Title: Fugitive Anne, A Romance of the Unexplored Bush
Author: Rosa Praed
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 
Language: English
Date first posted: September 2006
Date most recently updated: September 2006

This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html


To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au


Fugitive Anne, A Romance of the Unexplored Bush
Rosa Praed




Part I



Chapter I--The Closed Cabin



IT was between nine and ten in the morning on board the Eastern and
Australasian passenger boat Leichardt, which was steaming in a
southerly direction over a calm, tropical sea between the Great
Barrier Reef and the north-eastern shores of Australia. The boat was
expected to arrive at Cooktown during the night, having last stopped
at the newly-established station on Thursday Island.

This puts time back a little over twenty years.

The passengers' cabins on board the Leichardt opened for the most
part off the saloon. Here, several people were assembled, for
excitement had been aroused by the fact that the door of Mrs Bedo's
cabin was locked, and that she had not been seen since the previous
day.

Mrs Bedo was the only first-class lady passenger on the Leichardt.

Three men stood close to her cabin door. These were Captain Cass, the
captain of the Leichardt; the ship's doctor, and Mr Elias Bedo, the
lady's husband. Just behind these three, leaning on the back of a
chair which was fixed to the cabin table, stood another man evidently
interested in the matter, but as evidently, having no official claim
to such interest. This man was a big Dane, tall, muscular, and
determined-looking, with a short fair beard and moustache, high cheek-
bones, and extremely clear, brilliant, blue eyes. Eric Hansen was his
name, and he was also a first-class passenger. Further, he was a
scientist, bound on a mission of exploration in regard to Australian
fauna, on which he had been dispatched by a learned society in his own
country.

At the other side of the table, opposite the Dane, and apparently
interested too, in the affair of Mrs Bedo's locked door, stood an
Australian black boy in European dress--that is, in a steward's dress
of white linen, with a napkin in his hand; for it had happened that
Kombo, Mr and Mrs Bedo's aboriginal servant, had, with the permission
of his master and mistress, taken the place of a Chinese boy,
temporarily disabled by a malarial fever. These people were at the
upper end of the saloon, near which was Mrs Bedo's cabin. At the lower
end, the remaining passengers, with the purser and another steward,
had congregated. The passengers were few; a Javanese shipping agent, a
Catholic priest, a person connected with telegraphs, and two or three
bushmen on their way back from Singapore or Europe, as the case might
be. These were all waiting, with gaping mouths and open eyes, for the
tragedy which they imagined would be disclosed. For it was openly
suspected on board, that Mrs Bedo disliked and feared her husband.

Mr Bedo had been knocking violently at the cabin door, but no answer
was returned. He was a coarse, powerful person, with an ill-featured
face, a sinewy throat, and great, brawny hands. He had started in life
as a bullock--driver and was now a rich man, having struck gold in the
early days of Charters Towers Diggings--before, indeed, Charters
Towers had become officially established.

"Something must have happened," said the doctor. "Hadn't we better--
?" and he waited, looking at the Captain.

"There's nothing for it but to break open the door," said Captain
Cass.

"Try it, Mr Bedo."

Elias Bedo put his huge shoulders against the wooden panelling, and
as the Captain moved aside, the big Dane stepped forward, and laid his
shoulders--smaller, but even more powerful than Bedo's--also against
the white door. There was a crash; the door fell inward, and Bedo
entered, the Captain following.

The Dane had drawn back again, and the doctor, about to follow,
paused, seeing that Captain Cass pushed back the door, and drew the
curtain within, across the opening.

Every word, however, uttered within the cabin could be heard by those
immediately outside.

A coarse oath broke from Mr Bedo's lips.

"--She's gone."

"What do you mean?" said the Captain, in the sharp tone of alarm
which heralds calamity.

"Can't you see?" cried the husband, in a voice more infuriated than
despair-stricken. "I've always told you that those window-ports are
dangerous. It would be nothing for a thin man, let alone a girl, to
creep through that one. Damn her! I was a fool to let her have a cabin
to herself. She has gone overboard, and swum ashore."

"That's impossible," said the Captain, curtly.

"How is it impossible?" said the husband. "Anne Marley was a northern
girl, born and bred on the sea-coast. She knows every sort of water
dodge, and can swim like a fish."

"That may be," replied the Captain, "but Mrs Bedo has been three
years in England, and must be out of practice in swimming. And why--?"
The Captain paused dramatically, and straightly eyed Elias Bedo. "Why,
Mr Bedo, should your wife risk her life in swimming ashore? Was it
because she wanted to get away from you?"

Elias Bedo scowled for a moment, and did not speak.

"Well," he said presently, "I suppose that most of the chaps on board
have noticed that my wife is a bit cracky--a shingle loose, as we say
in the Bush." He looked shiftily at the Captain, who made no reply.
For he, as well as others on board, had remarked Mrs Bedo's silent,
solitary ways, and had thought her a little eccentric, though everyone
had attributed what was odd and unsociable in her manner to her
obvious unhappiness. Mr Bedo went on, "I don't mean that her being
queer, as you may say, is anything to her discredit. Women get like
that sometimes, and it passes. I've had doctors' advice, and that's
what I was told. It made no difference to me, except that I've known I
must look after her. And that's why I say that I was a damned fool to
let her have a cabin to herself. It was your doing, Cass; she got
round you, and if harm has come to her, you'll have to answer for it."
He turned furiously to the Captain, who met his angry gaze with
unabashed eyes, making a little jerky movement of his chin.

"Very well," said the Captain, "I'm quite ready to answer for my
share in the business, which is simple enough. When I have one lady
passenger, and more cabins than are wanted, I naturally give the lady
her choice. Mrs Bedo asked for a cabin on the cool side of the ship,
and I gave it her. It was the only amends I could make for letting
that rascally Chinaman cheat me at Singapore, so that we were put on
short commons with the ice. But abusing me, Mr Bedo, won't help you to
find your wife. She's on this ship, or she isn't; and if she is,
there's no need for you to suppose she isn't."

Silence followed, except for the noise of pulled out drawers, and
the metallic sound of curtains being drawn along brass rods, which
proclaimed to those outside, that Mr Bedo was searching the cabin lest
his wife should lie concealed in berth or locker. After a few moments,
the Captain was heard again.

"There's another thing you've got to think of. Suppose that Mrs Bedo
does swim like a fish, and is up to every water dodge, as you tell
me--I'm not gain-saying it, for I know what a coast-bred girl can do--
how is that going to help her against the sharks? And even if she did
the distance safely, there are the Blacks. Mrs Bedo is a northern
girl, and must have heard something of what the Blacks are, up on this
coast."

"Cannibals," put in the doctor, who, unable to restrain himself, had
drawn the outer curtain and pushed in the door. He stood on the
threshold, and through the rift in the curtain, the Dane's face could
be seen with an expression upon it of horror and perplexity; while
beyond, showed the black boy, with a look upon his countenance half
terror, half satisfaction, which to Eric Hansen, turning suddenly, and
thus coming within view of Kombo, was incomprehensible.

"Come," said the Captain, "it's nonsense to take it for granted that
Mrs Bedo must have thrown herself overboard, because she isn't in her
cabin. I'll talk to the stewardess, and have the ship searched
immediately."

He went out into the saloon, followed by the doctor, leaving Elias
Bedo within the cabin, and the Dane on its threshold, between the
parted folds of the curtain that screened the doorway. The stewardess,
who had come up from her own quarters, was standing beside Kombo, the
black boy; and to her the Captain addressed himself.

Her answers to his questions were clear enough. Mrs Bedo had gone
into her cabin the afternoon before, complaining of a headache, and
requesting that she should not be disturbed. The stewardess had
nothing to do with taking in her dinner, but she had brought the early
morning tea to the cabin door. Finding it locked, she had gone away,
expecting to be summoned by--and-by. Mrs Bedo, however, had not rung
her bell, and had not taken her bath as usual that morning. The
stewardess went on to say that she had again gone to the cabin door,
but still finding it locked, supposed that Mrs Bedo had had a bad
night and was sleeping late. Mrs Bedo had often had bad nights, and
several times had desired that she should not be awakened till she
rang.

Kombo was questioned as to when he had last seen his mistress, and
hesitated a moment, but answered explicitly.

"Mine been take dinner last night to Missa Anne, but that fellow no
want to eat, and I believe Missa Anne cobbon sick like-it cobra."

Kombo made a melodramatic gesture, pressing both hands upon his
woolly head. In speaking of his mistress, Kombo, who had known her
from a child, never said Mrs Bedo, but always Missa Anne, "Missa"
being, in the Australian blacks' vocabulary, the feminine of Massa as
a prefix to the Christian name.

"And where did Mrs Bedo take breakfast?" the Captain went on.

"Mine no see Missa Anne at breakfast," said Kombo. "Mine wait--give
Massa breakfast, but Missa Anne no come. Mine tell Massa, Missa Anne
plenty sleepy, and no like me to make her jump up."

Captain Cass left the saloon, giving orders that every part of the
vessel should be searched, though, as the stewardess remarked, there
wasn't much sense in that, for it was not likely that Mrs Bedo would
hide herself in the hold. The general opinion inclined to suicide, and
there was much excited whispering amongst the passengers, who now
followed the Captain on deck, leaving the saloon almost empty. Elias
Bedo remained, still examining his wife's cabin, and Eric Hansen, the
Dane, watched him from the doorway.



Chapter II--Cannibals or Sharks?



THE cabin was fairly large, considering the size of the steamer. It
had two berths--the top one having been occupied by Mrs Bedo for the
sake of coolness--and a cushioned bunk with drawers beneath, set under
the square porthole. In these smooth seas the heavy dead-lights had
been fastened back, leaving an aperture through which might be seen
the glassy sea, the Australian shore, and maybe a coral island, with
clumps of feathery palms, uprising from the blue. This window was, as
Mr Bedo had said, wide enough for a thin man, and certainly a slim
woman, to slip through into the sea.

Could it be possible that a girl of scarcely twenty--a bride of four
months--had been driven to so desperate a strait as to choose death,
or take the chance of life among sharks and cannibals, in order to
escape from a loathed bondage? He--Eric Hansen--knew what the Captain
and passengers only suspected, that Anne Bedo detested the man she had
married. And was it wonderful? The greater marvel seemed that she had
married him at all.

Eric Hansen gave a shudder as he watched the exbullock driver turn
over certain dainty properties his wife had left in the locker and on
the shelves and hooks; pretty garments and feminine odds and ends, and
finally a soft leather desk with folding cover, that lay at one end of
the bunk. An involuntary exclamation escaped Hansen's lips. Mr Bedo
turned and confronted the Dane, but he was too agitated to speak.

"Can I be of any service?" asked Hansen, commanding himself with an
effort. Bedo took no notice of the offer. His eye had been caught by a
large square sheet of paper written upon and half folded, that lay
upon the open blotting-pad of the desk, from which the leather cover
had fallen back. It seemed as though the pen had dropped upon the
paper, for there was a blot of ink after the last word. The pen,
Hansen noticed, stuck up endways between the red cushion of the bunk
and the vessel's side. No doubt, in shaking the garments, which hung
on a row of pegs above the bunk, Mr Bedo had displaced the writing-
case and caused it to close.

He took up the sheet of paper and held it before him, staring in a
stupefied manner at the words traced upon it in a decided and legible
hand. He stood with his face to the window, and Hansen, moved by some
strange impulse, stepped across the doorway, and read Anne Bedo's
unfinished letter over her husband's shoulder.

It was dated in the ordinary way from the S.S. Leichardt, near
Cooktown, on the previous day, but had evidently been written during
the night. The letter began:--

"My own Mother.

"The moon is shining through my cabin window, a full moon nearly,
with just a little kink in the round, that makes me think of your
dear, thin cheeks. I seem to see your loving eyes looking out of the
moon and asking me things; sad things, dearie, that we mustn't think
about. But oh! I long to lay my poor head on your breast and to feel
your arms round me, and to look up into your sweet eyes which I saved.
Ah! thank God for that!

