Part 5

Our journey was in a big transport—a three-masted, full-rigged ship, fitted up with quarters for the “lags,” as they call ’em; a good strong warder guard; and a company of Her Majesty’s Noughty Noughth, not armed with Martini-Henry rifles, but with the old-fashioned Brown Bess musket muzzle-loaders, you know, with bright ramrods, and each man carrying so many rounds of ball cartridge, that he had to bite, and a little pouch at his waist, to hold so many big percussion caps.

Our voyage was round by the Cape, and then down south, to catch the great currents and favorable winds; and, much sail as our ship carried, the rate at which we went was a regular crawl, giving plenty of time for the men to get troublesome and discontented, with the consequence that a couple of them were flogged.

Bird—“Gaol Bird,” as I called him, though his name was Richard—Dick—Pretty Dick, eh?—he was one; and you should have seen his round, close-cropped bullet-head, and big jaw.

If an artist had come to me and said, “Do you know of a man whom I could sketch as a specimen of a regular rogue?” I shouldn’t have hesitated for a moment—“Dick Bird” I should have said; “only, if you do draw him, have him chained up, and then don’t go too near, as he might knock you down and jump on you, to finish you, with his heavy boots.”

I suppose, Dick got it into his head, that I reported him for his promotion and stripes; and while his back was getting well, he used to smile at me in a queer sort of way, as if the cat had got into his nature, as well as across his back.

There were several little things, that ought to have made me see that a storm was brewing; but it’s a way with human nature to imagine trouble and ruin, where there’s none, and to be very blind where there is. ’Tis our manner to, I suppose, and has to do with the way we were made.

I saw nothing, my mates saw nothing. We were used to convicts, and we did our duty, seeing that the men did their work, and taking pretty good care that their irons were all right, and that our locks and bolts were well shot home.

* * * * *

Storms break out pretty suddenly down in the South, where there’s plenty of room for the winds to work, and one terrible storm broke out all at once, when we were about a hundred miles from Sydney.

It was one evening after a fearfully hot day, that the orders were given, for the men in our charge to be had out on deck, for the doctor had reported that he would not be answerable for the men’s health if they were kept so much down in their quarters, which were suffocating at times.

So the soldiers were called out, and planted here and there with fixed bayonets; our fellows were on duty, of course, and the convicts were kept moving about on the deck, while the ports were thrown open below and everything done to ventilate the place.

I’d been seeing to this with some help, and was very glad to get on deck again, to run my eye over the men; and I hadn’t been up five minutes, before I had one of the convicts looking at me in a curious way.

It was Ninety-seven, and he passed on to come round again after a few minutes, and look at me again in an imploring sort of fashion.

This happened four times, and being in a better temper that evening, I took a step or two forward, as he came round the fifth time, and spoke to him.

“What is it, my lad?” I said. “Want a quid of tobacco?”

“I want to speak to you, Mr. Rowan,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes,” I said, “you always did. You were born with too much tongue, Nick.”

“You don’t believe in me, Mr. Rowan, sir,” he said; “but, for God’s sake, let me speak to you for a few moments.”

“What, to beg, or to tell me some cock-and-bull story, eh?”

“No, sir, it’s life and death to us. It is indeed, sir. For God’s sake, let me speak to you.”

The man’s way was so earnest, that his words made an impression on me, but I only said sternly,

“Go on with your walk, my lad. You’ll be ordered below directly.”

He uttered a deep sigh, and continued his march, with his head down, but as he came round again I said sharply,

“Ninety-seven!”

He gave quite a jump at this, and followed me below, while I caught sight of Bird watching us as he went by.

“Now, what is it?” I said sharply. “What do you want?”

“You to give warning and be prepared.”

“What for?”

“There’s a plot hatching,” he whispered; “the convicts are going to rise, seize the ship, and take her to some uninhabited part, where they can all land and escape.”

“Indeed!” I said, with a chuckle; “and how are they going to manage it? I thought you were all pretty safe.”

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, “but it is a fact; and if you don’t mind there’ll be murder done.”

“Who will they murder first—you for telling tales?”

“I suppose so, sir,” he said in a low, despondent way. “I was afraid of that, but I felt that I must speak.”

“Oh, did you?” I said surlily; “and pray who’s at the head of the mutiny, and when is it to come off?”

