Part 31

Jimmy did not answer for a moment. He was occupied with his horse’s bridle, then he said carelessly, as if he were rather ashamed of making such a fuss about a trifle.

“Myalls pull along a hut.”

“My God!” cried Turner. It seemed like the realisation of his worst fears.

But Stanesby refused to see any cause for alarm.

“And you ‘ve ridden like blazes, and ruined the mare, to tell us rot like that. What if they do come up to the hut? They’ve been there before.”

The answer was more to his companion than his servant, but Jimmy answered the implied reproach.

“Blackfellow burn hut,” he stated.

“Nonsense!”

“This fellow sit down along a bush,” he went on stolidly.

“Well--if you did! I wish to heaven you had stopped alongside your confounded bush before you ruined my mare.”

“Bungally you!” said Jimmy, who was no respecter of persons, meaning “you are very stupid.” “Blackfellow put firestick in humpy and--”

“Good God! Stanesby, I knew it. The myalls are going to burn down the hut, and this beggar’s got wind of it.”

Jimmy nodded approvingly.

“All gone humpy,” he said, stretching out his hands as if to denote the deed was done.

“But the girl, Jimmy, the girl!”

“Poor gin tumble down.”

“I--Jimmy,” Stanesby caught him by the shoulder, and shook him violently, and Turner knew by the change in his voice that his fears were roused at last, “how did you know this? When did you hear it?”

“Sit down along a bush,” said Jimmy again. His vocabulary was limited.

“But when--when? It must have been all right when you left?”

“Blackfellow pull along a humpy to-night,” said Jimmy, nodding his head solemnly, feeling that at last he had got a serious hearing, and hoping to hear no more about the mare.

“But the girl--the girl! Where’s the girl?”

“That one myall hit him gin along a cobra big fellow nulla-nulla? Gin tumble down.” {1}

“But--my God! what ‘d you leave her there for?”

“Myall got ‘em nulla-nulla for this fellow.”

“You brute!” cried Turner, “why didn’t you bring her with you?”

“Only got ‘em one yarramen,” said the blackfellow nonchalantly. There was only one horse, he had taken it and saved his skin. He had come to warn the white man of the destruction of his dwelling, but he did not count the half-caste girl of any value one way or another. The blacks would attack the hut at sundown when they saw the coast clear.

1 A blackfellow has hit the woman over the head with a big stick or club. The woman is dead.

The white man would be angry at the destruction of his hut, he had ridden after him to tell him, and also because safety lay with the white man; but the girl--if there had been a horse in the little paddock, he might possibly have brought her out of danger, but even as a blackfellow he looked with contempt on a half-caste; and as a woman--well, a woman was worth nothing as a woman. There were plenty more to be got. He lay down on the ground, and lazily stretched himself out at full length. There was nothing more to be got out of him.