Australian Tales and Adventures.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2032, 18 February 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

Australian Tales and Adventures.

No. 15. A STRANGE STORY. By R. P. WHITWORTH. The story I am about to relate is a slrr-rg? one. Is it true? 1 do not know. .In! .red from the stand point cf every day experience, I should say that it is impossible that itc-mM have happened, and yet, marvellously and totally unaccountable as it seems and is to me, 1 cannot but believe it to be positively and absolutely a fact. It ia one of tho=e things which cannot be explained, and which will not bo explained away. We live our visible life, as it were, passing over a narrow bridge lying between two immeasurable gulfs, that behind us being the irrevocable past, and that before, the inscrutable future. What these guild contain, what is called the unseen world, whether anything or nothing, tangible or intangible, science tells us nothing about. Do, then, the disembodied spirits of the dead ever return to earth. Let my story tell what I think, and cannot bat believe.

Many, very many yeara ago, when I was a young man, little more than a youth in fact, just come from England to seek my fortune in this fair land of Australia, I had made up my mind to become what was the summit of so many ambitions, a squatter. 1 must tell you there were two of ns, myself and my cousin, Jim Welsh, a son of my father’s sister. He was of about the same age as myself, and I was deeply attached to him, as be was to me. We bad been at school and college together, and I mention this latter to show that we were both tolerably well educated, and therefore not likely to be imbued with the superstition and fanciful credulity that so often go hand in hand with ignorance. As I have said, wo were deeply attached to each other, a case of Damon and Pythias, or Orestes and Pylades, or, better still, of David and Jonathan.

We had come out in the same ship, and had vowed never to separate, but to stick together through good and ill. We had heard and read in England of the free wild life of the cattle kings, of the boundless plains, and breezy downs, and grassy glens of the land of the Southern Cross, and our hearts swelled high with hope that we too, some day, should become, as they were, lords of the soil. But to become squatters, it was necessary for us to know something about squatting. We were fairly well provided with funds, and had some good letters of introduction, and acting on the advice of a gentleman who had known Jim’s father, we determined, before venturing into a business of which we knew nothing, to go, for a time, on a station, and gain colonial experience. Sheep we would have nothing to do with. The life on a sheep run did not suit our ideas. It was too tame a kind of thing for us. It lacked the spice of romance attendant upon cattle breeding. There was none of the headlong gallopping through the crashing timber, and down stony defiles and steep gullies, the camping out beneath the giant gum trees in the solemn bush, the cracking stockwhips, the cabbage-tree hats, the blue shirts, the breeches and boots, and the other glories that render the life of a stockman so desirable—on paper. Therefore, on a cattle station would we go. There was no great difficulty in the matter. There were plenty of squatters who would willingly take us on their runs, and " break us in ” —for a consideration, of course. One of these offers wo accepted. It was on the station of a gentleman named Macgregor, a canny old Scotchman, which was situated on the upper part of the Goulburn river in Victoria, and which embraced some seventy thousand acres of good open forest country, carrying about eight thousand five hundred head of cattle.

We went to work in right down earnest to learn the business, and 1 may fairly say that we succeeded admirably. We were both tolerably good horsemen to begin with, and as old Maogregor was a rigid and exact man, who would have his work done thoroughly well, and as we were anxious to learn, we, ere long, were turned out really good bushmen. So much so that after we had been with the old gentleman a little over two years, he proposed to us that weshould take the sole charge of the station during a visit which he proposed to tike to the old country. Nothing could have suited us better. Toung, ardent, our own masters, with work that we took a delight in, we jumped at the offer, and ere another month, he had departed on hia homo trip, ami we were installed in the large comfortable house of our employer, practically “ bosses ” of the situation, and certainly, monarchs of all we surveyed, for the nearest house was Carftae’s, over the ranges some twenty miies away. Oar house, as we considered it, was a wooden structure, of many rooms, having a wide verandah round throe sides. It stood on the crown of a swelling down that formed the home paddock, and that sloped away past a small creek that formed one of the affluents of the Goulburn, to the foot of a range of hills about five miles away, and that shut in the view to the north. Through this range, and exactly opposite the house, was a dip or gorge, known locally as “ Maogregnr’s flip,” and being the sole means of communication that existed between our peaceful valley and the feverish world whose heart throbbed so fiercely outside.

