CHAPTER XV.

Magan’s armour—Safe at Bulinda Creek again—The professor’s last lesson on the island—Mat and Tim once more together—Tim convalescent.

After the first transports of joy at again meeting each other were over, Annie led her father under the big ti-tree, and recounted to him some of the adventures that had befallen her since she had been carried off.

“And where is the man that saved you, lassie?” said the squire, as soon as he had heard her narrative.

“He was here just now, father.”

Mat had retired, not wishing to disturb the meeting between father and daughter, but he now came forward, when Bell took his hand in both of his, saying as he did so,—

“Mat, you have saved my daughter’s life, like a brave and noble fellow that you are. Accept the gratitude of an old man, who owes her life and honour to you. I cannot say all that I think, and wish to, _now_, my nerves have been too much shaken, but I _will_ when we get home; I should never have got here if it had not been for ‘Terebare,’ who ran pretty well the whole way in front of my horse. I insisted on the others staying behind, so as not to come away and leave the station undefended. Now let us have some rest and refreshment.”

Whilst Annie went off with Terebare to cook some provisions, which the squire had brought, Mat took the latter aside and told him a few of the particulars connected with the rescue of Annie, adding,—

“Miss Bell knows scarcely anything of what I’m telling you, and she certainly does not know that the bushranger is lying dead about fifty yards up this gully; she must not go near the spot; but come and see, and then you’ll judge.”

So the two men proceeded to the place, and found the man lying dead sure enough.

Before they thought of burying him, which they knew must be done in that climate without much loss of time, they proceeded to take off and examine his armour, which both viewed with astonishment.

“How _could_ the man bear the weight in this climate and move about?” queried Bell.

“I don’t think he _did_ move about much,” replied his companion; “I expect he always rode. What I could not understand at the time was the slow way in which he got up when I surprised him; why, looking at the weight of this lot, he must have carried nearly a couple of hundred pounds.”

“Not far off it,” said the squire, who, with the help of Mat, had now got off the thigh pieces, breastplate, back piece, and a sort of helmet with a cover for the neck, from the body, all this iron being concealed by ordinary clothing.

“This has stood some shooting,” continued Bell, “and here’s your ‘brand’ too,” as he pointed to a couple of deep dents in the breastplate. “We’ll keep all this gear, and bury the body under that tree in the scrub, where the others can’t see us at work; I’m glad that Annie did not see this frightfully-mutilated corpse.”

So they scraped a hole, put Magan’s body in, marked the tree, and made a “cache” of the armour.

“I saw you limping when helping to carry the body,” said Bell; “are you wounded?”

“No, it’s nothing,” answered Mat, “else I couldn’t walk, but I may as well look at it before we go back.”

Mat found that the ball from Magan’s pistol had travelled just under the skin of his outer thigh, causing a slight flesh wound, but causing him little inconvenience.

After the little party had refreshed themselves, they prepared to start for home.

Terebare brought up the horses; Annie was mounted on her father’s, the squire insisting on Mat’s riding Magan’s, taking turn and turn about with him.

In this manner they reached home by easy stages, and without further adventure. As they approached the house, Mrs. Bell, rushed out to meet them, having recognized them from far off, and once again the family party met in safety and happiness on the verandah of Bulinda Creek.

When they had partly got over the first feelings of thankfulness at the rescue of Annie, Mrs. Bell said to her husband,—

“And who do you think is the wretch we caught?”

“I don’t know,” answered Bell; “I was too much engaged to look at the man; some escaped convict, probably.”

“You are partly right, but you ’av’nt guessed _who_ he is,—’e’s Rayon, the Frenchman! The police have recognized ’im as an escaped convict, and ’av carried him off to jail more dead than alive. I remembered afterwards, when Dromoora was tying him up he said, ‘French feller’; but I was ’alf stunned by all that ’appened, and didn’t know what he meant. I’ll never speak French again.”

“I see it all now,” replied her husband; “what a lot of fools we were to be gulled so, and what a doubly-distilled ass _I_ was not to listen to Mat when _he_ wanted to stay behind, saying he thought there was danger about.”

Mrs. Bell listened eagerly to the account of Annie’s rescue by Mat.

“What a brave man he is,” she said; “he must live with us altogether; we can never repay him. I must ‘embrasser’ him; I—I—mean embrace him, and Dromoora too.”

“As you say, we _cannot_ fully repay him,” joined in her husband; “but I have some plans that I will talk over with you by-and-by.”

The news of the death of one bushranger and the capture of another soon rang over the whole district, the newspapers especially devoting their columns to what they knew of the history and doings of the two miscreants.

There was no doubt that it was the intention of the bushrangers to murder all who opposed them.

One paper stated that the leader of the gang, the notorious Magan, had long been outlawed, and that he fought with a halter round his neck, for that his previous career showed that he had shot more than one man in cold blood; it related that—

“Upon one occasion this fiend had ridden up to a station down south, and had ordered the inmates to ‘Bail up!’ This they at once did, being taken by surprise. Magan had then shot at and wounded one of the men, then despatched another for the doctor, and then had deliberately shot _him_ as he was going away upon his errand.”

