We of the Never-Never Part 23

On stations in the Never-Never the blacks are supposed to camp either in the homesteads, where no man need go hungry, or right outside the boundaries on waters beyond the cattle, travelling in or out as desired, on condition that they keep to the main travellers' tracks--blacks among the cattle having a scattering effect on the herd, apart from the fact that "n.i.g.g.e.rs in" generally means cattle-killing.

Of course no man ever hopes to keep his blacks absolutely obedient to this rule; but the judicious giving of an odd bullock at not too rare intervals, and always at corroborree times, the more judicious winking at cattle killing on the boundaries, where cattle scaring is not all disadvantage, and the even more judicious giving of a hint, when a hint is necessary, will do much to keep them fairly well in hand, anyway from openly harrying and defiant killing, which in humanity is surely all any man should ask.

The white man has taken the country from the black fellow, and with it his right to travel where he will for pleasure or food, and until he is willing to make recompense by granting fair liberty of travel, and a fair percentage of cattle or their equivalent in fair payment--openly and fairly giving them, and seeing that no man is unjustly treated or hungry within his borders--cattle killing, and at times even man killing by blacks, will not be an offence against the white folk.

A black fellow kills cattle because he is hungry and must be fed with food, having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged "catch who catch can" among its commandments; and until the long arm of the law interfered, white men killed the black fellow because they were hungry with a hunger that must be fed with gold, having been trained in a school that for generations has acknowledged "Thou shalt not kill" among its commandments; and yet men speak of the "superiority" of the white race, and, speaking, forget to ask who of us would go hungry if the situation were reversed, but condemn the black fellow as a vile thief, piously quoting--now it suits them--from those same commandments, that men "must not steal," in the same breath referring to the white man's crime (when it finds them out) as "getting into trouble over some shooting affair with blacks." Truly we British-born have reason to brag of our "inborn sense of justice."

The Maluka being more than willing to give his fair percentage, a judicious hint from him was generally taken quietly and for the time discreetly obeyed, and it was a foregone conclusion that our "n.i.g.g.e.r hunt" would only involve the captured with general discomfiture; but the Red Lilies being a stronghold of the tribe, and a favourite hiding-place for "outsiders," emergencies were apt to occur "down the river," and we rode out of camp with rifles unslung and revolvers at hand.

Dan's sleep had in no wise lessened his faith in the efficiency of dust-throwing, and as we set out he "reckoned" the missus would "learn a thing or two about surprise parties this trip." We all did, but the black fellows gave the instruction.

All morning we rode in single file, following the river through miles of deep gorges, crossing here and there stretches of gra.s.sy country that ran in valleys between gorge and gorge, pa.s.sing through deep Ti Tree forests at times, and now and then clambering over towering limestone ridges that blocked the way, with, all the while, the majestic Roper river flowing deep and wide and silent on our left, between its water-lily fringed margins. It would take a mighty drought to dry up the waters of the Territory--permanent, we call them, sure of our rivers and our rains.

Almost fifty miles of these deep-flowing waterways fell to our share; thirty-five miles of the Roper, twelve in the Long Reach, besides great holes scattered here and there along the beds of creeks that are mighty rivers in themselves "during the Wet." Too much water, if anything, was the complaint at the Elsey, for water everywhere meant cattle everywhere.

For over two hours we rode, prying into and probing all sorts of odd nooks and crannies before we found any sign of blacks, and then, Roper giving the alarm, every one sat to attention. Roper had many ways of amusing himself when travelling through bush, but one of his greatest delights was nosing out hidden black fellows. At the first scent of "n.i.g.g.e.r" his ears would p.r.i.c.k forward, and if left to himself, he would carry his rider into an unsuspected n.i.g.g.e.r camp, or stand peering into the bushes at a discomfited black fellow, who was busy trying to think of some excuse to explain his presence and why he had hidden.

As Roper's ears shot forward and he turned aside towards a clump of thick-set bushes, Dan chuckled in expectation, but all Roper found was a newly deserted gundi camp, and fresh tracks travelling eastwards--tracks left during the night--after our arrival at the river, of course.

