Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 14

Whether such a desperate attempt would have been successful or not, is doubtful; but there is no question that a frightful scene of bloodshed would have taken place; nor that, if the ruffians had managed well, and judiciously timed their attack, they had some chance, and probably not a small one, of prevailing.

As it was, however, the matter was knocked on the head; for not only were the leaders of the conspiracy heavily ironed, but they were placed in different parts of the ship, wholly apart, and thus could neither act nor hold the slightest communication with each other.

Although the part I had acted in this affair did not operate in my favour with the greater part of my fellow-convicts,--for, notwithstanding all our caution, a strong suspicion prevailed amongst them that I was the informer,--it secured me the marked favour of all others on board the ship, and procured me many little indulgences which would not otherwise have been permitted, and, generally, much milder treatment than was extended to the others; and I confess I was not without an idea that I deserved it.

On our arrival at Sydney, whither I now hurry the reader, nothing subsequent to the incident just recorded having occurred in the interval with which I need detain him, I was immediately a.s.signed, with several others, to a farmer, a recently arrived emigrant, who occupied a grant of land of about a thousand acres in the neighbourhood of the town of Maitland.

Before leaving the ship, the captain added to his other kindnesses an a.s.surance that he would not fail to represent my case--meaning with reference to the service I had done him in giving information of the conspiracy amongst the convicts--to the governor, and that he had no doubt of its having a favourable effect on my future fortunes, provided I seconded it by my own good conduct.

The person to whom we had been a.s.signed, an Englishman, being on the spot waiting us, we were forthwith clapped into a covered waggon, and driven off to our destination, our new master following us on horseback.

The work to which we were put on the farm was very laborious, consisting, for several weeks, in clearing the land of trees; felling, burning, and grubbing up the roots. But we were well fed, and, on the whole, kindly treated in other respects; so that, although our toil was severe, we had not much to complain of.

In this situation I remained for a year and a half, and had the gratification of enjoying, during the greater part of that time, the fullest confidence of my employer, whose good opinion I early won by my orderly conduct, and--an unusual thing amongst convicts--by my attention to his interests.

On leaving him, he gave me, unasked, a testimonial of character, written in the strongest terms.

I was now again returned on the hands of Government, to await the demand of some other settler for my services.

In the meantime I had heard nothing of the result of the captain's representation in my behalf to the governor, but had no doubt I would reap the benefit of it on the first occasion that I should have a favour to ask. The first thing in this way that I had to look for was what is called a ticket of leave; that is, a doc.u.ment conferring exemption for a certain period from Government labour, and allowing the party possessing it to employ himself in any lawful way he pleases, and for his own advantage, during the time specified by the ticket. My sentence, however, having been for fourteen years, I could not, in the ordinary case, look for this indulgence till the expiration of six years, such being the colonial regulations.

But imagining the good service I had done in the convict ship would count for something, and probably induce the governor to shorten my term of probation, I began now to think of applying for the indulgence. This idea I shortly after acted upon, and drew up a memorial to the personage just alluded to; saying nothing, however, of my innocence of the crime for which I had been transported, knowing that, as such an a.s.sertion would not be believed, it would do much more harm than good. In this memorial, however, I enclosed the letter of recommendation given me by my last master.

It was eight or ten days before I heard anything of my application. At the end of that time, however, I received a very gracious answer. It said that my "praiseworthy conduct" on board the ship in which I came to the colony had been duly reported by the captain, and that it would be remembered to my advantage; that, at the, expiry of my second year in the colony, of which there were six months yet to run, a ticket of leave would be granted me--thus abridging the period by four years; and that, if I continued to behave as well as I had done, I might expect the utmost indulgence that Government could extend to one in my situation.

With this communication, although it did not immediately grant the prayer of my pet.i.tion, I was much gratified, and prepared to submit cheerfully to the six months' compulsory labour which were yet before me.

Shortly after this I was a.s.signed to another settler, in the neighbourhood of Paramatta. This was a different sort of person from the last I had served, and, I am sorry to say, a countryman. His name I need not give; for although the doing so could no longer affect him, he being long dead, it might give pain to his relatives, several of whom are alive both here and in New South Wales. This man was a tyrant, if ever there was one, and possessed of all the pa.s.sion and caprice of the worst description of those who delight in lording it over their fellow-creatures. There was not a week that he had not some of my unhappy fellow-servants before a magistrate, often for the most trivial faults--a word, a look--and had them flogged by sentence of the court, by the scourger of the district, till the blood streamed from their backs. Knowing how little consideration there is for the unhappy convict in all cases of difference with his taskmaster, and that however unjust or unreasonable the latter's complaints may be, they are always readily entertained by the subordinate authorities, and carefully recorded against the former to his prejudice, I took care to give him no offence.

