the matter in hand.

“What would you have to do if you were forced to repay this £20,000, say, to his nephew Angland?”

“I’d have to sell every beast on the run,” gasps Mr. Giles, his eyes protruding more than ever, “and I’d have to sell my own carcase into the bargain,” he adds, coarsely.

“You must please control yourself, uncle, or I must go indoors,” murmurs Lileth, leaning back in her chair.

“Oh, you’re not inquisitive about hearing any more, ar’n’t you?” begins Mr. Giles, angrily. “You are a woman, although you’ve got brains, and you needn’t pretend——” But the uncle is obliged to nip his ungallant speech in the bud, and afterwards to apologise for it; for his niece rises to leave him, and he feels he cannot afford to quarrel with her at any price.

“Well, uncle,” the young lady inquires, “would you be sorry if these promissory notes were found?”

“Why, of course. They’d ruin the whole bilin’ of us.” Mr. Giles’s answer, coming as it does from a mouth whose chin is sunk upon a desponding breast, is scarcely audible.

“With the exception of Glory?”

“Oh, her money’s all right; can’t touch hers.”

“You have tried, then,” thinks Lileth, “and this is the reason you inquired about it. You are desperate. The game is mine if I play my cards carefully.”

“Well, uncle,” she continues, “there are only two ways that I can see to get rid of this awkward state of affairs.”

“What’s them?” comes the snappish inquiry.

“Either to find out a means of getting at and destroying these P.N.’s, or——” Here Miss Mundella pauses so long that her uncle’s face grows redder than ever with excitement, till at last he bursts out impatiently, “Or what?”

“Or destroy the means this young Angland has of finding where the notes are.”

“Can either of these things be done?”

“Yes, the latter.”

“How can it be done?”

“By means of money.”

“Who will do it?”

“I will.”

Mr. Giles cogitates for a minute or two.

“You know more of this matter than you pretend.”

“Than I pretend!” The young lady expresses her surprise at this accusation in her sweetest tones.

“Well, then, than you have told me, if you like that way of putting it better. You’re a clever gal, and have more ‘savez’ than I have in a matter like this.” The speaker’s eyes withdraw into his head, and he feels more cheerful and hopeful as he goes on speaking.

He ends by placing the whole affair in his niece’s hands for her to fight out for him.

Lileth has her fish in the shallows now, but she knows she must not startle him till her landing net is safely under and around the prize. So putting a little softer intonation into her voice, and rising from her seat, she goes to her uncle’s side.

“Uncle, I am only a poor orphan,” she begins, looking almost through Mr. Giles’s downcast eyelids. Mr. Giles can feel the power of his niece’s glance and fairly trembles, for he is always most afraid of her when she speaks thus softly.

“You have given my brother and myself a home,” goes on the young lady. “We owe you everything. I can help you and I will.”

Mr. Giles breathes more freely, but he would hardly have done so if he had known that Miss Mundella only wanted to make him easier for a moment in order to insure his feeling shy of having the whole trouble back on his own shoulders again.

“But, uncle, I have my good name to think of. I must risk that and a good deal more besides in forwarding these interests of yours. I owe it to Mr. Puttis as well as to myself to ask you if you will make me some token of regard, of appreciation, if I clear this trouble out of your way.”

“Anything you like,” Mr. Giles murmurs sleepily, almost as if the words were somebody else’s and he was simply repeating them.

“I have thought out a plan of releasing you entirely from your indebtedness, but both myself and my future husband will have to risk everything in doing it. Will you promise to give me a quarter share in the run if I succeed?”

Mr. Wilson Giles’s tenderest point is touched at this request, and the pain wakes up his courage for a moment or two.

“You’re not afraid of opening your mouth to ask,” he says, fighting his ground as he retreats. “You know I’ve never given up all hopes of finding little George some day. I don’t believe the niggers that stole him killed him, or I’d have heard of it. I’d look nice if I gave away what’s to be his some day if he turned up afterwards, wouldn’t I?”

“If you make me a partner in the run I’ll help you. If not, I’ll marry Mr. Puttis at once, as he wishes me to do, and go to Brisbane. I don’t mind,” adds Lileth, pausing for a moment, “agreeing to give up to poor Georgie half my share if he ever returns to you.

“I shall want a written and signed agreement, uncle,” she observes, as she leaves him to enter the house, “before I commence work.” Then at the doorway she turns and remarks, in a careless tone of voice, “You may like to know that Angland—Dyesart’s nephew—has already left Sydney, and may be here any day.”

This last bit of news was just what was wanted to complete the subjugation of Mr. Giles to his niece’s will. How did she know of this news about Angland? Why, of course, from that young devil of a nephew of his, whom he had bribed to intercept the dead explorer’s approaching relative. His own rough-and-ready plan had failed; perhaps his niece’s scheme would succeed. Anyhow, it was best to have her on his side, for otherwise she might consider it best for herself to make young Angland fall in love with her. She could do that, if she liked, Giles felt certain. The squatter rises and paces up and down the creaking floor of the verandah restlessly at the thought.

“Fool that I was to let that black boy of the doctor’s escape me,” he murmurs aloud. “Torture and money would have made him reveal the grave to me. It is in that grave, or near it, where the secret that can blast and ruin me lies. If that girl knew that secret she would kill me without compunction. I know it. At any risk she must remain on my side till the danger is past.”

So the agreement is signed and handed to Miss Mundella that night. And the dark eyes flash like unto Diana’s upon a successful mythological hunting morning as Lileth’s steady pen directs two telegrams,—one for Inspector Puttis, which we saw him read at Ulysses, and another to an influential admirer of hers in the office of the Commissioner of Police, Brisbane. And then the active brain falls to pondering over the something that she believes her uncle kept back from her that afternoon.

CHAPTER XI.
THE BLACK POLICE.

“Ye to whose sovereign hands the Fates confide

Of this fair land the reins,—

This land for which no pity wrings your breast,—

Why does the stranger’s sword her plains invest,

That her green fields be dyed?”

Petrarch.

ERE’S another snob trying to get us all cashiered! Confound those beastly newspapers,—just my luck!” exclaims an elderly and rather handsome man, who, sitting before his office table, has just opened an important-looking letter, headed with the royal arms printed in red ink.

“Just my confounded luck. Just at this time too, of all others, when my application to be appointed Protector of Aboriginals for the district must just have reached the chief. Now I wonder what Mrs. Bigger will say if I don’t get this extra salary as Protector, for I can’t send Jane down south to school, as I promised, if I don’t get more than my present pay, that’s certain.”

The blue-paper letter that has occasioned Inspector Bigger of the N. M. Police so much vexation—for it is this well-known gentleman who now sits nervously rubbing his eyeglass in the little hot office of the barracks—is dated from the bureau of the Superintendent of Police, Brisbane, and runs as follows:—

“June 4th, 1889.

“John Bigger, Esq., Inspector of N. M. Police for Townsend Barracks, Werandowera District.

“The Colonial Secretary having requested the Commissioner of Police to supply him with such information as lies in his power, concerning the truthfulness of an occurrence of which the enclosed newspaper article (which appeared in a recent issue of the ‘Northern Miner’) purports to be an account, I am directed to desire you to communicate immediately with this Office upon the subject.

“I am, sir,

“P. P. Commissioner of Police,

“Harry Stocrat.”

The following is a reprint of the newspaper cutting which flutters to the floor on the letter being opened:—

“ANOTHER N. M. P. ATROCITY.

“Close to Townsend, a reliable correspondent informs, the following lately took place:—

“At a mining camp where nothing had been stolen by the natives for months, three natives ran by a miner’s tent one evening. Going into town next day, the said miner mentioned this, but did not ask for assistance. The neighbouring sergeant of Black Police with four boys, however, appears at the camp in a few days. As night falls the light of a native camp-fire is sparkling away on a mountain range some four miles off. No one knows or cares if these particular natives had committed the crime of running by a miner’s tent. Taking a ‘boy’ by the shoulder, the sergeant points out the fire, and soon after the four troopers steal off into the gloom, armed to the teeth, and naked save for their cartridge-belts. The sergeant remains behind, and in about an hour and a half the sound of nine shots coming rapidly one after another is heard. Presently the ‘boys’ again appear with spears and dilly-bags, and tell, amongst other horrid details, that they have despatched ‘plenty fellow pickaninnie’ with their tomahawks.”

The Inspector’s little office occupies half of a small weather-board erection, which is so crazy from the attacks of white ants (termites) that it can hardly support its hot, galvanised-iron roof. A rough wooden bookcase occupies one wall, standing on a rusty iron tray, which is generally kept supplied with water to defend this article of furniture from the same insect foes that are fast destroying the joints and studs of the building. On its dirty shelves a number of dusty law-books, blue summons papers, and the like, repose in picturesque disorder.

