Читать книгу The Last Lemurian: A Westralian Romance - G. Firth Scott - Страница 5

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It seems rather lawless, looking back at it from the safety of civilisation with a policeman at the street corner, but we were at least two days' ride from the nearest habitation of a white man, and nothing whatever could have been served by riding there and telling whoever we met of what we had found. Besides, it would have delayed us, and we were both, now that we were on the road, as impatient to get along towards that wonderful though misty range as schoolboys are to get home for the holidays. We might have buried what remained of the men who had, by chance, bequeathed us our outfit, but that would have prevented effectually any one ever finding a trace of them. So we made the best of what fate had thrown in our way. Leaving the bleaching bones to rest where they were till some one happened to come along and discover them, we formed up our enlarged cavalcade the following morning and steered for the open desert, which we knew lay right in our path.

It was the third day from our start, which we counted from the waterhole where we found the camels; the sun was well down towards the horizon, when the Hatter, who had, it seemed to me, been very restless all the afternoon, rode up alongside of me.

"I should not be surprised if there was a row to-night," he said.

I looked round at the sky, which was without a cloud. "You don't mean thunder, do you?" I asked.

"No, my lad; niggers."

"Why, there isn't a sign of them, and besides, what have we to fear? We haven't been disturbing the peace of their hearths," I answered, quoting the words he had used when we found those others poor chaps.

"There's plenty of sign, and has been all day," he said. "As to disturbing them, the previous owners of these did that," and he jerked his head towards the string of camels slouching along with their packs as stolidly and methodically as only camels can.

"It's as well to be prepared," he went on. "I reckon they're coming, and anyway there's nothing like being beforehand with niggers."

"Then we'd better take watch and watch when we camp."

"Watch and watch? No, not much. Double watch in these parts. They're mighty cunning, are the niggers you find near Spinifex Deserts, and that is the country we are coming to. I've got a little plan for them which I reckon will just about collapse them."

It was a pretty little plan too, when he described it. We were to camp at just such a place as afforded them (if his surmise were correct and blackfellows were about) splendid cover from which to make their attack. They would creep up and spear us as we lay around the fire or sat yarning, he explained, but in order to run them into their own snare, we would, carefully watching that we were not observed, fix up two dummy figures under the blankets and leave them by the fire, while we, with our Winchesters and plenty of spare cartridges (both of which we drew from our camel-packs) would be resting elsewhere with an open range on to the cover we left convenient for the attackers.

We shortly afterwards came upon just such a spot as we wanted. The country, which had been rather broken earlier in the day, opened out into a small level patch, free from timber except about the middle, where some scattered bushes grew in front of a few gums. On the left of the bushes and a little behind them a shallow ridge shot out like a tongue from the rougher and more thickly timbered country we had been travelling over.

"This is our place!" the Hatter exclaimed? "They'll follow close on our tracks, so we'll steer straight across to the other side of the bushes. We'll light our fire there, right ahead from here, so that it will show the shelter of the bushes, and, if I am not mistaken, draw them clean up to the trap. They'll be bound to creep up under the cover and have a shy at us—only we shall be on that rise on your left, where we can see them a bit clearer than they can see us."

It did not take us long to reach our ground and get our camp fixed up, and by the time the sun was sinking we had it all ready, even to our lay figures. We kept on the move enough to stop them making any attempt to cross the open ground between the broken country and the bushes, but as soon as the dark came we crept along the ground away from where our fire was blazing towards the tongue of the ridge. We had stacked our packs up so as to make a streak of shadow in the gleam of the fire, and this and the occasional impedimenta of tree stems and bushes effectually screened our movements from observation. When we reached the rising ground we crept back as far as we could with safety to our shelter, and lay, with our rifles ready, barely fifty yards from the bushes, on the other side of which the fire was blazing.

