Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Of course, you know I’m talking of the days when convicts were sent out to Botany Bay, as they call it, before the Suez Canal and the great steamers made a journey to the Antipodes a pleasure trip.

Our journey was in a big transport—a three-masted, full-rigged ship, fitted up with quarters for the “lags,” as they call ’em; a good strong warder guard; and a company of Her Majesty’s Noughty Noughth, not armed with Martini-Henry rifles, but with the old-fashioned Brown Bess musket muzzle-loaders, you know, with bright ramrods, and each man carrying so many rounds of ball cartridge, that he had to bite, and a little pouch at his waist, to hold so many big percussion caps.

Our voyage was round by the Cape, and then down south, to catch the great currents and favorable winds; and, much sail as our ship carried, the rate at which we went was a regular crawl, giving plenty of time for the men to get troublesome and discontented, with the consequence that a couple of them were flogged.

Bird—“Gaol Bird,” as I called him, though his name was Richard—Dick—Pretty Dick, eh?—he was one; and you should have seen his round, close-cropped bullet-head, and big jaw.

If an artist had come to me and said, “Do you know of a man whom I could sketch as a specimen of a regular rogue?” I shouldn’t have hesitated for a moment—“Dick Bird” I should have said; “only, if you do draw him, have him chained up, and then don’t go too near, as he might knock you down and jump on you, to finish you, with his heavy boots.”

I suppose, Dick got it into his head, that I reported him for his promotion and stripes; and while his back was getting well, he used to smile at me in a queer sort of way, as if the cat had got into his nature, as well as across his back.

There were several little things, that ought to have made me see that a storm was brewing; but it’s a way with human nature to imagine trouble and ruin, where there’s none, and to be very blind where there is. ’Tis our manner to, I suppose, and has to do with the way we were made.

I saw nothing, my mates saw nothing. We were used to convicts, and we did our duty, seeing that the men did their work, and taking pretty good care that their irons were all right, and that our locks and bolts were well shot home.

* * * * *

Storms break out pretty suddenly down in the South, where there’s plenty of room for the winds to work, and one terrible storm broke out all at once, when we were about a hundred miles from Sydney.

It was one evening after a fearfully hot day, that the orders were given, for the men in our charge to be had out on deck, for the doctor had reported that he would not be answerable for the men’s health if they were kept so much down in their quarters, which were suffocating at times.

So the soldiers were called out, and planted here and there with fixed bayonets; our fellows were on duty, of course, and the convicts were kept moving about on the deck, while the ports were thrown open below and everything done to ventilate the place.

I’d been seeing to this with some help, and was very glad to get on deck again, to run my eye over the men; and I hadn’t been up five minutes, before I had one of the convicts looking at me in a curious way.

It was Ninety-seven, and he passed on to come round again after a few minutes, and look at me again in an imploring sort of fashion.

This happened four times, and being in a better temper that evening, I took a step or two forward, as he came round the fifth time, and spoke to him.

“What is it, my lad?” I said. “Want a quid of tobacco?”

“I want to speak to you, Mr. Rowan,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes,” I said, “you always did. You were born with too much tongue, Nick.”

“You don’t believe in me, Mr. Rowan, sir,” he said; “but, for God’s sake, let me speak to you for a few moments.”

“What, to beg, or to tell me some cock-and-bull story, eh?”

“No, sir, it’s life and death to us. It is indeed, sir. For God’s sake, let me speak to you.”

The man’s way was so earnest, that his words made an impression on me, but I only said sternly,

“Go on with your walk, my lad. You’ll be ordered below directly.”

He uttered a deep sigh, and continued his march, with his head down, but as he came round again I said sharply,

“Ninety-seven!”

He gave quite a jump at this, and followed me below, while I caught sight of Bird watching us as he went by.

“For God’s sake let me speak to you.”
]

“Now, what is it?” I said sharply. “What do you want?”

“You to give warning and be prepared.”

“What for?”

“There’s a plot hatching,” he whispered; “the convicts are going to rise, seize the ship, and take her to some uninhabited part, where they can all land and escape.”

“Indeed!” I said, with a chuckle; “and how are they going to manage it? I thought you were all pretty safe.”

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, “but it is a fact; and if you don’t mind there’ll be murder done.”

“Who will they murder first—you for telling tales?”

“I suppose so, sir,” he said in a low, despondent way. “I was afraid of that, but I felt that I must speak.”

“Oh, did you?” I said surlily; “and pray who’s at the head of the mutiny, and when is it to come off?”

“To-night, I think, sir.”

“Oh, to-night, eh?” I said. “Who’s at the head of it?”

Nick was silent.

“Well,” I said again, “who’s at the head of it?”

“I can’t tell you, sir.”

“Don’t you know?”

He nodded.

“Well, then, who is it?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“No, of course you can’t,” I said contemptuously, “because it’s all one of your hatched-up plans to curry favour.”

“I swear to you it is the truth, sir,” he whispered. “I heard them talking it over.”

“Heard who talking it over?” I said sharply, but he was silent again.

“Be off on deck!” I cried roughly, and he turned upon me, as if he were going to throw himself on his knees.

“What can I say, Mr. Rowan, to make you believe me?”

