“Let us go and see after Mr. Levi, George.”
“Well, Tom, I had rather not.”
“Why not? he ought to be very much obliged to you.”
“That is it, Tom. The old man is of rather a grateful turn of mind—and it is ten to one if he doesn't go and begin praising me to my face—and then that makes me—I don't know which way to look. Wait till he has cooled upon it a bit.”
“You are a rum one. Well, George, I have got one proposal you won't say no to. First, I must tell you there is really a river of quartz in the country.”
“Didn't I tell you?”
“Yes, and I didn't believe it. But I have spoken to Jacky about it, and he has seen it; it is on the other side of the bush. I am ready to start for it to-morrow, for there is little good to be done here now the weather has broken.”
George assented with joy; but, when Robinson suggested that Jacky would be very useful to pilot them through the bush, his countenance fell.
“Don't think of it,” said he. “I know he is here, Tom, and I shan't go after him. But don't let him come near me, the nasty little, creeping, murdering varmint. Poor Abner will never get over his tomahawk—not if he lives fifty years.”
In short, it was agreed they should go alone at peep of day.
“I have talked it over with Jem already, and he will take charge of our tent till we come back.”
“So be it.”
“We must take some provisions with us, George.”
“I'll go and get some cold meat and bread, Tom.”
“Do. I'm going to the tent.”
Robinson, it is to be observed, had not been in his tent since George and he left it and took their gold out of it just before sunrise. As he now carried their joint wealth about his person, his anxiety was transferred.
Now at the door of the tent he was intercepted by Jem, very red in the face, partly with brandy, partly with rage. Walker, whose life he had saved, whom he had taken to his own tent, and whom Robinson had seen lying asleep in the best blanket, this Walker had absconded with his boots and half a pound of tobacco.
“Well, but you knew he was a rogue. Why did you leave him alone in your tent?”
“I only left him for a minute to go a few steps with you if you remember, and you said yourself he was asleep. Well, the moment our backs were turned he must have got up and done the trick.”
“I don't, like it,” said Robinson.
“No more don't I,” said Jem.
“If he was not asleep, he must have heard me say I was going to cross the bush with my mate to-morrow at daybreak.”
“Well! and what if he did?”
“He is like enough to have gone and told the whole gang.”
“And what if he has?”
Robinson was about to explain to Jem. that he now carried all the joint gold in his pocket, but he forbore. “It is too great a stake for me to trust anybody unless I am forced,” thought he. So he only said: “Well, it is best to be prudent. I shall change the hour for starting.”
“You are a cunning one, captain, but I really think you are overcareful sometimes.”
“Jem,” said the other gravely, “there is a mystery in this mine. There is a black gang in it, and that Walker is one of them. I think they have sworn to have my gold or my life, and they shan't have either if I can help it. I shall start two hours before the sun.”
He was quite right; Walker had been shamming sleep, and full four hours ago he had told his confederates as a matter of course all that he had heard in the enemy's camp.
Walker, a timid villain, was unprepared for the burst of savage exultation from brutus and Black Will that followed this intelligence. These two, by an instinct quick as lightning, saw the means of gratifying at one blow their cupidity and hate. Crawley had already told them he had seen Robinson come out of Levi's tent after a long stay, and their other spies had told them his own tent had been left unguarded for hours. They put these things together and conjectured at once that the men had now their swag about them in one form or other.
“When do they go?”
“To-morrow at break of day,” he said.
“The bush is very thick!”
“And dark, too!”
“It is just the place for a job.”
“Will two of you be enough?”
“Plenty, the way we shall work.”
“The men are strong and armed.”
“Their strength will be no use to them, and they shan't get time to use their arms.”
“For Heaven's sake, shed no blood unnecessarily,” said Crawley, beginning to tremble at the pool of crime to whose brink he had led these men.
“Do you think they will give up their swag while they are alive?” asked brutus, scornfully.
“Then I wash my hands of it all,” cried the little self-deceiving caitiff; and he affected to have nothing to do with it.
Walker was then thanked for his information, and he thought this was a good opportunity for complaining of his wrongs and demanding redress. This fellow was a thorough egotist, saw everything from his own point of view only.
Jem had dragged him before Judge Robinson; Robinson had played the beak and found him guilty; Levi had furnished the test on which he had been convicted. All these had therefore cruelly injured and nearly killed him.
Himself was not the cause. He had not set all these stones rolling by forging upon nature and robbing Jem of thirty pounds. No! he could not see that, nor did he thank Jem one bit for jumping in and saving his life at risk of his own. “Why did he ever get him thrown in, the brute? If he was not quite drowned he was nearly, and Jem the cause.”
His confederates soothed him with promises of vengeance on all their three his enemies, and soon after catching sight of one of them, Levi, they kept their word; they roused up some of the other diggers against Isaac on the plea that he had refused to give evidence against Walker, and so they launched a mob and trusted to mob nature for the rest. The recoil of this superfluous villainy was, as often happens, a blow to the head scheme.
brutus, who was wanted at peep of day for the dark scheme already hinted at, got terribly battered by George Fielding, and placarded, and, what was worse, chained to a post, by Robinson and Ede. It became necessary to sound his body and spirit.
One of the gang was sent by Crawley to inquire whether he felt strong enough to go with Black Will on that difficult and dangerous work to-morrow. The question put in a passing whisper was answered in a whisper.
“I am as strong as a lion for revenge. Tell them I would not miss to-morrow's work for all the gold in Australia.”
The lowering face spoke loud enough if the mouth whispered.
