The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 4 June 1914, Page 5

The Storyteller

(By John Boyle O’Reilly.)

MOONDYNE

i BOOK FIRST, i THE GOLD MINE OF THE VASSE. N ( Continued .) VI. THE BRIBE. When the r party had travelled a dozen miles from the convict camp, the evening closed, and the sergeant called a halt. A chain was passed round a tree, and locked; and to this the manacles of the prisoner were made fast, leaving him barely the power of lying down. With a common prisoner this would have been security enough; but the sergeant meant to leave no loophole open. He and the private trooper would keep guard all night; and according to this order, after supper the trooper entered on the first four hours’ watch. The natives and wounded men took their meal and were stretched on the soft sand beside another fire, about a hundred paces from the guard and prisoner. The tired men soon slept, all but the sentry and the captive. The sergeant lay within arm’s length of the prisoner ; and even from deep sleep awoke at the least movement of the chain. Toward midnight, the chained man turned his face' toward the sentry, and motioned him to draw near. The rough, but kind-hearted fellow thought he asked „ for water, and softly brought him a pannikin, which he held to his lips. At the slight motion,- the sergeant awoke, and harshly reprimanded the trooper, • posting him at a distance from the fire, with orders not to move till his watch had expired. The sergeant returned to his sleep, and again all was still. After a time the face of the prisoner was once more raised, and with silent lip but earnest expression he begged the sentry to come to him. ' But the man would not move. He grew angry at the persistence of the prisoner, who ceased not to look toward him, and who at last even ventured to speak in a low voice. At this the'fearful trooper grew alarmed, and sternly or-' dered him to rest. ’ »The sergeant awoke at the word, and shortly after relieved the trooper, seating himself by the fire' to watch the remainder of the night. ■

When the prisoner saw this, with a look of utter weariness, though not of resignation, he, at last closed his eyes and sank to rest. Once having .yielded to the fatigue which his strong will had hitherto mastered, he was unconscious. • A deep and dreamless sleep fell on him. The sand was soft round his tired limbs, and for. two or three hours the. bitterness of his captivity was forgotten. . V . Hd awoke suddenly, and, as if he had not slept, felt the iron on his wrists, and knew that he was chained to a tree like a wild beast. The sleep had given him new strength. 'He raised his head, and met the eyes of the sergeant watching him. The look between them was long and steady. ‘Come here,’ said the prisoner, in a low tone; ‘I want to speak to you.’ Had the gaunt dog beside him spoken, the sergeant could not have been more amazed. ‘Come here,’ repeated Moondyne; ‘I have something important to say to you.’ .-r The sergeant drew his revolver, examined the caps, and then moved toward the prisoner. ‘ I heard you say you had spent twenty-five years in this colony,’ said Moondyne, ‘and that you might as well have remained a convict. Would you go away to another country, and live the rest of your life in wealth and power?’ The sergeant stared at him as if he thought he had gone mad. The prisoner understood the look. ‘Listen,’ he said impressively; ‘I am not mad. You know there is a reward offered for the discovery of the Vasse Gold Mine. 7 ran lead you to the spot There was that in -his voice and look that thrilled the sergeant to the marrow. He glanced at the sleeping trooper, and drew closer to the chained man. ‘I know where that gold mine lies,’ said Moondyne, reading the greedy face, where tons and shiploads of solid gold are waiting to be carried away. If you help me to be free, I will lead you to the mine.’ The sergeant looked at him in silence. He arose and walked stealthily toward the natives, who. were soundly sleeping. To and fro in the firelight, for nearly an hour, he paced, revolving the startling proposition. At last he approached the chained man. ‘ I have treated you badly, and you hate me,’ he said. ‘How can I trust 1 you How can you prove to me that this is true ? Moondyne*' met the suspicious eye steadily. ‘ I have no proof,’ he>said; ‘you must take my word. I tell you the truth. If I do not lead you straight to the mine, I will go back to Fremantle as your prisoner.’ Still the sergeant pondered and paced. He was in doubt, and the consequences might be terrible. ‘ Have you ever known me to lie said Moondyne. The sergeant looked at him but did not answer. At length he abruptly asked: ‘ls it far away?’ He was advancing toward a decision. ‘ We can reach the place in two days, if you give me a horse,’ said Moondyne. ‘ You might escape,’ said the sergeant. ‘ I will not; but if you doubt me, keep the chain on my wrist till I show you the gold.’ ‘ And then?’ said the sergeant. , - ‘Then we shall be equals. I will lead you to the mine. You must return and escape from the country as best you can. Do you agree ?’ The sergeant’s face was white, as he glanced at the sleeping trooper and then at the prisoner. ‘I agree,’ he said; ‘lie down, ‘and pretend to sleep.’ The sergeant had thought out his plan. He would insure his own safety, no matter how the affair turned. Helping a convict to escape was punished with death by the penal law; but he would put another look on the matter. He cautiously waked the private trooper. ‘ Take those natives,’ he said, ‘ all but the mounted tracker, and go on to Bunbury before me. The wounded men must be doctored at once.’ *

