Title: The Boy in the Bush
Author: Richard Rowe
Release date: March 7, 2018 [eBook #56693]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from scans of public domain works at The National
Library of Australia.)
“POOR CHUMMY BRISTLED LIKE A PORCUPINE” FRONTISPIECE.—See page 189.
By the late
RICHARD ROWE,
AUTHOR OF “ROUGHING IT,” “THE DESERTED SHIP,” “A HAVEN OF REST,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
ZWEEKER, FRASER, MAHONEY, AND DALZIEL.
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLXXXV.
(All rights reserved.)
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Limited, London and Aylesbury.
“The impudent scoundrel! Just look at this, mamma. I should like to see him at it,” exclaimed Sydney Lawson in great wrath, as he handed his mother a very dirty note which a shepherd had brought home. On coarse, crumpled grocer’s paper these words were written in pencil: “Master sidney i Want your Mare the chesnit with the white starr soe You Send her to 3 Mile flat first thing Tomorrer Or i Shall Have to cum an Fetch Her.—Warrigal.”
“Sam says,” Sydney went on in rising rage, “that the fellow had the cheek to give it him just down by the slip-panels. He rode up to Sam and Paddy Fury as coolly as if he was coming up to spend the night at the house. If the great hulking fellows had a mite of pluck, they’d have knocked him off his horse, instead of taking orders from a chap like that. Paddy is fond enough of bragging about his foightin’ when there’s nobody to fight. But they’re like all the people about here; three parts of them funk the bushrangers, and the rest are in league with them. He may well call himself Warrigal, the sneaking dingo! He wouldn’t have been game to talk about sticking us up, if he hadn’t known father was away. Send him my Venus! Mr. Warrigal must have gone cranky.”
Sydney Lawson, who made this indignant speech at the tea-table of the Wonga-Wonga station (and almost made the hot potato-cake jump off the table with the thumps he gave it), was a tall, slim lad of fourteen. He and his mother had been left in charge of the station, whilst his father took a mob of cattle overland to Port Phillip. Sydney was very proud of having the key of the store, counting in the sheep, peppering mangled calves with strychnine to poison the native dogs that had mangled them, and riding about all day cracking his stock-whip, heading back store-bullocks that seemed inclined to make a rush at him, looking after the men, and when meat was wanted, driving the beast into the stock-yard himself, and shooting it with his own gun. Sydney thought himself a man now, and was very angry that Warrigal should think he could be frightened “like a baby.”
This Warrigal was a bushranger, who, with one or two mates, wandered about in that part of New South Wales, doing pretty much as he liked. They stopped the mail, “bailed up” dray-men and horsemen on the road by the two and three dozen together; “stuck up” solitary stores, and publics, and stations, and once had been saucy enough to stick up a whole township. The police couldn’t get hold of them. Some people said that the troopers were too lazy, and some that they were too cowardly. The truth was that the troopers did not know the bush like the bushrangers, and could not help themselves, as they could, to fresh horses when the ones they were riding were knocked up; and, besides, the bushrangers had “bush telegraphs”—spies who let them know where it was safe to rob, and did all they could to put the troopers on false scents.
The note that Sydney had received caused a good deal of excitement at the Wonga-Wonga tea-table. Miss Smith, who helped Mrs. Lawson in the house, and taught Sydney’s sisters and his brother Harry, had not long come out from London, and was in a great fright.
“Oh, pray send him the horse, Master Sydney,” she cried, “or we shall all be murdered in our beds. You’ve got so many horses, one can’t make any difference.”
All the little Lawsons instantly turned on Miss Smith, though she was their governess.
“I thought you English people were so brave,” said satirical Miss Gertrude: “you make yourselves out to be in your history-books.”
But Sydney, though Miss Smith had talked as if Venus was just like any common horse, was very fond of Miss Smith. She was pretty, and only five years older than himself. Besides, he was acting master of the house, and a little gentleman to boot. So he said,
“Be quiet, children; you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Miss Smith isn’t used to the colony.—Don’t be alarmed, Miss Smith. I will see that you come to no harm.”