"Mother, I know the sort of things you'd want me to tell you, and
what your first question would be. Well, I'll answer it. Yes, I'm
happy, dear, and I'm not sorry about anything. It's `altogether
bujeri' with me, as the Blacks used to say when they had got their
flour and tobacco, and were quite contented with things. I've got my
flour and tobacco, having earned it by a job that's just a little more
complicated than grubbing out stumps on a clearing; and I'm quite
content, so you needn't fret about little Missa Anne any more. I'd do
the same job over again if I was put to it, for the same end. So never
let that thought trouble you, dearie. Besides, you won't miss me so
dreadfully now that Etta is grown up, for she is so much more sensible
and practical than ever I could be. I couldn't do anything but sing,
and not well enough to make any money by it. But never mind, I was
able to buy you back your eyes, and for that to the last day of my
life, I shall praise God, and thank Him with all my heart.

"Yes, I'm happy, dearest. Don't worry about your little Anne.

"Oh! It's good to be back in the old country; and the whiff of the
gum--trees makes a woman of me once more. No, not all the musical
academies of London and Paris could change me from what I am, a Bush
girl to the bones of me. No, not even if that wonderful fairy story
were to come true, and I were really Anne, Baroness Marley, in the
peerage of England, as said that funny old burrower in Church
registers. Have you ever seen him again, and has he found the missing
link in the pedigree? But, of course, it's all nonsense. Mr Bedo told
me he had seen into the matter himself. He said that the man confessed
his evidence had broken down, and that he only wanted to get money out
of poor you and me, who hadn't any to give him.

"Dear, in a few days now, we shall be off the old bay--do you
remember? The shining moon reminds me of those hot nights when we used
to get up and bathe--Etta and I--with the waves rolling in over us,
silver-tipped. And how angry you used to be in the morning, and how
frightened because of the sharks! You always said, you know, that I
had a charmed life. The moon seems to be beckoning to me now. It's
streaming over a little bay so like our own old bay, and I can fancy
that I hear the roll of surf on the sand. No, I'm silly; it's the
water against the steamer's side. We're not so far off from land,
however. Since rounding Cape Flattery, we've kept close in shore. Now,
I've been standing up and looking out of my window. I can hardly bear
to stay in the cabin; it's like a prison--so hot, and there seem to
come living fumes into it, Chinese and Lascar smells, you know! from
all parts of the steamer. They poison what little air there is. Out
there, where the moon shines, all looks cool and pure and free, and
there's just a ripple on the water; and the moonbeams shake and
stretch out arms as if they were calling me. Why shouldn't I take a
dip?..."

And here the blot had fallen, and the writing ended.

Mr Bedo, absorbed in the letter, appeared quite unaware of the man
standing behind him. He turned the sheet over, staring at the blank
side for a moment or two; then going back, he read the writing again.
When he had finished, he crushed the paper in his hand, and made a
movement as though he were about to throw it out of the window, but
Hansen put out his hand and stopped him.

"You mustn't do that," said the Dane, quietly. "This should be given
into the Captain's charge, in case"--he hesitated, then said
straightly,--"in case there should be need for an inquiry."

Bedo swore again. "What business is it of yours?" he cried.

"None," replied Hansen, "beyond the fact that if an inquiry became
necessary, which I hope most earnestly may not be, I should be
examined as a witness, and should have to give evidence as to the
contents of that letter."

"The letter is a private one, written to her mother," said Bedo. "It
had best be destroyed; there is nothing in it to throw any light upon
the matter."

"I cannot agree with you," said Hansen, quietly; "nor do I think
would Mrs Bedo's mother."

"You prying skunk!" exclaimed Bedo. "Do you dare to own that you have
been so ungentlemanly as to read over my shoulder what my wife wrote
in confidence to her mother?"

"Certainly, I own it," said Hansen. "I will admit also that it was an
ungentlemanly action. Yet I'd maintain that it was justified by
circumstances. But for my having committed it, you would have
destroyed important evidence."

"Do you understand," said Bedo, trying to speak calmly, but shaking
either with anger or fear, "that you are forcing me to make public a
family scandal, which it is best for all parties should be concealed?
My wife was mad, and her words here prove it. All that nonsense about
the moon shows clearly that she must have thrown herself overboard in
a fit of insanity. She required careful watching, and I ought not to
have allowed her to be alone. That is the truth, though for her sake
as well as for my own, I did not want all the world to know it."

"I think I heard you a few minutes ago hinting what you are pleased
to call the truth, pretty broadly to the Captain," said Hansen, drily.
"If there's any family secret, you yourself have already revealed it.
But nothing would make me believe that Mrs Bedo is mad--unhappy, yes,
but not mad."

"And who are you to judge whether my wife was unhappy or mad?"

Hansen shook himself impatiently.

"Good Heavens! Mr Bedo, why should we stand arguing here? Do you care
so little about your wife's fate, that you don't even want to know
whether they are searching the vessel?"

Hansen was leaning over the bunk, his face against the window. Now,
giving a glance outward, he was attracted by something he saw, and
uttered a violent exclamation. He put out his hand, and drew in from
where it had been entangled in a rope used for the fixing of a wind-
sail, a lock of brown hair, which it was easy to recognise as Mrs
Bedo's. He held it up, carefully examining the ends. Mr Bedo, much
agitated, seized it from him, dropping at the same time the paper that
he had crunched in his hand. Hansen stooped and picked it up.

"That is my wife's hair," said Bedo. "Something must have caught it
when she was jumping over, and dragged it out of her head."

"No," answered Hansen, "I see that it is a strand which has been cut;
not dragged out. Mr Bedo, this convinces me that your wife did not
throw herself into the sea upon an hysterical impulse, but that her
escape was planned. No doubt she cut off her hair, thinking it would
hinder her in swimming."

The Captain had come in while the Dane was speaking.

"The Lord pity her then," he said, solemnly. "There's been smoke of
Blacks' fires along the coast, and yesterday, some of the devils were
sighted on the rocks, hurling their spears. But it seems impossible
that she could have got to shore; and to say truth, I'd far rather
that sharks had eaten her than that she should be in the power of
those fiends. Mr Bedo, I'm afraid we must make up our minds to the
worst. The first officer is still with the men searching, but we've
found no trace, and anyhow, it isn't likely we should. I came to tell
you that I must fasten up this cabin. Have you found anything which
could give us a clue?"

Eric Hansen told him of the letter; and Mr Bedo, who seemed too
stupefied for argument, allowed it to be given into the Captain's
hands. The hair, too, was again examined. Clearly, it had been cut
off, but was not, Captain Cass said, in sufficient quantity to be any
proof of intention, as regards the disappearance. Who could say that
Mrs Bedo had not cut off one of her abundant locks for some purpose of
her own, and then thrown it away. Perhaps she had done so by accident,
some days back. For the wind--sail had been taken down at Thursday
Island, and not fixed again.



Chapter III--Elias Bedo's Wife



ALL had been done that could be done on board the Leichardt in order
to make certain of Anne Bedo's fate. People felt that the search was
perfunctory, yet it was faithfully, if unavailingly, carried through;
Kombo, the black servant of the lost woman, being foremost in the
quest.

Mr Bedo, after his first sullen stupefaction, roused himself to a
fury of anxiety, and stormed at Captain Cass and all the ship's
officers, because the Captain refused to man and send off a boat for
the exploration of the coast behind them. It was useless, the Captain
declared, and would be contrary to his duty to his employers and the
Government, whose mail contract he was bound to consider before
everything else. Mr Bedo swore in vain, and at last was left to
solitary indulgence of his grief.

There was less commiseration with him in his loss than might have
seemed natural, for the man--drunken, brutal, and always quarrelsome--
had been endured rather than liked, and all the sympathy of passengers
and crew went out to the unfortunate woman, who, it was believed, had
done away with herself rather than submit to her husband's ill-
treatment.

The men admired her beauty in spite of her silence and reserve, which
they had at first called "stuckupness," not to be expected from little
Anne Marley, whose mother had had to give up her station to pay the
Bank's loan--little Anne, who had gone to Europe to make a name as a
singer, and had woefully failed, and been obliged to marry rough Elias
Bedo for the sake of a home. They had none of them believed in her
voice, till one Sunday, when the Captain held service, she had poured
out her glorious contralto in a hymn. Afterwards, they gave her no
peace till every evening she sang to Eric Hansen's accompaniment on
the old cracked piano in the saloon. Then, by the magic of her voice,
she had carried each man back to scenes on shore--to opera-nights in
Sydney and Melbourne, as she had sung airs from Verdi and Rossini and
Bellini, and even from Gluck's "Orpheus"; then to nigger-minstrel
entertainments, which the sailors loved best of all, when she had
given them "'Way down upon the Swannee River," and "Hard Times come
again no more," and "John Brown," and the rest of those quaint
plantation melodies.

By-and-by, Elias Bedo betook himself to his cabin in company of a
bottle of brandy; and when the steamer reached Cooktown that night, he
was incapable of even speaking to the Police Magistrate. This official
spent some time of the two or three hours during which the Leichardt
discharged and took up lading, in consultation over the affair. It was
midnight when the Leichardt entered the estuary of the Endeavour
River, and passed into the shadow of Grassy Hill, which overlooks
Cooktown harbour. The sky had clouded over; a drizzle threatened, and
the moon was quite obscured. Only a few kerosene lamps illuminated the
darkness of the sheds, and of that part of the wharf where cargo was
being unloaded. A few steerage passengers, mainly Orientals,
disembarked at this port, and here, Kombo, the black boy, left Mr
Bedo's service, having at Thursday Island announced his intention of
seeking his tribe in order to see what had become of his father and
mother, and, as he put it, "all that fellow brudder and sister
belonging to me."

Eric Hansen, on deck, saw him staggering along the plank with an
enormous swag on his back, and a young Lascar hanging on behind him,
but soon lost sight of the two behind the low sheds which lined the
quay. Hansen was sorry that the black boy had gone, and wondered that
he should care to go back to the Bush; but Kombo, though he was well
tamed, having been taken young from his tribe, and though he had had
three years' experience of domestic service with his mistress in
England, gave an example of that savage leaven which somehow or other
must assert itself in the Australian native. So Hansen knew that once
Kombo had got past the hills behind Cooktown, he would cast off the
garments of civilisation and relapse into his original condition of
barbarism. The explorer had offered, if he would wait, to give him a
place in his own pioneering expedition which was to start from a
little further south; but Kombo, with "Mine very sorry, Massa, but
mine like to stop one two moon before I go again long-a white man,"
had shaken his head and refused the offer. Hansen was disappointed,
for he intended to study the northern natives as well as the northern
fauna of Australia, and had been getting what information he could out
of Kombo, whose tribe was one dwelling inland of Cooktown. It was in
his talks with the black boy that he had come into more intimate
companionship with Mrs Bedo--curiously intimate, considering a certain
half savage, half timid reticence which she showed to almost all on
board. She rarely spoke at meals except a word or two to the Captain,
beside whom she sat. When the weather was fine and comparatively cool,
she would spend much time in her cabin; but in the afternoons, she
would usually sit on deck, and there, Kombo would bring her tea, and
sometimes stay to have a little conversation with his mistress. Then
it would seem to Hansen that she was like some wild, shy creature,
brought in from her native forests, and permitted to hold occasional
converse with a domesticated inhabitant of her own land. For it was
only, he felt, as her face lighted up in talk with Kombo, that he saw
the girl as she really was--as she might have been, freed from the
galling yoke of an uncongenial marriage. On one of these occasions,
when Kombo lingered after bringing her tea, Hansen, walking past, was
struck by the animation with which she spoke to her black servant in
his own language. The conversation, after the first minute or two, had
not seemed to be of a private nature, and presently Hansen drew near,
and begged for a translation of some of the words, over which Mrs Bedo
was now laughing with unrestrained pleasure. It appeared that they
related to certain adventures among the Blacks, which she and Kombo
were recalling, in which the girl had played the part of some native
deity.

Hansen then unfolded to her his own projects, and his desire to
become more intimately acquainted with the language and customs of the
Australian Aborigines.

He now learned that Mrs Bedo had been a Bush girl herself, and had
lived a little lower down on this very coast till, when she was
seventeen, the Bank had, as she expressed it, "come down upon the
station," fore--closing a mortgage, and had turned them out. Her
mother, who was in bad health and in danger of losing her sight, had
gladly accepted the offer of a free passage from the Rockhampton
branch of the Eastern and Australasian Steamship Company, and had,
with her two daughters, gone to live in England. In those seventeen
years of girlhood, Anne Bedo said she had learned the dialect of two
native tribes, and now, she told him, was practising the language to
see if she had forgotten it.

