“Did you ever taste milk, old fellow,” he said, “distilled chiefly from water-lilies? I assure you our two melancholy milkers have consumed no other food for weeks. There is not, of course, a particle of grass, or so much as an unstripped salt-bush or cotton-bush for miles. Well, the big lagoon (quite a lake it looks in winter) has not dried up yet. You may see the cows standing up to their backs in it all day long. Even the lilies are not on the surface. An occasional flower is all that they get there, but from time to time you may notice one of the amphibious creatures put her head deeply under water like a diving duck, and raise it after a longish interval, filled with a great trailing bunch of roots and esculent filaments. Great idea, isn’t it? I wonder how long they would take to Darwinize into webbed feet and a beaverly breadth of tail.”
“They manage to live, and give us milk besides, on this blanc-mange, or whatever it is,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “I don’t know what the poor children would have done but for these submarine plantations.”
“My dear old Mameluke has copied their idea, then,” joined in Maud, with a brave attempt at light converse, which ended in a flickering, piteous smile; “for I saw him in the cows’ water party yesterday, with very little but his head visible. He has lost all the hair from his knees down, either from the leeches or the water.”
“We are living in strange times,” remarked Jack; “it is a pity we can’t get a few hints from the blacks, who must have seen all the dry seasons since Captain Cook. What have you done with all your sheep, Mark?”
“We are eating the few that are left,” said Mark.
“And very bad they are,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove. “We are all so tired of mutton, that I shall never like it again as long as I live.”
“The beef would be worse, if we had any,” resumed Mark. “The sheep are just eatable, though I agree as to the indifferent quality. All the flocks are in the mountains in charge of my working overseer, old Hardbake, as well as the cattle. Here is the last letter: ‘The sheep is all well, and the wool will be right if so be as you get rain by the time the snow falls here. We must cut and run then for fear of haccidence. The cattle is pore but lively. Send some more baccy. Yours, to command, Gregory Hardbake.’ Curious scrawl, isn’t it?”
The ladies having retired, Mark Stangrove and his guest adjourned to the veranda for the customary tabaks parlement, and for some time smoked silently under the influence of the glorious southern night. All was still save the faint but clearly-heard ripple of the stream, and the low, sighing, rhythmical murmur of the river oaks. Cloudless was the sky; the broad silver moon hung in mid firmament, with splendour undimmed, save by a wide translucent halo – in happier times suggestive of rain. In this hopeless season, the denizens of the Warroo had learned by sad experience to distrust this and all other ordinary phenomena.
“Glorious night,” said Mark at length, breaking the long silence, “but how infinitely we should prefer the wildest weather that ever frightened a man to his prayers! Strange, how comparative is even one’s pleasure in the beauty of nature, and how dependent upon its squaring with our humble daily needs. When I read such a passage as – ‘the storm beat mercilessly in the faces of the wayfarers, with heavy driving showers,’ &c. – when the author has exhausted himself in this endeavour to elicit your sympathy for the unlucky hero and heroine – I feel madly envious, which I take it is not the feeling intended to be produced. So you are going to clear out, old fellow, for good and all? You know, I am sure, how sorry we all are. Will you pardon me if I ask what your plans are for the future?”
“I have no plans,” answered Jack. “I shall make a fresh start as soon as I am sold up. I must do as other shipwrecked men, I suppose – go before the mast, or take a third-mate’s berth, and work up to a fresh command – if it’s in me.”
“That’s all very well in its way. I admire pluck and independence; but without capital it’s a long, weary business.”
“How have the other men fared?” demanded Jack. “I am not the first who has been left without a shilling, but with health, strength, and – well – some part of one’s youth remaining, it is a disgrace to such a man, in this country above all others, to lie down or whine for assistance at the first defeat.”
“Granted, my dear fellow; though I confess I take your proposition to apply more strictly to the labourer proper than to him who starts weighted with the name and habits of a gentleman. There is no track open to him that he could not travel with tenfold greater speed with the aid of capital to clear the way.”
“That I cannot have without laying myself under obligations to friends or relatives, and nothing would induce me to ask or accept such help,” quoth Jack, with unwonted sternness. “I have lost a fortune and the best years of my life – as I believe by no fault of my own. I will regain it, as I have lost it, without help from living man; or the destiny which has robbed me of all that makes life worth having may take a worthless life also.”
