From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New

Chapter Twenty Two
Round the Log Fire – Hurricane Bill and the Tiger-Snake – Gentleman Craig’s Resolve

Kangaroo driving or hunting is one of the wild sports of Australia, though I have heard it doubted whether there was any real sport in it. It is extremely exciting, and never much more dangerous than a ride after the hounds at home in a rough country.

It really does seem little short of murder, however, to surround the animals and slay them wholesale; only, be it remembered, they are extremely hard upon the herbage. It has been said that a kangaroo will eat as much as two sheep; whether this be true or not, these animals must be kept down, or they will keep the squatter down. Every other species of wild animal disappears before man, but kangaroos appear to imagine that human beings were sent into the bush to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, and that both blades belong to them.

The only people from Burley New Farm who went to the Findlayson kangaroo drive were Harry, Archie, and Etheldene, and Craig to look after her. Me. Winslow stopped at home with Bob, to give him advice and suggest improvements; for he well knew his daughter would be safe with Gentleman Craig.

It was a long ride, however, and one night was to be spent in camp; but as there was nothing to do, and nothing in the shape of cattle or sheep to look after, it was rather jolly than otherwise. They found a delightful spot near a clear pool and close by the forest to make their pitch on for the night.

Hurricane Bill was the active party on this occasion; he found wood with the help of Harry, and enough of it to last till the morning. The beauty, or one of the beauties, of the climate in this part of Australia is, that with the sun the thermometer sinks, and the later spring and even summer nights are very pleasant indeed.

When supper was finished, and tea, that safest and best of stimulants, had been discussed, talking became general; everybody was in good spirits in the expectation of some fun on the morrow; for a longish ride through the depth of that gloomy forest would bring them to the plain and to Findlayson’s in time for a second breakfast.

Hurricane Bill told many a strange story of Australian life, but all in the way of conversation; for Bill was a shy kind of man, and wanted a good deal of drawing-out, as the dog said about the badger.

Archie gave his experiences of hunting in England, and of shooting and fishing and country adventure generally in that far-off land, and he had no more earnest listener than Etheldene. To her England was the land of romance. Young though she was, she had read the most of Walter Scott’s novels, and had an idea that England and Scotland were still peopled as we find these countries described by the great wizard, and she did not wish to be disillusioned. The very mention of the word “castle,” or “ruin,” or “coat of mail,” brought fancies and pictures into her mind that she would not have had blotted out on any account.

Over and over again, many a day and many a time, she had made Archie describe to her every room in the old farm; and his turret chamber high up above the tall-spreading elm trees, where the rooks built and cawed in spring, and through which the wild winds of winter moaned and soughed when the leaves had fallen, was to Etheldene a veritable room in fairyland.

“Oh,” she said to-night, “how I should love it all! I do want to go to England, and I’ll make father take me just once before I die.”

“Before ye die, miss!” said Hurricane Bill. “Why it is funny to hear the likes o’ you, with all the world before ye, talkin’ about dying.”

Well, by-and-by London was mentioned, and then it was Harry’s turn. He was by no means sorry to have something to say.

“Shall I describe to you, Miss Winslow,” he said, “some of the wild sights of Whitechapel?”

“Is it a dreadfully wild place, Mr Brown?”

“It is rather; eh, Johnnie?”

“I don’t know much about it, Harry.”

“Well, there are slums near by there, miss, that no man with a black coat and an umbrella dare enter in daylight owing to the wild beasts. Then there are peelers.”

“What are peelers? Monkeys?”

“Yes, miss; they are a sort of monkeys – blue monkeys – and carry sticks same as the real African ourang-outangs do. And can’t they use them too!”

“Are they very ugly?”

“Awful, and venomous too; and at night they have one eye that shines in the dark like a wild cat’s, and you’ve got to stand clear when that eye’s on you.”

“Well,” said Etheldene, “I wouldn’t like to be lost in a place like that. I’d rather be bushed where I am. But I think, Mr Brown, you are laughing at me. Are there any snakes in Whitechapel?”

“No, thank goodness; no, miss. I can’t stand snakes much.”

“There was a pretty tiger crept past you just as I was talking though,” she said with great coolness.

Harry jumped and shook himself. Etheldene laughed.

“It is far enough away by this time,” she remarked. “I saw something ripple past you, Harry, like a whip-thong. I thought my eyes had made it.”

“You brought it along with the wood perhaps,” said Craig quietly.

