That night it was my lot to gain
A reliquary and a chain. . .
Demand not how the prize I hold!
It was not given, or lent, or sold.
Upon approaching the western road, the party lay to in a thicket, while McCoy, who was now dressed in Huggins’s clothes, was sent forward to reconnoitre. He carried a pistol, a pair of handcuffs, and a letter which had been found in their victim’s pocket, and was instructed by Foxley, in the event of being met and questioned, what he should say, so that he might pass for a constable proceeding from Penrith, with a letter for Overseer Huggins.
He was away nearly two hours, and on his return he reported that the coast was clear, when the rest of the party recrossed with him the avenue they had so much dreaded to pass. All that day they wandered about in the vicinity of the road without food, and after nightfall McCoy was dispatched with directions to endeavour to procure some eatables from a station which they knew to be at no great distance. Rashleigh, worn out by hunger and fatigue, had long been asleep in their temporary hiding-place, when, far in the night, their emissary returned. Our adventurer, however, was awakened by Foxley, who bade him “bear a hand, rouse up, and eat that”, at the same time throwing him a piece of bread and a lump of raw salt meat, as, independent of their desire for speed, they dared not light a fire to cook anything, being too close to the road and settled part of the country. When he had partly devoured this primitive meal, he was handcuffed to Smith, who was, for the present, divested of his arms and destined with himself to enact the part of a prisoner in charge of Foxley and McCoy, who both of them assumed the character of constables, escorting prisoners to Penrith lock-up house.
They now went boldly on to the high-road, along which they proceeded in silence about two miles, until Rashleigh came to a place he recognised as being on the top of Lapstone hill, the last eminence of the Blue mountains eastward, and but a short distance from Ralph’s old quarters at Emu Plains. At the foot of the hill, a usual halting place, they found two drays, the drivers of which, according to their general practice, were encamped under them. The sham constables here diverged from the road and went up to the fires left alight by the travellers. The oxen were grazing around, but the dogs quickly aroused the sleepers, of whom there were four in all. The mock prisoners were now ordered to halt by Foxley and McCoy, who asked if they could have a drink of water. One of the men replied, “Certainly”, and gave them some, adding that if they would wait a few minutes, some tea should be prepared for them.
“Why, neither I nor my mate,” returned Foxley, “care about tea; but if you’ve a mind to give these poor devils of prisoners any, I dare say they would be glad of a feed, before they get to their journey’s end in the chokey (lock-up).”
“If that’s like to be the end of their travels,” observed the kind-hearted bullock-driver, “I pity them, with all my heart.” And he half-filled a large iron pot in order to boil it for tea.
The rest of the travellers were now assembled round the fire, helping to get ready a feed; for these wayfarers on the roads of New South Wales were at that time remarkably hospitable, as their erratic mode of life placed them completely at the mercy of any of the many small bands of armed plunderers who were so frequently levying contributions on the King’s highway in those days; and the ordinary carriers always paid great court to the convict population, perhaps imagining they might often escape being plundered, if they could only acquire the name of good fellows among that class. In the present case, therefore, while they treated the supposed constables with only ordinary civility, they paid most solicitous attention to their sham prisoners, supplying them with pipes and tobacco, and hastening the preparation of food for their use.
At length, all being ready, the new-comers sat down to eat, their hosts excusing themselves from joining in the repast, upon the ground that they had supped at a very late hour, and they sat in various positions telling, or seeking after news. At length one of the bullock-drivers asked what the prisoners were charged with, and McCoy replied, “They are bolters (runaway convicts). They belonged to that mob of Foxley the bushranger’s; but they won’t tell us where we could find him, or else we’d very soon have him as well as them.”
The name of Foxley caused an instant sensation. All the travellers began at once to question their visitors.
“Was Foxley near this? — How long since he’d been heard of? — What way was it thought he was going?” And the last querist enquired what was the last robbery or murder he had done.
To these hasty queries McCoy replied that it was thought Foxley was now somewhere near Bathurst, but had been heard of going back to the south, where he had lately been robbing all the country, concluding by stating that “Foxley might be a great terror to the south country constables, but he only wished that himself and his mate could come across the scoundrel, that was all!”
At this the elder of the bullock-drivers very politically observed, “For my part, I’d like to make a child’s bargain with Foxley: let be for let be. For folks do say he’s a regular devil, a complete fire-eater; and at any rate, it don’t answer, you know, for us folks that’s on the road to be meeting with gentlemen of his sort very often.”
“Och, botheration to your clack,” now struck in a sprightly Hibernian among the travellers, whose face betokened his unquestionable Milesian origin. “What a clatter you keep about Foxley! As if nobody knew anything about him at all at all but yourself. Sure, an’t Phil Foxley my own uncle’s wife’s shister’s husband’s sixth cousin? And oughtn’t I to know him, whin we used to be gossoons together playing at hurley in ould Ireland? And mark my words, sure you’d see if Phil was forenenst me now” (and the speaker looked direct at Foxley) “all that would be in id: he’d say at wanst, ‘Murtagh Cassidy, my jewel, is id yourself that’s in id?’ And he’d thrate me to the besht that was to be got!”
“But did you ever see Foxley since you came to this country?” now enquired McCoy, having been prompted to ask this ingenious gentleman the question by the real Simon Pure, who in fact appeared much to enjoy the rhodomontade of his Irish relation.
“Is id me see him?” responded the other, nothing abashed. “Faix thin, Mr Consthable, maybe id’s wanting to thrap me you are, in the regard ov my poor cuzin Phil, bein’ onlooky and the like. But, you see, I’ll only tell you I seen him a good many times in the counthry, and I won’t tell you neither whin nor whare we met. So you can’t take no hould of that, you see. Oh, I don’t mean any harm,” replied McCoy; “but only I’d like to know what like a man he is in size, as everybody talks so much about him. I’ve got a description of him from the runaway list; but then, that was took a long time ago, when he first came to the country, you know.”
“Och faix. As to that, if id’s your look to take the poor boy a presnor, ‘why, God’s will be done! What soort of a man is he, agrah? Faix thin, he looks just like meself; and we used always to be took for brothers even, if you plaze, whin we’d be together.”
Now the only difference between the appearance of Foxley and his veracious pretended kinsman were these: the former was as swarthy as an Italian, the latter as red as a fox; Philip was about sixteen stone weight, Murtagh not more than seven; Foxley was a strongly built, muscular and well-proportioned man, Cassidy was a little lean fretful-looking being, with ferret eyes, fiery hair and a confirmed snub nose. So, after all, their general favour could never have been so exceedingly alike, but the fact was, the whole tale was no more than a pure invention of the fertile brain of this ingenious off-side bullock-driver, who was very fond of what is by the vulgar in the Colony called “lifting himself”, that is, seeking for respect from others at the expense of truth.
Another of the bullock-drivers hereupon observed, “It’s all very well for you to talk about such things; but I should only just like to know whether there is any chance of our falling in with the same Foxley, for I could guess what to do in such a case.”
“Indeed!” said the bushranger chief. “Then I can tell you I have real good reasons for believing that Phil Foxley is not so far off as my mate here seems to think. In fact, I am certain I have been quite close to him this very day, and I’ll swear I will be alongside of him tonight yet, let him look as sharp as he likes; for I won’t sleep until I do. But, you know, when we came across these two men, we was forced to take them to the lock-up before we could go after the others.”
“Well then, if he’s so close as that,” returned the bullock-driver, “we must begin to look a little sharp, for he may be paying us a visit, if he knows we are on the road. I’ll just get my musket ready, and I’d advise you to do the same, Jem.”
Accordingly, Jem and the last speaker disappeared under the dray and presently returned with two old soldiers’ firelocks, which they began to arrange. Jem remarked that the charge had been so long in his gun he should draw it out, and began to do so; but Foxley, seeing that the screw on the end of his ram-rod was broken, offered to do it for him, and the other thanked him, resigning the weapon for this purpose.
In the mean time McCoy had got hold of the other man’s piece under pretence of looking at it. He turned round to Foxley. Their eyes met. Both lay down the travellers’ muskets and presented their own at the astonished bullock-drivers, whom they ordered to stand still on peril of their lives. “For,” added Foxley, in a tone of thunder, “I am Foxley the bushranger!”
Master Cassidy at that moment was stooping to light his pipe; but no sooner did he hear this dreaded mandate than, letting fall both pipe and knife into the fire in a paroxysm of fright, he leaped backwards over a heap of bullock bows, yokes and chains and ran off with the speed of a hunted deer.
McCoy presented his piece; but Foxley, who burst into an uproarious fit of laughter at the hasty retreat of his so-called cousin, thrust up the muzzle of the other’s musket, and as soon as he could speak cried, “Damn him, how he runs away from his relation. Come back, you fool, to your cousin phil! No. he won’t! Well then, blast him, let him run. He can’t get any help within three miles, at any rate, and I strongly suspect he’s too much bothered by his fright to know what way to go to look for it at all.”
The handcuffs were now taken off the pretended prisoners. Smith, being equipped with a gun, was posted as a guard over the remaining three travellers, whose persons were then closely searched by McCoy, who deprived them of their valuables with considerable address and some jokes as to how nicely they were taken in by the supposed constables. In the mean time Foxley had nearly unloaded both the bullock drays and selected such articles as he thought fit from their lading, all this being completed in a marvellously short space of time. The bullock-drivers were lashed fast to the poles and wheel of their drays, and the bushrangers, heavily laden, departed under the guidance of their chief.
The neighbourhood seemed to be quite familiar to Foxley, who led them by a most circuitous route until they again reached the foot of the mountains, where they are washed by the Nepean at the northern end of the Emu Plains. Here, in a most sequestered spot, they halted as the morning dawned, and took their first regular meal for forty-eight hours; after this they examined their booty, which comprised half a chest of tea, a bag of Mauritius sugar, a basket of Brazilian tobacco and a quantity of wearing apparel, shawls and handkerchiefs. They had also secured some flour and pork, and fancied themselves freed from apprehensions of famine, at least for a week. The greater part of the day was spent in sleep, and at the approach of night, McCoy was again dispatched to reconnoitre. After a short absence he returned and led the party to the river bank at a spot where they found a large bark canoe, which it seemed he had stolen from some settler’s wharf hard by.
In this they paddled along very softly for some hours, keeping under the shade of the mountains as much as possible, for the opposite bank of the river was crowded with human habitations, and it was sometimes so narrow that even the slight noise they unavoidably made in using their rude oars alarmed the farmers’ dogs, who ran along the shore baying with all their might and thus aroused their masters and mistresses, who then appeared in grotesque groups on the heights beside the stream, bearing bark torches in their hands, and hailing, to know whether there was anyone upon the river. But as the depredators in the canoe, of course, did not choose to reply, and as the precautions taken by these good folks in bringing out their flaring flambeaux effectually prevented themselves from seeing any object at the distance of a dozen yards from their noses, they could not discover the cause of the incessant din created by their wiser as well as more sharp-sighted canine guardians, and the party proceeded unmolested until the first blush of dawn tinged the eastern sky; when, finding themselves near a favourable spot, they ran their canoe close in among the reeds, unloaded her, concealed their cargo in various places, and then betook themselves to a fastness in the North Rocks, where they slept without fear.
Upon awakening in the evening, Foxley and McCoy had a short conversation with Smith, and leaving him, as it seemed, to watch Rashleigh, they set off towards the river. From conversation with his companion in their absence, Ralph discovered that their present hiding-place was the North Rocks, near Richmond, and that the other two bushrangers had now gone to that place in order to find out a purchaser for the fruits of their enterprise. They did not return until very early in the morning, when all of the party set to work collecting the goods they had hidden, and placing them together, the person with whom they had agreed to become a purchaser being expected every moment.
There was a man, at that time, whom every person in the neighbourhood of Richmond knew by the name of Sobersides. Originally a prisoner, and one of the greatest scamps even among that most scampish body, he for a very long period endeavoured to acquire the enviable notoriety of a flash man; that is, in the terms of the immortal Shakspeare,
A ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways!
But alas, he found that fame did not flow upon him so quickly through this channel as he had expected, probably owing to the number of skilful competitors with whom he had to contend in the race for this very amiable distinction. He therefore suddenly altered his whole plan, and, as many other vulgar-minded men in New South Wales have done, nay, are daily doing after a long career of villainy, Mr Sobersides turned hypocrite, no doubt expecting that the éclat which was denied to his previous course of atrocity would readily be granted to the brilliant novelty of his conversion. And in his common daily conversation, which had heretofore been a disgusting olla-podrida of the most brutal sensuality and soul-destroying imprecations, he now expatiated with vast unction upon the marvellous power of grace which had plucked him, as it were, like a brand from the burning, and delivered him from the domination of the world, the flesh and the devil!
So great a proficient did this consummate schemer become in his new art that his hypocrisy very shortly deceived both the village parson, who appointed him his clerk and sexton, and the village magistrate, who appointed him district constable. In this united capacity Mr Sobersides had now continued to officiate for several years, during the course of which he contrived to accumulate a very considerable portion of the world’s wealth; the rather that though he was extremely Pharisaical in his outward deportment, and no man could utter the responses on Sunday in his elevated station before the assembled inhabitants with a more solemn and edifyingly sanctified tone, yet he, in truth, possessed a most accommodating conscience, and never scrupled to overlook any violation of the law, so long as he obtained good and sufficient reasons of Sterling weight for doing so. But it is to be observed that he invariably atoned for his deviations from the strict line of duty in favour of those who could pay him well for his lenity, by a double portion of rigour towards all those rapscallions who, though they were so poor as to be unable to afford the harbinger of justice a douceur, yet had the unparalleled audacity to commit a breach of law or decorum, and their slightest faults were always magnified by him into crimes of heinous turpidity before “Their washups” until he thus became a perfect terror to all the miserable wretches of government men in his neighbourhood who fell under the displeasure of their masters for non-performance of the allotted quota of labour which the government regulations of that day exacted from each assigned convict.
Such was Mr Sobersides, whose terror to the minute fry of evil-doers illustrated the saying that “laws are like cobwebs, which catch the small flies, but allow the large ones to escape”; and his fame for pitiless execution of his duty having long before extended to Emu Plains, it may be supposed that Rashleigh’s astonishment was great when he saw this vigilant conservator of public peace and morality appear in the North Rocks in the capacity of a customer for the spoils of the lawless Foxley and his desperate associates, whose freebooting exploits, it seemed, he had often before profited by, heedless that by so doing he supported and encouraged a band of bloodthirsty ruffians who would stop at the commission of no act of atrocity to glut their eager desire for spoil.
In order to guard against any unpleasant recognition in after times on the part of their visitor, the bushrangers all wore pieces of crape upon their faces and were directed by Foxley not to speak during the bargain, which was to be carried on solely by himself. From the easy and unrestrained manner of both parties, it was evident they had frequently transacted business together before; nor were they long at present in making a deal, when he departed, leaving behind him a sack full of empty bags, into which the tea, sugar and other articles were transferred from their original packages. The replenished sacks were stowed away in a secret nook, the tea chest, bags and basket, which had been taken from the dray, being carefully buried by the bushrangers.
The latter now retreated to a place of security in the neighbourhood, where the day was spent subsequently in sleeping by Foxley and McCoy, who had apparently been up all night, Smith and Rashleigh being directed to maintain a sharp look-out; though from the nature of their present nearly inaccessible retreat there was indeed little danger of interruption.
The North Rocks of Richmond is the name given to a most singular valley that appears to have suffered some extraordinary convulsion of nature, being completely filled with immense masses of stone, apparently vomited out of the bowels of the earth by the agency of an earthquake, and left lying wherever chance had directed their fall, so that it was absolutely choked with
Rocks, mounds, and crags, confusedly hurled,
The relics of an earlier world.
At the upper end of this valley rises a precipitous hill, in the face of which appear many horizontal chasms. One of these, in particular, near its base, though possessing a very low entrance, is internally of great extent, and in most places from ten to twelve feet high. The floor of this cavern is composed of the débris of the sandstone that forms one stratum of the hill, and is perfectly dry, save in a corner, where a single drop of pellucid water continually falls from a joint in the rock; and this, through its long sustained action, has worn a basin about two feet wide and eighteen inches in depth, which is constantly full of most beautifully clear and cold water.
At the opposite side of the cavern from this spring is a narrow perpendicular slit in the rocky roof, open to the heavens, but fringed with brushwood so as to be nearly invisible from any distance, either above or beneath. This orifice admits a considerable quantity of light to the interior of the cave, which was selected for their retreat by Foxley, who had obviously made use of it for a similar purpose before, as he led the way to the opening, that admitted them without any difficulty, though it was so very low and well concealed by an overhanging rock that any person unaware of its existence might pass to and fro its front daily for years and still never discover it. In fact, it was necessary to creep into it on all fours; but after their having gone a few feet in this manner, the rock that formed its roof receded so much that the tallest man could stand erect. In this secluded spot did the party of bushrangers spend the rest of the day. A fire was made under the cleft before spoken of, on a spot that indicated having been appropriated to the same purpose before, and the materials for which they found lying near.
At nightfall they conveyed their plunder to the bank of the river under the guidance of Foxley, and very shortly after they had done so could observe, from the concealment in which they stood, that a boat approached, sculled by a single person, who proved to be Mr Sobersides, bearing the money agreed on between himself and Foxley as the price of the spoil. A few moments served to transfer the bags into the boat, which now disappeared, and the marauders retraced their steps towards the cavern, as it seemed to Rashleigh; but after travelling a short distance, the leader and his two companions held a consultation which ended in their turning abruptly again towards the river and reaching the bank at a different spot to the one they had so lately quitted. McCoy now searched among the reeds for some time, and then called to the others, who, on obeying his summons, found him guiding a catamaran, upon which they all got and quickly crossed the stream.
After they had ascended the high river bank, many lights were visible, and the busy hum of voices was heard directly in their route. Foxley and McCoy walked on either side of Rashleigh, whom the former cautioned to be silent, and they thus went on for about half an hour, until they had left the greater part of the houses behind. They then halted and McCoy went forward alone; but upon his returning in a few moments, the whole party again proceeded and presently arrived at a house standing by itself. Lights appeared within and the voice of a female was heard singing. Foxley tapped at the door and the travellers were admitted.
The apartment was a spacious one, of the usual humble order as regards furniture, etc., with those belonging to the greater portion of settlers; still, from many circumstances, it was obvious the occupants of the dwelling were in easy circumstances. The female that admitted them was a young and handsome Australian, who appeared overjoyed to see McCoy, whom she welcomed with many kisses. in a few moments two other girls and an elderly man and woman came in, who seemed happy to see the new arrivals, to whom food was pressingly offered, but declined by all; and McCoy, taking one of the girls aside, spoke something to her, finishing his conversation by giving her money. She went Out, and Foxley and Smith, who had by this time attached themselves to the other two girls, maintained a conversation with them, abounding, as it seemed, with some very merry topics, for ever and anon a loud and hearty peal of laughter accompanied their sallies.
The absent fair one now returned, bringing on her head a keg, the arrival of which was hailed with acclamations; and the party, excepting our adventurer, drew up to the table. Cards were produced, rum served round, and all preparations made for spending a social evening. Foxley had told Rashleigh, before he joined the group at the table, to sit in a certain part of the room, warning him that if he offered to leave it but for one instant without acquainting either himself or McCoy, then he would shoot him dead; and he cocked one of the pistols he wore at his belt, with a glance that spoke volumes, as he whispered this caution.
Near to the stool on which our adventurer was seated there was a table with a few books. One of these he found to be the Arabian nights, which was wonderfully tattered and dog’s-cared, while a volume alongside of it, The whole duty of man, was scarcely soiled, and though of an ancient edition, had more than half its leaves uncut. Rashleigh took the former and was quickly lost to all sense of the outer world, as well as the noisy mirth of the group around him, while perusing its pages, which frequently filled him with painful recollections, as it reminded him of the happy and guiltless days of his youth, when he had last delighted in the gorgeous delineations of Oriental magnificence with which these tales abound.
In the mean time his companions were rapidly getting furious with intoxication. They began to sing, to bellow and to rave, until at length, Foxley’s eye resting upon Ralph, he got up, staggered towards him, and asked what was the reason he did not drink; was he too much of a gentleman for his company? In vain did the other assure his tyrant that he had drunk abundantly and proffered evidence of his having just emptied a teacup full of rum and water.
“A tea-cup!” hiccupped the desperado. “To the devil with such an egg shell as a tea-cup.” And going to the fireplace, he seized on an empty quart pot which, after spilling a great deal, he at length succeeded in filling with raw rum from the keg.
Then, returning with it, he addressed his prisoner thus, “Here, damn your snivelling carcase. Take that and drink it off, directly. Do you think I’m going to let you keep sober while we all get drunk, so that you may go and bring the bloody traps (constables) upon us? So drink that at once, d’ye hear?”
Rashleigh remonstrated. The eyes of Foxley flashed fire; he drew the cocked pistol from his waist and presented it full at Rashleigh’s head, roaring, “Drink, you beggar, or die!”
This effectually put a stop to any further scruples, so our wretched adventurer took the pot and raised it to his lips, while Foxley kept on shouting, “Down with it, every drop,” still menacing with the pistol. Thus perforce compelled, Ralph drained the vessel of its burning contents. A savage laugh of exultation rang in his ears, and he sank senseless on the floor.
When Rashleigh recovered his consciousness, he was oppressed with a sensation of parching thirst. The torments of the damned raged in his whole frame. He attempted to rise, but fell again to the earth. He strove to speak, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and he thus lay in agony, but perfectly sensible. In a little while he heard the voice of Foxley, engaged in conversation with a female. They appeared to have been awakened by the noise of Ralph’s fall, and were sleeping in the same room at no great distance from him. Presently their alarm respecting the disturbance subsided, and their conversation took another rum, in the course of which the female seemed anxious to impress upon the mind of Foxley the magnitude of some booty that he would acquire by engaging in a certain enterprise, which, it appeared, they had been conversing about before, winding up her exordium by saying that she should soon find out whether her present bedfellow really loved her, as, if he did, he would not let that saucy Nancy Doughboy wear a silk gown while she had only a printed one! To all this Foxley replied in a suitable manner, so as to remove any doubts of his resolution from the mind of his chère amie, and silence was soon again restored.
This dialogue set our adventurer’s rum-bewildered brains in a complete ferment, for by it he well knew some new and most probably atrocious act of turpitude was resolved upon by Foxley; and the state of Rashleigh’s sensorium conjured up the most appalling visions of demons, furies and disembodied spirits colleagued to punish his wicked and guilty companions as well as to lavish torments upon himself for being even their unwilling associate. Never did poor mortal pass hours of such intense pain, both bodily and mental; but the former, sharp though it was, almost enough to bid his throbbing temples split, was yet as nothing to the latter, for his diseased imagination presented the most vivid representation to his inward vision of the last dread place of final torment spread with lakes of never-dying flame, where foul and gibbering monster fiends of all kind of hideous and indescribable shapes exhausted their ingenuity in inventing fresh and unendurable tortures for himself and the bushrangers.
Dogs! Think of your chiefs by this hand that were slain.
Exhaust all your tortures, you try them in vain;
For the chief of oswego shall never complain.
Long ere dawn the next day the bushrangers were afoot, bringing with them the wretched Rashleigh, who, though he was perforce compelled to swallow a large draught of the fiery spirit that morning to revive his prostrate energies, yet felt so ill that he would fain obtain permission to lie down and die. And never did he hail a place of repose with more heartfelt joy than spread itself over him when they at length arrived at the cavern and he was at liberty to stretch his palsied limbs upon the rocky floor of that secure retreat.
Here he lay all day in a state of semi-insensibility, until, in the evening, he was aroused by the full deep tones of Foxley, who ordered him to get up directly and come along with them, a command which he was fain to obey, though every nerve in his body trembled like the leaves of an aspen through the latent effects of his involuntary but deep debauch.
The moon was in its first quarter, and its pale light was just glimmering above the trees when the little band of plunderers set forth from their hiding-place, as Rashleigh doubted not, upon remembering the last night’s conversation, to carry havoc, and perhaps slaughter, to some peaceful fireside. By the great caution evinced among the party, it was evident they feared detection more than was their custom, and the oft-repeated baying of watch-dogs near them proved that human habitations were numerous and close to the route they were pursuing.