Hansen, as his mind went back to the occurrence, remembered with what
a start she had answered his first question, and how eagerly she had
asked him if he understood what she had been saying. He remembered,
too, how sadly and earnestly she had been talking some little time
before he had ventured to interrupt her, and he wondered whether she
had been confiding her sorrows to this sympathetic black friend.

That episode took place after he had been on the boat about a week--
he had joined it at Singapore--so that he had really known her for a
very short time. Yet it seemed to him that those two or three weeks
might have been years, so great was the interest with which she had
inspired him. He felt that he understood her--her girlish innocence,
her quenched gaiety, so ready to break out when the burden of her
husband's presence was lifted--her misery, and her proud reserve--as
he had never understood any other woman; and more than once it had
occurred to him that were she free and he less wedded to natural
science and a roving life, he would have chosen her beyond all other
women he knew for his wife. But she was married, and he, even had she
been free, was one not given to romantic dreams. So he had put away
the vague fancy--not because of the wrong of it--for, indeed, he
sometimes thought that the man who delivered her from so coarse a
creature as Elias Bedo, would be doing an action worthy of
commendation--but rather because he was the trusted servant of a
scientific society, and had planned for himself an interesting two
years' work, in which there was no place for sentiment concerning a
woman.

He had found out her misery the day after joining the steamer, not
through any confidence of hers, but by the accident that his cabin
adjoined that one occupied by Mr Bedo and his wife. This was before
Mrs Bedo, a few days after the landing of some other passengers at
Singapore, had ventured to petition the Captain for a cabin to
herself. Partitions on a steamer are thin, and ventilators admit sound
as well as air. Hansen had heard Bedo swear at his wife, and reproach
her for what he was pleased to term her imbecile obstinacy, in terms
opprobious and embarrassing to the involuntary listener. He had heard
also Mrs Bedo's sobs and pathetic remonstrances to the man she had so
unwisely married. Hansen had the impulse to rush in and denounce the
persecutor, but thought better of it; and after the second occurrence,
went to the Captain and frankly stated his reason for desiring a
change of quarters. Then he found that Mrs Bedo had been before him;
and as the only desirable cabin had been allotted to her, Hansen
withdrew his claim and remained where he was, suffering no further
disquietude except from Bedo's drunken snores.

He thought of Anne Bedo all through that dreary day, during which the
boat steamed down along the coast towards Cooktown. The notes of a
song she had sung the last time he had heard her sing, haunted him
through the hours--Che faro senza Eurydice--the most heart-thrilling
wail of bereavement which ever musician penned or songstress breathed.
He, too, felt almost as Orpheus might have felt in seeing his love
lifeless, her soul dragged down to the pit. His own Eurydice, it
seemed, had been torn from him by the cruel teeth of the monsters of
the deep. He sat on deck, trying to read, and so occupy his thoughts,
which, in spite of himself, would stray among visions of horror, and
all the while, his eyes, unconsciously lifting, gazed out on the blue
seas dotted with coral islands, or inland to the treacherous
Australian coast. Where was she? He shuddered as he asked himself the
question, recalling Captain Cass's words. Oh! that she had died
without lengthened agony. Better, in truth, a shark for the slayer,
than that she should become a prisoner among the Blacks.

A strange hush had fallen upon the vessel since Tragedy had brushed
it with her wings. All that day the sailors went silently about their
work; the meals were gravely served; none of the passengers seemed
inclined to talk. During the long hours between the event of the
morning, and the entrance into the mouth of the Endeavour River, which
is the harbour of Cooktown, and, indeed, during many perplexed hours
later, Eric Hansen brooded mournfully over his brief acquaintanceship
with Anne Bedo.



Chapter IV--Black Boy and Lascar



A BLACK boy and a young Lascar were trudging along a rough track in
the Bush, some distance from the coast,--a track that could hardly be
called a road; it had been made by the wool-drays coming in from a
far-off Western station. The traffic was at all times small, and now
the way seemed lonely and quite deserted, for the shearing season had
barely begun, therefore the ruts and bog-holes made by the last
bullock team which had trodden it, had already become grass-grown.

Both black-boy and Lascar were dressed according to their kind, the
latter more fully than is customary among Indians and Malays in
Australia, though his garments were wholly inappropriate to foot
travelling in the Bush, and were torn in many places, stained with
mud, and draggled and limp from the heavy dews. His small, lithe form
was pretty well covered by a voluminous sarong, and only a small
portion of brown ankle showed between it and his boots, while the
upper part of the body was clothed by a sort of tunic in cotton,
beneath the outer muslin drapery, which even hung over his arms. He
wore a muslin turban twisted round his head, set far forward, and with
loose ends, that, from a side view, almost hid his face. He trudged
wearily, with a blue blanket strapped upon his shoulders, which seemed
scarcely large enough for its weight. Indeed, he was so small and
slender as to look hardly more than a child.

The black-boy, larger and more muscular than the ordinary native,
seemed to have been a station hand employed by white men. Round the
open collar of his Crimean shirt was a red handkerchief, neatly folded
sailor-wise, above which his neck showed brawny and black. His
trousers were of good material and cut, though they hung loosely, and
were turned up in a big roll overlapping the tops of the boots. They
had evidently been made for a gentleman, and indeed, any one
acquainted with the wardrobe of Mr Elias Bedo might have recognised
the garments as having been once his property. They were held up by a
strap, from which hung several pouches, a knife, a tomahawk, and
sundry articles of miscellaneous use. Round his Jim Crow hat a
puggaree was twisted, and he bore on his back a very large swag.

The two had just struck the main road, having made their way across
country, through scrub and over creeks, to a point whence a small
digging township might be reached without difficulty. The direct dray
road to this township branched off some distance back, but, from the
present point, the diggings lay as at the apex of a triangle, and a
miner's rude track led to it through the Bush. Presently, on the crest
of a ridge in front of them, the black boy's quick eyes discerned two
or three men on foot, also humping their swags. He knew that they were
probably diggers, and this was the signal for him to call to his
companion, who lagged a little, and to strike sideways into the Bush.
They soon got behind another low ridge, and walked on in the direction
they wished to go, but out of sight of the track. By-and-by, the black
boy stopped, looked up at the sun, and peered around. Then he laid
down his pack, while he made certain observations usual with the
Australian native when he is not quite sure of his whereabouts.
Presently, he gave a click of satisfaction with his tongue and teeth,
and re--shouldered his swag, beckoning to the Lascar.

"That all right. Mine soon find--im old sheep-station, I b'lieve.
Come along now; we go look for water-hole."

The Lascar, who had sunk down upon a log, and was idly plucking and
smelling some gum-leaves from a young shoot which sprouted near, rose,
and again followed the native guide.

"That all right," the black repeated. "Mine think-it we sit down
along-a shepherd's humpey very soon now."

The Lascar nodded and smiled, and trudged on again with a springier
step than before.

They went silently through a stretch of gum-forest, wild and utterly
dreary. The great uncouth trees rose above them, stretching overhead a
latticework of stems, vertical rather than horizontal, and giving
little shade. The limbs of the iron-barks were rough and knotted, with
perhaps a stalactite of gum, red as blood, dropping here and there
from some wound or abrasion on their surface, and were hung with long
withes of green-grey moss that gave them a strange look of hoary
antiquity. The arms of the white gums were smooth and ghostly white.
They had but little foliage, and flapped shreds of pale papery bark
that fell from them like tattered garments. Among the gums, there
might be seen an occasional wattle, long past blossom, or a weird-
looking grass-tree with its jaggled tuft of grey--green blades, thin
and unleaflike, and its dark spear as long as the rest of its body.
All was dull green-grey, arid and shadeless, from the thin leaves of
the gum-trees to the tussocks of coarse grass and prickly spinnifex.
These often hurt the bare ankles of the young Lascar, and he would
give a little cry, instantly stifled, and then would tramp bravely on.

The Bush sounds only seemed to intensify the loneliness. It was
getting towards mid-day, and most of the birds were silent. Those that
were awake, had discordant notes, and were mostly of the parrot kind.
They chattered shrilly, their harsh cries rising above the tinny whizz
of myriads of new--fledged locusts, whose cast-off husks made odd
shining blobs on the trunks of the trees. Now and then, the black boy
ahead would call to his mate, and point to where a herd of kangaroos
were disappearing in ungainly bounds through the tangled gum vistas.
Sometimes an iguana would scuttle through the undergrowth, or the boy
would stop and tremble for a moment at the treacherous rustle of a
startled snake.

About dinner-time, the appearance of the country changed, and the
stony ridges, covered chiefly with mournful brigalow scrub, gave place
to a less timbered plain. The sun poured on them as they traversed it,
and more than once the Lascar took a pull at his waterbag. But far in
the distance their goal could be discerned. This was a dim belt of
denser vegetation; and as they came closer, they saw a fringe of
almost tropical greenery--great scrub-trees, and river-palms, and
luxuriant creepers.

Here was the deserted sheep-station of which the black boy had
spoken. It stood on the borders of a plain, close to a water-hole,
which could be seen in a clearing that had been made in a patch of
scrub. The grass upon the old sheep-yard was bright-green; there were
still some straggling pumpkin plants, and a rosella shrub almost
choked with weeds. Broken hurdles lay around, and close to the
clearing was a dilapidated hut. The travellers made their way through
vines and weeds, and entered the hut by an aperture, where the slab
door hung back on broken hinges. Inside was a plank table, nailed to
two stumps set in the earthen floor. Another plank, also supported by
two lower stumps, served as a bench on one side of the table, and a
slab bunk was set opposite against the wall. The Lascar sat down on
the bunk, heaving a weary sigh of satisfaction at having found rest at
last. Then he took off his pack, unrolled the blankets, and spread
them on the bunk, making a bed on which he stretched himself. The
black boy undid his swag too--it was much larger and heavier--and
seated himself on the table, grinning benevolently at his companion.

"Bujeri you, Missa Anne!"--the Blacks' commendatory formula. "Ba'al
mine think-it you able to walk that long way. You very fine boy, Missa
Anne." And Kombo gave a peal of laughter as he eyed the transformed
woman.

Anne laughed too. In their keen sense of humour, she and Kombo were
at one. It is the redeeming quality of even the most demoralised
township black. She tore off the bespattered turban which had covered
her head, and showed a short crop of soft hair--dark, but not dark
enough to accord with her pretended nationality. Never did Singalese
or Malay possess locks so fine and feathery. There did not now seem
much of the Lascar in the little brown face, oval of shape, with its
delicate aquiline nose, its small, pointed chin, and pretty, finely-
curved lips. The eyes were dark-brown, very velvety, with curly lashes
and straight, pencilled brows. Only in the hue of her skin, was the
girl a Lascar; and how Anne Bedo had contrived, during the hours of
her last night on the steamer, to stain herself the colour of a half-
caste, was a mystery only known to herself and to Kombo, who had got
the materials from a black medicine man in Thursday Island.

The girl's white teeth shone, as she laughed, between her red lips.
Her weariness seemed to have gone; at this moment she only thought of
the liberty bought, it seemed to her, so easily. For Anne Marley, in
her Bush girlhood, had loved adventure, had been familiar with the
Blacks and their ways, had known Kombo since her tenth year, and now
alone with him in the wilds, felt no fear.

She got up from the bunk and looked down at her soiled muslin
draperies--so unsuited to the life she had been leading during the
last few days--and at the tattered sarong, between the rents of which
a woman's longcloth under-petticoat could be seen. She put out her
slender feet, cased in laced boots, which had been originally made for
them, and therefore had not galled the poor little stockingless
extremities. She contemplated ruefully the scratches on her ankles,
over which the blood had dried and caked with the dust of the Bush,
and gave a very feminine shudder.

"Kombo, I'm dreadfully dirty. I want to bathe. Find me a place in the
water-hole where I can have a swim."

Kombo shook his head. "Mine think-it alligator sit down there, Missa
Anne."

The girl shuddered again.