The message was brought back to Black Will and Crawley.
“What energy!” said Crawley, admiringly.
“Ay!” said Black Will, “that is your sort; give me a pal with his skin smarting and his bones aching for the sort of job that wood shall see to-morrow. Have they marked him?” he inquired, with a strange curiosity.
“I am afraid they have; his nose is smashed frightful.”
“I am glad of it; now we are brothers and will have blood for blood.”
“Your expressions are dreadfully terse,” said Crawley, trying to smile, but looking scared instead; “but I don't understand your remark; you were not in the late unsuccessful attack on Mr. Levi, and you escaped most providentially in the night business—the men have not marked you, my good friend.”
“Haven't they?” yelled the man, with a tremendous oath—“haven't they? LOOK HERE!” A glance was enough. Crawley turned wan and shuddered from head to foot.
“Come in,” said Robinson. “You will take care of this tent while we are gone.”
Jem promised faithfully.
He then asked Robinson to explain to him the dodge of the gut-lines. Robinson showed him, and how the bells were rung at his head by the thief's foot.
Jem complimented him highly.
Robinson smiled, but the next moment sighed. “They will be too clever for us some of these dark nights—see how nearly they have nicked us again and again!”
“Don't be down on your luck, captain!”
“Jem, what frightens me is the villains getting off so; there they are to try again, and next time the luck will be theirs—it can't be always ours—why should it? Jem, there was a man in my tent last night.”
“There is no denying that, captain.”
“Well, Jem, I can't get it off my heart that I was to kill that man, or he me. Everything was on my side. I had my gut-lines, and I had a revolver and a cutlass—and I took up the cutlass like a fool; if I had taken up the revolver the man would be dead. I took up the wrong, and that man will be my death. The cards never forgive! I had the odd trick, and didn't take it—I shall lose the game.”
“No, ye shan't,” cried Jem, hastily. “What if the man got clear for the moment, we will hunt him out for you. You give me his description.”
“I couldn't,” said Robinson, despondingly. “It was so dark! Here is his pistol, but that is no use. If I had but a clew, ay, ever so slight, I'd follow it up; but no, there is none. Hallo, what is the matter! What is it? what on earth is the man looking at like that?”
“What was you asking for?” stammered Jem. “Wasn't it a clew?”
“Yes.”
Robinson got up and came to Jem, who was standing with dilated eyes looking at the ground in the very corner of the tent. He followed the direction of Jem's eyes, and was instantly transfixed with curiosity and rising horror.
“Take it up, Jem,” he gasped.
“No, you take it up! it was you who—”
“No—yes! there is George's voice. I wouldn't let him see such a thing for the world. Oh, God! here is another.”
“Another?”
“Yes, in the long grass! and there is George's voice.”
“Come out, Jem. Not a word to George for the world. I want to talk to you. If it hasn't turned me sick! I should make a poor hangman. But it was in self-defense, thank Heaven for that!”
“Where are you going in such a hurry, Tom?” said George.
“Oh, only a little way with Jem.”
“Don't be long, it is getting late.”
“No, George!”
“Jem, this is an ugly job!”
“An ugly job, no! —— him, I wish it was his head. Give them me, captain.”
“What, will you take charge of them?”
“That I will, captain, and what is more I'll find your enemy out by them, and—when you come back he shall be in custody—waiting your orders. Give them me.”
“Yes, take them. Oh, but I am glad to be rid of them. What a ghastly look they have.”
“I don't care for their looks. I am right glad to see them—they are a clew and no mistake. Keep dark to-night. Don't tell this to Ede—he is a good fellow but chatters too much—let me work it out. I'll find the late owner double quick,” said Jem, with a somewhat brutal laugh.
“Your orders about the prisoners, captain?” cried Ede, coming up.
Robinson reflected.
“Turn them all loose—but one.”
“And what shall I do with him?”
“Hum! Put a post up in your own tent.”
“Yes.”
“Tie him to it in his handcuffs. Give him food enough.”
“And when shall we loose him?”
“At noon, to-morrow.”
“It shall be done! but you must come and show me which of the four it is.”
Robinson went with Ede and his men.
“Turn this one loose,” said he; it was done on the instant.
“And this.”
“And this.”
“And” (laying his finger on brutus) “keep this one prisoner in your tent, handcuffed and chained, till noon to-morrow.”
At the touch, brutus trembled with hate; at the order, his countenance fell like Cain's.
Full two hours before sunrise the patrol called Robinson by his own order, and the friends made for the bush, with a day's provision and their blankets, their picks, and their revolvers. When they arrived at the edge of the bush, Robinson halted and looked round to see if they were followed. The night was pretty clear; no one was in sight. The men struck rapidly into the bush, which at this part had been cut and cleared in places, lying as it did so near a mine.
“What, are we to run, Tom?”
“Yes! I want to get to the river of quartz as soon as possible,” was the dry answer.
“With all my heart.”
After running about half a mile, George pulled up, and they walked.
“What do you keep looking behind for, Tom?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“You fidget me, Tom!”
“Can't help it. I shall be like that till daylight. They have shaken my nerves among them.”
“Don't give way to such nonsense. What are you afraid of?”
“I am not afraid of anything. Come, George, another run.”
“Oh, as you like. This beats all.”