For some hours they continued their journey in silence and at length entered a spacious clearing, in the centre of which a cluster of huts appeared, that they boldly approached. All was silent within, nor was there any light to be seen, and the outer door being fastened only by a latch, the whole party soon stood in an apartment which served the usual purposes of dining-room and kitchen to the family, none of whom were yet apparently awake; though many dogs, who had probably been absent at the critical moment of the marauders’ approach, were now exerting their vigilance too late, by baying most furiously around the door, which some of them were making fierce efforts to open, but in vain, for the uninvited visitors had taken the precaution of shutting it fast behind them.
A light was obtained by McCoy, and at that instant a man clad in sleeping dress came out of an inner apartment to that occupied by the intruders, grumbling, as he came forth, sundry drowsy imprecations against the dogs for their clamour. He had, however, scarce placed his foot upon the floor of the outer room when the hand of Foxley upon his shoulder and the muzzle of a pistol presented at his forehead caused him to start and utter an equivocal sound, which the robber at once checked by growling in a suppressed tone, “Silence! On your life! Or I’ll drive a brace of bullets through your skull!!”
Foxley then dragged him to the opposite side of the room, when he continued, “What men are there asleep in the house?”
“Only my two sons and a stranger,” was the reply.
“Where are they?” was the next demand.
“In yonder,” returned the old man, shaking as if with an ague fit, and pointing out a door different from that at which himself had entered.
Foxley now, with a mute motion to Smith that he should guard the settler, took a light, entered the room with McCoy, and soon his rude voice was heard arousing the inmates, who then, to the number of three, as the old man had said, came forth in their shirts and were ordered to take their places beside the first prisoner.
“Now,” said Foxley, addressing the old farmer, “call your wife and daughters out here; but mind! if there’s any more men, even another one, he shall die and all of you too!”
The women soon made their appearance, pale, disordered and trembling; but McCoy desired them to lay aside their fears, assuring them no harm was intended to their personal safety, an assurance which was echoed by Foxley, who ordered the mistress of the house and her daughters to prepare a feed for all the party.
While this request was being complied with, Foxley spoke to the settler himself, who now stood motionless in the corner where he had been placed, evidently suppressing strong feelings of indignation at the unceremonious behaviour of the bushranger.
“Well, Mr Shanavan,” said the robber chief, “I’ve been informed that you came up from Sydney with a swag of property the other day. I mean to have my share of it. So look sharp and bring it out here to the light; and mind that there is not one article deficient in the lot you bought; for if there is I shall be able to tell in a minute and I’ll cob you within an inch of your life . . . Where is it?” resumed the ruffian after a pause.
“In my bedroom,” stammered out the old man at length.
“Then come with me,” was the next direction given by the outlaw in such a tone of command that Shanavan dared not deny him, and taking up a lamp, he marshalled the bold intruder into another room.
In the mean time Smith the bushranger had been steadfastly looking in the face of the stranger whose ill fortune had brought him that night to partake of Shanavan’s hospitality, and who was now standing beside the two young men, sons of his host. This man did not seem at all easy under the scrutiny of Smith and repeatedly changed his position in order to evade the ruthless gaze of the other, which was evidently fraught with no kindly meaning.
At length Foxley returned with the master of the house, whom he compelled to carry out a quantity of wearing apparel and other goods, which were consigned to the care of McCoy.
Smith now addressed his leader thus, “I say, Foxley. who do you think we ve nailed upon the ground hop at last?”
“I can’t tell, I’m sure. Who is it?” replied the other, examining the man whom Smith’s gesture indicated, but whose face was now hidden from view, until the bushranger, stepping over to him, laid hold of that ear which was nearest to him, and with a sudden jerk, turned his head completely round to the light, saying, as he did so, in tones of the coarsest sarcasm, “Come, Mr McGuffin, let us have a look at your pretty mug (face). You didn’t use to be so bashful!”
“Why, ’tis McGuffin the tyrant!” roared Foxley in tones of savage triumph.
“You may well say that,” rejoined Smith. “Why, the very last time I ever saw him, he flogged our whole gang, fifteen in number, overseer and all, giving all us that were working hands fifty lashes each, and the overseer a hundred without being charged with any crime, and of course without the shadow of a trial; and when jack Bunn, the overseer, as good a fellow as ever broke the world’s bread, asked what we were all to be flogged for, this scoundrel said, ‘Why, to keep the hair out of your eyes, to be sure, you rascal!’”
“Aye, aye. I know him well by report!” now remarked Foxley. “An’t he the beautiful inspector of falling parties that Major Fireplace got the Governor to grant power to, so that he might flog any or all the men in the gangs under him without the trouble of bringing them to Court? And ever since that time, hasn’t he gone about on horseback all through the country, with a flogger at his heels for a running footman, sarving out stripes to all and sundry, so as to show, not only that he had got the power, but also that he was determined not to let it go to sleep in his hands. And now, my gentleman, I’ve got you. I’ll try if I can’t clear off all scores with you. At any rate, you’ve sarved out your last slops!!!”
McGuffin. who was a tall, weather-beaten, dark-complexioned man with unusually stern and determined features, seemed quite appalled by the ferocity of Foxley’s tone and manner when the latter began to talk; but by the close of the robber’s speech he recovered self-possession, and said, in a cone as resolved and stern as that of the other, “Well, you infernal, cold-blooded, murdering, treacherous ruffian, and what can you do after all but only take my life? And that you may do and be damned, if you like. Yes, I have had hundreds of such crawling caterpillars as you and your mob well flogged before now, and I’ve got one comfort left yet. It is this, that neither God nor man can much longer keep you from the gallows; for the Devil has almost done with you, and Jack Ketch must soon get his due in choking you and your loblolly boys. So you may do your worst, for I defy you!”
The bushrangers appeared paralyzed by his indomitable boldness. At almost his first word Foxley had taken a pistol from his belt, which he deliberately cocked, and with a scornful sneer, as coolly levelled at the captive’s head, still, as it seemed, suspending his final purpose, though his brow, true index to a tragic page, grew black with the darkness of tenfold night. As for Smith and McCoy, they stood gaping at McGuffin as though they were charmed with the audacity of his defiance; but the instant he had ceased to speak, McCoy, whose face was perfectly livid with the intensity of his rage, lifted his musket and felled the prisoner to the earth with the butt end of his weapon; while a loud shriek burst from one of the girls, who dropped senseless on the floor.
Foxley sprang up and said, “Now, by all my hopes of deep and black revenge, I’m glad you knocked the bragging bully down! For I was just that instant going to shoot him, and it would have been ten thousand pities he should get such an easy death! Is he hurt much?”
This query being satisfactorily replied to, Foxley next demanded what had ailed the girl who cried out, and having elicited that she had fainted through fear at the fate she supposed intended for McGuffin, to whom she was about to be married, the heartless ruffian roared out, striking his hand with tremendous energy upon the table, “Better and better . . . Why, this is glorious. We shall have most capital sport here presently. Bring the wench to, as quick as you can.”
He paced the apartment for a few moments with hurried strides as if under the influence of some extraordinary excitement, and presently broke out again with, “McCoy, throw a bucket of water over that grovelling beast. So! That will revive him! And now, mistress, let’s have our supper directly!”
McGuffin was then bound fast to a mill post that stood on one side of the room. The bushrangers had before this secured Shanavan and his two sons by placing them back to back, next tying their arms, legs and bodies together with many cords and lastly girthing them tight up with a horse’s surcingle.
Foxley and the other two now sat down to supper in such a position that they could keep their eyes upon the prisoners. Rashleigh was also invited by the former to partake, but he declined. He in truth felt such a sensation of nausea, which arose from apprehending that perhaps a scene of worse atrocity might here be perpetrated than any he had yet witnessed, that it was quite impossible for him to swallow any food whatever; and he sat shivering with dread and longing for a means of escape, yet completely cowed and fascinated by the searching glances which Foxley directed towards him from time to time.
This ruffian compelled the girl betrothed to McGuffin to serve him with food upon her knees and to taste everything on the table prepared for their supper. He also bade her, “Remember, as nobody else but such a superfine scoundrel as McGuffin would do you for a husband, his life is now in my hands; so you’d better try to keep me in good temper.”
After supper was over the involuntary attendants were obliged to produce spirits, and Foxley, having ascertained there was very little flour in the house, directed one of the girls to fill the hopper of the steel mill with wheat. This being done, McGuffin was partially unbound and ordered by McCoy to set to work and grind the grain.
His reply was equally brief and energetic. “I’ll see you all in hell first!”
Foxley heard this, and leaping up, cried, “Oho, you mutiny, do you? I’ll see how game you are!”
And he ran to a saddle, from which he stripped the stirrup-leather. Then, pouncing upon McGuffin, he tore the shirt from his back and this being his only garment, the latter was quite naked. The bushranger then began to beat him with the buckle end of his heavy weapon. The prisoner struggled violently; yet, though he was a very powerful man, he could not loosen the ligatures with which he was tied; but from the peculiar manner in which they were secured, his efforts only served to make the rude cords cut into his flesh.
For all this, the sufferer, whose courage and fortitude appeared indomitable, instead of deprecating the barbarity of Foxley, only continued to excite him with the keenest sarcasms, such as, “Strike, scoundrel! You couldn’t knock a sprat off a gridiron. You couldn’t brush a fly off your mother’s nose!”
Although through the powerful blows inflicted by his bulky antagonist his back was sorely mangled and the blood running in a fair stream down to the ground, yet his courage quailed not, until Foxley was fairly exhausted and compelled to leave off for lack of strength.
McGuffin then roared out. “Ah, you beast. I knew from your looks you was nothing but a flogger the first time I set eyes upon you. And you can’t say ever I flogged a man myself in my life!”
Stung to the very quick by this sarcasm — for the reproach attached to the name of a flogger is synonymous with that which attends the hangman in New South Wales, both offices being there considered as being upon a par, and a man who has once borne either being scouted from society as the vilest of the human race — Foxley now threw down his implement of torture, and muttering as well as his loss of breath would permit that he would be deeply revenged on the other, left him to himself.
His eyes next rested suddenly upon the females, who had been shrieking in concert at the sight of the cruel punishment; but now, awed to silence by the brutal threats of McCoy and Smith, they sat sobbing together. The girls clung round their mother, who appeared more dead than alive; and when Foxley saw them in this posture, a thought worthy of a demon rushed into his mind.
“Ha!” he suddenly roared. “I have it!” And springing upon McGuffin’s betrothed, he tore her from the maternal embrace, and went on, “McCoy, take the other girl . . . Smith, push that old bitch into the bedroom. And mind she don’t get out again!”
In spite of the poor mother’s resistance and heart-breaking entreaties, she was forced from the apartment, when Rashleigh, whose blood began to curdle within him at the horrid anticipations he formed respecting Foxley’s purpose, jumped out of his seat and entreated that ruthless villain to be merciful for once and spare the girls, adjuring him to think of his own mother, of his sisters, and what he would think of such an outrage being offered to them. The only reply he received was, at last, as in his energy, he had laid hold of the fainting girl, hoping to prevail, a blow from the butt end of Foxley’s pistol in the centre of his forehead stretched him senseless on the floor. And alas, upon his reviving, he saw enough to convince him that the worst of crimes had been perpetrated upon the poor girls by all three of his villainous associates, one of whom shortly afterwards demanded if Rashleigh were satisfied now to mind his own business, or whether he would like to have a blue pill (bullet) to finish the sports of the night.
Ralph, almost mad, and quite sick of this wretched life, clasped his hands, saying, “Go on, shoot me! And end it at once. As well die that way as by the hangman!”
“What’s all this?” now demanded Foxley.
“Only this jackass is tired of his life,” returned Smith. “And I think ’twere a good deed to finish it for him!”
“No, no, you shan’t,” rejoined the chief. “The crawling beggar shan’t get out of our hands half so easy as that! We’ll make him wish himself dead a hundred times over before we have done with him!” And so saying, he pushed the captive to the door.
It was now dawn, and Foxley, directing Ralph to follow him, went to a neighbouring open hovel, under which there stood a horse that the bushranger made his unwilling companion prepare for riding and lead to the house. When this was done, Foxley called out to McCoy, directing him to bring out McGuffin, who accordingly made his appearance with his hands tied fast together. The chief having mounted the horse, Rashleigh was ordered to take up a huge bundle of plunder and bring it along. This he steadily refused to do, nowithstanding the blows and kicks which he received from Smith and McCoy, who at last bound the load upon his back, and he was himself then fastened to Foxley’s stirrup by his wrists.
While the bushrangers were completing this, McGuffin was left standing alone, and Rashleigh saw the unfortunate girl who was to marry him come out of the house with a knife in her hand. As quick as thought she cut the cord that bound her lover’s arms. They instantly slipped back into the dwelling, the door of which was directly shut.
This last operation, however, was not so quietly performed but that it attracted the attention of Foxley, who was before intent on directing the others how best to secure the recalcitrant Ralph; but now, turning his head, he missed McGuffin.
“Ten thousand devils seize the bloody dog, he’s gone!” yelled the astonished robber, gazing round for an instant, then digging both his heels into the flanks of his horse.
The animal, which was quite young, leaped forward in great alarm, dragging Rashleigh to the ground and pulling him on a few feet; but the horse, growing more restive, plunged, reared, and finally flung Foxley over his head, while the stirrup-leather giving way at the same moment, Ralph was freed from the furious animal, which started off at full speed. Foxley, however, regained his feet, and gazing around, saw McGuffin, who had gone through the house without stopping, and who now, in his frantic race, was nearly at the river’s bank. The three bushrangers levelled their guns, and the charges of all their muskets appeared to plough the ground on either side of McGuffin, who still ran unharmed. Foxley and McCoy started after him, Smith being left to watch our luckless adventurer, whom, tied as he was, the bushranger began to beat with the butt end of his gun, swearing that he had turned obstinate on purpose for McGuffin to escape.
In the mean time the latter had reached the stream. At the moment he plunged into it his two pursuers again discharged their pieces, which they had reloaded as they ran; but in an incredibly short space the fugitive reappeared on the opposite bank, which echoed his loud shout of defiance as he dived into a thicket that effectually concealed him from further observation.
Foxley and McCoy now returned with sullen looks and slow pace to the house, where Rashleigh and Smith still remained. They both fell upon the former and gave him a severe beating, until at last Foxley remarked, “There, blast him! I think he’s had enough now! And we must be off or we shall have all Richmond after us.”
The burden of spoil was now divided and apportioned among all the party, who began their retreat, forcing their unhappy prisoner along with many blows and oft-repeated execrations. In this guise they got to the riverside once more, and plunged among the tall reeds on its banks, through which they waded often up to their middles in mud or water, McCoy urging the adoption of this plan, as he remarked they should thus leave no trace behind, and besides, if pursued, no person would think of looking there for them.
After some hours of most fatiguing toil in this new Slough of Despond, they arrived at a large tree, which had long previously fallen into the river; but the water being shallow at this place, many of its yet undecayed limbs were still above the surface, though so much overgrown by reeds as not to be at all visible to any person from the bank, however near. This formed a welcome resting-place to the weary runaways, and to none more so than to Rashleigh, who, finding a forked limb in which he could he down without the danger of falling, stretched his bruised and toil-worn limbs upon it, and overcome by pain and fatigue, slept for some time.
His rest was perturbed by fearful dreams. He fancied himself engaged in mortal struggle with his oppressive tyrant Foxley, whom he had almost overpowered, when McCoy gripped him by the throat and presented a pistol close to his head, which at length went off, inflicting a painful wound, with the anguish of which our exile awoke to find that it was not all a dream; for Smith’s hand was really grasping his throat, while with demoniac gestures he pointed to the shore, motioning him at the same time to shift with silence and caution to a place of more secure concealment.
Rashleigh obeyed this mandate, and his new position on the log enabled him to see the high ground on the river bank, though it was next to impossible any person standing there could observe him. He could scarcely analyze his own feelings as he perceived there were a number of armed men close at hand, one of whom, mounted on horseback, he soon recognised to be McGuffin, their late prisoner. The other two he found were the sons of Shanavan. The former swearing, as they could most distinctly hear, that he saw a man down among the reeds only a few moments since, young Shanavan suggested, “If you think there’s anybody there, let’s fire down a volley or two; and it’s ten to one but among so many bullets one might tell; or if not, we might make them sing out.”
This advice being apparently considered excellent by all the others, a discharge from full twenty muskets rattled among the reeds and logs close by the party of bushrangers. Foxley was apparently struck by one of the balls, for Ralph observed him to change colour, and he seemed to stagger, as if about to fall from the cowering attitude he had assumed upon one of the limbs. But an instant removed the hope Rashleigh was forming that the wretch had at last got his deserts, for the bushranger sternly compressed his lips and tightened his grasp of the bough that upheld him.
The experiment having thus failed, the party on shore, apparently deeming that it was impossible any human beings were harboured in the suspected spot, moved slowly off, firing from time to time into the reeds as often as they saw anything to attract their attention. It was very late at night before the fugitives dared to leave their place of concealment, and when they did so, they had several miles to walk before they once more gained the cavern in which they had made their temporary abode.
There, however, they found other occupants, being no less than the three young women at whose dwelling they had so recently passed a night, and who, as it now appeared, had been waiting in this gloomy place since long ere dawn of the previous day for the return of the bushrangers from their marauding expedition. These wantons, at the instance of one of whom the nefarious excursion had at first been planned, were anxious, it seemed, until their temporary lovers should return, that they might, according to promise, share in the spoils of the ill-fated Shanavan, whose purchase of many articles of unwonted female finery, to grace his eldest daughters’ approaching nuptials with McGuffin, had led to the envy of the girls in question, to whom they had often boasted of their new acquisitions. And one of their visitors, being an old sweetheart of the bushranger McCoy, had eagerly embraced the opportunity afforded by his unexpected visit, to incite himself and Foxley to the commission of this act of violence, so that they might not only participate in the plunder, but deprive their rivals, the Shanavans, of their fine clothing.
When, therefore, the young women saw the plunderers return, and when each laid down the share of spoil he bore, requesting them to take what they thought fit, and when, beyond all, the silks, ribands, laces, etc., of which they had received such glowing descriptions from the former proprietors, were now unfolded to their longing eyes, it may be conceived that they most warmly welcomed the men who had thus risked more than life for the gratification of their own paltry vanity.
They eagerly requested to hear all about it, and when the party sat down to a meal which had been prepared by the females during the absence of their male companions in villainy, a full description of the whole affair was given by Foxley in the coarsest terms, not even excepting the disgusting details of the violation of the poor girls’ chastity, which only made these fiends in female shape laugh heartily; and one of them observed that the Shanavan girls would not hold up their heads so high any more above any other young women who were fond of sweethearting.
Rashleigh could hardly believe the evidence of his senses. These girls, so fair and yet so callous, so totally lost to all womanly pity or shame, appeared to him absolute anomalies, though he had before heard that the most sinful deeds of shame were of common occurrence among the children belonging to the lower class of settlers in that early day. The long-continued evil habits of their parents, who generally on both sides had served sentences of transportation, had rendered them quite indifferent to virtue and inured to vice. Means of instruction there were none, and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, either at work, at their merrymakings, or bathing in the rivers, which last the heat of the climate renders indispensable, all these very early destroyed any innate principles of modesty. Still, there were many and very honourable exceptions even among the convict parents, some of whom often thought, and as often expressed their thought, that “If we have been bad all our lives, that is no reason why our children should be so too.”
Our adventurer had ample leisure, during the progress of this merry meal in the cavern, to observe the fulsome conduct of the damsels in question, who each. attached herself to one of the bushrangers as if it were a matter of course. And after supper was over, each pair retired together to their rude sleeping-places, leaving to Rashleigh, who was not now permitted to eat with his imperious tyrants, the fragments of their meal for his refreshment, and the choice of any unoccupied portion of the cavern for his repose.
He took a hundred mortal wounds;
As mute as fox mid mangling hounds.
And when he died, his parting groan
Had more of laughter than of moan!
The loud baying of a dog awoke the desperadoes concealed in the cavern. It was broad daylight, and they quickly discovered that the outlet to their retreat was beset. In the intervals of the clamour made by their canine assailants, they could hear many human voices, whose expressions denoted their certainty that they had at last tracked the ruffian Foxley and his bloodthirsty band to their harbourage, while the tone of one, who seemed to be in authority, was now distinguishable; who, after stilling the fierce baying of his four-footed allies, demanded if any man present knew what sort of a cave it was. Another voice replied to this enquiry, that it was very large, but had only this one outlet.
Directly afterwards the leader shouted out, “Foxley, we know you are here, and you may as well come out, for we will carry away the hill by handfuls, but what we will have you!”
To this invitation the person addressed made no reply, but busily occupied himself in loading all his fire-arms, in which example he was imitated by his companions, and the whole three now took up positions on one side commanding the entrance, which, it will be remembered, was so low that a man must creep upon all fours to come in.
Again and again the garrison of the cave was hailed, but still preserved an obstinate silence. At last a figure appeared at the opening, worming its way in. The head was hardly well in sight when the reports of three muskets resounded with terrific effect through the cavern. The cap fell off the intruder, which now proved to be merely a long pole, dressed up for the nonce to ascertain the impediments which might offer to freedom of ingress. A loud shout greeted the success of this stratagem by the assailants, and once more Foxley was hailed, to tell him if he did not come out and surrender they would smother him and all his companions with smoke, as they did the rats on board ship.
“You may try that and be damned,” growled the dauntless ruffian m reply.
Nor was it long before dense volumes of smoke filled the hold, rolling in thick, yellow, suffocating masses into every nook and cranny, until the inmates had no resource to preserve their lives; save by lying down flat on their faces and placing mouths and nostrils to the ground. The women were in great fear, but restrained themselves from making any noisy demonstrations of it, and they at length found a spot much more free from this suffocating vapour than any other part of the cavern. Owing to its being placed far back, beyond the narrow slit before mentioned as serving the bushrangers for a chimney, they were much more at ease.
For two hours the fire was kept up. It was then slackened, and voices could again be heard outside: they were speculating upon the probability of any of the marauders being still alive. Presently the former stratagem was repeated; but this time it produced no effect, the bushrangers being apparently determined now not to throw away a charge of ammunition until they should be certain of their mark, and the pole was in consequence shortly withdrawn. A volley of musketry was next discharged through the opening; but the balls rattled idly against the rocky roof of the bushrangers’ fortress, as the latter, being all lying on the floor, and the pieces apparently elevated at their muzzles in firing, all the shot passed harmlessly over them.
Three of the assailants now came creeping in, one of whom was rather before the other two. Foxley sprang to his feet, placed himself beside the entrance without noise, and the instant the man’s head was within his reach, the brass-bound stock of the ruffian’s musket descended upon it with such force that the skull was shattered as absolutely as if it had been but a walnut shell, the blood and brains of the victim flying in the faces of his two compeers, who both uttered cries of pain as McCoy and Smith discharged their pieces at them. But these two either withdrew from the opening immediately or were pulled back by their associates outside, for they disappeared directly, while the dead body of their comrade still cumbered the entrance.
The bushrangers, having now reloaded their pieces, discharged all three of them together at random through the orifice after the fugitives, which served at least to clear their immediate front. The voices were not so distinctly heard any more; but fire was renewed, and the smoke reappeared in greater volume than ever. After some time Foxley went to the split or rift that had as yet proved their salvation by allowing part of the smoke to escape. After looking at it for some time, he motioned McCoy to him, and they both began to fashion some pegs out of the remains of their firewood, and these they drove into various parts of the side so as to form a rude kind of ladder on which the leader soon got. These enabled him to reach a projecting pinnacle that concealed portion of the orifice above them, and he quickly afterwards threw down a quantity of rubbish into the cave and got still higher. At last he was seen or heard no longer for some minutes.
When Foxley made his reappearance he seemed in great joy, and Ralph heard him, addressing one of the girls, say, “Thanks to old Nick, Sophy, we can all get out of this smothering hole as easy as kiss your hand. I’ve been right up to the top, seen all them beggars below, busy heaping more wood on to the fire. But they could not see me, and there’s a gully within a hundred yards of the mouth of the hole. If we could only get there unseen, they might bid us good-bye.”
This news being communicated to Smith and McCoy, the flight began, with Foxley getting up first to help the women, that followed him closely. McCoy was after them, to render any assistance that might be required. Rashleigh came next, loaded with food, and Smith closed the retreat. After the pinnacle or ledge which served them for a landing-place was once gained, the difficulty in ascending was really but very slight, the chasm being wide enough to allow even Ralph, burdened as he was, to squeeze along it; and the angle of inclination was not by any means too steep to walk up.