"Well, let us have something to eat first. We'll see what the place
is like when we go to get water for the billy. Now let us find some
sticks and make a fire. Quick--Murra, make haste, Kombo. Poor fellow
me plenty hungry. Give me the ration bags. Go cut me a sheet of bark,
and I'll make a damper on it."

Kombo unstrapped his swag, which turned out to be two separate
bundles, each rolled in a blanket, and both together enclosed in
another blanket. From the dirtiest of the two--that which presumably
held his own property--he produced some ration bags containing flour,
tea, and sugar. These he set on the table, and then unfastened a
blackened billy, and two pint pots which hung at his waist.

Anne laid hands on the other bundle, and carrying it to the bunk,
undid it, gloating, like the girl she was, over certain feminine
appurtenances, to which for several days she had been a stranger.
Certainly, she had combed her short hair and washed her face, but that
was the only sort of toilet she had made. Their one idea had been to
push on, in order that as much ground as possible might lie between
them and the possibility of re--capture. So they had slept but for an
hour or two at a time, for the first day and night, and had only
breathed freely since yesterday. A bundle of pocket-handkerchiefs, a
change of linen, a grey riding-skirt and jacket, with a crushable cap,
a few toilet requisites, pencils and paper, needles and cottons, and
some other necessaries, made up all the baggage which Anne Bedo had
brought away from the steamer. It had not been easy to take more, and
even now she dreaded lest her husband should discover that the
garments were missing, and so guess that she had planned her escape.
Round her neck, beneath her tunic, she wore a locket containing the
portraits of her mother and sister, and also a little bag in which was
all her worldly wealth in the way of money.

Kombo went out to find sticks, and make a fire in the bark lean-to
which the shepherd had used for a kitchen. Anne lingered in the hut.
She had taken a little note-book out of her pack, in which were a few
entries--the date of their departure from England, an address or two,
and the list of her boxes on the steamer. The last entry had been a
memorandum concerning prices of cattle which her husband had desired
her to make on Thursday Island. The sight of it brought home to her
the reality of her present situation. She turned the page, and, with
the pencil attached to the book, scribbled sentences one after the
other, with no regard to composition, as a mere vent for the wild joy
that possessed her in the thought that she was safe from Elias Bedo,
and free henceforward to live her own life.

"Anne Marley, escaped from bondage, rejoices in her liberty."

"Better death in the wild woods than life in chains."

"Anne Marley hails Nature, the emancipator."

"How sweet is the taste of freedom! How intoxicating the joy of
deliverance!"

And so on, till the page was covered. Anne looked at her scribblings
with the naughty pleasure of a child which has amused itself out of
school hours by scrawling over a clean copy-book. It was a very silly
ebullition of feeling, which she had cause to regret later.



Chapter V--The Shepherd's Hut



THE crackling of burning sticks recalled Anne to the fact that she
was hungry, and going outside she saw a heap of dry gum-twigs making a
blaze, which the sun robbed of its redness. Kombo was fanning the fire
with his hat, and there would soon be a bed of ashes ready for the
damper. Now, Kombo attacked a young gum-tree with his tomahawk, and in
a minute or two had cut a sheet of fresh bark, on which Anne heaped
flour from one of the ration bags. Water was needed for the mixing,
and, searching the hut, she found a battered zinc pail under the bunk,
which she gave Kombo to carry, and taking herself the billy and pint-
pots, they proceeded down the clearing to the water-hole. This was not
so easy a matter; for though the big trees had been cut, and lay
tilted against others in the scrub on either side, lawyer palms had
grown round them and hung their prickly canes over the path where
ferns and undergrowth spread also, making progress difficult. How
strange it seemed to Anne to be again treading warily for fear of
snakes! This little bit of scrub was a delight, for it was more
luxuriant than those she knew further south, and had tropical plants
unfamiliar to her. She espied a tall tree on which grew a purple fruit
like a plum, and Kombo climbed up to gather it, telling her, when he
presented it to her, that it was very good. The water-hole they found
was one of a series connected by the dry bed of a creek which had not
for some time been flooded. It was dark and slimy looking, with muddy
banks and rotting vegetation. A dead log lay half in and half out of
the pool, and round it, grew a bed of poisonous-looking plants with
large fleshy leaves like those of the arum. At the other end, also
half in the water, lay a brown object which Anne thought at first was
another log, but suddenly it moved, turned over, showing the pale
underside of a hideous jaw, and she perceived that it was a crocodile.
Kombo pointed to it.

"Mine tell Missa Anne that Yamin sit down like-it water-hole," he
said, using the native term for the Saurian. The muddy bank, the slime
of weeds, and dread of alligators, made it not pleasant to dip up
water from the hole. Kombo poked about among the palms and ferns on
the bank, and presently found a wide, shallow trough which had, no
doubt, been dug out by the shepherd who had once lived at this sheep-
station. From this they filled the bucket and billy, and here, Anne
decided, that she would take her bath when the meal was over.

A scanty repast it would have been of new-made damper and tea, had
not Kombo, plunging further into the scrub, discovered the mound of a
scrub turkey, and brought back from it four of the bird's large eggs,
one of which is almost sufficient for a meal. Two were laid on the
ashes and baked. One had in it a young chicken that Kombo ate with
gusto; the other was fresh, and Anne thought she had never tasted
anything so delicious. When they had finished, Kombo put out the fire,
covering it with dead leaves lest there should be Blacks near, whose
attention might be attracted by the flame. This, however, was hardly
likely. The deserted sheep-station was near the little digging
township, as Kombo knew, for he had travelled past it with cattle on
their way to a station called Kooloola. It was hoped that he might
procure at this township a couple of horses, or even one that could be
ridden, also provisions to last them through their journey. He knew
the way to the diggings, and calculated upon getting there and back
before nightfall. Now came a difficulty which had not been solved in
Anne's talks with the black boy on the road. Should she accompany
Kombo to the township, or would it be best that she should remain
hidden in the hut? Anne, who was leader of the expedition, decided
without deep pondering that she would remain. She was afraid to trust
herself among white men, whose sharp eyes would perhaps pierce her
disguise, and who would possibly carry news of her south, that might
reach her husband. Strange as it may seem, she was not greatly
affrighted at being left alone in the wilderness. She knew that there
were no wild beasts in the bush that could possibly harm her, and
crocodiles could not crawl up through the scrub to the hut to attack
her. The most serious question in her mind was whether she might rely
on Kombo. His fidelity she had proved, and could not doubt, but were
he persuaded to drink at the grog shanty, there was no knowing when he
might return.

Kombo, however, swore that no blandishments should entice him into
the bar, or that were he compelled as a matter of business to enter
it, no grog should pass his lips. Anne was obliged to be content with
his promise. Never yet had she known him break his word when it had
been given to her. In relation to other persons, Kombo's sense of
honour was by no means binding, but between him and his young mistress
there had always been the strangest affinity. It had been a puzzle to
Anne herself; it was a puzzle also to the bushmen who knew of it, and
who had no experience of so deep an attachment between black boy and
white woman.

Anne untied the little bag she wore beneath her tunic, and taking
out of it three five-pound notes, bade the boy use them to the best
advantage. She had quickly thought the matter out, and now gave Kombo
his instructions. He was first to buy food at the chief store in the
township, and there to ask where he could best get a couple of horses.
He was not to pay more than five pounds apiece for them, and if he
could not find two for sale at that price, he was to get one; and also
some sort of saddle, if it were possible to pick one up cheap.
Supposing, as the chances were, that he could not get the horses that
day, he was to come back, and go in again on the morrow, but he was
not to say where he had left his mate. His story, if he were
questioned, must be that he and his mate--a half-caste boy--were
engaged to help muster at Kooloola, Mrs Duncan's station, some hundred
miles further north, and that as time pressed, they did not want to do
the journey on foot. The notes, he might say, were his wages which had
accumulated from his last employer.

Kombo, like all Australian black boys, revelled in playing a part. He
proceeded to set forth his views.

"Mine think-it Missa Anne make very good black boy," he said. "I go
along and buy shirt and trouser long-a store, same as black boy. My
word! Missa Anne bujeri boy!" and Kombo went off in peals of laughter.
"But mine think-it no good for ole Missa Duncan to see Missa Anne
like-it black boy," he continued, and meditated for a moment. "Never
mind, mine make-im all right. We stop close-up lagoon, outside fence
at Kooloola, and Missa Anne put on white Mary's skirt. Then ole Missa
Duncan no make-it noise first time. By-'m-by, Missa Anne tell ole
Missus what for that fellow make-im black. That no matter. Very soon,
Missa Anne come altogether white again."

Anne laughed too. She had forgotten she was brown. Her first idea had
been that she would put on her grey riding-suit as soon as the black
boy had departed. Second thoughts now showed her the prudence of
Kombo's suggestion. She knew the Blacks' language well enough to find
no difficulty in passing as a half-caste boy; and should they meet
diggers or stock-men by the way, she would certainly be thus less
likely to arouse suspicion. Besides, she could more easily ride in
man's dress, for it was not likely that Kombo would be able to buy a
side-saddle at the diggings. That in itself would cause remark. Often
in the bush, she had ridden on men's saddles, and even bare-back, and
had therefore no qualms on that account. So they settled that a
Crimean shirt and trousers of the smallest size procurable, were, in
the first instance, with rations, to be got out of the fifteen pounds.
As to horses and saddles, it was doubtful whether the money would run
to all these requirements. She had another five-pound note, but this
she had resolved to keep in case of emergency; and it was a relief to
her when Kombo proudly brought forth two other notes, describing how
he had made Mr Bedo pay him at Thursday Island, and how he had there
cashed his master's cheque. Kombo said he would buy his own horse out
of his own money, and hinted darkly that if horses were not for sale
at the diggings, he might be able to steal one.

Soon the black boy had disappeared among the gum-trees along the belt
of scrub. He had only to follow the river bed to arrive in due time at
the township; and, alone and unburdened, he could go much faster than
when the heavy pack had impeded him, and Anne had been dragging more
slowly behind.

Anne was alone. This she did not mind in the least; indeed, there was
joy in the thought. She had always as a child loved wandering by
herself in the bush. Once she had got lost, and had been out all
night, finding her way back the next day according to the methods of
the Blacks. She knew exactly how to trace down a gully, or follow a
river from its heads, and how to steer herself by the lay of the
country, and by the sun and stars. Many a time, too, had she chopped a
'possum out of a log, and unearthed a bandicoot from its hole at the
foot of a tree. She wished now that she could find a bandicoot, or if
she dared use her little revolver, to shoot some bird by the water-
hole.

She had kept her possession of a revolver a secret, and had not shown
it to Kombo. It was a tiny pistol which she concealed beneath her
sarong--a toy that her husband had given her. He knew what a good shot
she was, and she had asked for the pretty little weapon lying on the
counter in its open case, which she had noticed when Mr Bedo was
buying a gun to take out to Australia.

She had had scruples about carrying off this present of his, but some
instinct had told her that it would be well for her to possess it;
well also, that she should not make Kombo aware of her possession of
it. Brave and lighthearted as she was, Anne Bedo knew well enough to
what dangers a woman might be exposed in the Bush. So she had hidden
the pistol and cartridges belonging to it about her person, before
that early dawn, when Kombo had fetched her from her cabin to the
locker in the stewards' quarters where he had hidden her, and where
the search party had never dreamed of looking. Anne had then thought
vaguely, that were they to discover her, she would shoot herself
rather than go back to her husband.

Thinking over that eventful night and day, she wondered whether it
had been found out that she had left the cabin door locked on the
outside, and whether they had missed the revolver case, which she had
thrown into the sea. She thought, too, of the letter she had left
behind, speculating as to the impression it had made on her husband,
and those who had read it. When she had begun to write, her intention
was merely to finish it and give it to Kombo for the post. But in
writing the last paragraph, she had suddenly reflected that by wording
it in a particular way and leaving the letter unfinished, it might
lead to the conclusion that she had, in a fit of mental aberration,
thrown herself into the sea.

