Adventures of Working Men Part 21

"Well, I had myself rowed there, crept on to one lighter quietly, loosened an end of a tarpaulin, got underneath, and made myself snug as possible, giving my men orders to lay off behind a brig two hundred yards away, ready to come up to my help when they heard me whistle.

Then, in a moment or two, I heard the oars dip, growing fainter and fainter each moment, till all was still but the sighing of the wind, and the lapping, rushing noise of the tide running down hard.

"What an easy thing it is to plan out anything on paper, or in your own head, and what a different affair it turns out when you work it out in practice! Here was I lying snug in hiding, and all I'd got to do was to wait patiently till anybody came to plunder the lighters, then jump up, staff or pistol in hand, and arrest the lot; whistle, when our galley would come up; the men be transferred into the boat; taken to the station; and praise and promotion for me would most likely follow.

"That's how it was on paper; this is how it turned out in practice.

"I'd lain there for quite half an hour, in not the most comfortable of positions, when, growing tired, I took a glance out through a hole I slit with my knife in the tarpaulin; but all was still--nothing to be heard but the rushing of the river past the great barge, and I lay back once more, wondering whether the enemy would come, and, if they did come, how long they would be first.

"I don't think I'm more of a coward than most men, but somehow just about then I began to wish that I had made a couple of our fellows stay with me; then I wished that it was morning; and then, as I turned cold and shivering, I began to think about that dream of my wife's; and from being cold I now grew hot and wet with perspiration, so that I was thinking of lifting the tarpaulin a little, when I stopped the idea, for I heard all at once a sharp, scratching noise.

"'Bats,' I said to myself; and I began to think of the amount of mischief the little wretches do on shipboard, getting carried out, too, in the bales to the lighters, and from them into warehouse and bonded store.

"Then came the scratching again, and a slight rustling; and I uttered a loud, sharp hiss to drive them away; for, shut up as I was, I did not much like the idea of being nibbled by rats.

"That hiss did it; for it was all that some one wanted to know. My whereabouts was nearly guessed at: that showed it exactly.

"The rats seemed to have gone, and I was peering about in the darkness, when there came another faint rustling noise, and then--_crash_--it was as though half a dozen bales of cotton had been thrown upon me. I was nearly suffocated; but I had sense enough to know that several men had thrown themselves upon the tarpaulin; that my enemies had been too much for me, and had been lying in hiding beneath the coverings when I came, and had now taken me at a disadvantage.

"The thoughts ran rapidly through my brain, and I struggled hard to get myself sufficiently at liberty to blow my whistle, when a voice that I seemed to know whispered--

"'Lie still, or we'll drive a knife through to you.'

"Struggling was, I knew, useless then; so I prepared myself for an effort when opportunity offered. But they were too much for me. As the tarpaulin was raised, three men crept under; a lot of oak.u.m was thrust into my mouth; my whistle taken away; the handcuffs in my pocket, ready unlocked, thrust upon my own wrists; and, with many a warning growl, I was rolled off the lighter side into a boat that I had supposed to belong to one of the barges.

"'Now, Jack, you and d.i.c.k take him off,' was whispered; and I thought I caught the word 'Erith.'

"'They'll lay me in one of the reed-beds, bound hand and foot,' I thought; 'and the others will help clear this lighter the while.'

"I was so excited that I made a bit of a struggle, but only to have the end of an oar brought down heavily across my forehead; and the next moment some one leaned over me, and for a few seconds the glaring light of a bull's-eye rested upon my face.

"The next minute my blood ran cold; for there was a low laugh at my ear, and a voice I seemed to know said--

"'Every dog has its day, my lad. It's my turn now!'

"I wanted no telling--I could understand all plainly enough. River Jack had come back, and he meant to have his revenge.

"But what would he do? He would not mur--

"Pooh! nonsense! his companions would interfere. But there was only one here, and they were softly but swiftly rowing me down with the tide. If they would land me at Erith! They said so; but then this scoundrel had not known me, and now that we had openly recognised one another, he could not afford to have me as a witness to his having returned before his time.

"Was my wife's dream coming true? I shuddered from head to foot as I heard the washing of the water beneath the boat's keel; and then I thought of the bodies I had seen brought out, and the mooring chains; and then it seemed to me that I was to be as I had seen others, and a horrible sweat of terror broke out on me. But just then my attention was taken up by a low muttering between the men, and Hope whispered that one of them was opposing the other's plans. Whatever was said, though, silence followed, and they rowed on swiftly for what must have been a quarter of an hour, though to me it seemed an age, when, before I could do more than utter an inarticulate roar of despair, I was lifted quickly to the boat's gunwale, and in another moment I was beneath the cold, rushing water.

"A struggle or two brought me to the surface again, and I made an effort with my fastened hands to reach the boat; but, with brutal indifference, Jack placed the blade of his scull against my chest, and thrust me under; and when I again rose, it was out of sight of those who had thrown me in.

"Even in that time of agony, with the water burning and strangling in my nostrils, and thundering in my ears, I could think of the plunder the scoundrels would get; of how my men would stay waiting for my whistle; of my wife's dream; and lastly, of the finding of my handcuffed body, floating up and down with the tide. The papers would call it a mysterious murder, for I was sure to be found; but that River Jack would have it brought home to him was not likely.