When Rashleigh reached the top, their female companions were already gone, and the thick shrubs, coupled with the smoke that rolled over the face of the hill and the natural inequalities of the place, effectually concealed them from the view of those beneath, whom they could however hear plainly enough stimulating each other to increased exertion and venting many a bitter execration upon the heads of Foxley and his ruffian fellows.
The bushrangers did not long remain to remark the proceedings of their foes, but took their way to the gully, along which they rapidly passed, nor paused an instant in their headlong haste, until they had placed the hill between themselves and their assailants, whom they soon left far behind them.
They pursued their hurried flight westward with the greatest speed they could exert, nor did they see a single living thing during the whole of that day. At nightfall, deep in the recesses of a darksome and rocky ravine of the mountain, they at length halted and stretched themselves upon the ground to rest, not daring to light any fire for the preparation of food even in this solitude, as fear urged upon them that they might be close pursued, and the gleam of a light in such a waste would immediately attract the attention of those whom they most desired to shun.
In the dead of the night Foxley roared out, “Help! Murder! I am choking . . . Take his hand from my throat. Oh!”
Upon his comrades’ going to his assistance, they found him in a kind of fit, with his eyes wide open, foaming at the mouth, raving incoherent muttering sounds and gnashing his teeth. They obtained some water, by the application of which he partially revived; but he was no sooner able to stand than he got up and ran off at full speed. McCoy directed Smith to look out after our adventurer, and follow them. He then hastened on the tracks of the other, whom they all thought had gone mad.
Smith now, by blows and curses, compelled Rashleigh to get up and renew the flight, stumbling in the darkness over fallen trees, at times falling into cavities worn by mountain streams, yet not allowed to stay for a single instant by his brutal companions, to whom fear lent wings, because they believed the avengers of blood to be at their heels. Our unhappy adventurer was hurried along for four and twenty hours more through the heart of the mountains; and when, at last, they deemed themselves in a slight degree of safety, they halted on the edge of the valleys of the Comnaroy, at least 140 miles distant from the scene of their last outrage.
As if to add to the discomfort of these guilty wretches, the weather, which had been variable for some time, now settled into a perfect deluge of wet. The loudest peals of heaven-born artillery reverberated through the sky. The forked lightnings played around them upon every side in broad and vivid sheets of flame. The loftiest trees were crashed to the earth, and the rain descended in such torrents that every small level spot was converted into a standing pool.
The houseless wretches, who did not even possess the means of stripping a sheet of bark, the ordinary resource of bushmen in Australia upon such occasions, were now perfectly miserable. Overpowered with the fatigue of their superhuman exertions in the hurried flight, they yet could only rest in a miry pool or snatch brief and dangerous repose by leaning against trees, liable every instant they did so to be hurried into eternity by an explosion of the electric fluid. Firing, of course, was beyond their reach, for had they even succeeded in lighting a scanty flame, it could endure but few moments beneath such torrents of rain as continually were falling. Their scanty clothing was quickly drenched and all their food spoilt, but these they felt to be minor evils compared to the want of repose, which they one and all so much needed. The vilest hovel which could afford them shelter would have been hailed with heartfelt joy as superior to that experienced in the possession of a palace.
There has been an idea prevalent in almost all bygone ages and nearly every country under heaven, that men whose crimes have been so atrocious that they actually seemed to cry aloud to heaven for vengeance, have at length been utterly cast off as unworthy the divine mercy, and that they appear even in this world to feel a foretaste of those torments to which they are doomed, the anguish of which deprives them of reason and renders their ruin more easy and certain.
The Scottish language has at this day a word expressive of the national belief in such a doctrine. It is fey, and is used to designate the conduct of a man who rushes, as it were, upon destruction; and the old Romans used to say, quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat.
To this notion Ralph Rashleigh ever inclined in his after life from having witnessed the conduct of the villain Foxley during those dreadful three days they spent in the Comnaroy swamps. This ruffian, who had by his own account been repeatedly guilty of every crime that stains the decalogue and of others so atrocious that they are not named among Christians, in short, whose soul was so despoiled with blood-stained guilt that it might have dyed the waters of the vast ocean, was here delivered up a prey to the sharpest pangs of remorse. Twenty times in a day would he now exemplify the truth of the sacred word which states that “the wicked flee when no man pursueth”. Often he would seem to have his staring eye-balls fixed on vacancy, until a strong, fierce shuddering came over his whole frame, and he fell to the earth, raving ever that he was being choked, or that dogs were tearing him piecemeal. Then, after the humble means his colleagues in crime possessed had been effectually used for his resuscitation, he would start to his feet and run with frantic speed until his strength was exhausted or his failing limbs struck against some obstacles that hurled him headlong to the ground.
During all this time he spoke not one reasonable word, and if either Smith or McCoy went near him would fix his unspeakably wild eyes upon their faces as if he knew them not. But when they began to speak kindly to him, he would glare wildly for a few seconds and at last would get up and run, or endeavour to strike them to the earth. On the evening of the third day Ralph overheard a conversation between McCoy and Smith, from the terms of which it seemed they were at last agreed that their leader had become hopelessly mad, and they now deliberated whether they had better kill him. Smith suggested for them to toss up who should do this, and then, cutting off Foxley’s head, go in and deliver it, telling a plausible tale of the hardships he had perforce to sustain to capture the ruffian, by which means as this both, or at any rate one of the two, might at least earn pardon for himself, with the hope of a reward of freedom or promotion besides.
McCoy did not appear much to relish this plan; but Smith urged so many cogent arguments in its favour that at last it was mutually agreed to think over the scheme until morning, and the ruffians withdrew to the scanty covert of boughs which they had put up to shelter them in some measure from the pelting of the pitiless storm, which still continued unabated, and indeed appeared likely to last for many days yet.
Rashleigh had contrived a kind of lair for himself by breaking up a number of boughs, which he laid on the earth, the larger sticks downwards, confining them in their places by stakes set upright on each side, This he roofed with other bare boughs first, and at length thatched with small leafy twigs tied up in bundles. This very meagre shelter, however, he did not complete until the evening of the third day, for it was very troublesome, as he had only a small knife for a stock of working tools. Yet when completed, the loose sticks beneath permitted a passage for the water under his body, while the leafy thatch — the leaves being carefully placed all one way — kept him a little dry overhead. He proceeded to take an immeasurable quantity of repose, which was so very needful, especially after the long fatigue and continual drenching he had received.
It was late on the morning of the fourth day when a great commotion induced our adventurer to peep out of his bothy. He saw Foxley down, bleeding profusely, and doubted not that his two compeers had indeed made up their minds to sacrifice him as they had spoken of doing the previous night; but he quickly found out it was an accident, induced by the chief’s having started madly up, as before, and fallen over a root. His head had come in contact with a sharp-pointed stone, cutting a deep gash above his temple, which his companions were now vainly endeavouring to close so as to stanch the bleeding, which indeed was profuse; nor was it until Foxley must have lost nearly two quarts of blood that their rude bandage produced its wished-for effect.
The wounded bushranger lay nearly three hours in a torpid state; and when he at length unclosed his eyes, it was evident that reason had returned, for he spoke in a soft and very low voice, asking McCoy, whom he addressed by name, where they were; and he seemed much surprised when he was told the distance they had travelled. After taking a drink of water, Foxley went once more to sleep, and as the rain had now gone completely away, the others were enabled to do so likewise, on some drier part, more agreeably than they had yet done since they left Richmond. The next day, being the fifth of their sojourn here, during which time they had had but one meal, Foxley was very hungry; and as his fellow-marauders felt the assaults of the same enemy, they determined to set about robbing some settlement in order to obtain provisions. They therefore followed the banks of the Comnaroy rivulet, not doubting but that they would discover some stock — or sheep-station, of which there were a good many to the right of the Bathurst country.
They now turned southwards along the edge of the brook; but it was not until the forenoon of the next day that they at last descried a small hut and stockyard, which occupied the centre of a little natural clearing. The door of the dwelling was open, and smoke was ascending the chimney.
The bushrangers deliberated together how they might best approach it without being perceived by the inmates, until they should be too close for any of them to escape. At length they all made a circuit, by which they gained the back of the place, still keeping among the trees. Here Foxley and Smith disencumbered themselves of all their burdens, taking only a gun in the hand, and pistols in the belt of each; and throwing themselves on their faces, began to crawl through the grass in that manner. Rashleigh who was left in the charge of McCoy, was lying down behind a log, but could see the space around the hut without any difficulty. He observed that just as the two desperadoes had reached one corner of the stockyard, a man came out of the dwelling with a whip in his hand, and now approached a small shed built against the end of it, from which he led forth a horse ready saddled and bridled. He had his foot in the stirrup and was apparently about to mount when the two bushrangers stood up and presenting their pieces at him, ordered him to halt on peril of death. But the man, just casting one glance at them, vaulted lightly into the saddle and struck his horse with the spur, so that the animal bounded off.
After the rider had passed the covert of the hut, he rode within twenty yards of Foxley and Smith, who again roared out to him to stop; but he shook his bridle rein, and on sped the active colt he bestrode. Both the bushrangers fired simultaneously. The rider’s hat flew off, pierced by the slugs from Smith’s musket. That the horseman was yet unharmed a loud cheer soon satisfied all within hearing of it, and he was quickly lost to view among the trees, riding south at the top of his speed. His opponents now reloaded their pieces, and calling upon McCoy to join them, disappeared into the hovel.
When Rashleigh and his guard arrived at the door they found the three inmates of the hut upon their knees, while Foxley, with a pistol in each hand, was raving at them and threatening them all with instant death. As soon as Smith saw McCoy about to enter, he made a significant motion, as if indicating his disgust at the present proceedings of their leader, and added a gesture, as if he only sought the assent of his comrade to fire his piece into Foxley’s back.
But McCoy shook his head in disapprobation of this proposal, and instead of it said to his leader, “I say, Phil, don’t be in a passion, but let us make these crawlers get us a feed ready, for I’m very hungry.”
“Is that you, Sandy?” demanded the insane ruffian. “I thought these beggars had got you taken, and I was just a-going to slaughter them for it.
“Oh no!” returned the other. “I’m not taken yet! Come, get up, you chaps, and let us see what you have got to eat.” And the trembling inmates, thus released from the fear of immediate death, began to bustle about in order to make ready food for these unwelcome visitors.
One of these stockmen was very tall and had a singularly forbidding, lugubrious expression of countenance, upon which Foxley fixed his eyes repeatedly, sometimes with a vacant look of interrogation, and at others with an angry frown. At last his diseased imagination prompted the bushranger, and he spoke.
“I say, you great long fellow, what’s your name?”
The man tremblingly replied, “Allen. William Allen is my name.”
“You lie, blast you!” roared the querist; “for you are long Hempenstall, that used to hang the rebels long ago in Ireland!”
“I am sure, sir,” returned the terrified object of this address, “I never was in Ireland in my life!”
“Now, I say, Sandy,” persisted Foxley, “An’t it a hard case that such a varmint of a caterpillar as that should strive to make a man like me out a liar? I tell you”— to the stockrnan —“you are the walking gallows! I have heard my father talk about you when I was little, how you used to go about with ropes, and when the soldiers would catch a couple of rebels, they would tie them together by the neck and throw them over your shoulder so that they was choked!”
The poor man here muttered it was not possible it could be him, as he was only twenty-two years of age.
“There!” roared the brutal Foxley, cruel even in insanity. “Say so again, and I’ll tear your tongue out by the roots.”
“Never mind the long ghost, Phil,” now interposed McCoy. “The feed is ready. Come along!” And he persuaded the ruffian to go to the table.
Before Foxley would begin to eat, however, he pulled a pistol out of his belt and laid it beside him. And after their meal he roared out for the object of his suspicious hatred, whom he persisted in calling Hempenstall, and caused him to sing for his sport; then, taking down a stockwhip, he flogged him for making ugly faces.
The next vagary he engaged in was making all the three inmates of the hut dance jigs, he himself repeatedly quickening their steps by lashing them upon the legs. And these and other diversions he prolonged until after sunset, in spite of the entreaties of Smith and McCoy, who wished to be gone from the place, fearing the approach of some assailants, whom the horseman that had escaped would most probably dispatch to apprehend them.
To all the desires and urgent requests of Smith and McCoy that he would leave this hut, Foxley only at first replied by an idiotic laugh; but when towards nightfall they became more pressing in their instances, he worked himself into a fury, bidding them begone by themselves. Nor was it until after dark that he would set off, and even then insisted on passing the night in a thicket scarcely a mile from the scene of their last robbery.
Early the next morning the bushrangers were about to proceed, but had scarcely begun their march before they found there was a camp of native blacks close at hand, who had obviously seen them first and were now preparing for the attack. An obstinate conflict ensued before the sable sons of the forest were sufficiently dispersed to enable the marauders to pursue their flight; and when at last they gave way in front, they hung upon the skirts and rear of the route taken by the bushrangers, frequently discharging a spear or boomerang at one or other of the white men.
In the afternoon the blacks seemed to relax in their pursuit, and when at length the fugitives imagined themselves in a place of sufficient security to warrant their halting, not one of their assailants had been heard or seen for upward of two hours. The harassing nature of their day’s march, carried on in continual dread, without food since the previous evening, made rest with a prospect of refreshment very welcome to all, and each one set himself busily to work to assist in the preparation of their supper.
They were all engaged in partaking of this meal when suddenly a wild cry of a most thrilling and savage kind burst from a neighbouring thicket and a perfect shower of spears and other native missiles rained among them, some of which knocked both McCoy and Rashleigh over as they sat, without however very materially injuring either. Smith and Foxley leaped on their feet and fired into the thicket. A yell of anguish followed the discharge, which was redoubled when the latter — whose whole conduct seemed to have undergone a complete change, his reason appearing to return at the approach of danger — now, with a smile of malignant satsfaction, seized a fire stick, and calling on his companions to follow him, set fire to the scrubby thicket that concealed their enemies.
Smith and McCoy instantly copied his example, running hither and thither with their blazing brands, until the whole of the seared undergrowth was in a flame. The breeze, blowing freshly from the west, seconded their efforts, and the destructive element, flying on the wings of the wind, soon outstripped the efforts of the unfortunate aborigines to escape. Many frantic yells testified their agony at the torments by which they were thus suddenly encircled, and their unconquerable enemy, the fire, seemed like the hydra, on every hand expanding its devouring jaws to receive them; while the noise of the advancing flames, as they reared their fiery heads on high, until with blazing tongues they licked the tops of the loftiest forest trees, was a perfectly appalling compound of roaring, crackling and hissing, while ever and anon the explosion of some small receptacle of pent-up air appeared like a discharge of musketry.
A few of the boldest of the blacks charged the bushrangers through the flames, and two or three of them were shot down in the attempt, the rest scouring away in the direction of their camp, but so fearfully scorched that it seemed highly problematical whether any of them could survive. The fire, now having exhausted all it could feed upon in this neighbourhood, was posting on toward the east, spreading its destructive ravages on every side and illuminating the sky for many a mile with a lurid glow.
Foxley, after laughing at the retreating foes in a scornful manner, said, “They say a burned child dreads the fire. if so, I should think we might now get our suppers without any fear of them black beggars coming back to disturb us!”
“I don’t know that,” remarked McCoy. “Maybe they might come after us the more now to try for revenge. I’ve heard say the blacks in this part will follow any man that does them an injury an hundred miles, but what they will sarve him out for it!”
“Well, then, maybe so,” rejoined Foxley. “All we’ve got to do is to keep a sharp look-out, for I don’t think they’ll be like to sneak upon us through the scrub any more after the warming they got!” And the party once more sat down to their food, which they finished in peace; nor were they again molested during that night.
Having resumed their march next day, they were much surprised about ten o’clock in the forenoon to hear the baying of several dogs, a circumstance which the more alarmed them in this solitude, as they had good reasons for believing they were not nearer than thirty miles to any habitation of civilized man. They halted and began to ponder.
“By heaven!” exclaimed Smith at last. “The wind is blowing from the south. Bathurst lies in that direction from here. Those dogs are coming this way, and it’s very likely they are the bloodhounds in search of us; for they have bloodhounds there. 1 have been hunting the blacks with them myself!”
The sound grew nearer every instant, and facing to the quarter from whence it proceeded, they quickly saw several mounted and apparently well-armed men, who appeared to be galloping on their track, guided as well by the dogs they had heard as by several blackfellows, some of whom bore evident marks in their singed heads and scorched appearances of being those who escaped from the burning scrub the night before. Now, prompted by revenge and probably also stimulated by promises of reward from those they led, they were using their keenest sagacity in following the trail of Foxley and his comrades, whose destruction these sable warriors absolutely panted for, after the immolation of so many of their tribe by the hands of the marauders.
“It is those infernal bloodhounds!” cried Foxley to his companions. “And by all the devils in hell!” he added, as the pursuers drew nearer, “There’s that blasted McGuffin at the head of the party, and the young Shanavans alongside of him . . . I don’t know what you mean to do,” added the ruffian, now rendered desperate, “but I will never be taken alive; nor I’ll not fall by myself either.”
McCoy and Smith both swore they would die on the ground they occupied, and consequently. the bushrangers, shaking hands all round, prepared themselves for a desperate struggle.
As for Rashleigh, he was now quite neglected, and crept into a thicket out of the way. Here he lay perdu behind a log, but could see all that passed, himself, as he hoped, unobserved.
The spot occupied by the bushrangers was on the rise of a considerable elevation; between them and the advancing party lay a narrow valley, and the intermediate space was nearly clear of trees.
McGuffin had now espied his late tormentors, and he shouted out to his followers, “Here are the murdering, ravishing dogs at last. Hurra! Down with them, my lads!” And he fired his piece at the head of Foxley as he spoke, but without effect, for the bushrangers, one and all, were covered by trees, round which they dodged, so as to prevent a certain aim being taken at them.
The young Shanavans also united their boyish voices in a cheering hurra, which was echoed by two mounted policemen that rode beside them. This party also fired as they advanced; and the latter, flinging their carbines to the earth, drew their sabres and galloped up the hill towards the bushrangers, who were now also attacked in their rear by the party of blacks with volleys of spears and every other native missile weapon.
The marauders’ retreat was thus effectually cut off; but to do the ruffian Foxley justice, he does not seem to have thought of any such thing as flight. For he stood unflinchingly and returned the cheer of the attacking party with one equally loud, shouting out to his comrades “not to fire till the beggars were close up”, an order which he himself followed so exactly that McGuffin was nearly riding over him before the bushranger chief pulled the trigger of his piece, and down came his assailant, horse and man, to the ground.
McGuffin, however, was unwounded, for by checking his steed suddenly when he saw Foxley’s intention, the animal had reared up and received the discharge in his brain that was intended for his rider, who had gained his knee in rising again; while Foxley, with his musket clubbed, was rushing upon him to beat out his brains, when the youngest of the Shanavans struck the bushranger’s weapon out of his hand, and himself to the earth with the butt end of his gun.
McGuffin seized Foxley as he fell, and a desperate struggle ensued, neither party being enabled to rise or to obtain any advantage over the other, while young Shanavan could not strike the bushranger again for fear of injuring his companion as they rolled over and over the ground. At length one of the policemen, coming up, seized an opportunity, and cleft Foxley’s skull completely in twain with his weighty sabre, and the bloodthirsty ruffian thus died without a groan. Yet such was the tenacity of his grip upon McGuffin’s throat that it was found necessary to cut off his right hand at the wrist and to mangle every one of his fingers before the other could be freed.
In the mean time Smith had shot one of the advancing policemen dead, but was in his turn sabred by the same policeman that had given Foxley his death blow; while McCoy, by whose hand the elder Shanavan had fallen badly wounded, was knocked down by the younger one, to whom he was at last forced to yield, being overpowered, disarmed and secured by two or three others before he could get up.
McGuffin was some time before he recovered the effects of Foxley’s death grip, and when he regained his legs, he apostrophized his now inanimate enemy. “You wretch, I’ve paid my vow at last. I’ve never yet been off a horse since you done it; and I would have hunted you to hell but I’d have got my revenge.” And with that he kicked the prostrate ruffian.
At this moment he saw McCoy in the hands of captors, and raising from the earth the piece which Foxley had dropped, he rushed towards the captive bushranger. Those who held McCoy left go their holds, and the latter, suddenly drawing a pistol from his breast which had escaped their search, levelled it at McGuffin, and ere the other could close with him, fired. His opponent fell instantly; but the surviving policeman, rushing up, cut McCoy down the moment afterwards.
In the mean time, the blacks, in hunting about, had discovered our unfortunate adventurer’s retreat, and dragged him forth to the light. The other men were now all busily engaged about McGuffin, whose wound, on being examined, was found not likely to be immediately mortal, and Rashleigh was led unresistingly by his sable captors to this spot, where he was quickly recognised by a person present as having formed one of the party when they robbed the hut on the Comnaroy rivulet; and in spite of his protestations that he had been the unwilling thrall of the bushrangers, he was secured in handcuffs.
After a consultation, the victors placed the bodies of Foxley and Smith, who were quite dead, upon one horse; and those of the policeman and a constable, who had also been slain in the fray, were bound on another. McCoy and McGuffin, both severely wounded, were mounted on horseback before two of the party, their wounds having been first as well bandaged as circumstances would permit. Young Shanavan attended to his elder brother, whose wound was not found to be so very severe, and the party thus began their march to Bathurst, which, journeying slowly, they reached upon the third day, when Rashleigh was placed in separate confinement from McCoy.
The inhabitants for many miles round flocked to hear the evidence given upon the inquest, which took place three days after their arrival. The dead bodies were placed in an outer shed, McGuffin was brought on a stretcher from the hospital, and McCoy, tied on an easy chair, was placed at the bar with our adventurer.
After hearing the evidence of McGuffin and the others, a verdict of “justifiable homicide” was returned in the case of Foxley and Smith, while on view of the bodies of the policeman and constable, it was found that “wilful murder” had been committed by Philip Foxley, Christopher Smith and Andrew McCoy, the two former of whom were since deceased; and the latter was held over to take his trial at the next sessions of the Supreme Criminal Court at Sydney.
Our adventurer, who had not been seen by any of the witnesses during the affray, and who had been found unarmed after it was over, was next examined before a magistrate, and his examination ended in his committal to take his trial at the same time and place with Andrew McCoy, for bushranging and robbery, both of which at that time were equally capital offences with the most cold-blooded brutal murder.
There are more things in heaven and earth, horatio,
Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
It was many weeks before McCoy was judged sufficiently out of danger to travel, in the tender estimation of the medical gentlemen, who were most assiduous in their attention to him, so that he might be sufficiently recovered to grace the gallows with proper éclat. At length they set forward in a bullock-cart, well guarded by a posse of mounted police. Both Rashleigh and the other were heavily ironed, and at their departure, so far from attracting any execrations from the crowd that had assembled to see them set out, most of the bystanders seemed to pity them very much; and what our adventurer thought more strange than all, the women in particular gave vent to many tears of commiseration, especially devoted to McCoy, whose yet languid motions and pallid features showed the severity of the sufferings occasioned by his wound; and many were the gifts of money, tobacco, spirits and provisions that were made to the prisoners before they left Bathurst.
They were ten days in journeying about a hundred miles, resting at lock-up houses, the quarters of road gangs, or the various military stations on the mountains, frequently passing large parties of their fellow-convicts, either with or without irons on their legs, who were employed in the formation of those stupendous roads which traverse that once impassable district. As often as any of these men expressed their sympathy with the prisoners, whose death by the hangman all looked upon as certain, McCoy would reply in accents of triumph,
“Well, I’ve had a merry life, if ’twas only a short one; and I’d go and be hanged a hundred times over rather than drudge like slaves as you chaps are doing now.” And he would sometimes add, “Why don’t you all turn out like men, and then the blasted tyrants would soon be put an end to?”
The corporal in charge of the escort was asked by an overseer on the road why he did not stop this kind of talk, as it was obviously inciting the minds of those who heard it to mutiny, to which query he replied, laughing, “Why, how can I hinder the poor devil from talking? He’s got but a very little while longer to live, and it would be a pity not to let him spout away as he likes. Besides,” and here the speaker assumed a most comically knowing look, “don’t you know, friend, that the more runaways there are, the more rewards there will be for taking them; and if there were no bushrangers, what would be the use of the mounted police?”
This settled the matter apparently to the satisfaction of the other, who, no doubt, like many of his brother convict overseers, had not the least objection to earn a pound now and then by taking any such men as he could first persuade to run away; and a large sum of money was then annually paid in reward, for apprehending men who had absconded, to such personages as the speaker, who afterwards gave a small portion of the bonus to those whom they had taken.