Anne put the revolver and cartridges away again, and went down the
clearing to the dug-out pool in which she had thought of bathing. She
peered carefully round to make sure that there was no horrible Ymain
lying in wait for her. The only crocodiles with which she had as yet
been acquainted were the "bimbies," as the Blacks called them, which
are a smaller kind, and comparatively harmless; but even those had
filled her with terror, though she had eaten their eggs in the Blacks'
camp. She seemed safe, however, from spectators, either human or
animal, except, maybe, a stray wallabi or a `possum in a hollow log;
and the birds which, now that that mid-day had past, were beginning to
find voice. The strange "miawing" note of the cat-bird, the shrill
call of the bower-bird, the plaintive coo of the scrub pigeon fell
upon her ear, and another note that she had never heard--a very
nightingale-roulade--which, under her breath, she tried to give back
again. In old days, she had known how to reproduce the note of every
Bush bird, and the temptation was too keen to be resisted. After one
or two attempts she got the cry right, for the bird answered her back.
Her courage rose; the rich voice swelled louder and fuller. The birds
who at first had piped in response, held affrighted silence: they
fancied that a strange, invisible songster had risen among them.

The girl laughed in almost elfish merriment. It seemed to her that,
after long and weary banishment, she had once more found her home in
her native forests, and felt herself akin even with the wild things
which inhabited them. In truth, as she had herself said, Anne was a
Bush girl to the very bones of her, and now was no more afraid in her
own wild woods, than might have been Daphne before Apollo pursued her.

A very nymph she appeared as her garments fell, revealing her small
form in all the grace of its early womanhood. She had not taken so
much pains in staining herself where her clothes covered her, and
below her breasts, to her knees, the colour of her skin was merely
pale olive. Her face, shoulders, arms, and ankles were much darker,
and she was almost afraid to wash them lest the dye should be removed.
But Kombo had been right in his assurance of its efficacy. She might
have been just a little fairer when she came out of the pool, but that
was all.

As she dressed, the roaring of an alligator frightened her, and she
went quickly back to the hut. Now that the excitement and strain of
her flight were relaxed, she felt extremely weary, and her eyelids
drooped heavily, for she had not slept much for many nights past. She
spread her blankets on the slabs of the bunk, and, making a pillow for
her head with her grey skirt, fell into a deep sleep which lasted for
hours.



Chapter VI--Kombo the Cavalier



ANNE'S scheme of escape had been carefully thought out during the
night-watches on board the Leichardt, after she had told Kombo of her
determination to leave her husband. She had not come lightly to this
determination; and it is but justice to her to say that, much as she
feared and hated the man she had married, she would have remained in
servitude had she not become aware that every law, human as well as
moral, justified her in freeing herself. Therefore she had appealed to
the only friend she had, capable of helping her--the black boy. And in
truth Kombo was made of heroic stuff, and would not have been
undeserving of honour in the ancient days of chivalry. He had heard
Elias Bedo swear brutally at his beloved mistress, had seen him strike
her in a fit of drunken fury, and there had then come a look upon his
face which convinced Anne that here was her Heaven-sent helper. It is
usual to say that the Australian native is incapable of devotion, and
does not know the meaning of faithfulness. Treacherous as a race they
may seem, but there have been devoted Blacks who have served white
masters to the death. "Jackey," of the explorer Kennedy's expedition,
is one notable example. Kombo in his, as yet, humbler fashion, was
another. Certain it is, that from the time when he had been privileged
to hold Anne Marley's bridle at a bad crossing, to weigh the meat for
her, scrupulous to the fraction of an ounce, when she was giving out
rations, to pilot her on her Bush rides and keep the coast for her
when she and Etta were bathing, Kombo had always been Anne's devoted
slave. The girl's voice had in the first instance captivated him. All
Australian blacks, and especially those of the northern tribes, have
an extraordinary love of melody. Their own musical scale is limited,
and their Corobberee songs mere monotonous repetitions and
compositions of half a dozen notes. But their whole temperament is
peculiarly susceptible to harmonic influences, and their passions can
be soothed or excited to an almost ungovernable degree by a war song,
or one of the ugals with which they exorcise evil spirits. In Kombo's
imagination--and the Blacks are wildly imaginative--Anne Marley's
beautiful contralto stamped her as a being above all other humans,
white or black. He had heard the songs of stockmen and diggers by the
camp fire and had been moved thereby, but none of these affected him
as did the songs which Anne sang. He used to tell her that her voice
was as that of Baiamè, the Great Spirit, whose word had made the
world, and as the voice of those wonderful white birds that, according
to legend, had flown into the sky singing praises to Baiamè, and had
been turned into the Pleiades--those stars which the Blacks believe
are the keepers of rains. It was Kombo's fixed belief that Anne was
one of these, sent back to earth again, in order that, by her singing,
she might move the heart of Baiamè when the fountains of heaven were
locked. Once there had been a time of great drought when the cattle
had died, bogged in dried-up water-holes, and the sheep had made food
for carrion dogs, and when the Blacks had come into the head station
and stolen from tanks and reservoirs some of the scanty supply of
water. Then Kombo came to Anne and besought her to sing within the
Blacks' sacred circle. Assuredly, he declared, in answer to such
entreaty, Baiamè would send down rain upon his thirsty people. Anne
listened, for she loved the wild superstitions of the Blacks, and was
but a child, to whom the earth and inhabitants thereof, and the gods
above the earth, were all as one grand fairy tale. She had learned to
shudder at the Kinikihar--ghosts of the dead who wander on moonlight
nights in the Bush, and she feared mightily Yo-wi, the legendary
monster who brings fever and ague, and Ya-wi, the mythological snake,
and Buba, the giant kangeroo, traditional father of all kangeroos. So
she went obediently with Kombo one moonlight night to the sacred
circle that the Blacks had made, in which they had kindled bonfires to
keep Debil-debil away, and round which the whole tribe had
congregated. There were the warriors in the war-paint of great
ceremonials and tribal fights, the elders wealed according to their
tale of years, and adorned with frontlet, and necklace, and tuft of
cockatoo feathers. There, too, the women crouched on the ground round
the circle, crooning and beating time with boomerangs and nulla-
nullas. So, in the midst of them, Anne lifted her voice and sang the
grandest devotional song she knew--an Ave which their store-keeper, a
musician and an Irish Catholic, had taught her. And great Baiamè heard
and was merciful, for the next day the heavens were darkened, and rain
fell upon the thirsty land.

After that, the fame of her went abroad among the Moongar tribe, and
further, even to the far north. The Blacks named her Yuro-Kateena, or
Cloud-Daughter, and from this time revered her as a Karraji-Wiràwi,
which, being interpretated, is Medicine-Woman.

In those days, Kombo had shown his reverential devotion by bringing
her cockatoo crests, the plumage of lyre birds and rare parrots'
feathers, and such spoil of the Bush. Later, when disaster came, and
the Bank manager wanted to keep him on as stock-rider after the
station had been taken from Anne Marley's mother, Kombo had refused to
be servant to the enemy of his goddess.

There had been a great woolla, a palaver amongst the Blacks, and much
lamentation when their Cloud-Daughter, who they now believed brought
them luck in hunting and protected them from evil, was departing from
amongst them. It was the chief of the Moongar tribe who bade Kombo go
with the Karraji-Wiràwi, and bring her back from over the Great Water
that she might once more petition Baiamè on their behalf. So Kombo
made his request to the mistress, and Anne pleaded till, somewhat
against her better judgment, Mrs Marley consented. A free passage was
granted to the black boy also, and Kombo accompanied the mother and
daughters to England, where, if truth must be told, he had been more
worry than profit. Mrs Marley felt thankful when he asked to be
allowed to go back to Australia with Anne and her husband.

Kombo was one of the best specimens of the northern tribesmen, so
much higher in the scale of creation than their southern brethren. He
was a man, every inch of him; his natural gifts were remarkable, and
in sagacity and quickness he was the superior of most white men. He
could not be taught to read or write, and all attempts to instil into
him the principles of orthodox theology had been a failure; but he
could read every chapter of Nature's book that related to the story of
his own country; he could mimic any man or animal with whom he made
acquaintance; he was a keen judge of character, and he could hold his
own among the worst sharpers who ever haunted a shearing shed. With
the most guileless manner and appearance, he could plan and carry
through a complete campaign of deception, and he loved nothing better
than having in the way of work "to make fool of white man." He had
once gone on the drink, but ever since, had been afraid of a grog
shanty, not from any exalted morality, but because he knew that he had
been given doctored grog, which, as he phrased it, had made him
"close-up go bong," otherwise, very sick.

In his own domestic relations, Kombo's conduct left something to be
desired. He was much given to wooing and then incontinently dismissing
his gins, "because that fellow no good," and, according to white law,
he might have been frequently had up for bigamy. When residing in the
stockmen's huts on the Marley's station, he had been quite contented
to live "like-it white man" for a certain time, but about every three
years the savage fever seized him, and then Kombo went off to the
northern haunts of the Moongarrs, where he committed every aboriginal
atrocity, short of assaulting white men. He was even suspected of
having eaten warriors of a hostile tribe, though kindred in speech,
called the Maianbars, who had fallen beneath his spear. It was because
of this habit of Kombo's that he had never been allowed the possession
of a gun, which would certainly have given him an unfair advantage
over his enemies. He was now again due for a burst of barbarism, and
it was when he had announced his intention of joining his dusky
brethren somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kooloola station, that Anne
had conceived the idea of making him her escort thither. Mrs Duncan,
who owned Kooloola, was her father's sister. Some five years before,
Mr Duncan had pegged out boundaries beyond even the extreme limits of
civilisation, at the base of Cape York Peninsula, and though he had
been considered fool-hardy, and even blameworthy, for taking his wife
and children among dangerous Blacks, he had died a natural death, and
had so flourished on his new station that Mrs Duncan had not felt
inclined to give up the place. It was under Mrs Duncan's protection
that Anne Bedo had desired to place herself, till opportunity occurred
for her to start on a new scheme of life under another name than her
own. Beyond taking present refuge, however, at Kooloola, Anne had not
considered the future. Here, at least, she would be for a time safe.

Three days were passed in the shepherd's hut before Kombo found two
horses and a couple of old saddles. Anne had an idea that one of these
was stolen property, but asked no questions, and received back gladly
what was left of the fifteen pounds. Kombo had bought for himself an
ancient rifle and some ammunition, so that they fared sumptuously on
game that he shot and which he broiled on the ashes, or baked, black-
fashion, on red-hot stones in a hole in the ground. On the fourth day,
Anne donned her black boy's costume of Crimean shirt and moleskin
trousers, both absurdly large for her, and a felt hat, the whole a
little inappropriate perhaps to the Karraji-Wiràwi part she meant to
play, and on which her power of dominating Kombo's aboriginal impulses
mainly depended. But she had only to sing a few bars of an Ave or a
Gloria, and to point to the pale clusters of the Pleiades, indicating
the stars as her sisters, for the subservience of Kombo to become
abject. So, fearing nothing, and commending herself alike to the
Catholic Saints and to the heathen gods of the Bush, Anne mounted her
sorry steed, and the two--black boy and white woman--set off on their
hundred and fifty miles ride to Kooloola. They put up at no stations
on the way, not even accepting the hospitality of shepherd or
stockman, but camped each night in the bush, hobbling their horses and
cooking their own food, Anne sleeping under a gunya of boughs which
Kombo made for her.

It was a strange, wild journey. Kombo had heard rumours of raiding
blacks and of tribes at war with each other and with whites. Once,
they met a band of native police with Captain Cunningham, the chief
officer, at the head, which was on its way to the outside districts to
disperse the Blacks, as the leader put it. This meant nothing more
serious than the firing of a few shots, the wounding of an old man or
two, or maybe a gin, and the breaking up for the moment of the camps.
Anne, in her black boy's dress, astride upon what the Captain was
pleased to term "an old crock, only fit to draw my grandmother's
corpse," trembled, and tried to hide her face, making pretexts for
getting off the track, while the Captain parleyed with Kombo. She had
known Captain Cunningham well in early days and feared lest he should
recognise her. She fancied that he eyed her suspiciously, and did not
like his questioning of Kombo, as to where the black boy had picked up
his mate. "Ba'al mine think-it that brother belonging to you. What
name that fellow?" said the Captain.