“’Pon my word,” cried Harry, “you’re a lot of Job’s comforters, all of you. D’ye know I won’t sleep one blessed wink to-night. I’ll fancy every moment there is a snake in my blanket or under the saddle.”

“They won’t come near you, Mr Brown,” said Craig. “They keep as far away from Englishmen as possible.”

“Not always,” said Bill. “Maybe ye wouldn’t believe it, but I was bitten and well-nigh dead, and it was a tiger as done it. And if I ain’t English, then there ain’t an Englishman ’twixt ’ere and Melbourne. See that, miss?” He held up a hand in the firelight as he spoke.

“Why,” said Etheldene, “you don’t mean to say the snake bit off half your little finger?”

“Not much I don’t; but he bit me on the finger, miss. I was a swagsman then, and was gathering wood, as we were to-night, when I got nipped, and my chum tightened a morsel of string round it to keep the poison away from the heart, then he laid the finger on a stone and chopped it off with his spade. Fact what I’m telling you. But the poison got in the blood somehow all the same. They half carried me to Irish Charlie’s hotel. Lucky, that wasn’t far off. Then they stuck the whiskey into me.”

“Did the whiskey kill the poison?” said Archie.

“Whiskey kill the poison! Why, young sir, Charlie’s whiskey would have killed a kangaroo! But nothing warmed me that night; my blood felt frozen. Well, sleep came at last, and, oh, the dreams! ’Twere worse ten thousand times than being wi’ Daniel in the den o’ lions. Next day nobody hardly knew me; I was blue and wrinkled. I had aged ten years in a single night.”

“I say,” said Harry, “suppose we change the subject.”

“And I say,” said Craig, “suppose we make the beds.”

He got up as he spoke, and began to busy himself in preparations for Etheldene’s couch. It was easily and simply arranged, but the arrangement nevertheless showed considerable forethought.

He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned laden with all the necessary paraphernalia. A seven-foot pole was fastened to a tree; the other end supported by a forked stick, which he sharpened and drove into the ground. Some grass was spread beneath the pole, a blanket thrown carefully over it, the upturned saddle put down for a pillow, and a tent formed by throwing over the pole a loose piece of canvas that he had taken from his saddle-bow, weighted down by some stones, and the whole was complete.

“Now, Baby,” said Craig, handing Etheldene a warm rug, “will you be pleased to retire?”

“Where is my flat candlestick?” she answered. Gentleman Craig pointed to the Southern Cross. “Yonder,” he said. “Is it not a lovely one?”

“It puts me in mind of old, old times,” said Etheldene with a sigh. “And you’re calling me ‘Baby’ too. Do you remember, ever so long ago in the Bush, when I was a baby in downright earnest, how you used to sing a lullaby to me outside my wee tent?”

“If you go to bed, and don’t speak any more, I may do so again.”

“Good-night then. Sound sleep to everybody. What fun!” Then Baby disappeared.

Craig sat himself down near the tent, after replenishing the fire – he was to keep the first watch, then Bill would come on duty – and at once began to sing, or rather ‘croon’ over, an old, old song. His voice was rich and sweet, and though he sang low it could be heard distinctly enough by all, and it mingled almost mournfully with the soughing of the wind through the tall trees.

“My song is rather a sorrowful ditty,” he had half-whispered to Archie before he began; “but it is poor Miss Ethie’s favourite.” But long before Craig had finished no one around the log fire was awake but himself.

He looked to his rifle and revolvers, placed them handy in case of an attack by blacks, then once more sat down, leaning his back against a tree and giving way to thought.

Not over pleasant thoughts were those of Gentleman Craig’s, as might have been guessed from his frequent sighs as he gazed earnestly into the fire.

What did he see in the fire? Tableaux of his past life? Perhaps or perhaps not. At all events they could not have been very inspiriting ones. No one could have started in life with better prospects than he had done; but he carried with him wherever he went his own fearful enemy, something that would not leave him alone, but was ever, ever urging him to drink. Even as a student he had been what was called “a jolly fellow,” and his friendship was appreciated by scores who knew him. He loved to be considered the life and soul of a company. It was an honour dearer to him than anything else; but deeply, dearly had he paid for it.

By this time he might have been honoured and respected in his own country, for he was undoubtedly clever; but he had lost himself, and lost all that made life dear – his beautiful, queenly mother. He would never see her more. She was dead, yet the memory of the love she bore him was still the one, the only ray of sunshine left in his soul.