Journeying in this manner, they at length reached the lock-up at Penrith, where Ralph was quickly recognised as having not long before belonged to Emu Plains. Among a crowd that had assembled to look at the remains of “Foxley’s gang” our adventurer soon observed those three girls that had acted so prominent a part with the bushrangers at Richmond. They were now very much over-dressed in the spoils acquired at the robbery of Shanavan’s place, which had led to the unremitting pursuit that resulted in the capture of their former acquaintances.
These frail fair ones pressed to the side of the vehicle and seemed to vie with each other in expressions of tenderness towards McCoy, as well as lamentations over his present position and the unhappy fate of his companions.
The constables at length removed the prisoners, and Rashleigh and his associate in misfortune were now for the first time since their capture locked up together by themselves.
McCoy began a conversation by asking Ralph, “Well, what do you think of it now? Would it not have been as well for you to have joined Phil Foxley and the rest of us at first, seeing that you led the life of a dog all the while you was with us, and now, in spite of all you can say, you are sure to die the death of one.”
To this cheering as well as sensible speech, our adventurer only replied, “As for death, it must come sooner or later, and though I have no great fancy for the gallows, I have quite as much liking for that as I have for such a wretched life of cruelty and crime, attended by frequent starvation and toil, as was led by the scoundrel Foxley and those that were with him.”
“You dared not call him a scoundrel while he lived,” replied McCoy, “and you are an unmanly rascal to do so now.”
“Hark ye, McCoy,” said Ralph, who began to grow enraged, “I’d have you to know that if Foxley had been alone with me, unarmed as I was, or if I had been able once to have laid hold of a loaded musket while I was with him, he would have found out what Ralph Rashleigh dared to do. And as for you, were it not for your weakness, I would just this instant beat your brains out against that wall to repay you for your treatment me when I was helpless.”
McCoy jumped up, and throwing off his jacket, cried, “Come on, you crawling beggar, I’ll soon let you see how weak I am.”
A hundred recollections of this man’s ill usage during his career of crime, when he had his ruffian associates to assist him, crowded upon the mind of our adventurer, and maddened by fury at these thoughts, Ralph rushed upon him.
Rashleigh knew nothing of what is called the science of pugilism, in which McCoy was very expert. Thus, in spite of his superior strength, our exile was likely to get the worst of it, until exerting himself suddenly, he beat down his antagonist’s guard, and seizing his head by the ears, bore him back into a corner, where he pounded the unlucky McCoy’s skull against the wall until the other roared for mercy, and the turnkey came in, who wanted to know what the matter was. But as McCoy did not tell him, Rashleigh would not. The official then enquired which of the two was called McCoy, and this question being replied to, the janitor asked what the other would stand provided he were to allow one of the titters (girls) that was outside to pass the night with him.
To this McCoy replied that he would give a pound. The turnkey grinned acquiescence and withdrew. But when it became quite dark the door again opened, and the young woman who has before been spoken of as McCoy’s sweetheart made her entrée, bringing a basket with her, while the screwsman, who followed her with a quantity of bedding, said, as he placed the latter on the floor, “There’s your sister, young fellow; and here’s all the bedstuff I can muster for the three of you, so you must do the best you can.”
He then retired, carefully securing the massy fastenings of several doors as he went out.
McCoy and his “ladye love” after many endearments, began to converse in a low tone; and in a short time, a candle being lighted, a quantity of provisions and two bottles of spirits were produced from the basket, which the young woman invited Rashleigh to share.
He declined to do so very abruptly, but she said, “Why, I hope you an’t any ways offended with me. And if you and Sandy have had a few words or a blow or two, that’s nothing . . . Surely you can make it up again, especially as you have not got long to be together, at any rate.”
McCoy then observed, “You may as well not quarrel with the victuals, but come and get some, for maybe you won’t get another chance soon.”
Rashleigh at length consented to share the meal, in the course of which the girl remarked that it just put her in mind of her last sweetheart’s last night on earth, for he was then confined in Windsor lock-up and was shot dead in an attempt to escape from it early next morning. This young woman proved herself to be perfectly au fait and well inured to scenes like the present, nor did she appear to be at all cast down at the thoughts of the fate that was in store for McCoy, whom she only exhorted to “die like a trump, and split (tell) nothing.”
In fact, it seemed great part of her present errand to ascertain whether there was any probability of either McCoy or Rashleigh betraying herself and family for harbouring the marauders while they were in the bush or for receiving the property they had stolen from Shanavan’s, part of which she now wore. After she had apparently satisfied herself that no danger was to be apprehended from McCoy, she led the conversation to the nature of the charge against our adventurer, and said to her lover that if he thought fit, he could get the young man out of it, as it was pretty generally understood he had never taken a very active part in committing depredations.
To this McCoy replied, with an oath, that “he’d be blowed if he would though, or any crawler like him . . . No, no, Soph,” continued the desperado. “Let the beggar die as well as me, and then he can’t tell any tales!”
Upon this the girl dropped her endeavours, and after having drunk the spirits among them, all three lay down to rest.
The next morning “Soph” took a tender leave of her paramour, promising to follow them to Sydney in a day or two; and then, turning to Rashleigh, she observed, “I hope you won’t bring anybody else into trouble, young fellow, for that won’t do you any good; but if you must die, do so like a man!”
Ralph assured her that whatever might be his fate, he would never turn informer. They then parted; nor did the latter ever see this fair specimen of frailty more.
In the space of two days from this our criminals reached the old gaol of Sydney, a building of which it has often been remarked that if the sentries and fetters did not keep the prisoners from breaking out, the strength of the edifice never would. The inmates of this pandemonium may be far better conceived than described, especially when it is reflected that as New South Wales was the proper receptacle for the offscourings of villainy from three mighty kingdoms and all their vast dependencies, so this choice den was the great cesspit for the moral filth of the convict colony; and, of course, all undreamed-of and scarcely imaginable wickedness flourished within these walls in its fullest and rankest luxuriance of growth.
The authorities invested with the command of the gaol, confining their whole ideas of prison discipline to the mere safe custody of the offenders committed to their charge, did not greatly trouble themselves what enormities they were guilty of among themselves; and of this Rashleigh and his companion soon received ample proof, for no sooner had they arrived within the doors of the room to which they were ushered than every article of clothing was torn from their backs by the mere force of numbers. and they were left completely naked save for the rags they had tied round their legs to keep their fetters from chafing them, and in which Ralph had taken care to conceal his small stock of cash.
Their plunderers however restored them a few articles of their clothing after they had been minutely searched for money, and the new-comers were then declared free of H. M. Gaol at Sydney, which was understood to mean that they were thenceforward at liberty to do unto others even as they had been done unto.
The apartment in which they were confined was about forty feet long and twenty feet wide. In this were huddled generally, during the period of our adventurer’s confinement, not less than 120 human beings of all ages, from the hoary scoundrel of sixty to the not less villainous scamp of sixteen, and here Rashleigh was plunged into deeper despair than ever at the contemplation of his future lot, which, even if life itself were spared, appeared to be the doom of passing all the remaining portion of it in the society of ruffians like these he now saw. In thoughts of this kind days lengthened into weeks, and the hour of trial was rapidly approaching.
Ralph Rashleigh was moodily contemplating the probable issue of this, his second appearance at the bar as a capitally criminal offender, when one morning, as he walked for the short allotted space in the prison yard, a turnkey halloed his name most lustily, and he went to the hall door. Here he saw McGuffin, their captor, accompanied by a female whose face he thought he knew, which was shortly afterwards assured to him by the former observing, “This is my wife, young man, Miss Shanavan that was.” And the young woman rejoined, “Yes, and I am come to see you, for I have not forgotten the cruel knock on the head you got from that wretch that’s dead for trying to save me and my poor sister.”
Here she burst into tears, but McGuffin added, “We have brought you a few things to comfort you, for though I did not see you get the blow my wife speaks of, yet I can believe her, because I know I should not have got away from that blasted gang of scoundrels if you had not turned obstinate on Foxley’s hands; so if I can do you any good on your trial, I will do it with pleasure.” They then went away, and Rashleigh felt much relieved by their visit, because he conceived the proffered evidence of McGuffin might be very serviceable to his case.
The eventful day at length arrived. McCoy was first placed upon his trial. He persisted in pleading guilty, for he said, or rather shouted, from the dock, “What’s the use of being humbugged by such a set of blasted old wretches as that judge and jury? They are determined to hang me, 1 know; and I don’t care a curse for it! The only thing I am sorry for now is that I was so merciful when I was out; for if 1 had killed a score or two more they could only have topped me at last!”
Here he was stopped with some difficulty, and the learned judge commenced passing the sentence of death upon him, during which, however, he was repeatedly interrupted by the prisoner in the coarsest language; and the latter, when all was over, commenced pouring forth a torrent of ribaldry, obscenity and abuse on all and sundry, it finally requiring the united efforts of four strong constables to drag him from the bar by main force.
Rashleigh’s case came next. He was charged with being present, aiding and abetting in the commission of a robbery attended with violence, he being at the time a runaway convict. The evidence of one of the men belonging to the hut on the Comnaroy was now taken, and was supported by that of McGuffin as to his apprehension. The prisoner being called on for his defence, he related the manner in which he had at first been taken by the bushrangers, and called upon McGuffin to prove what he had seen, in testimony of his being only their unwilling agent. The latter stated what had taken place at Shanavan’s, coupled with the fact of Ralph’s not bearing arms at the time of the affray that led to their capture.
The learned judge summed up, leaving it to the jury to say whether it was possible the prisoner could have been compelled for so long a period to remain with these lawless men unless he had wished to do so, or whether he might not have escaped from them, if he had thought fit, at some time. The jury apparently did not require much time for consideration. They merely whispered together and returned a verdict of “Guilty”, upon which the wretched criminal clasped his hands together over his face and quite lost all sense of feeling. The Chief justice addressed an eloquent harangue to the convicted felon, but he heard it not; and when all was passed, he followed the turnkey out of the dock mechanically.
So completely was he entranced by his wretched doom that the full period of fourteen days had elapsed, during which he remembered nothing whatever, that term being quite blotted out of his memory, and he did not return to consciousness until the day fixed for his execution. The morning sun beamed brightly on the floor of his cell through the open door, and the clergyman in his robes stood without, ready to accompany him to the place of death.
The dread reality now poured upon his mind like a flood. He looked at the cavalcade that were in waiting; but the detested form of the hangman, bearing some of the appurtenances of his revolting office, seemed to fill the whole field of his vision after his eye had once rested on him. Nor could he withdraw his gaze, although the sensation of loathing that seized upon his soul was indescribable. The voice of the prison chaplain now sounded in his cars. The principal turnkey entered his cell, and gently taking his arm, led him forth.
It was a lovely day, and from the terraced esplanade in front of his cell door, on which they now stood, could be seen all the varied beauties of flood and fell that adorn the scenery of Port Jackson and far away, even the blue surface of that vast field of waters that severed the exile from his native land. Short was the gaze, however, that was permitted to the doomed wretch, who deemed he had now too surely looked his last upon the outer world.
The melancholy procession was quickly formed. McCoy. supported by two Presbyterian ministers, went foremost, followed by Rashleigh and the Protestant clergyman. They were attended by the Sheriff, the officers of the gaol, and a very few strangers, led by curiosity, perhaps, to witness the parting struggles of an immortal spirit ere it was finally severed from its frail tenement of clay. The divines became more impressive in their exhortations and more earnest in their petitions for mercy to the unhappy souls about to depart, as the sad train entered the gallows yard, around which were ranged many files of prisoners, most part of them heavily ironed, who were always thus drawn up to witness the last expiation of the crimes of their fellows.
Many of these who stood near paid their parting adieux to the condemned, and the foot of the fatal tree was now attained. The turnkey, who had not hitherto ceased to support the powerless frame of our unhappy adventurer, here left his side for an instant. Ralph tottered and would certainly have fallen had not the executioner hastily stepped up, seized his arm, and cried, “Keep up your heart, my cock; it will soon be over!”
This rude mode of consolation, in some measure, recalled the strength of the doomed man, who shrunk from the touch of the abhorred official as he would have done from contact with a serpent. His comrade in suffering was now placed on the dread platform, and Rashleigh, nerving himself as for a last effort, ran, rather than walked, up the flight of steps.
Within a few feet of him, outside the wall, were a crowd of the townspeople, who stood upon a flat piece of rock that almost overhung the area occupied by the engine of death; and these about to die could hear their conversation as plainly as the words of the ministers of grace, who were pouring the hopes of salvation through the merits of a crucified redeemer into ears about to be closed for ever.
Yes, here were assembled the gay, the idle, the thoughtless and the profligate, amusing themselves with — at best — the unmeaning nothings of ordinary gossip, full in view of two fellow-beings for whom in ten minutes time would have passed away and eternity, that dread and undefinable abyss, would have opened its bosom to receive them. Nor were there wanting among this assemblage beings in the garb of females, who vented ribald jokes and disgusting tirades of obscenity to their compartions, levelled either at the appearance of the unhappy convicts or that of those who with them occupied the fell apparatus of death.
Ralph Rashleigh beheld the scene with dim and glazing eyes, for he felt as if already the hand of death had clasped his soul in its icy grip. The executioner had now adjusted the rope round the neck of his companion, and according to custom, was about to shake hands with his victim, when McCoy, throwing the whole weight of his body forward, pushed the detested functionary with such force that he reeled and fell from the fatal platform, a distance of at least sixteen feet, into the paved courtyard beneath, while the criminal no sooner heard the fall than he exclaimed, “There, you beggar, I hope I’ve broke your blasted neck.”
A clamour of applause burst from the assembled convicts beneath, which yet resounded in the cars of Rashleigh when, without the least note of preparation, the drop fell. The thundering noise of that awful engine was the last sound of which our adventurer was conscious for many weeks; and when he again returned to a sense of his suffering and sorrowful existence, he was stretched upon a sick bed in the gaol hospital, where he soon learned that his life had been spared at the intercession of Mrs McGuffin, who had gone personally to the Governor with a petition on his behalf, in consequence of which his sentence had been commuted to a period of three years’ labour at the penal settlement of Newcastle.
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep.
A second sessions of the Supreme Court from that of Rashleigh’s condemnation was now proceeding, and by the time it had ceased, our adventurer was judged sufficiently recovered to be forwarded to the place of his destination. Accordingly, one day, shortly after the termination of the trials, about 130 miserable beings, among whom, of course, was our adventurer, were linked to a long chain and marched through the streets, heavily ironed and strongly guarded, until they reached the public wharf, where a small colonial coasting vessel called the Alligator was then lying in readiness to receive them.
They were duly marched on board and were stripped quite naked before they were permitted to descend into the hold, that appeared to have been prepared for their reception, a rough floor having been laid over the shingle ballast. As fast as each man got below he was secured by his fetters to a chain, which in its rum was strongly fastened to the planking beneath, so that it was absolutely impossible for him to walk, even if the height of their place of confinement had permitted such a motion. But this was by no means the case, as, from Rashleigh’s description of it, the distance from the floor to the upper deck could not have been more than three and a half feet at the furthest, and the vessel being very small, the number of men referred to were actually squeezed in so tight that it was perfectly impossible for them to be in any other position than upon their sides, while from their close proximity one to the other, they quickly began to perspire so profusely that reeks of vapour almost as dense as smoke could be perceived rolling up the hatchway, the closing of which, if it were but for half an hour, must have resulted in inevitable suffocation to the whole herd of hapless wretches.
Ralph had read a great deal respecting the horrors of the slave trade, but never until now had he any faint conception of the shocking reality; and the only thing from which he could draw consolation was that as they had got but about a hundred miles in all to sail, the voyage and consequent suffering would be but of brief duration.
In a short time the vessel unmoored and the wind being fair, soon cleared the harbour and got out to sea, where a fresh gale appeared to be blowing; for the Alligator pitched heavily and shipped many billows, which, of course, making their way through the open hatchway into the hold, were at first hailed with delight by the parched sufferers below, whose feverish bodies were cooled by this immersion in the briny fluid. But in a little while the water increased in their prison to such an extent that they were obliged to adopt very painful positions in order to keep their heads above it. For several hours did this continue, until the captain was obliged by a shift of wind to put into a haven under his lee called Broken Bay; and then the unhappy convicts thought themselves fortunate in having the water pumped off, leaving them the wet floor to repose upon.
In brief, their voyage lasted forty-eight hours, during which period they were parched with thirst, very few being so fortunate as to obtain a single drink of water. Half a rotten and mouldy biscuit to each man formed their sole sustenance; and to crown all, they were cramped into a noxious hole, rather than hold, where the mephitic vapour arising from the breath of 130 men was increased by ordure, urine and excrement of every kind, among which the sufferers lay perforce.
This scene of complicated horrors, the intensity of which was in no whit lessened by the ruthless character of the inmates of this floating hell, was at length brought to a close by their arrival at Newcastle, where they shortly afterwards landed, naked as they were, upon the beach, and were compelled to perform sundry very necessary ablutions before their clothing was returned to them.
Here they remained until they were inspected by the military commandant, a personage of stern and uncompromising severity, the absolute rigour of whose sway well merited the appellation bestowed upon him of “King of the Coal River.” Immediately on the close of this muster they were told off to various scenes of labour; and it fell to the lot of Rashleigh, with seventeen others, to be drafted for employment in the old coal mine, so called to distinguish it from another shaft, which had been recently commenced.
At the mouth of this work they were received by an overseer, the natural fierceness of whose grim physiognomy was not lessened by a plentiful griming of coal dust. He quickly called his clerk “to take the likenesses” of those whose ill fortune had newly subjected them to his oppression. The clerk, a miserable, half-starved, downcast-looking, ragged being, soon performed his avocation with fear and trembling at the oft-repeated rude threats of his stern superior, and the men were lowered consecutively into the darksome orifice that appeared to gape for them.
On their arrival at the bottom of the chasm, a scene that had at least novelty to recommend it to our adventurer met his wondering gaze. Seven low passages appeared, that opened into the space around the termination of the shaft. They were dimly illuminated by small lamps; but at the farther extremity of each avenue there was a perfect coruscation of blazing lights, in front of which various groups of men were plying different branches of their thrift in toilsome haste, their extra diligence being apparently occasioned by the presence of the superior who had received the new-comers, a specimen of whose brutality they had an early opportunity of witnessing; for no sooner had he landed ftom the skep (bucket) in which he descended than his vigilant eye rested on one of the waggons that a party of prisoners had dragged along one of the passages. This not being filled to his liking, he, without any ceremony, but with many distasteful terms of abuse and energetic oaths, began to lay about him with a stout cudgel he carried, and dispensed his forcible favours so heartily that in a few seconds not one of the luckless gang belonging to the waggon in question was standing erect. After having thus knocked them all down, he began next to beat them until they arose again, and fairly cudgelled them off out of sight with the waggon.
On his return after this agreeable exercise, rather out of breath, he turned his attention to the new-comers, and dividing them into parties of six, he gave each subdivision charge of a waggon; and these led the way through one of the long galleries, followed by the waggons, until they all arrived at the end, which was an open area of considerable extent, where two or three large fires of coal were burning, by whose light, aided by that of their lamps; the miners were delving out masses of coal, at an immense heap of which he finally paused, directing a man who appeared to be overseer of this part of the work, to “take the new chums in charge, and set them on”. This was quickly done. They were told to fill their waggons with coal, to draw them back to die opening, and there to upset the contents as the man at the shaft should direct them.
They continued to do this, stimulated by the blows and threats of their harsh taskmaster, until night, when each received a small portion of boiled grains of maize and much less rotten salt beef, which, with water, formed their whole food. The wretched miners soon after lay down in any part of the works they thought fit, bedding being here totally unknown except to the deputy overseers, and clothing of any kind whatever unworn by the workmen. In fact, the extreme heat of this subterranean place of abode, arising from want of air, and enhanced by the numerous fires maintained, would have rendered the lightest apparel an encumbrance. As for beds or blankets, there were various heaps of sand, which, being loose, were soft enough; and on these such of the convicts as were curious about lying luxuriously used to repose themselves.
The luckless wretches condemned to this kind of labour only left the mine once a week, on Saturday afternoons, when they were all drawn up and compelled to wash themselves and their clothing in the salt water; and after the latter articles wEre dry, all were marched to the convict barracks, where they abode until daylight on Monday morning, at which period they resumed their labour.
The first Saturday afternoon of our adventurer’s sojourn at this miserable spot, as they were all bathing together in the sea, he noticed that not one of those who had been there longer than himself was without certain highly significant marks upon the back or breech, most frequently, indeed, on both, that told of the recent and severe application of the cat. A man to whom he remarked that “punishment was plentiful enough here apparently”, replied with a grin, “Aye. There’s plenty of that, anyway; and so you will say soon, for to-morrow is pay day.”
Ralph did not choose to ask any further questions, and they were soon after, to the number of five hundred, shut up in a spacious room of the prisoners’ barracks, where they were left to pass the night on the floor as they thought fit.
Just at dawn the next day, being sunday, they were aroused by the hoarse voice of a convict barrack officer, who turned them out into the yard of that edifice, where they were all drawn up around some implements, which the increasing light soon showed Rashleigh were triangles for securing men about to be flogged. Beside these implements was placed a table, at which sat apparently a clerk; and four scourgers stood beside the triangles, having their instruments of torture laid in fell array upon a long bench near them.
Our exile had scarcely completed his survey of all these dread preparations when the clash of arms and the roll of a drum announced the approach of the haughty potentate who was to set all this machinery of suffering in motion. An opening was quickly made in the ranks of assembled convicts, and the “Captain” marched in, attended by a sergeant’s guard of soldiers, who fell into a double rank behind him as he took his sEat at the table.
“Dash my old rags,” said a fellow standing near Rashleigh, upon observing that the commandant was dressed in his suit of full regimental uniform. “Look out, my lads! The cove has got on his fighting jacket. It’s a-going to be a regular field day!” And full many a wretch who knew the signification and truth of this prediction writhed HIs back in anticipation of the warm infliction so many of them were doomed to taste ere long.
The clerk now opened his book. The overseer of the coal mines was first called on. He made his appearance, and a loutish reverence, to the awful authority, who ordered him sternly to begin his punishment list.
“Charles Chattey” stood foremost on this black beadroll, and when this name was shouted by the stentorian lungs of one of the scourgers, a little duck-legged Londoner stood forth.
“What’s he been doing?” enquired the “Captain”.
“Neglected his work, Your Honour,” was the brief reply.
“One hundreds lashes,” was the equally prompt sentence. And the luckless wight was stripped and tied up in a twinkling at one of the triangles.
Three others were tried in as many minutes and took their places at the remaining sets.
The drummer, having received the signal, began to tap his drum in a slow and deliberate manner, marking time for the lashes, as they were inflicted by the willing and brawny arms of the flagellators, who were selected for this office from among the most muscular prisoners that would accept such a hideous berth, which, as before remarked, entailed upon them ever after the execrations of their fellow-convicts. And even while they held it, in this place, they were looked upon with distrust by their superiors, a constable always standing behind the back of the operating scourger with a stout stick, with which he scrupled not to strike the striker when his blows did not fall heavily enough upon the back of the culprit who was undergoing punishment.
In short, not to dwell too long upon so revolting a scene, about fifty men received more or less lashes, but none fewer than 75, the commandant at the same time vigilantly superintending the infliction of the scourge, and frequently, towards the conclusion, stimulating the nearly jaded floggers to increased exertion by threats of punishing themselves. Nor was this ceremony concluded until long after nine o’clock, when the men in the ranks were dismissed to their wretched breakfast of boiled corn grains, half a pound of which, with an equal quantity of very badly cured meat, formed the daily allowance of each convict.
With reference to the above examinations, as they were called, it is to be observed that the ceremony of an oath to the truth of the complaints being deemed superfluous, so, in like manner, was the form dispensed with, of asking the unlucky wretches charged with misdeeds what defence they had to make. The convict overseers simply stated their causes of complaint, when a sentence of some kind followed immediately as a mere routine of duty.
The next day Ralph Rashleigh returned to the darksome scene of his labours in the mine; and all that week himself and his companions wrought at removing the huge pile of coal to the shaft. This was only completed by dint of extra haste, under the threats of dire punishment, in case of failure, from their overseers, in time to admit of their leaving the mine with the others on the ensuing Saturday. On the day following this the commandant performed his usual Sabbath morning’s service, when more than four thousand lashes were “served out” as they called it, among about fifty men. This day was subsequently spent like the other Sunday. namely, in lounging about the large hall of the prisoners’ barracks, to which they were restricted when out of the mine, where they resumed their labour next morning, Ralph being that day attached to another party, whose duty it was among them to deliver a certain quantity of coals at the pit’s mouth daily, failing which, in the briefly expressive language of the overseer, “they’d be flogged till they did”.
