CONRAD BAILEY 
 
 Rare& F'" 6 ^^-. 
 u. Box 85. BLACK ROC 
 Victoria. Australia .
 
 THE. CALL OF THE. 
 SOUTHERN CRO55
 
 The Call of the 
 Southern Cross 
 
 A Romance of Australia 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN SANDLS 
 
 Commonwealth of Australia 
 
 L. W. COLL 
 
 Book Arcade, Melbourne. 346 George St., Sydney 
 
 67 Rundle St., Adelaide
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. Tom Brisbane Makes a Useful Friend 7 
 
 II. The Child of the Battlefield 15 
 
 III. The Campaigning of Biddy Flynn . . 25 
 
 IV. Off to Australia 33 
 
 V. The Southern Cross Calls 42 
 
 VI. Pioneers of the West 48 
 
 VII. How Little Syd. Was Lost and Found 56 
 
 VIII. Enter Moira Bourke 64 
 
 IX. The Poisoned Damper 71 
 
 X. The Attack on "Pretty Plains" .... 77 
 
 XI. "Bakkooi Nan-Nomba Ninda" 84 
 
 XII. The Beckoning of the Stars 92 
 
 XIII. Gold Fever Breaks Out 98 
 
 18^4675
 
 6 CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 XIV. Diggers in Melbourne 105 
 
 XV. Off to Ballarat 116 
 
 XVI. The Murder at the Eureka Hotel .... 122 
 
 XVII. Mutterings of the Storm 132 
 
 \ 
 
 XVIII. At the Eureka Stockade 142 
 
 XIX. In the Camp Hospital 153
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 TOM BRISBANE MAKES A USEFUL FRIEND. 
 
 If that energetic young ensign, Tom Brisbane, of 
 His Majesty's 38th Regiment of Foot, had not been 
 quartered in Galway in 1790, and had not shouted a 
 ringing "hooray" when a long-nosed young officer on 
 a raking bay mare flew over a formidable stone wall 
 that had pounded most of the field, Sydney Verner 
 would not have been born at Parramatta a good many 
 years later, and this veracious chronicle of his strange 
 experiences would never have been written. That is 
 at least as certain as anything can be in this uncertain 
 world. 
 
 The long-nosed young officer, who happened to be a 
 lieutenant in the 12th Light Dragoons, and who was 
 passionately fond of hunting, turned in his saddle to 
 see who it was that had shouted "hooray," with such 
 obvious sincerity. Making inquiry of a local squireen, 
 Mr. Cornelius Blake by name, the lieutenant was curtly 
 informed that the acclaimer of his horsemanship was 
 
 "a d d Scotchman be the name of Brisbane." 
 
 Whereupon after transfixing Mr. Blake with a most 
 haughty stare from his cold blue eyes the long-nosed 
 young officer rode off as hard as he could in the wake 
 of the flying hounds, and at the first check found him- 
 self alongside Tom Brisbane, to whom he courteously 
 offered his hunting flask. The young ensign took a 
 drink from the flask with a smile of thanks, and there 
 and then inaugurated a life-long friendship with the 
 long-nosed young officer, whose name was Arthur Wel- 
 lesley, and who many eventful years afterwards pro- 
 cured for Major-General Brisbane, K.C.B., the gover-
 
 8 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 norship of the colony of New South Wales in succession 
 to Macquarie. 
 
 It is very doubtful whether at that time Tom Bris- 
 bane had ever heard of New South Wales, the distant 
 colony of which he was to assume the reins long after- 
 wards as a result of a personal request made by the 
 Duke of Wellington to Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of 
 State for the Colonies. He had embarked on a mili- 
 tary career, and as his adventure eventually led to 
 Henry Verner with his wife and little son and daugh- 
 ter coming to New South Wales where the second son, 
 Sydney, was soon afterwards born, it is necessary to 
 keep an eye on Tom Brisbane's campaigning and fol- 
 low him as rapidly as possible from one battlefield to 
 another, until at last he was able to spend his time more 
 congenially in his observatory at Parramatta. 
 
 After hunting over the Galway stone-wall country, 
 and shooting the Galway wood-cock in the company of 
 that long-nosed Arthur Wellesley, who was the keenest 
 sportsman that Tom Brisbane had ever met, the young 
 ensign of the 38th was summoned to serve his country 
 in less agreeable circumstances, and he bade good-bye 
 for a season to the long-nosed young gentleman, who 
 went back to Dublin Castle to resume his duties as 
 aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Westmor- 
 land. 
 
 By steady devotion to his military duties, and the 
 exercise of some considerable family influence for the 
 Brisbanes of Brisbane House, Largs, in Ayrshire, were 
 people of some consequence, and had a guid conceit 
 o' themselves the young ensign found himself a cap- 
 tain when the war with France broke out in 1793. 
 Having received his captaincy in the 53rd regiment, he 
 journeyed to Flanders and smelt powder for the first 
 time in the Duke of York's disastrous expedition. 
 
 Long years afterwards, in the sultry Sydney summer, 
 the Governor of New South Wales was accustomed to 
 look back to those freezing marches when the army 
 was retreating to Bremen and when for six nights in
 
 succession he slept in the snow wrapped only in his 
 military cloak, and a^oke at dawn to find himself fro- 
 zen to the ground. And once no fewer than 800 men 
 who had lain down like him to sleep never woke again, 
 it was not much wonder that "our armies swore ter- 
 ribly in Flanders." 
 
 But it was a fine hardening experience for Tom Bris- 
 bane, and after fighti.vg and freezing for a couple of 
 years in the Low Countries he sailed with Sir Ralph 
 Abercromby's expedition to the "West Indies, where he 
 fought, and was grilled, at Jamaica, and where he be- 
 gan that study of astronomy which was the real inter- 
 est of his life. 
 
 But, once a soldier, always a soldier. Retirement on 
 half pay did not suit Tom Brisbane's active spirit, and 
 after a period of enforced idleness he bethought him- 
 self once more of that long-nosed young gentleman who 
 had been so friendly with him at Galway and with 
 whom he occasionally corresponded still. Tom Brisbane, 
 though a colonel, was plain Tom Brisbane still, but the 
 long-nosed lieutenant, by reason of his genius for harry- 
 ing the enemies of Great Britain, had been made a mar- 
 quis, and members of Parliament who had been clam- 
 oring for his recall a few years earlier were tumbling 
 over each other in their desire to offer him the thanks of 
 the nation for his victories and to vote him generous 
 grants. 
 
 So, Tom Brisbane, after much cogitation and also 
 much earnest consultation of the stars, wrote to his 
 distinguished friend vho was Commander-in-Chief of 
 the allied forces in the Peninsula, and suggested that he 
 would like an appointment if one could be found for 
 him. 
 
 "Wellington received the letter at Arroyo das Molinos, 
 just after the complete surprise and defeat of Giraud's 
 force by General Hill, and he was in a very good humor 
 indeed. So he promptly wrote a short despatch to the 
 Secretary for "War, in which he required rather than 
 recommended that Colonel Thomas Brisbane should be
 
 10 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 forthwith gazetted a brigadier-general and appointed 
 to the command of the first brigade in the famous Third 
 Division under General Sir Thomas Picton. The re- 
 quest was at once complied with. Colonel Brisbane lost 
 no time in getting his equipment together, and he arriv- 
 ed at Wellington's headquarters early in 1812, with 
 two horses, two pack mules, and a creaking iron-wheeled 
 Portuguese ox-waggon, loaded with his ample baggage, 
 in which he had included as many astronomical instru- 
 ments as he had dared to bring. 
 
 So there he was in the field again and full of fight. 
 His personal staff included two thieving Portuguese 
 muleteers, and he speedily provided himself with a bat- 
 man or soldier-servant in the person of Private Terence 
 Flynn, and a clerk or secretary in Private Henry Ver- 
 ner, who was strongly recommended for the post by 
 his colonel. 
 
 "You'll find Verner a most useful fellow, General," 
 said Colonel Fox, confidentially, "a man of considerable 
 ability and education. Indeed, I have heard that he 
 held a commission formerly, but retired and fell on 
 evil days. Having neither money nor friends, he re- 
 turned to the only trade that he knew, and enlisted in 
 the ranks." 
 
 So Private Verner took his place in the ranks when 
 the troops were on the march, and when in camp he 
 performed the duties of clerk to Brigadier-General Bris- 
 bane, who taught him how to use the sextant, and how 
 to take the daily observation that enabled the Brigadier 
 to keep the time of the army. 
 
 Verner was a silent, uncommunicative man, but an 
 excellent soldier. With his refined and regular fea- 
 tures and his tall, graceful figure, he was in marked 
 contrast to most of the rank and file of his battalion. 
 On one occasion a foul-mouthed fellow named Jim Mul- 
 lens, who was an ex-prizefighter and belonged to Ver- 
 ner 's company, was indiscreet enough to comment with 
 blunt offensiveness upon his birth and breeding, and, 
 being in liquor at the time, to cast aspersions on his
 
 mother. The mill that followed was long remembered 
 in the battalion, for the ex-pugilist got a worse hiding 
 than he had ever received in the ring. So, after that 
 they took care to let Private Verner alone. 
 
 It was soon after Brisbane arrived to take the com- 
 mand of the first brigade in Picton's Division that Wel- 
 lington began the brilliant series of movements that 
 ended in the complete rout of the French army at Vit- 
 toria. In six weeks Wellington, with 100,000 men, 
 marched 600 miles, crossed six great rivers, captured 
 two fortresses, and fought a decisive battle, by which 
 he hurled King Joseph Bonaparte and his army across 
 the Pyrenees and out of Spain. 
 
 Brigadier-General Brisbane, whose name is commem- 
 orated in the capital of Queensland, the site of which 
 was discovered by his Surveyor-General, Mr. John Ox- 
 ley, long after the last battle of the Peninsular War was 
 fought, marched every step of that 600 miles to Vit- 
 toria, and played his part as a brave and capable lead- 
 er of men, when the great collision took place between 
 Joseph Bonaparte's army and Wellington's British-Por- 
 tuguese force with Spanish auxiliaries. 
 
 Along with the brigadier and his three battalions 
 went his clerk, Private Verner, and his batman, Private 
 Flynn. But in that great historic march there also 
 participated Mrs. Biddy Flynn, whose right to travel 
 with the battalion was recognised by the Regulations 
 which prescribed that soldiers' wives to the number of 
 four to six per company might follow the army on the 
 march. Thus it was that Mrs. Biddy Flynn was one 
 of a strange assemblage of about forty wives, the hardi- 
 est of campaigners, who marched in the rear of the 
 battalion, and whenever they could elude the Provost 
 Marshal, in advance of it, riding for the most part upon 
 donkeys, and enduring untold hardships with extra- 
 ordinary fortitude. 
 
 Brisbane encountered his batman's wife very early 
 in the campaign, and she freely enlightened him as to 
 her history.
 
 12 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 "Shure, me first husband, Mick Donovan, wasn't he 
 kilt at Talavera. Hiven rest his sowl, an' me not two 
 days a widder whin Flynn axed me would I have him. 
 An' I tought I'd better be stayin' wid the battalion, 
 yer 'anner, for what would I be doin' at home in Con- 
 nemara and me own sisters throwin' it up to me that 
 I wint away wid a soldier. So I tould Flynn I'd have 
 him, an' he found a praste to marry us inside av a 
 week, an' shure life's a quare thing, yer 'anner, an' 
 we must all make the best of it." 
 
 So Mrs. Flynn dropped a curtsey to the "gineral" 
 and went off to make .1 drop of tay for Terence and her- 
 self, which they wanted badly, for the battalion had 
 marched twenty miles since daybreak. A tough old 
 campaigner was Mrs. Flynn, but she had a heart of 
 gold, as will presently appear. 
 
 When the bugles blew an hour and a half before 
 daybreak, as was the invariable rule when the army 
 was on the march, Mrs Flynn was always the first out 
 of the blankets and ready to give Terence a helping 
 hand in getting ready his pack. Camp fires blazed out 
 in the darkness, camp kettles were put on to boil, and 
 Mrs. Flynn picking her way down the regimental lines 
 among the stacked halberds and the sleepy soldiers 
 bandied many a rough jest with the men as she slipped 
 away to steal a few handfuls of hay from the com- 
 missariat cart for her "burro," tethered far off among 
 the transport mules of the battalion. Then back for 
 a bit of breakfast with Terence bacon, biscuit, and the 
 inevitable cup of "tay," and precisely at daybreak she 
 was ready to march with the army. 
 
 There was the army ready to march. Method, or- 
 ganisation, discipline had done the business. Here was 
 a whole division of 6,000 men Picton's division, of 
 which General Brisbane commanded a brigade, and of 
 which Mrs. Flynn was a unit recognised by the Regu- 
 lations, and in an hour and a half the men had dressed, 
 breakfasted, and rolled and packed their blankets and 
 equipment. They were paraded in companies, told off
 
 TOM BRISBANE MAKES A FEIEND 13 
 
 in sections of threes, and marched to the alarm-posts 
 of their respective regiments and finally to the alarm- 
 post of the brigade, where they formed in close com- 
 panies and marched off by sections of threes from the 
 right, at sloped arms, and with the greatest precision 
 and regularity. 
 
 Mrs. Biddy Flynn and the other women followed the 
 column on their burros, the assistant provost marshal 
 with his guard bringing up the rear of the column, 
 and being followed by the rear guard, under an officer 
 who picked up all stragglers. 
 
 In this way the army steadily made its way north- 
 ward in accordance with the plan that was formed in 
 the brain of that tall, spare, silent horseman in cocked 
 hat, cloak, and cape, blue tightly-buttoned frock coat, 
 and boots and breeches. "The mind of a great com- 
 mander is the soul of armies," says one of the old time 
 historians of war, and the mind of Wellington was 
 certainly the animating principle of the army that 
 marched by day and rested by night, northward and 
 ever northward, to where King Joseph Bonaparte and 
 Marshal Jourdan lay with 70,000 men encamped near 
 the little city of Vittoria. 
 
 While Wellington was weaving his spells, King 
 Joseph remained inactive, first vacillating, and then 
 paralysed by his inability to discover what was going 
 on behind the frowning ranges that encircled the valley 
 of the Zadora, beyond which rose the spires of Vittoria. 
 And so it was that on the 20th of June, 1813, Brigadier- 
 General Brisbane knew before he lay down to sleep 
 that on the morrow he would fight the greatest battle 
 of his life. He discussed the position freely with his 
 clerk, Private Verner, who was writing out his orders. 
 Brisbane was on the Staff of the Army, and was in 
 close touch with the Duke. He had a map on the table 
 in his tent, and he pointed out the features of the 
 country to this very intelligent private, whose appear- 
 ance, manners, and education were so inconsistent with 
 his station.
 