Moat of the house was closed, for there were far mors rooms than two bachelor's could poaaiblyuse. We each had a bedroom, entered from the front verandah, and our common Bitting and dining room lay between the two, and was ns well our oftiee, smoking-room, library, and musio-roora, for Mr. Maogregor had a good seleetion of books, and a splendid pianoforte and harp for the use of his two daughters, who had aooompanied him home.

Our household consisted solely of our two selves, Alee. Payne, the head stockman, who slept over the stables, an ugly and hottempered old Scotchwoman named Meg. who cooked .and did for us generally, who lived somewhere in unknown parts at the back of the house, and who claimed to be distantly akin to the “ Maister,” and tyrannised over us accordingly, and a singularly handsome oolley slut named Fly, who located in spots, indifferently in mine or Jim’s bedroom, at her own sweet will and sovereign pleasure. _ The station hands had their huts at considerable distances, and we rarely saw any of them, except when they came to the house for rations, or on other business. . Halcyon days, indeed, were those we passed in the soft, sweet Australian spring. Fishing in the Goulburn, shooting in the hills, kangarooing on the flats, with plenty of healthful employment to keep us from rusting, who could have been happier than Jack Alleyne, that was myself, and Jim Welsh, the managers and residents of the Gap Station. But our time of unalloyed happiness was not to last. The blacks took to spearing our cattle. Why they did it we could not tell, for we had always treated the few who bad shown up on the tun with the utmost kindness. Where they came from we could not conjecture, for there were practically none belonging to our immediate neighbourhood. None, in fact, of any account, nearer than the Warrigal tribes of Gippeland. They wereferocious and mischievous enough

we knew, but we could not imagine that they would leave their native haunts so far away the southward, and cross the all but inaccessible fastnesses of the main range to do us an injury. We could not account for their presence, we could find no reason for their acts, unless, indeed, they were some wandering tribe who had been badly used by the white man somewhere, and were revenging themselves indiscriminately on friend and foe alike. But there was the unmistakable fact. We were first made aware of it by Alec, our head stockman, riding up to the house in hot baste one forenoon with the intelligence. He had, so he informed ns, been out to one of the cattle camps, and returning by the foot of the hill had came across blood marks on the grass. Following them up he had found the remains of a young strawberry heifer, one of out choicest breed. The blacks had carried off some of the flesh, and had left the rest to the hawks. Was he sure it was the blacks who had done it ? Quite sure. There was no mistake about that, for he had seen the mark of the spear thrusts. He had ridden up to the house as fast as he oonld, to see what was to be done. What was to be done? Ah 1 that waa a poser. Find the marauding scoundrels. Just so. But whore to find them ? Where (o look for them? They were miles away, no doubt, gone this way or that, who could tell ? It was our first experience with blacks, that is to say with mischievous ones, and we were completely at a loss how to act in the emergency. Jim and I, calling Alec, to our counsels, sat up late that night discussing the matter, although with but little result further tt(jn that we determined to keep a strict look out for the thieves in future.

We might as well bare saved ourselves the trouble. Do what we could, ride to and fro on the run, early and late, as we might, we never could come across them. Had we had native trackers we might probably have found their trail, and hunted them ofl, for the blacks have a wonderful instinct, and a naturallove for this bloodhound kind of work —it is strange, indeed, how the cartially civilised aboriginal takes a cruel delight in tracking and, it may be, slaughtering his own countrymen, even those of his own tribe, but so it is—but we had no trackers, and were totally unacquainted with the bushcraft and the thousand and one shifts and tricks of these cunning denizens of the woods and wilds for concealing themselves and eluding pursuit.

But of their presence we had ample proof, for hardly a day passed that we did not get reports of fresh outrages. Not content with slaughtering an occasional beast for food, they bad, as is their wont, taken to spearing our cattle indiscriminately, and for sheer love of bloodshed. Wno could tell how soon they, treacherous and vindictive as they were, would fly at higher game, and would take to killing human beings as well as cattle. At all events we went continually armed, we and the stockman too, with revolvers, and should doubtless have given good account of some of them, could we have found them, which as I have said, we could not. Then for a time came a cessation of hostilities, as it were. They seemed to have quitted our part of the eountry for we had no further alarms, and were just beginning to congratulate ourselves in having got rid of our troublesome visitors, when almost simaltaneoudy wo heard of no (ewer than three line young brad of cattle bring found slaughtered in widely d.thre:,’, parts of the run. Wa were at our wit’s end, but clearly something must be done, and at once. This kind of thing could not be permitted to go on. But how to prevent it 1 Why the wretches had elected to commit their depredations on our run, or whether they had extended them to other parts of the district we did not know. Again we held a council of war, and again wc felt ourselves powerless to cope with the evil. We felt certain that the blacks were about in force, but whether they were camped in the dense bush that bordered our run, or whether, as was most likely, they had their head quarters in the rugged mountain ranges to the northward of us, we were unable to say. It is as certain however that they were not located on the run, as, had they been, we should have been sure to have fallen in with the marks of their fires, if not with the ruins of their wurleys of branches of bark. We sat late in the night without having arrived at any settled plan of operations, further than that Jim Welsh had expressed his determination to ride over to Carfrae’s the following morning, and consult with our neighbour as to what had best be done.