“To-night, I think, sir.”

“Oh, to-night, eh?” I said. “Who’s at the head of it?”

Nick was silent.

“Well,” I said again, “who’s at the head of it?”

“I can’t tell you, sir.”

“Don’t you know?”

He nodded.

“Well, then, who is it?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“No, of course you can’t,” I said contemptuously, “because it’s all one of your hatched-up plans to curry favour.”

“I swear to you it is the truth, sir,” he whispered. “I heard them talking it over.”

“Heard who talking it over?” I said sharply, but he was silent again.

“Be off on deck!” I cried roughly, and he turned upon me, as if he were going to throw himself on his knees.

“What can I say, Mr. Rowan, to make you believe me?”

“Tell me who are the ringleaders.”

“I know——” he stopped short. “I can’t tell you, sir. I will not betray them. I only tell you, to be on the watch to put the rising down.”

“Don’t you be afraid about that,” I said, with a laugh. “Now go on deck, Nick Ninety-seven. You always were a sneak and a humbug. It’s all a flam, and I shall be glad to get to Sydney, if it’s only to see your back.”

He went on deck, and I walked to one of my brother officers, a sturdy fellow named Fraser.

“Here,” I said, “Ninety-seven tells me the lags are going to rise, seize the ship, and carry her off to an uninhabited island, to play Robinson Crusoe.”

“Young Nick’s a humbug and a sneak,” says my mate. “They’ll have to look sharp then, for we shall be at Sydney to-morrow before this time.”

“Then you don’t think there’s anything in it?”

“Bah! Are they going to try it on now on deck, and half a company of swaddies facing them?”

“Likely!”

“Down below then, when they’re all locked up?”

“Not likely that.”

“It’s all gammon, mate,” he cried. “Flam to get in favour.”

“What I told him,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t report it?”

“I would if I wanted to be snubbed,” said my brother officer, with a grin. “Ha! there goes the order for down below, and they haven’t riz, mate. They’ll be behind the bars in five minutes. Not much flurry to-night.”

As he spoke, a little squad of soldiers marched down and formed up on either side of the gate, and the convicts came down singly and went through till all were in; then the gate was shut and locked, and all was safe for the night.

“No,” I said, in a whisper; “there’ll be no rising.”

“Not till to-morrow morning, mate, when it’s time to get up.”

As Fraser—a man I’d known for years, as one who thoroughly understood convicts—thought as I did, I felt I was right about Nick’s warning, and that it would be folly to go troubling those in authority over us; so I had my meal, and at nine o’clock—one bell, as they call it on board—I went on duty with two more; and it was only then, as I stood in the main decks, looking about me by the light of the swinging lanterns, that I thought of Ninety-seven again, and the impossibility of the men making any attempt.

For there they all were safely locked up in irons; we were on duty, three of us—Fraser, me, and another—well armed; and only a few yards off there were the sentries with fixed bayonets, and fifty or a hundred armed men ready to be summoned, at the slightest alarm.

“All rubbish,” I said to myself; and then it all passed out of my mind again.

It was very hot indeed that night, and all was wonderfully still, when, as I marched slowly to and fro, with my keys in my belt, I began thinking of home and a certain person, and whether it wouldn’t be wise to stay out there and ask her to join me, when, all at once, there was a stifled sort of cry, right in forward amongst the men’s hammocks, and this was repeated again and again, as if someone was in pain.

Then came a rustling and a low whispering, and, without recalling Nick and his warning, I walked up to the grated door.

“What’s up there?” I said severely.

“Don’t quite know, sir,” said a man, drowsily. “Someone talking in his sleep, I think.”

Then the smothered cries came again.

“Do you hear there?” I said. “What’s the matter?”

A voice answered from far in:—“Someone ill here, sir; Number Seventy, I think.”

“Oh, doctor! doctor!” came feebly, from out of the darkness.

I turned away, to get a lighted lantern and speak to the two men on duty with me.

“It’s that bad soup they had to-day,” I growled; “I knew it wasn’t fit.”

“Shall I fetch the doctor?” said Fraser.

“Not yet,” I said. “He wouldn’t like to be roused out for nothing. I’ll go in and see.”