To say nothing of his positive orders, I obeyed his every slightest wish with a prompt.i.tude and alacrity that left him no shadow of ground to complain of me. It was a difficult task; but it being for my interest that no complaint of me, just or unjust, should be put on record against me, I bore all with what I must call exemplary patience and fort.i.tude.

I have already said that my new master was a man of the most tyrannical disposition--cruel, pa.s.sionate, and vindictive. He was all this; and his miserable fate--a fate which overtook him while I was in his employment--was, in a great measure, the result of his ungovernable and merciless temper.

Some of the wretched natives of the country--perhaps the most miserable beings on the face of the earth, as they are certainly the lowest in the scale of intellect of all the savage tribes that wander on its surface--used to come occasionally about our farm, in quest of a morsel of food. Amongst these were frequently women with infants on their backs. If my master was out of the way when any of these poor creatures came about the house, his wife, who was a good sort of woman, used to relieve them; and so did we, also, when we had anything in our power.

Their treatment, however, was very different when our master happened to be at home. The moment he saw any of these poor blacks approaching, he used to run into the house for his rifle, and on several occasions fired at and wounded the unoffending wretches. At other times he hounded his dogs after them, himself pursuing and hallooing with as much excitement as if he had been engaged in the chase of some wild beasts instead of human beings--beings as distinctly impressed as himself with the image of his G.o.d.

It is true that these poor creatures were mischievous sometimes, and that they would readily steal any article to which they took a fancy.

But in beings so utterly ignorant, and so dest.i.tute of all moral perceptions, such offences could hardly be considered as criminal; not one, at any rate, deserving of wounds and death at the caprice of a fellow-creature acting on his own impulses, unchecked by any legal or judicial control. Besides, it were easy to prevent the depredations of these poor creatures--easy to drive them off without having recourse to violence.

The humanity and forbearance, however, which such a mode of proceeding with the aborigines would require was not to be found in my master.

Fierce repulsion and retaliation were the only means he would have recourse to in his mode of treating them; and the consequence was, his inspiring the natives with a hatred of him, and a desire of vengeance for his manifold cruelties towards them, which was sure, sooner or later, to end in his destruction. It did so. One deed of surpa.s.sing cruelty which he perpetrated accomplished his fate.

One day, seeing two or three natives, amongst whom was a woman with a young infant on her back, pa.s.sing within a short distance of the house, not approaching it--for he was now so much dreaded by these poor creatures that few came to the door--my master, as usual, ran in for his rifle, and calling his dogs around him, gave chase to the party.

The men being unenc.u.mbered, fled on seeing him, and being remarkably swift of foot, were soon out of his reach. Not so the poor woman with the child on her back: she could not escape; and at her the savage ruffian fired, killing both her and the infant with the same murderous shot.

This double murder was of so unprovoked, so cold-blooded, and atrocious a nature, that it is probable, little as the life of a native was accounted in those days, that my master would have been called upon to answer for his crime before the tribunals of the colony; but retribution overtook him by another and a speedier course.

On the following day my master came out of the house, about ten o'clock in the forenoon, with an axe in one hand, and the fatal rifle, his constant companion, with which he had perpetrated the atrocious deed on the preceding day, in the other, and coming up to me, told me that he was going to a certain spot in an adjoining wood to cut some timber for paling, and that he desired I should come to him two hours after with one of the cars or sledges in use on the farm, to carry home the cut wood. Having said this, he went off, little dreaming of the fate that awaited him.

At the time appointed I went with a horse and sledge to the wood, but was much surprised to find that my master was not at the spot where he said he would be;--a surprise which was not a little increased by perceiving, from two or three felled sticks that lay around, that he had been there, but had done little--so little, that he could not have been occupied, as I calculated, for more than a quarter of an hour. Thinking, however, that wherever he had gone he would speedily return, I sat down to await him; but he came not. An entire hour elapsed, and still he did not make his appearance. Beginning now to suspect that some accident had happened him, I hurried home to inquire if they had seen or heard anything of him there. They had not. His family became much alarmed for his safety--a feeling in which my conscience forbids me to say that I partic.i.p.ated.

Two of my fellow-servants now accompanied me back to the wood, which it was proposed we should search. This, so soon as we had reached the spot where my master had appointed to meet me, and where, as already mentioned, he had evidently been, we began to do, whooping and hallooing at the same time to attract his attention should he be anywhere within hearing.

For a long while our searching and shouting were vain. At length one of my companions, who had entered a tangled patch of underwood which we had not before thought of looking, suddenly uttered a cry of horror. We ran up to him, and found him gazing on the dead body of our master, who lay on his face, transfixed by a native spear, which still stood upright in his back. It was one of those spears which the aborigines of New South Wales use, on occasion, as missiles, and which they throw with an astonishing force and precision.

Such, then, was the end of this cruel man; and that it exceeded his deserts can hardly be maintained.

