Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/78

 superiors and even their equals, who had risen in life by the exercise of industry and thrift, were capable of any villainy, not even stopping short of arson and bloodshed. Up to this time the Ministry of the day had been tardy and over-cautious, both in the protection of property and in the punishment of a criminal crew. But they were gradually coming to a determination to stop such disorders summarily. The strong arm of the law was invoked to that intent. For too frequently had peaceable workmen, under the ban of the Unionist tyranny, been captured, ill-treated, robbed, and temporarily deprived of their liberty.

Grown bold by previous toleration, the Union Camp by Moorara had determined to make an example of this particular steamer, with her load of free shearers and rouse-abouts—to teach them what the penalty was of withstanding the Australian Shearers' Union and bringing a load of blacklegs past their very camp.

It was nearly midnight when a scout galloped in to announce that the Dundonald was within half a mile of the camp, on her way down river with fifty free labourers on board.

'By the God of Heaven,' shouted a dissolute-looking shearer, 'we'll give them a lesson to-night, if we never do it again. I know the agent well—a d—d infernal swell, who looks upon working-men as dogs, and talks to them like the dirt under his feet. I told him I'd meet him some day, and that day's come.'

'Come along, lads,' shouts an evil-faced larrikin from a city lane; 'let's give it 'em hot. We'll burn their bloomin' boat, and have roast blackleg for breakfast.'

'You'd as well mind your eye, my lad,' said a slow-speaking, steady-going Sydney-sider, from Campbelltown. 'Seth Dannaker's the skipper of this boat—I can hear her paddles now, and he'll shoot straight if you meddle with his loadin'. You're not the sort to face Seth's pea-rifle, 'nless yer got a fairish big tree in front of yer.'

Upon this discouraging statement, the product of 'a city's smoke and steam'—under-sized, untended from childhood, grown to manhood, untaught save in precocious villainy—slunk into the background, while from the centre of a group emerged the man who had posed as the 'President of the Council,' and thus addressed the crowding shearers:—