In this dreary mode did our unhappy adventurer spend nine tedious months of starvation and unremitting labour, during which period he received 650 lashes for deficiency in the allotted task and other trivial offences. At length, he was one Sunday brought before the commandant on a charge of incorrigible laziness preferred by the principal overseer of the coal mine, and that officer administered one hundred lashes to him as a parting salute, directing that he should on the following day be sent to work naked in the limeburners’ gang.
After receiving his punishment, our exile was delivered into the care of the gaoler in order that he might be confined until he was forwarded to the place of punishment specified in his sentence; and the same afternoon an incident occurred which perhaps may afford to the reader some slight idea of the state of affairs in Newcastle at that period.
The commandant had six milch cows allowed to him for the supply of his household. So much of their produce as was not consumed in the state of milk was set aside and the cream taken off it to be manufactured into butter for his table. After this was skimmed, the refuse was given to the pigs; but there was a young scamp of a convict boy, who belonged to a party allotted for the service of supplying “Government house” (the commandant’s residence) with fuel, and this youngster, as it appeared, was in the habit of watching his opportunity, as soon as the skimmed milk was given to the inhabitants of the sty, when he would insinuate himself into their society to partake of the luscious meal.
The poor pigs seemed not to thrive so well as they might have been expected to do, while jack the woodboy got as round as a butt; and the commandant’s lady, who commiserated the lean state of her favourites — for she was very partial to pork — thought some surreptitious means must be resorted to in defrauding them of their dinners, which she resolved to see given to them herself for the future. Strange to say, even this tender solicitude did not seem to produce the wished-for effect. The dame was certain that they did get their food; and yet they got no fatter. At last an accident unveiled the mystery.
The commandant, upon this day, in returning to the house from the garden, heard an outcry in the pigsty. As he passed the back of it, looking over, he perceived an ancient sow, who had been named Lucy in honour of his lady, and she, being naturally irate at the injustice of the horrid peculations she had daily witnessed, seemed at length to have screwed up her courage to the sticking point, and was no longer to be kept away from the trough by the intruder that had taken possession of it, and who, alternately swilling the wash and kicking the rightful owner to keep her off, now lay at full length enjoying this delicious mess.
The commandant, equally enraged with the ill-used animal, had yet the prudence to suppress his wrath for a few minutes, because he was so placed that although he could see part of a human body in the sty, yet he could not tell who it was, and if he had spoken, the intruder might easily escape without his being able either to stop him or see his face.
Under these afflicting circumstances, the grave and haughty commander felt himself called upon for exertion; and he actually ran round the house, through the hall, calling lustily upon his lady, who followed him to the back yard, full of wonder at what could be the matter; when lo, right before the pigsty, the commandant halted, puffing and blowing with the unusual exertion. His lady joined him there. The angry officer, quite out of breath, could only point at the depredator, who, unaware of the approach of any interruption, still continued to enjoy his unhallowed meal.
“Oh, you scoundrel!” shrieked the lady.
The detected pig robber raised his head. Horror upon horrors, his eye caught that of the commandant, who roared out for a constable, whom he sent off for the scourgers, resolving that this atrocious offence should meet equally prompt and condign punishment.
In a few seconds six flagellators, bearing their cats and triangles, hastened to the spot. Jack was seized up by the wrists and feet.
“Give him a hundred!” roared the commandant, and observing that the officiating flogger only pulled off his frock, he ordered him also to doff his shirt and stationed another scourger behind the man who was about to punish the delinquent, with orders, if the first did not do his duty, that he was to flog him. The punishment now began; but whether it was owing to the obstinacy of the culprit or the fear of the flagellator preventing his exertion, Jack endured four or five lashes without wincing, far less crying out.
“Harder, sir, harder yet!” roared the commandant, who now quite lost his patience; and he ordered the second flogger to set on flogging the first.
Still the woodboy scorned to betray any pain, until the “Captain” cursed and swore like a maniac that neither one nor the other of the scourgers was striking at all! And he set a third operator to punish the second, a fourth to punish the third, and so on, until the whole six scourgers were pegging away at the backs of each other, the first one flogging the woodboy, and the commandant himself lashing the last with his horsewhip. Under these extraordinary circumstances, no regard was of course paid to the number of lashes inflicted, and it was not until the “King of the Coal River” was quite worn out that the scene terminated by his dismissing all the scourgers upon the spot and sentencing the woodboy to work at the limeburners, by which means Ralph Rashleigh came into possession of the tale.
Poor wretch! The mother that him bore,
If she had been in presence there,
She had not known her child.
In pursuance of the latter part of the last sentence passed by the commandant upon Ralph Rashleigh, he was stripped perfectly naked the ensuing morning, being allowed, however, to retain a portion of his shirt to serve as a garment, similar to the manner of the fig-leaf aprons of our first parents. He was then loaded with another pair of leg irons in addition to those which he had constantly worn since his arrival at Newcastle, and being now placed on board a lime punt in the charge of a constable, was transferred to the north shore of the Coal river, a spot equally sterile and forbidding in appearance to that which he had left, both being mere hummocks of sand, scantily clad with verdure of a peculiar nature consisting only of patches — like angels’ visits, few and far between — of couch grass and a few stunted bushes.
But the naked misery of the limeburners was even worse than that of the side on which the settlement stood, the latter being at least redeemed in some degree from the dull monotony of absolute barrenness by a patch or two of garden ground, beside the bustle incidental to a place which contained full fifteen hundred convicts, some of whom were perpetually passing to and fro. Here, on the contrary, were no gardens and only two ranges of wretched hovels, enclosed within a tall palisade of strips made from the outer coat of the cabbage palm.
At the moment of Ralph’s arrival the miserable beings who were stationed here, being all of them exiles and outcasts even from the horrors of Newcastle, sent from thence for punishment, were busily employed loading boats with marine shells that were burned but not slacked for making lime. This was done, amid coarse vituperation and oft-repeated blows from the convict overseers, by carrying the shells in baskets into the boats, in which the cargoes were stowed in bulk.
Rashleigh had no sooner landed than a basket was given to him. He was ordered to go on with the rest; and when he ventured to urge the soreness of his back from the receipt of a hundred lashes only the day before as a reason why he ought to be put to something else for a short time, the wretch to whom he applied, pretending at first to look very compassionate, asked to see the sore place. When Ralph, with great pain, withdrew the rag from it that he had applied, being the only dressing within his reach, this brute in human shape threw a handful of lime, that he had held concealed, upon the festering sore, and then bestowed a smart cut with his stick upon the suffering spot, bidding the poor fellow, “Begone to your work, you blasted crawling caterpillar, or I’ll soon serve you ten times worse than that.”
Rashleigh was thus fain to take his basket; and though the agitation of the waves soon drenched his sore with salt water, when the slackening lime hissed red-hot among his excoriated flesh, giving him a degree of agony that may far better be imagined than described, he was obliged to keep on at the run until ten o’clock at night; when the last of the boats being loaded, the weary starving wretches, who had now been sixteen hours at unremitted hard work, were at length permitted to withdraw to their as wretched abode, to pass the hours of rest in the best manner they could. Happy was he who had a pile of dry seaweed, and could cajole the overseers into permission to let him keep it. But this was indeed a rare luxury. Perhaps not five out of the 150 men that were then employed at this fit prototype of the infernal regions could boast of any kind of accommodation whatever to lie upon, save the rough slabs that formed the sleeping places.
To give any idea of the state of suffering that was endured by the emaciated wretches about twenty years since at this spot far exceeds the descriptive powers of the author of this tale. Let the reader, however, conceive it from the following brief delineation of some of the circumstances attending a sojourn there, gathered from the different persons consulted as authorities, the most favourable of whose representations have been selected.
In the first place, no clothing save the apron before mentioned, or any bedding whatever, was allowed to be used here, whether in the nearly tropical heats of summer or the freezing nights of winter; but every man wore at least two pairs of irons and very many even four or six pairs each; and at all hours, according to circumstances relating to the state of the tides. the wretched convicts were obliged to labour always breast-high in the sea before they could unload their baskets, as the draught of water required by the boats would not permit them to come nearer than this to the shore; and as before mentioned, there was no wharf. Thus, in the summer the heat of the sun peeled the skin from every portion of their bodies, and in winter the excessive coldness of the ocean on that naked and exposed beach chilled their very marrow. From this labour they were obliged at once to withdraw to a slabbed building pervious on every side to the wind, where their only resource for warmth in the winter nights was to huddle as close as possible together. The allowance of food, also, was miserably insufficient, consisting only of three and a half pounds of maize in cob weekly, with three and a half pounds of very ill-cured salt beef. Even this wretched pittance was subject to the peculations of the overseers, who helped themselves freely out of the common stock and then divided the rest among the wretched labourers, who dared not grumble, or the brutal tyranny of the others would be let loose upon them with all the lawless fury of wicked and ignorant malice.
Last, though not least, there were no stated hours of labour, the only rule being that the overseers were bound to make the men work as long as they could and do as much as they could; which they generally acted up to the spirit of by obliging them four days in the week at least to labour fifteen hours out of the twenty-four.
Besides all this, they were exposed to periodical visitations from the commandant; for although the trebly exiled wretches were put entirely out of the pale of society so far as regarded the comforts and even necessaries of civilized life, yet they were not by any means suffered to deem themselves out of the reach of the iron grasp of discipline, which this petty imitator of the haughtiest monarch that ever wore a crown wielded with a severity that has perhaps been equalled, but certainly never could have been excelled. His presence at any of the outstations under his sway was ever the signal for an inordinate use of the cat. He never travelled a mile to observe the progress made by any working party without being accompanied by two scourgers, who bore an ample supply of their implements of torture; and if his piercing glance detected any flagging from the most arduous exertion on the part of a working man, without deigning to enquire into the cause, whether arising from positive physical inability to keep pace with the others or not, the offender was called to him as he sat on horseback, and after a few imperious words of reproach, tied up to the nearest fence or standing tree, where a number of lashes, never less than fifty, was quickly administered to him, and he was sent back, bleeding from innumerable wounds, to resume his implement of labour.
In fact, whether from depravity of taste or utter want of any feeling, no exhibition appeared to delight this modern Caligula so much as when, on his Sabbath morning amusement, four miserable wretches were groaning and writhing before him at once under the infliction of what is to most men a transcendently revolting punishment to witness. No music appeared to delight his ears more exquisitely than the agonised yells of a wretched being who felt the lash for the first time; and on such occasions the fiendish joy that sparkled in his eyes would appear to dilate his form to nearly double its original size, and his every word and gesture, which, of course, he took no pains to conceal, fully proved that such scenes and sounds were supereminently gratifying to his soul; and accordingly, he took the greatest pains to prolong the enviable enjoyment as long as possible, frequently roaring out to the scourger in tones of thunder, “not to hurry”, “to take time”, “strike harder”, etc.
Nay, upon one occasion, in Rashleigh’s presence, when one of these ministers of torture did not appear to please this humane man of power in the vigour with which he dealt out the lash, the “Captain” rushed upon him and belaboured the scourger himself with a cane, bidding him at the same time, “Go on, sir! Go on!!” And every stroke the scourger applied to the back of the culprit was accompanied by one upon his own shoulders from the commandant’s cane, with a loud shout from the latter, “Harder yet, sir! Harder yet!!” until at last the weapon flew into fragments in the hands of this splendid specimen of a British officer!
When the dreaded commander visited the limeburners’ station, it was no uncommon proceeding, if the number of men brought before him by the overseer for trial, and of course punishment, did not tally with his ideas of propriety, for him to command the whole body of men there, overseers and all, to be ranked in line before him, when he would pick out every second or third man with his own hand and order them to receive fifty lashes apiece, declaring that he was certain they had deserved it over and over again since they last were flogged, or if not, that they would be sure to merit it before he should see them again! Then, if the boats were in the bay waiting to be loaded, he would compel the bleeding sufferers to place their baskets of lime upon their mangled backs and wade into the salt water with them until the agony of their wounds, with the mingled application of the briny fluid and the unslacked lime, became almost too poignant for humanity to endure; and several wretches, in Rashleigh’s sojourn, actually drowned themselves in the sight of the commandant, who merely remarked, “It will save Government rope, and spare the hangman a job!”
Lest this picture should appear overcharged respecting the partiality of this officer for flogging those under his sway, the reader is requested to remember that corporal punishment was of almost daily occurrence in the British Navy, as well as the Army, twenty-five years ago; and it is very probable the gallant captain in question had been selected for his present command to control upwards of two thousand lawless desperadoes from his known severity in his military capacity. And he might have considered that nothing short of absolutely breaking down the bodies as well as the minds of the ruffians — for such no doubt they were for the most part — could either sufficiently punish them for their past crimes or prevent them from committing further atrocities in the exile to which they were doomed. If such were the views of this humane official, they were completely answered, at least in the case of the limeburners’ gang, for the one single master feeling of extreme pinching hunger, independent of their other woes, was amply sufficient to debilitate the person and paralyze the mind of the strongest of the human species in less than three months’ endurance of this rigorous discipline, by or before which time they had become so weak in body that one of the overseers, and he was by no means strong, could knock two of their heads together as if they had been children, in spite of their struggles; and their minds were so abjectly debased that they were perpetually wailing and crying for food, anxiously seeking the most revolting substances with which to appease their ever craving hunger. Thus even the grains of maize that were voided by the oxen were picked out of their excrement and eagerly devoured by these starving wretches.
Happy was the man to whose share a soft bone fell among his pittance of meat. Twenty pairs of eyes would he enviously fixed upon him while he voraciously gnawed it; and if at last, when his jaws were quite fatigued with the exertion, he threw any portion of the bone away, a scramble, and as certainly a fight, would ensue among the bystanders, who should obtain the enviable morsel, a circumstance through which Rashleigh was unwittingly the cause of a fellow-sufferer’s death on the second day after his arrival at this abode of horrors.
He having cast a bone of this description down, a scuffle ensued to obtain it, during which two men caught hold of the prize; but as they could not agree who had the priority of claim, they referred the matter to Ralph as the original possessor of the coveted boon. He wished them to divide it; but they would not do this, both vehemently insisting that our adventurer should decide who ought to keep the whole. At length he did so to the best of his idea of the justice of the case, and the vanquished party withdrew, looking daggers at both Rashleigh and his opponent. The latter, in the mean time, after partly crushing his prize between two stones, sat down on the earth, with his back against a shed, to discuss it, which he did most greedily and with the greatest apparent enjoyment.
Our adventurer was gazing at him, half in pity and half in dread that he should soon be as craving as the other, when a slight sound caused him to lift up his head; and just behind the unconscious wretch, who was chewing the bone so greedily, Rashleigh was struck with horror to see the man that had striven with him for the possession of his morsel, who, with features now expressing the most fiendish rage, stood over his late opponent bearing an enormous iron rake, used for gathering shells on the beach, which he uplifted as in act to strike his victim on the head. Ralph uttered an involuntary cry and sprang forward to arrest the murderer’s arm. Alas, he was too late! The blow had fallen, crashing through the sufferer’s skull with such irresistible force that the man’s head was crushed as if it had been paper; while the hungry wretch who perpetrated this atrocity cried out, “Aha, I’ve got it now!” and seized the piece of half-gnawed bone that had dropped from his victim’s nerveless grasp, and which, though it was now all bespattered with brains and blood from the dying man, yet the other, brutalised by hunger, crammed in that state into his mouth, holding out both his hands to the overseer, who now came running up, to secure him with a pair of handcuffs.
Atrocities like these, Rashleigh was informed, were of frequent occurrence, and he was particularly cautioned by a shipmate of his, whom he met with in this gloomy place, never to save any portion of his food — even if he could — for another meal, as there were many men in that abode of utter despair, who would not, in fact, who had not, scrupled to deprive a fellow-creature of life for the sake of a few grains of maize or a couple of ounces of their rotten salt beef.
A day or two after this, chance most unexpectedly provided our adventurer and some others with several hearty meals which proved most acceptable to them. They had been sent out in the bush to cut timber as fuel for the kilns; and as the country was very scrubby, they were necessarily much out of sight of their harsh taskmasters. The team of oxen that was to draw the wood in passed a short distance away from Ralph and his associates; and even the cattle at this most delectable spot being well-nigh starved to death, just at this instant one of the poor beasts, utterly worn out with hunger and hard work, fell down, and though he was stimulated by blows and curses, nay, at last — rare humanity in a bullock-driver! — even lifted up again by those that drove the team, all proved useless. The unhappy ox,
His labours o’er,
Stretched his stiff limbs to rise no more.
The carters were therefore compelled to take off his yoke and leave him there.
Rashleigh and his companions, who had been unobserved spectators of the whole affair, now rushed out of their concealment and quickly immolated the poor beast with their axes, dismembering his quivering limbs with the speed of thought and bearing them away in triumph. They effectually concealed their prey and withdrew to a distant part of the thicket before the overseer could arrive at the spot with the drivers to look at the fallen bullock, of whom, however, their astonishment was very great to find no part remaining save the head, feet and entrails. Their search and the subsequent enquiry proved utterly fruitless, although both were conducted with cunning, amply exemplifying the accuracy of the old proverb, “Set a thief to catch a thief.” And Rashleigh, with his comrades in this act of spoliation, fared sumptuously, though of course very stealthily, for several days upon the meat, if that might be called so which had once formed part of the carcase of an unfortunate animal attenuated by famine to the last stage of his miserable existence, so that, in comparison with him, the leanest of the lean kine seen in the dream of Egypt’s Pharaoh might have been the very alderman of oxen.
Amid all the scenes of oppression, woe and starvation that were of constant recurrence at this Ultima Thule of the moral world, it may perhaps by some readers be wondered that the men did not break out into open and actual mutiny, and rather bravely earn death at once than endure so many prolonged evils, which in countless cases seemed only to be avenues of approach for the grim tyrant, in some one of his many most fearful shapes, at last.
The reasons why they did not, in short,
Take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them
may probably have been that at the limeburners they were too much broken in spirit by their complicated sufferings to attempt anything beyond the stealthy murder of some poor wretch for his pittance of food, and at the settlement of Newcastle each man feared the other, for Ralph very quickly found out the untruth of the proverb that “there is honour among thieves”. So far from this being the case, those who made the loudest professions of their staunch manhood as being incapable of betraying a comrade, were often found to concert schemes of escape or robbery, and in the hour of need, to turn abruptly round and denounce, or even prosecute to conviction, those whom they had themselves most probably induced to join in such enterprises, with the offence of committing or at times, of only meditating them.
Thus each prisoner stood in awe of the other, and as traitors like those above spoken of were always rewarded with some trifling post of comparative ease and idleness, no man dared to trust his fellow, and all were thus held in subjection far more by their own fears than by the numerical strength of their guards or the physical power of their superiors.
Merrily, merrily goes the bark
Before the gale she bounds;
As flies the dolphin from the shark,
Or the deer before the hounds.
One day, shortly after the death and demolition of the unfortunate ox, Rashleigh and some others were dispatched to cut a quantity of mangrove timber in a swamp, this wood being required to be sent to Sydney, where it was to be used for the manufacture of stone-cutter’s mallets, as it was both light and tough. In selecting the proper pieces for this purpose, the men were dispersed in all directions, nearly up to their necks in mud and water; and our adventurer, having strayed at last as far as the bank of the river, was much surprised to see a boat which apparently lay dry upon a sand-bank, having canted a little on one side, no person being observable either in or near it.
As the place where the boat lay was secluded from observation by a projecting point of land covered with mangroves, Rashleigh thought he might gratify his curiosity with impunity by looking into the little vessel. Accordingly he waded to the side of it and found to his great surprise that a man was lying fast asleep in its bottom. The boat here appeared, too, of much greater size when he looked into it than when seen from the shore; and it contained two half-decks, as they are called, under each of which two or three persons could sleep comfortably. There seemed to be a quantity of provisions and other things on board, and Ralph could also perceive the butt ends of some muskets peeping out from under a sail, which was appended to the mast that lay fore and aft along the thwarts.
Quick as lightning a hope of liberty darted into his brain. The breeze was blowing freshly down the river to seaward, and he hastily returned in quest of some companions. Unperceived by any overseer, he soon collected several of the men, and Ralph having briefly explained his hopes and his views, they were easily induced to risk one bold attempt for life and freedom, the bare thought of which animated their pallid features with unwonted fires and appeared to nerve their debilitated frames to dare any danger.
On returning under Rashleigh’s guidance to the boat, they found its unlucky occupant still fast asleep. They quickly pushed the bark off the bank she lay on into the deep water that flowed swiftly beside her and drew up the anchor that held her there. They were now drifting rapidly down towards the harbour’s mouth; but on their quickly setting up the mast, the sail swelled, and oh! what joy filled their breasts as they stood over to the southern shore and placed an island between themselves and their late dreaded scene of confinement.
When they were thus sheltered from immediate view, they awoke the slumbering boat-keeper, whose consternation was dreadful at observing in his boat upwards of half a dozen gaunt, animated skeletons, perfectly naked, smeared with filth and mud, and their faces overgrown with hair from their heads and beards. One of the fugitives held a musket to his head, ordering him to strip in silence. This he was fain to comply with, and his clothes being put on by one of their number, who had been selected from his knowledge of the management of a boat for this purpose, the rest lay down all together in the bottom of the bark, lest their nakedness might attract observation, and consequently, pursuit from the garrison.
When the helmsman judged he was at a sufficient distance from Limeburners’ Bay, he recrossed the harbour before the boat approached too near the settlement, and the bells being now ringing there for the men’s dinner-hour, the fugitives rejoiced in the idea that nearly all the people at the town of Newcastle would be under cover of their several dwellings when they passed on the river before it, and consequently that there would not be so many eyes to observe their motions.
The breeze continued to favour them. In a very short space they were opposite the wharf of the coal mines, and in reply to the anxious questions poured thick and fast upon him by his comrades below, who could not see anything, the helmsman continued to report progress every now and then, assuring them that all was right. They were soon abreast of Nobby’s island, a bluff rock which projects out of nearly the centre of the mouth of Hunter’s river.
“Blow, good breeze! Another mile, and all is safe,” was uttered in tones of triumph by the steersman when “Boat ahoy!” was thundered in their ears from the rocky islet.
Forgetful of prudential considerations in the anxiety of the moment, two of the naked runaways partially raised themselves from their place of concealment.
“Haul down your sail directly or I’ll fire into your boat!” roared the person on shore, who proved to be one of the military officers that had gone on the rock to shoot sea-fowl; and finding the fugitives paid no attention to his repeated cries, he shouted once more and louder than ever, “Halloo! Shore ahoy! Help!! Mutiny!!!” at the same time levelling his piece and firing. But the shot spattered harmlessly far astern of the boat, in the water, the little bark meanwhile still increasing the distance between the parties.
All concealment being now useless, the runaways stood up in the boat and Rashleigh could observe the whole settlement was in commotion, aroused probably by the firing, for the report of the officer’s piece had been repeated by one of the sentries posted at the signal station, and the verandah of Government house being full in his sight, he could even observe the dreaded person of their haughty commandant, who rushed out, and mounting a horse, galloped down to the sea-beach, where by his gestures he seemed to be urging some men, who were busily launching a boat, to increased exertion.
One party of soldiers quickly came flying, rather than running, down the hill to their commander, and another body of military, who had, in the hurry of the first alarm, apparently posted towards the gaol, now made their appearance upon the high ground at the back of Nobby’s island. The alarm bells were rung, and two pieces of cannon that were placed upon a green in front of the Government house, being hastily loaded, were fired, one of the balls from which whizzed just over their little mast, and then, plunging into the sea, appeared to skip from wave to wave until it buried itself deep in a bank on the northern shore, raising a cloud of sand in its career.