Dan surveyed the tracks, and his chuckles died out, and, growing sceptical of the success of his surprise party, he followed them for a while in silence, Sambo riding behind, outwardly stolid, but no doubt, inwardly chuckling.

Other eastward-going tracks a mile or so farther on made Dan even more sceptical, and further tracks again set him harking back to his theory of "something always telling 'em somehow," and, losing interest in n.i.g.g.e.r-hunts, he became showman of the Roper river scenery.

Down into the depths of gorges he led us, through ferny nooks, and over the sandy stretches at the base of the mighty clefts through which the river flows; and as we rode, he had us leaning back in our saddles, in danger of cricking our necks, to look up at lofty heights above us, until a rocky peninsula running right into the river, after we had clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses' necks in danger of taking somersaults into s.p.a.ce, as we peered over the sides of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. "Nothing like variety," Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself down in his most approved style; dropping from ledge to ledge as he went, stepping carefully along their length, he would pause for a moment on their edges to judge distance, then, gathering his feet together, he would sway out and drop a foot or more to the next ledge. Riding Roper was never more than sitting in the saddle and leaving all else to him. Wherever he went there was safety, both for himself and his rider whether galloping between trees or beneath over-hanging branches, whether dropping down ridges with the surefootedness of a mountain pony, or picking his way across the treacherous "springy country." No one knew better than he his own limits, and none better understood "springy country." Carefully he would test suspicious-looking turf with a cautious fore-paw, and when all roads proved risky, in his own unmistakable language he would advise his rider to dismount and walk over, having shown plainly that the dangerous bit was not equal to the combined weight of horse and man. When Roper advised, wise men obeyed.

But gorges and ridges were not all Dan had to show us. Twice in our thirty-five miles of the Roper--about ten miles apart--wide-spreading rocky arches completely span the river a foot or so beneath its surface, forming natural crossing-places; for at them the full volume of water takes what Dan called a "duck-under," leaving only smoothly flowing shallow streams, a couple of hundred yards wide, running over the rocky bridgeways. The first "duck-under" occurs in a Ti Tree valley, and, marvelling at the wonder of the rippling streamlet so many yards wide and so few in length, with that deep, silent river for its source and estuary--we loitered in the pleasant forest glen, until Dan, coming on further proofs of a black fellow's "second-sight" along the margins of the duck-under, he turned away in disgust, and as we followed him through the great forest he treated us to a lengthy discourse on thought-reading.

The Salt Creek, coming into the Roper with its deep, wide estuary, interrupted both Dan's lecture and our course, and following along the creek to find the crossing we left the river, and before we saw it again a mob of "brumbies" had lured us into a "drouth" that even Dan declared was the "dead finish."

Brumby horses being one of the problems of the run, and the destruction of brumby stallions imperative, as the n.i.g.g.e.r-hunt was apparently off, the brumby mob proved too enticing to be pa.s.sed by, and for an hour and more it kept us busy, the Maluka and Dan being equally "set on getting a stallion or two."

As galloping after brumbies when there is no trap to run them into is about as wise as galloping after a flight of swallows, we followed at a distance when they galloped, and stalked them against the wind when they drew up to reconnoitre: beautiful, clean-limbed, graceful creatures, with long flowing manes and tails floating about them, galloping freely and swiftly as they drove the mares before them, or stepping with light, dancing tread as they drew up and faced about, with the mares now huddled together behind them. Three times they drew up and faced about and each time a stallion fell before the rifles, then, becoming more wary, they led us farther and farther back, evading the rifles at every halt, until finally they galloped out of sight, and beyond all chance of pursuit.

Then, Dan discovering he had acquired the "drouth," advised "giving it best" and making for the Spring Hole in Duck Creek.