On either side of the single window of the apartment hangs a cat-o’-nine-tails,—one for the use of the refractory “boys” of the corps, and manufactured of plain leather thongs; the other having the narrow lengths of hide decorated with swan-shot artistically fastened to the cruel tongues with whipcord. This more complicated instrument is used for such cases as refractory native witnesses, when a murderer has to be discovered, and has also visited many of the stations round on loan to squatters who are anxious to instil the beauties of civilization into the bosoms (and backs) of those of their native slaves who are desirous of escaping from their bondage. A number of handcuffs and leg-irons, and a few racing pictures, spotted to indistinctness by the last summer’s plague of flies, decorate the walls; and behind Inspector Bigger’s chair is a rack of Snider carbines, whilst a pair of loaded, long-barrelled “Colts” lie on the pigeon-holed letter rack before him on the table, which occupies the centre of the room.

“Now what shall I do about this, I wonder?” ponders the gallant defender of frontier settlers. “I can’t say it was Sergeant Blarney’s fault and call him over the coals, for I have already reported the matter to the Chief as if I had been present. Well,” with a sigh, “it’s another proof of how careful we must be nowadays. Bai Jove! if any of these scribblers had seen some of the little affairs we’ve managed in the old days, between here and Herberton, there would have been some ‘tall writing,’ as the Yankees say, there would so. Bai Jove!” the Inspector adds aloud, rising from his chair and peering out of the open door down the bare barrack yard to where the square, rush-covered huts of the boys stand side by side, “if that isn’t Puttis back again. Wonder if he’s been sent up to replace me? Why, he was only ordered down to Nanga district six weeks ago.”

OFFICER AND “BOY” OF BLACK POLICE.

The small, military figure of Inspector Puttis, to whom we have already introduced our readers half-a-dozen chapters back, dismounts quickly from the magnificent chestnut which has carried him from Cairns, and, after a few rapid words to his black orderly, who has dismounted also, rapidly marches up the scrupulously neat yard towards the residence of his brother officer. The white sergeant of the local force, and two or three native constables who are standing near, stand “attention” and give the military salute as the dapper little man passes them, which he replies to by lifting his riding cane to his cabbage-tree hat.

Whilst the new-comer is being welcomed by Inspector Bigger, let us glance at the more prominent objects in the scene before us.

Two rows of weather-board iron-roofed buildings, amongst which are the white sergeant’s quarters, stretch down a slight declivity to where they meet at right angles a terrace of brown, single-roomed huts, occupied by the native constables. At the upper end of the fair-sized quadrangle thus formed, the thatched, bungalow-like home of the Chief, covered with creeping plants and standing in a brilliant flower garden, looks down on the rest from the summit of the moderate rise on which the barracks are situated.

The “boy” who arrived with the Inspector, and who, in company with several other natives, is now leading the two horses to the stockyard down by the heavily-timbered water-hole, is in the well-known uniform of the Black Police. This consists of a linen-covered shako, blue-jacket garnished with red braid, and white duck trousers; brown leather gaiters reach to the “boy’s” knees, and he wears an old pair of his master’s enormously long spurs on his “Blucher” boots. As he is “in marching order,” a brass cartridge-belt, containing Snider cartridges, is slung, after the fashion of a sergeant’s scarf, around his body. To complete this somewhat lengthy description of a uniform to be seen only in “up-country” Australia, we may add that a Snider carbine hangs in its “basket” and strap from the “off” side of the “boy’s” saddle.

A few boys in the “undress” of a pair of trousers are sweeping one corner of the yard, and from the doors of the dwellings the brightly turbaned heads of a number of native women, the property of the Chinese cook and white constables, are lolling out for a view of the new arrivals.

But to return to the two officers, who are now seated under the verandah of Inspector Bigger’s home, near a table loaded with the usual “spiritual” signs of Australian hospitality.

“Well, Puttis, so you’re going up to Murdaro again, are you?” begins the host, after the preliminary courtesies of greeting have been gone through between the two friends. “Bai Jove! I wish I had the influence you have, old fellow, with our lords and masters down there at Brisbane. Ah! you sly dog, can I congratulate you yet?” asks the smiling elder man. “There’s not the slightest doubt but Miss Mundella’s the handsomest, eh? and the smartest young lady this side of the Clarence. Did she ever tell you, by-the-bye, old man, that I knew her father?”

“Never,” replies Puttis, with his customary brevity, just letting his jaws open and shut to emit the word, much like a fox-terrier does when it snaps at a troublesome “blue-bottle.”

“Old Mr. Mundella—it was young Mundella then —was one of the first to take up-country near where you’ve just come from. And d’you know,” continues the verbose Bigger in a low tone of voice, “d’you know, they used to say at the time that it was our old friend Giles, that’s got Murdaro now, that cleaned him out of his run, and not the ‘pleuro’ (a cattle disease) at all.”

“Humph,” observes Inspector Puttis.

“Yes, that his wife’s brother did it. Well, upon my soul, I would not be surprised at anything I heard of Giles doing. Mundella was grand company, and I don’t think I ever saw a better shot at a running nigger in my life, except yourself.”

“Hah!” snorts the little man in the black, frogged jacket, “that is nothing,” and he bows in acknowledgment of the compliment paid to him by his friend. “Have lived with finger on trigger—night and day—over ten years, may say. You shot well yourself, a few years back.”

“Age making me old and shaky now, me boy,” answers Bigger; and if he had said a life of almost unrestrained licentiousness he would have been nearer to the truth. “But what have you done with your troop, Puttis?”

“Camped down creek. Four miles. Some niggers camped there. Want my ‘boys’ to pick up some information. About man I’m after.”

“Ah! a nigger?”

“Yes; perhaps you can help me.”

“With pleasure, if I can,” replied the elder Inspector, adding, “Especially, my dear fellow, as I sha’n’t feel so diffident about asking your assistance, in that case, in a little affair of my own.”

The host has by this time had six “nips” to his guest’s abstemious one, so turning his head towards Puttis he rattles on: “But won’t you alter your mind and have another? Or, if you prefer it, I’ve some real, genuine ‘potheen.’ Queensland make, of course, but just like the real stuff. One of my old constituents on the Barron river, ha! ha! sent it to me.” The two men smile and wink knowingly at each other. “Chinamen never forget a generous action, ha! ha!”

Laughing at the remembrance of how he obtained the “potheen,” and filling his glass from the decanter on the table with a very shaky hand, the jovial inspector continues,—

“In consequence of information received from one of my ‘boys,’ I rode up to the chinky’s little scrub farm one day, two years ago. ‘John,’ said I, ‘how many bushels of corn you get off this piece of ground?’ ‘Welly bad crop, Missie Bigger,’ answered the yellow devil, with a sly look at me to see how I took the lie he’d just uttered. ‘No goody Chinaman makey garden here. Twenty bushels me sell to Missie Brown. That all,’ and the cursed spawn of Confucius kicked some of the rich soil contemptuously over with his sandal. Any one could see there’d been a big crop, perhaps three hundred bushels off the land, by the heaps of husks off the heads of maize lying about the clearing. ‘Well, John,’ said I, leaning over in my saddle so that some friends who were with me shouldn’t hear, ‘well, John, you can send me a little of the ‘real stuff’ you sold MacDuff on Saturday, and then, whether you get twenty or five hundred bushels here, I sha’n’t trouble to ask you what you use it for next time.’ Ha! ha! how Li Ching (that was his name) stared! He grew green, but he never opened his lips. But what’s more to the purpose, he’s sent me a box of potatoes, regularly, every few months since, which I have carried carefully into my bedroom. I’m sure you’d like it. Take a bottle or two with you for Giles. He’s a good judge. What?”

“Thanks, awfully,” replies Inspector Puttis. “Do so with pleasure. But what’s your trouble? Little affair you mentioned?”

The jolly smile that has illuminated Inspector Bigger’s face during his telling of the previous anecdote fades suddenly upon the objectionable subject of the official inquiry being recalled to his memory. He hands the red-sealed epistle and the newspaper cutting to his friend with a sigh, and watches the expressionless face of the little man as he carefully reads both with anxiety.

“Well, Puttis, what had I better do about that?”

“About correct?” inquires the person addressed, pointing to the clipping in his hand.

“Oh, I think so. Of course I wasn’t there. No good my going up those beastly hills in the wet. You see, there’s not been much doing lately in our line about here, and the ‘boys’ were getting troublesome, so I told Blarney (the sergeant) to see if he couldn’t find something for them to do. He heard of niggers having been seen up Mulberry Creek way, and——”

“How did you word report?” interrupts Puttis, lighting a cigarette.