Until now Rashleigh had not observed a little boat containing only two persons that had put off from the rocky islet directly after the fugitives had passed. These were the officer who had first given the alarm, and his servant, who, although they had apparently but one fire-arm between them, were yet bold enough to persevere in a chase against such overwhelming odds, both of numbers and weapons, for the runaways, on searching the bark they had seized, discovered a good store of powder, ball and six muskets on board. The little boat, being so much smaller and lighter than that in which Rashleigh was, now gained rapidly upon them, and our adventurer hailed the officer, begging him as he valued his life to keep off, at the same time intimating the number of their weapons, which were also presented at the young ensign; but the latter perhaps thought he had gone too far to retract with honour, and the only reply he deigned to give was by discharging his gun, on which the steersman’s left arm dropped motionless to his side; and the report of six muskets from the convicts’ boat sounded the requiem of the gallant young soldier, who, as Rashleigh could see, fell bleeding overboard. His attendant was now too much occupied in endeavouring to recover his master to pursue the chase, even if he had been disposed to do so, and the fugitives had leisure to observe their other pursuers.
Foremost of these was a whale-boat, apparently impelled by sixteen oars, helped on by an enormous sail, which seemed to make her actually fly through the water. As the rowers bent to the stroke, she appeared, at least in the estimation of our terrified adventurer, positively to bound off the face of the deep. In the bow of this boat, bare-headed and apparently stimulating the boatmen by threats, oaths and promises to increase their already almost superhuman efforts, stood the commandant, with a musket in his hand, which he now and then presented at the escaping convicts as if measuring the distance between them with his eyes. Then, withdrawing it, he would shake his fist in the direction of the fugitives, turning at last again to the boatmen, his urgent imprecations to whom began now faintly to be borne on the wings of the breeze past the ears of those whom he so fain would overtake.
Behind this first boat were three others nearly abreast, all of them containing soldiers, as well as the first, and all impelled by both oars and sails, except the last, which was soon recognised by its peculiar rig to be the pilot-boat, known to be much swifter on the water than any other belonging to Newcastle, and which gallantly supported its fame on the present occasion by rapidly overhauling the foremost of the pursuers.
About five miles ahead, towards the north, in which direction the steersman held his course, was a point that terminates the bay into which the river Hunter erupts itself. From this promontory a number of rocks stretch out nearly a mile into the sea. These crags can only be seen at low water, or when the fury of tempestuous waves lashes the billows over them into rude and boisterous breakers. At other times they lie concealed. The freshness of the present breeze curled the waters into white and sparkling foam over and around this reef. The helmsman of the fugitive boat, who despite the wound that had broken his arm, and even now dropped blood on the deck at his feet, still maintained. his post, and now appeared, maugre the danger which was apparent even to the inexperienced eye of our adventurer, to steer full towards these breakers, instead — as Rashleigh thought would be the better course — of holding out into the open sea. Ralph ventured to hint as much to Roberts the helmsman, who only replied with great calmness that “he knew what he was about, and was doing all for the best”.
Meanwhile Rashleigh could observe that the pilot-boat had now overtaken the one which, hitherto foremost, had conveyed the commandant. The former lay to alongside the other for an instant; and when she resumed her way, the fugitives could see that dreaded officer on her forepart.
The breeze continued to freshen the more they got from under the lee of the land; and the boiling surf upon the sunken rocks was but a very short distance ahead, when Roberts roared out, “Lay down, every man!” setting the example himself by falling flat on the half-deck, still, however, retaining his hold of the tiller and keeping his eye fixed on a hill at some distance straight ahead.
A volley of musketry pealed from the pilot-boat, some of the bullets tearing through the sail of the fugitive craft; and instantly afterwards the voice of the commandant, known, alas, too well to all the runaways, was now heard thundering in imperious tones, “Strike your sail, you infernal scoundrels, and surrender; or we’ll run you down!”
Roberts raised himself to his knee and gave the tiller to another man, whose musket he took. Then, after looking carefully to the flint and priming, he said, “Now, my lads, if we were once inside of that reef we should be safe. There is but one passage through it, and I believe there is not a man in either of the boats who knows that course except myself. So if we can, we must stop the pilot-boat somehow. I’ll aim at that damned tyrant in her bow; and you other men, never mind those on board her, but fire at the slings of her sails. If any of your shots tell, they must stop and the devil thank them. So say when you’re ready, my lads.”
The others examined their pieces and levelled them when Roberts resumed, “Now, my boys, the slings, mind . . . Let fly!”
The reports boomed along the main, and Rashleigh, who was anxiously observing the effect of their volley, when the smoke cleared away, saw the commandant stagger. He let his musket fall with an oath and then sank into the arms of one of the boatmen who extended them to receive him. The after sail fluttered a moment in the breeze like a wounded bird and then dropped over the heads of the steersman and soldiers in the stemsheets. All were in confusion. The boat yawed quite out of her course in an instant, and that instant saved her from driving full split upon a rock that was not an oar’s length from her bow.
The boat manned by the runaways now was in the thick of the breakers that leaped, foamed and dashed on every side of her. There seemed to be scarcely her own breadth free from danger; but that narrow inlet lay right ahead. And the vessel answered helm sweetly, for Roberts, who had thrown his musket on the deck the instant it was fired, was now steadily guiding her by some well-known token on the opposite shore. On she flew, like a courser impelled by the spur, while the surf and spray broke fairly over her from either side, forming a perfect arch above the heads of the trembling fugitives, who every instant expected to be whelmed in the ocean, that seemed, like an insatiate monster, expanding its hungry jaws to receive them.
This wild commotion of broken waters was not more than a hundred yards in extent, which space was quickly passed by the gallant little bark that bore the flying convicts. They were then in comparative safety. On their left lay the mainland, on their right was the open sea; but between them and the latter, at about the distance of a mile, the thundering noise of breakers indicated the existence of a reef, or barrier of rocks, which is frequently found to guard the approach to the iron-bound coast of eastern Australia. Around and in front of the fugitives’ boat, the water, through the freshness of the breeze, was slightly rippled on its surface, but was undisturbed by any wave of magnitude, the fury of the boundless Pacific Ocean being expended upon the rocks by which this space was, as it were, girdled in.
Rashleigh had noticed and much admired the cool self-possession of Roberts their steersman, who amid the dreadful commotion of the roaring breakers through which they had passed, had not betrayed the least shadow of fear, but merely kept his lips sternly compressed and his eye fixed upon the land mark he seemed to be steering for. Our adventurer, now the danger was passed, could not help praising the dexterity of his seamanship. Roberts only smiled and replied, “We shall see directly how the sojers get through it; for look, by George! they are going to try it on!”
On turning his head, Ralph could see the sixteen-oared boat making for the opening in the surf. Impelled by the fresh breeze and the ardour of her crew, who still pulled unflinchingly at their oars, she came dashing at the reef like a high-mettled steed at some opposing barrier. Another instant a wild cry arose from all on board of her. She was upset. They were engulfed in the roaring breakers, the crashing noise of her parting planks and the cries of her crew for assistance being heard far above the din of the elements.
“Aye, aye,” said Roberts. “I thought some of you would cool your courage there!” And turning his back on the sight, he sat down very composedly alongside the tiller, which he leaned upon with one arm, while he asked another of his companions to bind up the wound he had so long before received.
Rashleigh continued to gaze upon the scene of their pursuers’ discomfiture, and he had the satisfaction of seeing that the remaining three boats quickly came up; for he could not help hoping that none of the crew of the swamped bark would lose their lives, though he felt at the same time that any of those he pitied would most probably have either shot or helped to hang himself with no more remorse than they would feel for the fate of a dog.
The boats from the settlement were now pulled round the reef and out into the open sea; but by the time they had reached the latter they were scarcely visible to the fugitives, who then felt themselves at leisure to answer those clamorous appeals that hunger had been making to each for some time past. Luckily there was abundance of water and provisions in the boat, which they now ascertained, by questioning the man who had been in charge of her, was originally equipped in Sydney for the service of two gentlemen of capital lately arrived from England, and about to settle in the Colony. They were bound on a voyage up the river Hunter to select land, and it seemed they had gone on shore at Newcastle to spend the day and dine with the commandant, when, unluckily for them, Rashleigh had discovered their little bark, which they had left at anchor where the officers’ gig bearing them the invitation had chanced to overtake their boat on their passage up the river.
After the first plentiful meal any of the poor wretches had partaken of for some time had been discussed, they held a consultation respecting their future proceedings. It was finally agreed upon that they should run along the coast to the north, as Rashleigh remembered having read of Captain Bligh and his boat’s crew doing after the famous mutiny of the Bounty, British man-of-war in the South Seas; and they doubted not by this means to reach some of the Dutch settlements in the Indian archipelago, where they hoped to pass for shipwrecked mariners. They therefore resolved to be as sparing as possible of their provisions and to eke them out as much as they could with fish. These views they kept secret from the boat-keeper, whom they put on the land, giving him directions how to follow the beach until he arrived at the north shore of the harbour opposite Newcastle.
The first night of Rashleigh’s freedom for several years passed away very pleasantly. He slept only a short time indeed, but talked over their plans with the steersman Roberts, who at length yielded to the entreaties of our adventurer, that he would take some rest. And the former now resigned to Ralph the guidance of the boat, directing him to keep her head towards a certain star which he indicated; but if the wind should alter or fade or any breakers should be near, all the men were to be instantly aroused.
Rashleigh spent the hours that remained until morning thinking over the various chances, whether of danger or success, which appeared to await their enterprise. It was certain, no doubt, that Captain Bligh and his companions had some years before traversed much more than twice the distance over the self-same track they were now pursuing, and had at last safely accomplished their voyage in an open boat, which was also very indifferently supplied with water and provisions; while the bark that bore our adventurer was half-decked, tolerably well stocked with food, to which, as they discovered a quantity of tackle in the boat, they might add abundance of fish, which absolutely teemed in the ocean around them, while, as they need not leave the sight of land, they could surely obtain a supply of fresh water as often as they required it. Upon the other hand, the danger was great that they might be pursued by some armed vessel, for they well knew that one of the colonial cutters was expected in Newcastle every day, and no doubt the commandant, who had shown so much personal anxiety to recapture them, would, if he had survived his wound, dispatch her to run down the coast as quickly as possible. Then again, it was questionable whether there was any passage through which the boat could pass into the open sea from the inlet they were now sailing over; or if there was, might not the boats of their pursuers intercept them at it?
Being, however, willing to hope for the best, and conscious that of himself he could do but little either to help or hasten their deliverance, our adventurer consoled himself at last by thinking that they all had at least a chance of escape; and if it should fail them, still, it was better to die in freedom than to linger out a miserable existence in that abode of horrors which they had quitted.
The dawn of day surprised Rashleigh upon his post. A sort of haze overspread the surface of the deep, and as he had no longer a beacon by which to steer, it became necessary to arouse Roberts. The latter speedily came from beneath the half-deck, and looking around at the shore, where only the summits of distant and lofty mountains were as yet visible. he exclaimed, “We have made a most capital run. We are beyond my knowledge of the coast, and that extends at least a hundred miles to the north of Newcastle.”
The increasing light soon made them aware that their pursuers in the pilot-boat, which was the only one that had continued the chase, were now nearly abreast of them, but still divided by the distance of nearly a mile and a half beyond the barrier of rocks, while to add to the discomfiture of the fugitives, the thundering noise of breakers full in their front gave evidence that they were approaching the termination of that inlet which had hitherto proved their safeguard. The breeze also had been gradually dying away, and it shortly became stark calm, so that they pulled the boat into shoal water among some mangrove bushes and anchored her there.
They continued anxiously to observe the motions of their enemies in the pilot-boat, who after some time also took to their oars and pulled slowly along the exterior of the reef, stopping every now and then, as if looking for a passage through it. After a brief consultation, therefore, the convicts, who feared their pursuers eventually discover some means of reaching them on the water, took everything out of their boat, carried whole on shore, and buried it in the sand, above high-water mark. They then filled the little vessel herself and sank her in a place of concealment, where the water was not very deep, a manoeuvre that was instigated by our adventurer, who hoped by this means to puzzle their pursuers very much, if they did not throw them off the scent altogether.
Each man now taking a small stock of provisions with him, some ammunition, and their muskets, they penetrated into a dense thicket, through which they made their way for nearly a mile with great difficulty, halting at length on the summit of an eminence that afforded a view of the ocean though not of their pursuers, who, having got over the reef, were now too close under the shore to be visible.
At once there rose so wild a yell
Within that dark and narrow dell,
As all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had pealed the banner-cry of hell.
The party of convicts that had thus so far succeeded in making their escape from the limeburners consisted of six men beside Rashleigh and Roberts the steersman, whose courage, and the skill he had displayed in conducting their boat in safety through the dangers of the reef, had caused him to be much looked up to by his comrades, who seemed by general though tacit consent to consider him as their captain and leader.
Of the others, McClashin was a native of Belfast who had earned considerable ill will among the convicts because he had, in order to save his own life, prosecuted to conviction four other men some time before that had engaged with him in the commission of a robbery, when his associates in crime had been hanged upon his evidence.
Phelim Hennessy was from Tipperary, and had been transported for life to New South Wales in consequence of his having participated in the popular though anything but humane amusement common in Ireland at that time, of “carding a tithe proctor”. This man used often to boast of his achievements prior to his exile in the most exulting terms, speaking of the most sanguinary deeds with a cool gusto that showed the bloodthirsty temperament of the man. He had been violently suspected since he came to the Colony of no less thin three murders, and was at length retransported to Newcastle for a most ruffianly assault upon an overseer.
The remaining four men, whose names were Perkins, Shawl, Hanlan, and Owens, were remarkable in no way as being either better or worse than the usual run of convicts. Of course, they were common thieves, and their knack of illicit appropriation, after having caused their banishment from their native land, had at length, upon some fresh offence, conducted them to the Coal river, from whence to the limeburners the transition was very easy.
Roberts the steersman had been a Nottingham boatman. He was transported for rioting and demolition of machinery. On his arrival at Sydney he had been employed in one of the government boats, but attempting to escape from the Colony, he was retaken and sent to Newcastle for seven years.
The party continued to watch the ocean from the hill upon which they had posted themselves, as related in the last chapter, until evening; and just before it became dark they had the mortification to see the pilot-boat standing out to sea, towing after it the little vessel that had borne them in safety thus far, and upon which they had depended for aiding them to escape altogether from the Colony.
Some of the men were disposed to raise a violent outcry against our adventurer, at whose instance the plan of sinking the boat had been resorted to; but upon his asking them in a cool and contemptuous tone why they had not proposed some better method of disposing their vessel when it was spoken of first, they were silent, except Hennessy, who swore that it had been his opinion all along the best way would have been to fight a passage out of the reef, in spite of the soldiers; and even he was calmed on Roberts observing, “If you think we can beat those that are in the pilot-boat, it’s not too late to have a bellyful of fighting now. Because you may take my word for it, if we go down to the beach and show ourselves, the redcoats will come back quick enough to have a slap at us!”
As even Hennessy, in spite of his boasting, did not quite approve of this plan, no more was said about the boat, but all began to deliberate what they had better now do.
McClashin, supported by Hanlan and Hennessy, was for turning inland to the west until they gained the settled part of Hunter’s river; then, after robbing the settlers about Wallis’s Plains, that they should pursue their route southwards and join some of the other parties of bushrangers who were laying waste the country in the neighbourhood of the Hawkesbury, finishing off by seizing on some vessel from the mouth of that stream and carrying their original intention of going to Timor Coupang into effect.
Upon the other hand, our adventurer, who had acquired from past circumstances an invincible detestation of the life of a bushranger, impressed upon the minds of his present associates the great danger they would incur of apprehension by adopting the last speaker’s project; and after dwelling upon the improbability of all their present party keeping together, even if they survived the perils of so long a journey, Rashleigh proposed as the more feasible plan, that they should persevere even now in marching along the beach, whether the party in the pilot boat had discovered all their concealed stores or not. But if they found any of the tools had been left behind, he submitted they might surely be able to contrive the construction of a double canoe the first cedars they came to, when they could at once proceed on their voyage to the northward without beginning, as preparation for it, a journey of more than five hundred miles, which the course spoken of by McClashin would subject them to, but which Ralph considered as outrageously ridiculous.
All the party now wished to hear what Roberts would say, and it was obvious that he would command the majority of voices in favour of the plan he might be inclined to pursue.
They did not wait long, for he said, “Our way lies north. And if only one man will go with me, I’ll take the beach for it. But I think those that want to go any other way are fools for their pains, as they are sure to be grabbed by some means before they get half the distance that’s talked about. No, no . . . Here we are, so far on our journey. We have the sea before us, and we can’t starve while there’s a fish in it; and besides, I’ve heard there’s plenty of wrecked ships along this shore. Who knows but we may make or find a better boat than the one we’ve lost!”
This settled the question, for the men who had not offered any opinion now sided with their captain and Ralph, so that they were five to three of those who wished to turn west. And after having in vain tried to bring Roberts over to their way of thinking, McClashin and his companions were fain to submit to the majority, though they did so with a very bad grace.
They reposed on the ground they had occupied during the day, nearly eaten alive by mosquitoes, which Rashleigh had never before felt so troublesome since he had been in the Colony; and by dawn the next morning they were in motion, anxious to see whether anything had been left of all they had hidden in the sand the day before.
Upon their arrival at the beach they soon found out that all except the boat remained in statu quo, although the thicket was much trampled down; and other indications presented themselves that the soldiers had instituted a rigorous search in every spot but the right one near the place where they discovered the boat. Every man now set himself busily to work to prepare a knapsack and other conveniences for carrying provisions, etc.; all the food, their arms, the tools and a couple of sails, with a quantity of cordage, being equitably apportioned, so that each man bore a fair proportion of the public burden. The only things they did not carry with them were the water-cask and a barrel of salted meat, which they left buried in the sand, being determined if they could succeed in manufacturing a canoe within any reasonable distance, they would return to fetch these articles as supplies for their proposed voyage.
It was noon before they had completed all their preparations, so they got ready some food. After having eaten this, they departed, each man bearing a burden, besides his clothes and arms, of nearly fifty pounds weight, which made their progress necessarily slow. The nature of their path, too, which lay along the sandy beach, would have tended to fatigue men much stronger than these emaciated beings just escaped from an abode of horrors “the like of which no eye bath seen, no heart conceived, and of which no tongue can adequately tell”.
At sunset they had not gained more than six miles towards their long march, but were much inspirited by seeing on a distant hill, a very short space inland, what one or two of the men confidently declared were cedar trees; and they came to a halt, flattering themselves that perhaps one more day’s toil would place them near this timber, which they now wished most anxiously for in order that they might try their hands at the proposed experiment of canoe-making.
Just before they ceased their march, Rashleigh had placed his burden upon the ground to rearrange it, and ere he completed doing so to his satisfaction, the others had got a trifling distance ahead of him. When he was about to reassume his load, chancing to look into the bush beside the beach, he fancied he saw a native black. Upon this he gazed more steadfastly, and though the sable son of nature slunk more deeply into the covert, yet Ralph was certain of his proximity, and argued no goodwill from him, as he was so apparently unwilling to be seen.
Roberts, to whom he mentioned this circumstance, fully agreed with him as to its being a prognostication of danger, and when the arrangements were made for the night, the party camped in as open a place as they could select, where no neighbouring thicket might afford harbourage for a lurking foe. Good fires were also made, and one of the men agreed to watch for a time, when he was to be relieved by another, thus maintaining a vigilant guard throughout the hours of darkness.
Nor were these preparations needless, for long after all the band of weary fugitives, except their sentinel, were buried in slumber, the man on watch observed a number of dark bodies wriggling over the sandy spot that encompassed their temporary camp, which he at first conceived to be some kind of wild animals; but on their nearer approach the glare of the fire betrayed their real forms. They were black warriors, who, with savage treachery and cunning, hoped thus to surprise the sleeping white men; but the latter, being awakened by their fortunately vigilant guard, yet kept themselves still, by desire of Roberts, who, conceiving that in such cases as this the failure of a first attempt would be likely utterly to discomfit the savages, directed them all to “lay quiet”, only keeping their arms in readiness, and to await his signal for firing all at once, which was to be the single word “Now!”
The savages, meanwhile, had approached, in their own broken English mode of expression, “murry close up”, when all at once they halted and remained motionless on their faces, save one, who crawled a little nearer to the white men’s camp. Then, raising himself partially, he uttered a single guttural monosyllable, apparently as a token to the others that the objects of their attack were asleep; for his sooty companions, the instant after he spoke, recommenced their sinuous, crawling mode of advance, and when they had got to the burdens which each of the fugitives had borne during the day, and which now lay disposed in a circle around the white men, the sable warriors yelled simultaneously and leaped on their feet with a cry which awakened the erewhile slumbering echoes of that lone and silent beach.
At this instant Roberts gave the promised word. The flashes of his companions’ musketry and the loud cheering hurra that accompanied their discharge completely amazed the assailants, several of whom fell by the bullets of this volley; while the remainder, exchanging their barbarous note of attack for cries of surprise and affright, bounded off into the forest with the speed of their own native emblem, the fleet kangaroo. The blacks who had fallen, too much wounded to follow their example, rent the air with exclamations of pain, until Hennessy rushed upon them and battered out their brains with repeated blows from the stock of his musket.
To sleep any more during this night was of course impossible, so the fugitives sat up and passed the remaining hours of it in watching the numerous torches which, after the repulse of their sable antagonists, had appeared to illuminate the neighbouring bush, but the bearers of which took great care to keep at a respectful distance from the dreaded muskets of the white men. Towards morning the moon rose, and Roberts, with another man, scratched some holes in the sand where the advancing tide would cover them and placed the dead bodies of the fallen blacks in these rude places of sepulture, because he knew that the sight of their slaughtered companions would be sure to excite the wildest passions of revengeful fury in the breasts of their black enemies.
When daylight appeared there was no vestige of any foe to be seen around them, and the band of runaways enjoyed their morning meal in peace. They then resumed their toilsome march, which still lay along the sea-beach, and had gone about two miles from the scene of the attempted surprise when their path led them beneath some lofty cliffs that nearly overhung the shore. Rashleigh, who now chanced to be among the first of the party, proposed to the others that somebody should ascend the nearest high rock and look out in order to ascertain whether their intended line of road was clear from enemies, as he much misdoubted, from the tales he had heard of aboriginal cunning, that the blacks might be concealed in, or near, these cliffs with a design of attacking them as they should pass beneath.
This advice, however, was overruled by the majority, who seemed to think that one of the men showing himself in so conspicuous a position would most probably invite their sable foes to attack him at least, when he might be killed before his companions could come to his rescue. They therefore continued their march, only keeping as near the water’s edge as possible, by which means they were generally out of the reach of any ordinary native weapons. For the space of nearly half a mile they went on unmolested. Here the cliffs receded a little, but returned to the very brink of the ocean about a quarter of a mile farther along, the intermediate little bay being thickly strewn with rocks. The last man of the fugitive party had scarcely passed the point entering on this spot when the discordant yell of the native warriors was heard from every part of it and a host of armed blacks was seen by the terrified runaways, among whom a volley of spears was thrown by their cunning foes, who the instant they had discharged their weapons threw themselves down behind the rocky lurking-places that had at first concealed them.
The prevailing feeling among the little band of white men on this sudden attack, made when they had begun to deem the peril of the place had been passed, was undoubtedly one of fear, and those who were unwounded turned to fly by the same road they had approached this fatal spot. But this was no longer in their power. A strong party of blacks had seized that outlet, and brandishing their weapons, seemed to defy the white men, daring them to the attempt.
Roberts had fallen with a spear through his leg. Hanlan also had been struck down by a waddy. But the former now arose and breaking off the spear point that protruded behind him, dragged the remaining portion of the weapon out of his flesh, calling Out, “Don’t be afraid, my lads, we’ll beat the black vagabonds yet.”
Not a musket had yet been fired on the side of the white men, and perhaps this made their enemies fear to rise for the purpose of discharging any more spears.
Not far from where Roberts then was there stood a flat-topped rock about eight feet above the level of the beach. On this, in spite of his wound, did this brave fellow clamber and surveyed the spot around. When he had marked all the places of danger in their route, he came down again and proposed to his companions that they should fight their way through the blacks to a part where a ledge of rocks overhung considerably, beneath which, he suggested, they would be safe from all attacks save those made from the front. This being agreed to, the wounded man Hanlan was supported by another and placed in the centre. The others, four in front and three behind, began to move slowly towards the appointed place, keeping their weapons ready for instant service, and the last three walking backwards.
They had gone but a short distance when they discovered a party of about twenty blacks that lay concealed in the bed of a small torrent, and who consequently were unseen by the white men until the latter, in making for their proposed post, arrived at the brink of the declivity which crossed their way. Nor were the savages aware of the approach of their foes. But the instant the cry of one of their number gave the alarm, all his companions, starting up to their feet with a dreadful yell, rushed furiously at the fugitives, who had scarcely time to take aim when the blacks, nothing daunted by the fall of six of their number, were mixed among them, every man grappling with at least one enemy, fighting hand to hand for dear life.
