The Romance of a Pro-Consul Part 3

V SOUTHWARD HO!

Now, the morrow called Sir George Grey, as it calls most, whether they hear it or no.

In him, boyish meditation had ever been braided by melancholy, a legacy of the shock with which his father's death burst upon his mother. As he grew up, this became a deep-seated pity for the suffering, wide and bitter, among the common people. His mother's care, his step-father's converse, fostered that feeling, and the service in Ireland, with its lurid emphasis of the misery he had seen in England, determined him in quite a definite way. A valley of despair moaned in his ear.

'Can nothing,' he reflected with himself, 'be done for this canker, this wretchedness? Not much, from the inside, it may be, for the evil has too firm a grip. But down there, in the far south, is a new world! Surely it has the secret of sweeter, freer homes; surely in those new countries lie better possibilities? Yes, there the future has its supreme chance, there is the field for a happier state of existence! All can be given a chance, and in the s.p.a.cious view, it will be planting posts of an Anglo-Saxon fence which shall prevent the development of the New World from being interfered with by the Old World.'

It was an abounding moment at which to be taken into partnership for the carrying forward of the universe. Half the globe, as we are intimate with it to-day, was then unknown, and North-West Australia was a no-man's land, saving to the Aborigines. It was believed by geographers that a big river, artery to an immense area of Australia, must here drain into the sea. A Government expedition, as head of which Sir George Grey was selected, should determine this, and familiarise the Aborigines with the British name and character.

'It's odd,' Sir George said, 'to reflect that in the lat.i.tudes, for which we were bound, human beings were everywhere eating one another. There was a patch of settled civilisation at the Cape, a lighthouse beaming into those seas, and that was about all, The full glow had to arrive from the north, seeing that south of a line, drawn from the Cape to Australia and New Zealand, there was only the Antarctic wilderness.

'You had ice in such parts as the savage could not inhabit; bleakness eternal, with no promise of help in raising him to a higher life. Mostly, in the history of mankind, civilisation has grown in upon a country from several quarters. The contrary should be noted in respect to the lands, which, as we left Plymouth, seemed to us so attractive, so full of promise for generations yet unborn. We were to test that promise, and Darwin's "Beagle," having brought him home from a voyage, was to bear us on another.'

Sir George already knew Darwin enough to be a frequent caller on him in London. They discussed evolution, and a host of subjects in which Darwin manifested an interest. Sir George's vignette of him was that he was one of the most amiable men it were possible to conceive. He was closely occupied with his own work, but that did not prevent him from being an informed observer of other things.

'Of the advantages of a.s.sociation with master intellects,' Sir George would say, 'I sought to make the best use. The three men who exercised most influence on me were Archbishop Whately, Sir James Stephen, and Thomas Carlyle, names which I revere. They denote characters who adorned the nation, and as for Carlyle, I can only describe him as a profoundly great figure. When I think of him, I immediately fly to Babbage, the inventor of the famous calculating machine. And I'm afraid I smile.'

The link lay in certain experiences which befell Carlyle and Babbage in the streets of London. The coincidence was notable, and, farther, Sir George thought it strange that each great man should have made him confidant. But he had delighted in receiving the confidences, proofs of their friendship, and with a mixture of gravity and amus.e.m.e.nt he had consoled the martyrs.

'Being,' he entered upon the tale, 'once introduced to Carlyle's company, I think by Sir Richard Owen, it was my delight, during any spell in London, to visit him at Chelsea. Perhaps, as the matter has been long under review, I may remark that, to an outsider, no want of harmony was apparent, in the relations between Carlyle and his wife. You were not conscious of any element of that description; a.s.suredly I was not, and I prefer to cling to that impression. Carlyle would sit at the right side of the fire, through an evening, I on his left, and we would talk on all manner of topics. I should most accurately describe our talk by saying that we philosophised. Or, we might read a little; he was a loving reader.

'Carlyle believed, with truth, that I had been influenced by his teachings, and if only for that reason he may have been rather fond of me. We lift our hats, to ourselves, as reflected in somebody else. I had a regard for him as a man, I gladly looked up to him, though that did not block out differences of opinion; and altogether we got on admirably.