Kombo invented a name on the spur of the moment; and then Captain
Cunningham, who had also known Kombo in Mrs Marley's time, enquired
about his mistress, and whether the rumour was true that Mrs Bedo had
thrown herself overboard off Cooktown. Just then Anne pretended to spy
a kangeroo, and putting spurs into the "old crock" darted through the
gum--trees. "Billy--Billy!" cried Captain Cunningham, calling her by
the name of Kombo's impromptu baptism. "Come here. Mine want to talk
to you, Billy."

But Anne would not hear; and Kombo, with a whoop and a black's
halloa, spurred along his steed in pursuit of her, leaving the Captain
to go on his own way with his troopers. They did not see him again,
but the incident frightened Anne. Captain Cunningham had known her
ever since she was a child. Often had she sat on his knee, and one of
his amusements had been to make her "talk black," and mimic her native
friends. She was terrified lest he should discover Anne Marley in
Billy, the black boy. Then all would be lost. She was sufficiently
well acquainted with Captain Cunningham's views on matrimony and
things in general, to be quite sure that he would take her in charge
and escort her back to her husband. Each day after that, she rode in
dread of again coming across the native police--in dread, too, of
Blacks, for the presence of the troopers implied danger in that
respect. Of the Blacks, however, Anne was far less frightened. They
therefore forsook the track, riding in a course some distance away but
parallel with it, and thus avoiding the chance of even meeting a
wool--carrier with his team, or a party of diggers, or a lonely
fossicker.

The journey lasted longer than it would have done had they been
riding better horses, or had they kept to the dray-track. They had
many adventures and endured much discomfort--at least Anne endured it;
to Kombo, loose again in the bush, discomfort was a joy. It was the
end of the rainy season, and the heat was steamy. For two days it
poured, and the creeks came down in flood. Once the water bailed them
up for a couple of nights; and twice obliged them to swim, clinging to
their horses' manes, for the beasts were too weak to carry their
weight against the force of the current. Kombo's gun was then disabled
and his ammunition wetted, while Anne had some trouble in saving her
own concealed revolver and cartridges from the wet. She contrived to
tie them on the top of her head beneath her hat, and so kept them
above the flood. When the rain ceased, they had to wind along the bank
of a river through the tropical scrub, which is common up north, for
some distance inland from the coast. In this they suffered greatly
from mosquitoes and ticks. But they fared sumptuously on scrub
turkeys' eggs, and ground game that Kombo trapped, as well as on the
white larvae which they found among the roots of trees, and which is a
delicacy for both blacks and whites. Leaner days followed while they
rode over the barren ridges they next struck. These were low detached
spurs of the great range; and here, one of the horses went lame, thus
retarding their progress. Camping on a ridge at night, a terrific
storm arose, the most awful Anne had ever seen. While the rain came
down in torrents, Kombo, with his head buried in the ground, called
piteously on Debil-debil to depart; and Anne, wet through, hungry and
frightened, wept like a lost child with her hands over her face. The
lightning struck and rebounded upon the iron-stone of the ridge,
making wonderful and awesome coruscations, and a tree within a yard or
two of their camp was shivered to fragments. Their horses bolted
during the storm, and this again delayed them, though the nags were
found later not far off, stowed away in the bed of a gulley.



Chapter VII--Birds of Prey



IT would take too long to tell of their escapes, which, after all,
are common enough with bushmen who have attacked the base of that
north Australian peninsula, though they were sufficiently alarming,
even to a Bush girl accustomed to out-country life. There are women,
however, to whom adventure is as the breath of life, and little Anne
Marley, for all her feminine sentiment and romantic notions, was one
of such. Often, in after life, she looked back upon the Bush journey
with Kombo as one of the happiest times she had known; and, perhaps,
compared with later adventures, it seemed tame and safe. By-and-by,
they came upon beautiful pastoral country, the land which had enticed
Duncan, the pioneer, from civilisation--rolling downs, slightly
wooded, swelling below the basalt mountains and volcanic country
westward. There, the peaks, strange--shaped and rock-ribbed, rose some
three thousand feet out of dark-green jungle, barring part of the
horizon. A little further, the mountains became higher, and multiplied
in forms still more fantastic, where, in the far distance, the range
turned inward towards a country wholly unexplored, and completely
guarded against the inroads of squatters by impassable gullies and
impenetrable scrub.

Anne had heard of the wonders and terrors of those mountain scrubs
from explorers who had climbed part of the eastern side of the range,
but had never penetrated its fastnesses, or gone into the mysterious
region beyond. The Blacks had legends of some great and awful Debil-
debil, more fearsome than any ordinary Debil-debil of the south, which
inhabitated these tracts of the interior. Anne knew of the great sandy
waste in the centre of Australia which had once been sea; where the
rivers lost themselves in the sand, and whence scarcely any traveller
returned. But between that sandy desert and the river-shed at the base
of Cape York Peninsula, rumour spoke of a tract of country, closed in
by scrub, where volcanoes had once raged, and where, according to the
Blacks, were small lakes, supposed by them to be fathomless. The
Maianbar and Moongarr tribes dwelt near its borders, and it was
through stray Blacks who had found their way south, or had been
brought by the native police from the outskirts of their own more
inaccessible haunts, that these reports came. Otherwise, the region
was unexplored. If the ill-fated Burke or Kennedy ever reached it,
they did not return to tell the tale. There were all kinds of
traditions about this unknown country. Anne had heard one prevalent
among the Moongarrs, of a leviathan turtle that had lived in a lake
which dried up, leaving the turtle without water. The story went that
the turtle had turned into stone, and was now a mountain possessed of
magic properties. Then there was another legend of a gigantic
crocodile, dwelling upon the top of a high hill, out of whose mouth
came fire and smoke; a monster which would still spit flame and ashes,
and overwhelm any intrusive stranger venturing into its dominions. It
was Kombo who had told Anne the story; he had learned it among the
Moongarrs. Kombo believed devoutly in the crocodile "Debil-debil
Yamin," and the turtle also--Mirrein, he called it. When Anne laughed,
he was very much offended, giving her to understand that this was too
serious a subject for profane jest. "Ba'al mine gammon," said he;
"plenty black fellow afraid of that fellow Debil-debil Yamin."

Anne asked him if he had ever seen that Yamin. Kombo shook his head.
"Ba'al brother belonging to me go long-a Deep Tank, close-up Crocodile
Mountain," said he. "Maianbar black, sit down there. Long-ago Maianbar
black, brother belonging to Moongarr, talk altogether same. Then many
moon back, two fellow tribe fight--oh! plenty fight"--and Kombo's eyes
and gestures expressed oceans of gore--"Maianbar blacks been eat
Moongarrs. Afterwards, not friends any more. Maianbars one side of
mountains: Moongarrs stop this side. But I believe two fellow tribe
brother again by-'m-by," added Kombo cheerfully, for his own part
quite ready to ignore the blood-feud.

Anne gazed out to a portentous-looking bank of clouds on the north-
west horizon, and fancied that they were mountains, and that two of
them were shaped like the turtle and the crocodile of Kombo's story.
She wondered what was the real foundation of the legend, though it was
not difficult to guess that it originated in a volcanic eruption. She
knew that extinct craters had been found by many explorers, and she
remembered, too, the explorer Hann's account of his find of fossil
remains in North Australia, the wonderful antediluvian animals
scientists had discovered to have existed in this oldest continent of
the world--the gigantic iguana, the Australian diprotodons, the
monstrous kangaroos, the enormous horned turtle.

Nearing the lower hills which bounded the great downs they had been
traversing, Kombo told Anne that now they were "close-up Kooloola,"
and that if she wanted to put on her "White Mary's" dress they would
camp by a lagoon that he knew, not far from the home paddock, where
she could undo her swag, and make herself "altogether like-it half-
caste woman."

"Ole Missus Duncan think plenty sun make-'im face black belonging to
you," remarked Kombo; and consolingly added, "Mine been tell Missa
Anne that all right. That come altogether white by-'m-by."

The lagoon lay between two low, full-bosomed hills, a peaceful tarn,
on the surface of which floated the beautiful blue and white water-
lily of Australia, and a few blossoms of a lovely pink colour, a rarer
kind. Anne wanted Kombo to have a swim, and gather some of these for
the old Missus while she changed her dress, but Kombo shook his head.

"Mine think-it bunyip sit down there," said he in a more portentous
tone than that in which he had warned her against the alligators.
"That water--hole go down long way in the ground. Mine think-it water
come out other side," he went on. "Ole Massa Duncan, he try once to
measure with plenty thread, but that no good. I believe bunyip catch
hold of thread. Ole Massa no find-'im bottom."

Thousands of black duck, teal, and other water-fowl, with their young
broods, floated on the lagoon, and now, alarmed by the voices of
strangers, uttered strange cries, and rose, a mass of fluttering wings
hovering over the water. At one end of the lagoon was a thick belt of
casuarina and flooded gums, the white scaly stems of these last,
uplifted like an army of ghosts. Anne retired with her swag into the
shadow of these trees, while Kombo lighted a fire in a hollow log and
set the billy to boil. Close to the bank, he warily waded to pluck
some roots of water-lilies, which he laid among the ashes, and roasted
like yams.

Presently Anne re-appeared--a trim little figure in her grey riding-
habit, with the soft cap upon her short hair, and a veil, which she
had brought away in her pack, tied round it, hiding the brownness of
her face. Kombo gave a "Tschk! Tschk!" the black's expressive note of
admiration, as she came up, tripping a little over her now
unaccustomed skirt.

"Bujeri, Missa Anne!" said he; "Ba'al ole Missus see that fellow no
look like-it White Mary."

But Anne wondered whether her aunt would recognise her. She had not
met Mrs Duncan since she was a child.

The girl and the black boy were hungry, and feasted with a light
heart. They ate the yellow powdery roots of the water-lilies, which
were very palatable, and a change from their ordinary diet of game and
damper. The quart-pot tea was drunk, and then they remounted. Anne had
some difficulty in sitting side-ways on a man's saddle, but Kombo and
she between them strapped a little hump, cut from a gum-branch, above
the saddle-flap, and thus contrived a sort of pommel. About three
miles further, they came upon a cattle-camp, which showed that they
must be near the station. Before long, the paddock fence appeared, and
they halted to put down the sliprails. Some way off, they could see
the homestead perched on the side of a hill, just above a long narrow
lagoon. Banking the head-station, the hill behind sloped gradually
towards a thick scrub which spread upwards over the summits of a
broken range, and downwards, in a kind of semi-circle, round the upper
end of the lagoon.

Anne, with her Bush knowledge re-sharpened, wondered why her uncle
Duncan had chosen so dangerous a site for his homestead, in a country
infested with Blacks, to whom the scrub would furnish a very effectual
cover for attack. She supposed he must have had some good reason
connected with the working of the station; for she knew that, though
called fool-hardy, there was never a more thorough bushman than her
uncle Duncan. She knew also that he had held theories concerning the
treatment of the Blacks, opposed to those of most bushmen. He had
always paid them liberally for work they did for him, and, appealing
to what he considered their better nature, had constituted himself
their protector. The thought flashed through Anne's mind just then--
for she was a hard-headed little creature, and, in spite of her
friendliness to the natives, knew they were like children whom it
wasn't wise to spoil--that it wasn't over safe to be a pro-Black in an
unsettled district.

A track, broad enough for the water-cart that supplied itself at the
lagoon, wound round the gentler ascent of the hill, past the
stockyard, with its heavy railed fence and massive corner-posts, to
the back of the cluster of bark-roofed buildings constituting the
head-station. They could just see these, partly hidden by a knoll that
abutted from the plateau on which the homestead was placed.

Kombo put up the sliprails, but just as he was about to re-mount his
horse, something attracted his attention, and he walked on a little
way, carefully looking at the grass and saplings which bordered the
track. Then he stood still for a minute or two, gazing keenly from the
homestead in the direction of the scrub behind it.

Anne called to him to take his horse which she was holding. He turned
sharply.

"Kolle mal! Kolle mal!" he muttered, giving the aboriginal words of
warning, and went on a short distance continuing his observations.
Presently he came back to the girl.

"Missa Anne," he said, "you see, smoke long-a scrub? You see, ba'al
no smoke long-a white man's chimbley! What for no fire? What for no
smoke? Missa Anne, mine think it wild black sit down long-a scrub.
Mine no want-im Missa Anne go first time long-a humpey. I b'lieve
Kombo mel--mel--Kombo, look out--Missa Anne stop here--then suppose
all right, I come back and tell Missa Anne."