The white man’s superior stamina at length prevailed. The butt ends of their heavy muskets proved much more effective weapons than the waddies of their sable antagonists, who, maugre their numbers, began to give way, thus affording time to the runaways for reloading their fire-arms, one discharge of which completely dispersed their wavering foes, who fled pell-mell to the nearest shelter of rocks, leaving thirteen of their number on the field, while of the whites, two were put hors de combat, namely Shaw, who was quite dead, and Hanlan, who in addition to the wound he had before received, had a severe contusion on the head. But now, taking advantage of the terror inspired by the late defeat of the onslaught made by the savages, the white men were enabled to gain the place of comparative security proposed by Roberts. Here they were permitted to take breath only for a short time before the blacks, working themselves into a paroxysm of fury at the sight of their slain companions, rushed among them like so many mad demons. The volley of musketry that was discharged with fearful effect into the thick of their advancing body only caused them to waver for an instant; but speedily recovering from this slight panic, they leaped upon the white men, and another arduous struggle ensued.
The fugitives, now reduced to six capable of exerting themselves, placed their backs against the rocky cliff and defended themselves with the butt ends of their guns. Rashleigh was soon busily engaged protecting himself against the attacks of four stout blackfellows, who appeared to be resolved on immolating him. Having heard that the legs of an aboriginal warrior are his most vulnerable part, he confined his blows to those limbs of his adversaries and had brought two of them down, when having in striking the last stepped a pace forward from the rock, he was seized round the body by another, who, lifting him up in his arms, was carrying him out of the throng; when our adventurer, whose hands were at liberty, dropping his musket, opened his pocket-knife and stabbed the other repeatedly until he fell, his loud and frequent yells for help being unheeded by his brethren, who were each and all too busy to lend him any aid.
To catch up his relinquished musket and rush at the backs of some of their sable opponents, who had got Roberts down, was but the work of a moment to Ralph, who plied his weapon so vigorously that his endangered companion was soon enabled to rise and give his assistance in repulsing the foe, who, now wearied with their long continued exertion, once more gave way. And finally, seeing that Roberts and Rashleigh were reloading their muskets, those of the blacks who were able to do so ran without stopping out of sight, leaving to the white men the possession of their rude fortress, which had cost them so dear to defend, Rashleigh being the only one of the fugitives that was left unwounded, while three of his companions were dead outright.
Nor had the aborigines effected this slaughter with impunity. Twenty-two of their body lay around, few of whom were killed, however, until Hennessy, the instant that he saw their assailants retreating, began to mangle the wounded wretches with his clasp-knife, as it seemed to our adventurer, needlessly prolonging their torture, until the latter and Roberts commiserated them, and put an end to their sufferings.
In broken dreams the image rose
Of varied perils, pains, and woes.
They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead;
As warm each hand, each brow as gay,
As if they parted yesterday.
The condition of the fugitives in their rude fortress was sufficiently dispiriting, after the first joy that they felt for their victory had passed away. Three of their number lay dead; and all the rest, save Rashleigh, were more or less wounded, as before related. Besides these causes for regret, they knew that the blacks, though repulsed for a time, would most certainly renew their attack with the first convenient opportunity and never cease to harass them until they had either revenged the fall of their fellows or shared their bloody graves. The spot in which they were also afforded no water, and it would have been perfectly impossible for some of the white men, who had suffered most in their late conflict, to remove to any more promising place, even if they had not feared danger by the way from the assaults of their insidious enemies.
McClashin, who was almost uninjured, and Hennessy, who was only slightly so, were now violent in their clamours against our adventurer, accusing him of being the origin of all their mishaps, since they had adopted his advice of continuing the route along the beach. It was in vain that Rashleigh alleged the fact that they would have been equally liable to the attacks of the aborigines in whatever direction they had proceeded. The others only became more clamorous; and Hennessy at length got so much enraged that, taking an opportunity while Ralph was looking another way, he presented his musket at the former. Roberts, whose wounds had by this time become so stiff that he could not rise, was only able to warn the intended victim of the other’s murderous design in a hurried manner.
On turning his head, Rashleigh saw the rascal taking aim at himself and rushed upon him. Fortunately the gun missed fire; and our adventurer, whose passions were fully aroused at the treachery of the attempt, wrested the musket out of Hennessy’s hand, then, throwing it away, seized upon his foe and lifting him up by main strength, dashed him to the ground, the craven ruffian roaring out all the while for mercy; which Ralph, thinking the fall might be a sufficient lesson to him, now granted and resumed his seat beside Roberts, who was rapidly sinking from loss of blood, he having received four spear wounds in different parts, besides many contusions.
It was Rashleigh’s care in the first place to withdraw the weapons, portions of which still remained in the wounds of his suffering companion. He then bandaged them up as well as he could and laid the wounded man in a nook where he might take some undisturbed repose. After this he cautiously crept out of their fastness, with his musket loaded, to reconnoitre the neighbourhood for water and to observe whether any of their late opponents were visible. Not one of the latter was to be seen, nor could our adventurer for a long period discover any of the former object of his search. At length, in a spot at the foot of a clef, in the precipice, he found some aquatic-looking plants, around which the soil seemed moist. Here he scratched a hole with a stick, and in a few moments had the happiness to observe the orifice filling with a fluid that examination soon assured him was good fresh water, a small supply of which he took in a quart pot to the cave, having first enlarged the little well to the capacity of a bucket.
The water was eagerly welcomed by Roberts; and the other wounded men were equally clamorous for a drink. But as a few minutes must elapse before any quantity could be collected, they were forced to wait, and in the mean time Ralph employed himself in dragging away the dead bodies that cumbered the floor of their retreat. These he put in a hole beside a huge rock at some distance, covering them with sand as well as his imperfect means would allow. The next operation he engaged in was the construction of a sort of hedge, or chevaux de frise, with the ropes they had brought, which he tied across a narrow part of their retreat, securing the ends to stakes wedged into fissures of the rock and interlacing the whole with thorny boughs, so that it might serve to prevent any sudden hostile attack and keep off their foes while they reloaded their muskets, which, as Ralph had discovered, was very essential from the circumstances attending the last onslaught of their sable enemies.
Our adventurer next procured a sufficient supply of fresh water and prepared some food, of which, however, neither Roberts nor Owens was able to partake. They were the principal objects of his solicitude, as the conduct of neither McClashin nor Hennessy had been such as much to endear them to him. But nevertheless, though they had not assisted him in any of his exertions, he invited them to share the meal, which they did very willingly, appearing to be quite friendly and reconciled, though once or twice our adventurer detected sinister glances passing from one to another of them, which he neither understood nor approved of, and therefore, after having attended to the wants of the wounded, he left the cavern in search of some secret nook to which he might repair after it became dark.
At some short distance from their place of retreat was an upright fissure in a rock, which had been filled with seaweed by the action of repeated storms. The upper part of this was now dry, and Rashleigh resolved on making it his lair for the night that was now fast approaching. Intending, however, to give one more look at his companion Roberts and to smoke a pipe beside him as he lay, he turned back for this purpose, taking with him a large armful of seaweed to form an addition to the couch of the wounded man.
Just before he reached their place of refuge he heard voices conversing together in a subdued, almost whispering manner. A little attention to the tones satisfied him they were those of McClashin and Hennessy, and willing to hear what the subject might be they were discussing in this stealthy manner, our adventurer noiselessly put down his burden and crept very cautiously behind a rock they were seated in front of, talking so earnestly that they had not observed his approach.
Ralph heard Hennessy say, “I tell you he’s as strong as a bullock and might be more than a match for the pair of us.”
McClashin rephed, “Well thin, we must do the other thing, that’s all.” And they rose from their seats, going away towards their companions.
The few words he had thus heard set Rashleigh thinking what might be their import; but he could not satisfy himself upon this score, though, coupling the glances he had seen exchanged between these men with this circumstance, he feared they intended treachery to himself. Thus put in some degree upon his guard, he entered the cavern very warily and looked round for the two conspirators, whom he saw sitting by the fireside, chatting together in a very unconcerned manner.
McClashin observed, “I see you’ve got something to make a bed. Is there any more of it anywhere handy?”
“Plenty on the beach,” briefly replied Rashleigh. And the other two rose and went out, as Hennessy said, “to gather something to lay upon.”
While they were gone, our adventurer’s first act was to take out the flints from their muskets, after which he made up a bed for Roberts and then concealed all the other fire-arms but the piece he carried himself. When this was done he prepared his pipe and lay down to smoke in silence beside his wounded companions, who went to sleep almost directly he had replaced them on their rude couches. McClashin and Hennessy soon returned, and the former observed they had now a good way of passing the night.
Our adventurer did not make any reply, and the other went on addressing him, “What’s the rason you don’t speak to a body? Sure you an’t crabbed at us because you had them few words wid us to-day, are you? You shouldn’t mind me or Hennessy, for we are only a couple of foolish wild Irishmin, you must know.”
Hennessy here laughed and swore, “By Jakus, thin, I’m foolish enough, anyway, for I’d quarrel wid my best frind sometimes; but id’s all over wid me in a minnit.”
Rashleigh did not put much confidence in the pretended friendship of either, but still thought it best to suppress the answer that was rising to his lips. So he only said that he wasn’t at all angry, but only tired and sleepy, on which McClashin remarked, “Faix, thin, and no wondher, afther the hullaballoo we’ve all been in to-day. By my sowl thin, I seen you shtick that big black divil that was hauling you off like a horse’s head to a bonfire. That was nately done . . . And thin, how you rattled the others about the shkulls that was pegging away at poor Roberts. I will say if you hadn’t come back to help us, he’d a bin dead now, anyway. And musha, God knows, the whole of us, maybe.”
There was a catlike, treacherous, whining way about this man that he ever assumed towards those whom he most deeply hated, and Rashleigh had observed it often before, so that all his specious talk made no further impression upon the mind of our exile than warning him against some meditated deed of stealthy violence. So, finding himself really about to sleep, he got up and stole out of the place, taking the greatest precaution against being either followed or observed. In this way he reached his proposed lair and nestling in among the seaweed, slept unmolested until morning.
Soon after daylight he re-entered the rude shelter, where he found all things undisturbed and the inmates fast asleep behind the defence he had erected. While he was preparing their morning meal, McClashin awoke, and observing Rashleigh to be busied in his occupation, he arose and proffered to assist him. Hennessy also got up and our adventurer thought there was an air of hesitation about this bold-faced ruffian that did not become the assumed heartiness of his manner as he bade Ralph a good morrow. In the course of their meal McClashin asked the latter how he had slept and being answered very well, he added that he also slept wen, “only the muskatees were very throublesome”.
This day passed over quietly, and towards nightfall McClashin and Rashleigh went out to fish while Hennessy promised to keep a strict look-out for the blacks.
The two anglers met with very good success and brought home as much finny spoil as promised to afford them all two abundant meals. After supper Rashleigh lay down beside Roberts as before, until it was dark, when he repaired to his separate sleeping-place, where he again disposed himself for slumber, but in vain for a very long period, and he imagined that he was not sufficiently tired to sleep quickly. At length the drowsy god shed his poppies over the eye-lids of our exile, who sank into a state of troubled repose.
His rest was broken by a series of singular dreams. First his vagrant fancy strayed to the home of his youth. He was playing with his only sister, when a little childish quarrel arose and she was suddenly transformed into a hideous spectre, whose demoniac features still bore a faint resemblance to those of the departed bushranger Philip Foxley, who, grinning horribly, appeared about to strangle the solitary sleeper. Then again, he fancied himself to be an inmate of Marshall’s cottage, paying courtship to his quondam fellow-traveller Jane Bates; and she was smiling at his suit as the door suddenly opened, when McClashin, with Hennessy for his compartion, rushed in, who shot the poor girl dead and were dragging him out when he awoke to feel a sensation of some undefinable dread overhanging his mind, which he could by no means dispel so as to sleep again.
At last the fear of some unknown and horrible impending calamity became so poignant that Rashleigh could endure it no longer, and hastily getting up, he went towards the place of his comrades’ repose. On arriving within sight of the opening, the first thing that attracted his attention was the ruddy glow of some hasty fire that emanated from it, which, casting its glare around, illumined every object for many yards. His instant idea was that the blacks had surprised his sleeping companions, and having set fire to the hedge he had put up, were perhaps waiting until the white men came out in confusion to spear them at their leisure.
Full of this dreadful thought, he cocked his piece and stepped stealthily towards the spot, where he saw McClashin stooping down, adding some light wood to the fire, while Hennessy was apparently looking for someone in the corner where Rashleigh had at first lain down.
Who was the object of this search quickly became apparent, for the ruffian making it uttered a loud oath, and said, “That beggar Ralph is not any place here!”
“Well, never mind him now!” replied McClashin. “We can give it to him as he comes back. Settle the other two at once.”
By this time our adventurer had got quite close to Hennessy, who stooped over Owens. A stifled sort of shriek and a blood-stained knife that gleamed in the murderer’s hand as he rose told what his base deed had been. At this instant his eye caught that of Rashleigh, whose finger was on the trigger of the musket, the muzzle of which was not a yard from the detected cut-throat’s head. He uttered an indescribable sort of howl as Ralph shouted, “Die, dog!” And the musket answering well to his words, the brains of the cold-blooded ruffianly assassin spattered full in the face of his accomplice McClashin, who, Pot yet seeing their intended victim, had come to the assistance of Hennessy, but dismayed by his sudden fall, offered no effectual opposition to our adventurer, who smote him to the earth with his musket.
Such was the force of the blow dealt that no second repetition of it was necessary. The defeated plotter sank to the earth, and the short-lived flame raised by his hand expiring at the same instant, our exile was left alone, as he believed, and in darkness with four inanimate corpses that had within the last few seconds been violently reft of life, two of them by his own deed.
For an instant he stood appalled; but at length collecting some scattered fragments, he again awoke the slumbering embers of the decayed fire, by the light of which he surveyed the scene and quickly found, to his great joy, that Roberts yet survived, not having been touched by Hennessy, whose purpose appeared to have been first to kill Rashleigh, and it seemed to be only when he could not find the primary object of his heartless design that he had resolved on ridding himself of their wounded comrades.
This idea was confirmed by McClashin, who did not die until near morning, though the roof of his head was completely crushed in. Before his departure, with every mark of penitence for this as well as many other crimes, he confessed to Rashleigh that himself and Hennessy had resolved on killing all three of their surviving companions, then to cut off their heads as well as the heads of those who had fallen and were buried. They proposed to take these bloody trophies back to Newcastle, where they intended to give themselves up to the commandant, telling him a specious tale to the effect that they (McClashin and Hennessy) having been pressed by the others and compelled against their wills to join in the seizure of the boat, had watched the opportunity as soon as they could acquire fire-arms by stealth from the fugitives, and killed them all. For this act of barbarous treachery they hoped to obtain their freedom, as many other equally execrable deeds had been similarly rewarded before; but the whole plan had been opportunely defeated, as we have seen, through the restlessness of one of its proposed victims.
For several days after this scene of detected treachery, the two surviving fugitives remained in their retreat unmolested; and at length Roberts, having acquired sufficient strength to walk, yielded to the urgent entreaties of Rashleigh, who ardently longed to quit a place where even the air they breathed appeared to be polluted by deeds of slaughter and violence.
Having therefore concealed the greater portion of their tools, arms and other appurtenances by burying them in the sand, the runaways recommenced their toilsome march, carrying with them two muskets, an axe and a cross-cut saw, with a small supply of provisions, intending still to persevere in their now almost hopeless design of penetrating to the cedar trees before spoken of and attempting to construct a canoe of that timber.
Roberts, however, was still so feeble and weak that although the distance could not have been more than twenty miles, yet they were three days in reaching the scene of their proposed operations.
The long sought for trees grew upon an island about four miles from the bottom of a bay, in the course of a broad and rapid river, which fell over a ledge of rocks at the end of the island nearest the ocean. The current was exceedingly rapid, and our adventurers could not for some time devise means of passing it. At length Rashleigh remembered the method adopted by Foxley in crossing the Nepean, and after some rime succeeded in constructing a catamaran near a bend in the river a good distance above the islet in question. This rude raft was formed only of logs lashed together with wild vines, but having tested its powers of endurance, Ralph did not doubt its answering their purpose, and Roberts, without hesitation, committed himself upon it to the water, accompanied by our adventurer, who had provided himself with a pole to guide their crazy vessel. Fortunately the bed of the stream was here very shallow, so that when they got out into the current our exile was enabled to bear strongly upon his pole, keeping the head of his raft in the proper direction, and in a few minutes they safely reached the haven of their hopes.
The island upon which they had landed was very small, deeply fringed with brushwood that grew down to the water’s edge. But the centre was a hill of considerable height, on which the trees grew that were the object of their ambition to reach, without any other kind of timber near them. These cedars were of very great size, and Rashleigh began to fear that even when his companion should be sufficiently recovered to attempt it, their saw would be found inadequate in length to cut down even the least, in which case they would be compelled to resort to the tedious process of chopping it through with the axe.
In the first place, the delicate state of Roberts’s health rendered it necessary that some shelter from the weather should be provided; and Rashleigh, anxious for employment to dissipate the unpleasant reminiscences occasioned by their past mischances, set himself so industriously to work that in three days he had completed a very passable hut, the sides of which were wattled with boughs and plastered with mud, while the roof was thatched with reeds.
Deeming this to be a place of security, our exile next determined to pay a visit to their former retreat under the rock, as he now discovered they were likely to want several other matters for the construction of a canoe which lay there, in particular some cordage; and having now acquired a little knowledge of the stream on which their island stood, he feared not to wade it. This he did shortly after daylight one morning, leaving his comrade in their little cot, well supplied with all he could be likely to require, and strictly enjoining him on no account to leave the hut, lest he should be seen by any of their sable foes from the shore.
As Ralph was encumbered with nothing but his gun, he ran the greater part of the way to the scene of their late conflict, nor did he see a single living being on his route. But on approaching the bay, he first perceived a dense smoke arising from the neighbourhood of their former fortress; and having ascended a tree on a slight eminence, he saw that a large number of blacks occupied the beach in front of it, who were apparently intent on the performance of some religious or perhaps funereal solemnity. As our adventurer had often heard that these savages do not like to remain for a long period near a place where any of their tribes have met with violent deaths, he concluded the best plan he could adopt was to wait patiently until the sooty warriors should withdraw; but he almost repented of this determination as hour after hour went by and they still appeared to have some fresh ceremony or new dance to perform.
The sun was very low before the blacks left the spot free to the researches of our adventurer, and on descending he found that they had indeed been performing some most revolting rites. The sable warriors that had fallen throughout the affray with the white men had apparently all been disinhumed and brought hither to be reinterred, a spot above the influence of the highest tides having been selected. Graves, or rather pits — as the aborigines always bury their dead either erect or sitting down, and not extended — had been dug, the number of which described a rude circle. The blacks who had been slain appeared here to have been buried. A post set up in the centre bore the heads of all the fallen white men, severed from their bodies and hung here by the jaws, while all of their teeth had been knocked out and carried off. On every one of the graves also lay some part of a white man’s corpse, other portions of which were strewn about in all directions, so that it appeared these revengeful savages had wreaked that vengeance upon the dead which they had been prevented from doing to the living.
Rashleigh stood a few moments an appalled spectator of this disgusting golgotha; but at last he resolved the savages should not be able to revisit that spot on the morrow to point to the senseless remains in proof of what they had done to avenge the aggressions of the white men. So, disgusting and repugnant as was the task, he collected all the mangled relics of his slain companions, and fearing no other method could secure them from further desecration, he piled them all together with a huge quantity of brushwood, which he at length set fire to, being well aware he need fear no interruption from the aborigines, whom no earthly considerations could induce to approach the grave of any of their recent dead after nightfall.
When this melancholy duty was fulfilled, he repaired to their former hiding-placc under the rock, where he found the articles they had concealed were still unmolested. From these he selected as much as he could carry and departed, using every exertion to arrive at the island before daylight; but it was long after sunrise when he did so, and found Roberts, as he had expected, much alarmed on his account.
When the wounded man had in a great measure recovered from his injuries, both our fugitives set themselves strenuously to work and by dint of arduous exertion in the short space of one day had not only felled a stout cedar but had cut a portion of the butt off and stripped it of its bark. There was fortunately a considerable hollow in this naturally, which, of course, promised to diminish their labour most materially. The plan they proposed to adopt, therefore, was to split a part of the butt off, to deepen the hollow by means of fire, rudely to shape the head, stopping up the orifice in that part by the means of gum, used instead of pitch by the aborigines. To this log they proposed to attach another, and connecting both parts together, thus to form a double canoe similar to those in use among the Sandwich islanders, which it is well known can scarcely be upset.
For several days, growing at length into weeks, they toiled unremittingly, and at length had the heartfelt joy of seeing both the parts of their canoe safely launched into the water, while the rude balks they intended for the connecting frame lay ready for joining on the bank. This inspired them with so much additional vigour that they wrought harder than ever, scarcely taking time either to eat or sleep, because they employed themselves on their vessel all day, and at night, by the gleam of their fire, prepared their cordage, sails and oars.
The river had been several days getting lower than it was when first they arrived on the island; but Roberts, to whom Rashleigh had that morning remarked this circumstance, only replied, “Never mind, mate. If there’s only water enough left to carry us over the fall, there’s sure to be plenty in the sea!”
The weather, too, was unusually oppressive; yet though it was so hot, the sun was obscured by a yellow haze, while all nature seemed completely hushed into a state of unnatural stillness. About four o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, as both our fugitives were working on the raft, our exile conceived he felt a tremulous motion that seemed to be communicated from the land against which one side of their vessel lay. Just after, a moaning rushing noise, far more terrifying to him than the loudest clap of thunder, seemed to issue from the neighbouring mountains.
“What’s that dreadful noise, Roberts?” asked Ralph, looking wildly at his companion.
“Only distant thunder,” was the reply.
“Thunder!” repeated Rashleigh, gazing round at the sky. “And not a cloud to be seen!”
At this instant his eye rested upon the bend of the river just above him, and who shall attempt to analyze or describe his feelings when he saw sweeping down towards them, silently save for that moaning noise which he now too well understood, a mighty mountain of rushing waters, that stretched from bank to bank of the stream, and whose height seen from the level at which the fugitives stood was equal to that of the loftiest tree of the forest!
Short was the time permitted him to gaze upon this awful sight. Before Rashleigh could communicate his alarm to his companion, the vast volume of water was upon them like a destroying angel. Roberts was torn from the canoe, which, bursting its fastenings as though they were threads, was hurled over the falls in an instant. The crash of its parting timbers announced its destruction; and Rashleigh became insensible.
Untamed, as nature first formed free-born man,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
When our adventurer was restored to sense he found himself lying upon an arid beach, surrounded by a great number of aborigines, who seemed to have been using some kind of means for his resuscitation. The instant that their patient gave indication of returning life a quarrel arose among them, the object of which, so far as Rashleigh could divine it, seemed to be which should drag the white man off with him. And they were obviously about to appeal to the issue of arms to decide this contest when one of their number came up, whose arrival changed the whole course of action.
The black who now approached was one of the most revolting specimens of humanity that can possibly be conceived. A very few white hairs only remained upon his polished skull, forming a thin circle around it. His beard, however, was more luxuriant than usually falls to the lot of any Australian aboriginal. One of his organs of vision had been utterly extinguished, leaving in its room only a raw and bloody cavity. His other eye appeared to be more than half obscured by rheum. His body was emaciated by sickness until it scarcely possessed more substance than a shadow.
Add to the above that he was gashed and scarred all over, but particularly about the face, also that, though last not least among a race supereminent for uncleanliness, he appeared even more conspicuous for personal filth than any of his fellows, and you may conceive some idea of the unattractive appearance of this old black, for whom, notwithstanding, every facility was afforded by his compeers, who withdrew from around their prostrate prisoner, for whose possession they had been only an instant before quarrelling with the utmost excess of savage fury. And they permitted the senior to approach Rashleigh, who, upon his part, had been long expecting to receive the coup de grace among them, deeming it highly probable, amid the furious contention which had so long prevailed, that somebody, enraged at a repulse, might end the dispute by dashing out his brains with one of the clubs or nullah nullahs that were brandished so angrily upon all sides.