Perhaps that was the best thing after all, for Mr. Catfraa had been a long time in the colony, and might reasonably be supposed to be better acquainted with the habits of the savage tribes, and the best method of dealing with thorn than we. Still, I felt a strange, and altogether unaccountable repugnance to letting Jim go. A singular vague premonition of evil which would not assume any tangible shape and which eluded my mental grasp at the same time as it would not be laughed away. After an early breakfast, Jim saddled his horse, and prepared for a start, ridiculing my groundless fears and attempts te induce him not to venture. II is argument was unanswerable “ Oar plain duty is clear,” he said, •' wo have already lost something like a score of out prime cattle, wc have been totally unable to put stop to the mischief, and unless we take some decided step there is no telling what the result will be.”

I could not contradict this, of course, and could only advise him to be careful, and to keep as much as possible in open country. “Never fear,” ho replied cheerfully, “ I am well armed, and the black scoundrels have too wholesome a terror of the white man's thunder and lightning to venture within oaaey of mo.”

Notwithstanding this, it was with a sinking at my heart that 1 saw him tighten his girths, vault into the saddle, and canter gaily over the grassy stretch of the homo paddock in the direction of the gap. I watched him until he was out of sight, shading my eyes with my hand, from the bright rays of the morning sun, and then I turned into the house with something like a sigh, determined to drive away my uneasy thoughts by writing lone letters home.

In vain, the inspiration would not come. I blundered and bungled through my correspondence for two hours or more, and then gave it up in disgust. I was ever haunted by the shadow of a nameless, formless tear, a hidden terror, that, like the “Dwellerson the Threshold" of which we read, I had no distinct comprehension, but which was, none the leas, there.

It was a clear warm day, the silence was almost oppressive, and by-and-byo, lulled by the faint but ever present hum of the bush, I fell into a light but troubled slumber. My dreams, if dreams they could be called were, as my waking thoughts bad been, ■* without form and void,” yet dimly shadowerod by a presentiment of impending ill. 1 know not how long I slept, but all at once I was roused from my unrest, by a long, loud, half howl, half wail of a dog, so weird, so inexpressibly sad, that it seemed to turn my very blood to ioe. I awoke with a start, and went out at the open door. , As I stepped out upon the verandah, Hy, our collie dog came whining and crouching to my feet, and orouohed tremblingly behind me, as if in mortal terror. At the same moment my eyes were blasted with a new Gorgon. Coming slowly up the path, not twenty yards from me, and gliding rather than walking, was a .f<nn, the form of my cousin, Jim Welsh, whom I had seen start for Cartrao’s some hours before. Pale to lividness, shadowy, ethereal, with a look of pain on bis erstwhile handsome (ace, and a

crimson blotch of blood veiling from a deep gash in his breast. I stood as it turned to marble,powetlesi to mov?, powerless to speak, powerless, almost, to think. Was I still dreaming? No. There he was, plainly palpable before me. I felt my eyes dilate. I felt ray hair stiffen on my head. I felt my heart throb as if it would burst, and still all I could do was to gaze entranced and spell bound iu silent, nameless horror. My breath came fast and thick, and as it came nearer and still nearer, with a supreme effort I gasped rather than spoke " .Inn'." The form waved its hand in the direction of the gap, a smile spread over the anguished countenance, and then it slowly melted into air.

