CHAPTER XXVI
THE LITTLE GREY MAN
To abscond from assigned service was to break yet another law of the land of bondage. And though he little knew it (but cared less), Tom Erichsen was now liable to further transportation—even to Norfolk Island—and that for life.
Six months in a chain-gang was, however, a likelier term; he might even get off with another fifty lashes, and doubtless would, if he fell alive into the ruthless hands through which he had slipped at last. He set his teeth at the thought. It should never be. They might take his body—there would be one or two more to go with it when they did.
The stars were still sharp in the sky. They remained so for some hours longer, when a breath of wind blew them out like candles, and day broke, or rather burst like a shell.
Meanwhile Tom had struck a creek, waded a mile in it to destroy the scent—waded within a stone’s-throw of Jarman’s hut—turned tail in a panic—and waded back, and miles further, in the opposite direction. In the creek also he slaked his thirst and laved his wounds. He had turned his back on it when the sun rose. And towards the rising sun he ran and ran until there was a great belt of blue beneath it in the sky; then hid for the day in a tiny clump of trees in the midst of an open plain.
Here he slept for hours, yet dreamt but one dream—of baying dogs and cantering hoofs. When he awoke the first sound was actually audible, but far away and growing fainter. It passed altogether, and he fell asleep again. Awaking a second time, he found the stars back in the sky, but as yet no moon. And Tom was deadly faint for lack of food.
Also, his wounds were so stiff that he could scarcely stir, every movement caused him pain; yet he struggled up, and tottered east, with those five fixed stars shining feebly upon his wan right cheek and haggard profile.
How long this continued Tom could never tell. It might have been hours later, or only minutes that seemed like hours, when the climax came. All he ever knew was that his head was by this time very light; and that the moon was no higher than the trees when it shone upon the stray wether bleating piteously in his path, which was to stand out terribly in his mind ever after. Yet up to that moment a forty hours’ fast had been broken but once—with sandwiches. It was either this or lingering death.
The moon won clear of the trees; it shone into the glutted eyes and on the blood-caked mouth and fingers of as desperate and abandoned a young convict as the settlement contained.
He pushed on now with a new and dreadful energy. He thought he smelt the sea. The country, however, was still well timbered; and instinctively, rather than with conscious precaution, the fugitive made his line where the trees were thickest. He was now steering jealously by the moon, with his head thrown further back the higher it sailed; thus it was that a little later he tripped and staggered without seeing what it was that had caught his foot; but it felt peculiar, and after a moment he turned round, stood still, and went back.
It was the dead body of a man.
The body had not a rag upon it.
Tom knelt to examine it by the moonlight, and a cold thrill ran down him which he resented when he had time to think; it showed there was something human in him yet.
The body was that of a very swarthy man, with wonderful white teeth upon which the moon shone and glistened in the ghastliest manner; and pierced ears from which the ear-rings had been brutally torn; and a chapfallen blue chin. Tom thought the man had not been many hours dead; what puzzled him was the apparent absence of a mortal wound where the other evidences of foul play were so glaring. When found, however, the wound itself puzzled him much more; it was at the back of the sunburnt neck, and might have been a bullet-wound, but Tom had never seen one before; nor would he have expected a bullet to drill a hole so clean and round.
He now behaved as though he had been tripping over murdered men all his life. He had not only recovered his composure, he was able to glory in it as a sign that his heart was dead after all, and so past bleeding for anything or anybody any more. At this moment he raised his eyes, and his new-found composure was at an end.
A light flashed through the trees into his eyes: a tongue of flame from some camp-fire.
Tom listened. No voices reached his ears save those of the nocturnal bush. The fire was farther off than he had thought.
He got up, and first walked, then crept, towards the light. The colony was infested with bands of bushrangers. What if here were one, and this corpse their handiwork? Now Tom thought of it, one particular and most notorious band had been depredating this very part of the country ever since the New Year. He had heard envious reports of the villains in the convicts’ huts at Castle Sullivan, and especially had he heard of their terrible Italian chief, said to be an outlawed brigand come to seek fresh fortunes in New South Wales. Of the merciless ferocity of this free alien the most horrifying stories were afloat. Yet the worst of these but feebly expressed one who shot men from behind, stripped their corpses, and tore the very rings from their ears.
