“On him attends the blue-eyed martial maid.”
—Homer’s Odyssey.
O
N board the swift coastal steamer Eidermere, as she cuts through the tepid waters of the Molle passage with her knife-like stem, on her way to the northern Queensland ports. The coral-reef-sheltered expanse of waters is quite oily in appearance, perfectly calm is its mother-of-pearl surface, which, crimson, blue, and yellow with evening tints, reflects a perfect topsy-turvy picture of the purple, pine-covered, pointed islets and grand, shadowy hills of the mainland, that make this spot the most charming point upon the Australian coast.
 
There is really no excuse for even the most susceptible sufferer from mal de mer on board to remain below. Consequently the whole “contingent” of passengers, saloon and steerage, are lolling about on deck in various easy attitudes, enjoying the ever-changing beauties of the glorious sunset picture before them, and revelling in the comparative coolness of the hour.
 
116
 
On the raised “first-class” end of the vessel the usual specimens of humanity one always sees on board a passenger-steamer, in whatever part of the world you travel, are present. The over-dressed, noisy bagmen of wine and spirit houses are there; the quiet, canny representative of a pushing “Glascy” soft-goods manufacturer; two or three Jewish mine-owners; a sprinkling of Scotch storekeepers; an Irish doctor; a German innkeeper; and a select circle of long-limbed members of those upper circles who belong to the genus termed in Australian parlance “silver-tailed,” in distinction to the “copper-tailed” democratic classes.
 
Here a thin-faced clergyman, on the way to his missionary labours amongst the Papuans, stands by his fresh, young Victorian wife, pointing out to her the various “outward and visible signs” that they have at last entered the tropics, as the trembling screw hurries them past lazy-looking turtles, long rows of alg? seed, and occasional broken branches of mangrove and pandanus.
 
Over there the courteous captain of the ship, dressed in spotless linen suit, is pointing out to a lady passenger “the identical spot on that particular island, my dear madam, on the dark red rocks that lift themselves out of the deep water, where Captain Cook landed in 1770.” The gallant skipper, who is a well-known antiquary and geologist, proceeds to promise he will some day show his fair friend—who, by-the-bye, does not appear very interested—the cairn erected by the same wonderful navigator near Cooktown, and lately discovered by himself.
 
Down near the forecabin a few greasy-looking 117 stewards are dawdling over the job of emptying overboard sundry trayfuls of débris from the saloon tea table, enjoying meanwhile the fresh air, ere the “boss” shall call them back into the stuffy atmosphere of their principal sphere of labours.
 
“Golly!” says a small boy to one of these marine waiters, as the former stands on tiptoe to look over the bulwarks, “Golly! but them kiddies round the news office, guess they’d give ’alf of their papers fur that lot o’ grub you chucks away, mister.”
 
Without waiting to see if his remark is understood or even noticed, Don—for it is Claude’s little friend—dives down, and, seizing a fat brown puppy that is lolling against his legs, lifts it up to see “them gooses” that are skimming past the ship. Above the group, on the saloon deck, is Claude, leaning against one of the boats, and trying to listen to a dark, elderly man, dressed in a “slop”-made grey suit and soft felt hat, as he spins him a yarn of the Palmer diggings, commencing,—
 
“’Spose you’ve heard of poor Jack Straw, who was killed by the natives under his waggon?” etc.
 
Claude, to tell the truth, is neither interested in the tale nor the scenery; and when the former is finished, and the historian has been dragged off to take a hand at “cut-throat” euchre, our young friend relapses into a reverie.
 
Eager as he was to follow out the instructions of his dead uncle until the steamer reached Brisbane, he cannot disguise from himself the fact that since that day his enthusiasm has greatly cooled. Something happened during the few hours he spent on shore in the capital of Queensland which has disturbed his set 118 purposes considerably. Struggle as he may, he feels a longing he can hardly understand to return to Morecombe Bay,—a mysterious tugging at his heart strings that grows stronger as the steamer rattles its way northwards. Any lady readers who may honour these pages with their perusal will already have guessed correctly that young Angland has been attacked with the same sort of complaint that caused sorrowful young Werther to make such an egregious stupid of himself in G?ethe’s marvellous histoirette.
 
A pretty girl has flattered his vanity by apparently particularly admiring him, and, man-like, he cannot help feeling that she shows a sense above all other girls in so doing. The birth of love in man is generally after this fashion. True admiration, whether signalled by word or smile, is the expression of adoration by an inferior to a superior being. And as man’s hereditary instincts teach him unconsciously to wish to succour and protect the weaker of his immediate species,—for it is probably owing greatly to this desire that the human race has worried its way along to the front seat in creation,—the usual predilection strong men (physically or otherwise) have for mating with weak women, and vice versa, is easily explained.
 
