第63章

I ought to mention here, that long before we reached my home we were constantly provided with escorts of natives from the various tribes we met.These people walked along the high banks or disported themselves in the water like amphibians, greatly to the delight of the girls.We found the banks of the Ord very thickly populated, and frequently camped at night with different parties of natives.Among these we actually came across some I had fought against many months previously.

As we neared my home, some of our escort sent up smoke-signals to announce our approach--the old and wonderful "Morse code" of long puffs, short puffs, spiral puffs, and the rest; the variations being produced by damping down the fire or fires with green boughs.

Yamba also sent up signals.The result was that crowds of my own people came out in their catamarans to meet us.My reception, in fact, was like that accorded a successful Roman General.Needless to say, there was a series of huge corroborees held in our honour.

The first thing I was told was that my hut had been burnt down in my absence (fires are of quite common occurrence); and so, for the first few days after our arrival, the girls were housed in a temporary grass shelter, pending the construction of a substantial hut built of logs.Now, as logs were very unusual building material, a word of explanation is necessary.

The girls never conquered their fear of the blacks--even MY blacks;and therefore, in order that they might feel secure from night attack (a purely fanciful idea, of course), I resolved to build a hut which should be thoroughly spear-proof.Bark was also used extensively, and there was a thatch of grass.When finished, our new residence consisted of three fair-sized rooms--one for the girls to sleep in, one for Yamba and myself, and a third as a general "living room,"--though, of course, we lived mainly en plain air.I also arranged a kind of veranda in front of the door, and here we frequently sat in the evening, singing, chatting about distant friends; the times that were, and the times that were to be.

Let the truth be told.When these poor young ladies came to my hut their faces expressed their bitter disappointment, and we all wept together the greater part of the night.Afterwards they said how sorry they were thus to have given way; and they begged me not to think them ungrateful.However, they soon resigned themselves to the inevitable, buoyed up by the inexhaustible optimism of youth;and they settled down to live as comfortably as possible among the blacks until some fortuitous occurrence should enable us all to leave these weird and remote regions.The girls were in constant terror of being left alone--of being stolen, in fact.They had been told how the natives got wives by stealing them; and they would wake up in the dead of the night screaming in the most heart-rending manner, with a vague, nameless terror.Knowing that the ordinary food must be repulsive to my new and delightful companions, I went back to a certain island, where, during my journey from the little sand-spit to the main, I had hidden a quantity of corn beneath a cairn.

This corn I now brought back to my Gulf home, and planted for the use of the girls.They always ate the corn green in the cob, with a kind of vegetable "milk" that exudes from one of the palm-trees.

When they became a little more reconciled to their new surroundings, they took a great interest in their home, and would watch me for hours as I tried to fashion rude tables and chairs and other articles of furniture.Yamba acted as cook and waitress, but after a time the work was more than she could cope with unaided.

You see, she had to FIND the food as well as cook it.The girls, who were, of course, looked upon as my wives by the tribe (this was their greatest protection), knew nothing about root-hunting, and therefore they did not attempt to accompany Yamba on her daily expeditions.I was in something of a dilemma.If I engaged other native women to help Yamba, they also would be recognised as my wives.Finally, I decided there was nothing left for me but to acquire five more helpmates, who were of the greatest assistance to Yamba.

Of course, the constant topic of conversation was our ultimate escape overland; and to this end we made little expeditions to test the girls' powers of endurance.I suggested, during one of our conversations, that we should either make for Port Essington, or else go overland in search of Port Darwin; but the girls were averse to this, owing to their terror of the natives.

Little did I dream, however, that at a place called Cossack, on the coast of the North-West Division of Western Australia, there was a settlement of pearl-fishers; so that, had I only known it, civilisation--more or less--was comparatively near.Cossack, it appears, was the pearling rendezvous on the western side of the continent, much as Somerset was on the north-east, at the extremity of the Cape York Peninsula.

My tongue or pen can never tell what those young ladies were to me in my terrible exile.They would recite passages from Sir Walter Scott's works--the "Tales of a Grandfather" I remember in particular; and so excellent was their memory that they were also able to give me many beautiful passages from Byron and Shakespeare.

I had always had a great admiration for Shakespeare, and the girls and myself would frequently act little scenes from "The Tempest,"as being the most appropriate to our circumstances.The girls'

favourite play, however, was Pericles, "Prince of Tyre." I took the part of the King, and when I called for my robes Yamba would bring some indescribable garments of emu skin, with a gravity that was comical in the extreme.I, on my part, recited passages from the French classics--particularly the Fables of La Fontaine, in French; which language the girls knew fairly well.