CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
IN A TRAP.
Sleep did not come very readily to Nic's eyes that night, and he lookedvery heavy and thoughtful at breakfast time next morning.
"How thankful I shall be when your father comes home, my dear!" saidMrs Braydon.
"A bag of flour would be the best thing," said Nic to himself.
"I know, of course, my dear, that you are doing wonders," continued MrsBraydon, looking uneasily at her son, and misinterpreting his heavy lookinto showing annoyance at her remark. "Both the girls and I areastonished at the rapidity with which you have taken up this wild farmlife, and gone on with it as if you had been working for years; but wecannot help longing to see your father back to take the management andgive us that feeling of protection which we miss."
"I ought to have guessed it at once," muttered Nic.
"Is anything the matter, Nic?" said Hilda.
"Matter? No. Why?"
"You seem so dull, and you are not eating your breakfast."
"Oh yes, I am," cried the boy, with forced merriment; and he rapidlyattacked the meal and made mother and sisters more uneasy by eatingtremendously and talking rapidly at the same time about how glad hewould be to have the doctor back.
Soon after breakfast Nic went to the storehouse and filled a bag withmeal, carrying it afterwards to the stable.
"I suppose one of the horses is ill," said Hilda. "Nic has been tofetch some flour to make it a mash."
"Then that's what made him so anxious and thoughtful at breakfast time,"cried Mrs Braydon. "Poor boy! it worried him. He wants to get it wellagain before your father's return."
Janet said nothing, but attributed it to the right reason--that herbrother was troubled about the convict--and she trembled in her longingto ask him, but did not dare.
Meanwhile Hilda had her thoughts; and the consequence was that Nic grewangry, as he busied himself about the place, going here and therelooking after the men, inspecting the cattle, and carefully watchingthat no tasks were being left undone.
"I never saw anything like it," he said to himself: "go where I willit's just as if some one was watching me. They surely cannot suspectanything."
Then, too, four or five times, when he had made up his mind to start,old Sam or Brookes or his mother wanted him about some matter. Butstill it was yet good time in the morning, when, taking his gun, themounted Sorrel, slung the big bag of meal across the saddle-bow and rodeout.
"You will not be late, my dear?" cried Mrs Braydon. "Oh no, mother;back in good time." Then to himself, "Don't--pray don't ask me whichway I'm going."
"It must be for some bullock at a distance," said Mrs Braydon, as shethoughtfully noted the bag across the saddle-bow, the fine sackinghaving now assumed an hour glass shape, at which Janet gazed curiously,feeling puzzled, though she could not have told why.
"At last!" muttered Nic, as he pressed his horse's sides and rode off,feeling very guilty, and yet bright and exhilarated, quite confident tooof having solved a problem, though he was doubtful still as to whetherhe would be able that night to write down mentally QEF.
He cast an eye to left and right to see if he were being watched, butevery one seemed to be busy over his or her affairs, and he began tothink that his start was exciting no interest whatever, when he sawBrookes crossing the big field beyond the garden.
But the man did not turn his head in Nic's direction; and the nextminute, after forcing himself not to look round, the boy had placed thetrees between them, and cantered away quite out of sight of the house,keeping down in a hollow leading toward the fern gully, as if going tovisit some cattle on the other side of the hills lying to thesouth-east. As soon as he was beyond those hills he bore away to thenorth, as if making for the Wattles; and when a mile or so in thatdirection he bore to the left again for some distance, and then made forthe west--just the very opposite direction to that which he had taken instarting.
The morning was delightful as he rode on, now in the full sunshine, nowin shade; and the feeling of exhilaration which came over him seemed tobe shared by his horse, which began to dance about and strain to getaway for a swift gallop.
A word or two always checked it, and the beautiful creature, whose satinskin glistened in the sunshine, playfully tossed its head and ambled on.
"Nobody can have imagined which way I was coming," thought Nic; andthen, "Bother the old flour!" he said, half aloud; "how it works throughthe bag! Why, Sorrel, your back will be as white as my knees. Woa!"