The scene was now entirely changed; all became so still and hushed around that the falling of a single leaf might with ease have been heard. The savages, as if surprised, suspended their weapons in the air in the midst of the explanatory, argumentative or threatening flourishes with which they had been erewhile assisting their oratory; and every man retaining the same posture he had occupied on the occurrence of this interruption to their unknown purpose, all eyes were now bent upon the decrepit savage.
Our adventurer, in the course of his rambles in New South Wales, had not omitted to satisfy his curiosity by enquiring of all whom he thought competent to afford information upon the various manners and customs of the nomadic races of Australia, and during the period of his investigations had received particular accounts of the personal appearance of, as well as the singular power and influence possessed by, the carandjies, even over the very wildest and most untamed tribes that had yet been heard of in the Colony. Among these rude bodies they appear to combine the characters of doctor, priest, magician and chief ruler. From the peculiarity of the marks made upon the parti-coloured personage who now drew nigh, as well as the great deference paid to him by the others, Rashleigh had no doubt but that this old savage was a carandjie of great eminence among his people.
The ancient black supported his tottering and feeble steps upon the rough limb of a tree. In his right hand he bore a green eucalyptus bough. Advancing to the white prisoner, he motioned with his hand, and all the other blacks fell back to a little distance, crowding together in a circle. The carandjie tottered several times round Rashleigh, waving his bough and chanting a kind of dull monotonous song, which seemed to our exile only a repetition of two or three words. At length he ceased to sing and sat down at the head of the captive, who silently watched his every motion. The old blackfellow next made a kind of speech, which was attentively listened to by the others, whose demeanour was perfectly altered and now appeared to be as pacific as a few moments before they had seemed animated by the wildest fury. A kind of guttural grunt hailed the termination of the carandjie’s harangue, who thereupon walked two or three more times round Rashleigh, waving his bough and chanting as before.
Two athletic black men now approached, who gently lifted Ralph from the ground and placed him on his feet, making signs that he should walk with them. Knowing the folly and inutility of resistance, our adventurer passively complied, and partly led, partly supported by his guides, reached the camp of the tribe, which, it being now fine weather, was in a piece of open forest land, and consisted of nothing more than a considerable number of little fires, beside each of which lay or sat the gin (wife) and dogs of the blackfellow to whom they belonged, watching, as it seemed, the dilleys (nets) that contained their fishing tackle and such weapons as the warrior did not carry with him. Rashleigh and his guards were guided to a resting-place by the decrepit old carandjie, who owned three fires, and of course, according to custom, three gins also; for no matter how many wives a blackfellow may have, each maintains her separate fire, and each provides a portion of food for her lord and master. Indeed, the latter always dispatches the former by the dawn of every day to fish, hunt for cockles and grubs, or to dig up swamp roots, according as either may be the usual kind of food for the season.
When the women depart, the men, in the mean time, unless urgently pressed by hunger, still lie asleep or lounge about the fires, making or repairing their weapons for war or of the chase until the return of their partners, when each man goes to his gin, or he who is rich enough to have two or more, visits them all, taking the lion’s share of what they may have brought, and rewarding them by caresses and praises for diligence, or punishing them by blows for the reverse, according as their researches have been successful or otherwise.
Thus, either in peace or in war, the gins of the aborigines in this part of Australia, at the time these incidents occurred, were no better than slaves to their men, who repaid them with the most haughty and imperious usage for all their exertions, and only left them the refuse of the provisions which they themselves had made to satisfy hunger. The male savages confined their labours to hunting the kangaroo or the opossum, which the women on no account were permitted to touch until they were presented with such portions as the men thought fit. Sometimes, too, the latter would go and spear fish; but this they did chiefly by way of amusement, as if it were beneath their dignity to follow it as a pursuit.
Rashleigh had been placed on the ground near the old carandjie’s fire, and in a short time one of the gins supplied his guards with a quantity of cordage, apparently spun from filaments of bark. His hands were bound fast to his side and his feet tied together, so that he could not stir by any exertion of his own, after which the warriors withdrew, leaving our adventurer alone with the ancient carandjie and his gin. The former now came and sat very close to his head again and continued to chatter without any intermission, using many extraordinary gesticulations; but not one word, of course, of all that he said was intelligible to our exile.
By and by another gin approached, bearing a few fern leaves in her hand, on which lay a large fish, apparently fresh roasted. A few words passed between herself and the old black, after which she placed Rashleigh in a sitting posture and began to tear the fish to pieces with her fingers, feeding the prisoner with these morsels, which, though rather insipid for want of salt, were yet very welcome after so many hours of abstinence. A draught of water from a calabash finished this novel repast, and Ralph was then replaced in his former recumbent position by his black mistress or attendant, for she might he either for aught he knew; and she lastly covered him with an opossum-skin cloak, directing him, still making use of signs, to go to sleep, which, in spite of his anxiety, he did in a short time.
When he again awoke it was night. No sound save the hoarse croaking of the frogs in a neighbouring swamp disturbed the silence; but the uneasiness of his position prevented any further sleep. At the dawning the gins all departed as usual. A very short time afterwards Rashleigh’s bonds were loosened, and he was motioned by one of the warriors to rise. He did so and perceived that the whole of the males belonging to the tribe were assembled close at hand, each being fully equipped as for war and most frightfully smeared with different earths, yellow, white and red being the predominant colours.
A sort of procession was now formed, the ancient carandjie leading the way, supported by two athletic men fully armed. These were followed by a body of about a dozen, who bore nothing in their hands but green boughs, which they waved to and fro, chanting in a low tone a formula of a few indistinct monosyllables. Behind these came the prisoner, walking between two other stout men, who, like the foremost, were equipped with spear, shield and waddy, having their hair most fancifully decorated by red and blue feathers, mixed with tufts of cotton grass. Large bones were also thrust through their ears and the cartilage of their noses. After these came more men with boughs, and the rear was brought up by the body of armed warriors attached to this tribe, of whom, in all, not less than 150 were present.
They walked on slowly until they arrived at a small open green space from which the sea was visible. It was not yet sunrise, but the eastern sky had begun to glow with the approaching presence of that glorious luminary. Nearly in the centre of the little plain was a sort of mount, apparently raised by art at some distant period and now covered over with grass. On this mound Rashleigh was placed in a sitting posture. The warriors then ranged themselves behind and on each side of him as he sat facing the sea. Those blacks who had borne the green boughs stuck them in their girdles behind them with the leaves pointing downwards like so many tails. They next began to jump about in a rude sort of dance, imitating, as it seemed, the motions of a kangaroo.
In the mean time the carandjie drew near our adventurer and placed on the ground before him a bundle tied up in a kind of cloth made of opossum skins dressed with the hair on. Then, taking a bough, he proceeded to wave it to and fro in a mysterious manner over the parcel, chanting or muttering all the time. At length he opened it with great caution, and Rashleigh now perceived that it contained a number of human teeth, all of them single, or such as grow in the front of the jaw. Beside these the packet enclosed an instrument made of green talc, bearing an imperfect resemblance to a chisel, and a flat, irregularly-shaped stone of considerable size.
At a motion from the old black, Rashleigh’s arms were secured by two of the bystanders, and the carandjie put on such an indescribably demoniac look that our exile now quite gave himself up for lost. His race was not yet run, however, for the ancient black magician, taking the implements of stone in his hand, approached, speaking very earnestly and pointing to the features of the others, making signs as if he wished the prisoner to open his mouth. Rashleigh at last complied with the direction, and the old man placed the chisel against one of his single teeth, looking round to the ocean as he did so. An instant after this the sun began to peer above the waves; and at the first glimpse of his body a smart tap on the chisel from the stone forced out the tooth, the patient’s head having been supported behind by, one of his guards.
A loud shout accompanied this operation, and the tooth was shortly afterwards handed round to each man present, all of whom, as Rashleigh observed, made a motion to spit upon it. It was at last restored to the carandjie, who placed it carefully among the others, tying up the parcel with great ceremony. A dance, called by the colonists a corroboree, now took place, in which only the unarmed men joined. It was, however, attended by much shouting and clashing of weapons among their armed brethren. At the conclusion of this dance Rashleigh was seized by his guards, who had before relaxed their grasp of him, and he was now laid on his face, being prevented from moving by numerous hands. Directly afterwards he felt several gashes inflicted on his back, and surely believing his end had now arrived, he resigned himself to his fate with as much composure as he could assume, and being almost indurated to torture by the cats of the Coal river, he did not betray by a groan any susceptibility to pain.
He was quickly turned over on the bleeding parts, and he now observed that each of the dancers bore a small sharp shell crimsoned with his blood. which flowed freely around. The operators, or as Ralph thought then, tormentors, now stooped towards him, their eyes glaring furiously on their victim. Again he felt the stabs, and a loud yell pealed around him. He was almost instantly raised from his recumbent position, when he found he had received no less than thirty-six deep cuts, regularly placed, before and behind him, in four rows of nine each, from his shoulders to the bottom of his ribs, but none lower than this. These gashes were, of course, now all streaming with gore, of which he also felt the warm current trickling down his back and legs. Another dance succeeded, after which the carandjie once more drew nigh with a shell full of some clammy styptic preparation, with which he anointed all the wounds, and they almost instantly ceased bleeding.
Rashleigh was then placed upon some boughs forming a sort of litter, which being hoisted upon the shoulders of four blackfellows, they returned to the camp in much the same order as they had left it, except that all the blacks made a great noise with shouting and beating their waddies against their shields, parties of them dancing along at times like so many mad furies.
When they arrived at the camp, the gins were all reassembled, busily roasting fish, roots and grubs, in short, apparently making preparations for a great feast. Two of their number were pounding some condiment between stones, which they afterwards put into a large calabash.
The men now squatted in a wide circle on the ground, the carandjie being placed next to Rashleigh; and directly afterwards the females presented to each some broiled roots and fish, also, by way of bon bons, a few of those large grubs that are found in rotten timber, which were now nicely roasted. The ancient black ate but very little himself, continually passing all that was handed to him over to our exile, who thought matters now began to look a little better. Still, the latter did not fancy the appearance of any of the food save the fish, which, though broiled without any kind of cleansing, just as they came out of the ocean, and eaten without salt, were nevertheless very good.
At various times during this repast calabashes full of some hot, moderately sweet drink were handed round to the festive group by their humble attendants, who were not allowed to sit down with them or to join in this rude revelry, but who, as soon as the men ceased eating, disappeared; nor did Rashleigh see anything more of a single gin during the remainder of the day.
To borrow a polite phrase, “after the ladies had retired”, the calabash before mentioned, which contained the pounded root, was put into requisition, being presented to the carandjie, and he divided its contents into a great many portions, which were put in other and smaller, calabashes or gourd skins, and the vessels having been filled up with water from a pond close by, their united contents were made to boil by having red-hot stones placed in them. The liquor was dipped out of these goblets with shells and eagerly drunk by the assembled blacks. Our exile partook of it and found it to have a taste something similar to fermented Spanish liquorice, but with a certain pungent acridity which it imparted to the palate after it had been swallowed. This drink speedily intoxicated the whole group. They danced, fought, sung and shouted away for several hours; and when at length Rashleigh was able to wrap himself in his opossum-skin cloak for the purpose of going to sleep, there was not one of his sable companions sensible. They all lay strewn about, completely dead drunk.
The next day our adventurer found himself very unwell, with all the symptoms of an overnight debauch, though he had drunk very little of this ardent mixture. But all the blacks really appeared more dead than alive. The old carandjie, in particular, lay like one in a torpor, and during the whole day he reposed with his head in the lap of his favourite gin, who ever and anon supplied him with some kind of cooling drink.
In a few days our exile’s wounds began to cicatrize; but over each gash a wavy sort of scar remained, of a very singular appearance and nearly as large in projection from the skin as his middle finger. One morning the old black doctor presented him with a dark-coloured kind of pigment with which he made signs for Rashleigh to anoint his skin. On compliance with this request the parts touched by the composition quickly assumed the tinge of rusty iron; and on repeating the application daily for about a fortnight, the whole of his body, save the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, was changed into a dull dark-brown hue. A ball of suet was next given to him to rub over his person. This appeared to deepen and even to fix the colour so much that Ralph Rashleigh, though naturally of a ruddy complexion, now really differed but little in colour from any of the sable sons of the forest among whom his lot appeared to be cast, especially after the latter, who were generally grimed with grease, filth and soot, had been bathing, which they frequently did in the summer season, either for pleasure or from necessity while following the chase.
The ancient black, who seemed to have adopted our adventurer, next presented him with a gin and gave him a good store of native weapons; but they still continued to eat together and always slept at a short distance from each other. One of the black warriors also, at the old carandjie’s request, now commenced initiating the new-comer into the mysteries of savage life, teaching Rashleigh the various modes of hunting, spearing fish, etc. Our exile, who feared that if he should return among his own countrymen his lot might be even worse than it was at present, applied himself to his instructions with great goodwill and soon became tolerably proficient in most of the simple arts of the aborigines, though nature and habit had denied to him the unerring eye and keen perception which are so common among them but appear never to be granted to any save savages. As he remained in this state of willing barbarism upwards of four years, it would be useless to attempt following his proceedings minutely during that period; but by giving a sketch of his mode of passing one day, an idea may be obtained of all the rest.
In the morning then, while Lorra his gin went out to dig roots, Rashleigh would go and hunt for bandicoots or kangaroo rats. if he met with a goanna or an opossum, he would follow him up any lofty tree, cutting notches in the bark with his stone tomahawk to enable him to ascend it. When at last the object of his chase got upon a bough that would not bear the pursuer, the latter, by cutting the limb through, would precipitate his prey to the ground, which seldom failed either to kill or very much to maim it. If, on the other hand, the animal or reptile took shelter in a hollow part, the white blackfellow would dig him out of his retreat, if he could not haul him from thence with a forked stick. In either case, he descended leisurely to the ground after accomplishing his purpose, secure of an ample breakfast.
If any of his dogs — of whom he bad a host, all of them either of the native breed domesticated or descended from such — pursued any of the smaller ground animals such as a bandicoot or a kangaroo rat until it took shelter in a log, the pack would stand baying and yelping around it until Ralph came up, either to cut into the hollow tree, or sometimes, if this seemed to be a hard task, to plug up the orifice and set fire to the other end of the log, certain that when he returned in an hour or two to reopen the hole, the animal would either be found dead close to it, or if living, would be forced by the heat to run out among the dogs, who never failed then to catch him.
After he had by any of these means secured sufficient food, he returned to the camp, having soon learned by unerring natural signs how to direct his steps so as to attain any wished-for point through the densest an most trackless parts of the wild Australian bush. In the camp Lorra would by this time have the fern roots washed, scraped and boiled or roasted, and some of the other gins would be provided with fish. Whatever our adventurer had obtained would now be added to the stock, all of which was prepared with more attention to cleanliness than usually obtains in aboriginal cookery. And when the repast was ready, the whole group of three gins, Rashleigh and the old carandjie sat down and shared alike. After this they reposed until evening in some shady spot, when fresh roots and fish or game being provided, they partook of another meal, seldom taking more than two daily.
At times Rashleigh and some of the blacks would go at night with their gins to a secluded bay or inlet not exposed to the fury of the open sea, the gins bearing large lighted torches made of resinous bark, and the males provided with fishing spears having four points slightly separated at the extremity. The whole party would wade up to their middles among the shallows, and the fish attracted by the glare would come swimming up around them quite close to their feet, where, dazzled and confounded, they fell an easy prey to their pursuers, who, thrusting them through with their weapons, cast them out upon the beach until they became fatigued.
In the winter season, when much of the undergrowth, such as vines, etc., that tend to render the scrubs inaccessible, had lost their leaves, so as to render a passage through such thickets possible to men and dogs, as well as opening the view into these at other seasons impenetrable fastnesses of the animal creation, the warriors of the tribe, appointing some detached place of this kind for a centre, would disperse themselves, forming a very wide circle of several miles in extent, having their dogs secured with leashes and held close. They would then advance towards the rendezvous, yelling and beating their more sonorous implements of the chase, blowing upon conch shells and in fact making as much noise as they could contrive.
The object of this was to make all the wild animals fly before them towards the middle, while the blacks kept on slowly advancing until night-fall. They then encamped, and one slept while another watched throughout the hours of darkness. At dawn they were again in motion until the scrub or thicket which formed their centre was full in sight, at which time the black warriors would be ranged in a close circular line around it, no person being perhaps more than six yards from another. Then some of the most expert, with all the dogs they could muster, beat the thicket, forcing the whole of the thus enclosed animals that could not ascend trees to fly out of their covert, when the MêLéE began, and the surrounding blacks slaughtered the kangaroos, bandicoots, etc., with their spears and waddies, after which, the game being carried home, a great feast ensued, lasting as long as the spoil they had taken would serve the assembled multitude for food, during which the liquor made from roots before mentioned, and a preparation of honey were drunk in great profusion, until serious quarrels invariably occurred, ending in furious fights, during which grievous wounds were freely given and received.
After some time Rashleigh acquired a competent knowledge of their lariguage — if their mode of expression could deserve to be dignified with such a name — which he described as being, like all else belonging to them, very inartificial and rude. In fact, they had no more words than were absolutely necessary to communicate one with the other on the few and simple subjects their mode of life rendered usual.
Of religion they had none whatever but many very ridiculous superstitions of supernatural appearances, chiefly relating to ghosts of slain warriors, transformed into cruel and malignant demons, continually endeavouring to kill the women and children or even the grown warriors if they could catch the latter asleep or unarmed. Many places were shunned with the wildest fear by these timorous creatures because they were supposed to be the haunt of these cowardly goblins, who, as it seemed, played their pranks by day as well as by night, in the former case terrifying the unlucky beings who saw them by their supernaturally demoniac forms, which required truly wild imaginations even to conceive. Nor would any temptation whatever induce them, when once they were lain down for the night, to remove from their fires even for the purpose of gathering a few sticks, though the flame should happen to be expiring, which took place the more frequently because they never would light a large log that might maintain them in warmth for a few hours, though such as these, consisting of huge trees uprooted by storms or age, lay around them in dozens; but owing to some ill-defined usage, derived also from superstition, they would only make use of boughs for this purpose not larger than a man’s wrist.
Their government, if such it may be called, was a species of patriarchal despotism. In the tribe to which our exile was so long attached, all the visible power was vested in the hands of the old carandjie, who appeared to have derived it from his eminence in feats of war during his youth; and he now maintained it by his dexterity in imposing himself upon his ignorant countrymen for a very great conjuror, since he had become decrepit. Of his power in this art, Rashleigh observed the following instance.
Lorra, who by the by had been the ancient carandjie’s favourite gin before our adventurer was taken captive, one day made a complaint to the former that Tumba, a powerful black, had beaten her because she had quarrelled with one of his wives while the two females were digging roots together. The old magician, having heard this plaintive tale, wrought himself up to a pitch of fury, and ordering Tumba into his presence, abused him with the most bitter virulence, which the other, so far from resenting, endured with the greatest humility, attempting to exculpate himself by throwing the whole blame of the quarrel upon Lorra, who, he said, had irritated him by her scolding tongue.
This defence by no means appeased the old man, who at last bade the culprit, “Begone and wither.” Now, upon enquiring from Lorra, Rashleigh found this meant to pine away and die; and the poor credulous gin added that several of the men who had before received this sentence had actually been taken sick, and two or three of them were dead, those who recovered, she added, only having done so because the old man had granted them his forgiveness. The credulity of the gin almost surprised the white man, but he afterwards saw enough to convince him that she had spoken the truth; because the old fellow, who, it must be remembered was doctor as well as magician-general to the tribe, always found some means of administering deleterious drugs by stealth to his enemies, which baneful potions, if not sufficiently strong to cause death, were at least potent enough to produce a painful and languishing sickness.
On this occasion Tumba no sooner heard the fatal sentence passed than he gave way to the wildest demonstrations of grief, tearing off all the fastenings which secured, and the feathers that decorated, his hair, so that it fell down over his back in confused disorder. He also cut severe gashes in many parts of his body, giving vent all the time to loud lamentations, in which demonstrations of grief he was joined by his two gins, who supplicated the old carandjie in vain for mercy. At length the suppliants withdrew in despair, and they appeared for about a week to be shunned by the whole tribe of blacks, every individual of which seemed to keep aloof from them as if they had been troubled with some infectious disorder. Tumba, during this period, lay about dejected and spiritless, while his gins endeavoured in vain to console him; but the placable Lorra never ceased to petition the old carandjie for a pardon in their behalf, until he granted it and was rewarded for it next day by the hind quarter of a most magnificent old man kangaroo, sent him as a present on this auspicious occasion by the heartily frightened object of his ban.
Very grave offences, such as murder or theft of a gin by one of the same tribe, are punished by a verdict of the general council consisting of all the warriors belonging to the sept, who, according to the nature of the case, sentence the offender to have a certain number of spears thrown at him; and on the day appointed for the execution of the award, just before sunrise, at which moment most of their ceremonies commence, all the warriors are assembled at the spot where our adventurer was, according to the aboriginal phrase, “made into a man”; such being the introductory usage to which each male is subject after he attains the age of puberty, in order to entitle him to assume the weapons and fulfil the duties of a grown warrior in these savage communities.
The tribe being thus assembled, the accused black, quite naked and unarmed save for the defensive weapon of a shield, is placed standing upon the mound before described. At a distance of seventy paces, the nearest relative of the deceased or aggrieved person waits the instant of the sun’s appearance above the horizon, when he throws the first spear at the culprit, who on his part uses as much dexterity to ward the weapon with his shield as the assailant exhibits in endeavouring to pierce him. After this party has thrown his one, two or three spears, according to the decision of the council, he withdraws, and every man in the tribe discharges a similar number of weapons at the condemned, on the conclusion of which the punishment is ended. And whether the prisoner die or escape with life, his offence is never again permitted to be spoken of. Such is the dexterity acquired by the blacks in the use of their shields, which are no more than from eight inches to a foot at the farthest in width, that Rashleigh knew several instances of criminals, after having had more than three hundred spears thrown at them one by one, who only received four or five wounds. and these all beneath their belts.
In very rare cases, when the crimes are considered unusually atrocious, the culprits are sentenced to receive twenty-one spears thrown at them at once. When this occurs, it is looked upon as equivalent to a certain doom of death, for should there be only two or three of the assailants revengefully inclined, the culprit is sure to be transfixed in a vital part, as almost any grown black can throw a spear with sufficient accuracy to strike a small bird at a distance of a hundred paces, and with force enough to penetrate the depth of four inches into the solid wood of a tree.
These aborigines have no marriage ceremony whatever. When a youth has undergone, his initiation and is declared to be a man, the first use he makes of the weapons he has prepared is to go upon a sort of foray to hunt for a wife. With this view he steals cautiously towards some swamp, near which he has lain in wait all night in readiness for this enterprise at day dawn, and from among the young gins belonging to another tribe, whom he thus surprises while searching for food, he selects one to his mind whom he perceives by her head-dress to be unmarried. Her he instantly pounces upon and bears off by force, maugre her struggles or the outcries of her companions. If he can succeed in conveying her safely to his camp before any of her male relatives can rescue her, she becomes his bride, never afterwards being owned by her own tribe, who will not even allow her to approach them.
The young gins, who seem to consider it a point of honour to offer as much resistance to this customary kind of abduction as they can, do not fail to bite, kick and scratch their captors as furiously as possible in their transit, which the latter retaliates by blows upon the female’s head, of force nearly enough to stagger a horse, for should any of them alight upon a leg or an arm it invariably breaks the limb; and thus, by the time they reach the camp the bride is at least insensible and the bridegroom streaming with blood from the effects of this truly savage courtship, to which there is no exception save in cases of black men like the carandjie so often spoken of, who, being too decrepit and feeble to man a gin for themselves in this manner, are obliged to depute the duty to others, of whom there are always many willing enough to oblige persons of their supposed supernatural power; and besides, this sort of affair is considered a very creditable exploit.
The death of a warrior, especially in his youth or prime, is regarded as a serious calamity by the whole tribe, who upon such occasions testify their grief by cutting great gashes on various parts of their bodies and by loud lamentations. The death of a chief or of a carandjie is attended by many superstitious observances; but that of a woman, or gin, is totally disregarded, as also is that of children of a tender age or of youths not made into men. But in any case, the name of the deceased must never again be spoken by the tribe, and they bury the whole of their dead, the men of ordinary rank in a sitting posture, great chiefs standing erect, women and children lying on their faces, heaping a mound of earth upon either, generally of an oval shape, neatly pressed down and sometimes planted over with an aromatic kind of small shrub.