During one of those fireside talks, he detailed to me an incident, which quite hurt his feelings.

'He had a horse then, and was in the habit of riding out for exercise, almost every afternoon. He was never very artistic in his manner of dressing, and for horseback he had a long and singular fur coat, which enfolded his legs. Between Chelsea and Maida Vale, some boys were attracted by this quaint figure astride a horse. Not knowing in the least, who it was, they shouted at Carlyle; he spoke something to them in reproof and pa.s.sed on.

'But next day, at the same place, there were the boys again, and not content with mocking Carlyle, they threw pebbles at him. He did not sustain any injury, but he mentioned the matter to me with a sore heart, as indicative of the condition of the youth of the country, for want of the better educational opportunities, of which he was so earnest an advocate.

'As to Babbage, also a very gifted mind, he had Sat.u.r.day evenings at home, and a person invited to one, was welcome ever after. His warfare against street musicians is history, and what I have to tell is one campaign of it. A German band was in the habit of annexing a position before his house, and treating him to its music. He might be deeply immersed in his work, when up would come this band, a trying disturbance to him. To be quit of the musicians he gave them money, with the inevitable thanks that they returned, seeking to be paid again, in order to depart once more.

'Babbage got tired of that sort of thing, refused to fee the Germans any longer, and ordered them to go and play somewhere else. They refused, and he, worn out by their music, left his study to seek a policeman and have them moved on. Like Carlyle, he dressed quaintly, and, moreover, at the moment, he was bare-headed. Not seeing a policeman, from his door-step, he walked into the street to search for one.

'Babbage's dispute with the band soon collected a small crowd, eager to witness the fun. It is impossible for me, to say if those forming it, knew the mathematician or not. That would depend on the elements of the gathering, whether local or casual, and who can determine the point in a city like London? A crowd gathers and disperses here, as the wind plays with a volume of dust on a March day. But, anyhow, the onlookers favoured the band against Babbage, and they let their views be understood, by pelting him with mud. Still, he held to his purpose, routed out a policeman, and had the band driven off. That time, at all events, he was able to resume his calculations without molestation.'

It was a far cry, from these home-keeping transactions, to that outermost fringe of British dominion for which Sir George Grey found himself sailing:

What time with hand and heart aglow The sower goeth forth to sow.

The cabin Darwin had occupied on the clumsy "Beagle," was his home from Plymouth to the Cape. Instead of sleeping in a bunk he swung a hammock, which he regarded as the better sea-going bed. Though no yacht in heels, the "Beagle" had her own qualities for rough weather, and she behaved loyally towards her pa.s.sengers. All the water supply had to be carried in casks, with the effect, under a blazing sun, that it soon grew bad. The ship called at South America, where Sir George had his first revelation of nature, as she blooms in the gorgeous tropics. The colour, richness, luxuriance, dazzled him; the more so that he had not read any description of the tropics, which adequately conveyed the sentiments they inspired.

He walked on sh.o.r.e of an evening, and the feelings engendered in him by the scene were wild, of a truth indescribable. He turned from the luxuriant foliage, to the stars aflame above, and he followed the fireflies as they danced. The woods were vocal with the hum of insect life, and balm loaded the breezes as they blew softly. These things at first oppressed his senses as so novel, so strange, that his mind almost hovered between the realms of fact and fancy.

'And you ask me of the sea,' he chatted; 'to which I answer that it has always made an impression on me, best described as a mixture of awe and gladness. I was very conscious, during that long voyage by sail, of the presence and majesty of the Maker. I felt, standing on the deck of the "Beagle," as if I were surrounded by some awful but beneficent power. The grandeur of the sea must make a reflective man religious, as its weirdness might breed superst.i.tion in the youthful, or the credulous.'

What wonder, he reasoned as he sailed, that a sailor should be superst.i.tious? He was separated in boyhood from his home, before he had forgotten the ghost stories of childhood. While the simple heart still loved to dwell upon the marvellous, he was placed amid all the marvels of the sea. In the dark, out of the howl of wind and din of waves, he would hear strange shrieks piercing the air. By him would float huge forms, dim and mysterious, from which fancy was p.r.o.ne to build strange phantoms.