This run brought them to the end of the broad road, and they found two smaller paths; after some hesitation, Robinson took the left-hand one, and it landed them in such a terribly thick scrub they could hardly move. They forced their way through it, getting some frightful scratches, but after struggling with it for a good half hour, began to fear it was impenetrable and interminable, when the sun rising showed them a clear space some yards ahead. They burst through the remainder of the scrub, and came out upon an old clearing full a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad. They gave a hurrah at the sight of it, but when they came to walk on it the ground was clay and so sticky with a late shower that they were like flies moving upon varnish, and at last were fain to take off their shoes and stockings and run over it on the tips of their toes. At the end of this opening they came to a place like the “Seven Dials”—no end of little paths into the wood, and none very promising. After a natural hesitation, they took the one that seemed to be most on their line of march, and followed it briskly till it brought them plump upon a brook, and there it ended. Robinson groaned.
“Confound the bush,” cried he. “You were wrong not to let me bring Jacky. What is to be done?”
“Go back.”
“I hate going back. I would rather go thirty miles ahead than one back. I've got an idea; off shoes and paddle up the stream; perhaps we shall find a path that comes to it from the other side.”
They paddled up the stream a long way, and at last, sure enough, they found a path that came down to the stream from the opposite side. They now took a hasty breakfast, washing it down with water from the brook, then dived into the wood.
The sun, was high in heaven, yet still they had not got out of the bush.
“I can't make it out, George; there is nothing to steer by, and these paths twist and turn so. I don't think we shall do any good till night. When I see the Southern Cross in the sky I shall be able to steer northeast. That is our line.”
“Don't give in,” said George; “I think it looks clearer ahead. I believe we are at the end of it.”
“No such luck, I am afraid,” was the despondent reply.
For all that, in a few yards more they came upon an open place.
They could not help cheering. “At last!” cried they. But this triumph gave way to doubts.
“I am afraid we are not clear yet,” said Robinson. “See, there is wood again on the other side. Why, it is that sticky clay again. Why, George, it is the clearing we crossed before breakfast.”
“You are talking nonsense, Tom,” cried George, angrily.
“No, I am not,” said the other, sadly. “Come across. We shall soon know by our footsteps in the clay.”
Sure enough, half way across they found a track of footsteps. George was staggered. “It is the place, I really think,” said he. “But, Tom, when you talk of the footsteps, look here? You and I never made all these tracks. This is the track of a party.”
Robinson examined the ground.
“Tracks of three men; two barefoot, one in nailed boots.”
“Well, is that us?”
“Look at the clearing, George, you have got eyes. It is the same.”
“So 'tis, but I can't make out the three tracks.”
Robinson groaned. “I can. This third track has come since we went by.”
“No doubt of that, Tom. Well?”
“Well, don't you see?”
“No. What?”
“You and I are being hunted.”
George looked blank a moment. “Can't we be followed without being hunted?”
“No; others might, but not me. We are being hunted,” said Robinson, sternly. “George, I am sick of this, let us end it. Let us show these fellows they are hunting lions and not sheep. Is your revolver loaded?”
“Yes.”
“Then come on!” And he set off to run, following the old tracks. George ran by his side, his eyes flashing with excitement. They came to the brook. Robinson showed. George that their pursuer had taken some steps down the stream. “No matter,” said he, “don't lose time, George, go right up the bank to our path. He will have puzzled it out, you may take your oath.”
Sure enough they found another set of footsteps added to their own. Robinson paused before entering the wood. He put fresh caps on his revolver. “Now, George,” said he, in a low voice, “we couldn't sleep in this wood without having our throats cut, but before night I'll be out of danger or in my grave, for life is not worth having in the midst of enemies. Hush! hus-s-sh! You must not speak to me but in a whisper.”
“No!” whispered George.
“Nor rustle against the boughs.”
“No, I won't,” whispered George. “But make me sensible, Tom. Tell me what all this caution is to lead to. What are you doing?”
“I AM HUNTING THE HUNTER!” hissed. Robinson, with concentrated fury. And he glided rapidly down the trodden path, his revolver cocked, his ears pricked, his eye on fire, and his teeth clinched.
George followed, silent and cautious, his revolver ready cocked in his hand. As they glided thus, following their own footsteps, and hunting their hunter with gloomy brows, and nerves quivering, and hearts darkening with anger and bitterness, sudden a gloom fell upon the wood—it darkened and darkened. Meantime a breeze chill as ice disturbed its tepid and close air, forerunner of a great wind which was soon heard, first moaning in the distance, then howling and rushing up, and sweeping over the tall trees and rocking them like so many bulrushes. A great storm was coming.
THIS very afternoon Mr. Levi came to inquire for George Fielding. Unable to find him, he asked of several diggers where the young man was; he could get no information till Jem saw him, and came and told him.
Now when he heard they were gone, and not expected back for some days, Isaac gave quite a start, and showed a degree of regret and vexation that Jem was puzzled to account for.
On reflection he begged Jem to come to his tent; there he sat down and wrote a letter.
“Young man,” said he, “I do entreat you to give this to George Fielding the moment he returns to the camp. Why did he go without coming to see me? my old heart is full of misgivings.”
“You needn't have any, sir,” said Jem, surprised at the depth of feeling in the old Jew's face and voice. “He shall have the letter, you may depend.”
Levi thanked him.
He then said to Nathan: “Strike the tents, collect our party, and let us be gone.”
“What! going to leave us, sir?”
“Yes! young man, this very hour.”
“Well now, I am sorry for that, and so will the captain be, and his pal that you think so much of.”
“We shall not be long parted,” said the old man, in his sweet musical Eastern accent, “not very long, if you are faithful to your trust and give the good young man my letter. May good angels hover round him, may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob guard him!”
