The Book of the Bush Part 22

Thus a great naval victory had been gained, and the whole of the enemy's fleet captured without the loss of a man. Nothing like it had been achieved since the days of the great Gulliver.

The two fishermen had taken no part in the naval operations, and when the whaleboat returned with its train of canoes like the tail of a kite, Davy administered a sharp reprimand.

"Why didn't you two lubbers keep your eyes skinned. I suppose you were asleep, eh? You ought to have up anchor and pulled away, and then the devils could never got near you. Look here!" holding up a piece of bark, "that's all they've got to paddle with in deep water, and in the shallows they can only pole along with sticks."

Pately Jim had been a prize runner in Yorkshire, and trifles never took away his breath. He replied calmly:

"Yo're o'reet, Davy. We wor a bit sleepy, but we're quite wakken noo. Keep yor shirt on, and we'll do better next time."

When the canoes, which were built entirely with sheets of bark, were drawn up on the beach, nothing was found in them but a few sticks, bark paddles, and a gown--a lilac cotton gown.

"That goon," said Campbell, "has belonged to some white woman thae deevils have murdered. There is no settler nearer than Jamieson, and they maun ha brocht the goon a' the way frae the Ba.s.s."

But Campbell was mistaken. There had been another white woman in Gippsland.

THE ISLE OF BLASTED HOPES.

There is a large island where the Ninety-Mile Beach ends in a wilderness of roaring breakers. It is the Isle of Blasted Hopes.

Its enchanting landscape has allured many a landsman to his ruin, and its beacon, seen through the haze of a south-east gale, has guided many a watchful mariner to shipwreck and death.

After the discovery of Gippsland, Pearson and Black first occupied the island under a grazing license, and they put eleven thousand sheep on it, with some horses, bullocks, and pigs. The sheep began to die, so they sold them to Captain Cole at ten shillings a head, giving in the other stock. They were of the opinion that they had made an excellent bargain, but when the muster was made nine thousand six hundred of the sheep were missing. The pigs ran wild, but multiplied. When the last sheep had perished, Cole sold his license to a man named Thomas, who put on more sheep, and afterwards exchanged as many as he could find with John King for cattle and horses. Morrison next occupied the island until he was starved out.

Then another man named Thomas took the fatal grazing license, but he did not live on the land. He placed his brother in charge of it, to be out of the way of temptation, as he was too fond of liquor. The brother was not allowed the use of a boat; he, with his wife and family, was virtually a prisoner, condemned to sobriety. But by this time a lighthouse had been erected, and Watts the keeper of it had a boat, and was, moreover, fond of liquor. The two men soon became firm friends, and often found it necessary to make voyages to Port Albert for flour, or tea, or sugar. The last time they sailed together the barometer was low, and a gale was brewing. When they left the wharf they had taken on board all the stores they required, and more; they were happy and glorious. Next day the masthead of their boat was seen sticking out of the water near Sunday Island.

The pilot schooner went down and hauled the boat to the surface, but nothing was found in her except the sand-ballast and a bottle of rum.

Her sheet was made fast, and when the squall struck her she had gone down like a stone. The Isle of Blasted Hopes was useless even as an asylum for inebriates.

The 'Ecliptic' was carrying coals from Newcastle. The time was midnight, the sky was misty, and the gale was from the south-east, when the watch reported a light ahead. The cabin boy was standing on deck near the captain, when he held a consultation with his mate, who was also his son. Father and son agreed; they said the light ahead was the one on Kent's Group, and then the vessel grounded amongst the breakers. The seamen stripped off their heavy clothing, and went overboard; the captain and his son plunged in together and swam out of sight. There were nine men in the water, while the cabin boy stood shivering on deck. He, too, had thrown away his clothes, all but the wrist-bands of his shirt, which in his flurry he could not unb.u.t.ton. He could not make up his mind to jump overboard. He heard the men in the water shouting to one another, "Make for the light."