And then he began to talk to his mother about what they had better do. Just because he was a manly little fellow, he was not ashamed to take his mother’s advice.
Now Mrs. Lawson was as little disposed as Sydney to let Mr. Warrigal do as he liked. She knew that her husband would have run the risk of being “stuck up,” if he had been at home, rather than have obeyed the bushranger’s orders, and that he would be very pleased if they could manage to defy the rascal. Still, it was a serious matter to provoke Messrs. Warrigal and Co. to pay the house a visit. She felt sure that Sydney would fight, and she meant to fire at the robbers herself if they came; but would she and Sydney be able to stand against three armed men? Not a shepherd or stockman or horsebreaker about the place was to be depended upon; and Ki Li, the Chinaman cook, though a very good kind of fellow, would certainly go to bed in his hut if the robbers came by day, and stay in bed if the robbers came by night. John Jones, the “new chum” ploughman, whose wife was Mrs. Lawson’s servant, slept in the house, and he was too honest to band with the bushrangers in any way; “but then, he’s such a sheep, you know, mamma,” said Sydney.
There was time to send word to the police at Jerry’s Town; but who was to go? Any of the men, except Ki Li and John Jones, would be as likely as not to go to Warrigal’s camping-place instead of to the Jerry’s Town police-barracks; and Ki Li would be afraid to go out in the dark, and John Jones would be afraid to ride anything but one of the plough horses, and that only at an amble. It wouldn’t do for Sydney to leave the place, since he was the only male effective on it; so what was to be done? But little Harry had heard his mother and brother talking, and, as soon as he made out their difficulty, he looked up and said,
“Why, mamma, I can go. Syd, lend me your stock-whip, and let me have Guardsman.”
Neither mother nor brother had any fear about Harry’s horsemanship (up-country Australian boys can ride when they are not much bigger than monkeys), but they scarcely liked to turn the little fellow out for a long ride by night. However, he knew the way well enough. Three-Mile Flat didn’t lie in his road, and if he didn’t fall in with any of the Warrigal gang, nobody would harm him; and, finally, there was no one else to go to Jerry’s Town who would or could go in time.
So Sydney went to the stable and slipped the bridle on Venus, and rode her down to the flat by the creek, to drive up Guardsman. And then he put the saddle and bridle on Guardsman and brought him round to the garden-gate, where Harry stood flicking about Sydney’s stock-whip very impatiently, whilst his mamma kissed him and tied a comforter round his neck. Sydney gave Harry a leg up, and cantered with him to the slip-panels, to take them down for him.
As soon as he was through, Harry shouted “Good night,” and gave Guardsman his head, and was off like a little wild boy. After one or two failures, that made his face tingle, he managed to crack Sydney’s stock-whip almost as cleverly as Sydney could have done. It rang through the still moonlight bush, and when Sydney lost sight of him, Harry, tired of the monotony of flat riding, was steering Guardsman stem on for a grey log that glistened like frosted silver in the moonshine.
When Sydney had stabled Venus again, and—an unusual precaution—turned the key in the rusty padlock, and when he had given a look about the outbuildings, it was time for him to go in to supper and family prayers. He read the chapter, and Mrs. Lawson read the prayers. She was a brave woman, but, with her little girls about her, and her little boy away, she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling a little when she said, “Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord; and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.”
Then the girls kissed their mother and their brother, and said “Good night;” and Miss Smith kissed Mrs. Lawson, and said “Good night,” and said “Good night” to Sydney without kissing him (though he looked as if he would have liked her to); and John Jones and his wife said “Good night, ma’am,” “Good night, sir,” just as if Sydney had been a grown-up master, and went to bed to snore like pigs, though they were dreadfully afraid of bushrangers. Sydney went into his mother’s bed-room, and looked at the blunderbuss that stood by the bed-head (Mrs. Lawson had selected the blunderbuss as her weapon, because she thought she “must be sure to hit with that big thing”), and he showed her once more how to pull the trigger. Then he bade her “Good night,” and went through the house, snacking the windows and fastening the shutters, though that was as unusual at Wonga-Wonga as locking the stable-door. And then he went along the verandah to his own little room at one end, where he locked himself in, and drew the charge of his gun and loaded it again, and looked at the chambers of his revolver, and put the caps on, and laid it down on a chair ready to his hand. When his preparations were completed, he said his prayers, and tumbled into bed with his clothes on, and slept like a top.