“Amen!” said rough Jem; for the reverend face glowed with piety, and the voice was the voice of prayer.
Suddenly an unpleasant reflection occurred to Jem.
“Well, but if you go, who is to buy our gold-dust?”
“The Christian merchants,” said Isaac, with an indifferent air.
“But they are such Jews,” cried Jem, inadvertently. “I mean—I mean——” And rough as he was, he looked as if he could have bitten his tongue off.
“I know what you mean,” said Isaac, sadly. He added: “Such as they are, they are all you have now. The old Jew was hunted and hooted and insulted in this place yesterday; here then he trades no more; those who set no value on him can of course supply his place.”
“The blackguards,” cried Jem, “the ruffians, I wish I had seen them. Come, Mr. Levi, that was not the mine; that was only the riffraff; you might forgive us that.”
“I never forgive,” was the calm reply.
A TREMENDOUS snow-storm fell upon the mine and drove Jem into his tent, where he was soon after joined by Jacky, a circumstance in itself sufficient to prove the violence of the storm, for Jacky loathed indoors, it choked him a good deal.
The more was Jem surprised when he heard a lamentable howl coming nearer and nearer, and a woman burst into his tent, a mere pillar of snow, for she was covered with a thousand flakes each as big as a lady's hand.
“Ochone! ochone! ochone!” cried Mary McDogherty, and, on being asked what was the matter, she sat down and rocked herself and moaned and cried, “Ochone—och, captain, avick, what will I do for you? an' who will I find to save you? an' oh, it is the warm heart and the kind heart ye had to poor Molly McDogherty that ud give her life to save yours this day.”
“The captain,” cried Jem, in great alarm. “What is wrong with the captain?”
“He is lying could and stiff in the dark, bloody wood. Och, the murthering villains! och, what will I do at all! och, captain, avick, warm was your heart to the poor Irish boys, but it is could now. Ochone! ochone!”
“Woman,” cried Jem, in great agitation, “leave off blubbering and tell me what is the matter.”
Thus blandly interrogated, Mary told him a story (often interrupted with tears and sighs) of what had been heard and seen yester eve by one of the Irish boys—a story that turned him cold, for it left on him the same impression it had left on the warmhearted Irishwoman, that at this moment his good friend was lying dead in the bush hard by.
He rose and loaded Robinson's double-barreled gun; he loaded it with bullets, and, as he rammed them fiercely down, he said angrily: “Leave off crying and wringing your hands; what on earth is the use of that? here goes to save him or to revenge him.”
“An' och, James, take the wild Ingine wid ye; they know them bloody, murthering woods better than our boys, glory be to God for taching them that same.”
“Of course I shall take him. You hear, Jacky, will you show me how to find the poor dear captain and his mate if they are in life?”
“If they are alive, Jacky will find them a good deal soon—if they are dead, still Jacky will find them.”
The Irishwoman's sorrow burst out afresh at these words. The savage then admitted the probability of that she dreaded.
“And their enemies—the cowardly villains—what will you do to them?” asked Jem, black with rage.
Jacky's answer made Mary scream with affright, and startled even Jem's iron nerves for a moment. At the very first word of the Irishwoman's story, the savage had seated himself on the ground with his back turned to the others, and, unnoticed by them, had rapidly painted his face with the war-paint of his tribe. Words cannot describe the ghastly terrors, the fiendish ferocity these traditional lines and colors gave his countenance. This creature, that looked so like a fiend, came erect into the middle of the tent with a single bound, as if that moment vomited forth by hell, and yet with a grander carriage and princelier presence than he had worn in time of peace; and even as he bounded he crossed his tomahawk and narrow wooden shield, to signify that his answer was no vulgar asseveration, but a vow of sacred war.
Kalingalunga glided from the tent. Jem followed him. The snow fell in flakes as large as a lady's hand, and the air was dark; Jem could not see where the hunter was taking him, but he strode after him and trusted to his sagacity.
Five hours' hard walking, and then the snow left off. The air became clear, and to Jem's surprise the bush, instead of being on his right hand, was now on his left; and there on its skirts, about a mile off, was the native camp. They had hardly come in sight of it when it was seen to break from quietude into extraordinary bustle.
“What is up?” asked Jem.
The hunter smiled, and pointed to his own face:
“Kalingalunga painted war.”
“What eyes the beggars must have,” said Jem.
The next minute a score of black figures came tearing up in such excitement that their long rows of white teeth and the whites of their eyes flashed like Budelights in their black heads.
Kalingalunga soon calmed them down by letting them know that he was painted for a private, not a national feud. He gave them no further information. I suspect he was too keen a sportsman to put others on the scent of his game. He went all through the camp, and ascertained from the stragglers that no men answering the description of George and Robinson had passed out of the wood.
“They are in the wood,” said he
He then ordered a great fire—bade Jem dry his clothes and eat; he collected two of his wives and committed Jem to their care, and glided like a panther into the wood.
What with the great heat succeeding to the great cold, and the great supper the gins gave him, Jem fell fast asleep. It was near daylight when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and there was Kalingalunga.
“Not a track on the snow.”
“No? then let us hope they are not in the wood.”
The hunter hung his head.
“Me tink they are in the wood,” said he, gravely.
Jem groaned, “Then they are lying under the soil of it or in some dark pit.”
Kalingalunga reflected. He replied to this effect:
“That there were no more traces of an assassin than of victims, consequently that it was impossible to know anything, and that it was a good deal too stupid to speak a good deal knowing nothing.”
