Читать книгу Fugitive Anne, A Romance of the Unexplored Bush - Rosa Praed - Страница 12

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LIFE in the cave, but for mosquitoes and absence of light and air, was not absolutely disagreeable. The rest from physical exertion was a relief to tired Anne, whose limbs ached from riding a rough horse, and on a man's saddle for so many days. They were stiff, too, after the march through the scrub, and bruised from her falls among the stones. Yet after the first twenty-four hours, her nerves began to recover their balance; for the wild life of the woods, the scent of the scrub, the sough of the wind among the trees, the calls of the birds and other native sounds breaking the solitude, were as medicine to her spirit. In spite of grievous thoughts that afflicted her, it was indescribable pleasure to feel herself once more Nature's child in the nursery of her earliest years. With the adaptability of youth, she set herself to make their rock abode as habitable as circumstances permitted. There was no knowing how long she might have to dwell in it, for Kombo and she had decided that they would not venture into the open until the coast was clear both of Blacks and Whites. The native police, they concluded, would have raised the district in quest of the murderers, and might at any time, in company of neighbouring squatters, turn up again at the station; but Anne hoped that her cousin Tom Duncan, if he were still alive, would return to Kooloola, and she determined, on the most convenient opportunity, to throw herself upon his protection.

They had not heard any sound of shots, and no search parties had come near their retreat. Kombo, taking off part of his garments of civilisation with the gladness of a savage restored to barbarism, and clad only in his dark-grey flannel shirt, crept cautiously through the scrub, and reconnoitred as best he could. He dared not go out of shelter; but from a little eminence overlooking the station, he had seen that a small detachment of troopers was quartered at the homestead, though doubtless the strength of the force had gone in pursuit of the Blacks. It was reinforced, Kombo had reason to believe--from the horse-tracks he had descried round the upper end of the water-hole, and on the edge of the scrub where he had ventured forth--by some white men from the stations eastward, who had hastened to Kooloola on receiving news of the murders.

There was no smoke of camp-fires in the scrub, as far as Kombo's eyes could reach; and it seemed clear, as he had told Anne, that the tribesmen must have fled towards the mountains, where the troopers would have much ado to catch them. They would not go, he said, as far as the fire--spitting crocodile. Into the dominions of that monster no Black would dare penetrate, and from them no White would issue alive--so declared Kombo, and Anne wondered anew if there were hidden volcanoes in that closed region, the existence of which was unknown to explorers. Short of that fearsome locality, Kombo informed her there were plenty of scrubs and rocky places on the side of the range, and where the natives would be perfectly secure from molestation. He also assured her, shamefacedly, that it would not be his own tribe, the Moongars, that had committed the evil deed. Their hunting-grounds, he explained, were further south, this being their extreme limit. He again suggested that the marauders belonged to one or other of a more warlike and much dreaded race, either the Maianbars or the Poolongools, both of which spoke the Moongar dialect, and inhabited the ranges further west.

Anne tried to forget her sorrow in making the cave comfortable, Kombo keeping his camp near the mouth of it, while she remained in the interior. There were grass-trees out upon the stony plateau upon which they had emerged from the scrub, and she made the black boy cut some of the green tufts of these, and spread them upon the floor of the cavern. On a heap of the long blades, she laid her blankets, making an odorous couch; the trunk of the tree they burned at the entrance of the cave, and so managed to keep off the mosquitoes, which would not fly through the smoke. Kombo collected, too, a number of dry branches to serve as fuel for several days; and finding a convenient basin in the cave, they fetched water in their billies and pint-pots, making many journeys to and from a spring Kombo had found, and filled the basin, so that they might have a supply at hand in case of siege.

Anne dared not herself go far outside the cave; but Kombo foraged for native berries and roots; for the larvae which, when roasted, make a dish for an epicure; for scrub turkeys' eggs, and for opossum and bandicoot, so that on the whole, they fared sumptuously. Kombo sometimes wished openly that he had a gin to get food for him, and once tentatively suggested that they should join the Blacks, who, he said, would pilot them up the coast to Port Somerset. He assured Anne that she need not dread ill--treatment at the hands of his brethren so long as she was under his protection.