 14 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 "You see, Verner," said General Brisbane, indicat- 
 ing a winding line on the map, "here is the river 
 Zadora, curving through the valley, and protecting the 
 French position on the opposite hillsides. The river 
 has steep, high banks, and is practically unfordable. 
 General Graham, with his division, has already got 
 across the high road to France, and has cut the main 
 line of retreat, so that the French army, if it escapes 
 us at all, can only get away by bypaths.'' 
 
 Verner nodded his head. "In which case," he said, 
 "it must drop all its artillery, baggage, and stores." 
 
 "Precisely," said Brisbane, "and if everything goes 
 right to-morrow, we should have a good chance of cap- 
 turing King Joseph himself along with his baggage. 
 Well, good-night, Verner. The general advance will be- 
 gin at daybreak. You had better get a few hours' 
 sleep, if you can." The brigadier dismissed his clerk, 
 and sat up writing letters until midnight, when he 
 turned in for a couple of hours' sleep.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 THE CHILD OF THE BATTLEFIELD. 
 
 There was a thick mist and a light rain was falling 
 when the army moved forward at daybreak. Flynn and 
 Verner, who were in the same company, found them- 
 selves climbing up the steep hillside together, and as 
 the sun rose just when they reached the crest they 
 could see the British uniforms trickling over and 
 through the hills all around them, and flowing into the 
 valley in a great and ever-growing torrent that soon 
 became a flood. 
 
 As Verner and Flynn scrambled down the stony hill- 
 side together, they became aware of a lonely little cot- 
 tage nestling on the flank of the hill in the midst of a 
 small patch of cultivated ground. It was right between 
 the opposing armies. Coming closer to it they per- 
 ceived the Spanish peasant, who was the occupier of 
 the place, sitting on a wheelbarrow, smoking, and in 
 a shed alongside the cottage was a girl, milking a cow. 
 As the redcoats came swarming down the hillside, she 
 looked up with a startled gaze, and ran to her father. 
 
 The black-bearded Pedro Moreno shouted to Verner, 
 and, Verner, who had picked up a good knowledge of 
 Spanish during his campaigning, rapidly explained to 
 him the danger of remaining at the cottage, as the 
 French artillery might open at any moment, and the 
 peasant and his daughter would be in serious danger. 
 
 At this remark Juana approached, wide-eyed, and 
 Verner saw that she was a pretty, dark-eyed girl no 
 more than 16 years of age at most. He smiled at her 
 encouragingly, and told her not to be frightened, where- 
 upon she blushed shyly and clasped her father's hand. 
 
 15
 
 16 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Moreno quickly grasped the military position. He 
 had seen more than one battlefield during the past four 
 years. He spoke rapidly in the rough patois of north- 
 ern Spain. "The French devils are over there. They 
 have been in this valley for weeks. Carajo ! They have 
 dug up and eaten my turnips, they have driven off my 
 sow and her eleven young ones, they have taken my 
 two best bullocks to drag an ammunition waggon, and 
 if 1 had not sat at my door with my rifle on my knee 
 they would have taken my daughter, Juana, also. But 
 they are strongly posted, senor. It will be hard work 
 to drive them out. 
 
 "Lord Wellington will drive them out very quickly 
 when he once begins," said Verner, "meanwhile I 
 strongly advise you to remove with the little Juana to 
 the other side of this range at the back of us. You 
 will be far safer there." The soldier, who was usually 
 so silent and reserved, smiled pleasantly at Moreno's 
 daughter. ' ' Don 't you think so, Juana ? " he asked, and 
 the girl nodded and showed her pretty white teeth in 
 a pleased smile. She liked this tall Englishman al- 
 ready, and was fluttered at the thought that he was so 
 solicitous for her safety. 
 
 Moreno scowled as he looked across the Zadora, and 
 shook his fist at the hills on which the French outposts 
 were drawn up. "If His Excellency Lord Wellington 
 could cross the river he might soon drive out those 
 French devils," he remarked. And then he added, sud- 
 denly, "It is I, Pedro Moreno, who will guide His Ex- 
 cellency. It is I who will show him where he can 
 cross. ' ' 
 
 Verner was startled. "Where is the place?" he ask- 
 ed rapidly. 
 
 "At the bridge of the Tres Puentes," said Moreno. 
 "I shall guide His Excellency to it myself. You will 
 take me to him now." 
 
 "Oh, father, must you leave me?" It was Juana who 
 spoke. 
 
 Pedro turned to her swiftly and kissed her on the
 
 THE CHILD OF THE BATTLEFIELD 17 
 
 forehead. "It is necessary for me to go now, my little 
 Juana, but I will be back soon, and if any accident 
 should happen to me, this English soldier will look 
 after you. So, courage, my little girl, and now good- 
 bye. You will look after her, senor, will you not?" 
 
 And Verner quietly assented. 
 
 By this time the columns were pouring into the 
 valley on the right and on the left, but still the French- 
 men made no sign. 
 
 Flynn had gone on and rejoined his company, which 
 was already forming up with the brigade. Verner hur- 
 ried along with the black-bearded peasant to where he 
 saw the easily recognised figure of Wellington, who sat 
 on his horse surrounded by his staff, and repeatedly 
 glanced impatiently at the tail ends of the columns that 
 were still defiling into the valley of the Zadora. 
 
 General Brisbane as a member of the Staff of the 
 Army, was one of the group, and it was he who first 
 recognised Verner. 
 
 "Now then, Private Verner, what on earth are you 
 doing here? Why are you not with your company?" 
 
 Verner saluted punctiliously. "I came across this 
 civilian, Sir, who desired to be brought to the Comman- 
 der-in-Chief. He declares that he can guide the troops 
 to a place where the river can be crossed." 
 
 "Eh, what's all this?" said Wellington himself, who 
 rode up in time to hear the explanation. "Well, my 
 man, if you do what you say you can do, you shall be 
 well rewarded. Where is the place?" 
 
 "The bridge of the Tres Puentes, Excellency," said 
 Moreno, looking Wellington frankly in the face. "The 
 French pigs have left it unguarded. I can guide you 
 to it now." 
 
 Wellington made up his mind instantly. The tail- 
 ends of the columns were already through the hills. 
 "Lead on, then, Guide," he cried. 
 
 But Moreno stopped for a moment to say a few words 
 to Verner. "And remember, senor," he said, "if any- 
 thing happens to me you have promised to look after
 
 18 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 ray little Juana, for she has no one else but me to look 
 to now." 
 
 ' ' I give you my promise, ' ' said Verner, and he clasped 
 the peasant's strong hand in his own and pressed it 
 earnestly. 
 
 "Wellington selected Kempt 's brigade of the Light Di- 
 vision to open the ball. A bugle blew, and the brigade 
 was quickly on the march, led by this brave Spanish 
 peasant, who guided them by a circuitous path through 
 rough and rocky country to the bridge of the Tres 
 Puentes, a narrow wooden structure that had been en- 
 tirely overlooked by the French general, Marshal Jour- 
 dan. In fact, Jourdan was harassed so perpetually by 
 King Joseph's constant interference that he forgot 
 many other things on that ill-fated day as well as the 
 bridge of the Tres Puentes. 
 
 As Kempt 's brigade dashed across the bridge, followed 
 by Picton's first brigade, in which Verner and Flynn 
 ran side by side, the French at last realised that the 
 bridge of the Tres Puentes had been left unguarded, 
 and they opened fire from their battery on the rising 
 ground that commanded the bridge. 
 
 As the Spanish peasant stood with outstretched arm 
 pointing out the path to a couple of officers a round 
 shot from the battery struck him, and hurled him to 
 the ground. He was lying there in a pool of his own 
 blood, while his life ebbed away, when Picton's brigade 
 reached the bridge head and Verner saw him. 
 
 Holding his water bottle to the lips of the dying 
 man, Verner caught his last words. "Senor, it is for 
 your country as well as my own that I die. Remem- 
 ber your promise. Take care of my little Juana. ' ' 
 
 Pedro Moreno, a peasant with a hero's soul, fell back 
 dead, and Verner rushed forward to rejoin his bat- 
 talion, which was supporting the 15th Hussars, who had 
 crossed the bridge of the Tres Puentes and were now 
 preparing to charge the French batteries. 
 
 It was Picton's sudden rush with his troops across 
 the bridge and right up to the village of Arinez that
 
 first shook the French defence. Brisbane and his bri- 
 gade were in the hottest of the fighting, and they press- 
 ed forward indomitably, driving the French back to 
 the second range of heights in front of the village of 
 Gomecha. 
 
 But the second position soon became as untenable as 
 the first, for the centre attack was directed by Welling- 
 ton himself with four divisions of infantry, together 
 with his artillery and cavalry, and D 'Urban 's Portu- 
 guese horsemen. The whole weight of this force was 
 hurled upon the shaken French defence, which was 
 steadily pushed backwards, and the battle resolved it- 
 self into a running fight and cannonade for six miles 
 towards the city of Vittoria. 
 
 It was 6 o'clock in the evening when the French were 
 driven from the last defensible height and the British 
 troops, "faint yet pursuing," could see the terrified 
 multitude of the non-combatants, a confused mass, in- 
 cluding numbers of women and children, carriages and 
 vehicles of all sorts, and transport animals, all gath- 
 ered in the plain behind the city. 
 
 What a rout! 
 
 Never was there seen anything like it in the whole 
 five years of the war. The streets of the city were so 
 densely blocked with fugitives and carriages that the 
 pursuing cavalry could not force their way through 
 the mass in time to cut off King Joseph, who jumped 
 from his travelling carriage and escaped on horseback, 
 when the British riders were yelling "View holloa," 
 as they hunted him on the line of retreat to Salvatierra. 
 
 Nothing saved King Joseph but the fact that the 
 horses of the British cavalry could not raise a gallop 
 at the close of that tremendous day. 
 
 The French King saved his skin, but he lost every- 
 thing else, for though his army escaped with a loss of 
 6.000 men on the field of battle, he had to throw away 
 all his artillery, transport and stores, and even the 
 priceless pictures and art treasures that he was carry- 
 ing away with him from the Eoyal Palace at Madrid.
 
 20 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Late in the evening, when the troops were still cheer- 
 ing in the exaltation of the great victory, Henry Ver- 
 ner made his way back slowly over the eight miles of 
 country that he had traversed in the fury of the fight. 
 Here and there especially on the crests of the hills, 
 where there had been hand to hand fighting the dead 
 men, both French and English, lay thickly, and Verner 
 could see the ghouls of the battlefield, Portuguese mule- 
 teers and camp followers, flitting hither and thither, 
 as they bent over the corpses robbing them. 
 
 The moon was riding high in the heavens as Verner 
 reached the bridge of the Tres Puentes. He had brought 
 a spade with him. He intended to bury the brave 
 Spanish peasant where he had fallen. 
 
 And then the thought struck Verner that it would 
 be necessary for him to go still further up to the flank 
 of the hillside on which Moreno's little cottage stood 
 in its patch of cultivated ground, so that he might 
 break the news to that brave peasant's daughter, and 
 at the same time find out from her where her dead 
 father's relatives could be found, so that he might 
 hand her over to them. He felt a thrill of pity for 
 Juana. The task in front of him was a painful one. 
 
 He descended the last ridge, picking his way among 
 the silent dead, and spade in hand strode down the 
 slope towards the bank of the Zadora, where Moreno fell. 
 
 Yes, that was the spot. He remembered it well. The 
 guide had just crossed the wooden bridge to the French 
 side of the river, when the round shot from the battery 
 on the hillside struck him. Verner could see the spot, 
 for the moon was nearly full. He could see the long, 
 narrow bridge of the Tres Puentes, and the dark waters 
 of the Zadora River, silvered by the moonlight. As 
 he reached the same spot early that morning the roar 
 of the artillery was deafening. His ears were filled by 
 the crash of the musket volleys and the yells of the 
 charging troops. But all was silent now. The stillness 
 \vas awe-inspiring where the dead men lay with their 
 faces turned towards the sky.
 
 THE CHILD OF THE BATTLEFIELD 21 
 
 And then, as he drew near to the spot where Moreno 
 fell, a low sound broke the silence the sound of a child 
 sobbing. 
 
 Verner hurried forward to the place where he had 
 left the dead guide, whose devotion had enabled the 
 great Commander-in-Chief to throw that first handful 
 of troops across the river and thus make the first step 
 forward to the triumph at Vittoria. 
 
 The sobbing continued, soft and low, and as he drew 
 near to the spot, the soldier saw the girl plainly. It 
 was Juana. 
 
 She was sitting on the ground holding the dead man's 
 head in her lap. Over his body she had drawn a heavy 
 military cloak that some infantryman had thrown away 
 to lighten his burden in the charge. She was keeping 
 vigil over her dead. 
 
 "So you found him, Juana," said Verner, leaning on 
 his spade as he looked down upon the Spanish girl. 
 "How did you know that he was dead?" 
 
 "He did not come home to me, senor, " said the girl, 
 simply. She had recognised Verner at once. "So I 
 came to look for him." 
 
 "And what are you going to do now?" asked Ver- 
 ner. 
 
 "I do not know, senor," said the girl through her 
 tears. My father always took care of me since my mother 
 died. And now he is dead also. I have no other rela- 
 tives. But I shall pray to the good God, and He will 
 send someone to take care of me." 
 
 Verner was troubled in his heart. Juana was so 
 young, so lonely, and so helpless, that it was absolutely 
 necessary that someone should look after her and some- 
 one of her own sex if possible. The only woman with 
 whom Verner had any real acquaintance was Mrs. Biddy 
 Flynn. He made up his mind to ask Mrs. Flynn to 
 take the Spanish orphan girl under her experienced 
 wing. 
 
 He looked down at the dead man and then at the 
 white face and large, dark eyes of Juana, who had
 
 22 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 ceased to weep. He tapped the handle of his spade 
 significantly. 
 
 Juana rose to her feet. "It is to bury my father," 
 she said, quietly. "Thank you, senor; it is good of 
 you. ' ' There were no more tears now. Indeed, the girl 
 displayed a firmness and resolution that showed her to 
 be a worthy daughter of her brave father. 
 