“It strikes me that you are hardly just, not to say generous,” rejoined Mark, “to speak of your life as entirely worthless; but I am not going to preach, old fellow, to a man in your hurt and wounded state. I have been near enough to it myself to understand your chief bitternesses. Now listen to me, like a good fellow, as if I were your elder brother or somebody in the paternal line. You know I am a heap of years older, besides having the advantage of being a spectator, and a very friendly one, of your game.”
Jack nodded an affirmative, while Stangrove, refilling his pipe, sent forth a contemplative cloud and recommenced:
“When a man is ruined – and I have seen a whole district cleared out in one year before now – one thing, almost the chief thing, he has to guard against is, a wild desire springing mainly from mortification, wounded pride, and a kind of reactionary despair, to get away from the scene of his disaster and from his previous occupation, whatever it may be. Now this feeling is perfectly natural. All the same it should not be indulged. When a man has done nothing worse than the unsuccessful, he should calmly review his position, and above all take the advice of his friends. If he have plenty of them – as you have – he may rest assured that their verdict as to his plans and prospects is far more likely to be correct than his own. When he disagrees with the whole jury of them, he generally is in the position of the proverbial person who found eleven most obstinate jurymen entirely opposed to his way of thinking.”
“But surely a man must know his own capacity, and can gauge the measure of his own powers more correctly than any number of friends,” pleaded Jack.
“I am not sure of that. I believe in several heads being better than one, especially where the latter has just come out of the thick of the conflict, and has not escaped without a hard knock or two. To pursue my lecture on adversity – don’t take it so seriously, Redgrave, or I must stop. A good fellow, with staunch friends, is invariably helped to one fresh start, often to two. So you may look upon it as a settled thing. Sheep are cruelly low now – ”
“What! begin with another sheep station, and a small one?” interrupted Jack. “Let me die first.”
“There, again, allow me to differ with you, and to state another peculiarity of misadventure. A fellow always insists upon changing his stock. A cattle-man takes to sheep, after a knock-down, and vice versâ. Whereas, it is just the thing he should not do. He knows, or fancies he knows, all the expenses and drawbacks of one division of stock farming; of the peculiar troubles of the other he is ignorant, and so over-estimates the advantages. By this shuttle-cocking, he abandons one sort when their turn for profit is at hand, and generally gets well launched into the other as their turn is departing. Besides, all the accumulation of experience – a fair capital in itself – is thus wasted.”
“Hang experience,” swore Jack, with peculiar bitterness; “it’s the light that illumines the ship’s wake, as some unlucky beggar like me must have said; and which leaves the look-out as dim as ever.”
“You persist in doing yourself injustice,” continued his patient friend; “everybody will concede that you have had very hard luck; you have lost by one fluke – you may get your revenge by another, if you have the wherewithal to put on the card; not otherwise though. As I said before, sheep are down to nothing – at that painful price you are compelled to sell. Why not buy some other fellow’s place at the same figure? When the tide rises, as it surely will, you will float into deep water with the rest of them.”
“What do you fancy the real value of runs to be?”
“From six to ten shillings for sheep and stations, according to quality, not a halfpenny more.” Jack could not repress a groan. “Well, with five thousand pounds you ought to be able to buy a good property with twenty thousand sheep – half cash, half at two years.”
“Where’s the money to come from?” demanded Jack, from the depths of his beard.
“My dear fellow,” Stangrove said, getting up and walking over to him, “you don’t think me such a beast as to have bored you all this time if I had not intended to act as well as talk. I will find the money; you know I have always been a screwing, saving kind of chap. You can relieve your conscience by giving me a second mortgage till you pay up.”
Jack grasped the hand of his entertainer till the strong man half flinched from the crushing pressure.
“You are a good fellow, true friend, and worthy to be the brother of the sweetest girl that ever gladdened a man’s heart. But I cannot accept your offer, noble and self-sacrificing as it is. I am an unlucky devil; I have no faith in my future fortune; and I will not be base enough to run the risk of dragging down others into the pit of my own poverty and wretchedness.”
“But, my dear fellow, hear reason; don’t decide hastily. You don’t know to what you are, perhaps, condemning yourself, and – others besides yourself.”