“Tell me who are the ringleaders.”

“I know——” he stopped short. “I can’t tell you, sir. I will not betray them. I only tell you, to be on the watch to put the rising down.”

“Don’t you be afraid about that,” I said, with a laugh. “Now go on deck, Nick Ninety-seven. You always were a sneak and a humbug. It’s all a flam, and I shall be glad to get to Sydney, if it’s only to see your back.”

He went on deck, and I walked to one of my brother officers, a sturdy fellow named Fraser.

“Here,” I said, “Ninety-seven tells me the lags are going to rise, seize the ship, and carry her off to an uninhabited island, to play Robinson Crusoe.”

“Young Nick’s a humbug and a sneak,” says my mate. “They’ll have to look sharp then, for we shall be at Sydney to-morrow before this time.”

“Then you don’t think there’s anything in it?”

“Bah! Are they going to try it on now on deck, and half a company of swaddies facing them?”

“Likely!”

“Down below then, when they’re all locked up?”

“Not likely that.”

“It’s all gammon, mate,” he cried. “Flam to get in favour.”

“What I told him,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t report it?”

“I would if I wanted to be snubbed,” said my brother officer, with a grin. “Ha! there goes the order for down below, and they haven’t riz, mate. They’ll be behind the bars in five minutes. Not much flurry to-night.”

As he spoke, a little squad of soldiers marched down and formed up on either side of the gate, and the convicts came down singly and went through till all were in; then the gate was shut and locked, and all was safe for the night.

“No,” I said, in a whisper; “there’ll be no rising.”

“Not till to-morrow morning, mate, when it’s time to get up.”

As Fraser—a man I’d known for years, as one who thoroughly understood convicts—thought as I did, I felt I was right about Nick’s warning, and that it would be folly to go troubling those in authority over us; so I had my meal, and at nine o’clock—one bell, as they call it on board—I went on duty with two more; and it was only then, as I stood in the main decks, looking about me by the light of the swinging lanterns, that I thought of Ninety-seven again, and the impossibility of the men making any attempt.

For there they all were safely locked up in irons; we were on duty, three of us—Fraser, me, and another—well armed; and only a few yards off there were the sentries with fixed bayonets, and fifty or a hundred armed men ready to be summoned, at the slightest alarm.

“All rubbish,” I said to myself; and then it all passed out of my mind again.

It was very hot indeed that night, and all was wonderfully still, when, as I marched slowly to and fro, with my keys in my belt, I began thinking of home and a certain person, and whether it wouldn’t be wise to stay out there and ask her to join me, when, all at once, there was a stifled sort of cry, right in forward amongst the men’s hammocks, and this was repeated again and again, as if someone was in pain.

Then came a rustling and a low whispering, and, without recalling Nick and his warning, I walked up to the grated door.

“What’s up there?” I said severely.

“Don’t quite know, sir,” said a man, drowsily. “Someone talking in his sleep, I think.”

Then the smothered cries came again.

“Do you hear there?” I said. “What’s the matter?”

A voice answered from far in:—“Someone ill here, sir; Number Seventy, I think.”

“Oh, doctor! doctor!” came feebly, from out of the darkness.

I turned away, to get a lighted lantern and speak to the two men on duty with me.

“It’s that bad soup they had to-day,” I growled; “I knew it wasn’t fit.”

“Shall I fetch the doctor?” said Fraser.

“Not yet,” I said. “He wouldn’t like to be roused out for nothing. I’ll go in and see.”

We warders were so strong, in the belief of our own power, that I thought nothing of going in there with my lantern amongst that crowd of half savage, half human beasts; and as the door was unlocked, I left my two fellow warders on guard and went right in, between the two rows of hammocks, towards where the moaning arose.

“Here, what’s the matter,” I said. “Who is it?”

I have a vivid recollection of the dim scene, as I asked that question. The darkness all around, save where the faint light of my lantern shone, showing the rows of hammocks hanging from the beams of the deck above, the fierce countenances gleaming out for a moment and the light flashing from their eyes, where all was silent—a peculiar hushed silence, I remember now, as a hoarse, rasping voice came from a few feet away from me.

“Oh! Mr. Rowan, sir, it’s me—Seventy, sir—Bird, sir—I’m dying, sir—poison, sir.”

“Here, let’s look at you,” I said. “Don’t make that row, man.”

“Haggony, sir—Doctor, sir—an—oh—_make it hot_!”

“Hah! You dog!”

I tried to say more, but the words were choked in my throat, for when, lantern in hand, I bent over the convulsed face, as its owner writhed heavily in his hammock, two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat, I was twisted as it were down upon the deck, and Bird wrenched himself round over me, saying in a hoarse voice to drown my struggles and gurgling attempts to cry for help,

“Can’t help kicking, sir. It’s haggony! but I’m a bit better, sir, thank ye, sir. No, sir, I don’t want the doctor, sir.”

All this and more, repeated, as if in mockery over my distorted face, as the ruffian gripped my throat with all his force, while above the singing in my ears and his words, I could hear that something was going on at the door where I had left my two fellow warders, but what I could not tell.

All I knew was, that I tried hard to throw the ruffian off my chest as he knelt upon me, that my senses were departing fast, that Bird would be hung for my murder, and that I was dying of strangulation.