Harry wasn’t expected home until next day. He had been told to sleep at the “Macquarie Arms,” in Jerry’s Town, when he had left his message at the barracks, and come home at his leisure in the morning. About four miles from Wonga-Wonga, the dreariest part of the road to Jerry’s Town—begins a two miles’ stretch of dismal scrub. Harry put his heels into Guardsman’s sides to make him go even faster than he was going when they went into the scrub, and was pleased to hear a horse’s hoofs coming towards him from the other end. He thought it was a neighbour riding home to the next station; but it was Warrigal. As soon as Harry pulled up Guardsman to chat for a minute, Warrigal laid hold of the bridle and pulled Harry on to the saddle before him.
“Let’s see, you’re one of the Wonga-Wonga kids, ain’t you?” said the robber. “And where are you off to at this time of night? Oh! oh! to fetch the traps, I guess; but I’ll stop that little game.”
Just then Harry gave a coo-ey! He couldn’t give a very loud one, for he was lying like a sack on the robber’s horse; but it made Warrigal very savage. He put the cold muzzle of a pistol against Harry’s face, and said,
“You screech again, youngster, and you won’t do it no more.”
And then Warrigal took Harry and the horses into the scrub, and gagged Harry with a bit of iron he took out of his pocket, and bailed him up to a crooked old honeysuckle tree, with a long piece of rope he carried in his saddle-bags.
“Don’t frighten yourself; I’ll tell your Mar where you are, and you’ll be back by breakfast,” said Warrigal, as he got on Guardsman, driving his own tired horse before him.
It wasn’t pleasant for a little boy to be tied tight to an ugly old tree in that lonely place, and to hear the curlews wailing just as the bushrangers call to one another, and the laughing jackasses hooting before daylight, as if they were making fun of him. But what vexed brave little Harry most was that he hadn’t been able to get to the police.
Next morning, just as day was breaking, Warrigal and his two mates, with crape masks on, rode up to Wonga-Wonga. I don’t know which were the bigger cowards, those three great fellows going to bully a lady and a boy, or the half-dozen and more of great fellows about the place who they knew would let them do it. They made as little noise as they could, but the dogs began to bark, and woke Sydney. When he woke, however, Warrigal had got his little window open, and was covering him with his pistol. Sydney put out his hand for his revolver, and though Warrigal shouted, “Throw up your hands, boy, or I’ll shoot you through the head,” he jumped out of bed and fired. He missed Warrigal, and Warrigal missed him, but Warrigal’s bullet knocked Sydney’s revolver out of his hand, and one of Warrigal’s mates made a butt at the bedroom door and smashed it, and he and Warrigal (were they not heroes?) rushed into the room, and threw Sydney down on the bed, and pinioned his arms with a sheet. The other bushranger was watching the horses. By this time the whole station was aroused. The men peeped out of their huts, half frightened and half amused; not one of them came near the house. John Jones and his wife piled their boxes against their room-door, and then crept under the bed. Miss Smith went into hysterics, and Gertrude and her sisters couldn’t help looking as white as their night-dresses, though they tried hard to show Miss Smith how much braver native girls were than English, even if they did not know so much French, and Use of the Globes, and Mangnall’s Questions. Mrs. Lawson had fired off her blunderbuss, but it had only broken two panes of the parlour-window, and riddled the verandah-posts; so Wonga-Wonga was at the bushrangers’ mercy.