“It is because I am considering others,” answered Jack, as he stood up and looked, half pleadingly, at the silver moon, the silent stars, the clear heavens, the wonder and majesty of night, as who should strive to win an answer from an oracle. “It is for the sake of others, for the sake of her, that I reject your offer. I should only blend your ruin with my own – foredoomed, it may be, like much else that happens in this melancholy, mysterious life of ours. And now, God bless you. I will start early. I could not say farewell to Maud. Tell her my words, and – to forget me.”
The two men grasped each other’s hands silently, and without other speech each went to his own apartment.
Before sunrise Jack left an uneasy pillow, and, dressing hastily, walked quietly out of the house, and into the horse-paddock, or an enclosure so designated, which in former days had contained adequate nutriment for all inmates. He found his attenuated steed, and caught him without much difficulty. The unlucky animal was standing by a box tree, staring vacantly upwards, and refreshing himself from time to time with a vigorous bite at the bark, which he chewed with evident relish. Saddling up at the stable, he walked towards the outer sliprails, intending to avoid the dismounting at that rude substitute for a gate, about which he had often rallied Mark. He had just concluded the taking down and replacing of these antiquated entrance-bars, and, with an audible sigh, was about to mount, when he saw Maud coming along the short-cut footpath from the house, which led to the garden gate. She waved her hand. He had no choice – no wish, but to stop. She was his love. She was before his eyes once again. He had tried to spare her – perhaps himself. But it was not to be.
She came swiftly up this dusty path, in the clear warm morning light, her hair catching a gleam of the level sun, her cheek faintly tinted with a sudden glow, her lips apart, her eyes burning bright. She looked at him, for one moment, with the honest tenderness of a woman, pure from the suspicion of coquetry – loving, and not ashamed though the world should witness her love.
“John,” she said, in a tone of soft, yet deep reproach, “were you going away, for ever perhaps, and without a word of farewell?”
“Was it not better so?” he murmured, taking her hand in both of his, and looking into her eyes with mingled gloom and passion, as though he had been Leonora’s lover, doubting, pitying, yet compelled to bid her forth to the midnight journey on the phantom steed.
“Better! why should it be better?” said she, with a wild terror in her voice and looks. “Have you no pity for yourself – for me – that you despise the advice of your best friends, and insist upon dooming yourself to poverty and obscurity? I knew Mark was going to speak to you, and he told me that he would help – like a good fellow as he is – you or – us – why should I falter with the word? – to make a new commencement. Why, why are you so proud, so unyielding, so unwilling to sacrifice your pride for my sake? You cannot care for me!”
Here the excited girl flung herself forward, as if she would have humbled herself in the dust before him, while a storm of sobs shook her bosom, and caused her whole form to tremble as if in an ague fit.
Jack raised her tenderly in his arms, and, pouring forth every name of love, strove to soothe and pacify her.
“Darling,” he said, “have pity upon me, and trust me a little also. All that a man should do would I do for your dear sake; and if I do not at once consent to accept Mark’s generous offer, or that of any friend for the present, why will you not let me try my chance, single-handed, with fortune, like another? When the Knight returns to his Ladye-love after such a combat, is he not doubly welcome, doubly dear? Why should you insist upon my being defended from the rude blasts of adversity, as if I were unable to prove myself a man among men!”
“You deceive yourself,” she said, in sad, serene accents; “you will not yield yourself to the counsels of those who are cool and prudent. Will you not let me tell you that, though you are the dearest, greatest of mortal men in my eyes, I do not think prudence is a marked gift of yours?”
“You are a saucy girl,” he said, as she smiled sadly through her tears; “but you are only telling me what I knew before. Still, but for imprudence, or what the world calls such, conquests and splendid discoveries would never have been made. I have something of the ‘conquestador’ in me. It must have space and opportunity for a year or two, or I shall die.”
“Will you make me one promise before you go?” said she, looking earnestly into his face, “and I can then wait – for, trust me, I shall wait for you till I die – with a heart less hopelessly despairing.”
“I will, if – ”
“Then promise me this – that if, in two years, you have not succeeded, as you expect, you will return to me, and will not then refuse Mark’s proffered aid.”
He hesitated.
“Think this,” she said, as she raised herself slightly on tiptoe, and whispered in his ear. “It is my life that I am asking of you; I feel it. If you love your pride – yourself more – ”
“I promise,” he said hastily. “I promise before God, if in two years I have made no progress, I will return and bow myself at your feet. You shall deal with me as you list.”