The nag stopped short, and Nic stood at the edge of a glade dotted withclumps of acacia in full bloom, everything seeming to be covered withtiny golden balls.
"Why, you two wretches, how dare you come hunting?"
Nic sat like a statue among the trees watching, as he saw the twocollies suddenly come into sight about five hundred yards away and thenrun among the low growth for which they were making.
"Well, it won't matter," he said. "They can't tell tales. But they maycome again and show some one the way. I'll send them back."
He pressed his horse's sides, and walked it toward where the dogs haddisappeared, putting up a flock of the tiny zebra paroquets, which flewa little distance to another tree.
"Poor fellows! I should like to give them a good run," he said tohimself; "but it's best not. I suppose I'm doing something veryunlawful, but the law did wrong to that poor fellow, and I feel as if Imust help him. Oh, what a thick-headed noodle I am not to have thoughtof it before! Why, I remember quite well now all he said about it.Hullo! what are those? They must be the great hawk parrots old Samtalked about. Bother the birds! I've got something else to think ofto-day. Why, there goes another of those great iguana things! Wheredid the dogs go?"
He had ridden on slowly, startling bird and lizard, and completely losttrace of the collies, when all at once he heard a smothered growl in adense patch close at hand.
"They've found a snake," he said to himself, cocking his piece. "Imustn't have them bitten."
He pressed forward, peering in amongst the bushes, passing some youngclean-stemmed trees; and as he rode unconsciously by one, a nude blackfigure, neatly ornamented with two or three stripes of white pipeclay onits breast, pressed close up to the tree holding a spear erect, and, asthe horse passed, moved so exactly round that the tree was kept betweenit and Nic.
That tree did not appear to be thick enough to hide the black, but socleverly did the man move that Nic saw nothing, though he was not tenyards away; and the black would have been unnoticed if it had not beenfor the action of the dogs, which suddenly charged out playfully, onegoing one side, the other the other, and then stopping barking at arespectful distance from the tree.
"You vagabonds!" cried Nic; "how dare you come! Here, what have youfound? Fetch it out!"
Rumble dashed forward barking; and Nic noted that the dogs did not lookexcited or angry, but playful, and as Rumble charged on one side Tumblemade a bound forward on the other.
"It must be a 'possum," thought Nic; but he altered his mind the nextmoment, for he saw a spear come forward with a poke on one side of thetree, and then drive at the second dog on the other.
Nic lowered the gun and moved round toward the other side cautiously;but the black edged himself along, as he did so cleverly keeping thetree still between them, and would have continued to keep himself inhiding if it had not been for the dogs, which, encouraged now by theiryoung master's presence, made a playful dash together at the black'slegs, and made him bound from the tree to keep them at bay with hisspear.
"Why, Bung! You?" cried Nic, who felt considerably relieved, while thedogs now scampered around, barking and leaping as if at the end of agame of hide-and-seek. "What are you doing here, sir?"
The black grinned, and, supporting himself on one leg by help of hisspear, made playful clutches at the delighted dogs with his right foot,whose toes worked about as he used it as if it were a great awkwardlyshaped hand.
"_R-r-r-ur_!" growled the dogs together, as
they now justified theirnames, and blundered over one another in a make-believe attempt to biteand worry the foot; Nic looking on amused as they threw themselves down,rolling over and grovelling along on their sides and backs to get closeup and feel the black's toes tickle them, and catch hold of their shaggyhair.
"Why don't you speak, sir? Why are you not at work?" cried Nic.
"Little White Mary say, `Bung, go along see master.'"
"What! did my sister send you?"
The black nodded and laughed.
"Then just you go back, sir, directly, and take those dogs with you."
"Little White Mary say come along," persisted the black.
"I don't care what any one said," cried Nic. "Be off back."
"Little White Mary say, `Gun no shoot--mumkull.'"
"Put down that spear," cried Nic, who now pointed the gun at Bungarolo,who replied by striking an attitude, holding his spear in a gracefulposition as if about to hurl it at the boy's head.
"No mumkull Bung?" cried the black.