That course led them away from the nearest land, which they could not see. At length a great sea swept the boy among the breakers, but his good angel pushed a piece of timber within reach, and he held on to it until he could feel the ground with his feet; he then let the timber go, and scrambled out of reach of the angry surge; but when he came to the dry sand he fainted and fell down. When he recovered his senses he began to look for shelter; there was a signal station not far off, but he could not see it. He went away from the pitiless sea through an opening between low conical hills, covered with dark scrub, over a pathway composed of drift sand and broken sh.e.l.ls. He found an old hut without a door. There was no one in it; he went inside, and lay down shivering.

At daybreak a boy, the son of Ratcliff, the signal man, started out to look for his goats, and as they sometimes pa.s.sed the night in the old fowlhouse, he looked in for them. But instead of the goats, he saw the naked cabin boy. "Who are you?" he said, "and what are you doing here, and where did you come from?"

"I have been shipwrecked," replied the cabin boy; and then he sat up and began to cry.

Young Ratcliff ran off to tell his father what he had found; and the boy was brought to the cottage, put to bed, and supplied with food and drink. The signal for a wreck was hoisted at the flagstaff, but when the signallman went to look for a wreck he could not find one.

He searched along the sh.o.r.e and found the dead body of the captain, and a piece of splintered spar seven or eight feet long, on which the cabin boy had come ash.o.r.e. The 'Ecliptic', with her cargo and crew, had completely disappeared, while the signalman, near at hand, slept peacefully, undisturbed by her crashing timbers, or the shouts of the drowning seamen. Ratcliff was not a seer, and had no mystical lore.

He was a runaway sailor, who had, in the forties, travelled daily over the Egerton run, unconscious of the tons of gold beneath his feet.

There was a fair wind and a smooth sea when the 'Clonmel' went ash.o.r.e at three o'clock in the morning of the second day of January, 1841.

Eighteen hours before she had taken a fresh departure from Ram's Head to Wilson's Promontory. The anchors were let go, she swung to wind, and at the fall of the tide she bedded herself securely in the sand, her hull, machinery, and cargo uninjured. The seventy-five pa.s.sengers and crew were safely landed; sails, lumber, and provisions were taken ash.o.r.e in the whaleboats and quarter-boats; tents were erected; the food supplies were stowed away under a capsized boat, and a guard set over them by Captain Tollervey.

Next morning seven volunteers launched one of the whaleboats, boarded the steamer, took in provisions, made a lug out of a piece of canvas, hoisted the Union Jack to the mainmast upside down, and pulled safely away from the 'Clonmel' against a head wind. They hoisted the lug and ran for one of the Seal Islands, where they found a snug little cove, ate a hearty meal, and rested for three hours. They then pulled for the mainland, and reached Sealer's Cove about midnight, where they landed, cooked supper, and pa.s.sed the rest of the night in the boat for fear of the blacks.

Next morning three men went ash.o.r.e for water and filled the breaker, when they saw three blacks coming down towards them; so they hurried on board, and the anchor was hauled up.

As the wind was coming from the east, they had to pull for four hours before they weathered the southern point of the cove; they then hoisted sail and ran for Wilson's Promentory, which they rounded at ten o'clock a.m. At eight o'clock in the evening they brought up in a small bay at the eastern extremity of Western Port, glad to get ash.o.r.e and stretch their weary limbs. After a night's refreshing repose on the sandy beach, they started at break of day, sailing along very fast with a strong and steady breeze from the east, although they were in danger of being swamped, as the sea broke over the boat repeatedly. At two o'clock p.m. they were abreast of Port Philip Heads; but they found a strong ebb tide, with such a ripple and broken water that they did not consider it prudent to run over it. They therefore put the boat's head to windward and waited for four hours, when they saw a cutter bearing down on them, which proved to be 'The Sisters', Captain Mulholland, who took the boat in tow and landed them at Williamstown at eleven o'clock p.m., sixty-three hours from the time they left the 'Clonmel'.

Captain Lewis, the harbour master, went to rescue the crew and pa.s.sengers and brought them all to Melbourne, together with the mails, which had been landed on the island since known by the name of the 'Clonmel'.

For fifty-two years the black boilers of the 'Clonmel' have lain half buried in the sandspit, and they may still be seen among the breakers from the deck of every vessel sailing up the channel to Port Albert.

