Chapter 2. "We're Off Now"

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_ CHAPTER TWO. "WE'RE OFF NOW"

Busy days succeeded during which every one worked hard, except the people of Port Haven. The captain of the ship hurried on his people as much as was possible, but the sailors obtained little assistance from the shore. They landed, however, the consignments of goods intended for the speculative merchant, who had started in business in what he called sundries; two great chests for the young doctor, who had begun life where he had no patients, and passed his time in fishing; and sundry huge packages intended for a gentleman who had taken up land just outside the town, as it was called, where he meant to start sugar-planting.

But the chief task of the crew was the getting up from the hold and landing of Captain Bedford's goods; and these were so varied and extensive that the inhabitants came down to the wharf every day to look on as if it were an exhibition.

Certainly they had some excuse, for the captain had gone to work in rather a wholesale way, and the ship promised to be certainly a little lighter when she started on her way to her destination, a port a hundred miles farther along the coast.

For, setting aside chests and packing-cases sufficient to make quite a stack which was nightly covered with a great wagon cloth, there were a wagon and two carts of a light peculiar make, bought from a famous English manufacturer. Then there were tubs of various sizes, all heavily laden, bundles of tent and wagon cloths, bales of sacking and coarse canvas, and crates of agricultural machinery and tools, on all of which, where they could see them, the little crowd made comments, and at last began to make offers for different things, evidently imbued with the idea that they were brought out on speculation.

The refusals, oft repeated, to part with anything, excited at last no little resentment, one particularly shabby, dirty-looking man, who had been pointed out as a squatter--though that term ought certainly to have been applied to the black, who was the most regular and patient of the watchers--going so far as to say angrily that if stores were brought there they ought to be for sale.

These heavy goods were the last to be landed, for after making a bargain with the gentleman whose name appeared in such large letters on the front of his great wooden shanty, four horses, as many bullocks, all of colonial breed, bought at Sydney where the vessel touched, half a dozen pigs, as many sheep, and a couple of cows brought from England, were landed and driven into an ill-fenced enclosure which Mr Jennings called his "medder," and regularly fed there, for the landlord's meadow was marked by an almost entire absence of grass.

Day by day, these various necessaries for a gentleman farmer's home up-country were landed and stacked on the wharf, the boys, Uncle John, and Samuel German--"Sourkrout," Norman had christened him--under the advice of the captain seeing to everything, and toiling away in the hot sunshine from morning to night.

At last all the captain's belongings were landed, and the next proceeding was to obtain half a dozen more bullocks for draught purposes, and two or three more horses.

These were found at last by means of the young doctor, who seemed ready to be very civil and attentive, but met with little encouragement. After the landlord had declared that neither horse nor ox could be obtained there, the doctor took Captain Bedford about a couple of miles up the river, and introduced him to the young sugar-planter, who eagerly supplied what was required, not for the sake of profit, but, as he said, to do a stranger a kindly turn.

"Going up the country, then, are you?" he said. "Hadn't you better take up land where you can get help if you want it?"

"No," said the captain, shortly. "I have made my plans."

"Well, perhaps you are right, sir," said the sugar-planter, who was, in spite of his rough colonial aspect and his wild-looking home, thoroughly gentlemanly. "You will have the pick of the land, and can select as good a piece as you like. I shall look you up some day."

"Thank you," said the captain, coldly; "but I daresay I shall be many miles up the river."

"Oh, we think nothing of fifty or a hundred miles out here, sir," said the young squatter, merrily. "Your boys will not either, when you've been up yonder a month. Come and see me, lads, when you like. One's glad of a bit of company sometimes."

They parted and walked back, driving their new acquisitions, and were getting on very badly, from the disposition on the part of the bullocks to return to their old home, when the black already described suddenly made his appearance from where he had been squatting amongst some low-growing bushes; and as soon as he stepped out into the track with his long stick, which was supposed to be a spear, bullocks and horses moved on at once in the right direction, and perhaps a little too fast.

"The cattle don't like the blacks as a rule. They are afraid of the spears," said the doctor.

"Why?" asked Norman.

"The blacks spear them--hurl spears at the poor brutes."

"Black fellow," said the shiny, unclothed native sharply, "spear um bullockum."

"Why, he can speak English," said Rifle, sharply.