“Oh! same old style: ‘Having received repeated complaints from the Mulberry Scrub settlers of the wholesale destruction caused by a ferocious tribe of dangerous Myall blacks,’—and that kind of thing, you know.”

“Ah! too risky nowadays!” snaps Inspector Puttis, again interrupting his senior. “Can you get a written complaint? ‘We demand assistance,’ and that style of thing?”

“Oh! there’s Thompson, and that old German Bauer,—he wants to sell me a couple of cows. Either would do that for me, I think.”

“Umph!” grunts Inspector Puttis, “I’d like to see sergeant. Will think I’m up here about case.”

The white sergeant is summoned to the presence of the two superior officers, through the medium of a native constable who is weeding the garden close by, and, after a little word fencing, he settles down into an account of the occurrence which corresponds, in most particulars, with that of “our trustworthy correspondent.” In answer to a question put to him he continues,—

“I heard of the camp, sorr, from a young gintleman, yer honours, who kapes the stour at Riversleigh, an’ he tells me, sorr, that one of them miner chaps up at High Cliff had tould him as how two murthering thaves of nigger women was in the creek by their camp lately. ‘Divil tax ’em, sorr,’ he said, but the varmints they got away before the miner could get his mates to help catch ’em.”

“Were the miners glad to see you and the ‘boys’?” demands Puttis.

“Sure, sorr, it’s yourself has guessed the right words they spake, sorr. They was sulky as bandicoots, an’ never said a word till I amused ’em, with me arthful stories,—the ‘bhoys’ having started afther the fire on the hill. ‘We’re not afraid of the niggers,’ said one,—who I’ll kape me eyes on when he’s in town for a bit of a spree,—‘we hain’t afraid of niggers: let ’em bide.’”

“Wait a bit, sergeant. How do miners get tucker (provisions) up there?”

“It’s Thompson, sorr, the only settler, yer honours, on that side of the Cliffs; he kills fur ’em.”

“Is that Thompson who trained the bloodhounds for Inspector Versley?”

“The same, sorr.”

“That’ll do, sergeant.” The energetic non-commissioned officer salutes and withdraws, and Puttis turns towards the local chief.

“Say, Bigger, have you got that western ‘boy’ you lent me once? What was his name? Oh! Tomahawk. Got him still?”

“No, accidentally shot. Very sorry to lose him, for he was a good ‘boy.’ He knew every nigger’s tracks for fifty miles round. No, I lent him to Versley, and you know what Versley is. Tomahawk gave him a piece of cheek, and—and he was accidentally shot.”

“Ah! that’s a pity. Fact is, I want a ‘boy’ who knows the western lingo. Also knows scrub. Got one?”

“Yes; Teapot’s a good ‘boy.’”

“I want to get hold of that educated nigger that Dyesart had with him when he died. Giles heard him telling other niggers. Had killed Dyesart. Have got warrant to arrest him. Served Dyesart right though. Educating a cursed nigger.”

“Oh, you mean that fellow Billy. Why, I thought he brought a letter or something to Murdaro from Dyesart. Should not be surprised if the nigger wrote it himself though. Those civilized blacks are up to anything.”

“He was at Murdaro,” remarks Inspector Puttis, “but he made himself scarce.” He might have added, for he knew it to be a fact, that Billy had only made himself “scarce” because he had very good reasons for believing that Mr. Wilson Giles intended to make him altogether “extinct,”—the reason for that worthy gentleman’s inhospitable behaviour being explained and set forth hereafter for the benefit of our readers.

“Shouldn’t be surprised if he was at the Mission Station,” observes Inspector Bigger, after a short pause for reflection. “If so, I can get him for you. I’ve got a little gin (girl) that will fetch him, if he’s to be fetched out of the sanctuary where all these rascals go to.” After another pause, and a “peg” at the volatile fluid on the table, the speaker continues musingly,—

“If these missionary fellows did any good I wouldn’t object, but they don’t. They just teach those black devils of theirs to think themselves better than a white man. Why, one beggar they’ve reared they sent over here,—in a black coat, if you please!—who had the impudence, curse him! to give a sermon in the Wesleyans’ Gospel-mill down there.”

“Ha! ha!” laughs Puttis grimly, looking straight in front of him, his left hand unconsciously fingering the revolver pouch on his hip. “These mission stations. Good preserves for us sometimes. Besides missionaries prevent squatters doing our work themselves. No missionaries, no Black Police very soon. A Black War, like they had in Tasmania, would soon result. No more niggers for us to disperse.”

Taking a Sydney paper from his breast pocket, the little man points to it, asking if his friend has “Seen this?”

Inspector Bigger adjusts his eyeglass after some nervous, blundering attempts, and with some trouble, for he has “nipped” himself into a happy, sleepy mood by this time, makes out the following paragraph in the Sydney Telegraph.

“DEPREDATIONS BY BLACKS.

“SWEEPING CHARGES AGAINST THE MISSIONS.

“(By Telegraph.)

“Adelaide, Wednesday.

“A deputation of Northern Territory pastoralists to-day asked the Government to send more mounted police to the Territory in order to deal with depredatory blacks, who killed large numbers of stock. The majority of these natives belonged to the mission stations. The Minister for Education, in reply, said it seemed to him that the mission stations did more harm than good. He had official information that all the black outlaws in the Territory made for the missions when hard pressed and the missionaries protected them, and that the worst cattle-killers were the mission aboriginals. He was sorry, however, that owing to the bad state of the finances of the Northern Territory additional police protection could not be granted.”

“Yes,” murmurs the inspector, when he has got the gist of the article fairly into his slightly muddled brain. “That’s comforting. Right man in right place. Education’s the thing. He knows what he’s talking about. As long as we’ve squatters in the ministry and on the bench we’re all right, eh?”

“Yes, and when Western Australia is out of home Government’s interference. Ha! ha! something to do for squatters there, I fancy. I’ll see Thompson,” Puttis adds, rising, “about your affair. He knows me. Never allow nonsense from cockatoos (settlers). He will send evidence you want. Double quick time.”

And Inspector Puttis knows what he is talking about, and is not bragging when he declares himself superior to the irritations occasioned wilfully at times by settlers. There were not wanting instances where imprudent scrub-farmers and others had suddenly lost horses and cattle; had found their cottages burned to the ground on a temporary absence in the bush; had left their crops safe over night, to wake cornless and hayless next morning; and yet no trace of the ravagers and thieves was to be found when the aid of the Black Police trackers had been called in to help to discover the aggressors. And as such invisible pirates, it was noticed, apparently only attacked the holdings of the few persons who were publicly at enmity with the Black Police, ugly stories got about that pointed to the N. M. “boys” as having played the rôle of midnight marauding Myalls (wild aborigines) “at the special request” of the officers of their troop.

Inspector Puttis now proceeds to bid his host adieu, and before he goes arranges for the neighbouring mission station to be watched for the arrival of Billy.

It is growing dark when Miss Mundella’s fiancé leaves the barracks, and he rides with loose rein at an easy canter towards his camp. The black “boy,” Inspector Puttis’s aide-de-camp, follows some hundred yards behind. After a couple of miles along the red clay banks of a dried-up mountain torrent, the track leads up a small ridge into an outlying portion of the dense “scrub,” or jungle, that covers the high ranges on either hand. Here the way becomes far more difficult to travel, and the riders allow their clever steeds to slowly pick their own path. The clay surface of the treacherous road, worn into wave-like corrugations, a foot or more in depth, from the passing trains of pack-mules from the distant tin-mines, and ever moist with the dews of the dense tropical growth on either hand, is quite dark with the overhanging branches of buttressed fig-trees of gigantic growth, of graceful palms and pendent ferns and creepers, whilst dangerous stinging-trees and lawyer-vines to right and left render caution necessary. But the other side of the patch of scrub is safely reached, and the inspector is just about to urge his horse into another canter, when that animal suddenly snorts and bounds to the other side of the track. This impromptu action probably saved its rider’s life, for as it does so, phut! and a long kangaroo spear flies harmlessly past the inspector’s body, and goes clattering down upon the stony bottom of the watercourse in front.

Puttis, although a perfectly fearless man, is one of those persons who never throws a chance away, and, knowing what good cause the aborigines of the district have to wish for his destruction, always carries a revolver in his hand when out late in the scrub. Almost before the spear has touched the ground, certainly before it is motionless, the active little man has swung round in his saddle, and fired a snap-shot at his cowardly assailant, whose dusky form can just be seen, as he stands, paralyzed for an instant at the escape of his victim, upon a fallen tree trunk by the wayside. A sparkling burst of flame, a crashing echo, half drowned with a yell of agony, and the inspector’s horse becomes unmanageable, and bolts with him down the track into the open land beyond.