The 'Clonmel', with her valuable cargo, was sold in Sydney, and the purchaser, Mr. Grose, set about the business of making his fortune out of her. He sent a party of wreckers who pitched their camps on Snake Island, where they had plenty of gra.s.s, scrub, and timber. The work of taking out the cargo was continued under various captains for six years, and then Mr. Grose lost a schooner and was himself landed in the Court of Insolvency.

While the pioneers at the Old Port were on the verge of starvation, the 'Clonmel' men were living in luxury. They had all the blessings both of land and sea--corned beef, salt pork, potatoes, plum-duff, tea, sugar, coffee, wine, beer, spirits, and tobacco from the cargo of the 'Clonmel', and oysters without end from a neighbouring lagoon.

They constructed a large square punt, which they filled with cargo daily, wind and weather permitting; at other times they rested from their labours, or roamed about the island shooting birds or hunting kangaroo. They saw no other inhabitants, and believed that no black lucifer had as yet entered their island garden; but, though unseen, he was watching them and all their works.

One morning the wreckers had gone to the wreck; a man named Kennedy was left in charge of the camp; Sambo, the black cook, was attending to his duties at the fire; and Mrs. Kennedy, the only lady of the party, was at the water hole washing clothes. Her husband had left the camp with his gun in the hope of shooting some wattle birds, which were then fat with feeding on the sweet blossoms of the honeysuckle. He was sitting on a log near the water-hole talking to his wife, who had just laid out to dry on the bushes three coloured shirts and a lilac dress. She stood with her hands on her hips, pensively contemplating the garments. She had her troubles, and was turning them over in her mind, while her husband was thinking of something else quite different. It is, I believe, a thing that often happens.

"I am thinking, Flora," he said, "that this would be a grand island to live on--far better than Skye, because it has no rocks on it. I would like to haf it for a station. I could put sheep and cattle on it, and they could not go away nor be lifted, because there is deep water all round it; and we would haf plenty of beef, and mutton, and wool, and game, and fish, and oysters. We could make a garden and haf plenty of kail, and potatoes, and apples."

"It's all ferry well, Donald," she replied, "for you to be talking about sheep, and cattle, and apples; but I'd like to know wherefer we would be getting the money to buy the sheep and cattle? And who would like to live here for efer a thousand miles from decent neebors? And that's my best goon, and it's getting fery shabby; and wherefer I'm to get another goon in a country like this I'm thinking I don't know."

Donald thought his wife was troubling herself about mere trifles, but before he had time to say so, a blackfellow s.n.a.t.c.hed his gun from across his knees, another hit him on the head with a waddy, and a third did the same to Flora and the unfortunate couple lay senseless on the ground. Their hopes and troubles had come to a sudden end.

This onslaught had been made by four blacks, who now made a bundle of the clothes, and carried them and the gun away, going towards the camp in search of more plunder. The tents occupied by the wreckers had been enclosed in a thick hedge of scrub to protect them from the drifting sand. There was only one opening in the hedge, through which the blacks could see Sambo cooking the wreckers' dinner before a fire. His head was bare, and he was enjoying the genial heat of early summer, singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of the melodies of Old Virginny.

The hearing of the Australian aboriginal is acute, and his talent for mimicry astonishing; he can imitate the notes of every bird and the call of every animal with perfect accuracy.

Sambo's senseless song enchanted the four blacks. It was first heard with tremendous applause in New Orleans, it was received with enthusiasm by every audience in the Great Republic, and it had been the delight of every theatre in the British Empire. It may be said that "jim Crow" buried the legitimate drama and danced on its grave. It really seemed to justify the severe judgment pa.s.sed on us by the sage of Chelsea, that we were "sixteen millions, mostly fools." No air was ever at the same time so silly and so successful as "Jim Crow." But there was life in it, and it certainly prolonged that of Sambo, for as the four savages crouched behind the hedge listening to the

"Turn about and wheel about, and do just so, And ebery time I turn about I jump Jim Crow,"

they forgot their murderous errand.

At last there was an echo of the closing words which seemed to come from a large gum tree beyond the tents, against which a ladder had been reared to the forks, used for the purpose of a look-out by Captain Leebrace.