Without a word, the disciplined trooper shook the drowsiness from him, saddled his horse, and mounted. In half an hour they were gone. Moondyne Joe and the sergeant listened till the last sound died away. The tracker was curled up again beside the fire. «= Sergeant Bowman then unlocked the chain, and the powerful prisoner rose to his feet. In a whisper the sergeant told him he must secure the native before he attempted to take the horse. Moondyne went softly to the side of the sleeping savage. There was a smile on his face as he knelt down and laid one strong hand on the man’s throat, and another on his pistol. In a few moments it was over. The bushman never even writhed when he saw the stern face above him, and felt that his weapon was gone. Moondyne left him tied hand and foot, and returned to the sergeant, who had tho horses ready. When the convict stood beside tho trooper he raised his hand suddenly, and held something toward him— the tracker’s pistol, loaded and capped ! He had played and won. His enemy stood defenceless before him— and the terror of death, as he saw the position, was in the blanched face of the sefgeant. ‘Take this pistol,’ said Mooxxdync, quietly. ‘You may give it to me, if you will, when I have kept my word. The sergeant took the weapon with a trembling hand, and his evil, face had an awed look as he mounted. Call the dogs,’ said Moondyne, ‘we ‘shall need them to-morrow.’ In answer to a low whistle the wolflike things bounded through the bush. The men struck off at a gallop, in the direction of the convicts’ camp, tho sergeant a little behind, with his. pistol ready in the holster.

VII. THE IRON-STONE MOUNTAINS. Moondyne took a straight line for tho Koagulup Swamp, which they ‘ struck ' after a couple of hours’ ride. They dismounted near the scene of the capture, •and Moondyne pulled from some bushes near the edge a short raft of logs bound together with withes of bark. The sergeant hesitated, and looked on suspiciously. ‘You must trust me,’ said Moondyne quietly; ‘ unless we break the track we shall have that sleuthdog tracker after us when he gets loose.’ The sergeant got on the raft, holding the bridles of the horses. Moondyne, with a pole, pushed from the bank, and entered, the gloomy arches of the wooded swamp. It was a weird scene. At noonday the flood was black as ink and the arches were filled with gloomy shadows. Overhead the foliage of trees and creepers was matted into, a dense roof, now pierced by a few thin pencils of moonlight. Straight.toward the centre Moondyne steered, for several hundred yards, the hofses swimming behind. Then he turned at right angles, and pushed along from tree to tree in a line with the shore they had left. After a while the horses found bottom, and waded. ‘No more trouble now/ said Moondyne. ‘ They’re on the sand. We must keep along till morning, and then strike toward the hills.’ They went ahead rapidly, thanks to Moondyne’s amazing strength ; and by daylight were a long distance from the point at which they entered. A wide but shallow river with a bright sand bottom emptied into the swamp before them, and into this Moondyne poled the raft and tied it securely to a fallen tree, hidden in sedge grass. They mounted their horses and rode up the bed of the river, which they did not leave till near noontime. At last, when Moondyxxe deemed the track thoroughly broken, he turned toward the higher bank, and struck into the bush, the land beginning to rise toward the mountains when they had travelled a few miles. w, ' '