When Puttis can prevail on his horse to return into the scrub, he finds his attendant native constable standing by the side of the prostrate body of the would-be murderer, examining him by the light of a wax match he has just struck. The wounded savage, who is desperately hurt in the region of the right lung, scowls up at his enemies as they lean over him. He is quite naked, and lies on the road on his left side. The necklace of joints of yellow grass that he wears, shows him to be in mourning for a relative.

“What name this beggar, Yegerie?” inquires Puttis of his constable, meaning, “Who is this?”

“Malle beggar, Marmie. Him bin long a ’tation, mine think it” (Bad fellow, master, has been a station-hand, I think), pointing to some half-healed scars on the man’s shoulder-blades that demonstrate to the experienced eyes looking down on him that he has recently received a flogging.

“Any more black fellows about?”

“No more black beggar, Marmie. This one sit down long his self,” replies the trained black, in whose wonderful powers of hearing, seeing, and deduction his officer has perfect confidence.

“What ’tation you belong to?” continues Yegerie, kicking the wounded man with the toe of his boot.

“Ah-r-r-r,” growls the wounded savage, with such angry fierceness that Inspector Puttis’s revolver drops into position, ready to give the sufferer his coup de grâce should he attempt any mischief.

“Monta karaan!” (curse you!) hisses the feeble voice, “you white devil. You kill um lubra (wife); you kill um pickaninnie; you,”—he pauses to gasp for breath,—“you kill um all about black fellow. No more brudder long a me. Ah! no more brudder long a me. Monta karaan!!” The sufferer’s head drops down towards the ground, and he literally bites the dust, or rather mud, in a frenzy of passion and agony. Then he becomes unconscious apparently, and murmurs a few unintelligible words, followed by a groaning request for—

“Kouta! kouta!” (Water, water.)

“Ah!” muses Puttis to himself, knowing by experience that a dying man speaks his last words in the language of his childhood, however much he may have forgotten it a little while before, when in full health. “Ah! Kouta is a western word. He’s a runaway nigger, and has been living with some tribe about here. He will be very well out of the way.” And nodding to his black aide-de-camp, who thereupon begins to drag the wounded savage off the track into the scrub, the inspector mounts and rides off.

As he reaches the other side of the dried-up river bed once more, his chestnut starts at the sound of a single carbine shot that rings out with weird, muffled suddenness from the dark glades he has just left. It is the requiem of another departed member of the fast-fading aboriginal race of Australia.

CHAPTER XII.
BILLY AND THE “HATTER.”

“He traced with dying hand ‘Remorse,’

And perished in the tracing.”

J. G. Whittier.

IXTY miles in a southerly direction from the place where Inspector Puttis met with the adventure related in our last chapter, the figure of a man is reposing beside a silent rocky pool, in the heart of a dense jungle. The tropic vegetation around him is part of the same straggling line of “scrub-country” that covers the great, rugged shoulders of the coast range of Northern Queensland with a soft green mantle of indescribable grandeur and beauty. Enormous fig-trees (Ficus), with gigantic, buttressed stems, tower on all sides into the hanging gardens of climbing ferns, orchids, and creepers that swing above in mid-air, and provide the dark, moist soil beneath with a perennial shelter from the sun’s rays.

Save where a brawling brooklet has cut a rugged pathway for itself through the dense undergrowth, or a hoary monarch of the forest has succumbed to age and insect foes and fallen to the ground, no road through the matted growths around seems passable but for the smallest animals. Yet it is in these gloomy wilds that some of the tribes of Queensland aboriginals find their only safe sanctuary to-day, from the white settlers who have driven them from their old homes in the open country at the foot of the mountain chain. It is midday, but the green shadows of the leafy canopy overhead would render the reading of a newspaper difficult work. But although so dark, the forest is not silent. Its great pulses throb and murmur with the pleonastic signs of tropic life. There comes upon the ear the thousand tiny voices of insects and of birds, swelling and dying in a soft-toned lullaby chorus, which, like the murmur of the coast-waves ten miles to the eastward, is never ceasing.

It does not require a second glance at the lonely figure at the little rocky pool to ascertain that it is that of an aboriginal. He is dressed in the ragged remains of a coarse woollen shirt and trousers, both of which garments are so torn with the thousand thorns of the thickets their wearer has just traversed that the wonder is that they still cling to his thin and emaciated body.

Presently the black raises himself from the ground, where he has been reposing at full length upon his back, with his arms extended at right angles to his body, after the fashion of aboriginals who have undergone excessive fatigue, and totters towards the little water-hole. First examining the sand upon its banks for footmarks, he next proceeds to bathe his bruised and bleeding limbs. The man before us is Billy, the late Dr. Dyesart’s “boy,” and he is almost in as bad a plight as when we saw him on the eventful morning by Paree River’s side, when the explorer saved the wounded child from the uplifted axe of the squatter’s tracker. Billy is now a young man of twenty-four years of age, well-built, active, and handsome for an aboriginal; but the privations and trouble he has lately undergone have pulled him down considerably. After refreshing himself at the pool, he sits down on a fallen tree, and, feeling in his pockets, smiles to himself as he finds that he still possesses a pipe, tobacco, and matches. He is too fatigued to search for food yet awhile, and here is something to stave off the feeling of hunger for a time. Odd as it may appear to those of our readers who do not know Australia intimately, Billy, although a native, and born a warragal, or wild native, was almost as helpless as a white man in this “scrub” country, as regards finding the means of sustenance. Take an aboriginal from the semi-desert interior of Australia, and place him in the coastal jungles of the north-eastern shores of the great island, and he is hardly more capable of getting his living there than a European, who then saw the “bush” for the first time, would be under similar circumstances. The fauna and flora were all new to Billy; even the snakes were different. This was bad enough, but, in addition, he had only just escaped from remorseless enemies, who might even now be again upon his tracks. The dependent life he had led for sixteen years with his old master was much against him, now that he was thrown upon his own resources. Much of his late life had of course been in the “wilds,” but they were very different to those that now formed his hiding-place. And, besides, there had generally been flour galore for “damper” and “Johnnie-cake” making, and always plenty of powder and shot as a dernier ressort with which to procure a meal.

The young man sits smoking and thinking for a while, and then falls to digging away at the rotten wood upon which he is seated,—a small, toothsome luncheon of fat, oily grubs rewarding his operations. Suddenly he stops, and withdrawing the pipe from his mouth listens intently. His marvellous powers of hearing have detected a distant sound that, falling on the tympanum of a European’s ear, would have become jumbled up and lost amidst the confusing buzz of flies and other myriads of tiny noises around him. What the sound is caused by Billy cannot tell, but it is a stationary one, and in a different direction from that by which any of his pursuers are likely to approach. It may be natives chopping down a tree for honey, but it is almost too sharp in tone for that. After listening awhile the young man rises, and, having determined to ascertain the cause of the phenomenon, begins to crawl down the bed of the little rocky creek nearby in the direction of the curious sounds.

Ragged fragments of basalt, straggling tendrils of sharp-toothed lawyer-vines, and other impediments, make his progress slow and painful; but after creeping along the half-dried-up course of the torrent about a quarter of a mile, where hundreds of mosquitoes and leeches combined, in a sort of guerilla warfare, to attack the black’s arms, legs, and face, he at last finds himself on the edge of a cliff, above one of those curious, circular, crater-lakes that abound in one part of the great uplands of the wild coast range.

Black walls of basalt rise more or less perpendicularly around the dark, indigo water at their feet. Here and there the ancient lava has crystallized into prismatic columns, or weathered into picturesque battlements and projections, which stand up, like the ruins of some old abbey, above the feathery palms and undergrowth that struggles down the precipitous cliffs in places in avalanches of sunlit emerald or shady o’erhangings of brown and purple.

The dark mountain tarn is some two hundred yards across, and opposite to where the stream, whose bed has hitherto been Billy’s road through the jungle, joins it, the surrounding wall of cliffs seems to fall away, as far as one can make out in the shadows, as if the waters of the lake there found a means of exit.

Cautiously peering through the prickly palms and brushwood, our black friend endeavours to find an open space through which he can proceed on his way; but so dense is the mass of vegetation on all sides that there appears but one road to take, that offered to him by the lake itself.

