Part 8

When I went out to New South Wales, I expected, from what I had read in guide-books, to see capital convict-made roads running through the colony everywhere. What I found was a tolerable bit of road reaching as far as Parramatta (not twenty miles from Sydney), but beyond that there was nothing that we should call a road in England. Deep ruts running right across the road; grey logs that the mail-cart used to bump over, and black jagged tree-stumps that it used to graze against; the smoothest bits of road like a ploughed field; unbridged creeks; "corduroy" causeways of tree-trunks across swampy places;--that is what I remember of Australian up-country roads in dry weather; and in wet weather they were chains of ponds, with marsh that swallowed you to the ankle, and bog that gobbled you above the knee, intervening; and bogged blue-bloused dray-drivers sitting here and there on the tops of their loads of wool-bales, smoking in sullen resignation, like mariners in the tops of gradually-sinking wrecks.

At last, however, our pioneers came to the end of even such roads as these, and had to trust to rare cattle-paths, the sun, the compass, and "gumption" for guidance. They had reached the march-land on which the white man, who has grown nearly as wild, meets the black man who has not been tamed, and shoots him or poisons him with strychnine-damper for spearing his flocks and herds, and sometimes gets speared by him in return. On the last run our pioneers crossed they met a stockman who was herding cattle with pistols in his holsters and a carbine in his hand. A strange wild-looking fellow was this stockman. He wore a rain-blackened, sun-bronzed, cabbage-tree hat, with a jetty, greasy cutty pipe stuck into the discoloured band; a faded, stained, white-seamed red shirt, buckled round him with a chapped brown belt; and tattered moleskin trousers falling in vandyked fringes over rusty gaping boots. One of his stirrup-leathers was made of knotted green hide. His face was just the colour of his hat--the little of it that could be seen peeping through a foot or two of coarse black hair like a guardsman's bearskin. He had lived so long by himself that, when he first began to talk to the new-comers, he stammered like a bashful girl. He soon recovered his tongue, however, and the first thing he asked for was tobacco. They were smoking tea on that station, owing to the long time the drays that were bringing them fresh stores had been delayed upon the road. When Sydney gave the man a fig or two of colonial tobacco, and another of glossy Barrett's twist, he pounced upon them as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. The American negrohead he put away jealously in his trousers-pocket for special occasions, and then began to slice and rub up the dull-green saltpetery colonial tobacco, as if he was famishing for want of a "proper smoke." As it spluttered in his pipe he told the strangers some strange tales about the blacks. They had sighted them several times before this; but, as the blacks had always bounded off like so many kangaroos as soon as they were sighted, our pioneers had begun to think that they would not have much to fear from them.

"Don't you believe it," said the stockman. "They'll be on ye when you're least lookin' for 'em, the sneaking divils!"

This is one of the stories he told about the blacks, and from it you will see that white men can be quite as bloodthirsty in those wild parts:

"When we come up here, two er the chaps that the cove hired was brothers. I niver seen brothers so fond er each other as them two young fellers was. Strappin' young fellers, though they was new to this kind er work. They'd been knockin' about, an' was glad to git anythin' to do, I guess. Wal, one day Tom--that was the youngest--was down by the creek yonder, lookin' arter a duck, or summat er that. Me an' Fred--that was the eldest--was up on the rise beyont, lookin' arter the bullocks. All of a suddent we heerd a _cooey_.

"'That's Tom,' says Fred. I didn't want him to tell me. It worn't a bit like a black feller's.

"'He's come to grief,' says I, for it sounded like that, an' down we galloped to the creek full pelt. Jist as we got into the scrub we heard another _cooey_, an' presently another, fainter an' fainter like. Wal, we hunted about, an' onder a grass tree we found poor Tom with a spear stickin' into him.

"'Mother--poor old gal!' he says, when we come up to him, an' Fred was kneelin' by his side. I guess he was the old gal's pet, and Fred had promised to look arter him when they come out, or summut er that. Anyhow Fred looked like a very divil.

"'Which way?' says he, lookin' about an' cockin' his gun. 'Who was it, Tom?' says he, with his face as white as ashes.