Ships might come and ships might go; the sea must ever hold sway over the sailor man, a mistress to be loved and feared.

'Sailors,' he added, 'are not a religious cla.s.s, so called, but I believe they are sincerely religious in their own manner. Poor Jack has faith that he is being guarded by some supreme power suited to the protection of the sailor. He does not seek to a.n.a.lyse that power; he simply believes that it will attend him in the hour of peril. And that is how all nature's giant works affect you, when once you are clear of the help of man. You have a perfect reliance upon the unseen, and there follows a calm, sweet solace, which you cannot express. No doubts enter, when you are confronted with the great spirit, which seems to preside over virgin nature.

'But my emotions on the "Beagle" were as a flood. Here I was sailing to a quarter of the world which the Creator, in His goodness, had provided for the support and happiness of men. Yet they did not know actually what it was like; the inheritance was still unexplored. And that land of North-West Australia was to be all my own, to designate as I wished. My feeling might be compared to that of a child waiting for a new toy. It gave rise to an ardent expectation.

'Behind was the despair of thousands, without the necessaries of life or the prospect of them; a nightmare of darkness that haunted me. But in front, as I trusted, lay hands which should afford mankind another start.

Why, the busy brains of England were already unconsciously preparing every device and implement, that could be useful to the rise of the New World. We make ready in the dark for the light.'

At Cape Town, the halfway house to Australia, Sir George chartered a schooner for detailed exploring work. In it, a trifle on the water, he completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from a boat, needed practice.

'You were,' he laid down the conditions, 'at issue with a heavy roll of the sea, even in glorious weather. Fortunately, I had always been an expert shot, and I quickly suited myself to the motion. You found your chances when the skiff sank into the trough of the waves, and a bird flew screaming over their tops; or, again, when you rose on the surge and had a wider target.' Thus at sea, and subsequently on land, he bagged many a fresh fact of natural history, and sent it home to enrich the British Museum. His word on that point was crisp. 'You had only to walk or row a little, and you secured a new living thing. The cry of the outlook was something discovered. The child waiting for the toy, of whom I spoke, was not half so happily situate as we. It was all surprises.'

His heart fell somewhat when he espied the land at Hanover Bay--the Promised Land, but naked and unkindly. What a contrast to the bouquet of Brazil! Still, why should there not be acres rich and worthy, behind those dull grey rocks? The idea of an incorrigible country was not to be entertained, for overcrowded England stood, with her hand for ear- trumpet, and the question on her tongue, 'What is the message?' Adventure followed adventure in the effort to secure it.

'Somehow,' quoth Sir George, 'we didn't seem to mind the risks, and I imagine that is the experience of everybody who has encountered any. A man is zealous upon some task, it quite occupies him, and the dangers are just details. Afterwards, his friends make him out to be a bit of a hero, and he has leisure to fancy so himself, which is all entirely harmless.

Now, I had to swim across an arm of the sea, where a violent tide ran, and where alligators and sharks had their haunts. The latter, I believed from observations made when we bathed off the schooner, could smell a human body in the water from a long distance. But the plain necessity was that, for the succour of certain members of the expedition, I must swim the lagoon.'

A nearer hazard furnished Sir George with a knowledge, which a call from his friend Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, enabled him to use in fun.

Lyell walked in on him, in London, with a spear-head and the curiosity, 'How old do you judge that would be?' The weapon was of stone, uncouth, barbarous. 'A thousand years, eh?' Lyell pursued. Sir George let him go on for a while, then broke in, 'If that's a thousand years old, I likewise am a thousand years old, because one has been taken out of me.'

'What do you mean?' was Lyell's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. 'Oh,' said Sir George, 'a head almost similar was on the spear which an Australian native drove into my thigh.'

Whereupon laughter, and tale of the fight.

VI MAN AND NATURE ABORIGINAL

There never had been such a drama in that forest of North-West Australia.

The noise of the white man's war fell upon the primeval silence, breaking it.

