Chapter XXVII.

My first care after the departure of the litter with its wounded occupant was to dispatch Snowball, who joined us at about this time, in search of Lampiere's flock of ewes and lambs. Of the escape of this flock from the ravages of the dingoes I now entertained the gravest doubts. As it turned out, however, my fears proved to be groundless. In a short time Snowball returned driving his bleating flock to the yard, having found them feeding very comfortably about a mile from home. Putting them into the yard, and counting them out, I found to my great satisfaction that to all appearance my noble tally of lambs, that I had begun to feel so despondent about, was still unharmed. Such an altogether unhoped for result would have seemed perfectly marvellous, but for one natural explanation, that I thought of at the time, and found afterwards to have been true. This was Lampiere's conscientious scrupulousness in carrying out my strict injunctions to always lay poison about for the wild dogs, to which they were attracted by the drawing of a trail round the page 197 sheep-yards at night by means of a scorched sheep's head, and dropping baits on it here and there as they went along. By the diligent observance of this custom the men had bagged— to use a hunter's phrase—so many dingoes, that the others began to grow wary of coming near the yard at all.

That night, in the tent, where Lampiere was laid on the softest bed that by rough hands could be fashioned out of the rudest materials—all hands vieing with one another in their attention to his wants, but Lilly taking upon himself the position of head nurse—we questioned Charlie on the manner in which he had succeeded in effecting Lampiere's deliverance from the murderous attack of so many blacks.

Of the manner in which this was done Lampiere was himself in entire ignorance. He only recovered consciousness, of which he had been deprived by the blow on his head, as he was being carried through the scrub upon Charlie's shoulders.

But Charlie's account of the affair, given in the broken or piebald English that only men like Lilly or Crawford, long accustomed to intercourse with the aborigines, could have fully understood, would be but a tedious task for an unpractised reader to attempt to follow. I will, therefore, give a more connected version of the story. To account for Charlie's action in this affair, however, the reader must first understand that not only had he been well acquainted with Lampiere, both having tended lamb flocks at the same place under Mulroy, but also (for that cause of itself would hardly have weighed much in the mind of a rude savage) that Lampiere, from a desire of studying Charlie's native language, had been in the habit of spending a considerable part of his evenings at Charlie's camp engaged in familiar intercourse with him, besides commending himself to his favour by presents of tobacco and pipes, etc.—attentions that may influence even a rude savage—and consequently a very friendly intimacy subsisted between them.

Charlie, naked and armed like the rest, being among the mob of blacks who went to attack the whites, though why, was not very clear, had determined in his own mind to effect, if possible, Lampiere's rescue. Knowing, however, that, single-handed against so many, this would be hopeless for him to attempt openly, he, to lull their suspicions, affected as great a bluster and eagerness for the destruction of the whites as his companions did. So zealously, in fact, did he appear to wish for the success of their bloody enterprise, that he shouted as in triumph—the shout probably that aroused Knight's attention—as the blacks rushed at Lampiere, who was felled senseless by a club blow from Billy the Bull. At that moment Charlie rudely jostled Billy to one side, as if in ferocious eagerness to be allowed the page 198 task of despatching the senseless victim, threw himself upon Lampiere's body, and, seizing him by the throat, as if with the design of strangling him, shouted to the others to go on after the other man, whilst he would throw this one into the water-hole.

As he spoke, the blacks, looking in the direction of the hut, just caught a glimpse of Knight disappearing into the scrub, after whom they, with a yell of ferocious triumph, instantly darted in pursuit.

Charlie's action proved to be the very best that under the circumstances he could have taken; although perhaps Charlie Knight's appreciation of it might not have been quite as emphatic at the time, had he known that he had been thus made a sort of scapegoat, for his mate's safety.

On the flight of the blacks in pursuit of Knight, Charlie immediately getting Lampiere, who he saw was still breathing, upon his shoulder, went across the yard and dropped him gently across the fence at the other side, that is hidden from view from the hut by an incline in the ground. First concealing Lampiere with a large decayed bough that he threw over his body, he then jumped with a great splash into the water. Emerging from this at once, he with a loud shout dashed after the other blacks who were in pursuit of Knight. These he overtook while still puzzled about the disappearance of Knight's tracks under the box tree.

Whilst moving round this tree in their attempt to again lift the broken trail, Charlie stated that he came across Knight's boots, where he had flung them from the tree. On telling us of this discovery Charlie, by way of expressing his secret desire for Knight's escape, emphatically remarked, in his own piebald English idiom, “me no make a light,” which signifies, he did not inform the others of this discovery, but left them to grope their way out of their difficulty by themselves, as best they could. However they soon found their clue. In the course of a wider circle round the tree, one of the blacks fell across the suspiciously deeply indented prints of naked feet, and called the attention of the others to the circumstance, when as the saying is, they smelt a rat, and at once darted forward in swift pursuit —with what result the reader already knows.

Here, however, Charlie contrived to leave them, by a swift double in the scrub, and returned in hot haste to where Lampiere was lying, and again taking him upon his shoulders, went hastily on to the place that has been already described, but which it cost him a tremendous effort to reach with the pressure of Lampiere's eleven stone.

Debating afterwards upon the circumstances of Charlie's page 199 narrative, Crawford, who was by nature suspicious of blacks, was still inclined to doubt the honesty of Charlie's intentions. “What did he want among that lot at all?” he said; “he knew they intended murdering the whites, and even although he did do so well with Lampiere, yet, with any of the rest of us, his hand would have been as red in our blood as any of the others; or what did he want in such bad company at all? I tell you these blacks are never to be trusted.”

“Well, no, Tom,” replied Lilly after a few moments' thought, “I am inclined to think different. I can see how Charlie might have gone along with the other blacks, knowing well what they were going to be up to, yet he himself be innocent of any intention to do harm.”