"Poor Tom had jist breath enough left to say 'Black Swan,' an' then the blood bubbled out er his mouth, an' he was dead, an' his brother a-blubberin' over him like a gal over her sweetheart. I let him blubber for a bit to ease hisself, but he was ser long about it that I gives him a nudge with my foot. 'Come,' says I, 'Fred, git up--that ain't no good,' says I.

"'No,' says he, jumpin' up, 'that _ain't_ no good--but you hear me, Tom!' An' then he clinched his fist like the playactors, an' swore that, if he iver cotched Black Swan, he'd cut him in two with a cross-cut saw.

"'Sarve him right,' says I, 'but there ain't much chance er that.'

"Black Swan was a black divil we'd called so 'cos of his gallus long neck. Wal, we cotched Tom's horse, and Fred took the corpse back on it to the station, and buried his brother close ahind our hut. I can't say I relished that azactly, nor the way Fred 'ud go an' sit by the grave arter sundown, mumblin' to hisself as if he was silly. He'd been a jolly chap afore that--not half as jolly as Tom, though. The hut was like a dead place when _he_ was gone. All that Fred seemed to care about was to get a pop at the blacks. Wal, one day when we'd had a scrimmage with 'em, Fred hit Black Swan in the knee. He was a-hoppin' off, boohooin' like a babby, a one leg, but Fred was down on him in no time. I 'spected he'd blow his brains out right off, an' have done wi' him. But Fred knocked him down with the butt-end er his gun, an' tied his hands an' feet, an' lugged him back to our hut, an' kicked him into the skillion ahind.

"'What are you going to do with that poor divil, Fred?' says I, when we was havin' our smoke arter supper.

"'Niver _you_ mind,' says he.

"Wal, it worn't no business o' mine, an' so I turned in. Next mornin' the black was gone, an' Fred didn't show. Then I guessed what was up, an' told the cove. Him and me rode down to the place where poor Tom was skewered, an' there, right afore the grass tree, was the black, lashed atween two planks, an' sliced through as neat as you'd cut a sangwidch. Fred niver showed arter that, an' I worn't sorry to be rid er his company, though, arter all, it were on'y a black feller."

Prince Chummy was far less affected by this horrid story than Harry and Donald were. There is not much love lost between black fellows of different tribes; the tribes are not united by any feeling of common patriotism; but native Australian lads have the same kind of liking for the blacks that a young squire has for his peasant foster-brother.

"The cowardly English cur!" cried Harry, indignantly. "If they'd fought fair with spears and womeras, the Englishman would precious soon have cut his lucky."

But before he left his brother's station, Harry had learnt to think somewhat more harshly of the blacks.

When Sydney's party had left that last run, and crossed a wide stretch of dry scrub country, they struck a creek shaded by red gum-trees, and ran it down until they came to what was, for Australia, a fine river. Fig trees and pines--all kinds of trees--laced together with creepers and wild vine, grew thick along the river's banks. They were pink and purple and crimson and yellow with wild flowers, and big white water-lilies with huge green leaves almost paved the water inshore. There were wild fowl, too, in the river; and scores upon scores of pigeons, bronzewings, and green and purple wompoos, were feasting on the wild figs and cherries, and making them patter down like rain. Besides a host of little birds, there were snowy cockatoos and flashing parrots and lories galore, and sometimes a paddymelon was seen.

"Just won't we blaze away, Donald!" cried Harry, in ecstasy.

But what pleased Sydney more was the grassy, light-timbered land, that stretched like a wild park for miles on both sides of the river. He determined to seek no farther, and as soon as he had pitched his camp, he was in the saddle again, and off to mark out his run. He scored the bark of a tree from which he started with his initials, and then rode a dozen miles or more, and slashed another tree with his tomahawk. In that free-and-easy fashion he took possession of all the land between the trees for ten miles on both sides of the river. Then he galloped into camp again, and scribbled off a rough description of the district he had taken up for the Crown Lands Office, using the dray for his writing-desk. With this specification Prince Chummy was sent back upon their tracks to the nearest post-office. It was by no means certain that Prince Chummy would return, although he did seem so fond of his young master, since black fellows are very fickle; but he could best be spared from the station when hard work had to be done--that being an occupation not at all to a black fellow's taste. He might safely be trusted to post the letter, since Sydney had made him believe that it would come back to tell of him if he didn't.