"Oh yes, he has hung about here for a long time now, and picked it up wonderfully.--You can talk English, can't you, Ashantee?"

The black showed his teeth to the gums.

"What's his name?" asked Artemus, otherwise Tim.

"Oh, that's only the name I gave him, because he is so black--Ashantee."

"Eh, you want Shanter?" cried the black sharply.

"No; but mind and drive those bullocks and horses down to Jennings', and the gentleman will give you sixpence."

"You give Shanter tickpence?" he cried eagerly, as he lowered his rough shock-head and peered in the captain's face.

"Yes, if you drive them carefully."

"Hoo!" shouted the black, leaping from the ground, and then bursting out with a strange noise something between a rapid repetition of the word wallah and the gobbling of a turkey-cock; and then seeing that the boys laughed he repeated the performance, waved his clumsy spear over his head, and made a dash at the bullocks, prodding them in the ribs, administering a poke or two to the horses, and sending them off at a gallop toward the port.

"No, no, no, stop him!" cried the captain; and the three boys rushed off after the black, who stopped for them to overtake him.

"What a matter--what a matter?" he said coolly, as they caught and secured him.

"Mind he don't come off black, Tim," cried Norman.

"Black? All black," cried the Australian. "White, all white. Not white many."

"That's not the way to drive cattle," cried the young doctor, as he came up with the captain.

"Not give tickpence drive bullockum?"

"Yes, if you are careful. Go slowly."

"Go slowly."

"No. Bullockum 'top eat grass. Never get along."

"You'll make them too hot," said Rifle.

"No, no," shouted the black; "no can get too hot. No clothes."

"Send the fellow about his business," said the captain; "we'll drive the cattle ourselves. Good lesson for you, boys.--Here you are, Shanter."

He took out a bright little silver coin, and held it out to the black, who made a snatch at it, but suddenly altered his mind.

"No, not done drive bullockum. Wait bit."

He started off after the cattle again, but evidently grasped what was meant, and moved steadily along with the three boys beside him, and he kept on turning his shiny, bearded, good-humoured face from one to the other, and displaying a perfect set of the whitest of teeth.

"Seems ruin, doesn't it?" said Tim, after they had gone steadily on for some time in silence--a silence only broken by a bellow from one of the bullocks.

"Hear um 'peak?" cried the black.

"What, the bullock?" said Rifle.

The black nodded.

"Say don't want to go along. Shanter make um go."

"No, no, don't hunt them."

"No," cried the black, volubly; "hunt wallaby--hunt ole man kangaroo."

He grinned, and holding his hands before him, began to leap along the track in a wonderfully clever imitation of that singular animal last named, with the result that the horses snorted, and the bullocks set up their tails, and increased their pace.

"Be quiet!" cried Norman, whose eyes ran tears with laughter. "Yes, you are right, Tim. He is a rum one."

"I meant it seems rum to be walking along here with a real black fellow, and only the other day at Harrow."

"Black fellow?" cried their companion. "Hi! black fellow."

He threw himself into an attitude that would have delighted a sculptor, holding back his head, raising his spear till it was horizontal, and then pretending to throw it; after which he handed it quickly to Norman, and snatched a short knobbed stick from where it was stuck through the back of the piece of kangaroo skin he wore.

With this in his hand he rushed forward, and went through the pantomime of a fierce fight with an enemy, whom he seemed to chase and then caught and killed by repeated blows with the nulla-nulla he held in his hand, finishing off by taking a run and hurling it at another retreating enemy, the club flying through the air with such accuracy that he hit one of the horses by the tail, sending it off at a gallop.

"Norman! Rifle!" cried the captain from far behind; "don't let that fellow frighten those horses."

"I--I--can't help it, father," cried the boy, who was roaring with laughter.

"Tink Shanter funny?" cried the black; and he gave vent to the wallah-wallah noise again.

"Yes, you're a rum beggar," said Rifle, who looked upon him as if he were a big black child.

"Yes; Shanter rum beggar," said the black, with a satisfied smile, as if pleased with the new title; but he turned round fiercely directly after, having in his way grasped the meaning of the words but incorrectly.

"No, no," he said eagerly; "Shanter no rum beggar. No drunkum rum. Bah! ugh! Bad, bad, bad!"