Tom crept near the fire in a personal fright curiously exhilarating in its intensity. He might almost have been a free man once more—worth robbing—worth murdering for his money. The novel sensation brought back a momentary whiff of unconscious self-respect. It was just the little thought of having a life worth taking once more; of being anything to anybody but a beaten dog; and it came and went and was forgotten in the same moment.
The next, he was gazing on a curious scene; and his fears were also at an end.
In the light of the camp-fire four men were sitting solemnly at whist; and three faces more innocently intent (for the fourth was turned the other way) Tom had never seen in his life. On his left sat a long-limbed stripling whom the others addressed as Slipper while they shuffled and cut and criticised his play; it was clear that Slipper was a novice, though an anxious student of the game. His partner was a wall-eyed man without a smile; neither did Tom hear a word from the one whose black hair and sullen shoulders were towards him, but opposite whom (facing Tom) sat the visible life and soul of the party.
This was a little elderly man, with grey tufts upon his bloodless cheeks, and horn spectacles pushed halfway up a singularly benevolent brow. He sat tailor-wise, like the rest, but played his cards in a way of his own. He had only one hand for the job; his right arm terminated in a polished hook with a cork at the end of it; but there knelt at his side a gigantic aboriginal, who threw down each card as the player touched it with the cork. Such was the party. At the first glance Tom had looked anxiously for the bloodthirsty Italian brigand; but he soon forgot his existence in the presence of this innocent group, who were not even playing for money.
Tom heard their horses champing hard by beyond the firelight; set them down as a party of drovers; and stepped fearlessly among them the instant the rubber came to an end. The wall-eyed one immediately drew a pistol, while Slipper leapt to his long legs with a knife. But the man with the spectacles ordered them both to put away their weapons and sit quiet; and they both obeyed.
“I saw him some time ago,” said he, lowering his glasses (as he had done once before while Tom was looking on), “and I am very much obliged to him. He didn’t interrupt our rub, as a more thoughtless person most certainly would have done. He is a well-bred young man, and I like the looks of him. Do you hear, sir? I like the looks of you; but what on earth’s the matter with your mouth?”
Tom hung his head and told his story. At its conclusion the little grey man insisted on shaking left hands with him.
“You’re the kind of young fellow I like to meet,” said he. “A runaway convict, of course?”
The question was terribly abrupt, but Tom told the truth.
“There, there, never mind!” cried the little grey man. “You’re not so singular in that respect as your sensitive imagination would appear to suggest. In fact, you are not the only one in the present circle; so you see that you may hold up your head again, and even trust us with further particulars. May I ask from whose service you have fled?”
Tom hesitated: if they should carry him back!
“You would rather not say!” exclaimed the little man. “Very natural, very natural; but what if I can guess? What if I said his name began with S, and considered that of his homestead hardly justified by the facts, save insomuch as every man’s dwelling is his Castle?”
Tom’s face convicted him. It was transfigured with amazement. The travellers exchanged significant glances, and proceeded to regard him with an interest obviously redoubled.
“How did you know?” he cried.
“I knew nothing. I only guessed.”
“But how?”
“More convicts abscond from that particular establishment than from any other in the Colony. Then I perceive that you are suffering from fifty lashes—”
“A hundred!”
“Indeed?—and more convicts are flogged on that farm than on any other in the land. A nice place! I know something about it—I intend knowing more.”
Slipper laughed.
“But you mustn’t let a hundred lashes depress you,” resumed the little grey man, in his smooth and soothing voice. “Why, my friend Wall-eye here had sixteen hundred in three years—on the same farm, mind you!—before he came to me. What do you think of that? But it’s high time I presented you to my friends. That’s Wall-eye, this is Slipper, and over there you see De Gruchy scowling at you; but don’t be frightened; he’s been scowling at us all the whole evening,” said the little man, with a gleam of his eyes behind their glasses. “You needn’t trouble your head about De Gruchy! The heathen’s name is Peter Pindar; he will provide for your needs in one moment; and my name is Hookey Simpson, at your service!”
