And perished in the tracing.”
J. G. Whittier.
S
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 185 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 his186 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 be187 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 and188 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 189 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 190 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 for191 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 192 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,193 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 194 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 195 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 became196 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 197 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 198 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 throw199 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 200 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 new201 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 202 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 gun203 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 their204 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.
205
“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 where206 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 207 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 208 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 209 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 natur?.
Billy and Weevil make more progress during the 210 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 hanging211 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 212 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,213 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 blue214 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.