Page:Feilberg.djvu/17

Rh at being so easily forgiven, chatting merrily. When out some distance, Mr. ——— quietly remarked, "I am going to shoot you, Toby." The black turned round smiling, thinking this was some joke, and saw Mr. ——— coolly pulling out his revolver. The wretched boy, in an agony of sudden fear, crouched on his saddle, putting out his hands and shrieking, "Baal shoot—baal shoot!" when his master sent a bullet crashing through his brain. The two whites then returned leading the riderless horse. This fact was much discussed in the neighborhood of ——— Downs, as it was well known. Some people approved of the action, as being the best way of "putting the fear of God in the blacks," and preventing them from at any future time doing mischief; but the majority, though quite admitting the right of Mr. ——— to deal as he liked with a "nigger," were of opinion that it was rather a dirty transaction. The Kanaka who was the aggrieved party was genuinely horror struck when he heard of the affair—but then he was only a South Sea Island savage.

On ——— Downs station there was a tribe of blacks who were quiet and quite harmless. But, in a large tract of desert country to the north of it, there was another tribe hostile to them, and to the whites. These "myalls" occasionally made a raid on ——— Downs, and plundered huts, &c., but the station blacks, who feared and disliked them, were always ready to warn the whites of their coming. After one of their raids, the superintendent sent for the native police. Sub-inspector ——— arrived with his troopers, and started out for the scene of the depredation. A young gentleman who was on the station acquiring "colonial experience" thought he would like to add to it by accompanying the police on an expedition which appeared to him, naturally enough, as a legitimate act of war. The party started, and they got on the tracks of the "myalls"—tracks which the troopers could follow as easily as an ordinary white man can follow a beaten road. The track led out into the desert, an uncomfortable region of sand and spinifex, where water was doubtful, and little food could be got for the police horses. Still, if the blacks who had made the raid were to be punished, it would be necessary to follow them there. The track led through a spur of a low precipitous range of hills, containing rock-surrounded pockets, from which escape would be difficult to any human beings penned up in them. Near one of these places the party espied a small troop of blacks, and to the astonishment of the new chum, who recognised them as belonging to the station tribe, and quite innocent of any outrage, the officer gave the word to the troopers to run them in to the pocket. They succeeded in penning up a small group of defenceless creatures who were shouting appeals for mercy to the sub-inspector by name. The new chum, who had in his astonishment followed the example of the others and dismounted, cried out to the sub-inspector, "Why, Mr. ———, these are our blacks." The answer he got was an angry "Stoop down, d——n you," for he was in the range of the sub-inspector, who was anxious to try the quality of a new sporting rifle he had purchased, and was taking deliberate aim at a wretched creature who was making frantic attempts to escape by clambering up the naked rock. The inspector's rifle was a good one, and his target was soon writhing in his death agony on the sand. The troopers "got" two more of the little group; the rest escaped. Then they returned home. They had done the work for which the State paid them—they had shot some blacks. To be sure they had not gone near the real offender, and they had exasperated a friendly tribe, but that is a matter with which we, their employers, do not concern ourselves.

On ——— Downs Station the blacks were "troublesome." How they became so does not concern this particular narrative, but they had taken some sheep. The native police were not available, but the partners who owned and managed the station got a trusted man and a neighbor who was willing to help them, and they started out to look for the offenders. They were fortunate enough to come across a mob of blacks away from the scrub, just before evening. The affair was quite a successful one. The blacks were paralysed with fear; some took to trees, some lay down to await their fate, others attempted to fly. Men on good stock-horses, quick to turn and pursue a quarry, armed with revolvers, can "get" a good many under these circumstances. They rode down the flying ones, and then returned quietly to practice shooting on the blacks perched in the trees. Altogether they managed to dispose of twenty-two, and then they camped at a neighboring waterhole, had their supper, and slept as men sleep who have done a good day's work. In the morning they saddled up to go home, but one of the number, a prudent one, remarked, "We ought to see that we have made an end of those ——." Accordingly he went carefully over the scene. Most of the blacks were stone dead; some were groaning in their last agonies; a few who had not been mortally wounded seemed to be reviving. Blacks have a wonderful capacity for enduring severe wounds and recovering from