 So Verner dug a deep grave on the battlefield close 
 to the Bridge of the Tres Puentes, and there he and 
 Juana buried the heroic guide on the spot where he 
 fell, and Juana knelt by the grave and said a prayer 
 for the repose of her father's soul, while Verner stood 
 bareheaded beside her. It was past midnight when the 
 girl rose from her knees and placed her hand in Ver- 
 ner 's. "Senor," she said, "I prayed to the good God 
 to send someone to help me. He has sent you." 
 
 Day was breaking, and Mrs. Flynn, who had made 
 the best of her way on her burro in the wake of the 
 army, and had speedily discovered the bivouac of Ter- 
 ence's battalion, was just busying herself in boiling a 
 kettle at the camp fire for a much needed cup of "tay" 
 when she became aware of a stranger in the lines of the 
 battalion. 
 
 Looking up from her kettle, she saw Private Verner 
 leading a raw-boned commissariat mule, that carried 
 instead of a saddle a sack partly filled with hay. And 
 on the sack sat the prettiest girl that Mrs. Flynn had 
 'seen since she left Connemara, a girl with large, dark, 
 tired eyes that turned instinctively towards Verner 's 
 tall, soldierly figure. 
 
 "Shure, where did ye get her at all. at all?" asked 
 Mrs. Flynn, who was thoroughly mystified. 
 
 "Her father is dead," said Verner. "He was killed 
 while acting as guide to the troops. I promised him 
 before he died that I would look after Juana. I want 
 you to help me, Mrs. Flynn." 
 
 "Shure an' I will do ut with a heart and a half," 
 responded Mrs. Flynn, briskly. "Ye can lave her to 
 me, Verner. Faith, I can see that what the poor lamb
 
 THE CHILD OF THE BATTLEFIELD 23 
 
 do be needin' is slape an' food. 'Tis meself that'll be 
 after takin' care of her this minnit." 
 
 So Mrs. Flynn, from Connemara, opened her arms 
 and her heart to dark-eyed Juana from the Spanish 
 mountains, and the tired girl slipped in with a sigh of 
 contentment. Whereupon Private Verner went off to 
 the tent of the brigadier-general to report himself and 
 to explain the reason of his absence. 
 
 Instead of the reprimand that he expected, he re- 
 ceived a few words of warm commendation from Gen- 
 eral Brisbane, who was aware of the death of the 
 brave guide, and expressed satisfaction at the news that 
 Verner had buried the body. 
 
 "There's another small matter that I have to report, 
 sir," said Verner, looking the general straight in the 
 face. 
 
 "Well, Verner, out with it, man." 
 
 "I have brought Moreno's daughter into the lines, 
 sir, and have left her in the care of Mrs. Flynn, the 
 wife of your batman." 
 
 ' ' The deuce you have, Verner ! ' ' ejaculated the briga- 
 dier, with some perplexity. "But was that quite neces- 
 sary?" 
 
 "In my opinion, sir," said the soldier, "it was im- 
 peratively necessary. I gave her father my word of 
 honor that if he died in the service of Lord Wellington 
 and the British Army I would be personally responsible 
 for seeing that his daughter was cared for." 
 
 General Brisbane was a religious man, a conscien- 
 tious man, and a thoroughly honorable man, who was 
 never in his life known to go back upon his plighted 
 word. "In those circumstances, Verner," he said, "you 
 did the right thing. I shall mention the matter to Lord 
 Wellington myself, and in all probability some suitable 
 provision will be made for the young woman in view 
 of the great service rendered by her father." 
 
 Verner made no reply to that, except to salute the 
 general. "Is that all, sir, for the present?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes, that is all for the present," said Brisbane, "but
 
 24 THE CALL OP THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 you look absolutely tired out, Verner. Go and have 
 a few hours' sleep. I'll send Flynn for you when I 
 want you." 
 
 So Private Verner, that silent and reserved man. 
 whose past was an insoluble mystery to his comrades, 
 went away to his own quarters in the great encampment 
 and lay down and slept. 
 
 And when he slept he dreamed of dark-eyed Juana.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE CAMPAIGNING OF BIDDY FLYNN. 
 
 "See here now, me jool," said Biddy Flynn, when 
 Juana awoke from a good sleep several hours later, 
 and found her new friend beside her with a cup of 
 coffee and a handful of biscuits, "ye must' be after 
 takin' thim goold earrings out av yer pretty ears, or 
 wan of them murderin' blay guards av Portugee mule- 
 teers will be tearin' 'em out an' robbin' ye entirely." 
 
 Juana looked at Biddy with a pathetic little smile. 
 She did not understand a word of the Connemara dia- 
 lect, but she recognised the kindly feeling that inspired 
 the speech. She let Biddy take the big gold rings out 
 of her ears, and Biddy made signs to her that they 
 would be safely kept. 
 
 Talking all the time to her in her "sootherin' " way, 
 Biddy helped the girl to dress herself in her white 
 chemisette, her dark blue bodice laced outside, and her 
 short red skirt reaching to the knees. Thick woollen 
 stockings and stout buckled shoes completed her cos- 
 tume. 
 
 Just as the girl finished dressing, a touzled head was 
 poked in through the opening of the tent in which Mrs. 
 Flynn had deposited her charge, and a pair of twinkling 
 brown eyes surveyed the newcomer with interest. 
 
 "Och, come in here Anita, ye poor haythen, and help 
 me to talk to this child of the battlefield, for I have only 
 enough of the Spanish to curse the mulemen, and she 
 haven't any English at all, at all." This was Biddy 
 Flynn 's ingenuous appeal, and in response to it Anita 
 popped in very willingly, sat down cross-legged on the 
 ground, and lighted her cigarette. 
 
 25
 
 26 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Anita was one of those girls of the country who had 
 elected to follow the drum. She had allowed herself 
 to be snapped up by an enterprising foot-soldier, who 
 discovered her while he was engaged on a private forag- 
 ing expedition. She was strictly loyal to her man, and 
 was rather a favorite with Mrs. Flynn. 
 
 "Ax her is she willing to jine the battalion, for be 
 this an' be that 'tis a harrd life, but if she don't come 
 wid us I don't know what I'll do wid her at all at 
 all." 
 
 So Anita, showing a set of perfect teeth in her very 
 friendly smile, engaged Juana in rapid conversation, 
 punctuated with puffs of her cigarette. 
 
 "She say she go where you go, Bidi," interpreted 
 Anita; she verra happy wit' you. But she ask all ze 
 time where is ze senor. I not know 'oo is ze senor. ' ' 
 
 "Av course ye wudn't, me girl. Shure, 'tis Verner, 
 she's axin' for, the poor lamb. Him that's the gineral's 
 own secretary. 'Twas him that found her down on the 
 battlefield' keenin' over her father's corpse, an' he 
 brought her in on a mule an' gev her to me to take 
 care of." 
 
 Anita's eyes sparkled with renewed interest. She 
 proceeded to question Juana, discharging her interroga- 
 tions with incredible velocity. Very quickly a red sig- 
 nal was hoisted in Juana 's cheeks, showing that Anita, 
 who had a keen eye for a romantic situation, had struck 
 home with her questions. 
 
 "She say she make a prayer to ze good God to send 
 somebody to take care of her when her fazzaire die," 
 interrupted Anita, "and ze good God He send immedi- 
 ately Senor Verner. I ask her if she loves Senor Ver- 
 ner. She say she not know what is to love, but she is 
 'appy with Senor Verner, and her heart beats faster 
 when he speak to her." 
 
 "Och! that's it, is it?" said Mrs. Flynn. "Well, the 
 likes of you an' the likes of me, Anita, is quare company 
 for such an innocent lamb; but if she's got to thravel
 
 THE CAMPAIGNING OF BIDDY FLYNN 27 
 
 with the battalion, faix there's only the wan thing for 
 ut." 
 
 "Wat you tink, Bidi?" 
 
 "Senor Verner must marry her, Anita, an' be this 
 an' be that from the luk I saw him give her whin I 
 tuk her away to me tint, I think he'll find it aisy an* 
 plisint enough to have Juana for a wife, an' 'tis my 
 belafe that a good wife she'll be to him too. So you 
 can tell her that now." 
 
 Again Anita poured forth a flood of animated Span- 
 ish patois, until Juana, with her neck and cheeks suf- 
 fused with blushes, half-laughing and half-crying, push- 
 ed her bold-eyed visitor out of the tent. 
 
 Biddy Flynn determined to arrange the whole matter. 
 She would leave them alone for a week or so, until 
 she was sure that the silent Verner really loved the 
 girl, and then she would act decisively. 
 
 But one morning, just before the army marched out 
 of Vittoria, Verner came to her in his abrupt way and 
 spoilt all her good-natured scheming. 
 
 ' ' Mrs. Flynn, ' ' she said, ' ' I am going to marry Juana 
 to-day at 12 o'clock. The new battalion chaplain will 
 perform the ceremony in his tent. We shall be very glad 
 if you and Terence will come and see us married." 
 
 It was a very quiet wedding, for Terence and Biddy 
 were the only visitors. Biddy would have preferred 
 a "praste," and she had her own private doubts as 
 to the ability of the nervous little "Prodestan" to tie 
 the knot securely. But the Rev. Mr. Tinkler, fresh from 
 his country curacy in England, rose to the occasion 
 and read the Marriage service with quite an air of 
 authority. Verner had duly received his colonel's sanc- 
 tion to the marriage, which was also cordially approved 
 of by Brigadier-General Brisbane. 
 
 Biddy and Terence both affixed their "marks" to the 
 marriage lines as witnesses, writing not being a strong 
 point with either of them, and they listened in wonder- 
 ment, while the Reverend Mr. Tinkler addressed a few 
 remarks on the mutual duties of the married state to
 
 28 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 the bridge and bridegroom, quite oblivious of the fact 
 that the bride did not understand a single word that 
 he was saying. 
 
 After the ceremony there was an informal drinking 
 of healths in the married women's quarters between 
 the ammunition bullocks and the transport mules and 
 Juana settled down very happily and contentedly in 
 that new station of life to which it had pleased the good 
 God and Senor Verner to call her. 
 
 There was plenty of hard fighting after Vittoria be- 
 fore the war was over, for Wellington pressed hard on 
 the retreating French army. 
 
 General Brisbane, with the first brigade of Picton's 
 division, was in the forefront of the fighting, and the 
 newly married Verner fought side by side with Terence 
 Flynn through the nine days' conflict in the Pyrenees, 
 and afterwards in the battles at the Nivelle and the 
 Nive on French soil, and at Orthez and Toulouse. 
 
 Then came the abdication of Napoleon at Fontaine- 
 bleau, and the close of the war just ten months after 
 the battle of Vittoria. 
 
 All through those ten months Juana followed the 
 column, happy in the love of her tall, strong husband, 
 who, though silent and reserved with others, found 
 plenty to say to his lovely young wife, to whom he was 
 most passionately devoted. 
 
 Biddy Flynn and Juana rode their burros side by 
 side in the wake of the column, along with the other 
 women attached to the brigade, all the way from Vit- 
 toria to Toulouse, camping every night with the troops. 
 Verner was always sure of seeing the little white don- 
 key that Juana rode plodding into camp alongside of 
 Biddy's big mouse-coloured burro, and as the two wives 
 sat with their husbands by the camp fire Biddy was 
 accustomed to relate the adventures of the day, and to 
 enlarge upon the hardships which attended the wife of 
 a soldier. 
 
 "But shure," she would say, "bad an' all as it is
 
 THE CAMPAIGNING OF BIDDY FLYNN 29 
 
 now, it isn't anny thing to what it was when I was 
 along o' Mick Donovan, God rist his sowl. " 
 
 "That'll do now, Biddy," said Terence, who was apt 
 to show a bit of temper at times when the virtues of 
 his predecessor were enlarged upon; "lave Mick Dono- 
 van rest in his grave." 
 
 "An' a good man he was to me, too," continued 
 Biddy, ignoring the interruption. "Well, as I was 
 sayin', 'tis a harrd life for a woman, but cowld an' all 
 an' tired an' all as I am this minnit, shure 'tis Hiven 
 itself to what I wint through in the retrate to Corunna. 
 Juana, me darlint, 'twud ha' made yer heart bleed to 
 see them poor women that dropped an' died in the snow, 
 for they cud not kape up with the arrmy; an' them 
 that didn't die fell into the hands av the Frinch, and 
 ten I don't know wat happened to them at all, at all." 
 
 And then Juana would look at Verner with a brave 
 smile, which said as plainly as possible; "I know that 
 my husband will protect me, and I do not fear any 
 danger as long as he is with me." She was able to 
 understand Mrs. Flynn's strange language fairly well 
 now, but better still she understood Mrs. Flynn's warm 
 and generous heart. 
 
 Sometimes Biddy would decide to make an early 
 start and march ahead of the column, instead of at the 
 rear of it, in order to have a fire lit and some food ready 
 for Terence and Verner at the next bivouac. Juana 
 would always go with her on the little white donkey. 
 She was getting used to the life now, though at first 
 the horde of women who accompanied the battalion ter- 
 rified her, and without Biddy's strong arm and ready 
 tongue to help her she would have fared ill with her 
 youth and innocence in that extraordinary throng. 
 
 Englishwomen, Irishwomen and Scotchwomen who 
 were the bona fide wives of men in the ranks were mixed 
 up with Portuguese and Spanish girls whom the soldiers 
 had picked upon the march, and who speedily acquired 
 all the arts of the skilled campaigner. Their plunder- 
 ing and fighting and disregard of all discipline worried
 
 30 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 the Provost Marshal more than the misdeeds of the worst 
 offenders in the ranks, and occasionally the Provost 
 Marshal asserted his authority. 
 
 As the usual four sat round their camp fire one even- 
 ing at a bivouac in the Pyrenees, Biddy related the 
 abominable conduct of the Provost Marshal. 
 
 "Me an' Juana, an' about forty of the gurls were 
 ridin' ahead av the column this mornin'," she said, 
 "an' the thrack was so narrer an' curly that the dun- 
 keys blocked the pass intirely. I looked behind me, an' 
 there was the battalion comin' up the pass wid the 
 band playin'. 'Millia murther!' sez I. 'Shure, we 
 can't get on, the way the women hev got the thrack 
 jammed,' sez I, 'an' the battalion will be blocked be- 
 hind us, an' the whole of the arrmy wid Wellington 
 and the Shtaff will be blocked, too,' sez I. So I called 
 out to the gurls in front to push on, or we'd be kilt 
 intirely, when I seen the Provost Marshal an' his gyard 
 beyant." 
 
