"Not too young to be a brave-hearted boy, however!" said the Captain.
"The other day, in Sydney harbour, one of my marines who couldn't swim went overboard and this boy soused in after him, and carried the lifebuoy to him, in spite of sharks. What do you think of that for a ten-year-old?"
The boy's face flushed scarlet as the Captain passed on, and he held out his hand to Alice to say good-bye. She took it, looked at him, hesitated, and then bent down and kissed his cheek--a tender, sisterly kiss--something, as Jim said, to carry on board with him!
Poor little Tacks! He was a great friend of mine; so I have been tempted to dwell on him. He came to me with letters of introduction, and stayed at my place six weeks or more. He served brilliantly, and rose rapidly, and last year only I heard that Lieutenant Tacks had fallen in the dust, and never risen again, just at the moment that the gates of Delhi were burst down, and our fellows went swarming in to vengeance.
Chapter XXXVI
AN EARTHQUAKE, A COLLIERY EXPLOSION, AND AN ADVENTURE.
So the Captain, the Colonial Secretary, and the small midshipman left the station and went on board again, disappearing from this history for evermore. The others all went home and grew warlike, arming themselves against the threatened danger; but still weeks, nay months, rolled on, and winter was turning into spring, and yet the country side remained so profoundly tranquil that every one began to believe that the convicts must after all have been drowned, and that the boat found by sagacious Blockstrop had been capsized and thrown bottom upwards on the beach. So that, before the brown flocks began to be spotted with white lambs, all alarm had gone by.
Only four persons, besides Mary Hawker herself, were conversant of the fact that the Bushranger and George Hawker were the same man. Of these only three, the Doctor, Major Buckley, and Captain Brentwood, knew of his more recent appearance on the shore, and they, after due consultation, took honest Tom Troubridge into their confidence.
But, as I said, all things went so quietly for two months, that at the end of that time no one thought any more of bushrangers than they would of tigers. And just about this time, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, having finished my last consignment of novels from England, and having nothing to do, determined to ride over, and spend a day or two with Major Buckley.
But when I rode up to the door at Baroona, having pulled my shirt collar up, and rapped at the door with my whip, out came the housekeeper to inform me there was not a soul at home. This was deeply provoking, for I had got on a new pair of riding trousers, which had cost money, and a new white hat with a blue net veil (rather a neat thing too), and I had ridden up to the house under the idea that fourteen or fifteen persons were looking at me out of window. I had also tickled my old horse, Chanticleer, to make him caper and show the excellency of my seat. But when I came to remember that the old horse had nearly bucked me over his head instead of capering, and to find that my hat was garnished with a large cobweb of what is called by courtesy native silk, with half-a-dozen dead leaves sticking in it, I felt consoled that no one had seen me approach, and asked the housekeeper, with tolerable equanimity, where they were all gone.
They were all gone, she said, over to Captain Brentwood's, and goodness gracious knew when they would be back again. Mrs. Hawker and Mr.
Charles were gone with them. For her part, she should not be sorry when Mr. Sam brought Miss Brentwood over for good and all. The house was terrible lonesome when they were all away.
I remarked, "Oho!" and asked whether she knew if Mr. Troubridge was at Toonarbin.
No, she said; he was away again at Port Phillip with store cattle; making a deal of money, she understood, and laying out a deal for the Major in land. She wished he would marry Mrs. Hawker and settle down, for he was a pleasant gentleman, and fine company in a house. Wouldn't I get off and have a bit of cold wild duck and a glass of sherry?
Certainly I would. So I gave my horse to the groom and went in. I had hardly cut the first rich red slice from the breast of a fat teal, when I heard a light step in the passage, and in walked my man Dick. You remember him, reader. The man we saw five and twenty years ago on Dartmoor, combining with William Lee to urge the unhappy George Hawker on to ruin and forgery, which circumstance, remember, I knew nothing of at this time. The same man I had picked up footsore and penniless in the bush sixteen years ago, and who had since lived with me, a most excellent and clever servant--the best I ever had. This man now came into Major Buckley's parlour, hat in hand, looking a little foolish, and when I saw him my knife and fork were paralyzed with astonishment.
"Why, what the Dickens" (I used that strong expression) "brings you here, my lad?"
"I went up to Hipsley's about the colt," he said, "and when I got home I found you were gone off unexpectedly; so I thought it better to come after you and tell you all about it. He won't take less than thirty-five."
"Man! man!" I said, "do you mean to say that you have ridden fifty miles to tell me the price of a leggy beast like that, after I had told you that twentyfour was my highest offer?"
He looked very silly, and I saw very well he had some other reason for coming than that. But with a good servant I never ask too many questions, and when I went out a short time after, and found him leaning against a fence, and talking earnestly to our old acquaintance William Lee, I thought, "He wanted an excuse to come up and see his old friend Lee. That is quite just and proper, and fully accounts for it."
Lee always paid me the high compliment of touching his hat to me, for old Devon' sake, I suppose. "How's all at Toonarbin, Lee?" I asked.
"Well and hearty, sir. How is yourself, sir?"
"Getting older, Lee. Nothing worse than that. Dick, I am going on to Captain Brentwood's. If you like to go back to Toonarbin and stay a day or two with Lee, you can do so."
