“boot and saddle, see the slanting
rays begin to fall,
flinging lights and colours flaunting
through the shadows tall.
onward! onward! must we travel?
when will come the goal
riddle i may not unravel
cease to vex my soul.”
adam lindsay gordon.
a
fter leaving murdaro “government house,” claude, in company with his little follower don, was not long in rejoining his party at the out-station. here he found the pack-horses all ready, and williams and billy just concluding a292 lengthy confabulation as to the best route to follow. so, there being nothing to delay the immediate departure of the expedition, a start was called, and some twenty miles travelled before darkness necessitated a camp for the night.
it is now three o’clock a.m. the chorus of crickets that has thrilled through the warm night air since sunset is gradually dying into the solemn stillness of the darkest hour that goes before the dawn.
the stars overhead throb with a clearer light than heretofore, and when some eccentric or sleepless insect breaks the hushed mantle of shadow resting upon the world with disturbing squeak or chirp, the ear jumps and strains into the deep, black silence with an intensity that is almost painful.
now, through the dark aisles of ebon-stemmed gum-trees, the first white stain of morning begins to blot out those stars near to the horizon, and high above the topmost branches of the tall, gaunt trees the pure lustre of the morning star heralds the day.
round the grey embers of the camp-fire, upon which remains the impress of last night’s damper, the figures of the party lie motionless in their tossed coverings of red and blue blankets, and nearby stands the billy, containing sodden tea-leaves, where the last man on watch drained the cold tea ere turning in.
each man’s saddle is his pillow, and beyond is a vague litter of pack-saddles, bags, and snaky-looking surcingles; amongst which don’s retriever pup keeps guard against the prowling, cowardly dingoes, whose blinking eye-stars have circled the camp during the dark hours.
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suddenly the hush of night seems broken by the brisk chirping of a small pied-tit, called by australians a shepherd’s companion, and, as if in response to the volatile little creature’s busy notes, the morning breeze comes with a soft, murmuring rush, and flutters through the long, pendant gum-leaves as if fair nature was softly sighing ere she awoke to the heat and toil of another tropic day.
claude, whose anxiety makes him a light sleeper, is roused by this peaceful réveille and opens his eyes, and then, raising himself upon his elbow, he throws off the blanket that has encompassed him during the night and is now wet with dew, and looks around. in a semi-circle by the camp-fire lie his companions, their limbs outstretched in various unstudied positions of utter repose, and over there, against the widening band of eastern grey, he can see the black form of old williams, who, mounted and armed, is taking the last watch.
although only a short time in australia, angland has already travelled over two hundred miles with horses through the bush, and has consequently already experienced some of the vicissitudes inseparable to that mode of progression,—straying horses and such “chances of the night” amongst them.
so his first thoughts are common to all equestrian travellers through the interior wilds, namely, “where are the horses? shall we be able to break camp early, or must we track some of the brutes back to the last camp?”
but claude is relieved from much anxiety on that score by reason of the watches that have been kept during the night; so he proceeds to finish a hurried294 toilet and afterwards awaken his slumbering companions.
there is always a great deal of vexation, and often danger, in waterless country, attending the loss of horses whilst travelling in the bush, and we pause in our narrative to remark upon a certain marvellous faculty possessed by many australian bushmen of long experience.
during many years, often for months at a time, these men have listened anxiously for the sound of their horses’ or bullocks’ bells,—at sundown when they turned in, during their wakeful moments through the night, and with redoubled anxiety in the early morning. it is therefore hardly surprising, taking all this into consideration, that these men gradually get into the habit, if we can correctly designate the new-born power by that term, of still being able to hear the bells, even when fast asleep, in which they resemble erckmann-chatrian’s murderous innkeeper, in the polish jew. but what is far stranger, having done so they can remember all about it next morning; in which they differ from those gifted somnambulistic individuals one reads about who write poetry and solve difficult problems during their slumbers.
many bushmen will wake up out of the deepest sleep if their bells wander too far away, or if these cease their jangling for too long a period; but those “old hands,” who are the particular object of these remarks, will be able in the morning to tell you as much about the wanderings that the horses have made during the previous hours of darkness, as if they had been watchfully awake all night; will unhesitatingly state to the “boys,” when these youths go horse 295 hunting in the morning, where bob, with the “condaminer” bell, has got to, and which direction boco, with the goat-bell, took with his part of the mob, when the horses began to feed at two o’clock.
it is still dark when claude gives the usual bush signal for all hands to wake up, by shouting out “daylight!” little don gives angland a wide, steady look, till, his wits gathering themselves together, he repeats the word interrogatively, and after sleepily rubbing his eyes, proceeds to put on his boots, thus completing his attire.
far away across the dark plain, upon the bush-fringed edge of which the party have camped, the faint tinkling of several of the horse-bells can be heard,—blessed sounds; and, more to the left, the thump, thump, of the big “frog” bell on claude’s horse charlie. another hour and the buzz of the awakened insect world will drown all sounds more than a few hundred yards away, and therefore it behoves those who perform the matutinal horse-hunting duties of a caravan, such as that which billy is about to pilot across the desert, to imitate the policy of the proverbial “early bird,” ere the daily plague of flies have made their noisy appearance.
so whilst claude and williams are preparing breakfast, billy and the two boys are away after the horses; and these animals, being all good campers, are soon rounded up and unhobbled, and come racing in towards the smoke of the camp-fire, biting and kicking, as if they highly appreciated the delightful feeling of being rid once more of those horrible gyves of chain and leather.