Whilst he was away Sydney and Jim and Bob set to work at timber-felling and splitting, whilst Harry and Donald in turns mounted guard over the stores or looked after the cattle. Before Prince Chummy got back, a store had been run up, and a hut for Sydney and the boys, and another for the men, and the stockyard was nearly finished. Masters and men fared very much alike. In neither hut was there any superfluous furniture. The bedsteads were bullocks' hides stretched on posts driven into the ground. All this time not a black had been seen at Pigeon Park, as Sydney had christened his station. They came often enough afterwards, as you will read in my next chapter; but in this I have only room to tell how they first made their appearance there.

One evening the cattle and horses had been driven into a grassy horseshoe peninsula made by the winding river, not far from the huts. Sydney and the men had knocked off work, and were sitting, smoking, on their verandahs, and the boys were out with their guns. Presently Harry cried out,

"Hark! I can hear a horse galloping yonder. Perhaps it's Chummy come back. Let's go and meet him."

When Donald put his ear down to the ground, he heard the hoofs quite plainly, and agreed to go. As a rule, young Australians think it is necessary to ride when they set out anywhither of set purpose. They will take the trouble of running a horse up from a flat almost a mile off in order to ride a mile. But if the boys had gone back then for their horses, the chances were that the horseman, whoever it was, would get to the station almost as soon as they did; so they trotted off on foot. In a few minutes the rider topped a rise, and though the setting sunlight bathed him in bright blood, they could make out that it was Chummy. He reined in as he drew near the boys in a place in which there was a belt of scrub on both sides. He was grinning, and shouting back greetings to his young friends, when from the scrub on both sides whizzed a flight of spears. Poor Chummy, bristled like a porcupine, fell forward on his horse's neck, clutching the mane with the rigid grasp of death, and the fear-maddened horse, which had been wounded in the neck itself, rushed past the boys like a whirlwind. Out of the scrub darted a score or two of darkies, dancing and jabbering, "Wah! wah! wah!" like angry apes, and advancing on the boys with brandished spears and wildly-waved boomerangs and waddies.

"I did feel funky then, and no mistake, Mr. Howe," Harry afterwards told me; "but, you see, if we'd shown the white feather then, it would have been all up with us. So we turned round and stared at the blacks.

"'We must pepper them,' I said to Donald.

"'Ay, lad; but ane at a time, and then load whilst the ither is firin',' says Donald.

"He's a cool customer, is Donald, with his _t'anes_ and _t'ithers_. We hadn't much time to talk, for I saw one of the beggars just going to let drive at us, so I up with my gun and let drive at him. I was loaded with duck-shot, and though it scattered, I must have spoilt his beauty, for the blood came streaming down his face. It was queer to see how scared the big beggars were--over six foot some of 'em were. They couldn't have been much used to powder. They all of them stopped short when they saw the blood, as if they'd _all_ been shot.

"'Don't wait for me,' I said to Donald, when I was going to load again; but, though he gave 'em both his barrels pretty quick when he saw how things were, he only marked 'em behind. They'd all turned, and before you could say 'Jack Robinson' they'd vanished in the scrub. Syd and the men weren't long in rushing up, I promise you; but there was nothing left for them to do. Poor old Chummy was as dead as a doornail by that time. We buried him before we went to bed, with some of the spear-heads still sticking in him. We couldn't have got 'em out without tearing him all to bits. I suppose the beggars had got it into their heads that he'd brought us, and so wanted to finish him off first. It's strange the down black fellows have on black fellows. Poor old Chummy! And yet, after all, if you think of it, you can't blame the beggars. I can't see what right we whites have to this country. If you were to get up at night and see a fellow helping himself to your swag, you'd do your best, I guess, to shoot him if he wouldn't bundle out. And that's how the blacks must feel when they see us taking up their country. It sounds soft, and yet I can't help half wishing sometimes that they were as 'cute and as plucky as the Maories. _They_ won't stand nonsense, for all your English red-coats; though the soldiers and settlers between them might eat up every Maori, if they could only catch 'em and kill 'em. There's enough of 'em to do it."