It speaks well for the superstitionless training Billy had received at his late master’s hands that he at last determined to take water, as a means of continuing his journey towards the sounds that still, intermittently, make themselves heard above the various voices of the forest. For little in nature can surpass the awful, supernatural look of these black, silent jungle lakes, and there was something particularly “uncanny” about the appearance of this one. And when, in addition to this, there was the certainty of those dark waters being the abode of more or less numerous swimming snakes, also the grim possibility of some frightful veengnaan—the local Australian edition of a Scotch “water-kelpie”—lurking in those gloomy depths, we may safely say that it showed Billy to be possessed of a cool courage of no ordinary sort when he determined on trusting his fatigued and wounded body to its inky bosom.

Quickly making up his mind, he wriggles through the springy mass of steaming vegetation upon the edge of the cliff before him,—losing quite a number of square inches of his fast-disappearing garments in the process,—and emerges from the shadows into the fierce midday heat of a tropical winter day.

A drop of twenty feet only has to be made to reach the silent waters at this point, for the storm creek has cut through the brim of the crater basin a dozen feet or more; and Billy is just about to make the necessary dive—as the prickly vines around offer no friendly chance of descending by their means—when he pauses to listen once more.

There are two sounds now audible above the ordinary murmurings of the forest. The clink! clink! of the noise he has followed now comes clearly upon the ear, and he recognizes it as proceeding from the pick of some prospector or miner working a creek or gully below, and beyond the lake. There is a cheerful ring about it that strikes a pleasant chord of remembrance in the mind of the poor, hunted wretch who now hears it; for it reminds him of happy, hopeful days with his old master. But the other sound that is upon the air, and whose purport Billy recognizes as easily as that of the unseen worker’s blows,—there is no mistaking those musical whisperings that are just audible, and seem to come from that broken mass of piled-up grey and purple rock that towers above the scrub a little distance off upon his right hand. The “banked-up fires” of Billy’s savage nature burst up into an energetic blaze as he hears the voices of a party of natives arranging themselves into a half circle, with the intention of surrounding and capturing some prey they have discovered. Billy correctly guesses the purport of these signals, but does not understand the exact meaning of the words, for he knows little or nothing of the coastal languages. What the natives on the rocky hill have in view is evident: it is the busy worker in the gully beyond. Billy forgets his fatigue as he glances round and satisfies himself that he has the start of the hunters, and then plunging into the water, with marvellously little noise considering the height from which he has descended, swims after the manner of a dog rapidly round the lake, keeping close to the cliffs on the side nearest to the approaching blacks.

The natives of most countries situated in the southern hemisphere, ere foreign civilization has crushed them in her deadly embrace, are good swimmers, but some of the inland tribes of Australian aborigines are perhaps able to produce the best of these,—men who can beat even the marvellous aquatic feats of Tongan, Samoan, and Maoris. The blacks of some portions of the central wilds have a fish-like proclivity for swimming and remaining for a long time under water that is simply marvellous.

In the muddy water-holes of the great, intermittently-flowing rivers of Northern Australia, we have seen aborigines successfully chase the finny denizens of the deep pools, and bring them otter-like to the shore in their white-toothed jaws. And many a hunted black has saved himself from the cruel rifle of squatter invaders of his native land by pretending to fall as if shot into a river or water-hole, and remaining, apparently, at the bottom. They manage this artifice in various ways: sometimes by swimming an incredible distance under water to a sheltering weedy patch or bed of rushes, where they can remain hidden; but more often by plastering their heads and faces with mud, and remaining, sometimes for hours, with only their nose above water, in some corner where floating leaves, grass, or the like, afford a temporary blind to baffle their relentless foes.

Billy, although by no means as perfect a swimmer as some of his countrymen, showed great skill in the way in which he noiselessly moved through the water to the opposite side of the black lake, and hardly a ripple disturbed its placid surface, above which his dark, glistening head only thrice briefly appeared during his swim.

Arrived at the point he had started for, the young man slowly raises his face again into the hot sunshine behind the leafy cover of a fallen mass of enormous stagshorn ferns, and carefully reconnoitres the summit of the opposite cliffs for any enemies who may be watching him.

None are in sight, so Billy leaves the water and proceeds to climb the rough side of the old volcano crater, and as the rocks are lower and less precipitous than at the place where he dived into the lake, he soon reaches the shelter of the scrub once more. A kind of rugged giants’ staircase, which the overflow from the lake has cut in the ancient lava covering of the mountain, now leads Billy down into a wide, wild-looking gorge, about two hundred feet below the surface of the dark tarn above. Through the centre of this deep gully, and flanked with a dense growth of gracefully festooned trees, runs a clear, silver stream, with a cool, refreshing, rushing voice, amongst the smooth, rounded bounders in its course. Taking its rise in some limestone formation in the unknown depths of the jungles beyond, it has painted its rocky bed of a pine white with a calcareous deposit, that stands out in strong relief to the sombre hues of the overhanging cliffs that here and there jut out boldly from the verdure on either side.

Each recurring wet season sees the whitened boulders swept off towards the sea-coast by the angry brown waters of the “flushed” river, in company with the like that has collected during the interval since the previous rains, and then the fierce torrent, gradually settling down once more into the bubbling little stream as we now have it, sets to work again to paint a fresh strip of white through the twilight forest glades.

Kneeling by the side of one of the chain of snowy pools that stretches into the misty vista of graceful palms and dark-leaved trees, beneath the afternoon shadows of the gorge, is a strange-looking figure, quite in keeping with the wild surroundings,—a thin, elderly man, with a ragged, unkempt beard and deeply bronzed and furrowed face, shaded by the most dilapidated of soft felt hats. The spare figure that Billy is now watching is covered with clothes so old, patched, and repatched that one would hesitate to pronounce an opinion as to which of the frowsy fragments formed part of the original garments. A certain yellow tone of colour, something between that of a nicely browned loaf and the lighter tints of a Cheddar cheese, pervades the “altogether” of the old man, for the iron-rust and clay-stains of years of lonely toil amongst the mountains have dyed both skin and rags of one common colour.

A thin but muscular left hand holds the outer rim of a brown, circular iron pan,—called by miners a “prospecting dish,”—and presses its other edge against the ancient’s open-bosomed shirt, so as to keep the vessel firmly in position, as the keen old eyes examine its contents for the cheering yellow specks with a small pocket-lens.

Billy stands looking at the old prospector for a minute, and rightly guesses that he is one of those mining recluses, called “hatters” in Australia, some specimens of which class our dark friend has met before. In fact, Billy’s curiosity as a miner himself makes him nearly forget the approaching natives, in his eagerness to ascertain if the dish now being “panned off” shows the presence of the precious metal in the locality. But this hesitation on his part is not for long. Billy has retained his European raiment at some considerable inconvenience in his flight through the scrub, for the same reason that chiefly prompts Australian aboriginals to put such value upon the sartorial signs of civilization, and now he is to reap the fruits of his forethought.

Many an Australian bushman will shoot a native at sight, without compunction, if in puris naturalibus, and it is a fact that many make it a rule to do so when meeting a “nigger” alone in the bush; but the same individuals would hesitate to pay this attention to a black sheltered in that badge of servitude, an old shirt or ragged pair of inexpressibles whose wearer may possibly belong to a neighbouring squatter or police inspector.

Billy trusts now implicitly to his torn clothes to serve as a flag of truce till he can get a hearing from the man whose life he is probably about to save; and careless of the fact that the old miner has a revolver hanging in the open pouch at his belt, and that a fowling-piece lies by the pick within a yard of the thin, hairy right arm, he girds up his tatters and commences to whistle loudly as he makes his way over the hot boulders towards the curious, propensic figure by the stream-side.

The old prospector turns suddenly as the shrill notes of Billy’s musical trilling echo along the rocky sides of the glen, and, dropping his dish, snatches up the brown old “Manton” by his side.

“Hold on, boss!” shouts Billy, thinking for the instant that perhaps he had been too rash after all, in leaving his shelter amongst the rocks before holding a parley with the stranger.

“Hold on, boss; you’ll want your powder for warragal blacks directly, and better not waste it on ‘good fellow’ like me.”

“Who the devil are you? Move a step an’ I blow your brains out,” responds the old man, lowering the piece, however, from his shoulder.

“I’m white fellow’s boy,” explains Billy, sitting down on a boulder in order to show his faith in the miner’s good sense, and also to give that dangerously excited old individual a chance to examine him and cool down. “I’m white fellow’s boy, and I see black fellow coming after you. They make a circle to catch you. See, I have swum the lake to bring to you this news. I was hidden when I saw them first. They will try to get me now as well as you; you must let me go with you.”

“Where’s your boss?” asks the old miner, glancing round on all sides for any signs of approaching foes.

“My boss is dead. His name was Dr. Dyesart, Dyesart the explorer. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? But you had better clear before the Kurra (vermin) reach us.”

The old “hatter’s” eyes gleam suspiciously at Billy as he speaks again.