"I could do but little; every struggle seemed to send me lower; I tried to float, but in vain; and the water whirled me round and round, drove me against vessel sides that I could not clutch, past lights that I could not hail, and I was fast lapsing into insensibility, when I struck something hard, raised my arms over it, and clung there with my nostrils above water--learning the secret of how bodies could hang to a mooring chain.

"At the end of a fortnight's fever, I learned how that I had been found soon after by another of our galleys, clinging to the mooring chain of a great vessel; but it was for some time a question of doubt whether our men had found a body with or without life.

"That's many years ago now, and such deeds have happily grown rare; though you don't know of all that goes on down the river. I'm in the force still, and mean to stay; for River Jack was taken, and report says he was shot by a sentry while attempting to escape, out in one of the penal settlements."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

MY PATIENT THE EMIGRANT.

Talking of penal settlements naturally suggests settlements that are not penal, where our most enterprising unsuccessful men go to seek the home and prosperity that they have not been able to discover here. One such man as this was Samson Harris, who, after twenty years of Australian life, returned home with a comfortable competency for a man of his cla.s.s. He was no millionaire, but he had made enough to live upon to the end of his days, and then leave enough for his children.

I attended his family, the little that they needed of medical aid, and finding him a thoroughly well-informed man, full of general knowledge, a certain amount of intimacy ensued, and he at various times told me so much of his life out at the Antipodes, that I was pretty well able to picture it from beginning to end.

He gave me one very vivid account of an incident in his career which I have endeavoured to reproduce.

From his description of his home, it might have been in one of the midland counties, the scene was so calm and peaceful. The roughly-built cottage, with its familiar English objects here and there--the loudly-ticking clock, the cleanly-scrubbed three-legged table; the big old family Bible; the cage of white wicker, with its ragged-tailed thrush hopping from perch to perch; and I picture to myself Samson Harris seated there upon a stool in the midst of the humble room, before a tin bucket of water, Englishman written boldly in the lines of his rugged, ruddy, sun-tanned face, as he bent to his task of washing out the barrel of his rifle--a necessity for protection in those early settling days--making the water play up like a fountain from the nipple, to the great delight of two rosy children who were looking on.

It might have been here, in one of the midland counties, but there was something about the brightness of the afternoon sun which streamed in at the open door, the blueness of the sky, the clearness of the atmosphere, and the scenery around, that was not English. The flowers that cl.u.s.tered about the door and nodded round the rough window-frame, and the objects that peeped here and there from some corner, too, told of a foreign land; while the huge pines that shot up arrow-like towards the sky were such as could be seen nowhere but in Australia.

"The poor brutes have been calling you, la.s.s, for the last half-hour,"

said he, looking up as a tall, fair-haired girl entered the room where he was busy, milking-pail in hand, and stood to watch the task with as much interest as the children.

"They shan't wait any longer, father," said the girl; and she pa.s.sed slowly through the door, humming a cheery old country ditty, and was gone.

The barrel was taken from the water, and wiped out; and then Harris set to work oiling the lock.

"Hallo, what are you back for?" he exclaimed as a roughly-dressed, heavy-faced man came up to the hut-door at a trot, his forehead streaming with perspiration, which had marked its course in lighter lines through his dust-grimed face. Directly behind him came, at an easy, loping swing, a tall, thin, fleshless-looking native, whose black skin shone as he came into the hut after his companion.

"Blacks out," panted the heavy-faced man, seizing the door as if to shut it, at the same time examining the cap upon the rifle he carried--"Blacks out, master."

"Blacks out, Tom?" said Samson; "blacks out? 'Pon my word, I never saw such a coward in my life. Now what in the world were you lagged for that your conscience must make you see a n.i.g.g.e.r in his paint behind every tree, or peeping up above the scrub? Blacks! Poor, inoffensive beggars. Why, you had your rifle, hadn't you, ready to scare off a hundred? This makes six times you've run home to cry wolf. And you've left those sheep to take care of themselves," he continued, forcing the ramrod into its place as he rose as if to leave the hut.

"'Tain't wolf this time, master; 'tain't, indeed," cried the man earnestly; and then, seeing Harris's smile of incredulity, he relapsed into a look of sullen injury, and stood leaning upon his rifle-barrel.

"Here, come along," said Samson.

"Load up first, master," said Tom. "'Tis true, indeed," he exclaimed, once more seeking to obtain credence for his story. "I saw scores. Ask Teddy here."

Now Teddy--or, as he was known in his tribe, Bidgeebidgee--stood spear in hand, showing his white teeth, and apparently listening intently, from the way in which his nostrils expanded and twitched. That something was amiss was evident, for, leaning his spear against the wall, he now took off the ragged blue shirt he wore, unfastened his girdle, and set free a formidable-looking waddy, or club, before throwing himself flat upon the ground to listen.

Samson paused, startled, and though uncharged, he involuntarily c.o.c.ked his piece as Teddy, the black shepherd, leaped up and exclaimed--

"Black fellows all a-coming--one--two--ten hundred."

The next instant he threw himself into an att.i.tude of attack, poising his spear for hurling at the first who should cross the threshold.

"Get out," exclaimed Samson, recovering himself; "here have I lived now two years and only seen a party or two of the poor wretches begging, and--"

"But they burned Riley's hut, and butchered his wife and children," said Tom, earnestly.