We warders were so strong, in the belief of our own power, that I thought nothing of going in there with my lantern amongst that crowd of half savage, half human beasts; and as the door was unlocked, I left my two fellow warders on guard and went right in, between the two rows of hammocks, towards where the moaning arose.

“Here, what’s the matter,” I said. “Who is it?”

I have a vivid recollection of the dim scene, as I asked that question. The darkness all around, save where the faint light of my lantern shone, showing the rows of hammocks hanging from the beams of the deck above, the fierce countenances gleaming out for a moment and the light flashing from their eyes, where all was silent—a peculiar hushed silence, I remember now, as a hoarse, rasping voice came from a few feet away from me.

“Oh! Mr. Rowan, sir, it’s me—Seventy, sir—Bird, sir—I’m dying, sir—poison, sir.”

“Here, let’s look at you,” I said. “Don’t make that row, man.”

“Haggony, sir—Doctor, sir—an—oh—_make it hot_!”

“Hah! You dog!”

I tried to say more, but the words were choked in my throat, for when, lantern in hand, I bent over the convulsed face, as its owner writhed heavily in his hammock, two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat, I was twisted as it were down upon the deck, and Bird wrenched himself round over me, saying in a hoarse voice to drown my struggles and gurgling attempts to cry for help,

“Can’t help kicking, sir. It’s haggony! but I’m a bit better, sir, thank ye, sir. No, sir, I don’t want the doctor, sir.”

All this and more, repeated, as if in mockery over my distorted face, as the ruffian gripped my throat with all his force, while above the singing in my ears and his words, I could hear that something was going on at the door where I had left my two fellow warders, but what I could not tell.

All I knew was, that I tried hard to throw the ruffian off my chest as he knelt upon me, that my senses were departing fast, that Bird would be hung for my murder, and that I was dying of strangulation.

Then, as if it were part of a dream, I saw the men racing out to attack and murder the sentries, and make the vessel their own.

“All through my neglect,” I thought, as there were a thousand lights dancing before my eyes; and then, almost at my last, there was a violent concussion, a savage snarl, a cessation of the compression at my throat, and a tremendous struggle going on upon me in the dark.

“Get hold on him, some of you,” came to my singing ears in a fierce growl, as the struggle went on. “Quick! D’yer hear? We shall have ’em all at us directly. Now then. Quick! You _will_ have it, then.”

There was a dull thud and then a groan, followed by a couple of shots outside, one following the other; shots which even then, half dead as I was, gave me a sensation of relief, for I knew they had been fired by the first sentry and the next to spread the alarm.

Almost at the same moment, I felt a warm gush of something flooding my face and neck, and with a moan a man fell back across me, as I lay listening to the rush of feet. Then came loudly, “Now for it, lads!”

There was another rush, and, sounding distant and strange now, as I lay half suffocated, I heard a fierce yelling, and above it in commanding tones,

“Halt! Surrender!”

But the rushing and yelling continued; there was the sound of blows, and then twice I heard loudly the order “Fire!” followed by a rattling volley; shrieks and groans; the scuffling rush of bare feet, and the clink of irons; and it seemed to me, that the convicts were running back to their hammocks.

Then all seemed to be blank till I was awakened by the glare of lanterns in my eyes, and someone said,

“Here’s Arthur Rowan, sir.”

“Dead?” said a voice, which I knew to be that of one of the officers.

I answered the question myself in a husky voice, with the word seeming to tear its way out of my throat.

“No.”

“Thank God, my lad! We thought they’d done for you.”

I got a sight now of glittering bayonets, and through the foul powder smoke, I caught glimpses of the faces of convicts looking over the sides of their hammocks.

“Turn that man over,” said the same voice I had heard before, as two men took charge of me. “Dead, I think. Who is it?”

“Ninety-seven,” said one of the warders, and it seemed to be Fraser.

“Oh! Did you stab him, Rowan?”

“No, sir,” I said feebly.

“Humph! someone has. Twice. Look sharp, my lads, or he’ll bleed to death. To the doctor.”

As fortune had it, I was carried out, and laid down on the deck, just as the doctor rose, from where he had been on one knee by a figure at my side.

“Carry him out, my lads; he’s past my help. One of you shot pretty truly.”

I looked beside me, and caught a glimpse of the dead man. It was Dick Bird, shot dead as he tried to escape.

“Now you,” said the doctor. “Where’s all this blood from?”