His manner all through had been so softly grandiose as to point the humour of this anti-climax, which, however, was now lost upon Tom. He was too busy trying to remember where he had heard the name of Hookey Simpson before. And he had remembered nothing when soap and water were put before him by the blackfellow, followed immediately by a supply of lukewarm mutton, which kept him silent for some time.
Meanwhile his entertainers kept silence, too; but replenished the fire and lit their pipes with the burning brands; and rested their eyes on Tom in a meditative fashion while he ate. It was he who became communicative when he had finished. Suddenly thinking of it, he told them of the ghastly discovery he had made among those very trees, about an hour before.
The effect was curious. Neither Hookey Simpson nor Wall-eye nor Slipper seemed in the least surprised or perturbed; but De Gruchy showed teeth as white as those of the corpse, and ground them horribly; and Hookey Simpson fixed his spectacles upon De Gruchy, leaning forward with the tip of his hook between finger and thumb.
“The fact is,” said Tom, “I thought it must be the work of that Italian brigand-fellow.”
All but De Gruchy burst out laughing.
“And when I first saw your fire,” he added, “I thought you must be his band!”
All but De Gruchy laughed louder than before. De Gruchy hid his sullen, foreign face in his hands. And the little grey man held up his hook for silence.
“We are!” said he.
“What? Bushrangers after all?”
“The band you speak of.”
“Then where’s the Italian?”
“You saw him for yourself about an hour ago!”
And the little man’s eyes were twinkling through their horn-rimmed lenses as if he had made a joke. But there was no more laughing outright, though Tom heard Slipper chuckle and De Gruchy snarl. As for himself, he was shuddering in the most mortifying fashion under the fascinating spectacles of the little grey man.
“That was your leader!” he stammered out.
“So he flattered himself.”
“And I thought it was his handiwork!”
“It was mine,” said Hookey Simpson coolly; indeed, a benign smile accompanied the confession, as though it were a public service he had performed, with the utmost mercy. But Tom thought of the stripped body with the torn ears; and those living faces, lit up by the crackling camp-fire, lived ever after in his mind, in the yet more lurid light of this dreadful revelation.
The high forehead, the twinkling spectacles, the grey tufts and the polished hook of the elderly man; the broad, keen, flashing blade with which Slipper sat paring his finger-nails; the wall-eyes, hard, dead stare; the knotted hands that hid De Gruchy’s face, and the blue-black hair in turn hiding half his fingers; the harmless playing-cards upon the ground; the ruddy, genial fire; and the white, the watchful moon, peering through a screen of trembling leaves: all these were as pieces of a mosaic, inlaid at this instant in Tom Erichsen’s brain, for him to carry there to his grave.
“So you killed him yourself?” he found himself saying at last, in a stouter voice.
“I did,” said Hookey. “I was under that painful necessity this very afternoon. It wasn’t done for the fun of the thing, you understand, but only when it became evident that one of us must go. I naturally preferred to stay. At the same time, I must admit I was wearying of being hectored and bullied by a confounded foreigner; and there were three of us Englishmen of the same mind; so you perceive how it all fitted in. Last night we had words. Now, a house divided against itself cannot stand; neither can a band of bushrangers, much less when the mounted police are on their track!”
“Are they?” cried Tom.
“Maybe within fifteen miles,” replied Hookey Simpson; “maybe within five. An ensign, two sergeants and eighteen troopers, as I understand; but never mind them. We two had words; they had been coming on for weeks. Well, there were three on my side and only two on his; so we made it up, but lay and watched each other with one eye open all night. This afternoon, at his suggestion, we rode behind together, to come to some understanding. But I saw him looking at me queerly,” said the little grey man, “and that was enough for me. When I galloped after these good fellows our number was reduced by one, but the little question of leadership was at an end.”
“A good job too!” cried Slipper; and Wall-eye nodded a grave assent.
“You see, the change is not unpopular,” continued Hookey modestly; “though I’m bound to add that I don’t see how it could be—among Englishmen. What was he before they kicked him out of his own country? The word that described our friend Barabbas was already applicable to the late lamented. But what was I before circumstances compelled me to leave mine? What do you suppose? Come, give a guess,” said Hookey Simpson.
“You talk like a parson,” suggested Tom, to compliment the wretch.