All this time Jem's fear and rage and impatience contrasted greatly with the philosophic phlegm of the Pict, who looked so fierce and took it all so cool, ending with an announcement that now Kalingalunga would sleep a good deal.
The chief was soon asleep, but not till he had ordered his gins to wake him the moment the snow should be melted. This occurred at noon, and, after snatching a hasty meal, he put a tomahawk into Jem's hands and darted into the bush.
All the savage's coldness disappeared now he was at work. He took Jem right across the wood from southeast to northwest. Nothing stopped him. When the scrub was thick above but hollow below he threw himself on his belly and wriggled along like a snake. When it was all thick, he hacked into it with fury and forced a path. When it was impenetrable he went round it, and by some wonderful instinct got into the same line again. Thus they cut clean across the wood but found no tracks.
Then the savage, being out in the open, trotted easily down the woodside to the southwest point; here he entered and took a line straight as an arrow to the northeast.
It was about five in the afternoon. Kalingalunga was bleeding all over with scratches, and Jem was torn to pieces and done up. He was just about to tell the other that he must give in, when Kalingalunga suddenly stopped, and pointed to the ground:
“Track!”
“What of?”
“A white man's shoe.”
“How many are there?”
“One.”
Jem sighed.
“I doubt it is a bad job, Jacky,” said he.
“Follow—not too close,” was the low reply.
And the panther became a serpent, so smooth and undulating were the motions with which he glided upon the track he had now discovered.
Jem, well aware that he could not move noiselessly like the savage, obeyed him and crept after at some distance.
The savage had followed the man's footsteps about half a mile, and the white man the savage, when suddenly both were diverted from their purpose. Kalingalunga stood still and beckoned Jem. Jem ran to him, and found him standing snuffing the air with his great broad nostrils, like a stag.
“What is it?”
“White fellow burn wambiloa wood.”
“How d'ye know? how d'ye know?”
“Wambiloa wood smell a good way off when him burn.”
“And how do you know it is a white man?”
“Black fellow never burn wambiloa wood; not good to burn that. Keep it for milmeridien.”
The chief now cut off a few of his long hairs and held them up to ascertain the exact direction of the wind. This done, he barked a tree to mark the spot to which he had followed the trail, and striking out into quite a different direction he hunted by scent.
Jem expected to come on the burning wambiloa very soon, but he underrated either the savage's keen scent or the acrid odor of the sacred wood—perhaps both. They had gone half a mile at least before his companion thought it necessary to show any caution. At last he stopped short, and then Jem smelled a smell as if “cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves,” were all blazing in one bonfire. With some difficulty he was prevailed on to stand still and let the subtle native creep on, nor would he consent to be inactive until the other solemnly vowed to come back for him and give him his full share of the fighting. Then Kalingalunga went gliding like a shadow and flitted from tree to tree.
Woe be to the enemy the subtle, noiseless, pitiless, remorseless savage surprises; he has not put on his war-paint in sport or for barren show.
A MAN was hunting Robinson and George Fielding, and they were hunting him. Both parties inflamed with rage and bitterness; both master of the other's fate, they thought.
A change of wind brought a fall of snow, and the fall of snow baffled both parties in five minutes. Down came the Australian flakes large as a woman's hand (I am not romancing), and effaced the tracks of the pursuing and pursued and pursuers. So tremendous was the fall that the two friends thought of nothing but shelter. They drew their blankets over their heads and ran hither and thither looking for a friendly tree. At last they found an old tree with a prodigious stem that parted about ten feet up into two forks. With some effort they got up into this cleft, and then they were on a natural platform. Robinson always carried nails in his pocket, and he contrived to nail the two blankets to the forks so as to make a screen. Then they took out their provisions and fortified themselves with a hearty supper.
As they were eating it they were suddenly startled by an explosion so tremendous that their tree seemed to have been struck by lightning. Out went Robinson, with his mouth full, on to a snowdrift four feet high. He looked up and saw the cause of the fracas. A large bough of a neighboring tree had parted from the trunk with the enormous weight of the snow. Robinson climbed back to George and told him. Supper recommenced, but all over the wood at intervals they now heard huge forks and boughs parting from their parent stems with a report like a thirty-two-pounder ringing and echoing through the wood. Others so distant that they were like crackers.
These sounds were very appalling in the ghostly wood. The men instinctively drew closer to each other; but they were no chickens; use soon hardened them even to this. They settled it that the forks they were sitting on would not give way, because there were no leaves on them to hold a great burden of snow; and soon they yielded to nature and fell fast asleep in spite of all the dangers that hemmed them.
At his regular hour, just before sunrise, Robinson awoke and peeped from below the blanket. He shook George.
“Getup directly, George. We are wasting time when time is gold.”
“What is it?”
“'What is it?' There is a pilot in the sky that will take us out of this cursed trap, if the day does not come and spoil all.”
George's eye followed Robinson's finger, and in the center of the dark vault of heaven this glittered.
[Southern Cross constellation]
“I KNOW it, Tom. When I was sailing to this country we came to a part where the north star went down and down to the water's edge, and this was all we got in exchange for it.”
“George,” said Tom, rather sternly, “how do you know they don't hear us, and here we are surrounded by enemies, and would you run down our only friend? That silver star will save our lives if they are to be saved at all. Come on; and, George, if you were to take your revolver and blow out my brains, it is no more than I deserve for sleeping away the precious hours of night, when I ought to have been steering out of this cursed timber-net by that blessed star.”