“say, boss, i want to speak to you bime-by,” 296 billy observes to claude, after breakfast, as he leans across the saddle of a pack-horse to give a finishing pat to one of the pack-bags before he tightens up the surcingle.
claude nods a signal that he has heard the remark, from where he is fixing a bunch of hobbles to another horse’s neck, and presently intimates that he can give the black youth his attention, by begging him to “fire away.”
“you know, boss, i was very sick gin i come up to station,” billy observes in a slow, sulky sort of voice.
“yes, i expect you were pretty bad when you’d finished your journey from my uncle’s grave,” replies claude.
“i bin tell you yesterday,” the dark youth goes on, “all about the wild fellows’ camp where i stay; where i come from three days ago.”
“the village where you’ve lived since the old digger you were with got killed? yes, i remember about it. are we near to it?”
“yes, boss. now i think this way. i was very sick when i get this far from where i plant the doctor, and i wonder sometimes if i able to pick up my pad (tracks) after all this time. i remember country near grave; not this way. you see, i was very sick this end of the stage.”
“i understand, billy; but what has that to do with the wild fellows’ camp?”
“just see here, boss, i think i better go to black camp and get two boys—one won’t come without a mate. these people very good at the track. they find my old pad, and bime-by, when i come to country i know, boys come back. you like?”
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“all right, billy,” complies claude, “but will you be able to get the blacks to come? they won’t like to leave the ranges, especially to go along with white folk. and i don’t blame them, either.”
“well, you see, boss, the doctor, he bin to their camp two, no three time, and they like him. he very good to them. when the old hatter get killed by them cussed kalkadoones, i think to myself, i make tracks back to this camp, and by-and-by doctor’s friends come along and i hear of them.”
“and i’m very glad you had the ‘savez’ to do so,” responds claude, patting billy on his shoulder.
the black’s eyes brighten at the praise given him by the master to whom he has begun to transfer those dog-like affections lately left objectless by the death of dr. dyesart.
“the wild fellow,” he continues, “bin very glad to see me when i come along. there was komorbory tuck-out (plenty of food). i tell them doctor was dead, and me like to live with them for a time.”
“can you talk their language, billy?”
“no, boss, but there was two runaway boys with them. one, he come from down boulia way,” the speaker waves his black arm towards the south-west. “this boy speak my language a bit, and i bin mining with the doctor in his country and know his——” the speaker hesitates for want of a word, and then gives a number of flourishes with his hands, to express to claude the masonic-like manual signs by means of which the members of some tribes are able to communicate with each other, to a great extent, without speaking.
“well, get these boys if you can,” interrupts 298 claude; “but don’t you think you can do without them?”
“no, i think it good to get the boys,” replies billy quietly but firmly.
“how long will you be away,” asks young angland, slightly expressing by the tones of his voice the annoyance he feels at this fresh detention.
“i come back with boys to-night or to-morrow. ’spose you camp next water-hole—’bout twenty miles. i tell joe all ’bout it last night. he knows place; he bin there.”
“but, billy!” exclaims angland, as a thought suddenly strikes him. “look here, if white fellow send ‘boys’ to track us they will see your track up to village. you’ll get your friends up there into trouble if you don’t mind what you’re about.”
“all right, boss,” replies billy, smiling a smile of superior wisdom; “you see it bime-by.”
both men have for the last half-hour been cantering after the rest of the party, who, with the pack-horses, are on in front. presently claude’s companion signifies his desire that they should proceed less quickly, and then, pulling his horse into a walking pace, billy throws his reins over his steed’s head, and holds them out to claude. our hero takes them, and looks on in silence, wondering what the black youth is about to do. sitting sideways on the quiet animal he is riding, billy next proceeds to divest himself of his boots and hat, which he fixes firmly to the dees of his saddle, and then producing a pair of queer, mitten-like objects made of emu-feathers, he fastens them securely upon his feet. he now motions claude to lead his horse under a big gum-tree that stretches its great branches over the299 cattle track they are following, and suddenly rising into a kneeling position upon his saddle, he clutches a branch above his head, and lifts himself clear of his horse into mid-air.
“me leave no track into bush this way,” the black cries from his perch, his dark face covered with a big, oily, triumphant smile, and claude, turning his head as he rides on, sees billy swinging from tree to tree, like some great anthropomorphic ape, into the heart of the dark forest on his right.
angland has heard of the feather slippers used by the natives of some parts of australia when particularly anxious to abstain from leaving any dangerous trail behind them during their peregrinations, but billy’s are the first he has seen. and on catching up to williams, and telling him of the method in which the black youth has taken his departure, the old miner spins claude so many interesting yarns about the ingenious devices employed by the aborigines to avoid being hunted down by their native or foreign foes, that he determines to get up an exhibition of some of them when his pilot returns with the two new auxiliaries.
but, leaving little joe to lead the rest of the party on to the next water-hole, let us follow the dark-skinned billy on his way to the village. this young man has learned a good deal about the kind of country he is now traversing during the last few weeks, and, moreover, he has journeyed to his friends’ hamlet more than once before from about the same point where he has just entered the forest. so he wends his way in a fairly straight course, and is not more than three hours doing the seven miles of rough 300 travelling that has to be got over before he reaches the vicinity of the myall camp. after leaving the forest at the foot of the wild range, his way lies for the greater part up the dried-up bed of a mountain torrent, that has cut its way during countless ages through the enormous mass of grey granite of which the mountain is composed. high above the dark boulder-strewn path of the storm-stream, the grim old cliffs rise on either hand, their broken fronts decked here and there with clinging tufts of herbage, and crowned with overflowing wealth of perennial vegetation of the dark forest on their summits. here and there the out-crop of a quartz reef stretches across the path with great, teeth-like projections of white, flinty rock, and now and again the brown face of what is a waterfall after the rains necessitates a bit of climbing. at last the traveller reaches the crown of the watershed, and follows the rocky ridge of the range northwards for a couple of miles. the forest, that has hitherto consisted chiefly of various kinds of eucalypti, some of which give off an almost overpowering odour much resembling peppermint, now changes its character suddenly, for here is the edge of the basaltic “top-dressing” that covers the bigger lines of ranges, lying to the eastward, with its characteristic vegetation.