“And I was next door to one!” cried the little man, beaming benevolently. “A schoolmaster! A pedagogue! A pattern to the village, and its model churchwarden, until an accursed organ-fund brought trouble in its train. So here I am, and here I was while our late friend was cutting throats in Italy; yet he thinks I’m going to knuckle under to him for ever! Likely, wasn’t it? No, no; he was a bold-enough man, but he’d met another. And I venture to say that to-night—my first in command—we’re on a bigger job than we ever should have tackled under friend Francisco!”
“Hear, hear!” cried Slipper, while Wall-eye nodded again, and Tom caught an evil gleam between De Gruchy’s fingers. There followed a pause, for the mellifluous grey man had taken off his spectacles and was breathing on the lenses with as tranquil a deliberation as though he were still in the village school-room, ruling innocent children, instead of grown men as infamous as himself.
Tom watched him still; indeed, his eyes had scarcely left this venerable villain from the moment it appeared he was one; and now his fascination was complete. He glanced at his own legs, crossed in unconscious imitation of the little bushranger; and his trousers were all stained, and his boots still stiff, from the blood that had run down and into them, drawn by the lash. Then he looked at Hookey, so wicked and strong and sly, and his heart leapt as he had never thought to feel it leap again. Here was the man for a whipped dog to follow! He leant eagerly forward, and begged and craved admission to the band, as another might have pleaded for his life.
Hookey Simpson surveyed him strangely. “Well, well,” said he, “I was thinking it would never do to leave you here.”
“Why not?”
“You were probably heading for the sea.”
“I was.”
“Well, the ensign and his men are, without a doubt, between the sea and ourselves. You might have fallen in with them.”
“That would have been my look-out.”
“Mine too, perhaps.”
“What do you mean?”
“You might have put them on my scent.”
Tom had seen it coming, yet he lost his temper when it came.
“So you think that of me?” he cried. “You see how I’ve been treated, and yet you think that!”
“I did think it,” was the reply. “I don’t say I do now. No; it never occurred to me to trust you on the grounds you suggest.”
“Then what did it occur to you to do?”
Hookey Simpson shrugged his shoulders, as one who would rather not say.
“To tie me to a tree, perhaps, and leave me there to starve?”
Hookey Simpson bit his thin lips to avoid smiling, but bent his grey head when that was impossible; and Tom, bending his, saw that the cork was off the polished steel hook, and its point as sharp as a needle. The little grey man was feeling it with his thumb, as he still tried to swallow his smiles.
“I see!” said Tom in a low voice. “Yes, now I see!”
“We never do things by halves,” observed Hookey, sucking a bead of blood, not without ostentation, from the end of his thumb. “We do them with all our might.”
“So I see,” repeated Tom. “Well, and so do I! You stick at nothing—I’ll stick at less. I’ll be with you in what you please—from whist to wholesale murder—only give me the chance! Man alive, can’t you see for yourself I’m as desperate as any of you? Haven’t you told me the mounted police are between me and the sea? Then what do you suppose I want with my life, except to sell it as dear as possible, and be done with it as quick? I tell you,” cried Tom, “I’m the very man for you! See here: you’re one short. Take me in his place, and serve me the same if I turn out worse than my word!”
His sudden vehemence, his impassioned manner, his fevered and infuriated eyes, all had their effect upon the bushrangers, who now (with the exception of Peter Pindar and De Gruchy) got up and held a whispered consultation some few paces from the fire. Tom watched them eagerly, and each time the wall-eyes or the fire-lit spectacles were turned upon him, he made ready to rise. But now and then they glanced at De Gruchy instead, who was still nursing a sullen face, and at such times their whispers fell lower still, so that Tom was at once startled and interested when a new voice gobbled in his ear:—
“Yabber-yabber ’longa him—him bael budgerie—him no dam’ use!”
It was Peter Pindar, whose oily locks and curling beard nodded disgustedly in De Gruchy’s direction.
“Why not?” said Tom. “What has he done?”
“Him good-fellow belonging[1] Francisco,” replied the black. “Me leave ’m alonga Francisco, me Hookey Simp’on. Bael budgerie; me leave ’m alonga good-fellow, my word!”