Was I then mad? No, no, a thousand times no, although -.it was surely enough to have driven me so. ' 1 was as sane as 1 am now. What it was, or whether it was, I did not, I do not speculate. I only know that I saw it. I tell you I taw it. For a time I stood incapable of motion or reasonable thought. Then came the reaction. With a hoarse, harsh half laugh, half sob, I bounded forward to where it had stood. There was nothing, I might have known that. I did know it. I ran round to the stable, hastily saddled a horse, snatched up my revolver, mounted, and hatle' 13 , coatDss, as 1 was, gallonped down the home paddock. Whore was I going ? I hardly knew. I bad but one feeling, one idea, that ot bitter vengeance on the perpetrators of this foul deed, tor that a foul deed had been done 1 knew only too well. I headed for the rocky bluffs that formed the (> ap. and bathed in perspiration, and with the hot fire of hatred at my heart, sped across the intervening down. Did I think of danger, of death perliaps, to myself? No, lv;vinge I RrVmgel Soon 1 reached the Gap. All still, all silent. The grim walls hemmed me in on either hand, but told mo nothing. Deeper and deeper into the gloomy d; file I passed, deeper and deeper still, but nothing. Not a sight, not a sound save the clatter and ting of my horse’s iron shod hoofs over the rough boulders. I dismounted, and slowly led my horec over the tugged track for it wna unsafe to ride. More dismal, more wildly solitary grew the scene, a quarter of a mile, halt a mile, a mile, and then—

At last. There he lay. Yes, there he lay. All there was left of him. Of my friend, of dear, true hearted, handsome Jim. Dead! Dead I Alas! Alas! 1 had 1 Dead I K I led by a spear thrust, treacherously hurled from behind a rock, as he was riding, or probably leading hia horse, through the defile. A spear thrust which entering his back, had come out at bis breast, and had cleft his heart in twain. There, at my feet, on his buck, with a smile on his pallid lips, ga/.ing blindly into my face with glazed eyes, as if in mockery of my unutterable woe. Do I feel shame in saying that the tears fell hot and fast from my eyes upon that cold face, that my kisses were impressed on that lifeless hand, which had never hr fore met mine save in (ha warm grip of friendship? Not I. A man sheds tears bat seldom, but when he does, they ate, as it were, teats of blood.

How long I stood looking wistfully into the (ace of ray dead friend I know not. I felt my heart throb almost to breaking. Ih It my brain whirl into dim unconsciousness, and then, kind heaven tent relief to my overcharged feelings. The grim defile, the 1u hj beyond, It at my feet, eeemed to swim round me. All earthly things were Untied cut, and I fell forward in a swoon, and all was dail..

But the awakening, oh I the awa'iei i ig. But the awakening, oh I the awnlumin;'. 1 found myself lying on a couch in ihe front room of our house. I awoke as it mi.-ht ba after a heavy sleep and ! knew nut wo, re 1 whs. For a time 1 lay only partially conscious, yet still entirely cmscious r f imp forms 1 knew around me. Altc. I’»ync, 1* am i llae from the township, and a female with a face strange to me, stood round my bed. I lay, dimly trying to gather up the tangled threads of memory, which seemed to hatbeen woven into a kind of inex.ricablc confusion. 1 tried to raise my hand, and it M! back on the counterpane, seemingly as heavy as lead. And then, I spoke, or rather, as it seemed to me, someone else appeared to speak my thought, so weak and gasping was the voice. “ Where am 17” I asked.

“ Thank God," ejaculated the 1 >octor, “ the worst is over. Mmd and memory arc returning.”

“ For a time I lay still, trying to think of the meaning o! what be said, and then. ns in an instant, the tide flowed. It all came back to me. All, all. The mysterious visitant, the gloomy gorge, the dead body of my friend at my feet.

I bad as they told me, been found lying across the corpse of Jim in the gap, found by Alec. Payne, who had from a distance seen me galloping wildly in that direction, and who, suspecting something was wrong bad followed on foot. 1 had been ill, very ill, nearly at deaths’ door, down with a viulrn. brain fever, for days’, ever since, hut, thank God, the danger was past. As for the appariti m I had wen, Dr. Use discoursed learnedly on psychology and kindred matters, proved to his own satisfaction, doubtless—that at the time I saw it, or was supposed to havo seen it, I was under the influence of incipient brain fever, induced by worry and work and the trouble consequent on the ravages made on our stock by the blacks. He persuaded me that it was all fancy, imagination, the outcome of a heat oppressed brain, all the rest of it, by which scientists try to explain the unexplainable.

Perhaps he was right. I do not know, common sense would tell mo that he was right, and that it was only in my own disturbed brain and mind that fatal vision had been. That is, no doubt, a sufficiently lucid explanation, but for all that, 1 say, as Shakespeare says

“ There are more things in Heaven and earth

Horatio Thau ever you dreamt of in your philosophy." I say with regard to the spirit or ghost, or whs.t you will, of poor murdered Jim Welsh, my cousin, and ray heart’s friend, as J have said before—l saw it.