XI. PIGEON PARK.

After that first brush, the blacks still for a time kept clear of the station buildings, but, now here, now there, they were always giving unpleasant proofs of their presence on the run. It was, in fact, the best bit of their hunting-ground, and therefore it is not astonishing that they considered the whites, instead of themselves, to be the trespassers. The black fellows speared the cattle and horses, and tried hard to kill the men and boys too. They had to look about them “with all their eyes” when they were riding past any cover.
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Once Handsome Bob was missing for a couple of days. When he was found he was almost dead; for the blacks had knocked him off his horse with a boomerang, gashed him with their tomahawks, prodded at him with their spears till his flesh was like a perforated card, and then tied him to a tree which ants had connected with their hill by a little sunken path like a miniature railway-cutting. The ants and the flies had made an awful object of poor Bob’s patchwork of wounds; and though he did at last most marvellously “recover,” as it is called, he was half silly ever afterwards. Jawing Jim was kinder to him than you would have expected whilst he lay helpless in the hut, and Sydney and the boys, of course, looked in, and did what they could for him. But for hours he had to be left alone, with the chance that the blacks would swoop down upon him and finish their work. When he did get about again, although half silly in other things, he had a strange, fierce knack of surprising black fellows, and potting them from behind a tree as if they had been so many wild ducks.
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Long before Handsome Bob was up again, his mates had been forced, as they thought, to be almost equally savage. Whenever they saw a black, they tried to kill him, as “naturally” as one tries to kill a snake or a wasp or any vermin. It is not pleasant to have to write about such things, but I must if I am to tell the whole truth about Australia. Sydney soon got quite envenomed against the blacks, whom he had robbed of their hunting-ground, because they were killing off his cattle; and not long afterwards Harry and Donald fully sympathized with him. Not one of the three felt the slightest scruple in shooting down a black, and then cutting off his head and hanging it in terrorem on a tree, as a gamekeeper nails a hawk against his gable. There is a terrible amount of the tiger in human nature. When blood has once been tasted, so to speak, in savage earnest, “civilization” peels off like nose-skin in the tropics, and “Christian” men, and even boys, are ready—eager—to shed blood like water. They are not eager to talk about what they have done when they get back from the Bush amongst their mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts; but then, they think white mothers, &c., are so different from black gins and their offspring—and when the white women hear of what the black fellows have done or tried to do to their darlings, they are very apt to frame excuses for the white atrocities which they dimly guess at when they kneel beside their beds at night to give God thanks for their darlings’ return to districts in which it is possible to go to a “real church” and “regular services” every Sunday. Jawing Jim wanted to “polish the blacks off” like dingoes, by setting baits of poisoned food about the run; but at poison Sydney drew the line, and the boys, who were half startled by the kindliness with which they had taken to their killing work, could not help feeling relieved at finding that the line was to be drawn anywhere.
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“No, Jim,” said Sydney. “Fighting’s all fair. If we didn’t shoot down the blacks when we came across ’em, they’d precious soon spear us. But it’s sneaking to poison the beggars, when they haven’t a chance of hitting back.”

“Boot ye poiason the warrigals, Mester Sydney, an’ ah kent see as there’s mooch to choose atween the two soarts o’ warmin.”

“P’r’aps there isn’t,” answered Sydney. “But anyhow there’s something of a man, so far as look goes, in a black fellow; and so we’ll fight fair. I’ll have no strychnine used—do you understand, Jim?”

“Ah oonerstaun’,” growled Jim, “boot thee doosn’t. Pooder or poiason—wha-at’s the oadds?”
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After a good many brushes in the scrub, the black fellows grew more used to fire-arms, and ventured down one night upon the station buildings. Fortunately it was moonlight, and Donald, who chanced to be awake and looking out of the window, could plainly distinguish the invaders as they crept out of a patch of scrub about a couple of hundred yards off, and came crouching towards the huts with their noses almost touching the moonlit grass.

“Sydney! Harry!” he shouted, “here come the blacks!” and snatching up his gun, he deliberately levelled it, and let fly at the foremost black fellow.

