Part 9
"Kaludie is blind," shouted the others: "the son of Kaludie, when he played with the spears, waved like the wild vine; the white boy stands stiff as the tea-pole."
The second thrower hurled his spear, and that, too, quivered in the shield, instead of piercing the heart at which it had been hurled.
"It is the son of Kaludie," shouted the old gin again.
Harry's marvellous luck still continued. He caught the third spear also, which was aimed at his head.
"It is the son of Kaludie," for the third time shouted the old gin, running to throw her arms around Harry, and at the same time gashing her cheeks with a stone.
"Kaludie has eyes," shouted the others, at last convinced. "The white fellow is slow as a koala, but this white boy is quick as a wink."
After this, although he was strictly watched, a great deal was made of Harry. He was taken hunting and fishing with the tribe, and was helped more plentifully than the other boys to the wallaby, snake, parrot, iguana, yam, figs, honey, grubs, or whatever else happened to be going for food. This made the black lads jealous of him, and one of them asked, "Was not the son of Kaludie a kipper?" and then pointed to Harry's mouth, out of which, of course, no tooth had been knocked, black-fellow fashion, at the "kipper" age. This discovery brought on another long argument, and it was at last decided that the son of Kaludie must be made a kipper over again next full moon. Accordingly poor Harry was obliged to submit to have a front tooth knocked out. That was rather unpleasant; but if Donald had been with him, he would have enjoyed the hunting and fishing. He learnt to hurl the spear and fling the boomerang almost like a black fellow. But just as he was getting a little reconciled to his captivity in the open air, something occurred which made him long more than ever to get back to his own people. In a fight with another tribe, several of his captors were slain. The corpses were brought back and roasted, peeled like potatoes, and eaten by their own comrades. When the bones had been picked, they were put into baskets of native grass, sent about to be howled over, then brought back to their families' gunyahs to be kept for a time _in memoriam_, and at last hung on the branches or dropped into the hollows of trees, on which the emblem of the tribe, a waratah, was carved. A plump arm was thrust into Harry's hands, as a special treat. When he flung it down, and rushed away from the horrid banquet, even Kaludie became half sceptical as to whether he could indeed be her son. For days afterwards he could not touch flesh food of any kind, and the natives' suspicions might have been seriously aroused, had not their attention been diverted from him by a mysterious illness which struck down young and old in their camp. In vain were dead men's skins brought out for the invalids to be laid on. In vain did adventurous warriors waylay the members of other tribes, in order to secure their kidneys to make ointment for the sufferers. In vain did the old gins rinse their mouths and spit beside the sick, invoking curses on the sorcerer who had caused them to writhe in agony. It was manifest, the blacks said, that the sorcerer came and went as he pleased, underground, to the camp, and that he must be slain before its peace could be restored. Handsome Bob was the sorcerer credited with its calamity.
One day a boasting young black bounded into the camp, and, striking an attitude, began to chant (of course in black fellow's lingo):
"I have slain--whom have I slain? Is it the white wizard that burrowed like the wombat? Is it he whom we caught and fastened to the tree? Is it the white wizard with the face like the flying fox? Yes, it is the white wizard that lies slain under the wattle--slain by the spear of me, the brave Jooragong."
Then the excited gins took up the song--
"Jooragong is young, but he has slain him who slew the blacks--the white wizard who burrowed like the wombat--the white wizard with the face like the flying fox. Jooragong is young, but he is braver than the old men. We will all be the gins of Jooragong."
And then there would have been a great corroborree, had not a sceptical old warrior said,
"Jooragong is brave in his own mouth. Why did Jooragong leave the scalp of the white wizard under the wattle? Let us go and look on the face of the flying fox. Let us be sure that the white wizard will no more burrow like the wombat."
Jooragong looked very much like a trapped dingo, but he could not refuse the old man's challenge. A party of the blacks started under his guidance to make sure of the death of the white wizard, and the son of Kaludie went with them. At last Jooragong stopped and said,
"The white wizard lies dead under _that_ tree," pointing to one in the distance; but when they came to the tree, there was no corpse there. "He is gone--he is a wizard," said Jooragong.