“Yer may be a good nigger. But yer too durned well spoken fur a nigger fur my thinkin’. I knew Dyesart once, and I’ll soon find out if ye’re trying ter fool me. But here, take the pick an’ dish, and go on ahead of me down past the rock there.”

Billy picks up the utensils mentioned, and, summoning up all the remainder of his strength, totters along the bed of the stream in the direction indicated by the skinny finger of the dirty old solitary, who comes shuffling along after him.

The part of the ravine the two men are now entering is even wilder than that where they first became acquainted with each other. The ground sinks rapidly, as the increasing noisiness of the brawling streamlet indicates, as it leaps from rock to rock on its way, as if rejoicing upon its approach to freedom and the sea. Some way down the gorge, the steamy haze of a cataract climbs up the cliff sides and blots out further view in that direction, and the soft thunderings of falling waters come up the gully at intervals, as the evening breeze begins to stir the topmost branches of the stately trees.

Great black cliffs tower skywards on the left-hand side, and their grim fronts yawn with numerous caves, the cold husks of what were once enormous air-bubbles in that awful flood of molten rock that in the far-off past poured down these mountain slopes from the Bellenden Ker group of ancient volcanoes.

A few more words have passed between Billy and the ancient “hatter,” which have apparently fairly satisfied the latter as to the goodness of the dark-skinned younger man, when the clamour of shouting voices behind them makes both turn round.

The sight that meets their eyes is by no means a pleasant one. Halfway down a part of the cliffs that the two men had passed only a minute or so before, a party of natives has just arrived, all of them naked, and carrying long spears, probably with the intention of cutting off the old digger’s escape down the gully. These sable hunters, seeing that their quarry has, for the time, escaped them, are shouting to their friends up the gorge to join them, for a fresh effort to surround the object of their hatred and suspicion.

“Only just in time, boss!” exclaims Billy, his white eyeballs glowing like coals from their dark setting of swarthy skin, as he watches the rapid movements of the enemy, who are moving along the summit of the cliff towards them. “Those devils got you safe enough, ’spose they’d kept you up there till dark,” pointing to the open part of the gorge.

“But where will you camp? I’m tired. In fact, just ’bout done. I have walked many miles to-day, and have eaten little since three days.”

“This is my camp,” answers the “hatter,” climbing up to one of the aforementioned caves with an agility that a far younger man might have envied. “We can keep out of the niggers’ way here.” And the old man coolly began to collect some sticks and leaves that lay about the entrance to the cavern, in order to start a fire, just as if two or three score of howling savages, all thirsting for his destruction, within a couple of hundred yards of him, was a matter of every-day occurrence to him, and therefore one of no importance.

Night falls quickly, and outside the cave the darkening forest begins its night chorus of many voices, day-choristers retiring one by one. The mountain teal whistle and “burr” in answer to each other; owls and night-jars scream and gurgle in the trees; boon-garies (tree-kangeroos) squeak and bark to their mates, as they leave the branches for a night stroll in the scrub; and every crevice of the caves gives forth its dark legions of flitting bats, some of enormous size, who vociferate shrilly, with ear-piercing notes, as if thousands of ghostly slate pencils were squeaking in mid-air on an equal number of spectre slates.

Inside the cave, which is much larger than its small, porthole-like entrance might lead one to imagine, the two men speedily make themselves as comfortable as they can under the circumstances. There is ample room for the fire that soon lights up the concave roof, of the cavern with a cheerful, ruddy glow, and the smoke rolling out of the doorway keeps the place clear of mosquitoes, who are getting pretty lively outside already.

The old “hatter” has used this retreat as his camping ground for the last few days, whilst prospecting this part of the upper waters of the unnamed creek, that can be heard in the darkness flowing past his temporary abode, and a small but sufficient supply of flour, tea, and sugar is to be seen carefully suspended from the stalactite-like projections from the ceiling of the cave. This provender, with the remains of a couple of pigeons, half a dozen wild turkeys’ eggs and some coohooy nuts give promise of a good “square meal,” at last, to the exhausted and half-famished Billy.

“Yer’ve done me a good turn, and though yer are a nigger, yer welcome ter what I’ve got here,” remarks the grey-headed old gold-seeker after a long silence, during which he has disinterred some of the aforementioned viands from an anti-wild dog pyramid of stones in one corner of the cave.

“Them blarmed devils outside hain’t seen a white face up here afore I’m thinking, and I guess they’ll not bother us till morning. What do you think, Charlie, or Jackie, or whatever yer name is?”

“My name’s Billy, boss,” replies our dark friend, who is endeavouring to keep himself awake by frantically chewing some of the sodden tobacco he has discovered in his pocket. “I think these fellows throw spear into cave by-an-by, p’r’aps. I think best keep up here,” pointing to a buttress of rock that, projecting from the walls of the cavern, provides a substantial shield against any missiles flung in at the cave entrance. “But I know little of these fellow-blacks. I come from the flat country, this time, out by the Einsleigh River way.”

“Ugh,” grunts the old man in reply, and telling Billy to “have a ‘doss’ (sleep),” whilst his namesake, the billy, is boiling, the “hatter” proceeds to cut up a pipe-full of very foul-smelling tobacco, looking thoughtfully at the fire meanwhile.

Billy, on his part, is not slow to avail himself of his host’s invitation, and sinking down upon the cold rock floor goes immediately to sleep.

If it should appear, to any of our readers to border upon the incredible, that two men should thus calmly sleep and smoke in the face of danger, that to one inexperienced in the wilder phases of bush-life would appear to demand the utmost vigilance, we can only reply by offering as our defence, firstly, the old saying that “truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction;” and, secondly, that in this scene, as in each of our main incidents, we have endeavoured to sketch from memory a faithful if humble representation of an actual occurrence, in preference to indulging what latent talents we may possess in the walks of imaginative scene-painting.

Mais revenons à nos moutons. The old “hatter” sits silently smoking; sometimes glancing upwards towards the roof of the cave, where the almost obliterated representations of white and red hands—the work of previous aboriginal occupants of the retreat—are still discernible, and at others fixing his ferret-like, bloodshot eyes upon the dark, hardship-lined face of the slumbering Billy, as the firelight dances upon its swarthy surface. Nothing appears to disturb the well-earned repose of the two men, save a small black snake that comes wriggling in to enjoy the warmth of the blazing branches, and meets with a warmer reception than it had anticipated. Then the billy at last splutters out its welcome signal, and the old digger and his companion proceed to indulge that taste that has made Australians the greatest consumers of tea, per head, in the world.

“Them Myalls (wild natives) don’t seem to mean business to-night,” observes Billy’s host, when the silent meal is finished, as he hands our black friend a piece of “nailrod” with which to charge his evening pipe.

“I think they wait, boss. Watch an hour, perhaps two or three, then throw spears.” Billy leans forward as he speaks to heat a piece of tobacco in the embers, in order to soften the flinty morsel, and thereby facilitate the operation of cutting it into shreds.

“I think those beggars,” jerking his black thumb towards the darkness outside the cave entrance, “I think those beggars come by-and-by. Urraurruna (take care); I think they come presently.”

Then both men relapse again into silence, each engaged with his own unpleasant thoughts. The “hatter,” although somewhat favourably prepossessed with Billy’s appearance, and glad of a companion for the time being, has that instinctive distrust of a “nigger” common to most Australian bushmen. He does not care altogether for the presence of his new acquaintance in the cave, and even considers, for a moment, what would be the easiest way of getting rid of him, and making him seek another shelter for the night. But the feeling of gratitude to Billy for the service he has rendered that day finally prevails, and the old man determines to hear the “boy” further explain his appearance in the gorge before he acts.

Billy, on his part, although naturally of a sanguine turn of mind (as indeed all his race are), and little given to ruminating upon the sorrows of to-morrow, is trying to puzzle out a plan of future operations, whose main object is to discover the nephew of his late employer. He notices the half-concealed, suspicious glances of his dirty old host, and is almost tempted to offer to seek other lodgings, when the latter breaks the silence once more.

“’Spose you’re a runaway nigger? Station or police?”

“Yes, boss, I’m a runaway. But I’ve never worked on station. Always with the doctor. All my time mining and cooking for the old man.”

“Thought yer was,” grunts the old prospector, taking his pipe from between his yellow teeth for an instant; “noticed the way yer carried the pick, and guessed yer knew something about ‘breaking down a face.’”

“Yes, I can do that much, anyhow,” remarks Billy quietly.