 "Shure, what wud he be doin', annyway?" inquired 
 Terence. 
 
 "He calls out," said Biddy, " 'You women were 
 ordhered to kape in the rare, and I'll tache you to obey 
 ordhers in the future.' An' wid that he gives a wurrud 
 of command to his min; an' what does the blaygards 
 do but stip out an' shoot three of them poor dunkeys 
 dead. Judy Callaghan an' Mary Murphy, an' Anita, 
 the Spanish gurl, were ridin' dunkeys, an' the three of 
 them pitched into the road wid all their pots and pans 
 on top of thim. An' och, murther! Ye niver heard 
 such cussin' of the Provost Marshal, the durty spy of 
 the camp. Bad cess to him. But the road was cleared, 
 and the three gurls came along wid us on fut loaded up 
 wid their baggage an' cryin' and cursin' like their 
 hearts was bruk. Me and Juana helped to carry their 
 bits of things, didn't we, Juana?" 
 
 Juana nodded and looked at Biddy admiringly. Her 
 protectress was extraordinarily efficient. No contin- 
 gency found her unprepared or resourceless. Moreover,
 
 THE CAMPAIGNING OF BIDDY FLYNN 31 
 
 Juana had picked up a kind of English from Biddy, 
 and she spoke her remarkable diction with surprising 
 fluency. 
 
 "And see also my Henry," she said to her husband; 
 "the good Bidi, she is strong like a boule-dogue. She 
 say to me 'Juana, take care of dat Portugee spalpino, 
 Gomez. I no like one look in his eye. So by an' bye 
 dat spalpino was dronk, oh very mooch dronk. 'E 
 come by me. 'E try to put his arm round me, an' I cry 
 at once ' Bidi ! ' At once comes Bidi running wit a 
 bucket av water, very hot, an ' she throw it over ze durty 
 spalpino, Gomez, an och, be Jasus, he runs off like ze 
 devil was behind 'im. " 
 
 . Terence roared with laughter at Juana 's serious and 
 dramatic recital of her peril and of the rescue effected 
 by his adored Bidi, but Verner 's brow grew black. The 
 "spalpino" Gomez would certainly have a bad time if 
 he ever happened to cross the path of Private Verner. 
 
 When a battle was expected, Flynn and Verner would 
 take leave of their wives with serious faces. To Biddy 
 these leave-takings were nothing. She was inured to 
 them, but poor Juana used to get terribly upset. She 
 cried her eyes out every day in the Pyrenees, and after- 
 wards at the Nivelle and the Nive. Then it was that 
 Biddy Flynn showed that she had a true, womanly heart 
 under the rough great coat that she had picked up on a 
 fire-swept ridge outside Vittoria and invariably wore 
 when on the march. 
 
 "There now, alannah," she would say, taking the little 
 Spanish bride in her capable arms, "don't be cryin', 
 asthore, for faix the bullet isn't mowlded that ud har- 
 rum that great long, lanky Verner, an' shure enough 
 ye '11 see him this night in the bivouac. An' haven't 
 you the great news to tell him intirely." 
 
 Then Juana would smile, though her face was very 
 white. She found it hard work marching behind the 
 army those days. She needed all the care and kindness 
 that Biddy Flynn could give her. 
 
 On April 18th, 1814, when the Peninsular Army was
 
 32 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CEOSS 
 
 at Toulouse, the news of Napoleon's abdication arrived, 
 and hostilities ceased. 
 
 On the same evening, Juana's baby was born in a tent 
 in the lines of the battalion. The regimental surgeon 
 and Biddy Flynn both declared that they had never 
 seen a finer child. 
 
 A proud and loving husband was Henry Verner, as 
 he held Juana's hand while the roar of the field guns 
 that saluted the end of the war reverberated through 
 the camp, and Juana, with the child beside her, looked 
 up into her husband's bronzed and furrowed face with 
 an expression of ineffable love. 
 
 "It's all right, darling," said Verner. "The briga- 
 dier himself has promised to stand godfather to the boy. 
 Little Tom Verner will make a fine soldier some day. ' ' 
 
 "Arrah, how could he help it," interjected Biddy, 
 who was arranging the blankets of the narrow camp 
 bed on which Juana lay, "an' him a-f olio win' the army 
 befure he was born. ' '
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 OFF TO AUSTRALIA. 
 
 In the six years that followed the abdication of Napo- 
 leon, many important events occurred. 
 
 In the first place, Tom Verner attained his sixth birth- 
 day, which he spent in the company of his father and 
 mother and little sister at Brisbane House, Largs, Ayr- 
 shire, where Henry Verner was retained in the capacity 
 of secretary. At the close of the war, Major-General 
 Brisbane was made a K.C.B. So, Henry Verner, who 
 had gone with Sir Thomas Brisbane to Canada, when 
 that distinguished officer went there and commanded a 
 brigade at Plattsburg, missed being present at Waterloo 
 an abiding disappointment to him. Brisbane, hurry- 
 ing back to join Wellington's army, when he heard of 
 Napoleon 's escape from Elba, arrived too late. Waterloo 
 had just been fought. But his distinguished friend, 
 whose acquaintance he had made many years before in 
 the Galway hunting-field, did not forget him, and Major- 
 General Sir Thomas Brisbane commanded a division in 
 the British Army of Occupation in France. He sent 
 Henry Verner back to Ayrshire to rejoin Juana and his 
 little son, who were attached to the household during his 
 absence in Canada. 
 
 Juana received her husband, whom the good God had 
 sent to her on the battlefield of Vittoria, with all the 
 passionate joy of her warm Spanish heart, and little 
 Tom surveyed his father with wide-eyed approval, crow- 
 ing lustily. So the years passed quietly and happily 
 until little Tom was six years old. But Henry Verner, 
 in spite of his happiness, could not forget the endless 
 variety and adventure of those old campaigning days. 
 
 B 33
 
 34 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 He often found himself wondering what would be the 
 next move of that distinguished soldier and man of 
 science, Sir Thomas Brisbane, for he had a strong im- 
 pression that wherever Brisbane went his secretary 
 would go too. 
 
 It was not long after little Tom Verner's sixth birth- 
 day that Sir Thomas Brisbane, walking in Paris one 
 summer morning on the boulevard, happened to meet 
 his old friend the Duke of Wellington, who took his arm 
 very cordially and walked along with him, while the 
 passers-by turned their heads to see the famous Duke 
 strolling arm in arm with one of his generals. 
 
 "Ah, Brisbane," said the Duke, "Othello's occupa- 
 tion's gone. The army is to go back to England, and 
 we are to go back with it. "Well, we've seen some great 
 days together you and I, but there's no more cam- 
 paigning for us now. What do you propose to do with 
 yourself?" 
 
 "I confess to you, your Grace, that I should like very 
 much to serve His Majesty the King in any situation 
 where my experiences and abilities, such as they are, 
 may be of value. 
 
 ' ' Ah, there 's the rub, Brisbane. Now that there is no 
 more fighting to be clone, it will not be easy to find 
 employment for all the officers who are anxious to serve 
 His Majesty. But, have you any particular opportunity 
 in mind?" 
 
 "Well, your Grace, since you ask me, I must be frank 
 with you. I learn that the governorship of New South 
 Wales is likely to be vacant shortly, and if without dis- 
 placing anybody else from such an honorable situation. 
 I should be considered worthy of it, I should be proud to 
 serve His Majesty in that capacity." 
 
 "Ha, very good. And how is the astronomy getting 
 on?" 
 
 "Excellently, your Grace, but I can assure you that 
 I never allow it to interfere with my military duties." 
 
 "Of course not, Brisbane; of course not. By the way. 
 do you remember the crest of that ridge where Reille
 
 OFF TO AUSTRALIA 35 
 
 made his last stand outside Vittoria, and how I found 
 you when the stormers had carried the hill standing on 
 the summit admiring the scenery?" 
 
 "I have not forgotten it, your Grace." 
 
 "And as you looked round while our fellows were still 
 in hot pursuit of Marshal Jourdan, on the Salvatierra 
 road, you exclaimed to me 'What a glorious site for an 
 Observatory.' Egad, Brisbane, the ruling passion, you 
 know. You'll have to beware of it." 
 
 Sir Thomas Brisbane was secretly amazed at his dis- 
 tinguished friend's power of intuition. How had the 
 Duke of Wellington guessed the secret ambition of his 
 heart which was to make a thorough astronomical study 
 of the southern heavens that had been very imperfectly 
 studied by Lacaille from the Cape of Good Hope, but 
 save for that single observer, formed a virgin field for 
 the astronomer? Brisbane gloated secretly over the 
 prospect of watching and classifying the constellations 
 of the Southern Hemisphere never adequately observed 
 before. He almost hated Lacaille for having, however 
 incompletely, forestalled him. 
 
 It was the Southern Cross that specially fascinated 
 Sir Thomas Brisbane. He felt its lure. He confessed 
 to his own heart that but for the chance of observing 
 the Southern Cross so imperfectly charted by that im- 
 postor, Lacaille the thought of going to New South 
 Wales would never have occurred to him. 
 
 It was the Southern Cross that drew him on. 
 
 And so, the Duke, after shaking his old frieud warmly 
 by the hand, went off chuckling to keep his appointment 
 with a very great lady, and Sir Thomas Brisbane resumed 
 his walk alone, wrapped in entrancing mathematical 
 meditations, concerning his famous method of determin- 
 ing the time with accuracy from a series of altitudes of 
 the sun taken on the same side of the meridian. 
 
 But, a few weeks later he met the Duke again, and 
 the Duke informed him that Earl Bathurst had told him 
 that he wanted a governor to rule the earth and not the 
 heavens. However, Earl Bathurst had eventually de-
 
 36 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 cided to appoint him, and he was to go out to New South 
 Wales at once. 
 
 Sir Thomas Brisbane was highly delighted, and ex- 
 pressed his thanks in the somewhat formal diction that 
 was habitual to him. 
 
 "Why, d it all, man," said the Duke, genially, 
 
 "one must not forget one's friends. Good luck to you, 
 and remember that I have told Bathurst that I hold 
 myself personally responsible for you. 
 
 And so it came about that in May, 1821, Sir Thomas 
 Brisbane, with Lady Brisbane, to whom he had been 
 married not very long before, and their infant daughter 
 and her ladyship's sister, Miss Makdougall, and their 
 personal belongings, and Sir Thomas's staff, and his two 
 assistant astronomers and his astronomical instruments, 
 and finally his assistant -secretary, Henry Verner, with 
 Juana and their two children, were all embarked in the 
 merchant ship "Royal George," Captain Pondite, then 
 lying in the Thames, and sailed from England bound for 
 New South Wales, arriving in Sydney harbour five 
 months later. 
 
 Sending a swift glance back across the intervening 
 years one descries the Royal George lying at anchor in 
 Sydney Cove, while the guns at Dawes Point battery 
 discharge their welcoming salute, and Lieutenant-Gover- 
 nor Erskine, in the absence of Governor Macquarie, who 
 is travelling in the northern settlements, goes forth in 
 his pinnace to receive the new governor. 
 
 Tom Verner, now seven years of age, holding his small 
 sister by the hand, observes with intense interest the 
 arrival of the pinnace and the appearance of Lieutenant- 
 Governor Erskine, brilliant in scarlet and gold lace. Yet 
 not half so brilliant as Sir Thomas Brisbane, who, after 
 being secluded for more than an hour in his state-room, 
 appears on deck in the full uniform of a Major-General, 
 K.C.B., with a big sword that Tom Verner regards with 
 veneration mixed with envy. 
 
 Sir Thomas majestically signifies his intention to make 
 his official landing on the following morning, and en-
 
 OFF TO AUSTRALIA 37 
 
 gages the Lieutenant-Governor in conversation on the 
 state of the Colony, whilst her ladyship and her sister, 
 Miss Makdougall, survey the coast and the buildings 
 along the foreshore with disconsolate apprehensions writ 
 large in their troubled eyes. 
 
 Henry Verner is down in his cabin, busy with official 
 correspondence, but Juana is on deck with the children. 
 She is a different Juana now from the blushing girl in 
 her father's cottage in the valley of the Zadora River. 
 A beautiful young matron of 24, she is the pride of 
 Henry Verner 's life, and with the marvellous adapt- 
 ability of women, she suits herself without effort to each 
 new phase of her ever-changing environment. She 
 speaks English fluently now with a slight Scotch ac- 
 cent, contracted in Ayrshire, though at rare intervals 
 some word suggestive of Biddy Flynn and Connemara 
 still makes its appearance. 
 
 This clear atmosphere, in which the outlines of the 
 buildings and the contours of the hills around the har- 
 bour stand out so sharply cut, remind her of her native 
 Spain. This blue sky is very like the sky of Andalusia, 
 and not at all like the grey and misty sky of Ayrshire. 
 Juana 's heart warms already towards her new home. 
 Home for her is truly where the heart is, and her heart is 
 with Henry Verner, the man whom the good God sent to 
 her at Vittoria, and who has brought her out over un- 
 imagined leagues of sea to this new country, where the 
 white buildings stand out against the blue sky just as 
 they used to do in Spain, and where the wind that laughs 
 along the water is sun-warmed like the breeze of the 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 Next morning, at 10 o'clock, the guns at Dawes-point 
 battery give tongue again as soon as Sir Thomas Bris- 
 bane steps into the boat that is to take him ashore along 
 with Lady Brisbane and all his household and retainers. 
 Little Tom Verner counts the number of guns in the 
 salute. He feels a personal pride in every one of them, 
 and there are nineteen in all. 
 
 Stepping ashore at the private landing place at Bin-
 
 38 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 nalong Point, Sir Thomas is received by the Lieutenant- 
 Governor, and the whole party walk the short distance 
 up to Government House, where they are received by 
 Mrs. Macquarie on behalf of Governor Macquarie, who 
 is not yet returned from the northern settlements. 
 
 Mrs. Macquarie is most gracious, and shakes hands 
 with all the ladies, including Juana, while little Tom 
 Verner at once rushes to the lawn, where the band of 
 the Forty-eighth Regiment is playing the martial music 
 that his small soul loves, for little Tom is every inch a 
 soldier. 
 