We had thrown some heavy logs on the fire before we left, so that the flames should not be too bright while we crossed to our place of vantage. They were now beginning to get well alight, and although we were in deep shadow we could see distinctly everything on the open patch between the bushes and the timber. We lay very still, and as the minutes went by and no sound came to us save the crackle of the fire and an occasional noise as the camels and horses moved, I began to grow sceptical of the Hatter's opinion. I was not used to watching under arms, and the experience prompted all sorts of foolish actions. First, I was tempted to tell my companion all I thought about his suspicions, and only the memory of his earnest request for absolute silence restrained me. Then there came a great desire to jump up, and run, and again to let off my rifle 'just for a lark,' as a schoolboy would say. I fought all and each and several more equally senseless ideas in turn and the hours went on, but no blackfellows showed where we anticipated they would. I was beginning to grow drowsy, and rested my head on my arms for a moment. It could not have been more, I am convinced, although the Hatter maintained afterwards that I had been asleep for over an hour, when I felt a gentle push on my shoulder. I raised my head, but before I could quite grasp the scene I heard a low whisper.

"Steady! Take from the right. Fire when I say."

Straight in front of me, standing in a half-circle behind the bushes, was a row of black fellows, their bodies all streaked and spotted with ochre, upon which the firelight, now considerably diminished, glowed in an uncanny way. Each man held a long war spear in his right hand, the ugly barbed points indicating like finger posts where our two lay figures rested under the blankets. Every warrior stood as still as the trees, not a muscle quivering nor a limb moving, but with the whole frame in a position which denoted more powerfully than the wildest movement a readiness to strike that was, even in the situation we were in, grandly impressive. I almost forgot that I was popularly supposed to be one of the figures half the spears were levelled at till I heard that soft whisper again.

"Have you covered him?"

It was my first taste of man-shooting and, had there been time, I should have cared for it less than I did. An uneasy tremor passed over me, and I remember I set my teeth very hard as I brought the sights of my rifle in line with the magnificent frame of the warrior on the extreme right. But, after all, I was only doing to him as he would do to me, and that idea gave me resolution for the moment.

"When they throw."

The whisper scarcely reached me ere, by some preconceived signal which was invisible to us, each spear was hurled through the bushes and buried itself in mine or the Hatter's blankets. I needed no further stimulus, and it was with a feeling of savage delight that I pressed the trigger home, my delight becoming elation as I saw my target leap in the air and fall lifeless.

Our shots must have been a terrible mystery to those unfortunates, for they stood as if they were too much amazed to move for the moment. Then they saw two of their number, the men who had stood at either end of their line, lying lifeless on the ground, and with one accord they crowded round them in two groups.

"Now, let 'em have it," the Hatter exclaimed, as he fired as fast as he could work his repeater into the thick of his group, while I did the same into mine. It was horrible work—afterwards. When the unhappy wretches who remained realised the awfulness of what was going on they ran blindly hither and thither in search of shelter or safety, and as our bullets took effect one warrior after another rolled over.

They may have been justified in their slaughter of those who had previously owned the rifles we used, but they had no quarrel with us, and for their treacherous attempt to slay us I felt justified in slaying them.

"Now we'll shift our quarters in case there are any more about," the Hatter suggested, in a low tone, and silently we crept away along our ridge, back into the timbered ground beyond, until we came to a place where we could still command a view of the little plain without fear of being surprised from behind. There we stayed till the dawn, the Hatter insisting that he would watch while I camped. But there was no sleep in my eyes for the rest of the night. The glow of excitement kept me awake while it lasted, and when it went there came that other sense which made the work we had done a hideous nightmare to me.

The picture was still more gruesome in the morning's light. Our dummies were riddled with spears (which we gathered into a sheaf and took away with us as trophies) and our horses had shared the same fate, for we found them lying on the ground dead, with two or three spears buried in each. There was one satisfaction in the loss; it made me feel less debased before those black silent figures, garish in their ochre streaks and spots, that lay scattered over the little plain and seemed to watch us as we hastily loaded up the camels with their own loads, and that of the dead pack horse and our saddles and bridles, and clambering each one upon the least laden of the team, made our way forward as fast as possible.