Then, as if it were part of a dream, I saw the men racing out to attack and murder the sentries, and make the vessel their own.

“All through my neglect,” I thought, as there were a thousand lights dancing before my eyes; and then, almost at my last, there was a violent concussion, a savage snarl, a cessation of the compression at my throat, and a tremendous struggle going on upon me in the dark.

“Two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat.”
]

“Get hold on him, some of you,” came to my singing ears in a fierce growl, as the struggle went on. “Quick! D’yer hear? We shall have ’em all at us directly. Now then. Quick! You _will_ have it, then.”

There was a dull thud and then a groan, followed by a couple of shots outside, one following the other; shots which even then, half dead as I was, gave me a sensation of relief, for I knew they had been fired by the first sentry and the next to spread the alarm.

Almost at the same moment, I felt a warm gush of something flooding my face and neck, and with a moan a man fell back across me, as I lay listening to the rush of feet. Then came loudly, “Now for it, lads!”

There was another rush, and, sounding distant and strange now, as I lay half suffocated, I heard a fierce yelling, and above it in commanding tones,

“Halt! Surrender!”

But the rushing and yelling continued; there was the sound of blows, and then twice I heard loudly the order “Fire!” followed by a rattling volley; shrieks and groans; the scuffling rush of bare feet, and the clink of irons; and it seemed to me, that the convicts were running back to their hammocks.

Then all seemed to be blank till I was awakened by the glare of lanterns in my eyes, and someone said,

“Here’s Arthur Rowan, sir.”

“Dead?” said a voice, which I knew to be that of one of the officers.

I answered the question myself in a husky voice, with the word seeming to tear its way out of my throat.

“No.”

“Thank God, my lad! We thought they’d done for you.”

I got a sight now of glittering bayonets, and through the foul powder smoke, I caught glimpses of the faces of convicts looking over the sides of their hammocks.

“Turn that man over,” said the same voice I had heard before, as two men took charge of me. “Dead, I think. Who is it?”

“Ninety-seven,” said one of the warders, and it seemed to be Fraser.

“Oh! Did you stab him, Rowan?”

“No, sir,” I said feebly.

“Humph! someone has. Twice. Look sharp, my lads, or he’ll bleed to death. To the doctor.”

As fortune had it, I was carried out, and laid down on the deck, just as the doctor rose, from where he had been on one knee by a figure at my side.

“Carry him out, my lads; he’s past my help. One of you shot pretty truly.”

I looked beside me, and caught a glimpse of the dead man. It was Dick Bird, shot dead as he tried to escape.

“Now you,” said the doctor. “Where’s all this blood from?”

“Not mine,” I whispered, half strangled.

“Humph! Whose then? One more.”

This was as another man was carried along, and laid on my other side.

“Eh?” said the doctor. “Stabbed, eh? How was this?”

“Number Seventy, sir—Bird—knifed him. It was a dodge,” said Fraser.

“Dodge, eh?” said the doctor, whose hands were busy with tourniquets and bandages. “Rum sort of dodge! What do you mean?”

“The men had planned to rise, sir, and that Bird was the ringleader.

“He shammed ill, and poor Rowan went to help him, to see what was wrong before calling you. Then Bird caught him by the throat and was strangling him, when this poor fellow, Ninety-seven—Nick—out here for picking pockets, went to Rowan’s help. He had warned us just before dark, but we thought it a flam; and now, when he tried to save my mate, Bird turned upon him and stabbed him.”

“And got his deserts the next moment, eh?” said the doctor, quietly, as he tied his bandages tightly. “Well, Master Ninety-seven has got two terrible stabs, but we must save Ninety-seven’s life. Pickpocket, eh? Not he. The man’s a hero.”

I did not hear any more then, for everything swam round me mistily—faces, bayonets, officers, epaulets—and when I opened my eyes to see clearly, I was lying in a bed in Sydney Infirmary, and the first question, I asked of the hospital nurse, was,

“Is Ninety-seven dead?”

“No. There he lies across the ward. The doctor says he’ll get well.”

I’d had quite a touch of fever and been queer for days, but from that hour I rapidly got well, though for many months my voice was as good as gone.

It was in April, when I left the hospital without seeing Nick. He’d been taken away to the convict infirmary, and it was in December that I saw him again.

In the meantime, while I lay in hospital, I had heard from Fraser, my mate, all I didn’t know about the men getting out after knocking down and trampling on him and the other; but the sentries had fired, and at the alarm the guard turned out, and as the men refused to surrender, fired twice and drove them back.

I said that my voice was as good as gone, but it was strong enough for me to report all I knew, to those who took my evidence at my bedside; and I can tell you, I laid it on pretty thick over poor Nick, for I was mad with myself for doubting the poor fellow, who nearly lost his life in trying to save that of one, who had behaved to him like a brute.

The consequence was, that Ninety-seven was sent up the country, as what they used to call an assigned servant, those being well-behaved men, to whom a chance was given to redeem the past.

“Went up the country in a bullock wagon.”
]

Three days before Christmas, I, Arthur Rowan, having leave of absence, went up the country in a bullock wagon, pretty well laden with Christmas cheer for a present, though the best present of all I was carrying in my breast.

