Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/102

94 was an useless one, and its echoes were its sole response. He passed the night in restless anxiety and was abroad at day dawning of the third morning, watching on the sandhill, but to no purpose. He returned to his tent sick at heart and lay down, whilst Duncan's little child amused itself outside as he best could. Young as this infant was, he had even now a little of the cunning and vigilance of the race he belonged to, by the mother's side at least, and Tucker, though half wearied out, noticed that he kept running in and out of the tent, with unusual frequency, and an evident desire to communicate something he was too young to explain. But the sealer unhappily gave less heed than he ought to the peculiar movements of the child, and he remained within.

But at this instant he was effectually aroused from his inaction by a volley of spears and stones striking the tent with uncommon force, accompanied by the shouts of the natives who were now surrounding his domicile. Tucker sprung to his feet, and seizing his two-barrel gun and the child, he got to the top of the sandhill mentioned above, before a second spear was thrown, determined if die he must, there to defend himself as he best could to the last. He had plenty ammunition and was a deadly shot, which latter fact was known to the tribe, but more particularly to at least two of the most forward of those savages, who had been on the Straits islands along with him before this time. DirectilyDirectly [sic] he was gone from the tent, the natives took possession of it and of his boat also, which latter they tried to set fire to, but from some unexplained cause, they failed to damage it much.

Amongst the natives present, he observed Duncan's woman, and the two men spoken of just above, to whom he was known. These young fellows had been taken in infancy, and were brought up amongst our own people, by whom they were named respectively Murray and Jack. Both of them had lived much in Hobart Town, where they earned a living on the water, either as boatmen or sailors, and both had visited the Straits islands in the sealing season, in vessels fitted out for the seal trade, and more than once had worked the seal rookeries in company with Tucker. But as usual with these civilised blacks, as they were called, their natural hankerings for savage life never departed from them, and they were as difficult to tame permanently as wolves or wood pigeons are, unless when taken so young as to retain no remembrance of the wild life to which they were born; and there is hardly an instance of their not rejoining their own people on reaching manhood, and it was observed of these particular individuals that they were ever afterwards the most forward and mischeviousmischievous [sic] of the tribe, and the directors of their movements in