billy, arrived at this point, sits down to rest awhile near a mound of stone chips, which is the sole monument remaining of a past generation of aborigines who once had a stone-axe manufactory here. a number of “wasters” and half-finished adzes, made of basalt, are lying about, and at a future day, no doubt, will grace some museum, when the old chip-heap has been discovered by some prowling ethnologist. over billy’s301 head swings the flat nest of a king-pigeon,—built, as is usually the case, on the extreme end of a bough,—and thousands of beautiful insects, notably some gigantic green and day-flying moths, are making their erratic, a?rial promenades through the glades bordering upon the gloomy jungle.
no white man’s eye could have detected the slightest sign of the track that billy now commences to follow, but to an aboriginal it is a fairly clear one. here and there an overturned stone, a broken twig, or a crushed leaf make it patent to the young man that some one has passed this way towards the village only a short time before. this is a cheerful sign for billy, knowing as he does that so great is the fear that his friends the villagers have of being discovered by the neighbouring squatters, that it was highly probable they might have shifted their camp upon his leaving for the station. presently the traveller stops and glances at a palm-leaf that is lying across the almost invisible track he is following. it has apparently fallen there naturally, but the black understands its signification, and immediately alters his course. and after a rough scramble down the precipitous sides of a densely scrubbed ravine, he comes to where he can hear the sound of voices below him. creeping like a snake amongst the dank, humid undergrowth, billy gets near enough to recognize the sounds as proceeding from the vocal chords of a party of the friends he has come to interview. so he begins a low guttural chant to apprise those beneath him of his arrival.
“kolli! kolli!” (hush! be silent!) one of the talkers ejaculates, and the talking ceases immediately. soon afterwards, without heralding her approach by302 the slightest noise, a woman stands before our black friend, clad only in the undress costume of her native shades; and after a few brief words of recognition have passed between her and the new-comer, the former returns to her people below, and reporting “all serene,” a united chorus of welcome invites billy to descend to them.
had a civilized european been present at the meeting in the merry woods, and had he been able to have understood the meaning of billy’s opening chant and the reply chorus, he might have been forcibly reminded of certain of the musical dramas of the old world.
the happy, beribboned peasant of the operatic stage has for years borne the brunt of many facetious remarks, simply because he cannot indulge even in the most commonplace conversation without surrounding his words with a shroud of fascinating trills. yet here in the australian woods and plains we find the untutored savage, like the wild birds round him, doing the same kind of thing, and much given to confabulatory chants and choruses. it truly would seem quite within the bounds of possibility that ere the joyous dwellers in arcadia had relinquished their independent notions and simple acorn diet before the incoming flood of european civilization, they really did “carry on” in the harmonious manner in which they are represented to us to-day by the gifted authors of modern opera.
but whilst we have been thus sadly digressing from our story billy has climbed down to the aboriginals in the gully below, and finds he has been following up a hunting party that, having been out all the morning,303 is now on its way home. half-a-dozen men, armed with womeras, spears, and nulla nullas, stand waiting for him to appear. most of them are resting on one leg, the sole of one foot being pressed against the inside of the other leg at the knee joint, after the local method of “standing at ease,” their spears or a neighbouring branch being used to keep their bodies in a state of equilibrium. one of the men, the runaway station boy spoken of by billy to claude, who belongs to the former young man’s mordu, or class-family, steps forward and welcomes the new arrival by embracing him. then, after a few guttural ejaculations, the party forms indian file and proceeds villagewards; three or four women carrying the hunters’ game, which consists of a couple of rock-wallaby and a few bandicoots, bringing up the rear.
as the natives get into the vicinity of the village, they take every precaution to leave no track behind them, and each individual enters the thicket in which the little collection of gunyahs is ensconced by a different route.
it is quite remarkable how the inhabitants of these scrub hamlets manage to travel to and from their habitations, for years sometimes, without leaving anything like a beaten track which might attract the notice of a passing foe.
the huts comprising the village into which the hunters are now entering are of the universal pattern affected by australian aborigines throughout their great island home. their form resembles that of a half-spread mushroom or a very squat beehive. but instead of being plastered over with red or yellow clay, as are the domiciles of the natives of the open304 country, these gunyahs are simply but securely thatched with palm-leaves.
this common type of dwelling is worth notice as being rather remarkable. one might have expected to have found that the present race of australian natives, who are unmistakably the descendants of papuan immigrants, who have intermarried with an inferior and puny aboriginal race, would have copied the well-built houses of their near neighbours and relatives the new guinea blacks. both races of people have the same name for the land they inhabit, calling each daudée, and many of their marriage laws and religious ordinances show a common and probably indian origin,—the occasional worship of the crocodile (sebara) and snake being a case in point.
possibly these small houses were necessitated by the absence of the bamboo, which supplied their foreign ancestors with such splendid building material. and the form of the dwellings may have originally been devised to imitate the spinifax-crowned mounds so common upon the sand-hills of the plain country, for to combine the advantages of an elevated position and one of comparative obscurity in a village would be a distinct gain to a community in a savage land from the increased protection they would afford.