Anne quailed at the scent of disaster, for the black boy looked
strangely troubled.

"What do you mean, Kombo? Don't you think old Missus Duncan sit down
long-a humpey?"

"Mine no think-it, Missa Anne. Suppose ole Missus long-a humpey, that
fellow make-it fire-smoke. I very much afraid of wild black. You no
been see long-a cattle camp, one bullock have spear hanging down long-
a leg? I b'lieve wild black camp close-up, and this morning he been
spear bullock. I no believe ole Missus long-a humpey. I b'lieve that
fellow plenty frightened and run away."

"No, no, Kombo. Ole Missus never frightened of Blacks."

"I believe so, Missa Anne. One fellow, black-policeman long-a
Captain Cunningham, been tell me Maianbar black come down and make
corroboree closeup Kooloola, Maianbar black want-im flour, sugar,
ration... Ba'al mine think-it, that fellow look out talgoro (human
flesh)." Kombo appeared doubtfully sanguine. "He no like old white.
Maianbar black like best young black fellow."

Anne turned very pale, and reeled slightly in her saddle. A more
horrible possibility dawned upon her than that ole Missus should have
run away.

"Oh! Kombo--don't!" she faltered.

"No fear, Missa Anne. He very bad black, Maianbar black;" and Kombo
made a devout grimace. "Ole Missus know all about that, and make
altogether white man yan (run away). You see--what for no firesmoke?
Mine think-it Missa Anne better stop down long-a hut close-up water-
hole. I go look out." Kombo pointed to a bark hut on the bank of the
lagoon at the end furthest from them. A fringe of trees and swamp oak
spread past the gum-trees, along the side of the lagoon inside the
fence they had just passed through, and Kombo's quick intelligence had
already grasped the advantage of placing themselves under cover. He
suggested that they should get off and lead their horses round along
the edge of the water-hole, under shelter of the trees, and then see
if the hut was empty, or tenanted by the stockman. He might well be
there, for it was near sundown, and work should be over on the run. If
he was at home, they might assure themselves that all was well at the
station. If the place was deserted, Anne might wait in it, with the
horses tethered near, while he, Kombo, crept up the side of the hill
near the scrub, and reconnoitred at the back of the house. Anne did
not quite care for the plan, and would have preferred to ride straight
up to the homestead, but Kombo impressed her by the earnestness of his
manner, and she had confidence in the boy's instinct. Besides, a
feeling of great uneasiness and desolation, such as she had not yet
known during their wanderings in the Bush, had crept over her in the
last minute or two. Though she had reached her goal, she could not
help, after Kombo's suggestion of the Maianbars' weakness for talgoro,
feeling terribly anxious.

Just then, a flight of hawks wheeled down from the homestead hill,
close over her head, fierce, red-eyed birds of prey, whose very
presence filled her with an unreasoning sense of ill-omen. She
resisted Kombo no longer, but got off her horse, and, leading it by
the bridle, followed the black boy among the belt of trees to the
stockman's dwelling. The door of the hut stood open. Inside, the blue
blankets lay in disorder on the bunk, as though a sleeper had hastily
arisen. Outside, the fire under the bark lean-to had been laid, but
had not been kindled. Two or three fresh bits of wood lay upon the
half-burned foundation logs, and there seemed something oddly forlorn
in the heap of last night's ashes beneath them, and in the empty black
pot tilted on the ground close by. Outside the door, on a bit of
stump, the stockman's coolaman--the bushman's wooden washing basin--
was set, with the hard square of yellow soap within it. Though in the
shade, it was quite dry, and had evidently been unused that day.
Nobody was in or near the hut, and Anne seated herself on the slab
bench beside the rough table, while Kombo hung the horses to a tree,
and then, skirting the upper end of the lagoon and the border of scrub
beyond it, began to climb the hill so as to get a side view of the
homestead.

Anne waited a long time in the hut--it seemed to her hours, though
it was scarcely forty minutes. The setting sun shed a glow on the
trees and the bare bit of ground outside, and upon the distant peaks
of the range which she could see through the hut door. The mosquitoes,
coming with the approaching twilight, had begun to swarm, and the hut
was close and ill-smelling. Outside, every now and then, she saw a
hawk circling low to the ground. One came after the other, and she
wondered what carrion feast had caused the foul birds to congregate.
No doubt, she thought, it was the speared carcase of a bullock which
the Blacks had killed, and, unable to carry away, had left to rot. She
had forced herself to dismiss any more appalling conjectures. Anything
else seemed impossible.

The evening birds were beginning to call. She could hear the
gurgling note of a swamp pheasant, and every now and then the raucous
mirth of a laughing jackass pealed from a neighbouring tree. The Bush
sounds which she so loved seemed now only to intensify the nervous
strain, which was becoming unbearable. She wondered why she should
suffer so, for the first time, now that she was within sight of her
aunt's house, and almost under her aunt's protection. For, of course,
her aunt was there. She had not felt so lonely and frightened in the
shepherd's hut by that crocodile-infested water-hole. It struck her;
were there any crocodiles in this lagoon? And then she began to feel
thirsty, and searched the hut for water. There was none to be found,
and she took a pannikin and went restlessly out towards the fringe of
ti-trees which hid the little lake from her view. The sun had now
sunk, and a red afterglow illuminated the plain, striking the slab
fence of the paddock, and causing scales of ti-tree bark to shine like
silver.

Anne walked a little way. All around her, were creepy sounds of
animal life, but there was no sign of Kombo. Now she thought that she
heard the thunder of hoofs--a rush of cattle, perhaps--on the plain. A
hawk rose from among the trees ahead of her close by the bank of the
lagoon; another flew up, and another. She pushed back the branches,
moving uncertainly, for she was vaguely conscious of some wakening
horror, She struck through an odorous thicket of river jasmine, lemon
gum, and the fragrance of ti-tree blossoms, and now stopped dead
short, and uttered a piercing scream.

At her very feet, the head towards her, the legs caught in a tangle
of vine, lay the body of a man clad only in a shirt, with the top of
the head battered in, the eyes staring, the mouth wide open, a swarm
of flies upon the blue lips; while, as she stood, her shoes were
almost wetted by a little stream of coagulating blood. Beneath her
outstretched arms, a loathsome carrion bird spread its wings, and
fluttered out over the lagoon. The girl gave another shriek, and fled
back through the thicket. She understood now. God of mercy! That this
thing should be! Had the Blacks massacred every white man and woman on
Kooloola station?



Chapter VIII--"Altogether Bong"



KOMBO stood at the door of the hut. He had been crouching at the back
of it, even as she went forth to the lagoon, not knowing how he should
tell his gruesome tale. He leaned against the lintel, his limbs
shaking as though he too had not recovered from the shock of some
terrible discovery.

His face seemed ghastly under the outer pigment of black, and his
lips were bloodless; but in his eyes there lurked an unholy light, and
Anne realised, with a fresh shudder, that the savage beast in him,
contending with acquired prejudices of civilisation, was for a moment
unleashed, and might have to be fought and conquered.

The girl's indomitable spirit gazed out from her own eyes, and
quelled the savage. He gibbered helplessly, uttering unintelligible
sounds and laughing with the Black's peculiar note in his guttural
merriment. Then he quailed before her gaze, making a gesture of
pleading and dismay.

"Kombo!" Anne said, aware that now she held the hereditary tendencies
in check, and that he was once more her slave. "Kombo, do you know
what has happened? Do you know that he's dead--the man out there? Do
you know that the Blacks have killed him?"

Kombo laughed again--a hopeless, helpless laugh, in which,
nevertheless, there was a faint triumphant cadence, telling of the
race hatred between black and white, subdued in him, but not wholly
eradicated.

"Yo-ai!" (yes) he said. "Mine think-it all white man bong long-a
station. Plenty dead white fellow--ole Missus; two fellow daughter
belonging that one. Young Massa--one fellow Chinaman cook--all lie
long-a floor where black fellow been, kill altogether white man. I
been tell Missa Anne no smoke--no fire; all white fellow bong--
altogether bong, altogether dead."

"Kombo, do you mean that they are all dead--all?" The girl spoke in a
whisper, her eyes distended, her teeth chattering. "Kombo, you say all
white fellow bong long-a station? You no tell lie?"

"Mine no tell lie, Missa Anne. I believe black fellow come last night
kill everybody, take-im store, find-im grog, mumkull altogether with
spear and nulla-nulla--ole Missus, young fellow white Mary belonging
to her; young Massa Jim--Chinaman long-a kitchen--altogether bong. I
creep up close--up humpey. I see long-a verandah ole Missus--I believe
black fellow kill that one first with waddy. Inside, I see two young
Missee--I believe black fellow take-im that fellow--no kill altogether
quick like it ole Missus. Then I go outside long-a store. Young Massa
he have-im spear like it back, and Chinaman he lie dead little way
off. Mine no see young Massa Tom. Mine think-it that fellow run away
and look out--find Captain Cunningham and black police."

Kombo's keen wit had worked out the situation in all its chances and
probabilities. He knew that of the Duncan boys there should be two at
home, and one was missing. He knew, too, that the black troopers under
Captain Cunningham, from whom he had heard their destination, should
be encamped a short distance eastward.

At this moment, in confirmation of his intuitive reasoning, the
distant thud of hoofs which Anne had heard, deepened into nearer
thunder, and suddenly ceased. Kombo darted to the fence, Anne
following, and both looked along it, to where now they saw a band of
troopers halt for a few seconds, to let the rails down, then pass
through in single file and gallop up the slope towards the head
station. Each one had his rifle ready, and it was evident the little
army was bent on no peaceful errand. No other white man was with the
band. Clearly, if it were Tom Duncan who had roused the police, he had
been too exhausted to return with them. Maybe he was wounded, and had
only dragged himself to Cunningham's camp to die.

Anne and Kombo faced each other--black man and white woman, realising
to the full, and without need of words, the danger of the position. On
one side were the Blacks, glutted with gore and spoil, their fury
satiated, and no doubt prepared for flight into the fastnesses where
men on horseback might not seek them. On the other, were the Whites,
and in their company the certainty of recognition. Were Anne and Kombo
to ride up now to the homestead, it would be almost impossible to
deceive Captain Cunningham. Publicity must be given to all details of
the tragedy, and the report of the native police would surely mean
that Elias Bedo would obtain positive information of his wife's
existence and whereabouts.

Better to fall into the hands of the Blacks, Anne thought, than into
those of Elias Bedo.

But there was a middle course. It might be possible to hide until
pursuit of the plunderers was fairly started, and the southern route
clear. Then she and Kombo might either return the way they had come,
or wait in the Bush and go northward by the coast to Somerset where
there would be a chance of catching some vessel bound for Java. That
had been the plan in Anne's mind, when she had decided upon seeking
temporary refuge with her aunt. The middle course had also occurred to
Kombo as the safest. There was no need between them for preliminary
discussion. He seemed to read her mind as she read his. Kombo
scratched his head, and thought silently for a minute or two. Then he
went back to the horses, unfastened their bridles from the gum-bough
to which he had strapped them, re-adjusted Anne's saddle and the pack
that had slipped down, then delivered himself of his opinion.

"Missa Anne, mine think-it no good to go long-a station until black
police go away. By-'m-by that fellow hunt after wild black in the
scrub, but mine think-it very soon, white man from other station come
long-a Kooloola. You know! That fellow wear-im shirt outside of
trouser and, my word! cobbon woolla--plenty talk and say prayer." Thus
Kombo graphically sketched the surpliced Bush parson of his
experience. "I believe that white man go look-out Massa Bedo... Tshck!
Tshck!" with the indescribable ejaculation of the native. "White man
tell Massa Bedo. `You run--murra, make haste--wife belonging to you
sit down long-a Kooloola. Massa Bedo--he think Missa Anne dead.' When
white man tell him Missa Anne no dead, he very glad. He ride quick,
and pialla (appeal to) Captain Cunningham to bring black trooper.
Altogether come--catch Missa Anne and by-'m-by put Kombo in goal.
Naia-yo! Naia-yo! That very bad for Missa Anne. That very bad for
Kombo."