This battle dwelt acutely with Sir George Grey as the single occasion, amid all his adventures, on which he had been the instrument of taking human life. He carried his own wounds to the grave, but only sorrowed for the bullet he sped, though sheer necessity drove it. The sacred light might burn in a savage, ignorant of its n.o.bler gleams, yet it was the gift of the Creator. Moreover, Sir George's whole dealing, towards native races, was guided by a pole-star principle. The duty civilisation owed them, he affirmed, was the larger in proportion to their state of darkness. He held this to be the simple rule for the Christian.

The natives of the Australian North-West were a fine race physically, and, he judged, had an ingrain of Malay blood. 'To see one for the first time,' said Sir George, 'produced a great effect upon you. These people were hardly known then.' They coloured themselves in fearsome style, red being the favourite daub. No matter, the strangers from over sea would have greeted them gladly, being anxious to cultivate friendship. The wild men responded not; but hovered in the distance of the bush, or peered curiously from some covering of the rocks.

'I did everything I could,' Sir George remarked in that relation, 'to get acquainted with them, but at this period they would have nothing to do with me. Their fires might still be smoking, as we beat up a camping place, but they had left, suspicious of us. When travelling, I frequently had grave cause to be anxious lest we should be attacked, especially at night. Therefore, I made my men sleep a little apart from each other, in order that, if a.s.sailed, we might at least have some warning.'

It was full day when the a.s.sault did take place; otherwise Sir George would hardly have lived to describe it. He went back with spirit on the details, more armour of youth to be placed in the scabbard of age. One item held a small essay on the influences which determine human action in a crisis of life or death. He was speaking of the feeling that seized him when spear after spear cut into his flesh. Here was a struggle between mind and body, each determined to conquer--a study in the inner sanctuary; but how began the fight?

With two of his men, Sir George was on the march, notching trees by the way, so that the rest of the party could follow. At a turn they found themselves beset by a swarm of blacks, who had gathered in strength, determined to act against so small a force. Not many of the warriors could be seen at the outset, the rough ground sheltering them. But there they were, and in a most warlike humour.

A spear clove the air, singing their menace, as they yelled it in a hundred raucous voices. Scare shots, fired by Sir George, had no effect, not even when an incautious warrior was winged as an object-lesson. The Aborigines grew bolder, leaping hither and thither in the attack--evil spirits of the bush. The sight they made, all pigments, was expressed in the shout of one of Sir George's men, 'Good G.o.d, sir! Look at them!'

The cry rose from behind a rack, where Sir George had ordered the man and his comrade to seek shelter. Fortunately, a series of rocks made a natural parapet to the right, and in a degree in front. Sir George, his gun empty at the moment, placed himself on the exposed left position. The spears rained round him, as if they were falling from the clouds. Things could not go on thus for long, and the natives planned to end them.

A superbly built fellow, lighter of skin than his companions, arrogant of air, showed to the front, evidently a general in command. He clambered, shouting the l.u.s.t of battle, on to the summit of a rock, not more than thirty yards from the spot where Sir George lay. Then he swung a spear, with agile trick, and it grazed the hem of the white captain's coat. It would have done more, had not Sir George by instinct, which is ever alert, jerked himself free of its path. Another spear, from the same supple hand, just missed his breast, striking the stock of his gun. This was too near for comfort and the future well-being of the expedition.

Sir George pa.s.sed his empty gun to the Englishman handiest, with the direction 'Please re-load it.' He had tried to do that himself, but his cramped position made it difficult to ram home the powder and ball. For his own gun, he s.n.a.t.c.hed an unshot one which the man was struggling to release from its cover. In the hurry, piece and cover got entangled, but, with a wrench, Sir George tore the two apart. His plan of campaign was settled; he advanced to the rock where the light-coloured native had head-quarters. In bold initiative, there remained the only hope for Sir George and his following, against imminent ma.s.sacre. Would it be a moral victory, won by a simple advance on the rock, or would it be necessary to strike? He had hesitated, as yet, to shoot straight; and he trusted still to avoid that extreme measure.

Three strides in the open, and three spears had him square and fair, a rent archery target. The first struck his watch, denting it, the second caught the fleshy part of his arm, the third tore into his thigh. The Aborigines were skilled spear-men, and proving it by Sir George's impalement, they shouted triumph. The shook of the weapons drove him to his knees, but what stung him was the crow of the blacks.