Their lips were pressed convulsively together in one lingering kiss. Then she released herself with mute despair.
She stood for one moment gazing upon him with all the ardour of her love and truth shining out of her wondrous eyes. Her face became deadly pale. Its whole expression gradually changed to one unutterably mournful and despairing. Then, turning, she walked slowly, steadily, and without once turning her head, along the homeward path. Jack watched her till she passed through the garden gate and entered the veranda. Mounting his horse, he rode along the river road at a pace more in accordance with the condition of his emotions than the condition of his hackney.
CHAPTER XVIII
“Fickle fortune has deceived me:
She promised fair, and performed but ill.” —Burns.
Events were following in quick succession across John Redgrave’s life, like the presentments of a magic lantern; and it seemed to him at times with a like unreality. But reason, in hours of compulsory attention, proved with cold logic that they were only too harshly true.
A little while, as he could not help owning to himself, and he would be driven forth from the Eden of “the potentiality of wealth” and luxury, into the outer world of dreary fact, poverty, and labour. Fast sped the melancholy, aimless, half-anxious, half-despairing days, following upon the advertisement which took all the pastoral and commercial world into his confidence, and stamped him with the stigma of failure. Thus, one fine day, a stranger, a shrewd-looking personage, redolent of capital, from his felt wide-awake to his substantial boots, arrived by the mail, and presented the credentials which announced him a Mr. Bagemall (Bagemall Brothers and Holdfast) and the purchaser of Gondaree. It was even so. That “well-known, fattening run, highly improved, fenced and subdivided, with 65,794 well-bred, carefully-culled sheep, regularly supplied with the most fashionable Mudgee blood, the last two clips of wool having averaged two shillings and ninepence per lb.,” &c., &c., as per advertisement, had been sold publicly, Messrs. Drawe and Backwell auctioneers. Sold, and for what price? For eight shillings and threepence per head, half cash and half approved bills at short dates!
Well, he had hoped nothing better. In the teeth of such a season, such a panic, such a general loosening of the foundations alike of pastoral and commercial systems, what else was to be expected as the proceeds of a forced sale, with terms equal to cash? The murder was out. The hazard had been played and lost – let the stakes at least be handed over with equanimity.
So Mr. Bagemall was received with all proper hospitality, and courteously entreated, he being apparently bent more upon the refreshment and restoration of the inner man, after a toilsome and eventful journey, than upon information regarding his purchase. He made no inquiries, but smoked his pipe and enjoyed his dinner, talking in a cheery and non-committal manner about the state of politics, and the last European news by the mail. He went early to bed, pleading urgent want of a night’s rest, and postponed the serious part of the visit until the morrow.
When the morning meal and the morning pipe had been satisfactorily disposed of, he displayed a willingness, but no haste, to commence business.
“I suppose we may as well take a look round the place, Mr. Redgrave,” said he; “everything looks well in a general way; nothing like fencing to stand a bad season. Monstrous pity to put such a property in the market just now. Can’t think what the banks are about. Sure to be a change for the better soon, unless rain has ceased to form part of the Australian climate, and then we shall all be in the same boat.”
“I shouldn’t have sold if I could have helped it, you may be sure,” answered Jack; “but the thing is done, and it’s no use thinking about it. The sooner it’s over the better.”
“Just as you please – just as you please,” said the stranger. “You will oblige me by considering me in the light of a guest during my short stay. I must go back the end of the week. I don’t know that I need do anything but count the sheep, in which our friend here (turning to M‘Nab) perhaps will help me. Everything being given in, I sha’n’t bother myself or you by inspecting the station plant. The wash-pen and shed speak for themselves.”
“Thank you very much,” said Jack; “delivering over a station is generally a nuisance, especially as to the smaller matters. I remember being at Yillaree, when Knipstone was giving delivery to old M‘Tavish. They had been squabbling awfully about every pot and kettle and frying-pan, all of which Knipstone had carefully entered – some of them twice over. To complete the inventory he produced a brass candlestick, saying airily, ‘The other one is on the store table.’ ‘Bring it here, then, you rascal,’ roared M‘Tavish. ‘I wouldn’t take your word for a box of matches.’”