a few shrivelled old crones, who are sitting scraping and scratching themselves at the entrances to their several residences, commence a low howl of welcome upon seeing the good things brought by the returning hunters, and presently other men and women appear upon the scene—the latter carrying their fat, bright-eyed offspring in elegantly shaped305 wicker-baskets, which are made so as to be conveniently carried in the hollow of the back by bands of plaited grass passed round the forehead. several brilliantly painted shields for use in native boorers (tournaments) and wooden dishes are scattered about, and a curiously carved stick—a sort of almanac, which is the property of the old man or father of the village—stands in front of a large gunyah at one end of the semi-circle of dwellings. a meal is now prepared by the younger women, consisting chiefly of such dainties as the roasted flesh of wallabys and a big kind of carpet-snake, which has been preserved till tender by being kept under water for some days, with a few side-dishes of grasshoppers, roasted grubs, wild-figs (yanki), and various kinds of berries; and these delicacies being consumed, billy proceeds to disclose the object of his visit. whilst speaking, however, he judiciously distributes some brilliantly coloured handkerchiefs to the male villagers, who are chewing an aromatic kind of resin, obtained from a scrub tree much resembling the kauri (dammara) of new zealand. after a great amount of talk, in which the women join at times, one of the runaway station boys and a tall, long-legged myall finally agree to return with billy, and the old father of the little community brings the business to a close by observing, “vai mollie moungarn,”—intimating thereby that the sun is fast declining towards the mountain tops, and that the men had better start at once.
a touching scene of parting now takes place between the men who are about to join claude’s party and their families. again and again, when on the point of marching off, do billy’s recruits return to fondle their306 children once more before leaving, and it is only by the promise of fabulous wealth—a blanket and tomahawk apiece—that the two blacks are at length persuaded to tear themselves away.
australian aborigines have always a great affection for their children; these seldom cry, and are never beaten, or indeed corrected, save when breaking any of those sacred laws, regarding the mysteries of which we shall presently speak, in which case terrible, even diabolical, punishment ensues.
it is nearly sunset when at length the three men set off, and after some rough travelling in the dark a clear spot in the jungle is reached, where they rest till the moon rises, when they again push on.
the grey hours of the next morning see billy and the two other blacks arrive at claude’s camp, some time having been spent towards the end of their journey in removing all signs of their tracks where they left the bush.
“at last!” cries claude exultingly, as, a few hours afterwards, he takes a parting survey of last night’s camp, to make sure that nothing has been left behind; “at last i am really en route!”
the rest of the party are gone on in advance. the neighbouring water-hole looks up at the white-hot sun above it with its thousand eyes of water-lilies in their gorgeous robes of white, yellow, crimson, and violet. on the low trees round about numbers of large crows—those scavengers of the wilds—are croaking their harsh cries of impatience: “augh, augh, ah-h-h-h.” these sable rascals are never absent from an australian traveller’s camp, and appear like magic when he lights his billy fire. hardly has claude mounted to 307 ride after his companions, when the crows swoop down by the cold ashes to fight and squabble over the odds and ends that lie about. at two o’clock arrives the hottest time of the day,—it is really as warm as any living thing can stand with safety,—and as the expedition crawls along over the burnt-up, reddish soil of the plain, upon which withered tufts of various kinds of coarse grass appear at intervals, claude feels certain that he has never been in such a thirsty-looking place before. everything around, trees, grass, and all, looks as if fashioned out of brown paper and sprinkled with dust.
a few dark-brown kites—similar to those that angland has seen some years previously at curious cairo and barren aden—sit panting with open beaks on the hot branches of the stunted quinine and gutta-percha trees, too overcome by the heat even to move as the party rides by, almost within arm’s length of them. the country round about, as the horsemen get well out into the plain, is almost a dead flat; the only difference in level being the long, wide, gentle rises which, like ocean waves, cross the shimmering expanse of heated earth from east to west, at distances apart of about a couple of miles. every kind of animal life is gradually left behind as the travellers push on; not even a kite, or a “gohanna,” as old williams calls the ignana-like lizards that are generally common throughout the bush, is to be seen. the weary horses wade patiently through the dust, which is so fine that it rises into the air on the slightest provocation. the horizon is a level circle of monotonous, grey-brown tree-tops; the middle distance sunburnt, reddish clay, grass that reminds one of the308 harmless, necessary doormat, and dusty tree-stems; and the immediate foreground is hidden in clouds of dust, so fine, so penetrating, that claude feels his throat to resemble the interior of a lime-kiln before half the day’s journey is done.
this desert country, however, is left behind by the time the dull-red sunset has begun to tinge the pillar of dust raised by the horses of a lovely rose colour, and at last a détour is made from billy’s old tracks in order to reach a water-hole known only to the myall (native) pilots. and claude blesses his black friend billy, in his heart, for having procured the guides, as he sees the horses prick their dust-covered ears, and liven up as they sniff the refreshing odour of the little mud-surrounded pool of dirty liquid.
the next few days’ travelling are monotonous in the extreme. sometimes the party toil over red deserts, whose sterile surfaces offer hardly a mouthful, even of withered grass, for the horses, and where no water can be found with which to refresh the suffering animals. for the country has suffered from a continual drought for two years or more, and the moist mud which still remained in the water-holes that billy luckily came across, on his late journey to murdaro station, has all disappeared.