"Not if you run off back," cried Nic. "If you don't I'll pepper you."
"No pepper Bung, no mumkull. Baal shoot gun. Little White Mary fellowsay Bung come."
"You go back home," cried the boy, following him up.
"Little White Mary say--"
"Go home."
"Little--"
"Will you go, sir? Here, Rum--Turn! Run him home."
The dogs made a rush, and the black darted off, but a hundred yards awayran behind a tree, where the dogs hunted him out.
"Home!" roared Nic, and the black darted on again, Nic riding after himagain and again, till, satisfied that the black was really making forthe station, followed by the dogs, he made a circuit in among the trees,and rode hard for a time, altering his course at last, and not pausingtill he was close up to the precipitous edge of the huge gorge.
Here the boy dismounted in a patch of rich grass surrounded by mightytrees, hobbled his horse, removed the bit, which he hung to the saddle,and then paused to think.
"He's here somewhere," the boy said to himself, "but the thing iswhere."
He was not long coming to the conclusion that the convict had devotedhimself during his shepherding tours to hunting out some place where hecould descend the terrible precipice into that glorious valley farbelow, where there were sheep and cattle, plenty of water, and no doubtwild fruits to enable him to subsist.
"And if he found his way down, why shouldn't I?" said Nic, with a littlelaugh. Then, shouldering his gun, he dived in among the trees andwattle scrub which lay between him and the edge of the precipice, withthe intention of keeping cautiously along it, first in one direction andthen in the other, till he found traces of some one having climbed down.
Two hours' work convinced him that he had undertaken a task that mighthave made Hercules sit down and scratch his ear, for it promised to behard enough to equal any of the celebrated labours of that mythicpersonage. Nic had toiled on in one direction only, forcing his waythrough thorns, tangles, and over and between rocks, pausing from timeto time, whenever he came to an opening, to gaze across the tremendousgap at the glories of the rock wall opposite, or to look shuddering downinto the beautiful paradise thousands of feet below, where the tints ofgreen were of the loveliest hues, and he could see the cattle calmlygrazing, mere dots in the natural meads which bordered the flashingwaters seen here and there like lakes, but joined possibly, for thetrees shut out broad stretches of the river in the vale.
For a time he would lie there, resting and listening to the whistlingcalls of birds whose names he did not know, to the shrieks of parrots,and now and then catch sight of what seemed to be tiny fragments ofpaper falling fluttering down, till he saw them turn, and knew that hewas gazing at cockatoos.
Then, after yielding to the fascination of peering down into the awfuldepth, he would turn suddenly away, for a cold chill would run throughhim as he experienced the sensation as of something drawing himdownward, and he would creep yards distant and sit there wiping theperspiration from his face.
He soon recovered, though, and once more continued his search for a waydown.
"It is as if it would take years," he said to himself; "but I don'tcare, I shall come again and again and keep on trying. I will find it,"he said half aloud, as he set his teeth in dogged determination, and foranother hour he struggled on, till, feeling utterly exhausted, he seatedhimself at the edge of the precipice at a point where he could dividethe bushes and look down. Here, only a few yards away, he saw thatthere was a broad shelf some fifty feet below, and along it a merethread of water trickled to a lower edge and disappeared, leaving amongthe stones amidst which it had meandered patch after patch of richestgreen, showing its fertilising power.
That water was tempting in the extreme, for his mouth was dry; he wasfaint, and he knew by the position of the sun that he had beenstruggling through the dense growth for hours without refreshinghimself, though all the time he had a cake of damper in his pocket,keeping the powder-flask company.
If he could get down there, he thought, he might have half an hour'srest, and then tramp back to where he had left Sorrel, and ride gentlyhome in the cool of the evening.
"And come again." For come again he would till he had found poorLeather, "unless," he said to himself with a shudder, "he has fallendown this terrible place."
And yet it was not terrible, he thought the next moment. It was grand,glorious, lovely, and the shelf below him, with its water, more temptingthan anything he had ever seen before.
