Chapter V. 'The Way we Civilize.'

John Campbell did look into that matter of which Philiberta had spoken, and the result was nothing. That is to say, he could not discover anything to justify him in sending the men away. Jimmy, the half-caste, only laughed when his master questioned him about the conversation on poisoning; but the boy always did laugh about everything, so there was nothing to be gathered from that. When the subject was broached to the 'old hands' they turned it off indifferently.

'Poison was the only cure for vermin,' one of them said.

'Yes,' said John Campbell, 'but when the vermin wass supposed to have immortal souls like the rest of men, it will not pe me which will take the responsibility of sending them off into eternity.'

The men laughed at that idea of the vermin having immortal souls.

'And there iss one thing mirofer,' continued the master. 'I do not grudge the vermin the food they steal no more as I page 35grudge them the food I gif to them. It is nothing—a pag or two of flour, or a sheep—nothing whateffer. It does not make me a poor man, the loss of it—let them haf it. And let there pe no more talk of poisoning at Morven. We will haf peace with the blacks, or else we will pe having spears and tomahawks, which iss worse—ay, and ferry much worse—as the stealing of a pag or two of flour.'

The men muttered something about its being no business of theirs.

'That iss ferry true,' said John Campbell, turning away; 'so let there pe no more talk about it whateffer.'

'There will pe no poisoning at Morven now,' he said, confidently, a little later, when he was telling the women all this.

Philiberta shook her head.

'You should have sent the men away, daddy,' said she.

'Well, what an obstinate lass it iss! Now the men was made to understand that we will not haf the blacks killed, they will not kill them. Why should they, when it iss not their flour or sheep which iss stolen?'

'They are bad men,' said Philiberta, 'Didn't I see one of them the first day he came here deliberately stone a young rosella off a tree, and then trample its life out with his great heavy cruel feet?'

'Ah, that iss it That iss why you hate them, and wish them sent away. Well, that wass a pad—a very pad thing to do, my Phil; but perhaps it was done bekass the rosellas are ferry greedy birds for the fruit in the orchard there.'

'Not at all. It was sheer love of wanton destruction; the instinct of murder. Daddy, I have an impression that some evil will come of those men staying here.'

'Impressions and presentiments, like Rosamond O'Brien there, who iss always hafing signs and tokens effer since she wass born. Winding sheets in the Candle, coffins flying out of the fire; shiverings, which iss bekass of people walking ofer your grave; death-tokens from poor little ticking spiders; putting on stockings and shimmies wrong side out; which iss, I page 36forget—which iss it the sign of, Rosamond?—putting on stockings and shimmies wrong side out?'

'Ah, be done now! One of these days ye'll be after repinting that ye laughed at mysterious things that ye ought to trate With respect.'

'My wife iss the most mysterious thing I efer wass acquainted with,' said John Campbell 'And who iss to say that I do not treat her with respect? Tell me that, the poth of you.'

Rosamond went round the table to pull his beard, and Philiberta went off to her sanctuary on the other side of the house to study a new species of spider that she had just discovered. The girl was wont to spend a great deal of time in this den, where, in glass cases, matchboxes, and under cups and saucers and tumblers, she had living specimens of natural history calculated to make one's flesh creep and one's marrow freeze. Of dead things and geological and botanical curiosities there were enough to start a small museum; but it was of the live things that Mrs. Campbell, who shunned the place as religiously as the devil is said to shun holy water, was in terror of her life. There was one fine old tarantula, that lived and throve in captivity, as if 'to the manner born,' and which was always ready to show off his accomplishments to anyone who would be so good as to oblige him with a fly, that became positively a nightmare to the poor woman. Night after night she awoke screaming from visions of the big hairy-legged, bright-eyed thing pursuing her; and at last, out of sheer compassion for her, Philiberta undertook the death of the spider. The execution was as merciful as could be; just a little pure spirit poured on him as he lay calmly digesting his dinner in the bottom of a glass jar; and he drew himself suddenly up to the size of a sixpence, and that was the end of him.

Even John Campbell, a man singularly free from common prejudices, set his face against live centipedes and scorpions, so these were always killed previous to admission; but Philiberta kept a tame lizard that would come out of his box at the sound of her tap on the lid; and sundry gold beetles and brown cockchafers, who were as ready as game roosters at any page 37time for a pitched battle with each other. And two colonies of ants, one of the species known as sugar-ants, the other of the pugnacious 'bulldog' tribe. But these came to final grief through the escape of the bulldogs and wholesale slaughter performed by them on the sugar-ants; and the subsequent exploring expedition of the bulldogs to the adjacent kitchen, where the cook summarily ended their fun with boiling water.

'That settles their hash,' said the cook, when she had done it; 'the stingin' little divils!'

One of them had tried to explore the cook, you see; and she had to wear cold water bandages round one leg for several days in consequence.

There is no doubt that, with all her insects and reptiles, odds and ends of stones and what not, Philiberta was at this time a serious nuisance. But what eager girl or boy, full of plans and projects, ideas, notions, and enterprises, is not a nuisance? Except, of course, to the one or two whose love, like that of the big soft-hearted Highlander, and his dear Irish wife, knows no fault in its idol.