They ransacked the house, and took possession of any little plate and jewellery and other portable property they could find. When the robbers had packed up what they called the “swag,” and put it on one of their horses, they pulled Ki Li out of bed, and made him light a fire, and cook some chops, and boil some tea. (In the Australian bush the hot water isn’t poured on the tea, but the leaves are boiled in the pot.) Then they marched Mrs. Lawson, and Miss Smith, and Sydney, and his sisters, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Ki Li, into the keeping-room, and sat down to breakfast, with pistols in their belts, and pistols laid, like knives and forks, on the table. The bushrangers tried to be funny, and pressed Mrs. Lawson and the other ladies to make themselves at home and take a good meal. One of the robbers was going to kiss Miss Smith, but Sydney, pinioned as he was, ran at him, and butted him like a ram. He was going to strike Sydney, but Gertrude ran between them, calling out, “Oh, you great coward!” and Warrigal felt ashamed, and told the man to sit down.
“We call him Politeful Bill,” Warrigal remarked in apology; “but he ain’t much used to ladies’ serciety.”
When breakfast was over, Warrigal asked Sydney where the mare was.
“Find her yourself,” said Sydney.
“Well, there won’t be much trouble about that,” answered Warrigal. “She’s in the stable, I know, and you’ve locked her in, for I tried the door. I suppose you’re too game to give up the key, my young fighting-cock? You’re game and no mistake, Master Cornstalk, and I’m a native, too.”
“More shame for you,” said Sydney.
“That be blowed,” went on Warrigal; “and since you’re so sarcy, Master Sydney, you shall come and see me take your mare. You might as well ha’ sent her instead of sending for the traps, and then I shouldn’t ha’ got the bay horse too”—and he pointed to Guardsman hung up on the verandah.
There was no time to ask what had become of Harry. Warrigal hurried Sydney by the collar to the stable, whilst the other men mounted their horses, and unhooked Guardsman to be ready for their captain. Warrigal blew off the padlock with his pistol, but Venus was fractious, and wouldn’t let him put on her halter. Whilst he was dodging about in the stable with her, Sydney heard hoofs in the distance. Nearer and nearer came the tan-ta-ta-tan-ta-ta-tan-ta-ta. Four bluecoats galloped up to the slip-panels—three troopers and a sergeant; the sergeant with Harry on his saddlebow. In a second Harry was down, and in three seconds the slip-panels were down too. Up the rocky rise came the troopers as if they were riding a steeple-chase. The waiting bushrangers saw the morning sun gleaming on their carbines as the police dashed between the aloes and the prickly pears, and, letting Guardsman go, were off like a shot. Sydney banged to the stable-door, and, setting his back against it, shouted for help. His mother and Gertrude, and even John Jones, as the police were close at hand, rushed to his aid; and up galloped the troopers. Instead of bagging Venus, Warrigal was bagged himself. He fired a bullet or two through the door, and talked very big about not being taken alive; but he thought better of it, and in an hour’s time he was jogging off to Jerry’s Town with handcuffs on and his legs tied under his horse’s belly.
“WARRIGAL WAS BAGGED HIMSELF.”
If Warrigal had not bailed up little Harry, most likely he would not have been taken; for when Harry had got to Jerry’s Town, he would have found all the troopers away except one. In the scrub, however, Harry heard the sergeant and his men returning from a wild-goose chase they had been sent on by the bush telegraphs, and managing at last to spit the gag out of his mouth, he had given a great co-oo-oo-oo-oo-ey!
After that night Miss Smith always called Sydney Mr. Sydney, and Sydney let Harry ride Venus as often as he liked.
Soon after his adventures with Warrigal, Harry Lawson had a tutor to teach him instead of Miss Smith, and when Harry was twelve, his cousin, Donald M‘Intyre, who was about his own age, came to live at Wonga-Wonga to share the tutor’s instructions. Harry considered this a very jolly arrangement. Like most Australian boys, he was a very quick little fellow, but he was inclined to be rather lazy over his lessons; and Donald helped him in his Latin and French exercises, and made his sums come right for him, and yet was just as ready for a spree out of school as Harry was. Donald, too, had been born in the colony, and so the two boys got on famously together.