XI. PIGEON PARK.

After that first brush, the blacks still for a time kept clear of the station buildings, but, now here, now there, they were always giving unpleasant proofs of their presence on the run. It was, in fact, the best bit of their hunting-ground, and therefore it is not astonishing that they considered the whites, instead of themselves, to be the trespassers. The black fellows speared the cattle and horses, and tried hard to kill the men and boys too. They had to look about them "with all their eyes" when they were riding past any cover.

Once Handsome Bob was missing for a couple of days. When he was found he was almost dead; for the blacks had knocked him off his horse with a boomerang, gashed him with their tomahawks, prodded at him with their spears till his flesh was like a perforated card, and then tied him to a tree which ants had connected with their hill by a little sunken path like a miniature railway-cutting. The ants and the flies had made an awful object of poor Bob's patchwork of wounds; and though he did at last most marvellously "recover," as it is called, he was half silly ever afterwards. Jawing Jim was kinder to him than you would have expected whilst he lay helpless in the hut, and Sydney and the boys, of course, looked in, and did what they could for him. But for hours he had to be left alone, with the chance that the blacks would swoop down upon him and finish their work. When he did get about again, although half silly in other things, he had a strange, fierce knack of surprising black fellows, and potting them from behind a tree as if they had been so many wild ducks.

Long before Handsome Bob was up again, his mates had been forced, as they thought, to be almost equally savage. Whenever they saw a black, they tried to kill him, as "naturally" as one tries to kill a snake or a wasp or any vermin. It is not pleasant to have to write about such things, but I must if I am to tell the whole truth about Australia. Sydney soon got quite envenomed against the blacks, whom he had robbed of their hunting-ground, because they were killing off his cattle; and not long afterwards Harry and Donald fully sympathized with him. Not one of the three felt the slightest scruple in shooting down a black, and then cutting off his head and hanging it _in terrorem_ on a tree, as a gamekeeper nails a hawk against his gable. There is a terrible amount of the tiger in human nature. When blood has once been tasted, so to speak, in savage earnest, "civilization" peels off like nose-skin in the tropics, and "Christian" men, and even boys, are ready--eager--to shed blood like water. They are _not_ eager to talk about what they have done when they get back from the Bush amongst their mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts; but then, they think white mothers, &c., are so different from black gins and their offspring--and when the white women hear of what the black fellows have done or tried to do to their darlings, they are very apt to frame excuses for the white atrocities which they dimly guess at when they kneel beside their beds at night to give God thanks for their darlings' return to districts in which it is possible to go to a "real church" and "regular services" every Sunday. Jawing Jim wanted to "polish the blacks off" like dingoes, by setting baits of poisoned food about the run; but at poison Sydney drew the line, and the boys, who were half startled by the kindliness with which they had taken to their killing work, could not help feeling relieved at finding that the line was to be drawn anywhere.

"No, Jim," said Sydney. "Fighting's all fair. If we didn't shoot down the blacks when we came across 'em, they'd precious soon spear us. But it's sneaking to poison the beggars, when they haven't a chance of hitting back."

"Boot ye poiason the warrigals, Mester Sydney, an' ah kent see as there's mooch to choose atween the two soarts o' warmin."

"P'r'aps there isn't," answered Sydney. "But anyhow there's something of a man, so far as look goes, in a black fellow; and so we'll fight fair. I'll have no strychnine used--do you understand, Jim?"

"_Ah_ oonerstaun'," growled Jim, "boot _thee_ doosn't. Pooder or poiason--wha-at's the oadds?"

After a good many brushes in the scrub, the black fellows grew more used to fire-arms, and ventured down one night upon the station buildings. Fortunately it was moonlight, and Donald, who chanced to be awake and looking out of the window, could plainly distinguish the invaders as they crept out of a patch of scrub about a couple of hundred yards off, and came crouching towards the huts with their noses almost touching the moonlit grass.