And he had come out here to Australia determined to turn over a new leaf. Alas! he had not done so.

“Oh, what a fool I have been!” he said in his thoughts, clenching his lists until the nails almost cut the palms.

He started up now and went wandering away towards the trees. There was nothing that could hurt him there. He felt powerful enough to grapple with a dozen blacks, but none were in his thoughts; and, indeed, none were in the forest.

He could talk aloud now, as he walked rapidly up and down past the weird grey trunks of the gum trees.

“My foolish pride has been my curse,” he said bitterly. “But should I allow it to be so? The thing lies in a nutshell I have never yet had the courage to say, ‘I will not touch the hateful firewater, because I cannot control myself if I do.’ If I take but one glass I arouse within me the dormant fiend, and he takes possession of my soul, and rules all my actions until sickness ends my carousal, and I am left weak as a child in soul and body. If I were not too proud to say those words to my fellow-beings, if I were not afraid of being laughed at as a coward! Ah, that’s it! It is too hard to bear! Shall I face it? Shall I own myself a coward in this one thing? I seem compelled to answer myself, to answer my own soul. Or is it my dead mother’s spirit speaking through my heart? Oh, if I thought so I – I – ”

Here the strong man broke down. He knelt beside a tree trunk and sobbed like a boy. Then he prayed; and when he got up from his knees he was calm. He extended one hand towards the stars.

“Mother,” he said, “by God’s help I shall be free.”

When the morning broke pale and golden over the eastern hills, and the laughing jackasses came round to smile terribly loud and terribly chaffingly at the white men’s preparation for their simple breakfast, Craig moved about without a single trace of his last night’s sorrow. He was busy looking after the horses when Etheldene came bounding towards him with both hands extended, so frank and free and beautiful that as he took hold of them he could not help saying:

“You look as fresh as a fern this morning, Baby.”

“Not so green, Craig. Say ‘Not so green.’”

“No, not so green. But really to look at you brings a great big wave of joy surging all over my heart. But to descend from romance to common-sense. I hope you are hungry? I have just been seeing to your horse. Where do you think I found him?”

“I couldn’t guess.”

“Why in the water down yonder. Lying down and wallowing.”

“The naughty horse! Ah, here come the others! Good morning all.”

“We have been bathing,” said Archie. “Oh, how delicious!”

“Yes,” said Harry; “Johnnie and I were bathing down under the trees, and it really was a treat to see how quickly he came to bank when I told him there was an alligator taking stock.”

“We scared the ducks though. Pity we didn’t bring our guns and bag a few.”

“I believe we’ll have a right good breakfast at Findlayson’s,” said Craig; “so I propose we now have a mouthful of something and start.”

The gloom of that deep forest became irksome at last; though some of its trees were wondrous to behold in their stately straightness and immensity of size, the trunks of others were bent and crooked into such weird forms of contortion, that they positively looked uncanny.

Referring to these, Archie remarked to Craig, who was riding by his side:

“Are they not grotesquely beautiful?”

Craig laughed lightly.

“Their grotesqueness is apparent anyhow,” he replied. “But would you believe it, in this very forest I was a week mad?”

“Mad!”

“Yes; worse than mad – delirious. Oh, I did not run about, I was too feeble! but a black woman or girl found me, and built a kind of bark gunja over me, for it rained part of the time and dripped the rest. And those trees with their bent and gnarled stems walked about me, and gibbered and laughed, and pointed crooked fingers at me. I can afford to smile at it now, but it was very dreadful then; and the worst of it was I had brought it all on myself.”

Archie was silent.

“You know in what way?” added Craig.

“I have been told,” Archie said, simply and sadly.

“For weeks, Mr Broadbent, after I was able to walk, I remained among the blacks doing nothing, just wandering aimlessly from place to place; but the woods and the trees looked no longer weird and awful to me then, for I was in my right mind. It was spring – nay, but early summer – and I could feel and drink in all the gorgeous beauty of foliage, of tree flowers and wild flowers, nodding palms and feathery ferns; but, oh! I left and went south again; I met once more the white man, and forgot all the religion of Nature in which my soul had for a time been steeped. So that is all a kind of confession. I feel the better for having made it. We are all poor, weak mortals at the best; only I made a resolve last night.”

“You did?”

“Yes; and I am going to keep it. I am going to have help.”

“Help!”

“Yes, from Him who made those stately giants of the forest and changed their stems to silvery white. He can change all things.”

“Amen!” said Archie solemnly.

