Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/20

12 eight of them (part of a band of 20). The account of this most gallant act is contained in an official report of Captain Moriarty, of the R.N., of the 25th of August, 1831.

Knowing by previous watching that this woman—a Mrs. Dalryrmple Briggs—and two female children, were the only occupants of her hut, they abandoned their usual stratagem in approaching it, and advanced undisguisedly to the door. Hearing "some little noise outside," says the report, "she sent the eldest child to see what was the matter, and hearing her shriek, went out herself with a musket. On reaching the door, she found the poor child had been speared. The spear entered close up in the inner part of the thigh, and had been driven in so far as to create a momentary difficulty in securing the child." The savages came on en masse, and so quickly, that she had scarcely time to close and barricade the doors and windows before they closed around her dwelling.

Her only means of defence was her musket and a few charges of duck-shot; and their only means of entry, the chimney, which in all bush huts are low, and so large, that two or three persons could jump down them at once. This being the weak point, our heroine took post here, and defied all their efforts to enter, firing her duck-shot at them, whenever they gave her a chance. They next tried to pull the chimney down; but she managed to give one of them such a dose of small lead that they desisted from the attempt. Baffled and repulsed they retired for about an hour, which time they employed in making a number of faggots, and then returned to the attack, to burn her out, as they could not force an entrance. They threw these blazing brands on the roof, to windward, says the report, but she contrived to shake them all off before ignition took place—how, is not stated. Her maternal affections and duties, quite mastering her natural fears, she actually maintained her post against them, for the time I have stated, when an armed and mounted party suddenly galloping up, the siege was raised.

The child that was speared was enticed outside by the blacks, (many of whom were famous mimics), imitating the cries of poultry when alarmed by hawks, &c. Moriarty's report also mentions, that these men had on the same day, attacked the hut of a person named Cubitt, and speared him; and further that the natives had assailed and badly wounded him eight times before; but another report from a different quarter states that he had always been very active against them; and as forgiveness is not amongst the attributes of the savage, nor forgetfulness one of his defects, they never appeared in his neighbourhood without letting him know that they still hold him in remembrance.