"Could do with a drop of spring water," he said, but Dan's luck was out this trip, and the Spring Hole proved a slimy bog "alive with dead cattle," as he himself phrased it. Three dead beasts lay bogged on its margin, and held as in a vice, up to their necks in slime and awfulness stood two poor living brutes. They turned piteous terrified eyes on us as we rode up, and then Dan and the Maluka firing in mercy, the poor heads drooped and fell and the bog with a sickening sigh sucked them under.

As we watched, horribly fascinated, Dan indulged in a soliloquy--a habit with him when ordinary conversation seemed out of place. "'Awful dry Wet we're having,' sez he," he murmured, "'the place is alive with dead cattle.' 'Fact,' sez he, 'cattle's dying this year that never died before.'" Then remarking that "this sort of thing" wasn't "exactly a thirst quencher," he followed up the creek bank into a forest of cabbage-tree palms--tall, feathery-crested palms everywhere, taller even that the forest trees; but never a sign of water.

It was then two o'clock, and our last drink had been at breakfast--soon after sun-up; and for another hour we pegged wearily on, with that seven hours' drouth done horses, the beating sun of a Territory October overhead, Brown stretched across the Maluka's knees on the verge of apoplexy, and Sool'em panting wearily on. With the breaking of her leg little Tiddle'ums had ended her bush days, but as she lost in bush craft she gained in excellency as a fence personifier.

By three o'clock we struck water in the Punch Bowl--a deep, volcanic hole, bottomless, the blacks say, but apparently fed beneath by the river; but long before then Dan's chuckle had died out, and soliloquies had ceased to amuse him.

At the first sight of the water we revived, and as Brown and Sool'em lay down and revelled on its margin, Dan "took a pull as an introduction,"

and then, after unpacking the team and getting the fire going for the billy, he opened out the tucker-bags, having decided on a "fizz" as a "good quencher."

"Nothing like a fizz when you've got a drouth on," he said, mixing soda and cream-of-tartar into a cup of water, and drinking deeply. As he drank, the "fizz" spattered its foam all over his face and beard, and after putting down the empty cup with a satisfied sigh, he joined us as we sat on the pebbly incline, waiting for the billy to boil, and with the tucker-bags dumped down around and about us. "Real refreshing that!" he said, drawing a red handkerchief from his belt and mopping his spattered face and beard, adding, as he pa.s.sed the damp handkerchief over his ears and neck with chuckling exaggeration: "Tell you what! A fizz 'ud be a great thing if you were short of water. You could get a drink and have a good wash-up with the one cupful."

With the "fizz," Dan's interest in education revived, and after dinner he took up the role of showman of the Roper scenery once more, and had us scrambling over boulders and cliffs along the dry bed of the creek that runs back from the Punch Bowl, until, having clambered over its left bank into a shady glen, we found ourselves beneath the gem of the Roper--a wide-spreading banyan tree, with its propped-up branches turning and twisting in long winding leafy pa.s.sages and balconies, over a feathery grove of young palm trees that had crept into its generous shade.

Here and there the pa.s.sages and balconies graded one to another's level, all being held together by innumerable stays and props, sent down from branch to branch, and from branches to the gra.s.sy turf beneath; and one sweeping limb, coming almost to the ground in a gentle incline before twisting away and up again, made ascent so simple that the men-folk sent the missus for a "stroll in midair," sure that no white woman's feet had yet trodden those winding ways. And as she strolled about the tree--not climbed--hindered only by her holland riding-skirt, Brown followed, anxiously but cautiously. Then, the spirit of vandalism taking hold of the Maluka, he cut the name of the missus deep into the yielding bark.

There are some wonderful trees on the Elsey, but not one of them will compare with the majesty and grandeur of that old banyan. Away from the world it stands beyond those rocky ways and boulders, with its soft shade sweeping curves, and feathery undergrowth, making a beautiful world of its own. For years upon years it has stood there--may be for centuries--sending down from its branches those props for its old age, bountiful with its shade, and indifferent whether its path-ways be trodden by white feet or black.