One Christmas the tutor had gone down to spend his holidays in Sydney, and Harry and Donald could do just as they liked. The papers were full of some traces of Leichhardt, the brave Australian explorer, that had recently been discovered, and the boys, of course, had read “Robinson Crusoe” also; and so they resolved to set out on a secret exploring expedition. They determined to go by water, because that would be both more like Robinson Crusoe, and more of a change for them. They were very fond of riding, but still they were as used to riding as English boys are to playing at “foot it,” and they had been only once or twice in the “cot” which a North of Ireland man, who had come to the station as a bush carpenter, had finished the week before, that the station people might be able to cross the creek in time of flood, when no horse could swim it or ford it.
One broiling December day—there is no frost or snow, you know, in Australia at Christmas-time—Harry and Donald slipped down to the cot directly after breakfast. They had a gun with them, and caps, and powder, and shot, and colonial matches in brown paper boxes, and some tea, and sugar, and flour, and three parts of a huge damper (that’s a great flat round cake of bread without any yeast in it), and a box of sardines and a can of preserved salmon, that Sydney had given them out of the store, and some salt, and two pannikins, and a Jack Shea (that’s a great pot) to boil their tea in, and a blanket to cover them by night, and to hoist now and then as a sail by day. The cot had no mast, but they meant to use one of the oars for that, and they had cut a tea-tree pole to serve for a yard.
They were going up the creek, not down. They knew that the creek ran into the Kakadua at Jerry’s Town that way, and, of course, as explorers, they wanted to go where they had not been before. So they shipped their stores, and untied the painter—it was twisted round an old gum tree on the creek-side—and pushed off from the bank, and began to try to pull up stream. But they could not row nearly so well as they could ride, and at first they made the cot spin round like a cockchafer on a pin. They were sharp little fellows, however, and soon got under way, only catching crabs when they tried to feather.
By the time they got abreast of Three-Mile Flat, though, their arms ached; and Harry stopped pulling, as he made out, to tell Donald again about Warrigal, and Donald stopped pulling, as he made out, to listen to Harry, although he knew the story by heart. Then they gave a spurt, and then they stopped pulling again, and hoisted their blanket on one oar, and tried to steer with the other; but it was a long time before they could manage this properly. The sail was for ever flapping against the mast—taken aback, as the sailors say—or else the cot was poking her nose into the tea-tree scrub on one side of the creek or the other, as if she wanted to get out of the hot sunlight into the moist shade. Still, it would have been very pleasant, if there had not been quite so many mosquitoes; but they hummed over the water in restless clouds like fountain-spray. However there were native vines, with grapes like yellow currants, twining round the lanky tea trees and lacing them together; and the bell-birds kept on dropping down into the scrub, and flying up into the gum trees, and calling ting-ting, ting-ting. It sounded like a dinner-bell, and the boys determined to take an early dinner. They ate up almost all their damper, and all their sardines, and picked their dessert off the wild vines.
On they went again; but they had not gone far before they came to what is called in Australia a “chain of ponds.” The creek had partly dried up, and they had to pull and push the cot from one pond to another. This was hard work, and not very pleasant work either, for the sand-flies got into the corners of their eyes as if they wanted to give them the blight, and the leeches crawled up their trousers and turned their white socks red with blood. Their heads throbbed so that they could hardly bear to hear the locusts—thousands of them—clattering on the trees like iron-ship wrights hammering, and they felt quite angry when the long-tailed, brown coach-whip bird flew by, making a noise just like a slavedriver cracking his lash. At last, however, they got into clear water again—clear except for the grey snags and sawyers—and paddled lazily along; listening to the twittering wood-swallows as they dipped their blue wings into the water, and the great, black, sharp-winged swifts screaming for joy as they tacked high overhead. Harry and Donald could not help wishing that the cot (which they had christened the Endeavour, in honour of Captain Cook) would dart along of herself like the swifts.