How I did laugh as I went up, for I felt real happy, and it did seem so comic.

Here it was just upon Christmas, and me with the plums and peel and things for a pudding, while the sun shone down so hot, I was nearly cooked meat myself, when on Christmas Eve I walked up to the shingle and bark squatter’s house, all amongst the gum and ti-trees.

There was a laughing jackass on the ridge, a tame ’un, and a great lame kangaroo, and a big long-legged emu stalked about along with the chickens, as I removed the rail fence, where the man, who drove me, stopped to hitch on his bullocks.

But I could see no more for staring at a tall, manly-looking brown fellow in shirt and trousers, though wearing his shirt so open, that I could see a great red scar at the side of his neck.

“Well, Nick, my lad,” I said in my husky voice.

“Mr. Rowan,” he cried, and he quite reeled. “Don’t say I’m to go back to the prison.”

“But I do say it, my lad,” I cried, “and at once. Leastwise, we’ll keep Christmas first. I’ve brought some tackle in the dray.”

He didn’t answer me, but I heard him groan,

“And I was so happy here.”

“Happier than at home, dear lad?” I said.

“What? Home?”

“Ay, and sorry I shall be to see you go, though I wouldn’t believe you once.”

“Then you’ve brought me news?”

“Yes, lad, this,” I cried, slapping a blue paper into his hand. “They let me bring it; me, the man whose life you saved.”

He stared at me, as if he could not hear a word, and his face looked blank and strange.

“Nick, lad, don’t you hear me? I tell you, it’s a free pardon—in the Queen’s name, though, hang me! if I believe you did that wrong.”

“A pardon!” he cried, “for me!” and he tore the paper open and tried to read; then I saw him stagger, but he recovered himself, sank down on his knees, and held the paper to his lips.

“Thank God!” he gasped; and then in a wild, hysterical voice—

“Nan, Nan, my darling! At last—at last!”

ARTHUR ROWAN.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EVE THE FIFTH.

SOME EVIDENCE OF ALFRED CURRAN, NEWS PAPER REPORTER, CONCERNING A PAIR
OF TRUE LOVERS.

_By MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED._

Christmas Eve! Strange that that letter should have reached me to-day. _In medias res_ was always my journalistic motto. Plunge straight into the heart of your subject, and don’t bore your readers with preliminaries.

I was thinking of Nan when Jem Starr, mail-man, rode up to the bachelors’ quarters this afternoon, and chucked the mail-bag on the veranda at my feet.

He told me to take it to the Big House and give it to the Boss. Took me for a new chum most likely—said, he was in a hurry to yard his horse—said, there was a chance of the river coming down with floods up at the heads, and that it was hot enough for us to be let off a term of purgatory. A queer independent chap is Starr.

Nan and Nick! Nick and Nan! But I was thinking of Nan more than of Nick. Yes, it is strange there should have been in that mail-bag a letter, asking me to tell all I knew of Nan and Nick, and of that Christmas time at Eungella Diggings, when I was sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_.

Alfred Curran.
]

Sounds grand—Sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_. It sounded grander still, when Jessop wrote to me—I was Jessop’s cousin, you know, and he was under promise to give me an opening if he could. He said he had started a paper and struck gold, and that if I liked, I might come out and run the paper, while he looked out for more gold.

Didn’t I jump at the offer, just! Didn’t I make sure, that I’d struck gold in my line, too! Didn’t I see visions of a fortune and a coming back to England, and a great Liberal organ started, with all the New World go, and getting into Parliament, and all the rest!

But it wasn’t for me that destiny reserved the fulfilment of those dreams. It was for Nan’s husband. Nan didn’t bring me luck.

Sometimes it seems to me, that she brought more bad luck than good, to the men who loved her—all, that is, except one. And there were a good many of them. It wasn’t her fault. But that’s how it came out in my experience of that Christmas Eve.

Anyhow, my fortune hasn’t amounted to much. Eungella Diggings smashed up, and Jessop smashed up, and _The Star_ smashed up, too. Things have a way of smashing up in Australia.

And here I am, a hack reporter, glad to get a job on anything. Bush races or bush-ranging, prize cattle, or a new cure for pleuro; “bush naturalist” articles, or gush over an election; it is all “copy.”

Election business, it was this time. Election finished; “copy” sent in, and a free and easy kind of invitation from one of the election bosses—the biggest squatter in these parts—to loaf about his station and pick up material, till the Christmas holidays are over.

I like loafing. I’m doing a story of bush life. I’m happy enough in the bachelors’ quarters. My lady squatteress doesn’t encourage me at the Big House, though I’m asked there for Christmas dinner to-morrow. The new chums are “tailing” on an out-station, and the Superintendent has gone to town for a spree.

That’s how I come to be jotting down shorthand notes of my reflections on this Christmas Eve.

Every now and then, I drop my pen to go and take a smoke in the hammock in the veranda, and think a little more of Nan.

I watch the Southern Cross, dipping over the mountains. I listen to the frogs, flopping from the veranda roof on to the grass, and to the hum of the flying ants, and the queer buzzings of the myriads of insects, and the cry of the curlews down by the swamp. I see the heat mist rising on the plain and the lightning zig-zagging on the horizon, west.