Chapter Twenty Three
At Findlayson’s Farm – The Great Kangaroo Hunt – A Dinner and Concert

Gentleman Craig was certainly a strange mortal; but after all he was only the type of a class of men to be found at most of our great universities. Admirable Crichtons in a small way, in the estimation of their friends – bold, handsome, careless, and dashing, not to say clever – they may go through the course with flying colours. But too often they strike the rocks of sin and sink, going out like the splendid meteors of a November night, or sometimes – if they continue to float – they are sent off to Australia, with the hopes of giving them one more chance. Alas! they seldom get farther than the cities. It is only the very best and boldest of them that reach the Bush, and there you may find them building fences or shearing sheep. If any kind of labour at all is going to make men of them, it is this.

Two minutes after Craig had been talking to Archie, the sweet, clear, ringing notes of his manly voice were awaking echoes far a-down the dark forest.

Parrots and parrakeets, of lovely plumage, fluttered nearer, holding low their wise, old-fashioned heads to look and listen. Lyre-birds hopped out from under green fern-bushes, raising their tails and glancing at their figures in the clear pool. They listened too, and ran back to where their nests were to tell their wives men-people were passing through the forest singing; but that they, the cock lyre-birds, could sing infinitely better if they tried.

On and on and on went the cavalcade, till sylvan beauty itself began to pall at last, and no one was a bit sorry when all at once the forest ended, and they were out on a plain, out in the scrub, with, away beyond, gently-rising hills, on which trees were scattered.

The bleating of sheep now made them forget all about the gloom of the forest. They passed one or two rude huts, and then saw a bigger smoke in the distance, which Bill told Archie was Findlayson’s.

Findlayson came out to meet them. A Scot every inch of him, you could tell that at a glance. A Scot from the soles of his rough shoes to the rim of his hat; brown as to beard and hands, and with a good-natured face the colour of a badly-burned brick.

He bade them welcome in a right hearty way, and helped “the lassie” to dismount.

He had met “the lassie” before.

“But,” he said, “I wadna hae kent ye; you were but a bit gilpie then. Losh! but ye have grown. Your father’s weel, I suppose? Ah, it’ll be a while afore anybody makes such a sudden haul at the diggin’ o’ gowd as he did! But come in. It’s goin’ to be anither warm day, I fear.

“Breakfast is a’ ready. You’ll have a thistle fu’ o’ whiskey first, you men folks. Rin butt the hoose, my dear, and see my sister. Tell her to boil the eggs, and lift the bacon and the roast ducks.”

He brought out the bottle as he spoke. Both Harry and Archie tasted to please him. But Craig went boldly into battle.

“I’m done with it, Findlayson,” he said. “It has been my ruin. I’m done. I’m a weak fool.”

“But a wee drap wadna hurt you, man. Just to put the dust out o’ your wizzen.”

Craig smiled.

“It is the wee draps,” he replied, “that do the mischief.”

“Well, I winna try to force you. Here comes the gude wife wi’ the teapot.”

“Bill,” he continued, “as soon as you’ve satisfied the cravins o’ Nature, mount the grey colt, and ride down the Creek, and tell them the new chums and I will be wi’ them in half an hour.”

And in little over that specified time they had all joined the hunt.

Black folks and “orra men,” as Findlayson called them, were already detouring around a wide track of country to beat up the kangaroos.

There were nearly a score of mounted men, but only one lady besides Etheldene, a squatter’s bold sister.

The dogs were a sight to look at. They would have puzzled some Englishmen what to make of them. Partly greyhounds, but larger, sturdier, and stronger, as if they had received at one time a cross of mastiff. They looked eminently fit, however, and were with difficulty kept back. Every now and then a distant shout was heard, and at such times the hounds seemed burning to be off.

But soon the kangaroos themselves began to appear thick and fast. They came from one part or another in little groups, meeting and hopping about in wonder and fright. They seemed only looking for a means of escape; and at times, as a few rushing from one direction met others, they appeared to consult. Many stood high up, as if on tiptoe, gazing eagerly around, with a curious mixture of bewilderment and fright displayed on their simple but gentle faces.

They got small time to think now, however, for men and dogs were on them, and the flight and the murder commenced with a vengeance. There were black fellows there, who appeared to spring suddenly from the earth, spear-armed, to deal terrible destruction right and left among the innocent animals. And black women too, who seemed to revel in the bloody sight. If the whites were excited and thirsty for carnage, those aborigines were doubly so.