It had taken such a time to get her through the chain of ponds, that evening was coming on. Great flocks of cockatoos were circling round their roosting-trees like English rooks, and parrots and lories—their fine green, and red, and blue, and yellow feathers beginning to look very dull and ragged, because moulting-time was near—were taking their evening bath in the shallow water by the banks, splashing it over their heads and wings, and chattering as if they were saying, “Isn’t this prime fun?” Presently the cockatoos lighted on the dark trees, and made them look as if a hundred or two of ladies’ pocket-handkerchiefs had been hung out to dry on them, and then the boys thought it was time to find a roosting-place themselves. They pushed the cot into a little bay in the bank, and fastened her to an old black stump, and then they scooped a hole in the ground for a fireplace, and gathered sticks, and lighted a fire. But when they were going to cook their supper, they found that they had lost their flour, and that their sugar-bag had got so wet that there was only a little sweet mud left in it. But that did not matter nearly so much as the loss of the flour. They boiled their tea, and sweetened it with the mud, and after a good deal of trouble they got the salmon-tin open. Harry, who was very hungry, was for finishing the salmon and what was left of the damper; but Donald said,
“No; we must go on allowance now—we’ll keep half for to-morrow’s breakfast, because, perhaps, we shan’t be able to shoot anything to-night—that’s how explorers manage.”
When supper was over, the moon had risen, and the boys went down with their gun to the creek to see if they could shoot a duck. The dark water was plated in patches with ribbed and circling silver, and, just in the middle of one of the patches, up came a black something like a bottle.
“Hush! it’s a water-mole,” whispered Harry; but before he could point his gun at it the queer duck-billed thing had gone under again. The boys found no ducks, and did not go very far to look for them. They were tired, and had had their supper, and were sure of a breakfast. So they soon went back to their fire, piled more sticks on it, and then, snuggling under their blanket, fell asleep. They said their prayers before they fell asleep beneath the bright moon and stars, and, as they said them, they thought for the first time that they had not done quite right in leaving Wonga-Wonga without letting any one there know that they were going.
When they woke in the morning, the sun was up, and the glossy magpies were hopping about the logs, and everything looked cheerful. The boys took a dip in the creek, and boiled their tea, and had their breakfast, and then away they went again in high spirits, although now they had no food except what they might shoot or catch. The kingfishers in their blue coats and yellow waistcoats were darting backwards and forwards over the water, and the fussy little sedge-warblers were dodging about the reeds, and twittering a little bit of every bird’s song they could think of; but they weren’t worth powder and shot. By noon—they could tell the time pretty well by the sun—both Harry and Donald felt very hungry, for they had had a very early breakfast. They began to wish that they had saved some of the salmon for their dinner; but just then the Endeavour was gliding between banks that had no tree or scrub, but only tufts of dry coarse grass on them, and Donald saw a bandicoot run out of one of the tufts. Up went the gun to his shoulder, and in a second Mr. Bandicoot had rolled over dead upon his back. A bandicoot is a very big brown kind of rat—nicer to eat than any rabbit. The boys soon made a fire, and baked the bandicoot in the ashes, in his skin; and they relished him ten times more than the preserved salmon. Rat, and tea without sugar or milk, may not seem a very inviting bill of fare, but you know the Delectus says that hunger is the best sauce, and, besides, baked bandicoot anybody might like.
Harry and Donald had some more shooting that day. About a mile from the place where they had taken their dinner they found a break in the creek-bank, filled up with tall rusty bulrushes. They got out of the cot, and pushed their way through the rushes, looking out very carefully for snakes, and sometimes sinking into the slush below the baked upper earth, just as if their feet had gone through a pie-crust, and on the other side they found a lagoon full of water-fowl. Then they forced the Endeavour through the rushes—she made a great black steaming furrow in the yellow ground—and launched her down the dry border of the lagoon, and pulled about in her, popping away in turns, and fancying themselves in Fairy Land. There were two or three black swans cruising proudly backwards and forwards, and fleets of piebald geese, and grey geese, and sooty ducks, and silvery ducks, and chestnut ducks with emerald necks, and musk ducks with double chins, and all their bodies under water. It was very funny to see their heads and necks moving about, as if they had lost their bodies and were looking for them. There were coots, too, on the banks of the lagoon, and purple herons and white herons holding up one leg as if they were trying how long they could do it for a wager; and ibises with untidy tufts of feathers on their breasts, that looked like costermongers’ dirty cravats dangling out of their waistcoats, and native companions, great light blue cranes lifting their long legs out of the mud, and trumpeting “Look out!” to one another, when the Endeavour was coming their way. There were beautiful water-lilies on the lagoon, also, with broad round leaves like shields of malachite, and great blossoms of alabaster, and blue and rose-coloured china. The boys, however, were too busy with the water-fowl to look at the water-flowers. They kept on popping away until the moon had been up for some time, and the bitterns were booming in the swamps all round, and the nankeen cranes were stalking about, nodding their white crest-plumes like Life Guardsmen, and croaking, “Now we’ll make a night of it.”