"Yes: that very bad," said poor Anne. "You must help me, Kombo, to
keep out of Captain Cunningham's way. What can we do?"

Kombo ruminated for a minute or two. "Mine cobbon stupid fellow,
Kombo. Massa Bedo, he plenty saucy. He got-im money; he make black
trooper servant belonging to him. Mine think-it no good to go back
long-a Cooktown. Best way to hide close-up Kooloola and look out till
black trooper go away."

"But where can we hide?" asked Anne. "Captain Cunningham very good
bushman, Kombo. No can hide from black trooper."

"Ole Massa Duncan no like black trooper," said Kombo. "I believe
ba'al that fellow know bush long-a Kooloola. Missa Anne, you see!" The
boy pointed to a knoll, two or three miles distant, which rose sharply
above the scrub. "Big fellow cave sit down over there. Brother
belonging to me show me place long time ago, when I bring cattle for
Massa Duncan. That cobbon big cave; that very dark cave, very good
place to hide. By-'m-by black police take pho-pho, and go shoot wild
black. Kombo look out; find saddle, catch horse--bujeri horse,
Kooloola brand. Missa Anne and Kombo make quick track. White man no
see; police no can find."

Kombo's comprehensive plan was the best in the circumstances, but
Anne hesitated.

"Suppose wild black sit down long-a cave?" she suggested, weakly.

Kombo shook his head.

"Mine no think-it Maianbar black stop close-up station," said he.
"That fellow frightened, and run away long-a mountain. You come long-a
me, Missa Anne; lie down inside cave; make fire and cook supper. Niai
kandu...Mine plenty hungry."

Kombo was a philosopher. No matter what the tragedy around him, the
danger and the difficulty, he never failed, at the close of the day,
to make this announcement. Anne did not feel hungry. Nevertheless, she
listened compassionately when Kombo said "Niai kandu."

"Mine show you short cut long-a cave. Mine take-im swag. Mine let go
yarraman (horses) and mine plantim saddle. By-'m-by, when black
trooper and white fellow altogether yan, mine run up yarraman in
paddock--much better yarraman. You see? You think-it that bujeri?"

Anne nodded acquiescence. She could not speak; something seemed to
have come up suddenly in her throat and choked her. Her eyes stared
vacantly into the bush. She saw before her the dead bodies of her aunt
and cousins, and the tragedy re-clothed itself with new horrors.
Silently she helped Kombo to unsaddle the horses. When free, the
beasts started off with a whinny, and went to drink at the lagoon. She
took the two swags in her right arm, while with her other hand she
held up the skirt of her riding--habit, regretting bitterly that she
had not kept on her black boy's costume. Then she staggered after
Kombo, who was laden with the saddles and bridles and his own gun, and
was making straight for the scrub. The two skulked behind trees and
shrubs till they had reached the shelter of the thicket, afraid that
the native police might espy them, but soon they were hidden in the
dimness of dense vegetation, and pressed inward as fast as their
burdens would allow. After walking for a quarter of an hour, Kombo
laid the saddles and bridles in a hollow at the foot of a tree where
the earth had slipped, leaving the roots bare, and collected mould and
twigs, scraping them backward with his foot, after the manner of a
scrub turkey building its mound. Then he gathered other twigs, and
before long, the saddles and bridles he had planted were covered safe
from the chance of a marauder. The boy then made a discreet blaze on
the tree with his tomahawk, so that they should neither of them, on
returning for their property, miss its hiding-place. While he worked,
Anne gathered her habit round her waist, binding it by a strap that
she took from the pack, so that with kilted skirt, progress through
the jungle might become a little less difficult. It was still
sufficiently arduous, though Kombo went first to move, here a spiked
log, or to cut away there, the withes of a hanging creeper. He steered
straight for the rocky knoll he had pointed out, in which the caves
were situated, though it was no longer visible, and even the stars by
which he might have guided himself were hidden by the roof of
interlacing branches. But a black boy's instinct of locality is a
compass which rarely fails him. Moreover, Kombo was near the hunting-
ground of his own tribe, the Moongarrs; and though it was years since,
as a naked piccaninny, he had wandered through this region, he had
returned to it with Duncan the squatter, and remembered the features
of the land.

Night fell. It was much darker in the scrub than it would have been
in the open, and the eeriness of it all thrilled Anne's nerves, which
vibrated like strings stretched to breaking point. She walked close on
Kombo's heels, sometimes stepping deep in mire, sometimes stumbling
over stones, sometimes slipping down the side of a gully; her ankles
bleeding, her hands torn among the prickly shrubs and tangle of vines.

As they got further into the heart of the scrub, the gullies became
steeper, and the great boulders that encumbered them more numerous.
Hugh volcanic stones were lying pell-mell, monoliths standing on end,
and rocking-stones poised, and trembling at a touch. It was as though,
in the beginning of things, fire demons had played here at pitch and
toss. After a time, through a rift in the trees, they could see the
evening star. The vegetation had become scantier, rocks taking the
place of trees, and now they found themselves on a space, clear, but
for the stones which strewed it, and with a basalt cliff rising close
over it. The base of the cliff was curtained by creepers, and low
scrub trees grew out of fissures in its face. Here, a part of the sky
was visible--cloudless, of an intense blue, gemmed with stars; the
Southern Cross apparently touching the summit of the crag. Anne--
ragged, scratched, and sore from the stings of insects and of scrub
nettles--sank exhausted upon a stone, a most pitiful figure; while
Kombo, marking the position of the stars, took his bearings, and gave
guttural clicks of satisfaction at finding how little deviation he had
made.

"Close-up cave, Missa Anne," he called, encouragingly. "Very quick,
plenty supper, plenty sleep. Come on."

Anne rose; and they moved northward round the knoll, pushing through
the scrub where it encroached on the rock, and at last halting before
a dark blot on the cliff's surface--a half-circle, in the centre of
which was a great bare boulder. Creepers hung round the opening,
which, to a casual eye, would not easily be discoverable. Kombo peered
about on every side, anxiously searching for any signs of Blacks'
fires, but he saw none. Now he bade Anne follow him, and stepped
warily inside the cave.

"All right," he called out; and the vaulted roof of the cave caught
his voice and sent it back in a reverberating echo, so uncanny that
Anne started at the sound. She pressed in close upon him, and, after a
little groping on Kombo's part, both stood in a deep embrasure near
the mouth of the cave, which was here dimly illuminated by the
starlight outside. The light was just sufficient for Anne to trace the
outline of a long, wriggling thing, which, at the sound of footsteps
and voices, stirred from its lair. Kombo darted forward. "Make light
quick, Missa Anne," he whispered hoarsely. "Mine think-it that snake";
and as Anne struck a match which she had in readiness, she saw by its
feeble flare that Kombo had brought the butt end of his old gun down
upon the neck of a great brown serpent, which, pinioned and powerless
to use its poison fang, struck out wildly with its tail, its body half
coiled round the body of Kombo's gun. She drew back shuddering.

"Give me waddy, Missa Anne," cried Kombo, stretching back his hand,
as with the whole weight of him he leaned on the gun. She handed him a
stout stick which he had cut for her as they went through the scrub,
and a few well-directed blows made the snake's coils droop flaccidly,
its back broken, while Kombo battered in its head. Anne struck match
after match, exploring the hollow in which she stood lest other
reptile or beast should there have made its nest. But all was safe;
the floor was smooth and clean, the walls bare stone, and she leaned
against a projection, too frightened to move. The cave seemed to
stretch into unfathomable blackness, but was now silent as the grave.
How thankful she was that Kombo had bought these boxes of lucifers at
the township store, and that they had managed to keep them dry when
crossing flooded creeks, by tying them up in the bladder of an animal
they had shot. She knew that she ought not to be reckless with her
matches, but to remain alone in the darkness of the cave was more than
her nerves would bear. Kombo had dragged the snake outside, but
presently returned, gloating over the supper he would make from it. He
brought in a bundle of sticks and dry leaves, and before many minutes
a fire was kindled. Then he took a fire-stick and searched the cave,
making another fire in a further recess. Here he took Anne's swag and
spread her blanket, keeping his own belongings by the fire at the
entrance. He called Anne to come up to her camp--so he named the
further fire--and the girl gladly obeyed.

Never had distressed damsel more chivalrous servitor, as Anne had
found good reason to assure herself during these wanderings. Each
night she had softly sung a prayer, and Kombo, reverently listening,
had made the Black's obeisance to Baiamè, the masonic sign taught
young men when initiated into the Bora mysteries. Anne knew of those
rites, which aboriginal tradition held that Baiamè himself had
established when, in long past ages, he had descended as a great white
man upon earth. When she had sung, Kombo would retire, and Anne would
lay herself to sleep--the first night or two of their journey with her
revolver clutched in her right hand close by her side, beneath the
blanket. But after a little time she realised the magic power of her
incantation, and the depth of Kombo's loyalty to his gods, and to the
woman who he believed was their representative. She knew most surely
that she had nothing to fear from Kombo himself, and also that his
outpost camp was a protection against intruders, upon which she might
safely rely. It gave her no anxiety to know that both her honour and
her life were at Kombo's mercy, for she realised that they could only
be assaulted across the boy's dead body. In her trustful gratitude to
Kombo, Anne almost cried sometimes when she thought of the treachery
which pioneering Whites had dealt to his race. She was certain that
those savages they had ill-used would have been faithful, had they
been taught by their conquerors the meaning of fidelity. When she
thought of the dispossessed tribe dying out down south, killed by the
very vices they had learned from Englishmen, her heart burned with
indignation. Setting aside superstition, Kombo loved her and was true
to her because she had been kind to him, had never scoffed at his
traditions, nor had tried to force on him a religion which experience
told him had, on the part of its professors, led to outrage upon the
women of his race, and cruelty to its men. Kombo once told Anne of a
certain squatter in the back blocks, who, when a camp of Blacks
pitched their gunyas beside his water-hole, had called up the chief
and palavered with him, telling him that the Whites wanted to make a
feast for the Blacks, as it was Christmas Day, and that "a pudding
like-it white man's Christmas pudding" should be made for them by the
white cook, and given to the chief if he would take it down to the
camp. The chief came, the pudding was given to him, and the next day
nearly all the tribe was dead, for the pudding had been poisoned. Was
it any wonder, she thought, that afterwards white men were speared
from behind gum-trees, and that there were murders on the lonely
stations?

Anne remembered this story now, and found in it a plea for black
murderers. Then the realisation of the tragedy so near, came home to
her, and she wept bitterly. Her kind old aunt, her young cousins; why
had they, who had never wronged either Black or White, been chosen as
expiatory victims for the wrongs civilisation had committed? She could
scarcely believe, even now, in the truth of that grim story which
Kombo had told her. She could not have credited it at all but for the
horrible sight she herself had seen by the lagoon. Her brain was
dazed, her senses numbed, the future was a blank. All her plans had
been destroyed; she could think of nothing now, but that for the
moment, her weary body had found a refuge in which she might lay
herself down to sleep. Kombo came up presently with a billy full of
water he had found in a hole among the rocks, and with the ration bags
of tea and sugar. They had a segment of damper, baked the previous
night, and this she ate greedily, not waiting for the billy to boil in
order to wash it down with quart-pot tea.

Kombo chuckled benevolently at the sight of her hunger, and produced
a bleeding lump of the snake's body which he laid on the embers to
roast. It seemed to him that he had provided a delicious repast, to
the merits of which his mistress had hitherto been insensible, but
which now, in her need for food, she would surely recognise. He had
never yet been able to persuade Anne to eat the blacks' favourite
delicacy, snake; the easiest food procurable in the Bush. But even now
Anne shuddered at sight of the dainty morsel, and bade him take it to
his own fire.

"Mine got plenty more, Missa Anne," said Kombo. "That very good,
altogether bujeri," and he smacked his lips in anticipatory relish,
but Anne still refused the delicacy.

"Mine find-im bandicoot to-morrow," said Kombo, grieved that she
should fare so ill, and took the bit of snake to his own camp, where
he cooked and devoured it, while Anne ate her damper and drank her
tea. Then she softly sang her little hymn, and bruised, tired, and
sore, she stretched herself as she was, on her blankets, and slept
long into the morning.



Chapter IX--The Cave of Refuge



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 protrud