When the blacks found that they were discovered, they sprang up erect, streaked and spotted with white and red clay, daubed on in stripes, and hideous faces, brandishing their spears, waving about their boomerangs and waddies, knocking their bark shields together, and advancing rapidly in a wild tramping dance to a horrible chorus of “Wah! wah! wah!”
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But Donald’s shot had aroused all the white folk. Handsome Bob was strong enough to fire a gun then, and rushing to his window, he was the first to follow suit to Donald. Five marksmen were soon popping away incessantly. A shower of missiles whizzed through the moonlit air, and hurtled against the slab sides and bark roofs of the huts; but several of the blacks were down on the ground, and more had been slightly hit. Leaving their dead and badly wounded, the blacks turned and fled in disorder, and the five whites, who had defeated more than a hundred savages, sallied from their cover flushed with victory, and commenced an incautious pursuit. In their contempt for their enemy, they straggled from one another, and whilst they were thus giving chase, a tall black suddenly sprang from behind a tree, stunned Harry with a blow of his waddy, and carried him off.
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When Harry came to himself, he was lying in a black fellows’ encampment. It was broad daylight. The wounded warriors were crouching here and there, with earth instead of ointment stuffed into their wounds. The unhurt warriors, for the twentieth time, were bragging about their prowess. The gins had already celebrated it in a song, which they sang as they dragged a water-hole for fish, with a mat rather than net of twisted grass, and as they squatted on the ground inside and outside the gunyahs—conical huts of bark and wild vine—that were scattered about and clustered together under the weeping acacias. Grey, glistening bark canoes were lazily rubbing their sides together on a large lagoon hard by. “Tamed” dingoes slouched at their masters’ heels, or snuffed about the gunyahs, gaunt as starved wolves. One woman was suckling alternately her own piccaninny and a puppy dingo! Two or three of the gins were guarding some opossums that were being cooked under a round layer of stones, on the top of which the kitchen fire was kindled. (Sometimes, instead of using this oven arrangement, the blacks bury their game, unskinned, in the hot ashes). The men had nothing on but a strip of kangaroo-skin round their loins, but the women wore kangaroo and ’possum rugs.
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When Harry came to himself, he ached all over, and felt so stiff, that, although he was not bound, he could not rise from the ground. He fell sometimes on his face, and sometimes on his back, when he attempted to get on his feet. Some black boys who were standing near jeered at him when they saw this, and pricked him with their spears, at the same time mimicking his motions, like so many monkeys. But an old black, who was sitting with his back to the tree under which Harry was lying, left off nursing his knees for a minute, waved the young rascals off, and beckoned to a party of old gins to come near. These old ladies felt Harry all over, and when they found that no bones were broken, they took off his clothes, and began to dig their skinny black fists into him as if they were kneading bread. Then they dipped him in a water-hole, and, after he had lain down to dry, they trotted him about till all his aches and pains were gone, and he was able to eat a hunch of baked ’possum with relish—strong as it did taste of peppermint—even though he could not help seeing that he was being attended to in this careful way simply that he might give his captors more sport afterwards, when they began to torture him. But one of the old women who had kneaded Harry had noticed a mole on his back which was very much like one that a dead son of hers had on his back, and so the old woman had come to the conclusion that her dead son had “jumped up white-fellow,” as the blacks phrase it, in Harry. The other members of the tribe opposed this view, and there was a hot argument about it, in which, although it lasted for an hour, the name of the dead son was not once mentioned—the Australian blacks carefully abstaining from naming their dead. At the end of this controversy Harry was placed on a little mound, and a shield was given him; three of the adroitest spear-throwers being stationed at some distance opposite to him. The first threw, aiming at Harry’s stomach, but Harry, more by good luck than good management, caught the spear in the shield.
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“It is the son of Kaludie,” shouted the old gin who claimed him as her son.

“Kaludie is blind,” shouted the others: “the son of Kaludie, when he played with the spears, waved like the wild vine; the white boy stands stiff as the tea-pole.”

The second thrower hurled his spear, and that, too, quivered in the shield, instead of piercing the heart at which it had been hurled.

“It is the son of Kaludie,” shouted the old gin again.

Harry’s marvellous luck still continued. He caught the third spear also, which was aimed at his head.
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“It is the son of Kaludie,” for the third time shouted the old gin, running to throw her arms around Harry, and at the same time gashing her cheeks with a stone.

“Kaludie has eyes,” shouted the others, at last convinced. “The white fellow is slow as a koala, but this white boy is quick as a wink.”

After this, although he was strictly watched, a great deal was made of Harry. He was taken hunting and fishing with the tribe, and was helped more plentifully than the other boys to the wallaby, snake, parrot, iguana, yam, figs, honey, grubs, or whatever else happened to be going for food. This made the black lads jealous of him, and one of them asked, “Was not the son of Kaludie a kipper?” and then pointed to Harry’s mouth, out of which, of course, no tooth had been knocked, black-fellow fashion, at the “kipper” age. This discovery brought on another long argument, and it was at last decided that the son of Kaludie must be made a kipper over again next full moon. Accordingly poor Harry was obliged to submit to have a front tooth knocked out. That was rather unpleasant; but if Donald had been with him, he would have enjoyed the hunting and fishing. He learnt to hurl the spear and fling the boomerang almost like a black fellow. But just as he was getting a little reconciled to his captivity in the open air, something occurred which made him long more than ever to get back to his own people. In a fight with another tribe, several of his captors were slain. The corpses were brought back and roasted, peeled like potatoes, and eaten by their own comrades. When the bones had been picked, they were put into baskets of native grass, sent about to be howled over, then brought back to their families’ gunyahs to be kept for a time in memoriam, and at last hung on the branches or dropped into the hollows of trees, on which the emblem of the tribe, a waratah, was carved. A plump arm was thrust into Harry’s hands, as a special treat. When he flung it down, and rushed away from the horrid banquet, even Kaludie became half sceptical as to whether he could indeed be her son. For days afterwards he could not touch flesh food of any kind, and the natives’ suspicions might have been seriously aroused, had not their attention been diverted from him by a mysterious illness which struck down young and old in their camp. In vain were dead men’s skins brought out for the invalids to be laid on. In vain did adventurous warriors waylay the members of other tribes, in order to secure their kidneys to make ointment for the sufferers. In vain did the old gins rinse their mouths and spit beside the sick, invoking curses on the sorcerer who had caused them to writhe in agony. It was manifest, the blacks said, that the sorcerer came and went as he pleased, underground, to the camp, and that he must be slain before its peace could be restored. Handsome Bob was the sorcerer credited with its calamity.
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One day a boasting young black bounded into the camp, and, striking an attitude, began to chant (of course in black fellow’s lingo):