“Well, that bein’ so, lad, I ain’t the man as would turn dog on a poor beggar, let alone a miner, be he black or white. I ain’t built that way.” The old man stops speaking to listen to a slight noise outside the cave for a moment, and then continues: “If yer like to camp here longer me till I’ve done this gully, yer can. But just sling me a yarn about how yer came to this hole in the ranges.” The speaker turns towards the fire, that has burnt itself low, and commences to rake it into renewed brightness. As he does so, his head and right arm leave the shelter of the projecting rock before-mentioned, and come between the luminous background of flames and the cave entrance.

Then Billy’s prognostications are fulfilled; for some natives, who have been silently watching for an opportunity to attack the occupants of the cavern, immediately take advantage of the appearance of the old digger, and the fire embers are scattered right and left by three spears, which, however, luckily all miss their human target.

The two men leap to their feet, and Billy, snatching up the old “hatter’s” shot-gun, without waiting a moment to ask the permission of its owner, glides noiselessly into the darkness, and is lost to the view of his startled host. Presently the latter proceeds to collect the scattered fire-sticks, and adding to them the spears, which he breaks up into pieces, he relights his pipe and waits for the return of his guest. Half an hour passes in silence, and then two loud reports, followed by the rain-like pattering of bouncing shot about the entrance to the cave, and the screams of a number of agonized voices, proclaim the successful accomplishment of Billy’s plucky plan of retaliation upon the enemy outside.

“No more trouble to-night,” observes that individual, with a complaisant grin, as he presently returns into the cavern, striking the butt of the gun he carries, as he walks, so as to give a jangling signal of his approach to the man by the fire, who, revolver in hand, might otherwise mistake him for an enemy. “Shot guns better at night than a rifle for this kind of work. The beggars have all cleared. None killed, I think.”

“All the better, lad. All the days I’ve knocked about the bush, I’ve never shot a black yet, though I’ve seen a many bowled over. But they warn’t bad in the old days, as they are now. These beggars here, though, are a bit koolie (fierce); and I don’t blame them. They don’t like to see a white face,”—the old man’s countenance was about the tone of colour of a new pig-skin saddle,—“they don’t like to see a white face hereabouts, for the scrub’s the only place in this part of Queensland where the poor beggars ain’t hunted.”

The night passes without further cause for alarm, and next day, and the one after, and for several weeks Billy remains with the old prospector. And the latter, being a sensible man, and finding himself thus brought into contact with a mind in no ways inferior to his own,—albeit housed in corporal surroundings of that dark tint that has hitherto placed the unfortunate aborigines beyond the pale of civilized law in Australia,—soon makes a companion and partner of Billy, instead of treating him as a mere animal, as has hitherto been his custom with those black “boys” he has had occasion to employ.

Moreover, in our dark friend the ancient “hatter” finds his ideal of what a model “mate” should be,—strong, cheerful, plucky, frugal, and, above all, lucky. And sometimes, as the strange pair smoke their evening pipes together in the firelit cave, and the thoughts of the “boss” go flying back into the dim vistas of memory, and the cruel swindles perpetrated upon him by this and that white partner of his younger days are re-enacted in his mind’s eye, he cannot help contrasting them unfavourably with his present mate, whose coming departure, although he is “only a nigger,” the old man begins to dread with a fear that surprises himself.

“Swelp me,” the poor old solitary soul sometimes ejaculates to himself, as the chilling thought of once more being a lonely “hatter” in these awful wilds goes like an ague-shiver through his spare and bended form, “I suppose I’m getting too old for this kind of work; and if I had had a mate like Billy when I was young I would have been doing the ‘toff’ in Sydney by this time, like that rascal Canoona Bill that swindled me on the Crocodile, and not have had to work up to my knees in water, with the pan and shovel, at my time of life.”

But it is not approaching age or failing bodily strength that is the cause of this change in the old miner’s feelings, as he tries to persuade himself it is, for he cannot find it in his mind to confess he feels any attachment or affection for a “nigger.” It is something very different that begins to make him feel disgusted with the idea of a return to his solitary mode of life.

Billy’s new friend, like most of his class of old “hatters,” became disgusted with the world owing to having been unfortunate in his choice of partners, and now that he at last finds one to suit him, his view of life becomes correspondingly fairer than heretofore.

“Billy!” one evening said the old man,—who has lately informed our black friend that he is known at Geraldtown and Herberton by his patronymic of Weevil,—“Billy! you ain’t told me yet how you come to clear out from the station where you left the doctor’s letter. What station was it?”

Billy, who is shaping a new pick-handle by the light of the fire, does not reply for a minute or two. When he does look up at the lean figure on the other side of the flames, he betrays a little of that sulky, spoilt-child demeanour generally exhibited by members of his race when recounting any occurrence that has been a source of annoyance to them.

“I ran away, boss, because they try and get me to show them the way back to where I planted the doctor. Mister Giles, who owns the station——”

“Who?” Old Weevil leans across the smoke towards Billy. “It warn’t Wilson Giles, were it?” he asks in a low, hoarse voice, looking at the black with ill-concealed anxiety.

“Yes, Wilson was his front name. D’you know him?”

The old man withdraws into the semi-obscurity of a shadowy pile of firewood against which he is standing at the question, much like a sea-anemone shrinks into its rock cleft before an obtrusive human finger.

“Yes, I know him,” growls the old man in the darkness, exhibiting an amount of hatred in the tone of his voice that makes Billy look in the direction of the wood stack with open eyes and mouth. Weevil, however, does not appear likely to be communicative, so Billy presently continues: “The doctor’s last words almost were, ‘Don’t let any one know where you left me save my nephew,’ and so it wasn’t likely I was going to tell the first man as asked me. Was it likely?”

“Burn him! No!” ejaculated Mr. Weevil, in parenthesis.

“Giles tried me with one thing and then another. Offered me anything I liked, at last, to take him to the grave. Thought I was only like a station black, I suppose!” and the speaker scrapes angrily at the wooden handle between his knees, with a black splinter of obsidian (volcanic glass) that he is using as a ready-made draw-knife.

“Then Giles has a talk with his niece,—she bosses it at ‘Government House’” (is mistress at the head-station),—“and she says ‘Flog the nigger! flog him!’ And a house-gin who belongs to my Mordu Kapara (class-family), which is Kalaru, hears all this as she sets cloth in the parlour. She come and tells me. Then me run away. Then me turn wild beggar again!”

Billy, who by this time is gesticulating excitedly with his hands, curiously relapses, slightly,—as he always does when highly agitated,—into the remarkable “station-jargon” to which we have already had occasion to refer.

“Me run and run. An’ Giles, he borrow the big dogs with the red eyes and thin flanks (bloodhounds) from Bulla Bulla station.”

“I know ’em,” interrupts old Weevil; “that fellow on the Mulgrave’s made a good thing out of breeding them for the squatters.”

“Well, boss, I made for the scrub. But I get tired, and the stinging-tree blind me, all but. The dogs come up close. I hear them howl, and the men calling to them. But the big dogs badly trained; they go after young cassowary, and I drown my tracks in a creek, and then ‘possum’ (hide in a tree) all the day.”

After Billy has thus graphically given his account of his marvellous escape from the clutches of Mr. Giles, the conversation turns upon the subject of going down the creek to the nearest township, which we will christen Meesonton, after a well-known Australian explorer living in the district.

“We’ll both go as far as the low scrub range, over the Beatrice creek,” observes old Weevil, “and yer can work the old sluice there I was telling yer of yesterday if them cursed Chinkies ain’t found it. I won’t be more nor a week or so away. I wouldn’t advise yer,” continues the old man, “ter show yer face near the store yet awhile. That beggar Giles is well in with the perlice, and they’d knab yer like enough.”

So very early next morning Billy and the old miner set out; just about the time when that earliest of early birds, the crow, has begun to think it time to commence his matutinal robberies, and long ere the sun has risen to dry the fern and scrub sufficiently for any natives to be out hunting who might notice the two men’s departure. By midday our friends have followed for eight miles that only road possible through the dense jungle,—the rough, white bed of the merry little creek. Here, after a rest and a smoke, the men left the stream and clambered up the dark, clayey banks, when they found themselves on a broken, open piece of country, across which they steered, Weevil leading, in a north-easterly direction, passing numerous little trickling creeks trending eastwards on their way. Here and there the recent footprints of aborigines were to be seen in the rich, volcanic soil; and once Billy detected the voices of natives, but said nothing to his companion about it. Late in the afternoon, after crossing some level tablelands, thinly covered with scrub, several large gunyahs (native dwellings) were discovered, and, as the evening began to look stormy, the two men took possession of one of the largest of them. These huts were similar to beehives in shape, like those of the village on the Paree river that we described in Chapter VIII., and were substantially thatched with fern fronds and that coarse kind of grass that grows in the open spaces in the scrub called “pockets” by northern bushmen. These “pockets” are treeless spots circular in form, and generally half an acre in extent, and are used by the aborigines for boorers (native tournaments) and dances. One of these native Champs de Mars, on the upper Barron river, covers quite fifteen acres, and is also a perfect circle.