at other times the horses pick their stumbling way over rough and semi-mountainous tracts of country, that stretch on all sides in an apparently interminable and dreary treeless waste. here and there, however, little patches of far better country are traversed, where water and dried but highly nutritious herbage is to be found. on arriving at one of these oases when the expedition has been nearly a week “out,” claude,309 acting by his friend williams’s advice, determines to spell his horses for a day, and camps by a rocky pool, fringed with a feathery belt of dark she-oaks. close by rises a flat-topped little bit of light-red sandstone covered with euphorbia trees, and, upon the morning after his arrival, claude proceeds to explore this elevation, taking with him the runaway station boy, who can speak a little broken english, and has introduced himself to angland by the name of general gordon.
the view that meets claude’s eyes from the summit of the scalloped and overhanging sandstone cliffs well repays the trouble he has taken in scrambling up their tawny sides. numerous other fortification-like projections are to be seen on all sides standing up, like weird islands, above the surface of the haze-bounded expanse of rolling desert.
he sits down and drinks in the weird, harmonious picture of desolation before him, and, as he does so, some lines of pringle, the explorer-poet of south africa, float into his memory:—
“a region of emptiness, howling and drear,
which man has abandoned from famine and fear;
which the snake and the lizard inhabit alone,
with the twilight bat from the yawning stone;
where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
save the poisonous thorns that pierce the foot.”
then glancing downwards over the little patch of verdure round the solitary water-hole, where the grey smoke of the camp-fire and the colour and commotion amongst the moving men and horses formed a little gem of life in the vast setting of deathlike 310 stillness around, claude’s thoughts take a serious turn, and he enters into conversation with his companion general gordon, with the idea of discovering if the aboriginal mind has any notions of a supreme being as conceived by europeans. but although the black has been amongst station civilization for some years, and has even been interviewed by a clergyman of the church of england upon the subject of his soul, his answer is hardly satisfactory:—
“yes, boss, mine know alle ’bout gord. missionary him bin tell me, ‘gord alle same ole man sit down longer sky.’ missionary tell me budgeree (good) you yabber (say), yabber, ‘give it to-day mine damper, give it to-day mine tuck-out.’ mine bin yabber, yabber, plenty long time; oh, plenty long time. but,” added the speaker in a sulky voice, evidently disgusted with the treatment he had received, “but bale (not) mine get it tuck-out, bale mine get it lillie bit tuck-out.” general gordon turns to catch and swallow a grasshopper, and then, shaking his woolly mat of hair, further expresses his opinions, in the following remarkable language: “bale mine think it gord sit down longer sky. no good de ole man. him only like it white fellow; no like it poor black beggar.”
claude ventures to calm the ruffled feelings of the general by suggesting that in a future life black fellows may possibly have a better time of it.
“yes, boss,” excitedly exclaims the “boy,” his face altering from an expression of injured worth to one of perfect faith in his noble existence. “yes, bime-by mine bin kick out” (by-and-by i die).
the speaker points eastwards, as his race often 311 do when speaking of dying. “bime-by me kick out, then me jump up white beggar. me jump up stockman. budgeree (very good), mine like it.”
claude tries to conceive what the general finds in life worth living for when he can look forward with pleasure to a future life as a stockman, which, in common with most station blacks, he evidently firmly believes in.
our young friend unconsciously follows the lines of reasoning laid down long since by a celebrated wit, when he finally concludes that it is probably the same with blacks as with whites, in that, “by the time the emptiness of life is discovered, living has become a fatal habit.”
old williams now joins claude upon the hill-top, and, looking carefully round about him on the ground as if in search of something he has dropped, presently deposits himself upon a chocolate-coloured block of sandstone with a grunt of satisfaction.
“mind where ye sit doone, lad,” he observes to angland, through clenched teeth, which hold a grimy old maize-cob pipe; “this hill is just the very place for snakes.”
the words are hardly uttered, when the black boy, who is standing behind the white men, suddenly ejaculates a guttural exclamation, and dashes his nulla nulla (a three-foot club of heavy wood) down upon a small branch-like object, lying on a ledge of rock close to where claude’s feet are resting.
“a cussed death-adder, by all that’s blue!” exclaims williams, as both men start up, and bending over the cliff observe a little light-brown serpent that is writhing on the rocks below.
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“a narrer squeak you’ve had of it, my son,” the old miner observes, wiping his brow with the back of his hairy hand. “if you’d happened to move your foot, it would have been a case of death in less than twenty minutes. there ain’t no cure for their bite.”
general gordon, acting under orders from the elder white man, now fetches the snake from where his well-directed shot had thrown it, and claude shudders slightly as williams, pointing to the crushed remains of the dangerous reptile,—which is only about two feet in length,—proceeds to direct his friend’s attention to a curious horn-like projection which sticks out from the tail end of the hideous, slug-like body.
“some say that this ’ere’s got a poison fang in it, but i don’t believe it,” the old miner observes. “it’s against nature for the warmint to have a sting at each end. it can do all’s fair with the fangs it’s got at its business end, i take it.”
claude nods his acquiescence.
“this ’ere horn is just for helping the devils to jump. they move when they’re skeered jest like them yellow grubs in a cheese. and i believe they use this prong to catch hold of, just like this.”
the speaker, to exemplify his meaning, takes a springy stem of dry grass between his finger and thumb, and, bending the two ends towards each other, allows the fragments to fly off into the air.
the black boy, who has been watching this object lesson in ophiology, roars with delight at the ingenious method williams has employed to explain the snake’s mode of progression.