It makes me melancholy, a night like this. Those trumpet flowers give out a sickly scent, and there’s a Cape jasmine creeper, twined round a pole, that looks like a ghost. Sets one dreaming—dreaming. And there’s a girl over at the Big House singing; and I can catch the tune and a word here and there. It’s a singing kind of thing. It goes—

“For the old love’s sake,
For the old love’s sake!”

And I seem to see Nan. The jasmine reminds me of her, and the pointers of the Southern Cross are like her eyes. Nan, with her pretty, pale face and her red lips, so resolute and so sweet, and her deep, bright, dark eyes, and her black, curly hair.

We came out to Australia together. She was a second-class passenger, and so was I, but she kept very much to herself; and then she was in her cabin a good bit the first part, and we didn’t get to know each other till the voyage was getting on.

“We came out to Australia together.” (_Page 158_)
]

She was all by herself, but she didn’t seem lonely; and she didn’t seem to want to talk. I’d watch her on deck, reading and working by the hour together, and sometimes just thinking, with a happy smile on her face.

She was a great one for reading, and she read clever books—histories and travels and biographies, and I would even see her studying grammars and suchlike. I wondered why she was so eager to improve herself, and I wondered what made her look so happy.

It was seeing me usually reading, too, that made her notice me, I think, and I contrived to make the books a means of falling into talk.

I offered to lend her one I had, that was the sequel to one of hers, and it came about after this, that she would let me sit with her on deck, and she said she learned things from me that none else had taught her. But she had plenty of brains, had Nan; anyone could see that, though, of course, I saw, too, that she had not been educated in the way girls are, and, in fact, that she wasn’t a lady, as the saying goes.

Nan was a lady, every inch of her, as far as Nature went; but she hadn’t the ways of those “born.” I could see that then, having my mother and my sisters and the dear old Rectory full in my mind. Perhaps I shouldn’t so easily tell the difference now.

Nan didn’t make any secret of her humble beginnings. She had been a girl in a baker’s shop, and she had been nurse in a Children’s Hospital.

I supposed that was where she picked up her gentle manners. But that hadn’t lasted long, she said, and she had never had any time for improving her mind. And she told me, that her only friends were in a low walk of life.

That didn’t matter to me. I fell in love with Nan, before we had been talking half an hour—before, indeed, we had ever spoken at all, and I asked her to marry me, just ten days before the ship landed at Australia.

She refused me. I hadn’t supposed she would accept me right off. In spite of her frank cordiality where she trusted, there was a sort of impenetrableness and stand-offishness about Nan, which always rebuffed me. I felt somehow that she wasn’t in love with me. But I thought that was her way. And I didn’t expect to find that she was on the eve of being married to somebody else. And yet I might have guessed it if I hadn’t been a fool.

That was the secret of her dreamy, happy smile—of her suppressed excitement as the voyage neared its close—of stray allusions which, preoccupied with my own hopes, I had totally misunderstood. I had got the impression that she was going to join her brother in Australia; now I found that it was her lover, who was awaiting her—her lover, whom she hadn’t seen for seven years.

“Seven long, weary years, Mr. Curran,” she said. “Seven years of waiting and hoping and struggling—everything, as it seemed, against us.”

Then she told me something of hers and Nick’s story; of the wrongful accusation and unjust sentence; of its remission, and of his efforts to earn sufficient money to pay her passage out, so that they might marry and work together.

But people wouldn’t believe in Nick’s innocence, and in spite of what he had done, there was a prejudice against employing him. Then, she said, luck had been altogether against Nick.

Just when he was getting on, his little savings had been lost; and then he had had a bad illness, and for a very long while she had heard nothing, and had been almost wild with anxiety.

Letters had miscarried, and at one time she had almost believed that he had forgotten her. But two years before he had written to tell her that he had his health again, and that he would never rest until he could make her his wife. And then had come a letter telling her, that he had found gold and would be a rich man—a letter enclosing a sum for her expenses to Australia.

“It seems like a dream,” she said. “I wake of nights, and I can’t believe, that, in a little while, I shall see my Nick again. And then I get afraid that he may be disappointed in me, and find that, while he has risen, I have sunk. For I am only a poor girl, and I’ve led a hard life.

“It was all right, while I was in the Children’s Hospital, and I think they would have made almost a lady of me there; but Miss Challice died, and her brother was removed to another place, and things went wrong, and one day I found,” she went on, “that I was turned out without a penny in the world.

“I don’t know how I managed. I got into a factory and worked there, and after a bit, I got easier work, but I could never save enough to be of any use. Ah, Mr. Curran, if you knew how Nick and I have loved each other, and how we have looked forward to this meeting, you wouldn’t grudge us our happiness.”

It went to my heart, and touched all the best part of me, that girl’s way of taking my disappointment.

She seemed to think it was her fault, and that she ought to have told me at the first.

She asked me to let her be my friend, and she asked me to go on teaching her and helping her to be worthy of Nick.

It’s only good women that can rub it into a chap, by saying things like that.

Help to improve her for the joy of another man—a man probably, I thought then, not worthy to tie her shoe-strings! But I said I’d do my best to be her friend, and I’d love her always. And I think I had a lurking hope that the other fellow might throw her over at the last, or that she might find she had been making a mistake.