"Let Jooragong show me the white wizard's tracks," answered the old warrior.
"He burrows like the wombat," said Jooragong.
"Then Jooragong, who is young, but braver than the old men, has not speared the wombat," sneered the old man. "We will go back, and the gins shall sing of Jooragong--'Jooragong is young. Jooragong is brave. His enemies are dried up before him like water. We look for the enemies whom he hath speared, but we find them not. When dead they still fear Jooragong, who is braver than the old men.'"
The son of Kaludie, however, did not go back to camp. Jooragong had led the party of searchers within sight of the station buildings, and Harry determined to make a bolt for them, if he died for it. He found it easier work than he had expected to get away. The rest of the blacks were so busy jabbering jibes at Jooragong that Harry was not noticed when he lagged behind, and in a few minutes he was able to slip behind a tree, and thence make a slant for the station. When he had once ventured to begin to run, he kept on running as if he was racing Death. He tumbled to the ground dead-beat, but panting like a steam-engine just about to blow up, when he had almost reached the huts. Donald ran out, and then looked half inclined to run away again.
"Harry," he said, "are ye sure it's yoursel', of your wraith? Hech, man, ye're a sicht for sair een," Donald went on, with the tears gushing up into his own generally hard-looking grey eyes, like water oozing from a rock. "We thocht ye'd been deid, an' buried inside the blacks this long while."
After Harry's escape the blacks again made very audacious descents on the station buildings. For one thing, they wanted to recapture the son of Kaludie; for another, they wanted to kill the white wizard, who, instead of having been speared by Jooragong, had made the braggart dodge from tree to tree before his gun. For a third thing the black fellows had a great relish for the white fellows' stores, to which every now and then they found a scrambling chance of helping themselves. More fighting took place, and every now and then a black was shot. Still the blacks came down upon the homestead. As it was impossible to guess when they would come, the place could not be efficiently guarded unless the whole of the little garrison always stayed at home--and in that case how was the work of the station to be done?
"Ah tell thee whet 'tis, Mester Sydney," said Jawing Jim (who up in the bush had almost begun to merit his _sobriquet_); "if tha wan't poiason the warmin, tha moost skeer 'em. Me an' Boab'll do it for thee. Boab ain't mooch fit for nawthing else nowa, poor lahd!"
This was the stratagem the men contrived: They cut off the head of a dead black fellow, and put it into a full flour-cask, the top of which was left open. Then leaving the store door unlocked, and the flour-cask just behind it, all the pioneers left the buildings; the boys, however, returning by a roundabout route, and "planting" in some scrub not far off to witness what might happen. They had to wait some time, but at last the blacks made their appearance. Even their keen eyes detecting no trace of the presence of any whites, they soon swarmed up boldly to the store. Jooragong, bravest of the brave when there was nothing to be feared, rolled out the cask that stood so conveniently near and open, and began to scoop out the flour with both hands. But presently they brought up his countryman's head. The other blacks raised a wild howl and fled, but Jooragong stood stock-still, gaping, with eyes starting from his head at his hideous handful. The firing of the boys' guns broke the spell. Off Jooragong bounded also, dropping the floury head out of his floury hands back into the cask; and so long as Harry and Donald stayed at Pigeon Park, the blacks never again ventured within gunshot of the store.
XII. A GOLD RUSH.
Soon after Harry and Donald returned to Wonga-Wonga, the station was excited by the news that gold had been found about seventy miles to the north of Jerry's Town. At first the news was partially pooh-poohed at Wonga-Wonga.
"We've heard of _storekeepers' rushes_ before now, haven't we?" Mr. Lawson said to the men, who were getting unsettled by the tidings. "Those fellows would make out that there was gold in the moon, if people could get there to buy their damaged goods; and nicely they'd clap it on for carriage."