 Then, at the request of Sir Thomas, the gates of 
 Government House grounds are thrown open in order 
 that the Australian public may come in and he may 
 make their acquaintance. Thus Tom Verner, among 
 the rest of the party, has his first glimpse of the Aus- 
 tralian public, and fraternises with them merrily. But 
 he goes back at frequent intervals to talk to the bands- 
 men of the Forty-eighth Regiment or the sentries on 
 duty in their sentry boxes. The quarter in which all his 
 interest is engaged is quite plain. 
 
 In the afternoon carriages were brought round, and 
 the whole of Sir Thomas Brisbane's large party jour- 
 neyed out to Parramatta to take up their abode there in 
 the fine Government House that had been completed 
 three years before to take the place of the first unpre- 
 tentious structure built by Governor Phillip at Rosehill. 
 
 The mounted escort followed by the carriages clattered 
 into George-street at a canter, and then settled down to 
 a steady trot for the journey in front of them. Passing 
 along the street where every shop bore its sign as well as 
 every public house, the escort soon left the Rose and 
 Crown in George-street north, behind them. An im- 
 portant place was the Rose and Crown, for the four- 
 horsed stage coach for Parramatta started from its front 
 door in great style, with the driver cracking his whip 
 and the guard blowing his long coach-horn. 
 
 Governor Brisbane, surveying the scene from the car- 
 riage window, was not greatly impressed by it, and Lady
 
 OFF TO AUSTRALIA 39 
 
 Brisbane and her sister, Miss Makdougall, were frankly 
 steeped in melancholy. The objects of interest along the 
 route were few. They saw the two small pottery fur- 
 naces at the brickfields without emotion. Even the hand- 
 some Gothic gateway, through which the tollbar was ap- 
 proached, left them cold, and they refused to show the 
 slightest signs of enthusiasm over Brickfield Farm, 
 which belonged to the Government, the homestead being 
 surrounded with handsome grounds, in which golden 
 wattles bloomed luxuriantly. Lieutenant Stirling, the 
 young officer of the Buffs, who occupied a seat in the 
 Governor's carriage for the purpose of supplying him 
 with local knowledge, pointed out the various objects of 
 interest along the route, but Lady Brisbane sniffed, and 
 Miss Makdougall steadily refused to be comforted. Even 
 the country house of the late Colonel Johnstone, with its 
 fine avenue of tall tapering Norfolk pines, failed to move 
 them, and they listened with resignation to the story of 
 Colonel Johnstone 's famous coup d'etat by which he 
 deposed Governor Bligh and took over the government 
 of the territory himself. 
 
 Not by such scanty features of interest in the depress- 
 ing landscape of this new country could two ladies from 
 Ayrshire be beguiled into acquiescing with any other 
 feeling than one of deep melancholy in the mysterious 
 dictates of Providence which had brought them to this 
 remote country, where members of the Presbyterian 
 Church were few, and far between, and where red-faced, 
 rum-drinking officers and their wives were almost the 
 only society. 
 
 They could see nothing to admire even in Underwood's 
 Inn, eight miles out, where the stage coach changed 
 horses, and they sniffed critically at Mrs. Darcy Went- 
 worth's fine mansion, Homebush, with its surrounding 
 park of 1,000 acres of cleared land. Thank goodness, 
 they reached the Parramatta tollbar at last, and from 
 the top of the hill saw the whole town spread before 
 them. The sight of the Church of England church, 
 with its steeple, was not pleasing to Miss Makdougall,
 
 40 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 and she directed a glance that was positively hostile to- 
 wards the Rev. Samuel Marsden's fine brick house, 
 which crowned the rising ground to the left, surrounded 
 by clumps of trees. More tolerant was her gaze when 
 she looked upon the rows of neat detached cottages, each 
 standing in its garden, and upon the considerable num- 
 ber of two-storey residences, built with taste, and sug- 
 gesting possibilities of social intercourse. 
 
 The Governor's cavalcade clattered past "The Golden 
 Fleece," which was then the principal inn at Parra- 
 matta, and stopped at last at Government House. 
 
 The mansion at which Governor Brisbane looked with 
 satisfaction on that lovely summer evening, and which 
 v.as surveyed with obvious misgivings by Lady Brisbane 
 and her sister, the long-visaged, melancholy and deeply 
 religious Miss Makdougall, was a substantial structure, 
 designed by Lieutenant Watts and built of stone three 
 feet thick. The rooms were large and lofty, particularly 
 the dining-room and the ball-room, and the guard-room 
 and offices at the back. 
 
 In the plans of those early military architects, nothing 
 is more remarkable than the careful provision which was 
 made for the convenient bestowal of ample supplies of 
 liquor. Lieutenant Watts, the designer of the Parra- 
 matta Government House, was evidently of the opinion 
 that the official occupants of the residence would be 
 great topers. All the ground under the house was ex- 
 cavated, and in the excavated space huge cellars were 
 constructed, with bins for the reception of multitudin- 
 ous bottles. Also there were "horses" of wood in the 
 cellars to support many barrels of beer and spirits. 
 
 Tom Verner, making a delightful tour of exploration 
 with Aileen, immediately upon his arrival, discovered 
 the brick steps leading from the courtyard into the cel- 
 lars, and promptly descended into the depths. A gorge- 
 ous place for all manner of games, but it was so dark 
 that one bumped one's head against the barrels. Aileen, 
 clasping him lightly by the hand, dragged him out, much 
 against his will, from the fascinating catacombs designed
 
 OFF TO AUSTRALIA 41 
 
 by Lieutenant Watts for the reception of the vice-regal 
 liquor. 
 
 Next morning there were other delightful explorations 
 to make. Tom and Aileen sallied forth, hand in hand, 
 and, climbing the hill, discovered the wonderful bath- 
 house that had been erected for the ablutions of His 
 Excellency and his household. There was a big tank 
 on the top of the bath-house, supplied by pipes, through 
 which water was forced by pumping. 
 
 Tom was examining the tank with keen interest, and 
 was privately speculating on the possibility of being able 
 to climb up and look into it when he heard voices just 
 round the angle of the little building. 
 
 "I tink dis vill do alretty, eggselently, Sir," bommed 
 a voice, which Tom recognised at once as that of Mr. 
 Kumcker, the Chief Assistant Astronomer, whom Bris- 
 bane had brought out, together with the second assistant, 
 Mr. James Dunlop, in the Royal George, from England. 
 
 "A varra guid place. I canna thenk that ye can bet- 
 ter it, Sir Tawmas, " added Mr. Dunlop. 
 
 ' ' I am quite of your opinion, ' ' said the Governor. ' ' I 
 shall give instructions to-day to have the building of 
 the Observatory commenced on this site at once." 
 
 The two children scuttled away down the hill, as soon 
 as they heard the Governor. But Tom was quite thrilled 
 at the prospect of assisting informally at the construc- 
 tion of the Observatory. Mr. James Dunlop, in an ex- 
 pansive moment on board ship, had promised to let him 
 see the man in the moon through his big telescope as 
 soon as the Observatory was built.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE SOUTHERN CROSS CALLS. 
 
 So in due course the Observatory was built close to 
 the bath-house. It was a small rectangular building 
 with two domes. The north and the south sides had five 
 windows each, but there were no windows on the other 
 sides. 
 
 Tom Verner peeped in when the building was finished, 
 and all the astronomical instruments that Governor 
 Brisbane had brought out with him were installed. The 
 inquisitive urchin saw that the interior of the building 
 was divided into two halves by a cross-wall. Strange 
 objects, of which Tom knew neither the name nor the 
 use were installed in place. A great achromatic tele- 
 scope 46 inches long, through which one might easily 
 see the man in the moon, was placed under the south 
 dome, and a repeating circle under the north dome. 
 There was a transit instrument in place, an eight-day 
 clock keeping sidereal time, and other strange and fas- 
 cinating objects. Also there were Mr. Rumcker and Mr. 
 Dunlop, who abused little Tom Verner angrily in their 
 respective dialects whenever they caught him meddling 
 with their precious instruments. 
 
 Soon after the Observatory was finished, and Gover- 
 nor Brisbane had entered upon the entrancing task of 
 observing the stars in the southern heavens, instead of 
 worrying over the distracting quarrels between the "ex- 
 clusives" and the "emancipists" that formed the politics 
 of the time, little Tom Verner experienced another de- 
 lightful surprise. He acquired a little brother. 
 
 Juana was just as proud of her son, who was born 
 under the Southern Cross, as of her firstborn, who saw 
 
 42
 
 THE SOUTHERN CROSS CALLS 43 
 
 the light amid the thunder of the guns at Toulouse, and 
 her husband who was kept busy with the private scien- 
 tific correspondence of the Governor his official cor- 
 respondence being handled by his official private secre- 
 tary, Major Ovens, was equally delighted. 
 
 "What name shall we give to this little 'spalpino,' " 
 asked Juana, her thoughts going back by the association 
 of ideas to her firstborn, and then to Biddy Flynn, who 
 had ministered to her. 
 
 "Why not call him Sydney, dearest," said Verner. 
 stroking his wife's beautiful hair, "for he is our little 
 Australian son." 
 
 So Sydney it was. 
 
 Even as a baby Sydney Yerner was fascinating above 
 all other babies. Tom was a second edition of his father 
 adventurous, eager to see and do all that there was 
 to be seen and done, but solid and steadfast, slow in 
 forming his ideas, and earnest rather than brilliant in 
 expressing them. Sydney had his mother's graceful 
 -harm the charm that had captivated Verner, and 
 made even that hardened old campaigner, Biddy Flynn. 
 her staunch friend and unwearying helper through the 
 last year of the campaign. Little Sydney Verner was 
 startlingly like his mother a regular little Spanish 
 haby. It was a pretty sight to see him when he was 
 three years old, toddling about with his big brother, 
 Tom, who adored him. 
 
 The place that the two children loved best of all was 
 Governor Brisbane's Observatory, which was built near 
 the bath-house on the hill, and the Governor, with his 
 kindly nature could not find it in his heart to deny them 
 admittance. 
 
 Mr. Rumcker, the first assistant, having quarrelled with 
 the Governor soon after the Observatory was opened, 
 retired in great dudgeon to his fine farm, which he called 
 "Stargard," after his native place in Pomerania, and 
 which was situated at "the Cow Pastures." Conse- 
 quently Mr. Dunlop became the officer-in-charge of the 
 Observatory, under Governor Brisbane, and it was to
 
 44 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Mr. Dunlop that Tom and Sydney applied for permis- 
 sion to look through the big 46-inch achromatic tele- 
 scope, in order that they might see the Man in the 
 Moon. 
 
 They did not see the Man in the Moon, but they saw 
 the starry heavens, including the Southern Cross, and 
 it made a profound impression upon their youthful 
 ciinds. 
 
 That dome of the Observatory was a real cave of 
 magic, and the wizard who inhabited it was Mr. James 
 Dunlop, Governor Brisbane's astronomer a slenderly 
 built man, clean-shaved, swarthy and pale, with piercing 
 dark eyes. He wore a blue coat with brass buttons on 
 it, and nankeen trousers. He showed Tom and little 
 Syd. the wonders of the planets, and then the four prin- 
 cipal stars of the Southern Cross, and neither of the 
 boys ever forgot what they saw through that big achro- 
 matic telescope big for those days which Mr. Dunlop 
 manipulated so carefully. 
 
 Jupiter, hanging in the dark sky, for all the world 
 like an enormous pearl, with his four bright little moons 
 around him, impressed the boys profoundly, and Tom 
 was old enough to get a glimmering idea of the meaning 
 of Mr. Dunlop 's remarks on the subject. 
 
 "Hech, laddie," said the Scotchman, with the light 
 of enthusiasm in his piercing eye, "ye 're seein' the noo 
 what Galileo saw through the first telescope. Thenk of 
 it, laddie, juist thenk of it. Jupiter was the first of the 
 wonders of the nicht that Galileo pointed his new-made 
 telescope at, an' the movement of those four wee bricht 
 munes tellt to Galileo that Copernicus was right after 
 a'. It was through obsairving yon great pearl of the 
 nicht that Galileo learnt the truth about our airth, 
 laddie the truth that she moves round the Sun, instid 
 of the Sun moving round her, as was falsely taught by 
 the Church of that time. They would like to hae burnt 
 Galileo, laddie, ay, as they burned Giordano Bruno, but 
 they daurna. Yet 'tis said that they tortured him for 
 telling what he saw in yon bricht globe, with the four
 
 THE SOUTHERN CROSS CALLS 45 
 
 wee sma' mimes around it, that ye are hikin' at this 
 mennit, laddie." There was a tremor of profound 
 emotion in Mr. Dunlop 's voice. 
 
 Tom was only vaguely aware of the meaning of Mr. 
 Dunlop 's talk, but it excited him. There was something 
 eerie and mysterious in this dome of metal plates, 
 painted black, with its panels that were hauled up by 
 cords running through pullies. Moreover, in that small 
 circular chamber, the acoustic effects were startling, and 
 even terrifying. When Mr. Dunlop spoke at the far side 
 of the dome, his voice travelled round the circular wall 
 and boomed into Tom's ears from behind him. Mr. 
 Dunlop became to him and to little Syd. a "Wizard of 
 Darkness. 
 
 Little Syd. listened open-mouthed to the braw Scot's 
 tongue, that boomed in his ears from behind, while he 
 plainly saw Mr. Dunlop in his blue brass-buttoned coat 
 and white nankeen trousers in front of him at the far 
 side of the dome. The child's imagination was stimu- 
 lated by the weird surroundings and so was Tom's 
 imagination also. They desired to see fresh wonders. 
 So Mr. Dunlop showed them the Southern Cross. 
 
 Neither of them ever afterwards forgot that night in 
 the little Observatory at Parramatta, when they saw the 
 Southern Cross at first pointed out to them low on the 
 horizon, by the bony forefinger of Mr. Dunlop, and after- 
 wards seen star by star through Mr. Dunlop 's big 
 achromatic telescope. 
 
 Mr. Dunlop pushed against a handle, and the whole 
 of the black dome moved round in its bed until an aper- 
 ture, formed by the raising of a panel, came opposite to 
 the Southern Cross. 
 
 "Noo, Tom," he said, "ye canna see a' the five stars 
 at once, laddie, forbye they winna gae upo' the objec' 
 glass thegither. So we wull een hae to tak 'em ane by 
 ane. ' ' He pointed the telescope on its stand and applied 
 his eye to it. Then making room for Tom on the stool, 
 which he had placed there for his personal convenience, 
 he went on: "Ton's Alpha Crucis, twa stars that luik
 
 46 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 like ane, a* bricht an* gletterin' like a bonnie big 
 diamond." 
 