“Yes! well that does seem a strange contradiction. Going along with a mob, whom he knew intended murdering the whites, and he himself guiltless of any intention of harm; what was he doing there at all if that was so?” was Crawford's reply.

“And you can't see how that might happen for all that? I should have thought that a man like you Tom, that has travelled a bit, and been among a lot of rowdy men so often as you have been, would have known better than that!”

“I don't see what my travelling and being among rowdy men has to do with these blacks, Lilly.”

“It should have a lot to do with it,” replied Lilly decisively, “for it should have shown you what human nature is. And human nature is always the same wherever you go, under white skins or black; and it is from what I have seen of that myself, Tom, that makes me feel that the Bible is true when it says, that all the people on the earth have the same origin. Now Tom, you have often been in strikes among a lot of hands on a station, haven't you?”

“Certainly I have,” said Crawford, “and led them too, for that matter.”

“That's it; now, it's no matter whether the hands that struck were in the right or in the wrong, you would expect all hands to go together.”

“Yes, that's right. I have been more than once at a back country station, where we knew they could get no shearers, and we put our heads together, and stuck out for a higher price than we could have got, if there had been more shearers to be had.”

“Now then, tell me this: after you all, or nearly all of you, had made up your minds to go in for this strike, if there had been a few perhaps among you who refused to go in with you, what would you have said to them?”

“What should I have said? Why, called them b——y page 200 crawlers, and perhaps have kicked them off the place,” replied Tom impetuously.

“Just so,” said Lilly with all the satisfaction of a successful logician, who, by drawing his opponent into the concession of several inductions, shows him that he has thereby completely taken the wind out of his sails, with reference to the matter under discussion. “Now, Tom, as I said before, human nature is always the same; now just think for yourself. Might not this have been the exact case with Charlie there? The other blacks had resolved upon a strike against all the whites here, which with them meant just knocking you all on the head. Charlie refuses to join them in that strike—and mind you it would be all the worse in this case for Charlie, because he was a stranger here, and on that account more open to suspicion from the others of treachery towards them if he refused joining with them in the murder of the whites. Now, that for which you would only think of calling a man a b——y crawler, or perhaps kick him off a station for, they might think sufficient to smash a head with a club, or split it open with a tomahawk; now, don't you see yourself how for such reasons—and mind you I think they are the true reasons—Charlie might have been against his own wish amongst the other blacks, whom he yet knew meant to stain their hands with the blood of the whites?”

“I see it now, Lilly,” replied Crawford, in a tone of conviction, “but I never looked at it before in that light. As you say, human nature is human nature, and after all, I believe it is so in a sort of a way all the world over.”

Next morning Billy Stock yoked up the bullocks to the dray, in which, by Macalister's handiwork, a frame was erected, to which a swinging couch for the convenience of the wounded man was slung, and the whole covered in with a tarpaulin. By this means we determined to move Lampiere at once to the home station. His wound, that had been kept carefully fomented, was now bound up by Lilly, who had previously carefully removed all the surrounding hair—for by the time that Lampiere had been discovered the wound had been too much inflamed to admit of its being drawn together by stitches. Though an ugly cut it was not a fatal one, because the weapon that had inflicted it had been partly turned aside in its descent.

On satisfying himself on this point, Lilly had joyfully remarked that “a poet's skull was not such a weak one after all”. For in his simplicity in this point, Lilly could scarcely imagine other than that such a purely intellectual cranium must of necessity be made of thinner stuff, and consequently be more easily broken than those of ordinary mortals.

Lilly, tying Coleena on behind, went in the dray with page 201 Lampiere, attending on the sick man all the way, by keeping his wound constantly fomented, by which means alone—aided by the use of some ground blue stone, for the reduction of proud or unhealthy flesh, Lampiere's wound was eventually healed at Lilly's hut, and his broken arm restored again to a perfectly sound condition. With the team Cabbage-tree Jack also returned to his own hut.

To Charlie I gave the charge of Lampiere's flock, until I could get another shepherd, telling Jack to desire Bellamy to send one out at once. Afterwards, on my return, I took Charlie with me to the home station, with the design of finding him in permanent employment there as a station black, fearing lest, after his services in preserving Lampiere's life, he might be exposed to the resentment of the blacks, after we had all left the neighbourhood.

But, accompanied by Snowball, each of us well armed, I scoured the run in all directions for further traces of the gang that had occasioned so much disturbance and danger, but no trace of it could be found. The other quieter blacks in the camp, that Crawford had proposed killing, all declared their belief that “Warrugul (wild) black fellow go away”. The black fellow whom I had shot I next day had interred, taking Crawford and Macalister over with me to aid in the work, and Crawford instantly identified him as Tommy the Turk.

On going to where I had seen Billy the Bull however, he had disappeared. Evidently, by the numerous naked footprints around him, he had been borne off somewhere by his companions, but to whatever locality they might have taken him, it could only have been to die, for I felt convinced that he could not survive such a dreadful wound as I had seen. The shepherds, inclusive of those in charge of the other two lamb flocks at the other end of the run, were staying together, in one hut, where there were double yards, and had been happily unconscious of all our troubles, until I rode out to inform myself of their safety.

All being now armed—after, as it proved all necessity for arming had passed away—every one relapsed from their state of lively expectation into the state of monotonous indifference habitual to such men. As for myself, my fears too were quieted—from the conviction that the summary vengeance that had befallen the two desperado ringleaders would have instilled such a wholesome fear into the hearts of the others, as would effectually prevent the recurrence of another such outbreak during the few weeks that would still intervene between then and the time, when, for the purpose of shearing, I should finally evacuate the back country for the summer.