Meanwhile the men had dismounted, Archie and Harry among the rest, and were firing away as quickly as possible. There is one thing to be said in favour of the gunners; they took good aim, and there was little after-motion in the body of the kangaroo in which a bullet had found a billet.

After all Archie was neither content with the sport, nor had it come up as yet to his beau ideal of adventure from all he had heard and read of it. The scene was altogether noisy, wild, and confusing. The blacks gloated in the bloodshed, and Archie did not love them any the more for it. It was the first time he had seen those fellows using their spears, and he could guess from the way they handled or hurled them that they would be pretty dangerous enemies to meet face to face in the plain or scrub.

“Harry,” he said after a time, “I’m getting tired of all this; let us go to our horses.”

“I’m tired too. Hallo! where is the chick-a-biddy?”

“You mean Miss Winslow, Harry.”

“Ay, Johnnie.”

“I have not seen her for some time.”

They soon found her though, near a bit of scrub, where their own horses were tied.

She was sitting on her saddle, looking as steady and demure as an equestrian statue. The sunshine was so finding that they did not at first notice her in the shade there until they were close upon her.

“What, Etheldene!” cried Archie; “we hardly expected you here.”

“Where, then?”

“Following the hounds.”

“What! into that mob? No, that is not what I came for.”

At that moment Craig rode up.

“So glad,” he said, “to find you all here. Mount, gentlemen. Are you ready, Baby?”

“Ready, yes, an hour ago, Craig.”

They met horsemen and hounds not far away, and taking a bold détour over a rough and broken country, at the edge of a wood, the hounds found a “forester,” or old man kangaroo. The beast had a good start if he had taken the best advantage of it; but he failed to do so. He had hesitated several times; but the run was a fine one. A wilder, rougher, more dangerous ride Archie had never taken.

The beast was at bay before very long, and his resistance to the death was extraordinary.

They had many more rides before the day was over; and when they re-assembled in farmer Findlayson’s hospitable parlour, Archie was fain for once to own himself not only tired, but “dead beat.”

The dinner was what Harry called a splendid spread. Old Findlayson had been a gardener in his younger days in England, and his wife was a cook; and one of the results of this amalgamation was, dinners or breakfasts either, that had already made the Scotchman famous.

Here was soup that an epicure would not have despised, fish to tempt a dying man, besides game of different kinds, pies, and last, if not least, steak of kangaroo.

The soup itself was made from the tail of the kangaroo, and I know nothing more wholesome and nourishing, though some may think it a little strong.

While the white folks were having dinner indoors, the black fellows were doing ample justice to theirs al fresco, only they had their own cuisine and menu, of which the least said the better.

“You’re sure, Mr Craig, you winna tak’ a wee drappie?”

If the honest squatter put this question once in the course of the evening, he put it twenty times.

“No, really,” said Craig at last; “I will not tak’ a wee drappie. I’ve sworn off; I have, really. Besides, your wife has made me some delightful tea.”

“Weel, man, tak’ a wee drappie in your last cup. It’ll cheer ye up.”

“Take down your fiddle, Findlayson, and play a rattling strathspey or reel, that’ll cheer me up more wholesomely than any amount of ‘wee drappies.’”

“Come out o’ doors then.”

It was cool now out there in Findlayson’s garden – it was a real garden too. His garden and his fiddle were Findlayson’s two fads; and that he was master of both, their present surroundings of fern and flower, and delicious scent of wattle-blossom, and the charming strains that floated from the corner where the squatter stood were proof enough. The fiddle in his hands talked and sang, now bold or merrily, now in sad and wailing notes that brought tears to even Archie’s eyes. Then, at a suggestion of Craig’s, Etheldene’s sweet young voice was raised in song, and this was only the beginning of the concert. Conversation filled up the gaps, so that the evening passed away all too soon.

Just as Findlayson had concluded that plaintive and feeling air “Auld Robin Gray,” a little black girl came stealthily, silently up to Etheldene, and placed a little creature like a rabbit in her lap, uttering a few words of Bush-English, which seemed to Archie’s ear utterly devoid of sense. Then the black girl ran; she went away to her own camp to tell her people that the white folks were holding a corroboree.

The gift was a motherless kangaroo, that at once commenced to make itself at home by hiding its innocent head under Etheldene’s arm.

The party soon after broke up for the night, and next day but one, early in the morning, the return journey was commenced, and finished that night; but the sun had gone down, and the moon was shining high and full over the forest, before they once more reached the clearing.