"Ba'al mine like-it altogether Maianbar and Poolongool black," said he; "but all the same, long time ago that brother belonging to Moongar. Suppose mine say, Missa Anne, been bring down rain for black fellow; Missa Anne, Cloud-Daughter belonging to Mormodelik (the Pleiades); Missa Anne plenty good to black fellow? Then Maianbar black very kind--bujeri look out after Missa Anne. Black fellow no make Missa Anne carry spear, waddy, dilly-bag, like-it gin. Mine tell black fellow Missa Anne like-it Karaji (Medicine man). Mine say, Missa Anne pialla (talk to) debil-debil till that fellow go away. Mine say, Missa Anne make it rain, make it thunder, make-im black fellow very sick--you see! Black fellow frightened of Missa Anne; give her gunya, bring her nice fellow tucker--make it altogether bujeri for Missa Anne. I b'lieve Missa Anne be like-it queen long-a black fellow."

But these gracious promises did not tempt Anne. Indeed, they alarmed her, as showing the trend of Kombo's desires. She thought of the horrors at Kooloola, and even began to be a little afraid of Kombo, who, she saw plainly, was longing to rejoin his tribe; and though she trusted him as regarded her own safety, she could not be sure that he would not yield to the impulse of savagery, which, it was evident, had seized him since the casting of civilisation. She could only beg him to wait until the commotion had blown over, pointing out that, in such case, they would both be in danger of being shot by the black troopers; whereas, if they remained in the cave, by-and-by her cousin Tom would be settled at Kooloola and would plenteously reward Kombo, and maybe cease from hostilities with the tribes because of the black boy's care of her.

Three days passed, and Anne was getting accustomed to being a cave dweller. She mended the rents in her grey habit, combed her hair, and took a bath, stealing to the spring for that purpose. She saw in the pool's mirror that she was less brown than when she had bathed in the water-hole near the digging township, and was half glad, half fearful. She was woman enough, however, not to desire that Kombo should get her materials for re--dyeing the skin that had once been fair.

Things were so quiet, that after the first day or two, Kombo reconnoitred more freely and was out longer at a time; while Anne also, chafing against her enforced imprisonment, took courage and went out into the scrub above which the crag rose. She now discovered that this was not an isolated peak, but the half of a cloven hump, and that it was rounded more gently on the other side, and covered with the same dense scrub which stretched westward among the hills at the back of Kooloola head station.

Seeing the configuration of the country, and realising the shelter which so vast a jungle must give to dangerous Blacks, Anne marvelled again at her uncle's want of bushman-like sagacity in selecting this site for his homestead. She did not know that the scrub, lightly wired, formed an easily-made boundary for an extensive home-paddock, which it would have cost a good deal of money to fence, and that Angus Duncan's Scotch thrift had on that account prompted the choice.

The wild berries were now, as the summer waned, dropping off the trees from ripeness. They were very tempting to the little troglodyte, and a search after an especially luscious plum led Anne one day much further than she had intended. She lost her way, and was some time in striking the precipitous face of the hump; then, being quite out of her bearings, she skirted it in the wrong direction, getting further and further from her own temporary dwelling-place. Seeing a dark opening in the face of the cliff, and mistaking it for the entrance to their cave, she ran towards it, to find that it differed somewhat from the opening she knew, for it had not the grey boulder which there guarded the cave's mouth. She was venturesome enough to wish to explore this new cavern, but was held back by the dread of encountering such another snake as the one Kombo had killed on taking possession of their own refuge. Then she fancied that she heard a Black's cry--the sort of cry Kombo gave when they were separated in the Bush, to let her know his whereabouts, and which he had taught her to imitate. She uttered it now, imagining that Kombo had found the cave before her; but immediately afterwards, a confused sound of Blacks' jabbering fell upon her ear, and at the same time she saw a little cloud of blue smoke blown outward from the opening in the cliff, which showed her that there must be a fire within.

Was it Kombo who had made the fire, or were there other Blacks near? A sudden doubt came into Anne's mind and caused her to retreat hastily into the shadow of a boulder of rock, cowering against it till she should become certain who were her neighbours.

If, in truth, there were blacks near, it was not possible that Kombo should be unaware of them. Certain small circumstances, suspicious in themselves, which she had not at the time thought much of, now came back to her. The black boy had been out an unusually long while the day before, and she had noticed on his face, when they were afterwards in the cave together, an expression which had puzzled her, a suggestion of mystery, glee, and yet of awed timidity in his manner of dealing with her. At the same time, there had been in his demeanour something of repressed savagery, and he had talked to her in his own language entirely, not in the pidgin English--aboriginese--customary among Europeans and half--civilised blacks. Anne understood to a great extent the language of his tribe, but had preferred to encourage him in learning English, an effort which, so far as grammar went, had not been wholly successful. She remembered, too, that he had brought with him a bit of half-cooked kangaroo tail, and knowing that they had no kangaroo meat in their camp, she questioned as to where he had got it, and why he had not fetched more of the flesh home to the cave, but received only evasive replies.

