Page:Life and Adventures of William Buckley.djvu/116

Rh my turf and bark hunting and fishing hut, on the banks of the Karaaf River.—I should here mention, that although previously married, my wife did not present me, on the day of our union, with any tender little remembrances of her first husband, my predecessor in her affections. Affections!—we shall see more about that presently; but, perhaps I may as well say at once, that my dearly beloved played me most abominably false, for at the end of our honeymoon, (perhaps it might have been a few months after that moon had gone down,) one evening when we were alone in our hut, enjoying our domestic felicity, several men came in, and took her away from me by force; she, however, going very willingly. The next day—as I had no Supreme Court to go to for damages—I went over to the tribe the intruders belonged to, and told them how I had been treated. I confess I did not make a very great fuss about my loss—if it was one—but endeavoured to whistle it down the wind gaily. Several of the friendly natives were anxious I should take the usual revenge upon her and the man she had left me to live with, but I refused, and in the end, she was speared by another man, with whom she had been coqueting, and to whom she had also played falsely. Mixed up by relationship, as all these parties were, after a great number of altercations about her having run away from me, and the circumstances of her death, there was another fight, in which many heads were broken. I, however, took no part in these, excepting assuming the defensive, and threatening them with punishment if