“I have slain—whom have I slain? Is it the white wizard that burrowed like the wombat? Is it he whom we caught and fastened to the tree? Is it the white wizard with the face like the flying fox? Yes, it is the white wizard that lies slain under the wattle—slain by the spear of me, the brave Jooragong.”

Then the excited gins took up the song—

“Jooragong is young, but he has slain him who slew the blacks—the white wizard who burrowed like the wombat—the white wizard with the face like the flying fox. Jooragong is young, but he is braver than the old men. We will all be the gins of Jooragong.”

And then there would have been a great corroborree, had not a sceptical old warrior said,
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“Jooragong is brave in his own mouth. Why did Jooragong leave the scalp of the white wizard under the wattle? Let us go and look on the face of the flying fox. Let us be sure that the white wizard will no more burrow like the wombat.”

Jooragong looked very much like a trapped dingo, but he could not refuse the old man’s challenge. A party of the blacks started under his guidance to make sure of the death of the white wizard, and the son of Kaludie went with them. At last Jooragong stopped and said,

“The white wizard lies dead under that tree,” pointing to one in the distance; but when they came to the tree, there was no corpse there. “He is gone—he is a wizard,” said Jooragong.

“Let Jooragong show me the white wizard’s tracks,” answered the old warrior.

“He burrows like the wombat,” said Jooragong.
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“Then Jooragong, who is young, but braver than the old men, has not speared the wombat,” sneered the old man. “We will go back, and the gins shall sing of Jooragong—‘Jooragong is young. Jooragong is brave. His enemies are dried up before him like water. We look for the enemies whom he hath speared, but we find them not. When dead they still fear Jooragong, who is braver than the old men.’”

The son of Kaludie, however, did not go back to camp. Jooragong had led the party of searchers within sight of the station buildings, and Harry determined to make a bolt for them, if he died for it. He found it easier work than he had expected to get away. The rest of the blacks were so busy jabbering jibes at Jooragong that Harry was not noticed when he lagged behind, and in a few minutes he was able to slip behind a tree, and thence make a slant for the station. When he had once ventured to begin to run, he kept on running as if he was racing Death. He tumbled to the ground dead-beat, but panting like a steam-engine just about to blow up, when he had almost reached the huts. Donald ran out, and then looked half inclined to run away again.
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“Harry,” he said, “are ye sure it’s yoursel’, of your wraith? Hech, man, ye’re a sicht for sair een,” Donald went on, with the tears gushing up into his own generally hard-looking grey eyes, like water oozing from a rock. “We thocht ye’d been deid, an’ buried inside the blacks this long while.”
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After Harry’s escape the blacks again made very audacious descents on the station buildings. For one thing, they wanted to recapture the son of Kaludie; for another, they wanted to kill the white wizard, who, instead of having been speared by Jooragong, had made the braggart dodge from tree to tree before his gun. For a third thing the black fellows had a great relish for the white fellows’ stores, to which every now and then they found a scrambling chance of helping themselves. More fighting took place, and every now and then a black was shot. Still the blacks came down upon the homestead. As it was impossible to guess when they would come, the place could not be efficiently guarded unless the whole of the little garrison always stayed at home—and in that case how was the work of the station to be done?

“Ah tell thee whet ’tis, Mester Sydney,” said Jawing Jim (who up in the bush had almost begun to merit his sobriquet); “if tha wan’t poiason the warmin, tha moost skeer ’em. Me an’ Boab’ll do it for thee. Boab ain’t mooch fit for nawthing else nowa, poor lahd!”
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This was the stratagem the men contrived: They cut off the head of a dead black fellow, and put it into a full flour-cask, the top of which was left open. Then leaving the store door unlocked, and the flour-cask just behind it, all the pioneers left the buildings; the boys, however, returning by a roundabout route, and “planting” in some scrub not far off to witness what might happen. They had to wait some time, but at last the blacks made their appearance. Even their keen eyes detecting no trace of the presence of any whites, they soon swarmed up boldly to the store. Jooragong, bravest of the brave when there was nothing to be feared, rolled out the cask that stood so conveniently near and open, and began to scoop out the flour with both hands. But presently they brought up his countryman’s head. The other blacks raised a wild howl and fled, but Jooragong stood stock-still, gaping, with eyes starting from his head at his hideous handful. The firing of the boys’ guns broke the spell. Off Jooragong bounded also, dropping the floury head out of his floury hands back into the cask; and so long as Harry and Donald stayed at Pigeon Park, the blacks never again ventured within gunshot of the store.