When Harry and Donald left off shooting, they found that they had fired away all their powder and shot except two charges, and that they had got three little ducks. They made a very merry supper off one, baking it on the lagoon bank, as they had baked the bandicoot, and then they went to sleep by their fire. Early in the morning, just as the laughing jackass was hooting before daybreak, Donald woke. The moon had gone down, and so had the fire, and Donald, though it was summer, felt very chilly.
He got up to stamp his feet and stir up the fire. What do you think he saw? An iguana—that’s a great lean lizard—sneaking off with the two ducks that were to serve for breakfast and dinner. Donald flung a hot log at him, but it only made the lizard run the faster. Plenty of red sparks were scattered about, but the two ducklings were not dropped.
“Hech, weel,” said Donald (he had picked up a little Scotch from his father). “it’s nae guid greetin’ ower spilt milk;” and he lay down again and slept like a top, until Harry woke him, asking him what ever could have become of the ducks? They had to breakfast on tea alone that morning. They tried to shoot a duck, but they had made the birds wild, and they were very anxious not to waste their precious powder, and so they did not succeed.
When they had hauled the cot into the creek again, they were half inclined to go back to Wonga-Wonga, but they determined to go on for one day more.
They looked about eagerly for something to shoot, but everything except insects seemed to have vanished from the creek. On both sides there were stony ridges with scarcely a blade of grass on them. One landrail ran along the bank, calling out “ship, ship,” as if it was hailing the Endeavour, but Donald missed it when he fired at it. Harry took the gun then, and said he would try to shoot a fish. He saw something black wriggling about in the water, which he thought was an eel, and he fired and hit it; but it was a snake, and it bit itself before it died; so they were obliged to leave it in the water, instead of cooking it on shore and getting a dinner as white and delicate as a roast chicken.
Still, however, the boys determined not to turn back until next day; and late in the afternoon they got more fish than they could eat. They came upon a black fellow’s “fish-trap”—a kind of little mud hut, thatched with dry grass—and out of it they scooped up a score or two of black fish, and what they call trout in Australia. They were not very tasty, but the boys enjoyed the little fellows greatly when they had grilled them, though they had no soy.
When they had finished their dinner, they rowed on to find the black fellows’ camp, which they knew could not be very far off. The moon had come up again, however, before they reached it. The creek, fringed with shea-oaks with dark long leaves like lanky tassels, wriggled about there like a snake. Long before the boys got to the camp, they heard the measured tramp of feet and fierce shouts, and when they got there they saw ever so many black fellows, streaked with ochre, dancing and brandishing their boomerangs and waddies, whilst the “gins” (that’s the women) in their ’possum cloaks and blankets, squatted on the ground beating time.
Harry and Donald were not a bit afraid of black fellows. They were generally very friendly in those parts, and often came to Wonga-Wonga. But it happened that the black fellows were in a very savage mood. They had been doing a little sheep-stealing, and an overseer had fired at them, and killed one of them; and so they had made up their minds to kill the first white fellow they came across, in revenge. As soon as they saw the cot, they rushed down to the creek, shouting out, “Wah! wah! wah!” and they pulled the boys on shore, and burnt the cot on the great fire they had lighted to keep the “debil debil” away. Then they jabbered for a long time, disputing which of the boys they should kill; and Harry and Donald, brave little fellows though they were, most heartily wished themselves back at Wonga-Wonga.