Of course I didn’t believe all that, about the unjust sentence. I asked her where he was, and then it seemed like a fate, that she should say Eungella, and I told her that it was Eungella I was bound to.

She knew he was to meet her in Sydney. I knew it, too. And I shall never forget the wonderful look on Nan’s face, as we steamed in between Sydney Heads into the new world.

She was trembling all through her little thin body, and her red lips were parted, and her eyes were like two shining stars set in darkness. “Oh, how beautiful it is!” I heard her murmur; “and Nick is there.”

It _was_ beautiful: the great rugged cliffs and the sun setting over the barren ridge of rock, and then the harbour with all its little bays lying blue and peaceful, and the town and the forts, and the lovely Botanic Gardens with their tropical trees and the feathery clumps of bamboos.

Nan had never seen such trees and plants before. But I don’t think she distinguished anything; I am sure it was all like a picture in a dream to her. She could think of nothing, but that she was going to see Nick.

I felt her give a little gasp and a strange cry, as he came pressing forward from the crowd on the wharf. He never seemed to pause or hesitate. He knew her at once for his own.

He was a great, tall fellow, with a sunburnt face, and he had a noble presence—I was obliged to own that. And he had clear, blue eyes and fair, curly hair. He made me think, somehow, of one of the old Vikings of the North. I didn’t wonder that she loved him.

“He never seemed to pause or hesitate.”
]

“Nan!” I heard him say, as she cried “Nick!” and if I had ever had any hope of change in her or him, it died in that moment, when I saw the wonderful and immortal love in their eyes.

Love! love, real love! In spite of the cynics, there’s nothing else in this universe that endures. I turned away feeling lonely and sick at heart. I’d had my dream, and it was over; but I knew that I should never love any woman as I loved Nan, and when I saw the two, drawn as it were into each other’s arms, both uttering that strange yearning cry, of a longing that was at last to be fulfilled, I swore to myself that I’d be Nan’s loyal brother and Nick’s friend, as long as Fate kept us three together.

Eungella Diggings was a wild sort of place to bring a woman to—a straggling town, set in a hollow of the hills, with claims all about, and heaps of mullock, as they call the refuse after the crushing of the quartz, and queer, unsightly erections of machinery, of which the whirr ceased not day nor night.

Then there were mushroom tenements of canvas, and shanties of bark, and weather-board lean-to’s, and zinc-roofed buildings, mostly of a public character—the Courthouse, and Bank, and _The Star_ Office, and the many public-houses, into which all the scum of the earth seemed to gather itself. And some of its aristocracy, too.

There was a baronet doing a store business two doors from _The Star_, and “Honourables” were as thick as peas—or Chinamen, which is saying much the same thing at the Diggings.

There were all sorts, mostly scamps; and fine, daredevil scamps they were that went out to Australia in those days. Many are the stories I could tell, if I hadn’t to tell that of Nick and Nan, about the Diggings crew.

There were lags, too, of course—old hands, as bad as you make ’em, and rough miners as honest as you make ’em, and Oxford and Cambridge men, and army swells, that you’d expect to see in London drawing-rooms.

There were women, too, of all sorts—the worst and the best; and drink flowing, and divine bank-notes flying, and knives gleaming, and tomahawks and pistols at men’s belts.

I often wondered what Nan thought of it all, and if things startled her as much as they sometimes did me. Perhaps it was a good thing for me, that I had the new work and the queer experiences and the “copy” to think of; they helped me to reconcile myself to my disappointment, though I never saw Nan and Nick without a nasty pain at my heart, and at first I rather avoided seeing them at all.

I cannot think why Nick didn’t marry Nan straight off—why he hadn’t married her in Sydney, when she arrived, and brought her to Eungella as his wife.

He was rich enough. He had a good claim, and was turning out gold hand over hand. I believe that was what he wanted and intended, but Nan had some romantic notion that she wasn’t educated enough to be his equal, and that it would be right of her to give him a little time before the knot was irrevocably tied, so that he might be quite certain of his own mind.

She was a noble creature, and I am not sure that she wasn’t right. And she wouldn’t take any more money from Nick, but insisted on working for herself. She talked it over with the doctor’s wife, and they got her nursing jobs to do, and she was called there, as she had been called in the hospital, she said, “Sister Nan.”

There was sickness enough at Eungella—accidents in the mines, and touches of fever and sunstroke cases as the great heat came on. It was early in November when we got to Eungella, and hot indeed then. But that heat was nothing to what came later.

Sometimes on the blazing December days, when the sun would beat on the zinc roofs, and the glare be reflected from the white stones and the mullock heaps, and when there was no shade to be got under the straight lank gum-trees, and the miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf about the street, and the bars would be filled with the sound of swearing, I used to fancy that, if you wanted to find an earthly similitude of Hades, you couldn’t go to a more likely place than Eungella Diggings.

There were drink cases, too—plenty of them, only Nick drew the line there. Though he humoured Nan’s pride and independent spirit, he watched her as carefully as Dummy, the dog, had done in days gone by.

It was to last only a few months—this probation and testing of each other.

“Miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf about the street.”
(_Page 174_)
]

Nick made a bargain for a certain date, though he was always begging her to change her mind, and let him off a month or so, more especially as the nuggets thickened.

And when he pleaded in his earnestness, Nan’s face, for all its wistful, resolute look, would brighten and brighten till it seemed to me the face of an angel, and would give me that nasty pain at my heart once more. But she was resolute always, and the richer Nick became the more she held to her determination.

Nan used to live with the Postmaster’s wife, who was a good sort and something of a lady. She used to take Nan to the entertainments, that were given at Eungella, and there were balls and picnics and concerts, and even a kind of theatre, for money was so plentiful there just then, that actors and conjurors and people of that sort were bound to come.

This was all good for _The Eungella Star_, which flourished mightily, and I made quite a feature of “social topics.”

It was a short time before Christmas when there was a big ball given at the Town Hall, as they called the zinc building. That was the wind up of some races, to which I went as in duty bound, and at which Nick ran and rode a horse, and Nan was present with the Postmaster’s wife, and clapped Nick as he went victoriously past the winning post.

Nick could afford to keep racehorses in these days.

It was only a few days before, that he had come into my office—we had got great friends—I couldn’t help liking the fine, generous fellow in spite of my love for Nan and the soreness of my disappointment. I am sure that Nan had told him about the whole affair, though he never said a word to me on the subject, and that was what made him so nice in his ways to me.

“Curran,” he said, and his whole face was alight, “do you believe in a good fairy coming to bring a man luck? Nan is my good fairy—she has brought me luck. The gold has been coming up thicker and thicker ever since my darling came out to me. To-day has come the biggest luck of all. I’m a rich man, Curran—my fortune is made.”

“He went victoriously past the winning post.”
]

I could not help quoting the old proverb, but Nick only laughed.

“Unlucky in love! Looks like it, eh? Nan and I are a living disproof of all the saws. Ah, my Nan shall drive down the Ladies’ Mile in her carriage yet, and I shall perhaps fulfil what has been—next to Nan—my life’s dream!”

“What’s that?” I said.

“To be a power, Curran—a power for good in that terrible city—that Babylon in which I was born. I want to do something for the poor and the vicious; I want to help to save such helpless, deserted children as were Nan and I from the fate that, but for God’s mercy, might have been Nan’s fate and mine. I want to get into the English Parliament, Curran; I want to plead the cause of the friendless—to get protection for the children—justice for the hireling.”

There was a great solemnity in Nick’s tone, and a curious prophetic look in his eyes.

He had been talking it all over with Nan, he said. They were to be married in two months’ time, which was the limit she had fixed, and as soon as he was in a position to make a good start in the old country, he would leave Australia. And he would leave no stone unturned to clear himself of the charge, which would, he knew, cling to him through life, and hinder the useful career, which he might otherwise carve out for himself.

But I am getting away from the races. It was after Nick had won his race that a rather handsome man of a coarse, underbred type, well dressed, and looking what the Australians call “flash,” was brought up by a friend of Nan’s, and introduced as Mr. Tempest.

I was standing near Nan at the time. Nick had left her to see after something about his horse, and she was talking gaily to a little knot of her Eungella friends, elated at the good luck that had befallen Nick, and looking cool and fresh and surprisingly beautiful in her white dress which she had put on in honour of the occasion.

I had been noticing this “Mr. Tempest.” He was a recent arrival at the diggings, and I did not like his manner or appearance. He was loud, boastful, and vulgar, with a veneer of smartness—and an occasional lapse into ways, that would have disgraced a navvy.

Just now he was on his good behaviour. He had evidently been greatly struck with Nan, who was certainly the belle of the Stand. He made her a very low bow and said a few words of compliment.

I saw an odd startled look come over Nan’s face, and she looked at him closely, and repeated his name, as if she were puzzled. “Mr. Tempest?”

“Reginald Tempest—at your service,” said he, with a kind of leer that made me inclined to strike him.

They began to talk, and at every word, the man said, I saw the mystified look deepening in Nan’s face. She seemed glad when she spied Nick—away down the course—and proposed to me that we should walk and find him.

Before she went, however, Tempest had got her promise to dance several dances with him at the ball that evening.

Nan was greatly agitated. “Mr. Curran,” she said as we walked along, “that man’s name isn’t Tempest. I wish you’d try and find out something about him; he is either the brother of a man I knew long ago—the man who got Nick into terrible trouble—or he is the man himself, and his name is Rummles. But he has grown a beard and moustache since then, and is changed in every way, and I can’t be sure.

“Oh, if I knew!” she went on, excitedly. “He, and he only, can clear Nick, and give him the right to go about the world without a stain.

“Mr. Curran, if there’s any spark of good feeling in him, he’d do it now—now, after Nick and I have suffered so. And now that Nick is rich and has a career before him, and wants so to do good—we’d pay him, Mr. Curran.

“I’d promise for Nick the half of his fortune—you know about the big nugget—and Nick wants me to marry him at once, and to get away from this dreadful place, and start a fresh life in England. But what’s the good of his trying, with that stain always on him? Oh, I feel that I’d almost sell my soul to clear him.”