It was late in the afternoon when they halted for the day’s first meal. Moondyne climbed a mahogany tree, which he had selected from certain fresh marks on its bark, and from a hole in the trunk pulled out two silver-tailed ’possums, as large as rabbits. The sergeant lighted a fire on the loose sand, and piled it high with dry wood. When the ’possums were ready for cooking, the sand befxeath the fire was heated a foot deep, and making a hole in this, the game was buried, and the fire continued above. After a time the embers were thrown off and the*meat dug out. It looked burnt and black; but when the crust was broken the flesh within was tender and juicy. This, with clear water from the iron-stone hills, made a rare meal for hungry men; after which they continued their travel. Before nightfall they had entered the first circle of hills at the foot of the mountains. With a springing hope in his heart, Moondyne led the way into the tortuous passes of the hills ; and in a valley as silent as the grave, and as lonely, they made their camp for the night. They were in the saddle before sunrise, and travelling in a strange and wild country, which no white man, except Moondyne, had ever before entered. The scene was amazing to the sergeant, who was used to the endless sameness of the gum forests on the plains of the convict settlement. Here, masses of dark metallic stone were heaped in savage confusion, and around these, like great pale serpents or cables, were twisted the white roots of tuad trees. So wild was the seen© with rock and torrent, underbrush and forest, that the sergeant, old bushman as he was, began to feel that it would be dangerous for a man who had not studied the lay of the land, to travel here without a guide. However, he had a deep game to play, for a great stake. He said nothing, but watched Moondyne closely, and observed everything around that might assist his memory by-and-by. In the afternoon t}xey rode through winding passes in the hills, and toward sunset came on the border of a lake in the basin of the mountains. ‘ Now,’ said Moondyne, dismounting by the lakeside, and turning loose his horse to crop the rich grass, ‘ now we may rest. We ax-e inside the guard of the hills.’ The sergeant’s manner had strangely altered during the long ride. He was trembling on the, verge of a great discovery ; but he was, to a certain extent, in the power of Moondyxxe. He could not help feeling that the man was acting truly to his word but his own purpose was so dark and deceitful, it was impossible for him to trust another. The punishment of falsehood is to suspect all truth. The mean of soul cannot conceive nobility. The vicious cannot believe in virtue. The artificial dignity imparted by the sergeant’s office had disappeared, in spite of himself; and in its place returned the caitiff aspect that had marked him when he was a convict and a settler. Standing on an equality with Moondyne, their places had changed, and the prisoner was the master. On the sandy shore of the beautiful lake they found turtles’ eggs, and these, with baked bandicoot, made supper and breakfast. On resuming their ride, next morning, Moondyne said: ‘To-night we shall reach the gold mine.’ The way was no longer broken; they rode in the beds of grassy valleys, walled by precipitous mountains. Palms, bearing large scarlet nuts, brilliant flowers and birds, and trees and shrubs of unnamed species all these, with delicious streams from the mountains, made a scene of wonderful beauty. ■ The face of Moondyne was lighted up with appreciation ; and even the sergeant, coarse, cunning, and brutish, felt its purifying influence. ' 1 It was a long day’s ride, broken only by a brief halt at noon, when they ate a'hearty meal beside a deep river that wound its mysterious way among the hills. Hour after hour passed, and the jaded horses lagged on the way but still the valleys opened before the riders, and Moondyne advanced as confidently as if the road were familiar.

Toward sunset he rode slowly, and with an air of expectancy. The sun had gone down behind the mountains, and the narrow valley was deep in shadow. Before them, standing in the centre of the valley, rose a tall white tuad tree, within fifty paces of the underwood of the mountain on either side. I ' When Moondyne, who led the way, had come within a horse’s length of the tree, a spear whirred Irom the dark wood on the right, across his path, and struck deep into the tuad tree. There was not a sound in the bush to indicate the presence of an enemy. The gloom of evening had silenced even the insect life, and the silence of the valley was profound. Yet there was startling evidence of life and hostility in the whirr of the spear, that had sunk into the tree before their eyes with such terrific force that it quivered like a living thing as it stood out from the tuad. / Moondyne sprang from his horse, and, running to the tree, laid his hand on the shivered spear, and shouted a few words in the language of the aborigines. A cry from the bush answered, and the next moment a 'tall savage sprang from the cover and threw himself with joyful acclamations at the feet of Moondyne. Tall, lithe, and powerful was the young bushman. He arose and leant on his handful of slender spears, shaking rapidly to Moondyne. Once he glanced at the sergeant, and, smiling, pointed to the still quivering spear in the tuad. Then he turned and led them up the valley, which soon narrowed .to the dimensions of a ravine, like the bed of a torrent, running its perplexed way between over-joyful hanging walls of ironstone. The sun had gone down, and the gloom of the passage became dark as midnight. The horses advanced slowly over the rugged way. A dozen determined men could hold such a pass against an army. Above their heads the travellers saw a narrow slit of sky, sprinkled with stars. The air was damp and chill between the precipitous walls. The dismal pass was many miles in length; but at last the glare of a fire lit up the rocks ahead. The young bushman went forward alone, returning in a few minutes. Then Moondyne and the sergeant, proceeding with him to the end of the pass, found themselves in the opening of a small valley or basin, over which the sky, like a splendid domed roof, was clearly rounded by the tops of the mountains. A few paces from the entrance stood a group of natives, who had started from their rest at the approach of the' party.

(To be continued.)