It soon became certain, however, that something more than the mere "colour of gold" had been found at Jim Crow Creek. Three parts of the population of Jerry's Town started for the new diggings, and yet the town was busier than ever, such a stream of people poured through it. Nearly every township between Jerry's Town and Sydney contributed its quota, and amongst those who came from Sydney were a good many who had sailed thither from Melbourne. Perhaps they had been doing very well on the Victoria diggings, but diggers have almost always a belief that they could do better somewhere else than where they are; and so, when they hear of new diggings, off they flock to them, like starlings from England in autumn.
Wonga-Wonga and the other stations near Jerry's Plains soon became very short-handed. Shepherds and stockmen sloped wholesale for the Creek, sometimes helping themselves to their masters' horses to get there. To make the best of a bad job, Mr. Lawson resolved to avail himself of the market for meat that had suddenly been created at Jim Crow Creek; and, accordingly, he and the boys started thither with some of the sheep and cattle that had been left with scarcely any one to look after them.
As they rode into Jerry's Town, they passed a mob of Chinamen, in baggy blue breeches, who were preparing to encamp by the roadside. Most of them still wore their tails, coiled up like snakes, or dangling down like eels. The Jerry's Town youngsters were pelting the Chinamen, and taking sly pulls at the dangling tails, whenever they got the chance, meanwhile shouting "Chow-chow" and singing in chorus--
"Here he was, and there he goes, Chinaman with the monkey nose."
As the Chinamen laid down the bamboos they had carried on their shoulders, with bundles hanging from them like milk-pails from a yoke, and gathered sticks to boil their rice, their almond eyes glanced very evilly from under their beehive hats at the young outside barbarians. I am sorry to say that is not only the _young_ barbarians who behave very brutally to Chinamen in Australia.
All the way from Jerry's Town to Jim Crow Creek the road, that used to look even more solitary than Highgate Archway Road looks during the greater part of the year, was every here and there almost as crowded as Highgate Archway Road during the time of Barnet Fair. Men on horseback, with saddle-bags and pistols peeping from their holsters, were ambling and cantering along, singly and in couples, and in threes and fours. Moleskin-trousered pedestrians, who had "humped the swag," were toiling along, footsore and perspiring, their red or blue shirts rolled up and laid upon the top of their heavy loads. Greenhorn-looking young fellows, fresh from the counter or the desk, were sitting down, dead beat. Tarpaulined drays ground along in a long line, monotonously jingling the pots and pannikins slung beneath.
Here and there a dray had broken down, and the driver was fussing about as angry as a wasp, or smoking in sulky idleness, because he could not get any one to stop to help him right his cargo. Every public was crammed with rowdy-looking, bronzed, bearded fellows, shouting for nobblers, spiders, and stone-fences. The free commons which every traveller in Australia used to look upon as a right rather than a favour, had ceased to be supplied by either house or hut. If any passenger wanted food or drink, he had to pay for them, and pay smartly too. Some of the parties taking their meals along the road were faring jollily, but some of the pedestrians who limped past them cast enviously hungry glances on their commissariat. To say nothing of brandy, bitter beer, sardines, and potted salmon, _they_ were speculating anxiously as to how much longer they could make sure of tea and damper.