After the heat and "drouth" we could have loitered in that pleasant shade; but we were due at the Red Lilies "second night out"; and it being one of the unwritten laws of a "n.i.g.g.e.r-hunt" to keep appointments--"the other chaps worrying a bit if you don't turn up"--soon after four o'clock we were out in the blazing heat again, following the river now along its higher flood-bank through gra.s.sy plains and open forest land.

By five o'clock Dan was prophesying that "it 'ud take us all we knew to do the trick in daylight," but at six o'clock, when we were still eight miles from the Red Lilies, the Maluka settled the question by calling for a camp there and then. "The missus had had enough," the Maluka decided, and Dan became anxious. "It's that drouth that's done it," he lamented; and although agreeing with the Maluka that Jack would survive a few hours' anxiety, regretted we had "no way of letting him know." (We were not aware of the efficiency of smoke signalling).

We turned back a short distance for better watering for horses, settling down for the night at the second "duck-under"--McMinn's bar--within sound of the rushing of many waters; for here the river comes back to the surface with a mighty roar and swirling currents. "Knockup camp," Dan christened it in his pleasant way, and Sambo became unexpectedly curious.

"Missus knock up?" he asked, and the Maluka nodding, Sambo's question was forgotten until the next mid-day.

By then we had pa.s.sed the Red Lily lagoons, and ridden across the salt-bush plain, and through a deep belt of tall, newly sprung green gra.s.s, that hugged the river there just then, and having been greeted by smug, smiling old black fellows, were saluting Jack across two or three hundred feet of water, as we stood among our horses.

"Slewed!" Jack called in answer, through hollowed hands. "Didn't worry.

Heard--the--missus--had--knocked--up," and Dan leaned against his horse, limp with amazement.

"Heard the missus had knocked up?" he gasped. "Well, I'm blowed! Talk of surprise parties!" and the old black fellows looked on enjoying the effect.

"Black fellow plenty savey," they said loftily, and Dan was almost persuaded to a belief in debbel-debbels, until our return to the homestead, when Jimmy's Nellie divulged the Court secret; then Dan e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed another "Well, I'm blowed!" with the theory of second-sight and thought-reading falling about his ears.

After a consultation across the river in long-drawn-out syllables, Jack decided on a horse muster for the return trip--genuine this time--and went on his way, after appointing to meet us at Knock-up camp next evening. But our horses refusing to leave the deep green feed, we settled down just where we were, beside the river, and formed a curious camping-ground for ourselves, a small s.p.a.ce hacked out and trampled down, out of the dense rank gra.s.s that towered above and around us.

But this was to be a record trip for discomfort. Dan, on opening out the tucker-bags, announced ruefully that our supply of meat had "turned on us"; and as our jam-tin had "blown," we feared we were reduced to damper only, until the Maluka unearthed a bottle of anchovy paste, falsely labelled "Chicken and Ham." "Lot's wife," Dan called it, after "tackling some as a relish."

Birds were everywhere about the lagoons--ducks, s.h.a.gs, great geese, and pigmy geese, hovering and settling about them in screaming clouds; and after dinner, deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper, we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily. But revolvers are hardly the thing for duck shooting, and the soft-nosed bullets of the Maluka's rifle reducing an unfortunate duck to a tangled ma.s.s of blood and feathers we were obliged to accept, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, the prospect of damper and "Lot's wife" for supper. But our hopes died hard, and we sneaked about the gorgeous lagoons, revolvers in hand, for a good hour, "larning a thing or two about the lagoons" from Dan as we sneaked.

The Red Lily lagoons lie away from the Roper, on either side of it, wide-spreading and shallow--great sheets of water with tall reeds and rushes about them, and glorious in flowering time with their immense cup-shaped crimson blossoms cl.u.s.tering on long stalks above great floating leaves--leaves nearly approaching three feet in diameter I think; and everywhere about the leaves hover birds and along the margins of the lagoons stalk countless waders, cranes, jabiroos, and oftentimes douce native companions.