“hah! hah! illa perrachie (the snake) him make 313 it the buck, alle same little fellow waddy” (woodie: piece of wood, stick).
by which remark claude infers that the native, whose experience amongst snakes must of course be very great, fully endorses the old miner’s theory; although, had our young friend known the polite readiness which most aboriginals manifest for corroborating anything affirmed by a white man in their presence, it is questionable whether he would have placed as much reliance upon general gordon’s evidence as he did.
it is now getting too warm for the men to sit or stand still, for there is no wind; indeed, not the slightest movement of the air. so claude and his companions rise and stroll across the hot, flat fragments of rock towards the other side of the table-topped hill. here and there a lively lizard or an emerald snake attracts the eye for an instant, but little else of interest is to be seen. presently, however, angland stands in amazement before a level expanse of rock; for he is apparently upon a sandy sea-shore, from which the waves that left those ripple marks have but just now ebbed away. he can almost imagine that he hears the surf still rippling over those almost red-hot stones at his feet, so recent does everything appear. here lie numerous shells of the succulent and delicious pipi, at the sight of which claude’s memory flashes back to many a delightful picnic in the land of the maori; star-fish, echina, seaweed, cockle-shells, and mussels, or rather their ghostly semblance in hard, brown silica, are scattered around on all sides where the last wave left them.
clambering down the other side of the hill, where 314 a fall of rock has recently occurred, claude finds in the geological section thus formed an open page in which to read the history of the country. at a little distance below the surface of the old sea-bed, volcanic dust is mixed with the grains of silica that form the rock,—drab-coloured dust, such as fell at krakatoa and tarawera. this gradually gives place in the lower strata to a volcanic conglomerate, composed chiefly of rounded masses of felsite, ferruginous clay, burnt to a cinder, and silicious, iron-stained nodules. the old sea-beds have long ago received the red-hot ejecta from some great eruption, and then, the land rising, gradually pushed back the ocean. next come the centuries during which the resistless sea rolls again over the land, and once more retiring the waves cut much of the old ocean bottom away, and leave the flat-topped, island-like hills as the travellers see them. and upon the last page angland sees the sandstone rock before him with its fossil exuvi?, and its surface sheltering a few miserable euphorbias, where passing birds have dropped undigested seeds. the poor grass struggles here and there to clothe the barren, ugly rocks, during the few months in every two or three years when it has the opportunity of growing. perhaps nature will one day add another and a brighter chapter to this history of the wilds of central-northern queensland—a chapter of forest life and copious rains. it may be so; but, at any rate, claude, looking round him, decides that man has come upon these deserts too soon—some five thousand years too soon.
when night falls upon the little camp beneath the rocky cliff, and the first watch—consisting of don and the two natives from the myall village—have315 gone on duty, billy spreads a saddle-cloth upon a flat stone by the camp-fire, and commences to mix some flour and water thereon into a thick paste, preparatory to cooking to-morrow’s bread.
he has made a discovery that morning, whilst bathing in the water-hole with the boys, and it appears to him to be such an important one that he is rather puzzled how to act. so instead of droning a song or keeping up a lively chatter with anybody who happens to be near, as he usually does when at his culinary occupations, he frowns over his work and remains silent.
the ruddy light of the hot pile of embers, that he has just fashioned into a glowing nest for the reception of the damper that he is now manufacturing, falls on his thoughtful face. presently claude notices that billy is strangely quiet, and, seeing his preoccupied air, puts the cause down to one of those troubles to which all bush-cooks are at times heir.
“what’s up, billy, not made it wet enough?” angland asks, referring to the loaf the black is making.
“oh no, boss,” answers billy, keeping his black fingers moving in elliptic spirals in the little crater of dough before him. a fight is going on in the darkie’s mind as to whether he shall keep his discovery to himself or tell angland; in which latter case he knows his secret will ultimately reach and render happy the man he most hates on earth. but the young fellow’s dependent and affectionate disposition wins in the end, and, after he has raked the last embers over his cookery, billy turns to claude determined to reveal his thoughts to his new master.
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williams is asleep at a little distance from the others, his bush experience inclining him to take his night’s rest away from the light of the camp-fire, that might show his outstretched form as a tempting target for the spears of any avenging aborigines who may be about.
“you remember, boss,” billy begins, as he lifts a piece of glowing charcoal with his bare fingers to light his pipe,—“you remember what i told you about when them cussed myall blacks killed old weevil?”
“yes, i think i remember all you mentioned to me, billy,” responds claude. “there was something the old hatter told you when he was dying that you said you could not understand altogether. you said, i think, that you had missed a good deal the old man said in the excitement of the moment.”
“that’s jest it.” the black looks sadly into the fire at the remembrance of his old friend’s death, and then, glancing round to see that he and claude are alone, continues, “i had forgotten what the old man said. now i remember. he told me he had stolen a boy pickaninnie of old giles’s from murdaro station, long time ago.”
“you told me that much, i remember, the day after we started on this trip.”
“yes, i not forget that; but old man say, ‘i mark that boy on shoulder, on near shoulder. i mark him with blue star and the front letters of giles’s names, w. g.’”
“well,” inquires claude as the last speaker pauses, “but what became of the boy? you didn’t tell me if he told you that.”
billy does not answer the question, but goes on 317 puffing at his pipe, even now undecided whether to reveal his secret. presently, with a sort of groan, he turns him towards his master and asks,—
“where you get that lillie fellow don? i think him very clever boy.”
“i got him in sydney,” replies claude, laughing. “are you concocting a plan to palm him off on mr. giles as his long-lost son, you rascal?”
“no, boss,” responds the dark youth thus addressed, in an injured, pettish tone of voice that shows that his feelings are hurt by the light way in which claude has treated his question.
“no need to ’coct a plan. don, he got the mark on shoulder, all the same weevil tell me ’bout.”
“nonsense!” claude ejaculates,—he is perhaps rather too much given to making this remark when surprised,—“i know the mark you mean; it’s a bruise he got the other day when his saddle turned round on kittie, careless young devil.”