“Not mine,” I whispered, half strangled.

“Humph! Whose then? One more.”

This was as another man was carried along, and laid on my other side.

“Eh?” said the doctor. “Stabbed, eh? How was this?”

“Number Seventy, sir—Bird—knifed him. It was a dodge,” said Fraser.

“Dodge, eh?” said the doctor, whose hands were busy with tourniquets and bandages. “Rum sort of dodge! What do you mean?”

“The men had planned to rise, sir, and that Bird was the ringleader.

“He shammed ill, and poor Rowan went to help him, to see what was wrong before calling you. Then Bird caught him by the throat and was strangling him, when this poor fellow, Ninety-seven—Nick—out here for picking pockets, went to Rowan’s help. He had warned us just before dark, but we thought it a flam; and now, when he tried to save my mate, Bird turned upon him and stabbed him.”

“And got his deserts the next moment, eh?” said the doctor, quietly, as he tied his bandages tightly. “Well, Master Ninety-seven has got two terrible stabs, but we must save Ninety-seven’s life. Pickpocket, eh? Not he. The man’s a hero.”

I did not hear any more then, for everything swam round me mistily—faces, bayonets, officers, epaulets—and when I opened my eyes to see clearly, I was lying in a bed in Sydney Infirmary, and the first question, I asked of the hospital nurse, was,

“Is Ninety-seven dead?”

“No. There he lies across the ward. The doctor says he’ll get well.”

I’d had quite a touch of fever and been queer for days, but from that hour I rapidly got well, though for many months my voice was as good as gone.

It was in April, when I left the hospital without seeing Nick. He’d been taken away to the convict infirmary, and it was in December that I saw him again.

In the meantime, while I lay in hospital, I had heard from Fraser, my mate, all I didn’t know about the men getting out after knocking down and trampling on him and the other; but the sentries had fired, and at the alarm the guard turned out, and as the men refused to surrender, fired twice and drove them back.

I said that my voice was as good as gone, but it was strong enough for me to report all I knew, to those who took my evidence at my bedside; and I can tell you, I laid it on pretty thick over poor Nick, for I was mad with myself for doubting the poor fellow, who nearly lost his life in trying to save that of one, who had behaved to him like a brute.

The consequence was, that Ninety-seven was sent up the country, as what they used to call an assigned servant, those being well-behaved men, to whom a chance was given to redeem the past.

Three days before Christmas, I, Arthur Rowan, having leave of absence, went up the country in a bullock wagon, pretty well laden with Christmas cheer for a present, though the best present of all I was carrying in my breast.

How I did laugh as I went up, for I felt real happy, and it did seem so comic.

Here it was just upon Christmas, and me with the plums and peel and things for a pudding, while the sun shone down so hot, I was nearly cooked meat myself, when on Christmas Eve I walked up to the shingle and bark squatter’s house, all amongst the gum and ti-trees.

There was a laughing jackass on the ridge, a tame ’un, and a great lame kangaroo, and a big long-legged emu stalked about along with the chickens, as I removed the rail fence, where the man, who drove me, stopped to hitch on his bullocks.

But I could see no more for staring at a tall, manly-looking brown fellow in shirt and trousers, though wearing his shirt so open, that I could see a great red scar at the side of his neck.

“Well, Nick, my lad,” I said in my husky voice.

“Mr. Rowan,” he cried, and he quite reeled. “Don’t say I’m to go back to the prison.”

“But I do say it, my lad,” I cried, “and at once. Leastwise, we’ll keep Christmas first. I’ve brought some tackle in the dray.”

He didn’t answer me, but I heard him groan,

“And I was so happy here.”

“Happier than at home, dear lad?” I said.

“What? Home?”

“Ay, and sorry I shall be to see you go, though I wouldn’t believe you once.”

“Then you’ve brought me news?”

“Yes, lad, this,” I cried, slapping a blue paper into his hand. “They let me bring it; me, the man whose life you saved.”

He stared at me, as if he could not hear a word, and his face looked blank and strange.

“Nick, lad, don’t you hear me? I tell you, it’s a free pardon—in the Queen’s name, though, hang me! if I believe you did that wrong.”

“A pardon!” he cried, “for me!” and he tore the paper open and tried to read; then I saw him stagger, but he recovered himself, sank down on his knees, and held the paper to his lips.