"Sydney! Harry!" he shouted, "here come the blacks!" and snatching up his gun, he deliberately levelled it, and let fly at the foremost black fellow.

When the blacks found that they were discovered, they sprang up erect, streaked and spotted with white and red clay, daubed on in stripes, and hideous faces, brandishing their spears, waving about their boomerangs and waddies, knocking their bark shields together, and advancing rapidly in a wild tramping dance to a horrible chorus of "Wah! wah! wah!"

But Donald's shot had aroused all the white folk. Handsome Bob was strong enough to fire a gun then, and rushing to _his_ window, he was the first to follow suit to Donald. Five marksmen were soon popping away incessantly. A shower of missiles whizzed through the moonlit air, and hurtled against the slab sides and bark roofs of the huts; but several of the blacks were down on the ground, and more had been slightly hit. Leaving their dead and badly wounded, the blacks turned and fled in disorder, and the five whites, who had defeated more than a hundred savages, sallied from their cover flushed with victory, and commenced an incautious pursuit. In their contempt for their enemy, they straggled from one another, and whilst they were thus giving chase, a tall black suddenly sprang from behind a tree, stunned Harry with a blow of his waddy, and carried him off.

When Harry came to himself, he was lying in a black fellows' encampment. It was broad daylight. The wounded warriors were crouching here and there, with earth instead of ointment stuffed into their wounds. The unhurt warriors, for the twentieth time, were bragging about their prowess. The gins had already celebrated it in a song, which they sang as they dragged a water-hole for fish, with a mat rather than net of twisted grass, and as they squatted on the ground inside and outside the gunyahs--conical huts of bark and wild vine--that were scattered about and clustered together under the weeping acacias. Grey, glistening bark canoes were lazily rubbing their sides together on a large lagoon hard by. "Tamed" dingoes slouched at their masters' heels, or snuffed about the gunyahs, gaunt as starved wolves. One woman was suckling alternately her own piccaninny and a puppy dingo! Two or three of the gins were guarding some opossums that were being cooked under a round layer of stones, on the top of which the kitchen fire was kindled. (Sometimes, instead of using this oven arrangement, the blacks bury their game, unskinned, in the hot ashes). The men had nothing on but a strip of kangaroo-skin round their loins, but the women wore kangaroo and 'possum rugs.

When Harry came to himself, he ached all over, and felt so stiff, that, although he was not bound, he could not rise from the ground. He fell sometimes on his face, and sometimes on his back, when he attempted to get on his feet. Some black boys who were standing near jeered at him when they saw this, and pricked him with their spears, at the same time mimicking his motions, like so many monkeys. But an old black, who was sitting with his back to the tree under which Harry was lying, left off nursing his knees for a minute, waved the young rascals off, and beckoned to a party of old gins to come near. These old ladies felt Harry all over, and when they found that no bones were broken, they took off his clothes, and began to dig their skinny black fists into him as if they were kneading bread. Then they dipped him in a water-hole, and, after he had lain down to dry, they trotted him about till all his aches and pains were gone, and he was able to eat a hunch of baked 'possum with relish--strong as it did taste of peppermint--even though he could not help seeing that he was being attended to in this careful way simply that he might give his captors more sport afterwards, when they began to torture him. But one of the old women who had kneaded Harry had noticed a mole on his back which was very much like one that a dead son of hers had on _his_ back, and so the old woman had come to the conclusion that her dead son had "jumped up white-fellow," as the blacks phrase it, in Harry. The other members of the tribe opposed this view, and there was a hot argument about it, in which, although it lasted for an hour, the name of the dead son was not once mentioned--the Australian blacks carefully abstaining from _naming_ their dead. At the end of this controversy Harry was placed on a little mound, and a shield was given him; three of the adroitest spear-throwers being stationed at some distance opposite to him. The first threw, aiming at Harry's stomach, but Harry, more by good luck than good management, caught the spear in the shield.

"It is the son of Kaludie," shouted the old gin who claimed him as her son.