Jim Crow Creek was reached at last. A week or two before, it had been so quiet that the shy water-moles would come up and bask for the half-hour together on the surface of its gravy-soup-coloured water. There was nothing to startle them except the sudden scream of a flock of parrots flashing across, or the lazy rustle of the long, inky, lanky-tassel-like leaves which the grey-boled trees upon the banks dipped into the smooth stream. But now for two or three miles upon both banks there was bustle. The trees had been cut down, the banks scarped and honeycombed, and dotted with big boil-like heaps of dusty earth. The tortured creek, here dammed, there almost drained, and yonder flowing in a new channel, seemed to be as puzzled as to its identity as the old lady who had her petticoats cut all round about. Steam sent up quick, angry white puffs; windlasses went round and round at the top of yawning wells of dirt; the grinding, rattling dash of shovels into soil, the ticking click of picks on stone resounded everywhere. Cradles rocked; hip-booted men, who looked as if they had not washed either face or hands for a twelvemonth, swished their precious mud round and round in washing-pans. Scattered along the sloping sides of the creek, and jostlingly jumbled on the flat it once crept round, so sleepily quiet, were all kinds of extemporized stores and dwellings: a house or two of corrugated iron; more hastily knocked-up ones of slabs; canvas-walled houses, roofed with asphalte-felt; round tents, square tents, polygonal tents, and mere bark gunyahs. Some had their owners' names roughly painted on the canvas. Outside one tent hung a brass plate inscribed with "Mr. So-and-So, Photographer." Keen-looking gold-buyers stood at the doors of their wooden "offices." A commissioner, swellish in gold lace, cantered superciliously through the bustling throngs. Policemen lounged about, striving to look unconscious of the "Joey!" which the miners found time to shout after them in scorn. Hanging about the sly grog-shop tents, there were men who might have been thought to have more time for such amusement, since smoking and nobblerizing was all that they seemed to have to do; but these gentry appeared by no means eager to attract the attention of the police. The gold-buyers looked anxious when the rascals' furtively-ferocious eyes chanced to fall their way, and they were not the kind of man that a solitary digger would have liked to see peeping into his tent at night, or loitering before him in the bush. Everybody at Jim Crow Creek had guns or pistols of some kind, and took care to let his neighbours know that he was armed by firing off his weapons before he turned in, and then ostentatiously reloading them after the gun-powdery good night.
Before Mr. Lawson and the boys reached the "township," as the Jim Crow Flat was already called, their sheep and cattle were bought up by a butcher who was waiting on the road. They bought their chops of him for their evening meal, and when they found what he charged for them, Mr. Lawson was not quite so satisfied with his cattle bargain as he had been when he made it. After tea, the boys strolled out to look about them, and presently came to a large tent, with the American colours flying above it. There was a crowd at the entrance, and it was as much as two money-takers could do to make sure that they did take the admission-money from all the boisterous fellows who were rolling in. Amongst them were a few women, with faces like brown leather, who were still more boisterous.
"Let's go in, Donald," said Harry. "It must be those Ethiopian chaps that passed us on the road in the American waggon."
The boys struggled in at last, and then wished, but in vain, that they could struggle out. They were jammed in a steaming, smoking, rum-scented mass of miners, good-tempered enough in the main, but apparently of opinion that the proper place for a man's elbows was in his neighbour's ribs, and for his feet upon his neighbour's toes. Not more than half had seats, and sometimes they swayed about so, that it seemed certain the bulging tent must fall. They joined most discordantly in all the choruses, and when especially pleased, pitched coppers, and sixpences, and shillings on the stage. They threw other things that were not so pleasant. One wag threw a potato, which hit Bones upon the nose just when he was propounding a conundrum to Tambourine; and Mr. Bones, in spite of his fun, being a very irascible little serenader, leaped down amongst his audience, and made frantic efforts to get at his assailant. There was very nearly a battle-royal between house and performers, and Mr. Bones was pulled up at last by his brethren, with his woolly wig half off his head, his long-tailed coat split from waist to collar, and his huge shirt-collar and cravat in a sadly crumpled condition. Whilst the scrimmage lasted, Donald had noticed a broad-shouldered mulatto, in red shirt and ear-rings, who had kept on plunging backwards and forwards in the crowd, apparently bent on increasing the confusion.
"Hae ye got anything in your pockets, Harry?" said Donald, when comparative calm had been restored. "Just spot yon body in the red shirt. He tried my pockets more than once. I suppose he thocht I'd bring a bundle of notes in here. I'm nae sae daft."
It was nearly midnight when the "entertainment" concluded, and it was Sunday morning before all the entertained got into the open air again. As the reeking crowd struggled out, the mulatto recommenced his plunging manoeuvres. When the boys got out, they saw him hurrying in the moonlight down an alley between two little rows of tents.
"He's a nice young man for a small music party," said Harry, looking after him; "and there seems to be plenty of his sort. Come along, Donald; we've a good step to go, and I should feel so spoony if I got bailed up by those fellows; though it isn't much, is it, they could ease us of?"
Mr. Lawson had pitched his tent on the other side of the "township," some little way down the Jerry's Town road, in a place where there were no other tents near.