Being so shallow and wide-spreading, the lagoons would dry up early in the "dry" were it not that the blacks are able to refill them at will from the river; for here the Roper indulges in a third "duck-under," so curious that with a few logs and sheets of bark the blacks can block the way of its waters and overflow them into the lagoons thereby ensuring a plentiful larder to hosts of wild fowl and, incidentally, to themselves.

As the mystery of this "duck-under" lies under water, it can only be described from hearsay. Here, so the blacks say, a solid wall of rock runs out into the river, incomplete, though, and complicated, rising and terminating before mid-stream into a large island, which, dividing the stream unequally, sends the main body of water swirling away along its northern borders, while the lesser current glides quietly around the southern side, slipping partly over the submerged wall, and partly through a great side-long cleft on its face--gliding so quietly that the cleft can be easily blocked and the wall heightened when the waters are needed for the lagoons. Black-fellow gossip also reports that the island can be reached by a series of subterranean caves that open into daylight away at the Cave Creek, miles away.

Getting nothing better than one miserable s.h.a.g by our revolvers, we faced damper and "Lot's wife" about sundown, returning to camp through a dense Leichardt pine forest, where we found myriads of bat-like creatures, inches long, perhaps a foot, hanging head downwards from almost every branch of every tree. "Flying foxes," Dan called them, and Sambo helped himself to a few, finding "Lot's wife" unsatisfying; but the white folk "drew the line at varmints."

"Had bandicoot once for me Christmas dinner," Dan informed us, making extra tea "on account of 'Lot's wife'" taking a bit of "washing down."

Then, supper over, the problem of watering the horses had to be solved.

The margins of the lagoons were too boggy for safety, and as the horses, fearing alligators apparently, refused the river, we had a great business persuading them to drink out of the camp mixing dish.

The sun was down before we began; and long before we were through with the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching--skimming along and above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the river, but reaching right across it, and away beyond the tree tops.

Swiftly it came to us and sped on, never ceasing its peculiar cry; and as it swept on, and we found it was made up of innumerable flying creatures, we remembered Dan's "flying foxes." In unbroken continuity the cloud swept out of the pine forest, along the river, and past us, resembling an elongated kaleidoscope, all dark colours in appearance; for as they swept by the shimmering creatures constantly changed places--gliding downwards as they flew, before dipping for a drink to rise again with swift, glancing movement, shrilling that peculiar cry all the while. Like clouds of drifting fog they swept by, and in such myriads that, even after the Maluka began to time them, full fifteen minutes pa.s.sed before they began to straggle out, and twenty before the last few stragglers were gone. Then, as we turned up stream to look after them, we found that there the dense cloud was rising and fanning out over the tree tops.

The evening drink accomplished, it was time to think of food.

Dan welcomed the spectacle as an "impromptu bit of education. Learnt something meself, even," he said with lordly superiority. "Been out-bush forty years and never struck that before "; and later, as we returned to camp, he declared it "just knocked spots off De Rougemont."

But it had taken so long to persuade the horses that a drink could proceed out of a mixing dish, that it was time to turn in by then; and Dan proceeded to clear a s.p.a.ce for a sleeping ground with a tomahawk.

"Seems no end to education once you start," he chuckled, hacking at a stubborn tussock. "Reckon no other woman ever learned to make a bed with a tomahawk." Then Sambo created a diversion by asking for the loan of a revolver before taking a message to the blacks' camp.

"Big mob bad fellow black fellow sit down longa island," he explained; and Dan, whimsical under all circ.u.mstances, "noticed the surprise party wasn't exactly going off without a hitch." "Couldn't have fixed up better for them if they've got a surprise party of their own up their sleeves,"

he added ruefully, looking round at the dense wall of gra.s.s about us; and as he and the Maluka swung the two nets not six feet apart, we were all of one mind that "getting murdered was an experience we could do nicely without." Then Sambo returning and swinging his net in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the two others, set Dan chuckling again. "Doesn't mean to make a target of himself," he said; but his chuckle died out when Sambo, preparing to curl up in the safest place in the camp, explained his presumption tersely by announcing that "Monkey sit down longa camp."