The subject of the blacks and the poisoning was forgotten for a week or so. The blacks, indeed, were behaving themselves very well just then. Black-fish were very abundant that month in Emu Creek, and were easier skinned and cooked than mutton, so the rascals let the sheep alone. And they brought beside a good supply of that welcome fresh water delicacy to the station in exchange for the flour and tobacco they came to beg, so matters rested amicably.

But towards the close of the shearing the blacks broke out badly. Not only were several sheep carried off, but half a dozen or so beside were left cruelly mutilated on the ground. John Campbell waxed righteously wroth, and vowed to punish the 'teffles' at the first opportunity.

But the two 'old hands' that Philiberta disliked so made opportunity. They despatched Jimmy, the half-caste, on a secret mission to the township. The lad was missing a whole day; and when John Campbell demanded explanation of his absence, said, 'Mine come along a township for make a light page 38doctor-fellow, mister. Mine got um belly-ache too muchee—no gammon.'

Two nights after this there was another raid upon the flour.

The half-caste was in great glee. 'Mine belly-ache go along a dam blackfellow now, pretty quick. Oiya! Baal blackfellow shake um flour next time, my word!'

It was not until three days later that the reason of this rejoicing was discovered, and then it was Philiberta who made the discovery. Wandering far afield on King Lowrie, her own well-beloved steed, in search of a particular mossy lichen that was just then the most important thing in the world to her, she came all suddenly upon a blackfellows' camp. There was the heap of ashes and fag ends of wood where they had built their fire; there were the fragments of flesh and damper that indicated a feast; there, lying in all possible attitudes begotten of pain and death, were a dozen swollen black distorted bodies. Pah! but it was a horrible sight!

Explanations were unneeded. The whole thing was understood at once. The station hands had put arsenic in the flour. John Campbell's anger and sorrow knew no bounds. He thrashed the two old convicts to within an inch of their worthless lives, and discharged every man about the place, because he said they must all have had a hand in it.

'But the branding, and the cattle-muster, John,' cried Rosamond, 'and no men!'

'We will hef to let it all slide, Rosamond, or take our chance of swagmen, dear. Not one more penny of mine will those tam murderers earn while I am alive; not if there wass nefer to pe another shearing at Morven.'

So every man had to tramp off, except Jimmy, the half-caste. He cried so bitterly, was so utterly and abjectly penitent, and in such an agony of terror at the prospect of being turned adrift, that his master retained him, arguing that 'he wass not a man, anyhow, but only a lad; a heathen mirofer, who did not know any petter, and wass not responsible.' Jimmy's sire was the first owner of Burnagulla; dam Queen Mary, the lubra, who forsook his majesty, her lawful husband, in favour of the page 39whitefellow, and died in bed, a most unusual thing for a lubra. But the nomadic instinct was very feeble in her; still feebler in her offspring. To Jimmy the idea of being sent out into the unknown world to look after himself, was of all ideas the most awful. His attachment to the home of his birth was as powerful as his hatred of his mother's race.

'Btackfellows! Ugh!' he would ejaculate, spitting; on the ground in fine contempt at sight of his dusky brethren.

So he proved a willing tool to these white murderers, and then just as willingly 'rounded on' them when the time came for confession. He described how he had been sent to the township with money for arsenic; how he had been told to explain that it was wanted at Morven for dingoes and native cats; how three of them had mixed it with the flour in the dead of night; how the same three, Jimmy and the convicts, had followed the victims on the night of the theft, and watched them feast and gasp and leap and writhe and struggle till they died.

'If it wass not so far to the nearest prison,' said John Campbell, shaking the leader of this tragedy as a terrier might shake a rat, 'I would take you there now with my own hands, and hef you hanged in less time as a week. I would, py Kott!'

As it was, he could simply thrash them and let them go; and thus it was that Morven was almost desolated just at the season when it was usually busiest.

'And if I wass not needing men,' grumbled the master savagely, 'then there would be crowds of them swagging up. Now, when I will pe wanting them ferry padly, there iss not even a sundowner comes to Morven.'

And so the whole of December passed, and Christmas and New Year's-day went by almost without notice. Since the time of the poisoning the natives had kept away altogether. The tribe seemed to have taken fright. John Campbell and Philiberta scoured the country for miles in search of them; for both had an idea that some effort at explanation and compensation would perhaps stave off probable evil. Over Morven there hung a shadow all through these long hot days and short hot nights—the shadow of impending danger. Rosamond page 40became sorely nervous and depressed, and worried her husband hourly with superstitious observations.

'It iss a pain in your head you hef got, dear,' said he one day, soothingly, when she was complaining of a ringing sound in her ears.

'No, darlin', it is the dead-bell that has been droning there these two days; the saints avert all harm.'

Of course he only laughed at her. She had been hearing 'dead-bells' and experiencing other presentiments of evil ever since he had known her, and what but good had come to them yet? Everything had prospered always; and had they not got the lass? But even John Campbell could hardly shake himself free from the shadow of trouble that brooded over Morven; and nought but a sense of the cowardice of running away prevented him from gathering up his women-folk and fleeing for a season to Ballarat or Melbourne.