We saw no more of the tribe, and two days later we entered upon the desert. Gradually the timber became more and more stunted and straggly, until at last it was only in low, undersized bushes that vegetation was visible. Herbage dwindled away the day after we left the scene of our conflict, and then we found ourselves in the midst of bare sandstone boulders and sandy ridges that rose and fell in long rolling waves, and which the dawn painted rosy and enticing and the sunset ruddy and fierce, while for the rest of the day they shivered and quivered in a furnace-like glow of blinding yellow light. The nights were cold, and not even our blankets sufficed to keep us from shivering in the absence of a fire. Once we stumbled upon a native well, and spent nearly a day in digging it out sufficiently deep for enough water to collect in it for the camels and our water kegs. Three times we were deceived by mirage but after that we ignored the glamour and kept steadily and resolutely on our track, watching each day for the sign of a range but finding only sand.

Things were beginning to look serious. There was barely enough water to last us another day, and we had journeyed too far from the native well for the camels to last to get back to it, even if we could find it, and still no range showed on the horizon. I had frequently felt misgivings about our ultimately arriving anywhere or becoming anything but bleached bones, but the Hatter seemed to be utterly indifferent, and when I did speak in timid accents of the apparent hopelessness of the search, he always had one answer—

"It's good enough to have a shot at, and whether it's wealth or whether it's death, we're mates in it to the end."

I tried once to get beyond this interesting platitude, and, failing any verbal notice being taken of my views, I suppose I let my tongue run its own way. We were camping for the night, and only a pint or so of water remained in the kegs, and I remember feeling incensed at the imperturbable calm of my companion, and said so rather forcibly. He came over to my side and took my hand in his, and again there streamed through me that strange influence I had felt the night when first I met him. Then things grew hazy, and I remembered nothing more till I heard his voice saying—"Look!"

I found myself sitting upon my camel, the sun high in the sky, and in front of us, in strange, rugged grandeur, rose a range of apparently beetling cliffs. I felt dazed and bewildered, and swayed on my seat as if I would fall to the ground. I clutched the pack on which I sat, and the movement brought me sufficiently to myself to notice that I swayed because the camel was striding forward at a long, swinging jog-trot, entirely different from anything either for speed or discomfort that I had yet experienced.

"Water," the Hatter cried out; and, following the direction of his extended arm, I saw a thin gleam down the face of one steep spur of the range.

The camels seemed to fly over the ground, and almost before I could realise it a stretch of fair green verdure seemed to rise from amidst the sand, and I was shot from my seat as my camel sank on its knees beside a clear pool of water. My head was in it, and I was swallowing great gulps of it, too, a second later.

Some one seized me by the legs and pulled me away from it, and I turned with hot words on my lips to see the Hatter standing over me and smiling.

"Wait till I brew some tea, my lad, or you'll get as drunk as the blackfellows I told you about," he said.

I sat up and looked at him blankly. My memory came back in a rush. It was only just now that I had been reviling him for leading me into a waterless, arid desert to die and leave my bones to whiten, and yet here I was resting in the shade of broad-leaved trees with sweet grass growing under me, and a wide pool of clear water, some of which still clung to my hair and beard, beside me.

"Am I mad or dreaming?" I exclaimed.

"Neither, my lad; only you were getting a bit down a day or so ago, so to save trouble to both of us I sent you off."

"Sent me off?" I repeated.

"Yes. It's all right. I had to do it," he said laughing. "I'm a bit of a hypnotist, you know," he added.

It was a new word to me then, but it struck me as being a strange sort of proceeding, and I said so.

"Well, we'll discuss that later," he answered. "For the present let us camp."

Whatever he was he had me under his thumb, for I had to do just as he pleased, whether I wanted to or not.

After we had finished our meal—a meal by the way that was the sweetest I had ever enjoyed—we lit our pipes, and he explained something of what he meant. I gathered that he had a control over me, and that, if he liked, he could make me do anything he wished; but, he said, he was not going to use it so long as I stood by him, as I had said I would.

"We've come so far together, not without danger and difficulty," he said. "But if my anticipations are right, and this is the range the old blackfellow told me of, we may have many more to face before we start back with our camels loaded up with gold. Are we still mates?"

There was no getting away from the frankness of his eyes, and, half-ashamed of myself, I held out my hand.

"Mates to the end," I answered.