So Claude develops at first a simple desire to shield this forlorn maiden. He feels somehow that she must be forlorn, although he does not,—and he feels ashamed to own it, even to himself,—he does not even know her name. She may be engaged to marry a man who will not appreciate her. What a sickening feeling comes over him at the thought. What a pity the days of the duello are over, and all that kind of thing. Surely she could never have looked into anybody’s soul before,119 as she did into his, with those deep blue orbs,—those eyes that have floated before him day and night since his little Brisbane adventure; her little dimpled face, flushed with excitement and pretty pursed-lipped anger, as he first saw it; or that angel look of mute entreaty as those glorious eyes shot burning arrows into his brain as he turned to her assistance, that would have spurred him to any rashness, much less knocking down a clumsy lout of a drayman. Yes, permanently nailed upon the wall of his mind’s photographic studio is the sunlit picture of the neatly dressed petite figure, with the halo of golden hair, that held out a tiny, faultlessly-gloved hand to him as she said good-bye, and, thanking him for his service, left him half-stupefied with a last glance of those glorious eyes.
 
This is Claude’s first affair, and one must not be too hard on him. Some men take love easily, as others do the measles. Some young fellows, on the contrary, have their best natures all over one grand eruption, which leaves their soul’s cuticle marked for ever, for good or bad, as the circumstances of the case direct. But really the spooney season is a more important time in a young man’s life than it is generally considered. For there is little doubt that men (who have “felt the pain”) look at womankind during the remainder of their lives through spectacles that are coloured rosy or grey, according to their happy or miserable experiences of “the sex,” as represented by the particular cause of their première grande passion. But instead of stating our own opinions upon a matter that every healthy subject diagnoses for himself or herself in his or her own way, we had better proceed120 to state at once that Claude had been “hard hit,” and that the “pleasing punishment” was given under the following circumstances.
 
On the afternoon of the S.S. Eidermere’s arrival at Brisbane, where she had to stay a few hours, Claude landed, and proceeded townwards from the region of great, busy wharves, behind which noisy steam-cranes were rattling and puffing at the cargoes of sundry vessels. At the gates of the steam-ship’s company’s yard the usual crowd, that always congregates in similar places to prey upon the freshly-arrived and perhaps sea-sick passengers, was there in force. Porters, cabmen, van-drivers, runners, and nondescript loafers of various sorts jostled each other and fought for the luggage of the travellers. Pushing his way through these, he soon found himself in the comparatively quiet neighbourhood of the public gardens, and was just about to enter them when he heard a great “how d’ye do” close at hand. This was occasioned by the dusty scuffling of two dogs, one of which was shrieking as only a small dog can shriek when in fear of immediate disintegration at the hands, or rather teeth, of a larger canine animal. Above all rose hoarse yells of delight from a circle of the city’s gamin who were enjoying the scene. Claude would have proceeded on his way, after turning his head to ascertain the cause of the uproar, but for a sight that attracted his sudden attention.
 
The small dog evidently belonged to a young lady, who, alone and unprotected amongst the crowd of roughs, was courageously but injudiciously trying to save her tiny four-footed dependent by beating the big dog with her parasol. Hurrying up to her assistance, 121 Angland saw a burly, red-faced man, apparently the owner of the large animal, step forward and roughly snatch the fair one’s weapon of attack from her vigorous little hands, giving vent to his indignant feelings at the same time by expressing his intentions of “seein’ fair play,” and “lettin’ no blessed gal hurt ’is dawg.” Claude just saw the little figure with clasped hands, and heard the faltering appeal for help to the brutal bystanders, as he burst through the crowd. To him, accustomed to wild-boar hunting in the dark Hunua ranges near his home, the job of making a fierce pig-dog “take off” from its quarry had often been an every-day occurrence when training his canine hunters. It was comparatively an easy work to choke the big, over-fed cur, and make it let go its hold of the little ball of palpitating floss beneath it in the dust. To give the large dog a sounding kick that lifted it half-a-dozen yards away, whence it slunk off homewards, was the next act; and the whole thing was done ere the disappearing mongrel’s master could recover from his open-mouthed surprise. Claude was stooping to pick up the young lady’s dishevelled pet, when he saw the red-faced man “coming for him,” and was just in time to receive that gentleman’s most prominent features upon his own large and rather bony left fist. Angland knew that in a row with those modern mohocks, Australian larrikins, you must “hit to kill,” as Dick, his old home chum and “tutor in pugilism,” used to call it. So, following his defensive blow with one of attack, he instantly brought his right fist forward, so as to knock loudly on that thinner portion of his adversary’s skull which is situated just above the approximation of the jaw and ear, 122 dropping him as neatly as the proverbial bullock. The crowd of roughs around, who would have half-killed and afterwards robbed our hero if he had been worsted in the encounter, drew back on seeing the big man fall, and respectfully made way for Claude, as, holding the little dog in his arms, he escorted the lady to whom he had been thus curiously introduced into the gardens, where she sank trembling on one of the seats.
 