“THE BLACK FELLOWS WERE IN A VERY SAVAGE MOOD.”
All of a sudden, however, a black fellow held up his finger, and then a dozen of them put their ears to the ground. It was horses’ hoofs they heard in the distance. Then they jabbered again, and all the blacks ran into the scrub, leaving the boys, but carrying off their gun. In a few minutes up galloped Mr. Lawson, and Sydney, and a stockman. The boys had been hunted far and wide, but it was only that day that the cot had been missed, and so a clue found to their whereabouts. Mr. Lawson, having heard that the up-creek blacks were “in a scot,” and fearing that the youngsters might fall into their hands, had then started with his little party in pursuit. Of course, he could not help feeling very angry with the young truants, but there was no time to tell them so then. Boomerangs and spears began to whiz out of the scrub, and there was no good in three men stopping to fight with a hundred whom they could not see. So Mr. Lawson pulled Donald on to his horse, and the stockman pulled Harry, and off they galloped; whilst Sydney brought up the rear, firing his revolver right and left into the scrub as he rode away.
Harry and Donald were not frightened out of their love for exploring by their adventure up the creek. The next expedition they went on, however, was by land. They had heard a good deal of the Cave of the Red Hand in the Bulla Bulla Mountains, about ten miles from Wonga-Wonga; and one Saturday afternoon, directly after dinner, they started in search of the cave—Harry on his own horse Cornstalk, and Donald on his own mare Flora M‘Ivor. They knew that they had to steer for a very tall blasted gum tree that stood on the top of a ridge, and that when they had “rose the ridge,” as Australians say, they would find the mouth of the cave somewhere near at hand on the other side of the gully.
When they got down into the gully they dismounted, and hobbled their horses where there was a little feed; and then they began to look about them. It was some time before they found the cave’s mouth, but, whilst they were looking for it, they saw what neither of them had ever seen alive before, though they were Australian-born; and that was one of the shy birds after which the mountains were named. They got a full view of the dingy cock-pheasant, as he stood between two clumps of scrub, with his beautiful tail up like a lyre without strings. “Bulla, bulla, bulla, bulla,” he was gurgling like a brook; but, as soon as he saw the boys, he was off like a shot.
“Here it is!” at last shouted Harry, and when Donald ran up, he found his cousin standing outside a very gloomy-looking opening in the hillside, with a moustache and whiskers of almost black brushwood about the gaping mouth. On the rocky wall at the entrance, a red hand with outstretched fingers pointed inwards; and when the boys had lighted their lantern and groped their way into the cave, they found more red hands on the walls, and white hands too—some pointing forwards and some backwards, some up and some down.
“ON THE ROCKY WALL A RED HAND.”
“Don’t they look queer, Donald?” said Harry; “just as if they were murderers and people getting murdered poking their hands out of the stone. I wonder who did them, and what they mean.”
“Why, the black fellows don’t know,” answered Donald. “They say the old people did them, but they don’t know who the old people were. I expect a flood drowned them. Do you know the story the black fellows tell about the Flood? They say that somewhere or other in Australia the black fellows’ father lies asleep on the ground, with his head resting on his arm; and that he woke up ever so long ago, and that then all the country was flooded; and that when he wakes next, he will eat up all the black fellows. They say he is a giant—taller than that blue gum on the ridge. The old fellow puts them into a great funk. Up at our place I went out one day with a black fellow after honey. He caught a native bee, and stuck a bit of down on it, and chased it till it lighted on a tree, and then he climbed up with his tomahawk, and tapped till he found where the nest was. He cut out the combs and the bee-bread before you could say ‘Jack Robinson;’ but he took precious care to leave some of the honey for the old giant. If he’s asleep, though, I don’t see what good it would do him.”
“They’re a queer lot, the black fellows,” philosophically remarked Harry; “but they’re a long sight better than new chums—they were born in the colony just like us. A black fellow can ride like a native, but those Englishmen look so scared when a horse begins to buck.”