“The purchase-money was somewhere about eighty thousand pounds,” remarked Bagemall, who seemed to remember what every station had brought for the last ten years. “A paltry fifty pounds couldn’t have mattered much one way or the other.”
The next morning the counting began in earnest. A couple of thousand four-tooth wethers had been put in the drafting yard, for some reason or other, and with this lot they made a commencement. Now, except to the initiated, this counting of sheep is a bewildering, all but impossible matter. The hurdle or gate, as the case may be, is partially opened and egress permitted in a degree proportioned to the supposed talent of the enumerator. If he be slow, inexperienced, and therefore diffident, a small opening suffices, through which only a couple of sheep can run at a time. Then he begins – two, four, six, eight, and so on, up to twenty. After he gets well into his tens he probably makes some slight miscalculation, and while he is mentally debating whether forty-two or fifty-two be right, three sheep rush out together, the additional one in wild eagerness jumping on to the back of one of the others, and then sprawling, feet up, in front of the gate. The unhappy wight says “sixty” to himself, and, looking doubtfully at the continuous stream of animals, falls hopelessly in arrear and gives up. In such a case the sheep have to be re-yarded, or he has to trust implicitly to the honour of the person in charge, who widens the gate, lets the sheep rush out higgledy-piggledy, as it seems to the tyro, and keeps calling out “hundred” – “hundred” with wonderful and almost suspicious rapidity. Yet, in such a case, there will rarely be one sheep wrong, more or less, in five thousand. Thus, when arrived at the yard, M‘Nab looked inquiringly at the stranger, and took hold of one end of the hurdle.
“Throw it down and let ’em rip,” said Mr. Bagemall. “You and I will count, and Mr. Redgrave will perhaps keep tally.”
Keeping tally, it may be explained, is the notation of the hundreds, by pencil or notched stick, the counter being supposed only to concern himself with the units and tens.
M‘Nab, who was an unrivalled counter, relaxed his features, as recognizing a kindred spirit, and, as the sheep came tearing and tumbling out, after the fashion of strong, hearty, paddocked wethers, he placed his hands in his pockets and reeled off the hundreds, as did Mr. Bagemall, in no time. The operation was soon over. They agreed in the odd number to a sheep. And M‘Nab further remarked that Mr. Bagemall was one of those gifted persons who, by a successive motion of the fingers of both hands, was enabled (quite as a matter of form) to check the tally-keeper as well. Paddock after paddock was duly mustered, driven through their respective gates, and counted back. In a couple of days the operation, combined with the inspection of the whole run, was concluded.
Sitting in the veranda after a longish day’s work, all smoking, and Jack looking regretfully at his garden, which, small and insignificant compared with the exuberant plantation of Marshmead, was very creditable for the Warroo, and indeed was just about to make some small repayment for labour in the way of fruit, Mr. Bagemall remarked —
“I didn’t know you had any blacks about the place. Does this lot belong here?”
“It must be old man Jack and his family,” answered M‘Nab. “I have been wondering what had become of them for ever so long. I heard Wildduck was very ill. Yes, this is our tribe, sir; not a very alarming one, but all that brandy and ball-cartridge have left.”
“What has the old fellow got on his back?” inquired Mr. Bagemall; “the men carry nothing if they can help it.”
“Poor Wildduck,” said Jack, half to himself, “I had forgotten all about her of late, with the allowable selfishness of misfortune. By Jove! it’s she that the old man is carrying. She must be ill indeed.”
The old savage, followed by his aged wives at humble distance, marched on in a stately and solemn manner, until he reached a mound near the garden gate. Here the little procession halted; one of the gins placed an opossum rug upon the earth, and upon this the old man, with great care and tenderness, placed the wasted form of the girl Wildduck. She it was, apparently in the last stage of consumption, as her hollow cheeks testified, and the altered face, now lighted by eyes of unnatural size, brilliant with the fire of death. The three men walked over.
“Ah, Misser Redgrave,” said she, while a dreamy smile passed over her wan countenance, “stockman say you sell Gondaree and go away. Old man Jack carry me from Bimbalong – me must say good-bye.” Here a frightful fit of coughing prevented further speech, while the old man and the gins made expressive pantomime, in acquiescence, and then, seating themselves around, took out sharp-edged flints, and, scooping a preliminary gash on their faces, prepared for a “good cry.” Strangely soon blood and tears were flowing in commingled streams adown their swart countenances. Wildduck lay gasping upon her rug, and from time to time sobbed out her share of the lament for the kind white man who was about to leave their country.