And the simian face grinned from ear to ear, in each of which Tom now beheld a gold ear-ring smeared with blood. But he was determined to be horrified no more; and, the trio beckoning him, he joined them with what alacrity he could, in the strait-waistcoat of stiff wounds which now imprisoned him.
“Well,” began the little grey man, “we’re going to give you a trial!”
Tom broke out with impious thanks which the other instantly cut short.
“Stop till you hear what that means,” said Hookey. “It means that we saddle up straight away—and stick up Castle Sullivan before morning. It means that you’ve got to make yourself extra useful there, since you know the place. So what do you say to it now?”
For the moment Tom could say nothing at all. He was too surprised; and, in his surprise, he was thinking of the Sullivans and sweet revenge, of the detested spot he meant never to see again, and of Peggy who must be protected—all at once.
“Well?” said Hookey. “You know the place. What do you say?”
“I’m known there, too!”
“What of that?”
“They’d make a mark of me. The Sullivans would have me back alive or dead. Then I have enemies among the men—they’d side against me out of spite.”
“Well, we shall all wear masks.”
Tom glanced down at his regulation jacket, shoes and trousers; took off his regulation cap, and shook his head.
“It would never be enough. There are too many of them wearing the very same as these.”
“Then you’ll just have to take your chance,” said Hookey sharply. “Or you may kneel down and say your prayers!”
“Stop!” said Slipper.
“Well, what now?”
“Francisco’s rig!”
Hookey considered the suggestion, and finally accepted it, though with an evil grace.
“All right—out with them,” said he. “And you slip into them, young fellow, without more of your jaw. We sha’n’t wait for you. Saddle up there, saddle up, or we’ll never get off to-night!”
The little grey man was altogether changed. The long mellifluous word gave way to the monosyllable of short and sharp command; the horn spectacles seemed to kindle and flash to right, left and centre all at once; and yet, in three or four minutes, they were bent as benignly as ever upon Tom, who was now, however, another man himself.
Long spurs, longer boots and a bright blue jacket with enormous buttons, though some sizes too large, became him wonderfully upon the whole; and a straw hat, such as Dr. Sullivan wore and the convicts plaited, but wreathed with leaves and berries in a foreign fashion, crowned a disguise which only required the mask to render it complete.
“Be good enough to turn round,” said Hookey Simpson, with his former urbanity, and some perceptible amusement.
Tom did so; and there was De Gruchy still sitting in the moonlight, with his head between his hands; and the others as busy as bees.
“Now turn back again—and many thanks! That was an admirable idea of Slipper’s; they’ll take you for Francisco himself, and on the whole it’s just as well they should. Yet, mind you, he was a pretty hard nut! You mustn’t disgrace his cloth!”
Tom was shaking his head when there was a loud cry of “Francisco! Francisco!” behind him; and he turned in time to catch De Gruchy on his knees, with his clasped hands raised, and a face of ashes that broke into flames as the apparition of the dead man resolved itself into the newcomer in the dead man’s clothes. With a single bound the Frenchman was upon him; the hat was torn off; and a gasping, glaring figure crouched with it in both hands, as the others rushed up and closed about him.
“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” said Hookey Simpson, stepping forward. He laid an arm upon the Frenchman’s shoulder. It was the arm that ended in a hook, but the cork still guarded its terrible point. Nevertheless, the man’s face went white again; he started forward, but Hookey Simpson pushed him back. In a moment they were on the ground together.
This was all Tom had seen; all he now saw was Hookey Simpson getting to his feet, with the burst cork forced high up the hook, which gleamed in the moonlight as bright and cleanly as before.
“So that’s all right!” said the little grey man, adjusting his spectacles, which had become crooked in the fray. “Half a heart is worse than no man, and as he couldn’t get on without the other heathen, why, it was the kindest thing to do. What’s more, gentlemen, I rather think that our young recruit here is going to prove himself worth the two of them put together!”
And Tom got a playful prod with the round part of that murderous hook; and yet stood his ground, though De Gruchy lay flat on his face, with the moon beating down on his neck, and on a dark blob there in much the same place as that other mortal wound, which now puzzled Tom no more.
- ↑ Friend of.