When the boys had crossed the flat, and were ascending the steep rough bush track dignified with the name of Jerry's Town Road, they were not exactly pleased to see a man who looked very much like the mulatto, and two other men, slip out of the bush, and seat themselves on a log and a stump by the roadside.
"It don't seem game to turn out of the road for those fellows, does it, Donald?" said Harry. "But I'll go bail they're up to no good, and they're hulking big beggars, and I'll be bound they've barkers, and we haven't."
"I dinna think they're planting for us," answered Donald; "but, as like as not, they'd gie us a knock on the head if we went up to them; an' what's the use o' gettin' a knock on the head for nae guid, if ye can avoid it?"
"I should uncommonly like to know what they're scheming," said Harry, as the boys turned aside into the bush. "They're jabbering fast enough about something. Let's creep up behind and listen. P'r'aps it's the governor they've a down on."
This is what the boys heard when they had crept like cats to a listening-place:
"It's a squatter fellow that sold some bullocks to Wilcox the butcher," said one of the mulatto's companions. "He's camped out yonder by himself."
"Well, but," objected the mulatto, "Wilcox would pay him in orders, and what's the good of them?"
"Ah, but I heard him ask Wilcox for some in cash or notes, if he had it. The fellow said he'd got cleaned out on the road up, and must have some money to take him back. So Wilcox gave him some; I can't say how much it was, but any's worth finding. Besides, he's a gold ticker--a real handsome one, as big as a frying-pan. And then there's the three horses, and first-chop colonial saddles."
"Is there anybody with him, then?"
"Two young 'uns came with him, but they've gone down into the town, an' if they've come back, it don't matter much. I fancy he's turned in now. I've been watching him this good while, till I come down to hunt up you and Bill."
"Well, let's be off then," said the mulatto; and the three began to run. The boys tried to make a short cut for the tent, but lost ground instead. When they reached the tent Mr. Lawson was on his back, half-throttling, however, the mulatto who knelt upon him, whilst the other two scoundrels were giving him savage blows and kicks.
"Put--a--ball--in--to--him," gasped the mulatto.
Before a pistol could be pointed, however, the two boys had leaped on the two men, and by the suddenness of the onslaught toppled them over, tumbling at the same time themselves. For a minute a confused heap of trunks and limbs heaved and wriggled on the floor; but Mr. Lawson rolled himself out, and, getting uppermost in turn, brought down his huge Northumbrian fist with a tremendous thud upon the mulatto's face. As soon as the other two men could scramble to their feet, they took to their heels. The boys had got hold of their pistols by that time, and Mr. Lawson was reaching out his hand for his revolver. Three bullets whistled after the two runaways, but neither was hit. Meantime the mulatto, save for his stertorous breathing, lay like a log upon the ground.
"Get your horse, Harry, and ride in for the police," said Mr. Lawson. "We'd best tie the scoundrel first, though."
Harry and Donald went to catch the hobbled horse; Mr. Lawson turned to refasten an up-pulled tent-peg, and to get a cord, and when he turned round again, the mulatto was gone.
"The rascal was only shamming," said Mr. Lawson, feeling rather silly, when the boys returned. "I turned my back for a second, and he wriggled off like a snake. Now, boys, turn in, and I'll keep watch till the sun comes up. If I hadn't been in such a hurry to get a snooze, I shouldn't have been laid on my back by those mean curs. I must have been sleeping like a top when they pounced in upon me. I've to thank you, boys, and let us all thank God."
Mr. Lawson and the boys stayed over the Sunday at Jim Crow Creek, but it was a strange Sunday. The miners knocked off work, but they economized the Sabbath hours in fighting out the week's quarrels, which they could not spare time to settle on week-days. The only "service" was one conducted by a tall, gauntly-sinewy Cornish miner, who shouted at the top of his voice, and worked himself into a pale perspiration as he flung about his long limbs as if they were galvanized. A few of his hearers looked pleased to be reminded anyhow of what the day was. A few more looked ashamed _because_ they were ashamed to look pleased too. But most grinned, and then passed on to find more exciting amusements.