"I would rather come on with you, sir," he said eagerly.
"Are you sure?" I said.
"Quite sure, sir." And Lee said, "You go on with Mr. Hamlyn, Dick, and do your duty, mind."
I thought this odd; but, knowing it was useless to ask questions of an old hand, or try to get any information which was not volunteered, I held my tongue and departed, taking Dick with me.
I arrived at Captain Brentwood's about three o'clock in the afternoon.
I flatter myself that I made a very successful approach, and created rather a sensation among the fourteen or fifteen people who were sitting in the verandah. They took me for a distinguished stranger. But when they saw who it was they all began calling out to me at once to know how I was, and to come in (as if I wasn't coming in), and when at last I got among them, I nearly had my hand shaken off; and the Doctor, putting on his spectacles and looking at me for a minute, asked what I had given for my hat?
Let me see, who was there that day? There was Mary Hawker, looking rather older, and a little worn; and there was her son Charles sitting beside pretty Ellen Mayford, and carrying on a terrible flirtation with that young lady, in spite of her fat jolly-looking mother, who sat with folded hands beside her. Next to her sat her handsome brother Cecil, looking, poor lad! as miserable as he well could look, although I did not know the cause. Then came Sam, beside his mother, whose noble happy face was still worth riding fifty miles to see; and then, standing beside her chair, was Alice Brentwood.
I had never seen this exquisite creature before, and I immediately fell desperately and hopelessly in love with her, and told her so that same evening, in the presence of Sam. Finding that my affection was not likely to be returned, I enrolled myself as one of her knights, and remain so to this present time.
The Major sat beside his wife, and the Doctor and Captain Brentwood walked up and down, talking politics. There were also present, certain Hawbucks, leggy youths with brown faces and limp hair, in appearance and dress not unlike English steeplechaseriders who had been treated, on the face and hands, with walnut-juice. They never spoke, and the number of them then present I am uncertain about, but one of them I recollect could spit a great deal farther than any of his brothers, and proved it beyond controversy about twice in every three minutes.
I missed my old friend Jim Brentwood, and was informed that he had gone to Sydney, "on the spree," as Sam expressed it, along with a certain Lieutenant Halbert, who was staying on a visit with Major Buckley.
First I sat down by Mary Hawker, and had a long talk with her about old times. She was in one of her gay moods, and laughed and joked continuously. Then I moved up, by invitation, to a chair between the Major and his wife, and had a long private and confidential conversation with them.
"How," I began, "is Tom Troubridge?"
"Tom is perfectly well," said the Major. "He still carries on his old chronic flirtation with Mary; and she is as ready to be flirted with as ever."
"Why don't they marry?" I asked, peevishly. "Why on earth don't they marry one another? What is the good of carrying on that old folly so long? They surely must have made up their minds by now. She knows she is a widow, and has known it for years."
"Good God! Hamlyn, are you so ignorant?" said the Major. And then he struck me dumb by telling me of all that had happened latterly: of George Hawker's reappearance, of his identity with the great bushranger, and, lastly, of his second appearance not two months before.
"I tell you this in strict confidence, Hamlyn, as one of my oldest and best friends. I know how deeply your happiness is affected by all this."
I remained silent and thunderstruck for a time, and then I tried to turn the conversation:--
"Have you had any alarm from bushrangers lately? I heard a report of some convicts having landed on the coast."
"All a false alarm!" said the Major. "They were drowned, and the boat washed ashore, bottom upwards."
Here the Doctor broke in: "Hamlyn, is not this very queer weather?"
When he called my attention to it, I remarked that the weather was really different from any I had seen before, and said so.
The sky was grey and dull, the distances were clear, and to the eye it appeared merely a soft grey autumnal day. But there was something very strange and odd in the deadly stillness of all nature. Not a leaf moved, not a bird sang, and the air seemed like lead. At once Mrs.
Buckley remarked,--
"I can't work, and I can't talk. I am so wretchedly nervous that I don't know what to do with myself, and you know, my dear," she said, appealing to her husband, "that I am not given to that sort of thing."
Each man looked at his neighbour, for there was a sound in the air now a weird and awful sound like nothing else in nature. To the south arose upon the ear a hollow quivering hum, which swelled rapidly into a roar beneath our feet; there was a sickening shake, a thump, a crash, and away went the earthquake, groaning off to the northward.
The women behaved very well, though some of them began to cry; and hearing a fearful row in the kitchen I dashed off there, followed by the Doctor. The interior was a chaos of pots and kettles, in the centre of which sat the cook, Eleanor, holding on by the floor. Every now and then she would give a scream which took all the breath out of her; so she had to stop and fetch breath before she could give another. The Doctor stepped through the saucepans and camp-ovens, and trying to raise her said,--
"Come, get up, my good woman, and give over screaming. All the danger is over, and you will frighten the ladies."
At this moment she had got her "second wind," and as he tried to get her up she gave such a yell that he dropped her again, and bolted, stopping his ears; bolted over a teakettle which had been thrown down, and fell prostrate, resounding like an Homeric hero, on to a heap of kitchen utensils, at the feet of Alice, who had come in to come see what the noise was about.