AN AUSTRALIAN HEROINE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1043, 2 March 1882, Page 4

AN AUSTRALIAN HEROINE.

The death of Mrs. Watson closes one of the saddest tales of suffering, and shows one of the grandest instances ■of heroic To titude in the annals <f Australian history. She was left on Lizard Island by her husband, abecht-de-mer trader, with a baby and tv.o Chinese servants. On the 27th of September the blacks came, next day speared one Chinaman, and on the .30th speared the other in seven places, but the dauntless woman defended herself so resolutely with firearms as to drive them temporarily away. But to remain was certain death, and on the 3rd of October she escaped in an iron tank, with her child, the wounded Chinaman, and a supply of provisions clothes, firearms and books. They floated all night, and next day landed on a bare reef, where she remained till the 6th. Water gave 'Out, and the poor hunted woman pulled the tank and its contents over to No. 1 Island of the Howick Group. Search for ■water there was in vain, but natives were there so she again started, and reached No. 5 Island, 40 miles away, on the Bth. There, surrounded with water —but all salt ; with plenty of provisions which her parched and swollen throat could not swallow; with her child, only a few months old, dying before her eyes, while she herself suffered the tortures of Tantalus ; she died of thirst. To the last she thought of others, her diaty and the bandages found beside the bones showed she had been dressing the Chinaman’s wounds, and each day’s entry in the book showed that her baby was her chief care The diary was kept regularly, and on the last day, the 11th October, it closes with these words, ‘No rain. Ah I Sam, gone away to die. Baby more cheerful ; self not at all well. Have not seen any boats of any description. No water. Dead with thirst.’ Death could not have been very long after, for she had then been five days without a drink. And not a word of fretfulness or bewailing over her own terrible sufferings ! Her diary was brought to Brisbane, and the Lizard Island blacks have been .punished by the Queensland police. In all the records of womanly heroism and indomitable pluck, no instance can be found where death was faced with a braver heart than by Mrs Watson.— Sydney Huletin.

“ DEAD WITH THIRST." (Contributed to the Sydney Bulletin). ■The drama’s o’er and we know the end, (The bitter worst; In droughty agony, with none to tend, .But with a fortitude that scorned to bend, She died of thirst! For ever menaced by the savage spears, By night and day, With nameless horrors threatened, nameless fears, No time for grieving, fainting, or for tears, But aye at bay. She kept them off—the black and -devilish band, The fiends accureed; And in her iron craft escaped the land— Alas ! upon the cruel parching sand To die of thirst! At death’s worst anguish she could firmly look, And never quail ; Though wan and weak, her Angel's never shook As day by day she entered in the book Her piteous tale. From first to last there is not one complaint; No useless cry ; No sign of heroine’s heart-strength waxing faint, The while she watched—with pains no pen can paint — Her baby die. Five fearful days, beneath the scorching glare, Her babe she nursed. -God knows the pangs that woman had to bear, Whose last sad entry showed a mother’s care Then—“ Dead with Thirst! ”