It was still dark, the next morning, when Billy and old Weevil started once more on their journey; and the latter, in consequence, fell into a two-foot hole near the gunyah in which they had slept, and found himself lying on a mass of loose, rattling objects, which his sense of touch quickly told him were human skulls,—the remains, doubtless, of by-gone picnics of the good people whose village the two men had appropriated during the previous night.

Pushing onwards, our friends spent the first half of the day in climbing rocky peaks, and crossing the dark, rugged sources of creeks, wrapped in their primeval gloom of frizzled, intricate masses of thorny vines and dangerous stinging-trees; and, after making only three miles in six hours, were forced to rest awhile in a ragged gully, walled in by grey slate cliffs, and strewn with glistening blocks of white and “hungry” quartz.

The stinging-tree, which we have twice mentioned in this chapter, is worthy of a few remarks, for it is perhaps the most terrible of all vegetable growths, and is found only in the scrub-country through which Billy and his friend are now forcing their way.

This horrible guardian of the penetralia of the Queensland jungle stands from five to fifteen feet in height, and has a general appearance somewhat similar to that of a small mulberry-tree; but the heart-shaped leaves of the plant before us differ from those of the European fruit just mentioned in that they are larger, and because they look as if manufactured from some light-green, velvety material, such as plush. Their peculiarly soft and inviting aspect is caused by an almost invisible coating of microscopic cilia, and it is to these that the dangerous characteristics of the plant are due. The unhappy wanderer in these wilds, who allows any part of his body to come in contact with those beautiful, inviting tongues of green, soon finds them veritable tongues of fire, and it will be weeks, perhaps months, ere the scorching agony occasioned by their sting is entirely eradicated. Nor are numerous instances wanting of the deaths of men and animals following the act of contact with this terrible lusus naturæ.

Billy and Weevil make more progress during the afternoon, the country being more level and the scrub less thick; but, although both men are inured to fatigue and discomfort of all sorts, they are forced to camp early, after doing another six miles. Ragged, weary, and barefooted,—for even the most imaginative mind could hardly recognize the flabby pieces of water-logged leather that still adhere to the men’s feet as boots,—the two travellers fling themselves down on the dry, sandy bed of a mountain torrent, and scrape the clusters of swollen leeches from their ankles, which are covered with clotted blood, and pick the bush-ticks and scrub-itch insects from their flesh with the point of the long scrub-knife the old digger carries.

As our friends are engaged in this painful but necessary toilet of a voyager through the Queensland scrub, a wild turkey comes blundering by in all the glories of her glossy, blue-black feathers and brilliant red and yellow head,—not the Otis Australasianus which is known to southern settlers as a “wild turkey” and is in reality a bustard, but a true scrub turkey (Telegallus).

Billy is not long in tracking the footprints of the bird back to its enormous mound nest. For this ingenious feathered biped, like her smaller contemporary the scrub hen (Megapodius tumulus), saves herself from the monotonous duty of sitting on her eggs by depositing them in a capital natural incubator, formed of rotting and heated leaves, which she collects into a pile, and arranges so as to do the hatching part of the business for her.

A meal of turkey eggs and roasted “cozzon” berries, whose red clusters are to be seen hanging from parasitic vines upon the great stems around in plentiful profusion, and then the men retire to rest upon their wet blankets, beneath a great ledge of granite, upon whose surface some aboriginal artist has delineated in different colours the admirable representations of immense frogs in various attitudes.

But trouble commences with the morrow; and when old Weevil raises his stiff and patchwork form from the hard couch upon which he has passed the night, he finds Billy, gun in hand, watching something on the dim summit of the cliffs opposite their camp.

“Sh!” observes that individual, without turning his head; “plenty black fellow all about here. D’you see that beggar’s head?”

“Bust ’em!” yawns the old digger, stretching; “they won’t interfere with us. Let’s have tucker, and ‘break camp’ as soon as we can.”

The frugal repast is soon silently completed, but half a mile down the creek, where the aborigines have constructed an ingenious weir, armed with conical baskets in which to catch what fish may pass that way, Billy and his companion find a small army of copper-coloured natives collected on the opposite side of the stream, who wave and beckon to the two travellers to return whence they came. Their gesticulations and fierce yells not having the desired effect, a series of signals are given by them to other natives in ambush on the jungle-fringed precipices that rise with lycopodium-tasselled ledges above the heads of the intruders.

“We’re in fur it now!” grunts the older man, who has done some prospecting in New Guinea, amongst other places. “Them yellow niggers is Kalkadoones, and as like Papuans as may be; and they’re devils to fight. Keep close under the cliff.”

Billy guesses the mode of attack which the old digger’s experience teaches him to anticipate, and which prompts his advice to his mate to seek the shelter of the rocks as much as possible. The wiseness of this precaution is soon seen. For when our friends are fairly started on their way past the rapids in the gloomy gorge, the natives commence hurling down great boulders of conglomerate. These would speedily have crushed the adventurous twain below, had they not been sheltered by the overhanging base of the precipice, which was worn concave by the river’s action during floods. As it was many of the rocks bounded horribly close to the men’s heads.

“I can’t use my gun here, that’s sartin,” presently observes the old man, as he puts fresh caps upon his old companion of many years. “We’ll have to clear them beggars off before we go any further.” Then springing from his shelter with his rags and tangled grey locks flying in the air, Weevil makes for a rocky reef that juts out into the river, which is deep at this place, with the idea of peppering the enemy from this point of vantage.

But the Fates are against him, and sable Sister Atropos snaps her weird scissors on poor old Weevil’s thread of existence. A shower of stones descends upon the wild-looking figure as it hurries towards the river, and the old miner falls an uncouth, bleeding object upon the strand, groaning heavily.

Happily, the gun has escaped destruction, and by its aid Billy, who rushes forward to defend his friend, performs prodigies of valour that on a field of civilized warfare would certainly have gained him some such coveted distinction as the Victoria Cross.

A hurried shot at the yelling figures that are clinging to the trees overhanging the edge of the cliff in an appalling manner, and one of them comes spinning down with a sickening thud upon the rocks below. A second wire cartridge sent in the same direction is equally successful, and another of the enemy tumbles forward on to a jagged rock that projects from the precipice; while his friends, horrified at the sudden illness that has thus overtaken two of their number, stop short in the middle of a diabolical yell of triumph, and clearing off are seen no more.

Billy bathes the crushed features of the old man, whose stentorious breathing shows how badly he is injured, and the cold water revives him somewhat.

“I’m busted in my inside, lad,” he murmurs raspily. “Gimme me pipe. I can’t see to——How blind I’m gettin’!”

After a pause, during which he has tried to smoke in vain, he asks to be raised in a sitting posture.

“Billy,” he says, when this is effected, “you’re a good boy. I’m goin’ fast. Listen ter me afore I chuck it up altogether. Me legs is dead already.”

The dying man has a crime upon his soul, and dreads to take the secret of it with him into the unknown which he is about to enter, so he fights gamely against the dissolution that is fast approaching till he has told it to Billy.

“Remember what I tell ye, lad. ’Twas I as stole Wilson Giles’s only son. Giles had ruined my life, and (gasp) I tuck revenge. I marked the boy blue star an’ W. G. on near shoulder. Then I cleared out an’ tuck him (gasp) ter Sydney.”

Silence for a time follows, after which the expiring flame of life flickers up, and the last words Weevil speaks on earth are gasped out.

“God furgive me! Intended to return boy after a bit. Lost him in Sydney. God furgive me! (gasp). Goo’-bye, ole man. Let’s have ’nother——(gasp). Oh God! Jane! Jane! come back ter me!”

The old man stretches out his wounded hands as he wails the last sentence in tone of wild entreaty, and Billy feels, by the suddenly-increased weight in his arms, that he is holding a corpse.

CHAPTER XIII.
CLAUDE’S LETTER TO DICK.

“We have at various times had stories told us of the treatment the blacks are subjected to in the bush, and it behoves the Government to make strict inquiry into the whole question. By the way, where is the Protector of Aborigines, and what has he got to say in the matter?

“Oh it’s only a nigger, you know;

It’s only a nigger, you know;

A nigger to wallop, a nigger to slave,

To treat with a word and a blow.

“It’s only a nigger, you know;

A nigger, whose feelings are slow;

A nigger to chain up, a nigger to treat

To a kick, and a curse, and a blow.

“It’s only a nigger, you know;

It’s only a nigger, you know;

But he’s also a brother, a man like the rest,