Luckily for me, my period of service with my late master was at this time about out. A few days more, and I became ent.i.tled to my ticket of leave. For this indulgence I applied when the time came, and it was immediately granted me for one year. On obtaining my ticket I proceeded to Sydney, as the most likely place to fall in with some employment. On this subject, however, I felt much at a loss; for not having been bred to any mechanical trade, I could do nothing in that way. Farming was the only business of which I knew anything; and in this, my father having been an excellent farmer, I was pretty well skilled. My hope, therefore, was, that I would find some situation as a farm overseer, and thought Sydney, although a town, the likeliest place to fall in with or hear of an employer. On arriving in Sydney, I proceeded to the house of a countryman of the name of Lawson, who kept a tavern, and to whom I brought a letter of introduction from a relative of his own who had been banished for sedition, and who was one of my fellow-labourers in the last place where I had served. On reading the letter, Lawson, who was a kind-hearted man, exclaimed--

"Puir Jamie, puir fallow; and hoo is he standin't oot?"

I a.s.sured him that he was bearing his fate manfully, but that he had been in the service of a remorseless master.

"Ay, I ken him," said Lawson. "A man that's no gude to his ain canna be gude to ithers."

"You must speak of him now, however, in the past tense," said I.

"Mr.----- is dead."

"Dead!" exclaimed Lawson, with much surprise. "When did he die?"

I told him, and also of the manner of his death.

"Weel, that is shockin'," he remarked; "but, upon my word, better couldna hae happened him, for he was a cruel-hearted man." Then, reverting to his relative, "Puir Jamie," he said; "but I think we'll manage to get Jamie oot o' his sc.r.a.pe by-and-by. I hae gude interest wi'

the governor, through a certain acquaintance, and houpe to be able to get him a free pardon in a whily. But he maun just submit a wee in the meantime."

"But anent yoursel, my man," continued Lawson, "what can I do for ye?

Jamie, here, speaks in the highest terms o' ye, and begs me to do what I can for ye; and that I'll willingly do on his account. What war' ye bred to?"

I told him that I had been bred to the farming business, and that I should like to get employment as a farm overseer or upper servant, to engage for a year.

"Ay, just noo, just noo," said honest Lawson. "Weel, I'll tell you what it is, and it's sae far lucky: there was a decent, respectable-looking man here the day, a countryman o' our ain--and I believe he'll sleep here the nicht--wha was inquirin' if I kent o' ony decent, steady lad who had been brocht up in the farmin' line. I kenna hoo they ca' the man, but he has been in my house, noo, twa or three times. He's only twa or three months arrived in the colony, and is settled somewhere in the neighbourhood o' Liverpool--our Liverpool, ye ken, no the English Liverpool. He seems to be in respectable circ.u.mstances. Noo, if he comes to sleep here the nicht, as I hae nae doot he will, seein' there's nae coach for Liverpool till the morn's mornin'--I'll mention you till him, and maybe ye may mak a bargain."

I thanked Lawson for his kindness, and was about leaving the house, with a promise to call back in the evening, when he stopped me, and insisted on my taking some refreshment. This, which consisted of some cold roast fowl and a gla.s.s of brandy and water, I readily accepted. When I had partaken of his hospitality I left the house, repeating my promise to call again in the evening. The interval, knowing n.o.body in Sydney, I spent in sauntering about the town.

On the approach of evening, I again returned to Lawson's. He was standing in the doorway when I came forward.

"Come awa, lad," he said, with a glad face, on seeing me. "Your frien's here, and I hae been speakin' to him aboot ye, and he seems inclined to treat wi' you. But he's takin' a bit chack o' dinner 'enoo, sae we'll let him alane for twa or three minutes. Stap ye awa in there to the bar, in the meanwhile, and I'll let him ken in a wee that ye're here."

I did so. In about ten minutes after, Lawson came to me, and said the gentleman up stairs would be glad to see me. I rose and followed him.

We entered the room, the worthy landlord leading the way. The stranger, with his elbow resting on the table, was leaning his head thoughtfully on his hand when we entered. He gazed at me for an instant wildly; he sprang from his chair; he clasped me in his arms. I returned the embrace. Reader, it was my own father!

"Davie, my son," he exclaimed, so soon as his surprise and emotion would permit him to speak, "how, in the name of all that's wonderful, has this come about? Where are you from? how came you here? and where on earth have you been all this weary time, since you left us?"

It was several minutes before I could make any reply. At length--

"I have much to tell you, father," I said, glancing at the same time towards Lawson, who stood with open mouth and staring eyes, lost in wonder at the extraordinary scene, which he yet could not fully comprehend.

Understanding, however, the hint conveyed in that look, the worthy man instantly quitted the apartment, leaving us to ourselves. On his doing so, I sat down at table with my father, and related to him the whole history of my misfortunes, without reserve or extenuation.