Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/83

 We had reached the point when "something must be done." We could not permit our cattle to be harried, our servants to be killed, and ourselves to be hunted out of the good land we had occupied by a few savages.

Our difficulty was heightened by its being necessary to behave in a quasi-legal manner. Shooting blacks, except in manifest self-defence, had been always held to be murder in the Supreme Courts of the land, and occasionally punished as such.

Now, there were obstacles in the way of taking out warrants and apprehending Jupiter and Cocknose, or any of their marauding braves, in the act. The Queen's writ, as in certain historic portions of the west of Ireland, did not run in those parts. Like all guerillas, moreover, their act of outrage took place sometimes in one part of a large district, sometimes in another, the actors vanishing meanwhile, and reappearing with puzzling rapidity.

We went now well armed. We were well mounted and vigilantly on guard. The Children of the Rocks were occasionally met with, when collisions, not all bloodless, took place.

Their most flagrant robbery was committed on Mr. John Cox's Mount Napier station, whence a flock of maiden ewes was driven, and the shepherd maltreated. These young sheep were worth nearly two pounds per head, besides being impossible to replace. Mr. Cox told me himself that they constituted about a third of his stock in sheep at the time. He therefore armed a few retainers and followed hot on the trail.