With these words Robinson dived into the wood, steering due east by the Southern Cross. It was like going through a frozen river. The scrub was loaded with snow, which it discharged in masses on the travelers at every step.
“Keep your revolver dry in your hat and your lucifers, too,” cried Robinson. “We shall have to use them both, ten to one. As to our skins, that is hopeless.”
Then the men found how hard it is to take a line and keep it in the Australian bush. When the Southern Cross was lost in a cloud, though but for a minute, they were sure to go all wrong, as they found upon its reappearance; and sometimes the scrub was impenetrable and they were forced to go round it and walk four hundred yards, advancing eastward but twenty or thirty.
Thus they battled on till the sun rose.
“Now we shall be all in the dark again,” said poor Robinson, “here comes a fog.”
“Stop, Tom,” said George; “oughtn't we to make this good before we go on?”
“What do you mean?”
“We have come right by the star so far, have we not?”
“Yes.”
“Then let us bark fifty of these trees for a mark. I have seen that varmint Jacky do that.”
“A capital idea, George; out with our knives—here goes.”
“No breakfast to-day, Tom.”
“No, George, nor dinner, either, till we are out of the wood.”
These two poor fellows walked and ran and crept and struggled all day, sometimes hoping, sometimes desponding. At last, at five o'clock in the afternoon, their bellies gnawed with hunger, their clothes torn to rags, their skin bleeding, they came out upon some trees with the bark stripped. They gave one another a look that words can hardly paint. They were the trees they had barked twelve hours ago!
The men stood silent—neither cared to tell the other all he felt—for now there crept over these two stout bosoms a terrible chill, the sense of a danger new to them in experience, but not new in report. They had heard of settlers and others who had been lost in the fatal labyrinth of the Australian bush, and now they saw how easily it might be true.
“We may as well sit down here and rest; we shall do no good till night. What, are you in pain, George?”
“Yes, Tom, a little.”
“Where?”
“Something gnaws my stomach like an adder.”
“Oh, that is the soldier's gripes,” said Tom, with a ghastly attempt at a jest. “Poor George!” said he, kindly, “I dare say you never knew what it was to go twenty-four hours without food before.”
“Never in my life, Tom.”
“Well, I have, and I'll tell you the only thing to do—when you can't fill the breadbasket, shut it. Go to sleep till the Southern Cross comes out again.”
“What, sleep in our dripping clothes?”
“No, we will make a roaring fire with these strips of bark; they are dry as tinder by now.”
A pyre four feet high was raised, the strips being laid from north to south and east to west alternately, and they dried their blankets and warmed their smoking bodies.
“George, I have got two cigars; they must last us two days.”
“Oh, I'm no great smoker—keep them for your own comfort.”
Robinson wore a sad smile.
“We can't afford to smoke them; this is to chew; it is not food, George, but it keeps the stomach from eating itself. We must do the best for our lives we can for Susan's sake.”
“Give it me, Tom; I'll chew it, and thank you kindly. You are a wise companion in adversity, Tom; it is a great grief to me that I have brought you into this trouble, looking for what I know you think is a mare's nest, as the saying is.”
“Don't talk so, George. True pals like you and me never reproach one another. They stand and fall together like men. The fire is warm, George—that is one comfort.”
“The fire is well enough, but there's nothing down at it. I'd give a hundred pounds for a mutton chop.”
The friends sat like sacrifices by the fire, and chewed their cigars in silence, with foreboding hearts. After a while, as the heat laid hold of him, George began to dose. Robinson felt inclined to do the same, but the sense that perhaps a human enemy might be near caused him to fight against sleep in this exposed locality; so, whenever his head bobbed down, he lifted it sharply and forced his eyes open. It was on one of these occasions that, looking up, he saw, set as it were in a frame of leaves, a hideous countenance glaring at him; it was painted in circular lines, red, blue and white.
“Get up, George,” roared Robinson; “they are upon us!”
And both men were on their feet, revolvers pointed. The leaves parted, and out came this diabolical face which they had never seen before, but with it a figure they seemed to know, and a harsh cackle they instantly recognized, and it sounded like music to them.
“Oh, my dear Jacky,” cried George, “who'd have thought it was you! Well, you are a godsend! Good afternoon. Oh, Jacky!—how d'ye do?”
“Jacky not Jacky now, cos um a good deal angry, and paint war. Kalingalunga berywelltanku” (he always took these four words for one). “Now I go fetch white fellow;” and he disappeared.
“Who is he going to fetch? is it the one that was following us?”
“No doubt. Then, Tom, it was not an enemy, after all!”
Jacky came back with Jem, who, at sight of them alive and well, burst into extravagances. He waved his hat round his head several times and then flung it into a tree; then danced a pas seul consisting of steps not one of them known at the opera house, and chanted a song of triumph the words of which were, Ri tol de riddy iddydol, and the ditty naught; finally he shook hands with both.
“Never say die!”
“Well, that is hearty! and how thoughtful of him to come after us, and above all to bring Jacky!”
“That it was,” replied George. “Jem,” said he, with feeling, “I don't know but what you have saved two men's lives.”
“If I don't it shan't be my fault, farmer.”
George. “Oh, Jacky, I am so hungry! I have been twenty-four hours without food.”
Kalingalunga. “You stupid fellow to go widout food, always a good deal food in bush.”
George. “Is there? then for Heaven's sake go and get us some of it.”