She told me that was the reason she had promised the dances to Tempest. She wanted to find out if he was really Rummles. She said he had been fond of her once, and perhaps he would tell her the truth now.

Remembering a look in the man’s eyes, when they had rested on Nan, I told her it was a dangerous game, and that she had best not encourage this Tempest, or Rummles, whichever he might be. But she shook her head, and her eyes had that shining look, which Nan’s eyes always took, when she was determined.

We missed Nick somehow in that walk; and it wasn’t for some time—not till we got back near the stand—that we saw him coming from it. His face was quite white, and I could see that he was deeply moved. He came up to Nan.

“Nan,” he said, hoarsely, “I’ve seen him, I’ve recognized him—our enemy. And you’ve been speaking to him! Nan, I forbid you to do it. He will work us harm again, as he did before. And he has been talking about you—chaffing—pretending that he has made a conquest. I won’t have it, Nan.”

I never before saw Nick angry. He was almost angry with Nan, and when she told him that she had promised to dance with Rummles, forbade her sternly. But Nan tightened her lips. She had her own design, I knew. I wished that she would not try to carry it out.

There was a coolness, it was very evident, between Nick and Nan that evening. The Postmaster’s wife told me they had almost had words on the way to the ball, because Nan wanted to do something that he wouldn’t allow.

The Postmaster’s wife was curious about it, and there was talk in the ballroom, for a good deal of interest attached to Nick just now, because of his splendid find and his rapidly increasing fortune.

Nan looked lovely. She had a soft colour, and her white dress set off her beautiful eyes and hair.

It was quite a grand affair, the ball. You wouldn’t expect there could be anything so fine at a place like Eungella Diggings. The stewards had sent blacks into the scrub, and they had brought back branches of treefern and bunya cones and creepers, and what with flags and one thing and another, it was as pretty a sight as you could fancy.

The Baronet had turned out in swell evening clothes, and so had the “Honourables”—though nobody knew how they had managed it, as they had only brought their swags on their backs to the diggings. And they had got out all their London manners, and danced unlike the other men.

The Gold Commissioner was at the ball, too, and the Police Magistrate, and we had all got ourselves up, as well as we could.

Tempest was in regular dress clothes, with a flower in his button-hole, and looked like a Strand shopman, I thought.

Nan kept to her word and danced with him, and I saw them sitting out and talking very earnestly. But for all Nan’s bright colour, she looked unhappy, and Nick scarcely went near her. “It’s for Nick’s good,” she said to me, when we were dancing together. “Mr. Curran, I was right; it _is_ Rummles, and he has promised me—— Oh! Nick will thank me some day.”

Whatever Rummles had promised, he didn’t seem in a hurry to keep his promise, and tried in the meantime to get as much as he could of Nan’s company. He was always up at the doctor’s and the Postmaster’s, where Nan spent most of her time, and the consequence was that Nick went seldom to see her.

Nick began to look moody and wild; but he was so proud that he wouldn’t go straight to Nan and have things out. He had got it into his head already, I could see, that she was being attracted to Rummles.

Now was my time, and the devil did whisper to me—I’ll own it honestly—that if I chose to foment the mischief by working on Nick’s suspicions, there’d be a chance for me yet with Nan. But I didn’t yield to the temptation.

I did my best to put it away, and I even expostulated with Nan for letting Rummles come between her and Nick. The tears came into her eyes as I talked to her. She was looking very worn and white and thin. All she said was, “It won’t last much longer, Mr. Curran; I’ve got his promise, and Nick will be grateful to me in the end.”

That very afternoon, as I was going across the gully from _The Star_ office to one of my claims, I came upon Rummles and Nan. They were standing close by the passionfruit hedge, which screened the Postmaster’s garden, and she seemed to be pleading earnestly, and he was looking at her in a mad, wicked sort of way.

I crept round the hedge. I suppose it was dishonourable, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to take care of Nan, and I felt by that look on Rummles’ face, that he was up to devilry.

“You’ve got to do this for me,” I heard him say, “and then I’ll do what you ask. I’ll give you the proofs because I love you—yes, I love you, Nan, and I’ve always loved you, and I hate Nick because he has taken you from me.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” she cried. “You mustn’t say that. I love none but Nick, and you mustn’t say you’re doing it for love of me. You are doing it for love of right and justice.”

“Very well,” he said with a malign laugh, “I’m doing it for the love of right and justice. But I’m not going to abate my terms, Nan. You are to come yourself, and alone.”

She was frightened, and argued with him, and begged him to let her bring Nick, but he roughly refused.

She had to come alone—to his hut up the gully—after dusk that evening, and he pledged himself to give her the proof of Nick’s innocence. Then they parted, and I went on to the claim, a good deal disturbed in my mind.

I was afraid, that if I told Nick, there would be murder done, but I was determined Nan should not go to that villain’s hut, without my being somewhere within earshot.

I skulked about the Postmaster’s house till after sunset, and it was almost dark when I saw Nan come out, looking very pale and very frightened, but with the steadfast, resolute look in her face, that I knew meant she wasn’t to be turned from her purpose. I felt easier about things when I saw her stop and take a little pistol from her belt, look at it, and hide it away again under her jacket. Nan was a brave woman, but she was not blindly foolhardy.