 Mr. Dunlop 's telescope was not big enough to divide 
 the binary into a triple star. Probably Governor Bris- 
 bane's astronomer, with his piercing dark eyes, never 
 found out to the day of his death that Alpha Crucis is a 
 triple star, and not a binary. 
 
 Then he turned the telescope upon Beta Crucis, the 
 second white star of the Cross, and upon Gamma and 
 Delta Crucis, the two red ones. Just above Beta, the 
 sharp eyes of Tom Verner could make out through the 
 glass innumerable faint points of coloured light. "What 
 he saw was Herschel's "Jewel Cluster," now known as 
 Kassa Crucis. Long and earnestly Tom and little Syd. 
 stared at the stars of the Southern Cross that cross of 
 fire that pointed to the south. 
 
 The two boys could not tear themselves away from 
 that big telescope. One after the other they sat there 
 with their eyes glued to the eye-piece, watching the 
 coruscations of Alpha Crucis. 
 
 "Why are those stars called the Southern Cross, Mr. 
 Dunlop?" 
 
 ' ' Because they aye point to the South, laddie. ' ' 
 
 "If a boy was to walk away from here and go on and 
 on, and keep them always in sight, where would he come 
 to, Mr. Dunlop?" 
 
 "He micht come to a bad end, I'm thenkin'," re- 
 sponded Mr. Dunlop, cautiously. 
 
 "But if he didn't come to a bad end, where would he 
 come to?" persisted Tom. 
 
 "I suppose he would come to the most southern part 
 of Australia, laddie the country that Mester Hume and 
 Mester Hovell hae discovered on the ither side of that 
 great river o' theirs an' a fine country it is, too, they're 
 tellin' me." 
 
 "I would like to follow the Southern Cross and go 
 down and see that country," said Tom, the adventurous, 
 as he took one last fond lingering look at Alpha Crucis. 
 
 "Me, too," said little Syd., with eyes wide open. "Me
 
 THE SOUTHERN CROSS CALLS 47 
 
 go there with you, Tom." He clasped his big brother by 
 the hand. He had an idea that if he and Tom were to 
 follow the great white star that Mr. Dunlop conjured 
 up out of the night and placed at the end of his big 
 telescope, they would reach a very pleasant land a land 
 of unknown delights better perhaps even than Parra- 
 matta. 
 
 When Mr. Dunlop at last, with great difficulty, drove 
 them off and sent them down to the big house where 
 Juana put them to bed, they dreamed all night of the 
 Southern Cross, and of the beautiful country and mys- 
 terious treasures that they would come to if they fol- 
 lowed it. 
 
 Both Tom and little Syd. determined firmly to follow 
 the Southern Cross as soon as they were big enough, 
 and explore the unknown treasures of that land in the 
 South, of which Mr. Dunlop, the Wizard of Darkness, 
 had spoken.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 PIONEERS OF THE WEST. 
 
 Governor Brisbane did not stay many years in Aus 
 tralia. He had not the brusque strength of character, 
 the independence, the will power, the contempt for the 
 opinions of those around him when they conflicted with 
 his own, that marked his predecessor, Macquarie. To 
 Brisbane, the perpetual attempts of the ' ' Exclusionists ' ' 
 that is to say, the official and military class to retain 
 all the wealth, power and influence of the territory in 
 their own hands, were as ignoble as the unceasing efforts 
 of the "Emancipists," with whom many of the free im- 
 migrants of small means and unofficial standing threw 
 in their lot to procure for themselves social recognition 
 and a share in the lands that were being made available 
 for settlement. The Governor was sick of the intermin- 
 able wrangling between these two classes. His philoso- 
 phic and scientific temper caused him to hold himself 
 aloof from both of them as much as possible, and con- 
 sequently he satisfied neither. 
 
 He was a great mathematician. He could tell the 
 distance of Saturn from the earth with wonderful accu- 
 racy, but he could not make the revenue and the ex- 
 penditure of the colony balance. He could predict the 
 exact hour and minute when a transit of Venus across 
 the sun's disc would begin, but he could not foretell that 
 financial troubles would follow if he interfered with the 
 currency, and that the smaller agriculturists would be 
 ruined if the Government refused to buy more than three 
 months ' supply of wheat from them at a time, instead of 
 buying the whole crop as previously. 
 
 Consequently the time came when Governor Brisbane 
 
 48
 
 PIONEERS OF THE WEST 49 
 
 received a strong hint from certain persons in authority 
 in England, that he had better return to London, but 
 before he went he summoned his faithful clerk, Henry 
 Verner, and disclosed to him his impending departure. 
 
 "Before I go, Verner," said the Governor, "I would 
 like to feel that you and your family are comfortably 
 settled here. If you will make a formal application to 
 me for a grant of land, say, 5,000 acres, I shall be very 
 glad to cause the grant to be made. I shall give you a 
 letter to Mr. John Oxley, the Surveyor-General, instruct- 
 ing him to place you in possession of the land in any 
 locality that you may select, provided there is land avail- 
 able. I consider that you are a most suitable person, 
 from my personal knowledge of your steadiness and 
 trustworthiness, to have a grant of land made to you. ' ' 
 
 Verner expressed his gratitude for this mark of con- 
 sideration, and before the Governor, with his wife and 
 family including a son and a daughter, both born at 
 Parramatta sailed for England, Mr. John Oxley was 
 obliged, much against his will, to deal with Henry Ver- 
 ner 's application granted by the Governor for 5,000 
 acres of land. 
 
 Verner and Juana had long and anxious consultations 
 as to the district in which they should choose their 
 estate. 
 
 "I do not like this Parramatta, dear one," said Juana. 
 "It is in the hollow, closed in by the small hills. It is 
 so hot here in the summer. It is not good for the chil- 
 dren ; see how white they become. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Then, where would you like to live, Juana ? ' ' 
 
 "Ah, my Harry, have you forgotten where you found 
 me? In the mountains. I was born in the mountains, 
 and I would like to breathe the mountain air again to 
 remind me always of my mountain home in the Valley 
 of the Zadora, where I first saw you." 
 
 "We might try the Western tableland," said Verner, 
 thoughtfully. "I believe that there is a fine climate up 
 there, and splendid soil. I'll see the Surveyor-General 
 about it."
 
 50 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 ''The Surveyor-General was almost rude when Verner 
 presented his application for 5,000 acres of land, bearing 
 a minute from Governor Brisbane, ordering that the re- 
 quired number of acres should be allotted to him in 
 whatever locality he might solicit, so long as land was 
 available there. Air. John Oxley was in two minds 
 whether he would not tear up the application, in spite 
 of the fact that it bore the Governor's signature. But 
 after brief reflection he consented surlily to carry out 
 the business, although he considered it most reprehen- 
 sible on the part of the Governor to make a grant of land 
 to a mere dependent. A thorough going ' ' Exclusionist ' ' 
 was Mr. John Oxley, with all the prejudices of his class 
 deeply ingrained in his nature. 
 
 "Where do you want this land?" he inquired un- 
 graciously. 
 
 ' ' I should like it, if possible, on the Western tableland, 
 Sir, on account of the good climate there, ' ' replied Ver- 
 ner, with military precision and directness. 
 
 "Umph!" Mr. John Oxley grunted. Evidently this 
 man knew what he was talking about. He drew out a 
 large map and spread it on the table in front of him. 
 ' ' How would the Macquarie River suit you ? " he asked, 
 reflecting safely that if this undesirable person had to 
 have 5,000 acres of land, it would be just as well to 
 locate him as far away from Sydney as possible. 
 
 Verner looked at the large-scale survey-map, upon 
 which Mr. John Oxley pointed out the Macquarie River 
 with his pencil. The country along the Macquarie ap- 
 peared to be desirable land. Mountain ranges were in- 
 dicated by criss-cross lines, but in several places Mr. 
 Oxley, in his neat caligraphy, had written the words 
 "rolling downs," and the region was intersected by a 
 network of creeks running into the main stream or into 
 its tributaries. 
 
 Scanning the map with a practised and understanding 
 eye, Verner indicated a place marked "rolling downs," 
 a little to the North-west of Bathurst. The Downs were 
 near several creeks that flowed into the Macquarie. "I
 
 PIONEERS OF THE WEST 51 
 
 should like my land there, Sir, if it can be managed," 
 he said. 
 
 1m*. Oxley grunted again. "Very good, Mr. Verner, 
 I will look into the matter, and let you know in due 
 course." 
 
 The matter was arranged sooner than Verner had an- 
 ticipated. 
 
 Governor Brisbane treated his faithful henchman 
 very generously, and just before sailing for England 
 with his wife and family, he made Verner a handsome 
 present of money, wherewith to buy stock for his land. 
 Verner attended the famous valedictory banquet which 
 was given to Sir Thomas Brisbane by the Emancipists, 
 at Andrew Nash's ""Woolpack Inn, at Parramatta, and 
 two days afterwards he and Juana said good-bye to the 
 generous patron with whom they had been so long asso- 
 ciated, and together with sturdy little Tom, and blue- 
 eyed Aileen, and Sydney, the baby, turned their faces 
 towards the "West. 
 
 To Juana, the loneliness and the silence of the illimit- 
 able solitudes that spread before them as soon as they 
 lost sight of the spire of Parramatta church were terrify- 
 ing. But one glance at her confident, resolute husband 
 reassured her. "With him she was ready to face whatever 
 this wild new country had in store for her. She sat in 
 the bullock dray, which was covered in with stout canvas 
 as a protection against the weather, and which lumbered 
 slowly forward, carrying the Verner family and all 
 their possessions towards the Macquarie River, 140 miles 
 away. 
 
 Along with them went a couple of hundred sheep, 
 mostly breeding ewes, and a few head of horned cattle. 
 Verner rode beside the dray on a useful looking stock 
 horse, and his three assigned servants marched on foot. 
 The expedition camped at Penrith for the first night, 
 and tackled Lapstone Hill next morning. Slowly it 
 crawled along, seldom accomplishing more than nine or 
 ten miles between dawn and dark. 
 
 Sitting round the camp fire at night, when the chil-
 
 52 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 dren had been put to sleep in the dray, Juana and her 
 husband recalled again their old campaigning experi- 
 ences. Sleeping under the dray, wrapped in their blan- 
 kets, they awoke before the dawn, having heard through 
 their dreams the bugle calls of long ago. But when they 
 peered out there was no sleeping army round them. 
 Nothing but the interminable trees and the three men 
 stretched out in front of the embers of the camp-fire, 
 and the sheep cropping the scanty native herbage beside 
 the track. 
 
 A week out from Parramatta they reached Mount 
 York, and saw on their left a huge and formless mass of 
 sandstone that Verner, with his skeleton-map in front of 
 him, identified with a thrill. 
 
 "Guess what that mountain over there to the left is 
 called," he whispered to Juana. 
 
 ' ' Oh, my dear, I cannot tell, ' ' said Juana, ' ' but tell me 
 then, my Harry." 
 
 "Mount Vittoria," said Verner in a tense whisper. 
 "They named it after our Vittoria in honour of that 
 great battle, dearest, that began on the Zadora River 
 and ended in the Spanish city." 
 
 Juana covered her face with her hands and went 
 down on her knees beside the track. Turning towards 
 this new Vittoria in a strange land, she said a prayer 
 for the repose of the soul of her brave father, who lay 
 in the grave where she had placed him near the old 
 Vittoria, so far away in Spain. And Henry Verner 
 stood bare-headed beside her as twelve years earlier he 
 had stood bare-headed while the child of the battlefield 
 prayed at the grave by the Bridge of the Tres Puentes. 
 
 After passing Wallerawang, the working bullocks 
 were stampeded at dawn by a mob of wild scrub cattle 
 that thundered down the hillside like an avalanche. 
 For a few moments it seemed as though the intruders 
 would sweep over the encampment and annihilate the 
 whole party. 
 
 But Verner, prompt as ever in action, sprang into 
 the saddle and charged the wild mob with his stock-
 
 PIONEERS OF THE WEST 53 
 
 whip. Swerving from that biting lash, they swept away 
 from the bullock dray and vanished with thunder of 
 hoofs and splintering of timber, into the bush. It took 
 a couple of hours to round up the working bullocks when 
 the mad charge was over. 
 
 On the sixteenth day after leaving Parramatta, Juana 
 and her husband saw the swamp oaks that fringed the 
 bank of the Macquarie River, and on the seventeenth 
 Verner entered into possession of his fine estate 5000 
 acres of rich, well-watered park land close to which 
 ran an unnamed creek that was one day to become 
 famous. 
 
 The family lived on the bullock dray while Verner 
 and the three men built the first little house of logs, 
 roofed with bark. Later on Verner built a neat stone 
 bungalow, set in a fenced enclosure, adorned with native 
 shrubs and flowers. 
 
 In their new surroundings more than 2000 feet above 
 sea level, Juana renewed her girlish bloom, and the three 
 children grew as hardy as the young saplings. Little 
 Aileen kept close to her mother for the most part, but 
 Tom and Syd. roamed far afield with their father. There 
 was always some new and delightful adventure to en- 
 gage in, some fresh and entrancing sight to see on the 
 hills and plains around "Coonara," the native name 
 for the hill behind the house. Verner discovered that 
 the name meant "Bright Outlook," and he promptly 
 adopted it as the name of his fine estate, which was a 
 lonely spot, many miles distant from Bathurst, which 
 lay to the south-east. 
 
 "Within easy distance of the homestead was a small 
 creek, which was a tributary of a larger one. The lar- 
 ger one ran into the Macquarie River, which was called 
 by the blacks "Wambool," meaning "the meandering 
 one." But the creeks were at that time unnamed. 
 
 Tom and Sydney Verner, following the little creek 
 down to its junction with the larger one, found there a 
 swimming pool, and many a time on the hot summer days 
 the lads used to paddle in the stream that carried be-
 
 54 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 neath its shining water that which was to change the 
 history of Australia. 
 
 A natural protector that was Tom. He kept a sharp 
 eye on little Syd., and was always ready with a helping 
 hand in the time of need. Little Syd. had a knack of 
 getting into trouble, and it was invariably Tom who got 
 him out of it. 
 