"I must get down," he said; and going farther along he sought for ameans, but had not far to go, for he soon grasped the fact that thisshelf was only some eighty or a hundred feet off the top, which hadslipped a little and then stopped. It had broken away, gone down somefifty feet, and then been checked.
While as he gazed down at the old edge of the precipice, and over itinto the gorge below, he could hear the soft, whistling, humming trickleof the water, and it increased his eagerness. He must get down, hethought--but how? There were no overhanging boughs, no roots which hadforced their way between cracks in the rock and gone on down and downsearching for the moisture of that tiny rill which went over the edge toits present depth; and there were no stout bushes growing in the sidebeneath him. All there was clean, broken-away stone, which could onlybe descended by stepping from projection to projection, while if any oneslipped--
"Well, what if he did?" said the boy contemptuously, as he gazed down:"he would, at the most, only get a few scratches and bruises. Here'sthe best spot, and I'm going down."
Without further hesitation he laid down his gun, turned upon his breastand lowered his legs, found footing easy to get upon a ledge, andlowered himself more and more till he was at the full stretch of hislimbs, when a horrible thought occurred to him: suppose, when he jumpeddown upon that broad shelf formed by a sliding of the rock till it waschecked by some inequality, his weight should be sufficient to start itgoing again, and he should be carried with it backward into the gulf.
"What nonsense!" he thought; "why, my weight upon it will be no morethan that of a fly;" and he lowered himself a little more, found itharder, moved to the right, and got on to a firm ledge, and from that toanother, and was soon half-way down.
There he came to a stop, for he could find neither foot nor hand hold;and there he was at last, spread-eagled against the perpendicular rock,unable to go down, and, upon determining to go up instead, utterlyunable to retrace his steps.
"Oh, this is absurd," he thought, and looking sidewise, he saw a littleprojection which seemed as if it would do then, feeling that if hestopped longer in his cramped position he would be less able to act, hemeasured the distance with his eyes, gathered himself together, made aclumsy spring, got a foot on the projection, but missed the crevice intowhich he meant to thrust his right hand, and went scrambling and slidingdown the other five-and-twenty feet, to come into a sitting position onthe broken stones, scratched, bruised, and uttering a loud groan o
fpain.
"Oh my bones!" he cried, with a laugh and a wince of pain, as he beganto rub himself; and then, as he looked up, a sudden chill struck him,for, he said to himself:
"Why, it's like a trap. I can never get up there again. I ought tohave looked farther before I leaped."
He limped a little as he stood up, and his arms both required a rub,especially about the elbows; but while he performed these littlecomforting offices he was not idle, for he carefully inspected theshelf. Escape on the one side did not seem possible, for it was overinto the gorge; the other side, a curve, was one nearly perpendicularwall of rock, along which he walked from where he stood to the ends atthe edge of the precipice and back.
"It is a regular pitfall," thought Nic; and then, determined to make thebest of things, he lay down upon his chest over the clear murmuringwater, lowered his lips, and took a long, deep, delicious draught of thesparkling fluid.
"That's refreshing," said the boy to himself, and he came to a sittingposition on the warm stone, took out his piece of bread cake, and lookedup at the wall facing him, as he broke off a morsel of damper.
"Doesn't look so high as it did before I had that drink," he said, witha laugh. "Not half so high; and by the time I've eaten my bread it willonly look half as high once more. Pooh! I can climb up. Cake's good."
He sat munching away contentedly enough now, stopping from time to timefor a fresh draught of water; and as he ate and drank he forgot theawkwardness of his position in wonder and admiration of the mountainprecipice before him, and at last crept to the edge of that upon whichhe had been seated, to obtain another look down into the mighty gorge.
"Ah, it's very grand," he sighed; "but it's time I climbed out of this."
He started, for he heard a sharp double click, like the cocking of agun, and looked up behind at the edge from which he had descended.
"Cricket or grasshopper," he thought; and then he felt, to use afamiliar old saying, as if his blood ran cold; for a slight movement atthe top had caught his attention, and he found himself gazing at themuzzle of his gun, so foreshortened that there seemed to be no barrel--nothing but a round hole, and behind it a glittering eye.