While these thoughts were passing uneasily through Anne's mind, she was startled by the whizz of a boomerang which flew by the rock, and returned towards the thrower. At the same moment there was a rustle in the brushwood by the cliff, and two naked Blacks advanced round the boulder upon her.

The girl kept her self-possession, though the Blacks were fully armed, each holding a nulla-nulla pointed, and a spear poised. She reared herself against the rock, and looking straight at the warriors, said fearlessly in their own tongue:

"Minti into yuggari Mai-al?" which means, "What is it that you would do to a stranger?"

The men fell back and jabbered to each other, astonished at the sight of this brown woman who yet was not as themselves, but who addressed them bravely in their own language. Now, out of the cave a crowd of natives swarmed--young and old, men, women, and piccaninies. There must have been nearly a hundred hidden in the recesses of the mountain.

"Wunti Murnian?" they cried. "Wunti Karabi?" (Where are the police? Where are the white men?) And they waved their arms at her threateningly.

The girl felt for her revolver beneath the flap of her jacket where she usually carried it, then recollected with dismay that she had not taken it that day from the hole beside her bed in the cave, where she kept it hidden. Only the belt with cartridges in it was about her waist. Then she reflected that perhaps it was as well that she had not the temptation of using her revolver. These Blacks, if they were those who had raided the station and murdered its inhabitants, would know the use of fire-arms, and would not regard them as something supernatural, wherein she felt lay her chief hope of alarming the Aborigines. Perhaps one of these very nulla-nullas had battered in the skull of her aunt. She shuddered at the thought. What chance had she among such blood-thirsty devils? Oh! where was Kombo, who might have protected her?

And yet her words seemed to have awed them, for the nearest of the warriors made no further demonstration. And now it occurred to her that she possessed possibly a surer means of self-defence than even her revolver. She lifted both her arms, stretching forth her hands in a gesture so commanding, that the attention of the blacks was arrested, and they all gazed wonderingly at her, and ceased from manacing. She stepped back on to a ledge of rock that protruded from the boulder, and, letting her arms fall at her sides, sent out the full strength of her voice in the Ave Maria of Gounod, that devotional chant, which had once before so impressed Kombo's tribe; only, that for the name Maria, she substituted Baiame, the title of the Blacks' Great Creator. The natives shrank for a minute or two in amazement, and made a circle a little distance from her, as they do in a corroboree when the medicine women dance and sing. Suddenly, a warrior stepped forward. He lifted his spear and, springing to this side and that, began to dance the wild semi-religious dance which preludes the native religious rite of the Bora, to which, however, no women are ever admitted. Anne sang on, and one warrior after another followed the example of the first dancer. The sublime strains of the chant echoed among the forest trees and the great boulders, and were thrown back from the face of the basalt cliff. The girl's soulwas in the invocation. She was singing for the glory of God, and the preservation of the life He had given her. "Ave Baiamè!" Was ever stranger prayer or praise raised to the Lord of Hosts in His wilderness?

She ceased. The warriors continued their dance, but presently stopped too; and now the whole congregation gazed at her as she stood on the raised ledge, her head level with the point of the boulder; her grey habit the colour of the rock itself, falling in straight folds round her; her brown face upraised, with its delicate aquiline nose, its little square chin, and its shining eyes all aglow; her lips tremulous with excitement. The Blacks, spell-bound, regarded her with the wonder and admiration they would have given to a divinity. And, in truth, she seemed like some goddess of their own race, suddenly descended incarnate among them. They waited in awe--stricken silence.

"Nulla Yuggari berren," she said simply. (I have now finished.) Shouts arose, and she could distinguish the words, "Pialla naia nanti." (Tell your name.)

She answered in their dialect--that of Kombo's tribe, the Moongarrs--the words coming to her as if by inspiration, "What would you have of me? I, who am sister of the Mormodelik--the Pleiades--have come to give you blessing."

She pointed skywards. They understood, and with one voice the old men, the young warriors, and the women acclaimed her:

"Mormodelik! Mormodelik! The Spirit of the Pleiades!"

At that moment, from the summit of the precipice above them, another voice shouted, and a spear, hurled down with unerring aim, struck the ground a few paces from the outskirts of the mob.

The voice was Kombo's.