“Thank God!” he gasped; and then in a wild, hysterical voice—

“Nan, Nan, my darling! At last—at last!”

ARTHUR ROWAN.

EVE THE FIFTH.

SOME EVIDENCE OF ALFRED CURRAN, NEWS PAPER REPORTER, CONCERNING A PAIR OF TRUE LOVERS.

_By MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED._

Christmas Eve! Strange that that letter should have reached me to-day. _In medias res_ was always my journalistic motto. Plunge straight into the heart of your subject, and don’t bore your readers with preliminaries.

I was thinking of Nan when Jem Starr, mail-man, rode up to the bachelors’ quarters this afternoon, and chucked the mail-bag on the veranda at my feet.

He told me to take it to the Big House and give it to the Boss. Took me for a new chum most likely—said, he was in a hurry to yard his horse—said, there was a chance of the river coming down with floods up at the heads, and that it was hot enough for us to be let off a term of purgatory. A queer independent chap is Starr.

Nan and Nick! Nick and Nan! But I was thinking of Nan more than of Nick. Yes, it is strange there should have been in that mail-bag a letter, asking me to tell all I knew of Nan and Nick, and of that Christmas time at Eungella Diggings, when I was sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_.

Sounds grand—Sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_. It sounded grander still, when Jessop wrote to me—I was Jessop’s cousin, you know, and he was under promise to give me an opening if he could. He said he had started a paper and struck gold, and that if I liked, I might come out and run the paper, while he looked out for more gold.

Didn’t I jump at the offer, just! Didn’t I make sure, that I’d struck gold in my line, too! Didn’t I see visions of a fortune and a coming back to England, and a great Liberal organ started, with all the New World go, and getting into Parliament, and all the rest!

But it wasn’t for me that destiny reserved the fulfilment of those dreams. It was for Nan’s husband. Nan didn’t bring me luck.

Sometimes it seems to me, that she brought more bad luck than good, to the men who loved her—all, that is, except one. And there were a good many of them. It wasn’t her fault. But that’s how it came out in my experience of that Christmas Eve.

Anyhow, my fortune hasn’t amounted to much. Eungella Diggings smashed up, and Jessop smashed up, and _The Star_ smashed up, too. Things have a way of smashing up in Australia.

And here I am, a hack reporter, glad to get a job on anything. Bush races or bush-ranging, prize cattle, or a new cure for pleuro; “bush naturalist” articles, or gush over an election; it is all “copy.”

Election business, it was this time. Election finished; “copy” sent in, and a free and easy kind of invitation from one of the election bosses—the biggest squatter in these parts—to loaf about his station and pick up material, till the Christmas holidays are over.

I like loafing. I’m doing a story of bush life. I’m happy enough in the bachelors’ quarters. My lady squatteress doesn’t encourage me at the Big House, though I’m asked there for Christmas dinner to-morrow. The new chums are “tailing” on an out-station, and the Superintendent has gone to town for a spree.

That’s how I come to be jotting down shorthand notes of my reflections on this Christmas Eve.

Every now and then, I drop my pen to go and take a smoke in the hammock in the veranda, and think a little more of Nan.

I watch the Southern Cross, dipping over the mountains. I listen to the frogs, flopping from the veranda roof on to the grass, and to the hum of the flying ants, and the queer buzzings of the myriads of insects, and the cry of the curlews down by the swamp. I see the heat mist rising on the plain and the lightning zig-zagging on the horizon, west.

It makes me melancholy, a night like this. Those trumpet flowers give out a sickly scent, and there’s a Cape jasmine creeper, twined round a pole, that looks like a ghost. Sets one dreaming—dreaming. And there’s a girl over at the Big House singing; and I can catch the tune and a word here and there. It’s a singing kind of thing. It goes—

“For the old love’s sake, For the old love’s sake!”

And I seem to see Nan. The jasmine reminds me of her, and the pointers of the Southern Cross are like her eyes. Nan, with her pretty, pale face and her red lips, so resolute and so sweet, and her deep, bright, dark eyes, and her black, curly hair.

We came out to Australia together. She was a second-class passenger, and so was I, but she kept very much to herself; and then she was in her cabin a good bit the first part, and we didn’t get to know each other till the voyage was getting on.