“oh, all right, boss; i ’spose i get blind now,” billy replies in an offended tone, for nothing insults an aboriginal more than to distrust his keenness of vision. but his clouded expression dissolves into a sunny grin of satisfaction, as he sees that the information he has imparted to angland has apparently excited a far deeper interest in angland’s mind than he had supposed it would.
what claude’s first thoughts are upon learning that which seems likely to turn out a most fortunate discovery for himself and several other persons besides little don may easily be guessed. he conjures up happy pictures in his mind, that for the most part are variations of one glorious central idea,—wilson 318 giles, with weak tears of joy dribbling down his purple countenance, presenting his golden-haired fairy of a daughter to the man who has recovered for him his “little georgie.”
and if these mental sketches of our young friend’s are rather selfish ones, and more redolent of love and glory than of the mutual gratification upon meeting that the long-separated father and son will soon enjoy at his hands, it is but natural, after all, that in claude’s present state of mind it should be so. but cold second thoughts and chilly doubts soon come to tone down these brilliant visions. then a half-conceived suspicion as to whether billy and don—or perhaps billy alone—might not have concocted the story of the blue marks upon the boy’s shoulder duly presents itself; to flee away, however, before the knowledge that the tattooing and subsequent healing of the wounds produced thereby would take longer than the whole time the two individuals concerned have known each other.
for various reasons, at any rate, angland determines not to investigate the subject further that night, and, as he rolls himself up in his blankets prior to going off to sleep, he tries to call to mind all that he has heard about the lost child.
during the second watch, which he keeps in company with his little purchase joe, claude remembers that glory had told him once about a severe accident that happened to her baby brother not many months before he disappeared. it had occurred when some visitor at murdaro head-station—who was rocking himself in one of the chairs upon the verandah and had not noticed the approach of mr. giles’s tiny 319 son and heir—had heard a sudden scream at his elbow, and discovered that the rocker of his chair had crushed some of the child’s tender little toes.
“ah, when i examine don to-morrow morning,” claude thinks, “i will notice if his toes are intact. i am glad i remembered this, as it will possibly throw some light upon the mystery.”
as angland looks up in thought at the purple dome above him, where “the stars burn bright in the midnight sky,” suddenly a great meteor appears, and blazes into brightness as it comes in contact with the world’s elastic shield of air, and then sinks with a graceful, downwards streak of brilliant incandescence into earthly obscurity.
“what makes that fellow star fall down?” claude asks of the owner of the small, dark figure standing by his side, who is gazing up at the purple-set jewels of scintillating worlds above the watchers’ heads.
joe, in reply, grins fondly up at his friend and owner,—his white teeth glistening under the starlight as he answers, “me know,”—and, taking a match from his pocket, proceeds to explain what to his mind appears to be the correct solution of the cause of meteoric phenomena. striking his match and pretending to light an imaginary pipe, and putting on a slyly grave countenance, which in the darkness, however, is lost upon claude, the boy says,—
“me think great, big, one master,”—pointing to the heavens,—“him want um smoke um pipe. strike um matche,”—acting the process meanwhile,—“and puff, puff,”—pretending to smoke. then joe makes a movement with his hand, and drops the match slowly to the ground, which, with its bright, smouldering 320 end, gives a remarkably faithful representation of a shooting star on a very small scale.
claude has often been struck before with the “smartness” of his diminutive henchman, and many a weary hour has the boy enlivened with his grotesque sayings and doings. but angland is particularly interested in this last piece of evidence of joe’s histrionic powers,—the more so since it is the first time the youth has expressed a belief in a supreme “great, one master.” but just in order to prove that the aboriginal mind—as represented by the little specimen of the race that is now following claude in his midnight march round the slumbering men and horses—is practical, as well as theoretical, perhaps we may be excused if we linger, for a moment, to relate another comical little instance of joe’s ingenuity. it happened when angland and his companions were on their way to murdaro, and amused our hero a good deal at the time.
little joe, upon becoming “by right of purchase” one of claude’s goods and chattels, had been presented with a suit of slop-made clothes and a tiny pair of boots. these latter shortly disappeared. whether the boy sacrificed them as a parting gift to one of his numerous brothers—all male blacks of the same class—family stand in this relationship to each other—when the party left mount silver, or whether they were stolen, as joe stated was the case, never transpired. but, anyhow, a few days afterwards, the black urchin, who did not relish being the only one of the party to ride barefooted, chanced upon an extremely ancient pair of what had once been elastic-sided boots lying upon the site of a deserted camp, and straightway321 determined to appropriate them to his personal adornment. dismounting from the tall steed he is riding, two small black feet are carefully inserted into the sun-dried derelicts, and with a grin of satisfaction joe prepares to mount. but as he lifts his right leg over the horse’s back, the enormous boot thereon—which is absurdly too large for the diminutive limb—tumbles off upon the ground. again and again the boy tries, with the same result. the “boss” is calling, but it will never do to leave the treasure behind. joe has no string to fasten it upon his foot, but he soon solves the problem. running round to the other side of his steed, he seizes the stirrup-iron and securely jambs this into his prize; then mounting, he places his foot therein, and joins the other riders, looking very proud and haughty, with the dilapidated old leather coffins swinging at his horse’s girths, in ludicrous contrariety to the spindle-like shanks which, decked with short white trousers, rise from them.
the next afternoon claude finds an opportunity, as old williams and he ride side by side behind the trackers, to tell his friend of billy’s discovery concerning don’s supposed parentage.
“i bathed with the boys myself this morning,” angland says, “and took the opportunity of checking what billy told me about the mark on the youngster’s shoulder. it’s there safe enough.”