 When the little fellow slid into the deep swimming 
 pool in the creek while he was sailing his boat made of a 
 chip of bark in the shallows, Tom heard his scream that 
 ended in a gurgle, and, running at top speed to the bank, 
 dived in where he saw the boy's rough straw hat float- 
 ing on the surface. Little Syd. was a long way down 
 when Tom reached him and dragged him up again. And 
 when they got home Juana wept over both of them, and 
 Verner patted Tom's head with an approving "Well 
 done, little son, ' ' that was music in his ears. 
 
 Then there was the eventful day when the new bull, 
 which had just been bought and brought home from the 
 Government cattle run at Bathurst, came charging down 
 the paddock with head lowered at little Syd. Syd. was 
 fully fifty yards from the fence, and he started to run 
 as fast as his fat legs would carry him, but the bull was 
 travelling like a locomotive, and Juana, who was watch- 
 ing from the verandah, screamed in agony. 
 
 Tom caught the cry. and saw what had happened. 
 Without even a stick in his hand, he dashed to the 
 rescue, and, running in between Syd. and the bull, dis- 
 tracted the animal's attention with loud shouts. The 
 bull changed his objective at once, and made after this 
 new and audacious intruder, leaving little Syd. to 
 scramble breathlessly through the fence. The gallant 
 Tom having achieved his object, and drawn off the pur- 
 suing enemy from his small brother, started for safety 
 himself. 
 
 But he was too late. The bull caught him, and with 
 one vigorous butt bore him forward and upward. By 
 a miracle the animal's horns missed the boy, one going 
 on each side of him, but the bony forehead hit him like
 
 PIONEERS OF THE WEST 55 
 
 a battering ram, and with a prodigious lift hoisted him 
 clean over the stout four-rail fence. The wind was 
 knocked out of Tom Verner when he fell, but not the 
 pluck, and when his father and the three "Government 
 men" arrived with pitchforks he advanced with them 
 to the attack, armed with a heavy stockwhip, and gave 
 the bull such a merciless hiding that the animal never 
 charged again. 
 
 Never was an elder brother more devoted to a younger 
 one than was Tom to little Syd. The two boys roamed 
 together over the lovely rolling uplands, clothed with 
 sweet-scented Kangaroo grass. Every valley was knee- 
 high in luscious herbage, and Verner 's sheep and cattle 
 fattened and increased both in the ranges and on the 
 plains. 
 
 When Syd. was still a little fellow he was hoisted 
 upon a horse, and watched his father and Tom and the 
 three men mustering the cattle each day, "a wonder 
 and a wild delight." 
 
 He learned to like the taste of the wild berries on 
 the warria bushes, and when he was thirsty he drank 
 the water from the "gilgais" or shallow pools in the 
 rocks. Also, when Tom took out his gun, there would 
 be parrot for dinner parrot grilled on dry branches of 
 the scented gum trees, and eaten with the delicious dam- 
 per that Tom could bake so well in the embers of the 
 wood fire. 
 
 Those were dinners to be long remembered, for they 
 were eaten in the shade of the river-oaks that fringed 
 the Lewis Ponds Creek, which was called after the Rev. 
 F. Lewis, the first Wesleyan Minister who went to 
 Bathurst. And the Lewis Ponds Creek was destined to 
 be famous in Australian history. 
 
 Tom and Syd. ate their parrot and damper sitting 
 though they did not know it on golden ground.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 HOW LITTLE SYD. WAS LOST AND FOUND. 
 
 The country lying at the back of Henry Verner's land 
 was rough and rangy difficult country to find one's 
 way in. Juana got a terrible fright when little Syd. 
 was lost there during her husband's absence in Bathurst, 
 where he had gone to buy some cattle from the Govern- 
 ment run. It all happened simply, and yet, as it seemed, 
 inevitably. 
 
 George Collins and his friend Con. Burke had ridden 
 over from Pretty Plains station in the afternoon to warn 
 Verner that wild blacks were showing signs of unusual 
 restlessness. They found that Verner was not at home, 
 but the hospitable Juana speedily made them forget 
 their disappointment, for she invited them into the house 
 and set before them watermelon, and rockmelon, nec- 
 tarines, and cool drinks. Tom was away in the horse 
 paddock, and little Syd. was playing round the veran- 
 dah. 
 
 Mr. Collins often rode over to Coonara. In those 
 wild solitudes it was a real treat to meet such a beauti- 
 ful and simple-natured woman as Mrs. Verner, and 
 George Collins thoroughly enjoyed talking to her. As 
 for his friend, Mr. Con. Burke, that impetuous young 
 Irishman, fell head over ears in love with Juana the 
 moment he saw her. He had heard a vague hint of her 
 romantic history from Collins, and the reality of her 
 warm Spanish beauty fired his imagination at once. 
 
 The two of them sat on the verandah talking to their 
 lovely hostess, and they found plenty to say to her. 
 Mr. Burke in particular was full of questions, and would 
 not be satisfied until Juana had told him the whole story 
 
 56
 
 LITTLE SYD. WAS LOST AND FOUND 57 
 
 of the Bridge of the Tres Puentes, the death of her brave 
 father, and the dramatic appearance of Henry Verner, 
 spade in hand, on the battlefield at midnight, in answer 
 to her prayer to the good God to send a helper to her. 
 
 The sun had set before Mr. Burke 's romantic interest 
 in the adventures of the "child of the battlefield," as 
 Biddy Flynn called her, was half satisfied. The two 
 young men rose to go and get their horses and Juana 
 looked round for little Syd. 
 
 Little Syd. was nowhere to be seen. 
 
 Juana ran round the house calling for the child, with 
 cries that became more and more like sobs. Mr. Collins 
 and Mr. Burke coo-eed loud and long. 
 
 No answer came from the plains in front, or from the 
 densely wooded hills behind the homestead. As they 
 were still coo-eeing, Henry Verner rode up with his 
 eldest son Tom, whom he had met in the horse paddock, 
 and brought along with him. 
 
 Juana, half distracted with terror, burst out into pas- 
 sionate self-denunciation, wringing her hands. "Oh, 
 my Harry," she sobbed, "it is all my fault. I was talk- 
 ing to these gentlemen and I did not watch the little one. 
 He has wandered away in the great forest, and now he 
 is lost." 
 
 But Verner, with his prompt and resolute character 
 tempered like fine steel by years of campaigning, lost 
 not a second in useless repining. He issued rapid orders 
 to Mr. Collins and Mr. Burke, and calling Tom to follow 
 him, galloped off towards the belt of light scrub that 
 gradually merged into heavy timber higher up the 
 range. 
 
 Burke was despatched to fetch two black stockmen, who 
 were skilled trackers, from his own station, and Collins 
 was bidden to round up the neighbouring run-holders 
 and let them know that the child was lost. Verner knew 
 well that they would respond to the call. It was impera- 
 tive to find the boy as soon as possible. Verner thought 
 with a shudder of the wild blacks. He also thought of 
 the dingoes. They had killed many of his sheep lately.
 
 58 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 He felt an icy tremor at his spine when his brain framed 
 an instantaneous picture of little Syd. stumbling along 
 through the immense solitude and darkness of the bush 
 until his chubby legs could go no further, and then 
 sinking exhausted at the foot of one or other of those 
 tens of thousands of mighty trees that loomed up in 
 front of him. 
 
 Verner could almost see the yellow eyes of the dingoes 
 as they drew closer and closer to the wearied child. By 
 a stern effort of will he blotted out the picture, and con- 
 centrated his brain on the immense task of finding his 
 son before it was too late. 
 
 The night set in cold and dark. Juana, alone in the 
 house, spent it on her knees praying to the good God 
 to send a deliverer to little Syd. as he had sent a helper 
 to her at the Bridge of the Tres Puentes. At intervals 
 she heard with straining ears the faint far coo-ees as 
 the searchers called to each other. 
 
 Out in the bush the black stockmen hunted persist- 
 ently for little Syd. 's tracks. But they could not do 
 effective work in the darkness. 
 
 Mr. Burke and Mr. Collins, with half a dozen of the 
 neighbouring run-holders, who had responded instantly 
 to the call, divided up a section of country between them 
 and quartered it persistently. Several of them carried 
 lanterns on their saddles. They shouted and coo-eed 
 hour after hour, listening eagerly for the childish cry 
 in reply that they longed so much to hear. 
 
 Harry Verner and Tom kept near the two black- 
 trackers. They spoke very little. Their hearts were too 
 full. Tom, like his father, resolutely put aside those 
 chilling paralysing fears for his little playmate. He 
 concentrated all his will power on the task of finding 
 little Syd before it was too late. He knew that there 
 was no danger from the wild blacks until daylight. 
 Their superstitious fears was a sufficient guarantee of 
 that. Not a blackfellow in New South Wales would 
 venture to leave his camp during the hours of dark- 
 ness.
 
 LITTLE SYD. WAS LOST AND FOUND 59 
 
 But the dingoes ! Tom tried not to think of the din- 
 goes. He roused his tired horse with his heel and 
 pushed on beside his father. As he joined him a long 
 melancholy howl came through the night. Tom shud- 
 dered in spite of himself. 
 
 With thud of hooves and crackling of branches, half 
 a dozen of the wild scrub cattle that ranged at liberty 
 over the hills until the mustering parties should come 
 to round them up, charged past the searchers and dis- 
 appeared through the dark colonnades of blackbutt and 
 tallow-wood. 
 
 Sunrise at last! 
 
 The two black-trackers had brought Henry Verner 
 and Tom clean through a ten-mile belt of timber of vary- 
 ing density during the night. Grassy open pastures were 
 found in the timber belt here and there. The scrub 
 cattle found them readily enough. 
 
 Verner, as he looked with haggard eyes towards the 
 dawn, saw the open country in front of him a vast im- 
 mensity of plain and range. Yonder was Coombul 
 Creek to the South-east. Turning northward, he could 
 see the great mass of the Canoblas mountain miles and 
 miles away. He could not help giving a groan. 
 
 "We have passed the poor little chap in the thick tim- 
 ber in the night, Tom," he said huskily. "I must go 
 back and cheer up your mother. Keep with Long 
 Jimmy and Derribong. and I will be with you again 
 soon. 
 
 Henry Verner touched his horse with the spur and 
 rode off, heavy at heart, to encourage Juana with new 
 hopes, though his own hopes were sinking, in spite of his 
 determined efforts to ward off despair. 
 
 The coo-ees of the other searchers were growing faint 
 and infrequent depressing evidence of their dis- 
 couragement. But Long Jimmy and Derribong applied 
 themselves to their task with renewed vigor, now that 
 the daylight had come. They quested forward silently 
 with the pertinacity of bloodhounds on a trail. 
 
 Tom looked towards the ten-mile belt of timbered
 
 60 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 country that he had traversed during the night, and as 
 he looked something like despair began to creep into his 
 heart. Somewhere in that vast track of pathless forest 
 little Syd. was lying. Dense brushwood and heavy 
 scrub of box and myall and young saplings, hundreds 
 of thousands of blackbutts and bluegums, a single one 
 of which would screen a child from the sight of the 
 searchers how could he hope to find little Syd. in all 
 that mighty maze, even if the lad had survived the 
 exposure and all the perils of the night? 
 
 But Tom summoned his will power to reinforce his 
 hopes, and the indomitable resolution that was part of 
 his very nature, and had been absorbed into his being 
 during the long months when Juana had marched be- 
 hind the army from Vittoria to Toulouse before he was 
 born, reasserted itself. He put all doubts away from 
 him and pressed forward steadily. 
 
 The silence of the bush was oppressive broken only 
 by the occasional screech of a lory or the soft tap tap of a 
 wallaby hopping through the undergrowth. 
 
 The blacks had not yet picked up the trail, and were 
 taking the shortest line back to the point where they had 
 entered the thick timber on the previous evening. In 
 the daylight they expected to find the lost child's foot- 
 marks easily enough in the soft ground near his home. 
 
 After travelling for a couple of hours the blacks led 
 Tom up a slope that rose stiffly to a green well-grassed 
 plateau on the top. The frightened bellowing of a bul- 
 lock fell upon the boy's ears, and he heard a warning 
 shout from Derribong just in time to pull his horse off 
 the treacherous surface of a shaking bog. He realised 
 the danger at once. There were many such bogs on the 
 higher points of the rolling downs or plains in the re- 
 gion round Bathurst. 
 
 The bullock had sunk to its brisket in the horrible 
 morass. It had ceased to struggle. It continued to bel- 
 low with terror. 
 
 Tom would gladly have stayed and attempted to 
 rescue the hapless animal, but he steeled his heart
 
 LITTLE SYD. WAS LOST AND FOUND 61 
 
 against pity. Delay might be fatal to his chance of 
 rescuing his brother. He left the wretched bullock to 
 sink to its doom, and pressed on after the black boys. 
 
 A terrible thought flashed through his mind, that 
 little Syd., stumbling forward through the darkness, 
 had walked into one of these bottomless swamps that 
 were covered with a deceptive surface of green herbage. 
 The thought turned him sick with horror. He wiped his 
 brow and found it clammy. 
 
 Resolutely he refused to think of that dread possi- 
 bility. The blacks had described an arc of a circle 
 during the night. They were returning along the tangent 
 and were travelling fast, in order to have plenty of day- 
 light when they had once picked up the trail in the clear 
 ground outside the wide belt and thickly timbered 
 country. 
 
 Tom was very tired. He had had neither food nor 
 sleep. He could not touch the food that he carried in 
 his wallet for Syd. Fortunately there was plenty of 
 water in the creeks. He did not suffer from thirst. He 
 kept his energy unflagging, and his determination un- 
 vveakened. 
 
 The coo-ees of the other searchers had entirely ceased. 
 They must have travelled many miles away. Tom began 
 to wonder where his father was. He coo-eed as loudly as 
 he could. There was no reply. 
 
 The bush became more and more open. The blacks 
 showed Tom the tracks of the scrub cattle leading to- 
 wards a large patch of lightly wooded country almost 
 like a park. 
 
 Tom shaded his eyes with .his hand. He could see the 
 cattle bunched together half a mile away. Something in 
 the way that they were standing made his heart beat 
 faster. He watched them carefully. A black bull 
 trotted forward with his. nose to the ground, and then 
 stopped abruptly. Several others did the same. They 
 left off feeding and moved slowly forward. Something 
 in their movements suggested inquiry. 
 
 ' ' Mine bin tinkit bull gindie, ' ' remarked Derribong.
 
 62 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 That was it. He could see the cattle "gindie." To| 
 "gindie" was to play around. The expressive word 
 seemed to signify restlessness and investigation. 
 