He went through an excited pantomime expressive of horror and disgust, and shook his head furiously. "Shanter no rum beggar."

"I meant funny," said Rifle.

"Eh? Funny? Yes, lot o' fun."

"You make me laugh," continued Rifle.

"Eh? make um laugh? No make black fellow laugh. Break um head dreffle, dreffle. No like black fellow."

In due time they were close up to the hotel, where, the boys having taken down the rails, the new purchases made no scruple about allowing themselves to be driven in to join the rest of the live-stock, after which Shanter went up to the captain.

"Get tickpence," he cried, holding out his hand.

The coin was given, and thrust into the black's cheek.

"Just like a monkey at the zoological," said Norman, as he watched the black, who now went to the wharf, squatted down, and stared at the stern, sour-looking man--the captain's old servant--who was keeping guard over the stack of chests, crates, and bales.

The next thing was the arranging for the loan of a wagon from the landlord, upon the understanding that it was to be sent back as soon as possible. After which the loading up commenced, the new arrivals performing all themselves, the inhabitants of the busy place watching, not the least interested spectator being the black, who seemed to be wondering why white men took so much trouble and made themselves so hot.

One wagon was already packed by dusk, and in the course of the next day the other and the carts were piled high, the captain, from his old sapper-and-miner experience, being full of clever expedients for moving and raising weights with rollers, levers, block and fall, very much to the gratification of the dirty-looking man, who smoked and gave it as his opinion that the squire was downright clever.

"Your father was quite right, boys," said Uncle Jack, as the sheets were tightened over the last wagon. "We could not stop anywhere near such neighbours as these."

Then came the time when all was declared ready. Seats had been contrived behind the wagons; saddles, ordinary and side, unpacked for the horses; the tent placed in the care which bore the provisions, everything, in short, thought of by the captain, who had had some little experience of expeditions in India when with an army; and at last one morning the horses were put to cart and wagon, one of which was drawn by three yoke of oxen; every one had his or her duty to perform in connection with the long caravan, and after farewells had been said to their late companions on board ship and to the young doctor and the sugar-planter, all stood waiting for the captain to give the word to start.

Just then the doctor came up with his friend of the plantation.

"You will not think me impertinent, Captain Bedford, if I say that Henley here advises that you should keep near to the river valley, just away from the wood, so as to get good level land for your wagons."

"Certainly not; I am obliged," said the captain quietly.

"He thinks, too, that you will find the best land in the river bottom."

"Of course, of course," said the captain. "Good-day, gentlemen; I am much obliged."

"If you want any little service performed, pray send," said the doctor; "we will execute any commission with pleasure."

"I will ask you if I do," said the captain; and the two young men raised their hats and drew back.

"Father doesn't like men to be so civil," said Man.

"No; he doesn't like strangers," whispered back Rifle.

"Of course he doesn't," said Tim, in the same low voice. "It wasn't genuine friendliness."

"What do you mean?" said Man.

"Why, they wouldn't have been so full of wanting to do things for us if it had not been for the girls. They couldn't keep their eyes off them."

"Like their impudence," said Rifle, indignantly.

"Of course. Never thought of that," cried Man.

Just then the captain, a double-barrelled rifle in his hand, and well mounted, was giving a final look round, when the dirty-looking fellow lounged up with about a dozen more, and addressed him as duly set down at the beginning of the first chapter.

But the laughter was drowned by the sound of wheels and the trampling of hoofs; the wagons and carts moved off, each with a boy for driver, and Uncle Munday came last, mounted like his brother, to act the part of herdsman, an easy enough task, for the cattle and spare horses followed the wagons quietly enough after the fashion of gregarious beasts.

The little caravan had gone on like this for about a mile along a track which was growing fainter every hundred yards, when Man Bedford gave his whip a crack, and turned to look back toward the sea.

"We're off now, and no mistake," he said to himself. "What fun to see Uncle John driving cattle like that! why, we ought to have had Master Ashantee--Tam o' Shanter--to do that job. I wonder whether we shall see any fellows up the country as black as he."

His brother and cousin were musing in a similar way, and all ended by thinking that they were off on an adventure that ought to prove exciting, since it was right away west into an almost unknown land. _

Read next: Chapter 3. "Are You Afraid?"

Read previous: Chapter 1. "Have I Done Right?"

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