“you didn’t tell the boy about all this, nor billy neither?” inquires claude’s companion.
“no, of course. i don’t intend don to know anything about it at present, and i told billy to keep mum about it.”
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“ah! it’s what i call a rum yarn now,” remarks williams, as he muses over what he has just heard. “if it had been any one else nor you had found the boy, i’d have said they had salted him against the chance of making a rise out of old giles.”
“salted don?” repeats claude interrogatively, looking at the old miner, and wondering at the strange expression he has made use of. “what do you mean by ‘salting’ him?”
“don’t you know what salting a mine is?” asks williams in return.
“well, i fancy i’ve heard that term applied to some kind of mining swindle,” replies claude.
“exactly so, my lad. and after i’ve explained what ‘salting’ is, you’ll understand what ‘salting’ a boy is.” old williams is never happier than when explaining some mining term to a new hand who will listen patiently, and, when started on such a theme,—especially if a chance of bringing in old reminiscences occurs,—he must be allowed time to run down. claude has already learned this much about him, so does not attempt to check his elderly friend when he sees him settle down comfortably in his saddle to begin his discourse.
“salting a mine,” williams goes on, “is getting rayther out of fashion; leastwise there’s a many easier ways bin invented of late years—and safer ways too, mind ye—of making a ‘wild cat’ look like a fust-class, boniefied speculation.”
“well, tell me first what the old system, the ‘salting,’ was like,” interrupts claude, fearful that williams will wander yet further from his subject unless kept in the groove.
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“salting a mine, lad, accordin’ to the old way of doing business, was just firing some gold dust into a ‘face’ in order to sell out well or float a company.”
claude remembers that williams has already informed him that a “face” is the exposed section of a reef in the workings of a mine in distinction to the “backs,” which is that part of a lode unworked and above the lowest levels.
“there is better ways nowadays than this kind of ‘salting,’—such as using chloride of gold and the like,—but get a good syndicate together to help ye, and it will do all the dirty work for you and float anything.” stopping every now and then to persuade his horse to walk a bit faster, williams continues, “some say as how the term ‘salting’ originated this way. on a new field, especially if tucker’s scarce, as it often is, there’s always a lot of hungry dogs about. they’ll steal anything they can grab hold of, from your last piece of damper to a pair of boots. now it ain’t quite the go ter shoot these ere ‘canine tithe collectors,’—that’s what i calls ’em,—for their owner might come down and arguefy in the ‘love me love my dog’ style. so yer puts salt in yer gun, and the dog ain’t killed, but he don’t come hankering around agin where he finds he’ll only get condiments and nary a bit of meat. i don’t like to shoot any man’s dog,” observes the lecturer feelingly, “let alone a camp-mate’s, and i’m always sorry fur the brutes when they go off yelling after getting a charge of salt.”
“yes, i suppose so,” observes claude, who, thinking of certain appropriate lines, proceeds to quote them:—
“sympathy without relief
is like mustard without beef.”
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“but what has this ‘salting a dog’ got to do with ‘salting a mine’? i can see now, at any rate, the origin of ‘saving one’s bacon,’ for i expect the dogs would make a bee line for home on finding themselves thus salted down,—but why all this about dogs? you don’t think any one has been firing salt into don, do you?”
“no, lad,” williams says, “you don’t take me. in the rough old diggin’s we always used to empty our revolvers about sundown, if we did it at all. those who made the most show about doing this were mostly new hands, but that’s neither here nor there. i mean you wouldn’t hear no firing after nightfall. if there should happen to be a shot fired it was either a murder or a robbery, and the whole camp would turn out. but if it turned out to be only a hoax, the boys would skylark round, and mayhap the man who started the fun would have to put on a roller bandage instead of a shirt for the next few weeks.”
“i see,” remarks claude, knowing that it is of no use to attempt to hurry the old miner, who always moves towards the main subject of his remarks after the manner of a hawk approaching its prey, namely, in circles.
“well, some chap invented this plan of punishing the dogs, and then firing at night got to be quite common. instead of turning out when you heard a shot, you’d say ter your mate, ‘oh, some one’s cur is gettin’ salted.’ by-and-by all kinds of shooting got to be called ‘salting,’ and from that, not only firing gold into a reef, but every kind of swindle, went by the same name.”
“you’ve explained it very well,” claude says, as 325 williams closes his remarks, “and, as regards little don, i thought myself it might be a try on till i examined his feet, and found that the toes on his left foot have evidently been damaged at some time or other.” angland then discloses to his companion what glory giles had told him about the accident that befell her baby brother, which we have related for the benefit of our readers.
“and now, williams, what ought i to do? i somehow feel i should send don back to giles at once. i might send joe and general gordon with him, but it would be risky work with one waterbag. that’s the only reason, as you know, i’ve not sent gordon and his mate back before.”
“send him back!” exclaims the elder man; “not a bit of it. providence, lad, has given yer the boy to keep for a time, and it would be going agin yer luck to send him back. don’t you go out of your way to chuck what providence has lent you, just to oblige a man who you don’t count as a friend, anyhow. a very obliging man is another name for a fool, take my word for it. besides, how do you know these myall blacks wouldn’t knock both the boys on the head if they got a chance? they would do it, and no fear they wouldn’t, if they thought don was giles’s son. wouldn’t they like to get square with old giles! he has polished off a good many of their relatives, if you ask me. no!” adds the speaker in a voice that shows he puts his foot down at what he says, “we’ll all go back together. you’ll be able to play this trump card, my son, better when you’ve got some more in your fist, as providence is going to give you shortly.”