Kalingalunga. “No need go, food here.” He stepped up to the very tree against which George was standing, showed him an excrescence on the bark, made two clean cuts with his tomahawk, pulled out a huge white worm and offered it George. George turned from it in disgust; the wild chief grinned superior and ate it himself, and smacked his lips with infinite gusto.
Meantime his quick eye had caught sight of something else. “A good deal dinner in dis tree,” said he, and he made the white men observe some slight scratches on the bark. “Possum claws go up tree.” Then he showed them that there were no marks with the claw reversed, a clear proof the animal had not come down. “Possum in tree.”
The white men looked up into the bare tree with a mixture of wonder and incredulity. Jacky cut steps with his tomahawk and went up the main stem, which was short, and then up a fork, one out of about twelve; among all these he jumped about like a monkey till he found one that was hollow at the top.
“Throw Kalingalunga a stone, den he find possum a good deal quick.”
They could not find a stone for their lives, so, being hungry, Robinson threw a small nugget of gold he had in his pocket. Jacky caught it, placed it at the top of the hollow fork and let it drop. Listening keenly, his fine ear heard the nugget go down the fork, striking the wood first one side then another, and then at a certain part sound no more. Down he slips to that silent part, makes a deep cut with his tomahawk just above the spot, thrusts in his hand and pulls out a large opossum, yelling and scratching and emitting a delicious scent in an agony of fear. The tomahawk soon silenced him, and the carcass fell among the applauding whites. Now it was Robinson's turn. He carved the raw animal for greater expedition, and George helped him to wrap each limb and carcass in a thin covering of clay. Thus prepared, it was thrust into the great pile of burning ashes.
“Look yonder, do! look at that Jem! Why, Jem, what are you up to, patroling like a sentinel out there?”
“Never you heed Jem,” was the dry reply; “you mind the roast, captain, and I'll mind—my business;” and Jem continued to parade up and down with his gun cocked and his eye piercing the wood.
To Robinson's repeated and uneasy inquiries what meant this pantomime, Jem persisted in returning no answer but this: “You want your dinner, captain; eat your dinner, and then I'll hoffer a hobservation; meantime, as these woods are queer places, a little hextra caution is no sin.”
The pie dishes were now drawn out of the ashes and broken, and the meat baked with all its juices was greedily devoured. “It tastes like a rabbit stuffed with peppermint,” said George, “and uncommon nice it is. Now I am another man.”
“So am I; Jacky forever!”
“Now, Jem, I have dined. Your story, if you please. Why are you here? for you are a good fellow, but you haven't got gumption enough to say to yourself, 'These two will get lost in the bush, I'll take Jacky and pull them out.'”
“You are right, captain, that wasn't the way at all; and, since your belly is full and your courage up, you will be able to enjoy my story better than you could afore.”
“Yes, so let us have it;” and Robinson leaned back luxuriously, being filled and warmed.
“First and foremost,” commenced this artful narrator, “there is a chap prowling in this wood at the present time with a double-barreled gun to blow out your brains, captain.”
“The devil,” cried Robinson, starting to his feet.
“And yours, farmer.”
“How do you know?” asked George, without moving.
“That is what I am going to tell you. That Mary McDogherty came crying to my tent all through the snow. 'What is up?' says I; says she, 'Murder is up.' Then she told me her cousin, an Irish boy, was at Bevan's store and he heard some queer talk, and he looked through a chink in the wall and saw two rascals putting their heads together, and he soon made out they were driving a bargain to rob you two. One was to do it, the other was a-egging him on. 'I must have fifty pounds first,' says this one. 'Why?' says the other. 'Because he has been and locked my pal up that was to be in it with me.'”
“Ah!” cried Robinson. “Go on, Jem—there is a clew anyway.”
“I have got a thicker one behind. Says the other, 'Agreed! when will you have it?' 'Why, now,' says t'other. Then this one gave him a note. Pat couldn't see that it was a fifty, but no doubt it was, but he saw the man take it and put it in a little tin box and shove it in his bosom.”
“That note was the price of blood,” said Robinson. “Oh, the black-hearted villains. Tell me who they were, that is all; tell me but who they were!”
“The boy didn't know.”
“There! it is always so. The fools! they never know.”
“Stop a bit, captain, there is a clew (your own word).”
“Ay, and what is the clew?”
“As soon as ever the note was safe in his bosom he says: 'I sold you, blind mate; I'd have given fifty sooner than not done this job. Look here!' says he, 'I have sworn to have a life for each of these;' and, captain,” said Jem, suddenly lowering his voice, “with that it seems he held up his right hand.”
“Well, yes! yes! eh!”
“And there were two fingers a-missing on it!”
“Ah!”
“Now those two fingers are the ones you chopped off with your cutlass the night when the tent was attacked.”
“Why, Tom, what is this? you never told me of this,” cried George.
“And which are in my pocket.”
“In your pocket?” said George, drawing away from him.
“Ay, farmer! wrapped up in silver paper, and they shall never leave my pocket till I have fitted them on the man, and seen him hung or shot with them two pickers and stealers tied round his bloodthirsty, mercenairy, aass-aassinating neck, say that I said it.”
George. “Jacky, show us the way out of this wood.”
Kalingalunga bowed assent, but he expressed a wish to take with him some of the ashes of the wambiloa. George helped him.
Robinson drew Jem aside. “You shouldn't have mentioned that before George; you have disgusted him properly.”
“Oh, hang him! he needn't be so squeamish; why, I've had 'em salt—”
“There, there! drop it, Jem, do!”
