Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/44

20 gin I captured and was bringing along. i tied her hands to my stirrup, but she howled and made herself such a nuisance that I just took my tomakawk and chopped off her hands at the wrists to get rid of her!”

He had been actually too lazy to untie her hands, and had of course left the wretched woman to bleed to death in the Bush! The cool callousness of it takes away one's breath.

Of course he was arrested and punished, but I do not know what punishment he got.

I said the City of Melbourne adopted me: it seems like it, for every soul on board, including sailors, stokers, and the like, loaded me with kindness, and all went out of their way to make me feel at home, as I did. You do not know how frank, open, and unreserved these people out here are: there is no nonsense about them. They are genuine; and have no idea that it is necessary to hide anything. With their free, frank independence, always combined with good-humoured manners, they appeal to me strongly. Independence, you know, is not bad manners as it often is at home. There are no people like these in Great Britain, so you will scarcely know what I mean. They are no pattern saints or plaster images, or anything like that—far from it—but most of them have a good-comradeship feeling about them. Every one on that ship came to me as a matter of course with a cheerful “Well, Mister,” and entertained me—cabin-boys, stokers, and all. Without the slightest mauvaise honte they begintelling you all about themselves in their free, independent, but perfectly polite way, paying you the great compliment of being sure that they may doso. Australians are often boastful—absurdly so at times—and they think no place equals their own and; and of course this land holds much of