Concerning Rayon, whose real name was never clearly made out, this much was known—that he was English-born, had been very well educated travelled as courier in France with some of the best families. Having learnt French perfectly, he had settled in Paris, but eventually ran away from there, owing to his being found out at card-sharping. He next turned up in London, and, being an accomplished penman, had forged whilst there the name of one of his former patrons for a large sum of money; was tried, convicted, and transported for life to Botany Bay, and escaped.

As we have seen, he was now captured again, and doomed to pass the rest of his life, _this_ time on a well-known island, whose sole sentries consisted of swarms of gigantic sharks, which had already snapped up more than one unlucky prisoner upon his attempting to swim to the mainland.

Our forester was surprised on his return to Bulinda after the rescue of Annie, not to hear any news of Tim. The squire, too, could not make it out, but said,—

“I expect he did not start from the ‘Downs,’ as he said he intended to when he wrote; so, as we have not done with this police business yet, having to go to headquarters again soon, supposing we make a start to-morrow to Sydney; we may then hear news of Tim.”

Mat gladly agreed to this proposal, and as Parson Tabor also wished to visit the capital, the three men started the next day.

Passing the station where Tim had “spelled” before starting on his moonlight walk, the travellers were astonished to find that Tim had been there, and as they had heard no tidings of his being about Bulinda, they thought that he must have forgotten something important, and returned to Sydney. So, without further delay, they put spurs to their horses, and galloped into the town.

Leaving their horses in a stable, they were walking down one of the chief streets when a man accosted Mat with,—

“Beg pardon, how is your brother to-day?”

“Brother!” replied Mat, “why, where is he?”

“I know it’s your brother,” replied the man, “I saw you both at the School of Arts, at your lecture, he’s ill in the hospital, so they say.”

Without another word the three friends hurried off to the hospital, and there learnt that it was indeed Tim who was one of the patients, but further they could not learn until the house-surgeon appeared, who gave them particulars of the case, and then, in answer to their questions, said that Tim was now out of danger, and that one of them might visit him; so it was settled that Mat should go to his brother, whilst the others, Bell and Tabor, would transact some business in the town and call for him again.

Our forester found his brother looking very white and wan, lying in a small bed in one of the wards. One of the nurses, before ushering him in, had warned Mat not to let the patient talk above a whisper by exciting him in any way, and not to stay long.

So he went in very softly, took his brother’s thin hand, in his, and pressed it, saying,—

“Don’t talk, Tim, only a little whisper now and again. The doctor has told us all about you, and I would have come before, but have been away from the station, and only heard you were here by accident. Squire and the parson are in the town—”

Tim here interrupted him with a questioning look, so Mat bent his head to hear what he had to say.

Tim’s whispered words came faintly to him,—

“I want to get to the station where you and t’parson are.”

Mat replied,—

“I will go and ask the doctor,” and was leaving the room, when Tim motioned him back with a plaintive look,—

“I want to go to-morrow.”

Mat nodded, went out, and having found the doctor, repeated his brother’s wish to him.

The doctor was a little spare man, short in stature and short in manner. He said,—

“We knew some time ago who your brother was, and where _you_ were living, but we were also aware that the patient’s life depended upon utter quiet, and up to two days ago it would have been madness for any of his friends to have seen him, therefore we sent no message to Bulinda Creek: we meant to have let you know to-day or to-morrow. As I told you, a bullet in the lungs is no joke; still if you could get a very easy carriage and take him by short stages, only travelling by day, it might be safe _now_.”

Mat told Tim the good news, and waited quietly by his brother’s bedside until the squire and the parson sent up to say that they were waiting below.

The three men then had a consultation, the doctor being present, when it was decided to bring a carriage there next day, should the weather be favourable. Mat was requested not to disturb his brother again so sending word to him of their intention, they adjourned to a hotel for the night.

The weather was warm and balmy, and looked as though it would remain so for the next few days, as the carriage drew up on the morrow at the hospital, and Tim was comfortably and slowly driven to the Creek, which he reached in two days’ time, escorted by his brother, the squire and the parson, and not any the worse for his journey.

The doctor, as he had promised Mat, came out to see his patient on the day after his arrival, and finding him all that he could wish, called Mat out on to the verandah, and said,—

“What he wants now is absolute quiet, no exciting talk, no physic, merely cooling drinks; your brother is not likely to live to be an old man, but the best chance of lengthening his days is, when he is well enough, to get him out of this hot climate—a mild sea voyage, if possible, I would suggest, even to going home. But, above all, _gentle nursing now_.”

Annie, who had entered the verandah during the latter part of the conversation, walked up to Mat, and addressing him and the doctor, said,—

“Let _me_ look after him; I will do so night and day, I promise it.”

And Annie was as good as her word, never leaving Tim without his cooling drinks, making him jellies and other delicacies with her own hands, sitting by his bedside night after night, and when at length he was able to leave his bed, it was upon the same fair nurse’s arm that he leaned, to take his first feeble walks on the verandah.