“Captain! are you going to let them take us out of the wood before we have hunted it for that scoundrel?”
“Yes, I am. Look here, Jem, we are four, and he is one, but a double-barreled gun is an awkward enemy in a dark wood. No, Jem, we will outwit him to the last. We will clear the wood and get back to the camp. He doesn't know we have got a clew to him. He will come back without fear, and we will nail him with the fifty-pound note upon him. And then—Jack Ketch.”
The whole party was now on the move, led by Kalingalunga, bearing the sacred ashes.
“What on earth is he going to do with them?”
The chief heard this query, and looking back said gravely, “He take them to 'Milmeridien';” and the party followed Jacky, who twisted and zigzagged about the bush till, at last, he brought them to a fairy spot, whose existence in that rugged wood none of them had dreamed possible. It was a long, open glade, meandering like a river between two deep, irregular fringes of the drooping acacia, and another lovely tree which I only know by its uncouth, unmelodious, scientiuncular name—the eucalyptus. This tree, as well as the drooping acacia, leaned over the ground with long leaves like disheveled hair.
Kalingalunga paused at the brink and said to his companions in a low, awestruck voice, “Milmeridien.”
The glade was full of graves, some of them fresh, glittering with bright red earth under the cool, green acacias, others richly veiled with golden moss more or less according to their age; and in the recesses of the grove peeped smoother traces of mortality, mossy mounds a thousand years old, and others far more ancient still, now mere excrescences of green, known to be graves only by the light of that immense gradation of times and dates and epochs.
The floor of the open glade was laid out as a vast parterre—each grave a little flower-bed, round, square, oval, or rhomboid; and all round each bed flowed in fine and graceful curves little paths too narrow for a human foot. Primeval tradition had placed them there that spirits might have free passage to visit all the mighty dead. For here reposed no vulgar corpses. Here, their heads near the surface, but their feet deep in earth, sat the great hunters and warriors of every age of the race of Kalingalunga, once a great nation, though now a failing tribe. They sat there this many a day, their weapons in their hands, ready to start up whenever the great signal should come, and hunt once more, but without fatigue, in woods boundless as the sea, and with bodily frames no longer mortal, to knock and be knocked on the head, ad infinitum.
Simple and benign creed!
A cry of delight burst from the white men, and they were going to spread themselves over the garden of the dead.
The savage checked them with horror.
“Nobody walk there while him alive,” said he. “Now you follow me and not speak any words at all, or Kalingalunga will leave you in the bush.—Hush!”
The savage paused, that even the echo of his remonstrance might die well away before he traversed the garden. He then bowed his head down upon his breast in a set manner, and so remained quiet a few seconds. In that same attitude he started and walked slowly by the verge of the glade, keeping carefully clear of the graves, and never raising his head. About half way he stopped and reverently scattered the ashes of the wambiloa upon three graves that lay near the edge, then forward—silent, downcast, reverential.
“Mors omnibus est communis!” The white men, even down to Jem, understood and sympathized with Kalingalunga. In this garden of the dead of all ages they felt their common humanity, and followed their black brother silent and awestruck. Melted, too, by the sweet and sacred sorrow of this calm scene; for here Death seemed to relax his frown, and the dead but to rest from trouble and toil, mourned by gentle, tender trees; and in truth it was a beautiful thought of these savage men to have given their dead for companions those rare and drooping acacias, that bowed themselves and loosed their hair so like fair women abandoned to sorrow over the beloved and dead, and night and morning swept with their dewy eyelashes the pillows of the brave. Requiescant in pace!—resurgant in pacem! For I wish them better than they wished themselves.
After Milmeridien came a thick scrub, through which Kalingalunga tracked his way; and then a loud hurrah burst from all, for they were free—the net was broken. There were the mountains before them and the gaunt wood behind them at last. The native camp was visible two miles distant, and thither the party ran and found food and fires in abundance. Black sentinels were set at such distances as to render a surprise impossible, and the travelers were invited to sleep and forget all their troubles. Robinson and Jem did sleep, and George would have been glad to, and tried, but was prevented by an unfortunate incident—les enfans terribles found out his infirmity, viz., that nothing they could do would make him hit them. So half a dozen little rascals, potter bellied than you can conceive, climbed up and down George, sticking in their twenty claws like squirrels, and feeling like cold, slippery slugs. Thus was sleep averted, until a merciful gin, hearing the man's groans, came and cracked two or three of these little black pots with a waddie or club, so then George got leave to sleep, and just as he was dozing off, ting, tong, ti tong, tong, tong, came a fearful drumming of parchment. A corroboree or native dance was beginning. No more sleep till that was over—so all hands turned out. A space was cleared in the wood, women stood on both sides with flaming boughs and threw a bright red light upon a particular portion of that space; the rest was dark as pitch. Time, midnight. When the white men came up the dancing had not begun. Kalingalunga was singing a preliminary war song.
George had picked up some of the native language, and he explained to the other that Jacky was singing about some great battle, near the Wurra-Gurra River.
“The Wurra-Gurra! why, that is where we first found gold.”
“Why of course it is! and—yes! I thought so.”
“Thought what?”
“It is our battle he is describing.”
“Which of 'em?—we live in hot water.”
“The one before Jem was our friend. What is he singing? Oh, come! that is overdoing it, Jacky! Why, Jem! he is telling them he killed you on the spot.”
“I'll punch his head!”
“No! take it easy,” said Robinson; “he is a poet; this is what they call poetical license.”
“Lie without sense, I call it—when here is the man.”