“Oh, how good of you! How brave of you! I can’t thank you enough! Oh, I didn’t know what to do! Poor Fluffy, you’re not hurt much, my darling, are you?” (this to the dog). “You know I’d just landed from the ferry-boat, and I wanted to go to the post-office; and I’m always afraid of those horrible men and their nasty dogs when I come over. Poor little doggie,” as the worsted ball of a creature continues to wail softly. “How can I thank you!” And all the while the sweet little smiles, that were impartially divided between the dog and the man, were working a state of havoc in Claude’s heart, the completeness of which even the larrikins could hardly have imitated upon the young man’s body.
 
If the young lady had been plain, or even a little less enchanting, Claude would probably have found out a good deal about her in no time. But the bright little maiden, with the golden hair and dark, melting eyes, bewildered him with suppressed emotion, and when she prayed that he wouldn’t think her ungrateful if she said he mustn’t come with her further than the post-office, and then when they arrived there tripped off, after giving his hand a timorous little pressure with her tiny fingers, he felt as if he had just 123 learned what heaven was and had lost all chance of it for ever.
 
He was inclined to rush madly after her and ask sundry questions, but by the time his thoughts had arranged themselves for action, his goddess had disappeared, and a white-shako’d policeman was watching him suspiciously with gin-and-watery eyes, as a possible slightly inebriated stranger whom he could drag to durance vile.
 
So Claude walked vaguely about the town (noticing nothing of it), vainly hoping all the while to see her once more, and, barely catching his boat, became surly for the rest of the evening.
 
“Turning in” early, he dreamed a lot of kaleidoscopic nonsense about fighting red-faced men with small-gloved hands, who changed into laughing-eyed girls and scraggy clogs by turns, and finally burst into pieces, looking like minute larrikins, with a noise resembling the rattling of the rudder-chains, whose jangle overhead awoke him every morning.
 
And this was how it came about that our young friend wasted his time and opportunities of learning about the wonderful land he was approaching from his fellow-passengers, and remained for a few days in an almost perpetual state of reverie, consisting of alternate pleasing remembrances and self-objurgations at not having ascertained “her” name. His “maiden meditations,” however, daily became fewer and farther between, and the particular one that cost him the loss of his mate’s yarn, and most of the lovely scenery that lies between Whitsunday Island and the mainland, was abruptly brought to a close by the Irish doctor aforesaid, who, having been a quondam associate of124 Claude in New Zealand, came to re-open a subject of conversation between them that had interested our hero considerably before the Brisbane catastrophe.
 
“Well, me boy, is it brooding over the mimery of the dusky daughters of fair Ohinemuri ye’ve left far behind you in far Zealandia, you are, or has some Australian rose
 
“Put your ring on her finger
And hers through your nose”?
And the gay, dapper little Dublin licentiate winds up his bit of good-natured banter with a piece of impromptu verse, as he seats himself by Claude’s side.
 
Why is it that Irish doctors are, as a class, the most fascinating of men? Is it because in addition to their attractive mother wit and natural kindness of heart, their glorious profession makes them also better judges of mankind than the ordinary outside barbarian, by teaching them the “why” of human sayings and doings, where every-day folk only observe the “how”? We don’t know. But at any rate, Dr. Junelle, as a representative of the class, was just the right man in the right place to charm Claude out of his moody thoughts.
 
Noticing immediately, with quick medical eye, from the slight flush of confusion that rises on Claude’s face, that his carelessly thrown conversational fly has hooked the real cause of the young man’s thoughts, he proceeds to cover his mistake by plunging at once into the theme that he knows will interest his friend. Dr. Junelle has travelled through a great deal of the little-known and less-populated districts of Australia125 called generally the “outside” country. Whilst moving amongst the frontier settlers of these parts, as the medical referee of one of the great assurance associations, he had ample opportunity for studying the effect of some of the wildest forms of bush-life upon the human mind and body, and has made an especial study of hereditary characters developed by the offspring of Australian backwoodsmen.
 