Jack leaned over the ghastly and shrunken form of what had once been the agile and frolicsome Wildduck. The dying girl – for such unquestionably she was – looked up in his face, with death-gleaming and earnest gaze.
“You yan away from Gondaree, Misser Redgrave?” she gasped out. “No come back?”
Jack nodded in assent.
“Me yan away too,” she continued; “Kalingeree close up die, me thinkum; that one grog killum, and too much big one cough, like it white fellow. You tell Miss Maudie, I good girl long time.”
“Poor Wildduck,” said Jack, genuinely moved by the sad spectacle of the poor victim to civilization. “Miss Maudie will be very sorry to hear about you. Can’t you get down to Juandah? I’m sure she would take care of you.”
“Too far that one place, now. Me going to die here. Old man Jack bury me at Bimbalong. My mother sit down there, long o’ waterhole – where you see that big coubah tree. Misser Redgrave!” she said, with sudden earnestness, trying to raise herself; “you tell me one thing?”
“What is it, my poor girl?”
“You tell me” – here she gazed imploringly at him, with a look of dread and doubt piteous to mark in her uplifted face – “where you think I go when I die?”
“Go!” answered Jack, rather confused by this direct appeal to his assumed superior knowledge of the future. “Why, to heaven, I believe, Wildduck. We shall all go there, I hope, some day.”
“I see Miss Maudie there; she go, I know. You go too; you always kind to poor black fellow.”
“I hope and trust we shall all go there some day, if we’re good,” said he, unconsciously recalling his good mother’s early assurances on that head. “Didn’t Miss Maudie tell you so.”
“Miss Maudie tell me about white man’s God – teach me prayer every night – say, ‘Our Father.’ You think God care about poor black girl?”
“Yes, I do; you belong to Him, Wildduck, just the same as white girl. You say prayer to Him. He take care of you, same as Miss Maudie tell you.”
“She tell me she very sorry for poor black girl. She say, why you drink brandy, Wildduck? that wicked. So me try – no use – can’t help it. Black fellow all the same as little child. Big one stupid.”
“White fellow stupid too, Wildduck,” said John Redgrave; “you have been no worse than plenty of others who ought to have known better. But perhaps you won’t die after all.”
“Me die fast enough.” Here the merciless cough for a time completely exhausted her. “I believe to-morrow. You think I jump up white fellow?”
“I can’t say, Wildduck,” answered he. “We shall all be very different from what we are now. You had better cover yourself up and go to sleep.”
“I very tired,” moaned the girl, feebly; “long way we come to-day. You tell new gentleman he be kind to old man Jack. You say good-bye to poor Wildduck.” Here she held out her attenuated hand. It had been always small and slender, as in many cases are those of the women of her race. In the days of her health and vigour, Jack had often noticed the curious delicacy of her hands and feet, and speculated on the causes of such conformation among a people all ignorant of shoe and stocking. But now the small brown fingers and transparent palm were like those of a child. He held them in his own for a second, and then said, “Good-night, Wildduck.”
“Good-bye, Misser Redgrave, good-bye. You tell Miss Maudie, perhaps I see her some day, you too, long big one star.” Here she pointed to the sky. Her eyes filled with tears. Jack turned away. When he looked again, she had covered her face with the rug. But he could hear her sobs, and a low moaning cry.
“Strange, and how hard to understand!” said Jack to himself, as he strode forward in the twilight towards the cottage. “I wonder what the extent of this poor ignorant creature’s moral responsibility may be. What opportunities has she had of comprehending her presence on this mysterious earth? Save a few lessons from Maud, she has never heard the sacred name except as giving power to a careless oath. As to actual wickedness she is a thousand-fold better than half the white sinners of her own sex. Her sufferings have been short. And perhaps she lies a-dying more happily circumstanced than a pauper in the cold walls of a work-house, or a waif in a stifling room in a back slum of any given city. As far as the children of crime, want, and vice are concerned, all cities are much on a par, whether Australian, European, or otherwise.”
The night was boisterous, yet, mingled with the moaning of the blast, Jack fancied that at midnight he heard a cry, long-drawn, wailing, and more shrill than the tones of the wind-harp, or the sighing of the bowed forest.