Sambo paused, looked up to the gum tree, and said, "By golly, who's dere?" The echo was repeated, and then he wheeled about in real earnest, transfixed with horror, unable to move a limb. The blacks were close to him now, but even their colour could not restore his courage. They were cannibals, and were preparing to kill and eat him. But first they examined their game critically, poking their fingers about him, pinching him in various parts of the body, stroking his broad nose and ample lips with evident admiration, and trying to pull out the curls on his woolly head.

Sambo was usually proud of his personal appearance, but just now fear prevented him from enjoying the applause of the strangers.

At length he recovered his presence of mind sufficiently to make an effort to avert his impending doom. If the blacks could be induced to eat the dinner he was cooking their attention to himself might be diverted, and their appet.i.tes appeased, so he pointed towards the pots, saying, "Plenty beef, pork, plum duff."

The blacks seemed to understand his meaning, and they began to inspect the dinner; so instead of taking the food like sensible men, they upset all the pots with their waddies, and scattered the beef, pork, plum duff and potatoes, so that they were covered with sand and completely spoiled.

Two of the blacks next peered into the nearest tent, and seeing some knives and forks, took possession of them. But there was a sound of voices from the waterhole, and they quickly gathered together their stolen goods and disappeared. In a few minutes Captain Leebrace and the wreckers arrived at the camp, bringing with them Kennedy and his wife, who had recovered their senses, and were able to tell what had happened.

"Black debbils been heah, cappen, done spoil all de dinner, and run away wid de knives and forks," Sambo said.

Captain Leebrace soon resolved on a course of reprisals. He went up the ladder to the forks of the gum tree with his telescope, and soon obtained a view of the retreating thieves, appearing occasionally and disappearing among the long gra.s.s and timber; and after observing the course they were taking he came down the ladder. He selected two of his most trustworthy men, and armed them and himself with double-barrelled guns, one barrel being smooth bore and the other rifled, weapons suitable for game both large and small. During the pursuit the captain every now and then, from behind a tree, searched for the enemy with his telescope, until at last he could see that they had halted, and had joined a number of their tribe. He judged that the blacks, if they suspected that the white men would follow them, would direct their looks princ.i.p.ally towards the tents, so he made a wide circuit to the left. Then he and his men crept slowly along the ground until they arrived within short range of the natives.

Three of the blacks were wearing the stolen shirts, a fourth had put on the lilac dress, and they were strutting around to display their brave apparel just like white folks. The savage man retains all finery for his own personal adornment, and never wastes any of it on his despicable wife, but still Captain Leebrace had some doubt in the matter. He whispered to his men, "I don't like to shoot at a gown; there may be a lubra in it, but I'll take the middle fellow in the shirt, and you take the other two, one to the right, the other to the left; when I say one, two, three, fire."

The order was obeyed and when the smoke cleared away the print dress was gone, but all the rest of the plunder was recovered on the spot.

The shirts were stripped off the bodies of the blacks; and after they had been rinsed in a water-hole, they were found to have been not much damaged, each shirt having only a small bullet hole in it. It was in this way that the lilac dress escaped, and was found in the canoe at the Old Port; the blackfellow who wore it had taken it off and put it under his knees in the bottom of his canoe, and when the white men's boat came after him, he was in so great a hurry to hide himself in the scrub that he left the dress behind.

Next day there was a sudden alarm in the camp at the Old Port.

Clancy and d.i.c.k the Devil came running toward the beach, full of fear and excitement, screaming, "The blacks, the blacks, they are coming, hundreds of them, and they are all naked, and daubed over white, and they have long spears."

The men who had guns--Campbell, Shay, and Davy--fetched them out of their huts and stood ready to receive the enemy; even McClure, although very weak, left his bed and came outside to a.s.sist in the fight. The fringe of the scrub was dotted with the piebald bodies of the blacks, dancing about, brandishing their spears, and shouting defiance at the white men. They were not in hundreds, as the boys imagined, their number apparently not exceeding forty; but it was evident that they were threatening death and destruction to the invaders of their territory. None, however, but the very bravest ventured far into the cleared s.p.a.ce, and they showed no disposition to make a rush or anything like a concerted attack.