“I’ve got a bit of news for you, my dear fellow,” he continues; “in troth, that’s the reason I’m after bothering you this minute. Did you happen to notice that tall young fellow who joined us at Mackay? Sure it’s himself that’s standing there with his swately embroidered forage-cap stuck on the north-east end of his face, wid a military air an’ no mistake. You did, eh? Well, and he’s an officer in the Corps I was telling you about. I’ll introduce you by-and-by, if it’s to your liking. He’ll be glad to give my Royal Geologist here any information he can, but don’t you go indulging in any of the caustic remarks about his profession that you did to me when I told you some of my experiences of the work of the Black Police. No, cushna machree, remember the swate little Irish melody, ‘Tha ma machulla’s na foscal me,’ which, being translated literally, means nothing at all but ‘I’m ashlape and moinde ye don’t thread on me tail.’ For it’s myself that knows what power and influence these same gentlemen have in the north, and our friend over there would pay any grudge he had against you on your humble servant, that’s me. Now it’s live and let live, say I, although I am a doctor, and I’m after making a fortune as soon as ever I can, me boy, and then, hey! for the bosky dells of scrumptuous126 New Zealand, and divil a bit I’ll pine any longer in this confounded tropical climate.”
 
“Well, doctor,” answered Claude, laughing, “I’ll be just real glad, as our American friends say, to have a chat with the hero of a hundred fights over there, and I’ll promise I won’t offend him. I don’t expect all these inspectors are the savage, Nero-like demons you and Williams make out. He looks quiet enough, in all conscience. By-the-bye, do you really mean to settle down in our tight little island of the south some day or other?”
 
“You can lay your last dime on that, me boy, an’ sure I won’t be long before I’m there, if the spalpeens don’t spoil me honest fields of labour for a year or two by going in for those cursed Saxon innovations that no medical man with an honest pride in the rights of his profession likes to see about him,—drainage and temperance. But, nonsense aside, just to show you that ‘it’s the truth I’m telling you’ when I say the officers of the Black Police,—or Native Mounted Police, as the Corps is officially termed,—that these fellows hold a good deal of social power up north, I’ll spin you a yarn if you’ll promise you’ll not go off to sleep. It’s all about a quandary a friend of mine—a Dublin man—was put in, and how he had to knock under to the powerfully persuasive police of his district.
 
“At a mining township not far from that ‘rocky road to Dublin’ you will have to follow, I expect, on your way up-country, there used to be a lot of natives employed about the houses of the miners. There were ‘batteries,’ or something of the kind, in the place that employed a lot of men, and some twenty natives used to come into town every morning and work as hewers 127 of wood and drawers of water for the miners’ wives. These niggers were as quiet and well-behaved as any in the colony, barring one I’ve got at home myself, who’s always up to some divilmint. And they were all as well-known as the bodagh on me father’s own estate, which, botheration! was left to me uncle instead when me gran’father died. Now one day—all this happened about five years ago—an inspector of Black Police rides up to the town, all alone but for his regiment of ‘black boys,’ who came up some time after, and, showing a warrant for the arrest of certain blacks for murder of a stockman, asked, as politely as you please, of the townsfolk if they could inform him where these unauthorized vivisectionists were at present to be found. Divil a one of them was known in the place. But the good gentleman wasn’t going to be beaten, and with the admirable zeal that had made an inspector of him determined not to return home with hands full of nothing. So my noble sends his ‘boys’ round the township, and they catch all the aboriginals who haven’t run away the moment they saw the red-and-blue uniforms, and these were three or four ‘buck’ niggers, a very old chap, some native women, and a child or two. All these, mind you, Angland, were as well-known, and better, than the Maoris that help you with your maize at home.”
 
“Didn’t the miners object?”
 
“Yes, they did, but only a few men were about, the rest being at work. Those whites about the place showed the inspector that the natives he’d collared were working in the township at the time of the murder, but it was no good. Unfortunately, the local J.P., who was the owner of the batteries and mines 128 in the vicinity, and had made himself objectionable to the police of the district by doing his best to preserve the natives of the place, was absent, and no one liked to take the responsibility of making a stand against the law in the matter. So the niggers were hauled off. This was bad enough, sure, but the bitter part was to follow. I must stop for a moment to go on to tell you that it’s a divil of a bother to bring home a conviction of murder against an aboriginal, through some of the judges having decided that it is illegal to try a man in a language of which he doesn’t know a single decent word, barring a few swear words he’s heard used by bullockies, and drovers, and the like. So, finding this lion in the path of justice, the artful protectors of the public have hit upon another plan for arriving at the same desired end.”
 
“What is that?” asks Claude.
 
“Sure the idea is ‘just grand,’ as my Scotch gardener says, and as easy to carry out as falling off a greasy log, and that’s as nate as it’s convanient. The plan is to let the prisoner have a chance of escaping when taking him to gaol, and promptly perforate him with bullets if he takes it or not.”
 
“But that wouldn’t work long. Too many witnesses, doctor. Sure to leak out some day.”
 
“Not at all, me boy. The gentleman in charge, who is so anxious to save the Crown the expense of the trial, it’s just himself that knows what he’s about. His squad of ‘boys’ is composed of black fellows from various parts of Australia, who belong to different tribes, or factions, to tip it a rale Irish simile. On the top of a downright lovely, natural animosity for each other, w............