 A sudden hope flamed through Tom's brain. He put 
 spurs to his horse and dashed forward to investigate the 
 investigations. Why did the cattle ' ' gindie ' ' ? His wild 
 yearning suggested an answer that he hardly dared to 
 accept lest it should be followed by disappointment. But 
 the hope became belief, and the belief became assurance 
 long before he reached the spreading bluegum round 
 which the cattle were grouped, nosing the ground, and 
 snorting inquisitively. 
 
 As Tom rode up they galloped off, tails in air. And 
 there at the foot of the bluegum, a good eight miles from 
 his home, lay little Syd., wearied out and fast asleep, 
 still clutching in his small fingers the remains of a fern 
 root that he had been chewing to assuage his hunger 
 when he dropped off. 
 
 Little Syd. opened his eyes and smiled faintly, as Tom 
 dropped on his knees beside him. "I knew you'd come, 
 Tom," was all he said, and then holding Tom by the 
 hand, he struggled to his feet. 
 
 But Tom made him sit down again and drink the milk 
 and eat some of the bread and meat that he had brought 
 so far, in spite of his own hunger. But Syd. would not 
 eat unless Tom would eat too, and when Long Jimmy 
 and Derribong rode up they found the lost child relating 
 his adventures to his rescuer between generous bites of 
 the food that Tom had rigorously refused to touch all 
 through the long search. 
 
 Tom put Syd. on his own horse, and then climbed into 
 the saddle behind him. The blacks led the way at a 
 canter, shouting loud and joyous coo-ees as they rode 
 coo-ees that soon brought Henry Verner crashing 
 through the light scrub on his big stock horse, to look 
 with delight and pride on his two sons, the rescuer and 
 the rescued. 
 
 Juana met them with tears of joy and thankfulness 
 long before they reached the homestead, and in a very
 
 LITTLE SYD. WAS LOST AND FOUND 63 
 
 short time Mr. Collins and Mr. Burke, and all the sur- 
 rounding settlers who had taken part in the search, were 
 gathered together at the homestead to offer their con- 
 gratulations and to receive the heartfelt thanks of Juana 
 and Verner for their arduous work. The men had all 
 been in the saddle for nearly 18 hours. They were hungry, 
 thirsty, and exhausted, but overflowingly happy. Juana 
 would have liked to kiss them all, but she contented her- 
 self with shaking each one of them warmly by the hand 
 instead, and Mr. Con. Burke was so much overcome by 
 his feelings that he could not resist taking Juana 's hand 
 and kissing it before them all. 
 
 It was a memorable evening at the hospitable home- 
 stead, and both little Syd. and Tom had to recount their 
 respective adventures over and over again amid a chorus 
 of exclamations of apprehension and admiration from 
 the assembled party. 
 
 The moon was riding high above the vast dark timber 
 belt that had been robbed of its prey, when Mr. Collins, 
 Mr. Burke, and the friends whom they had collected to 
 join in the search, mounted their horses and set off for 
 their homes, leaving Juana and Verner alone together 
 with their sons. 
 
 Juana put her hand in her husband's as they stood 
 looking out over the open country, that stretched away 
 in front of them, in a succession of low ridges towards 
 the distant ranges. By night th"e scene reminded her 
 of the country outside Vittoria. 
 
 "I prayed to the good God to send a helper to the 
 little one, my Harry," said Juana softly, "And he sent 
 our own son just as he sent you to me long ago." 
 
 "Tom is a splendid fellow," said Henry Verner 
 proudly. "He ought to be a soldier." 
 
 A wave of recollection flooded Juana 's brain, making 
 her think of Biddy Flynn and her emphatic prediction. 
 The very words came back to Juana. She looked up into 
 her husband's face and said whimsically, with a depth 
 of feeling that contrasted curiously with the veritable 
 accent of Biddy Flynn. "Arrah, how cud he help it, an 
 him a follerin' the arr-my befure he was born."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 ENTER MOIRA BURKE. 
 
 Unusually heavy and continuous rainfalls marked the 
 early thirties throughout New South Wales, and the iron 
 gangs working on the road over the Blue Mountains suf- 
 fered terribly, but they kept the road to Bathurst open, 
 and the little city made steady progress. Bathurst even 
 possessed the civilising and refining influence of the town 
 stocks, and one of little Syd. 's earliest recollections was 
 connected with those same stocks in which a drunken 
 man was confined. 
 
 Verner had taken Tom and little Syd. into Bathurst 
 when he went there to transact some business with the 
 Bathurst Bank, an enterprising little institution which 
 had been started by six of the leading men of the dis- 
 trict, among whom Verner was included. While their 
 father was in the bank, the two boys wandered along the 
 main street to investigate, and speedily arrived at the 
 town stocks in which the town drunkard was shut up 
 as usual, with his feet sticking out through two holes in 
 a stout board. Two or three urchins were jeering at the 
 unfortunate prisoner, and just as Tom and Syd. came 
 upon the scene one of the urchins picked up a handful 
 of mud and threw it at the defenceless confinee. 
 
 The town drunkard was an old man with long white hair 
 and a straggling white beard. The red mud struck him 
 on the cheekbone, and spattered both hair and beard. 
 While the urchin was still clapping his hands in delight 
 at his successful shot, a particularly active and ferocious 
 wild cat descended upon him, apparently from the 
 clouds, and proceeded to assault him furiously. 
 
 It was little Syd., who had been seized by a sudden 
 
 64
 
 65 
 
 access of rage at this assault upon an old man who could 
 not protect himself. Syd. flew at little Jack Hall, the 
 assailant of defenceless old age, and planted a solid 
 smack on the nose of that young gentleman that warned 
 Jack Hall to do his best. Tom "kept a ring" as the 
 small fry showed a disposition to pour in and overwhelm 
 the valiant Syd. by force of numbers. Round one ended 
 with Jack Hall very much the worse for wear, and 
 bleeding from the nose, while Syd. glared at him, 
 shouting, "Come on when you're ready." 
 
 The town drunkard made a pathetic noise, which Tom 
 interpreted as a feeble attempt to cheer his young cham- 
 pion. The old man clapped his hands. "Well done, my 
 young cockerel, ' ' he wheezed. ' ' Give 'im another one on 
 the conk for me." 
 
 Round two opened at a pace that was plainly too hot 
 to last. Little Syd. went for his urchin with a succes- 
 sion of punches aimed at the freckled little snub nose 
 that stood out on the small round face like a raisin on 
 a plum-pudding. Jack Hall subsided into the gutter at 
 the side of the road, holding his nose with his grimy 
 little thumb and forefinger as though to assure himself 
 that it was still in its place, and howling loudly at his 
 own discomfiture. 
 
 When Verner arrived on the scene he found Syd. pre- 
 senting the slices of bread and butter with which Juana 
 had carefully provided him for his luncheon, to the town 
 drunkard, who was eating the food ravenously. It was 
 the town drunkard who narrated little Syd.'s prowess 
 in language that would have been extravagant if applied 
 to Sayers or Heenan. 
 
 And Tom, too, added his meed of praise. "My word, 
 father," he whispered privately, "Syd. has plenty of 
 pluck. That other boy is at least two years older, and 
 quite a stone heavier." Tom said no word about his own 
 part in keeping the ring, and holding off the rabble of 
 boys. He never spoke of himself. That was due to the 
 inborn soldierly instinct. 
 
 As the two boys grew towards manhood the affection
 
 66 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 between them was undiminished, though the differences 
 in their characters were accentuated. Tom was still the 
 protector, loyal, steadfast, -reticent, inspiring confidence 
 in men and women alike the confidence which carried 
 an assurance that he would be faithful unto death. He 
 was devoted to his handsome, dashing, brilliant young 
 brother, who did almost everything better than Tom did 
 himself even to making love, at which Syd. was an 
 adept. 
 
 Now it happened that their sister Aileen, who had 
 always been a quiet little thing in her childhood the 
 darling of her father and mother and her two brothers 
 bloomed out in her teens into a singularly lovely girl, 
 who resembled to an extraordinary degree the Juana 
 of past years. To Henry Verner the likeness was re- 
 markable, and he often spoke about it to Juana. Re- 
 membering Juana 's irresistible charm, he used to look 
 with misgivings at his daughter, wondering how long he 
 would be permitted to keep her, and speculating upon 
 the suitor who would one day arrive. When a girl is as 
 pretty as Aileen, suitors have a way of dropping from 
 the clouds. Henry Yerner's experience of life had 
 taught him that much. 
 
 And indeed her father was not the only person who 
 had noticed Aileen 's ripening beauty and the allurement 
 of her large, dark, long-lashed eyes. These attractions 
 had been vividly impressed upon the plastic imagination 
 of the Verners' nearest neighbor, Mr. Con. Burke, whose 
 romantic regard in old days for Juana was gradually 
 transferred to Aileen. To Juana, young Con. Burke 
 had never been more than an impulsive and romantic 
 boy. She felt a genuine pleasure when she found him 
 riding over in the evenings to talk to Aileen, who, in 
 truth, was completely captivated by the handsome young 
 fellow. And so it came about that at least two or three 
 times a week Con. Burke 's horse was to be seen at the 
 slip-rail soon after sunset, where he had to wait 
 patiently, swishing off the flies with his tail, while Con
 
 ENTER MOIRA BURKE 67 
 
 and Aileen discussed matters of serious import on a log 
 amid the bushes. 
 
 It was only natural that Aileen should like Con. 
 Burke, seeing that his sister, Moira, was her closest girl 
 friend. And as Con. Burke 's visits to Coonara became 
 as regularly recurrent as the tides, it was inevitable that 
 Moira Burke should find her way to the Verner home- 
 stead more frequently than before. 
 
 At each successive visit the fact was borne in upon 
 Tom Verner with increasing force that Moira Burke was 
 an extraordinarily attractive girl. Her freshness and 
 charm positively bewitched him. Her dark hair and 
 dark-blue Irish eyes held him captive. When she smiled 
 at him her little white teeth were the prettiest things in 
 the world. 
 
 It was singularly unfortunate that Syd. should have 
 formed almost precisely the same opinions about Moira 
 as Tom. Every time she rode over in the morning to 
 see Aileen it occurred to Syd. that she looked fresher 
 and more flower-like than before. Syd. did not believe 
 in keeping knowledge of that kind to himself. He 
 would not lock it up in his own breast as Tom did. He 
 imparted the information to Moira with a flashing 
 glance from his own dark eyes, and Moira, listening, 
 found his voice full of music. 
 
 Among Tom Verner 's many sterling and serviceable 
 qualities the gift of keen observation was not included. 
 Moreover, though he could be silent he could not act a 
 part, and hence it never occurred to him that any other 
 person, least of all his dearly-loved brother Syd., would 
 deliberately conceal his feelings and behave with a light- 
 hearted and unconcerned demeanor that gave no clue to 
 his emotions on a question of such vital importance as 
 that of Moira Burke. 
 
 It was true that Moira never gave Tom any real en- 
 couragement. But, as he reflected, girls were not 
 expected to know their own minds all at once. He had 
 made known to her unmistakably his feelings towards 
 her, and her cheeks had flushed suddenly rose-red, while
 
 68 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 tears gathered in the corners of her dark-blue Irish eyes. 
 She had stretched out both her hands to him, and had 
 said : ' ' No, Tom, indeed I am not good enough for you. ' ' 
 And then she had run out of the room. Tom was a bit 
 puzzled, but he resolved to be patient and trust to time. 
 Poor Tom ! 
 
 He said nothing to Syd. about his love for Moira. It 
 would not interest Syd., he thought. Besides, there were 
 some things that were too sacred to be talked about, even 
 between brothers. That was how Tom felt about Moira. 
 
 But to Juana's heart there came a sharp pang of grief 
 for the lost happiness of her first born son. She had 
 seen the situation with unerring clearness. Syd. 's dash- 
 ing manliness and fascinating grace had captivated 
 Moira. It was nobody's fault. It was just the working 
 of fate the fate that operates and achieves its object, 
 by the mysterious forces of character and temperament. 
 Juana had always known in her inmost heart that if 
 Tom and Syd. ever loved the same girl, Syd. with his 
 irresistible grace and gaiety would win the day against 
 the sterling steadfastness and honest loyalty of his 
 brother. 
 
 Juana looked wistfully at her two sons as they rode 
 off together, with Moira, while Con. Burke and Aileen 
 rode side by side behind them, to the mustering of the 
 cattle. It seemed to her then that big-hearted Tom was the 
 only one of the party who did not know that all his hopes 
 were dust. 
 
 Henry Verner brushed aside all Juana's uneasy ap- 
 prehensions when she whispered them to him. Of course 
 the boys would fall in love. Boys always did. But they 
 got over it. "Do not worry yourself about them, dear 
 one," he said. "They will marry when fate fixes the 
 day and the girl, as their father did before them. Per- 
 haps they will fall in love many times before then. ' ' 
 
 "Ah! And did you fall in love many times before 
 you married me, my Harry ? ' ' asked Juana, half in play, 
 and half in earnest.
 
 ENTEB MOIRA BURKE 69 
 
 Verner kissed her tenderly and, like a wise man, 
 "smiling, put the question by." 
 
 But Juana's fears for her firstborn were not relieved. 
 She could see that when Moira rode over to Coonara 
 with her brother, Con., it was Syd., and not Tom, who 
 brought the new light into her eyes, and the flush of 
 color to her cheeks. Tom himself could not, or would 
 not, see it. Syd. to him was still the ' ' little Syd. ' ' of his 
 boyhood to be loved always and guarded against all 
 danger. 
 
 Riding over to Pretty Plains with Con. Burke and 
 Aileen and Moira one afternoon, the two brothers learnt 
 a disquieting piece of news from Burke 's shepherd, a 
 sinister beetle-browed old man, who had been a poacher 
 in the old country in his youth, and had been mixed up 
 in an affray in which a gamekeeper was brutally mur- 
 dered. Old Ben, the shepherd, was a man of few words 
 as a rule. But he was quite talkative on this occasion. 
 
 "Them wild blacks is givin' us a lot of trouble, Mr. 
 Burke," he began, as he showed the party into his bark 
 hut, and proceeded to brew a billy of tea. ' ' I reckon I '11 
 teach 'em a lesson pretty soon." 
 
 "What have they been up to now, Ben?" asked 
 Burke. 
 
 ' ' Sheep-spearin ' again," remarked the ex-poacher 
 grimly. "They got away with three fat yowes larst 
 night. Mortial fond of mutton them wild blacks are." 
 Circumstances alter cases, and the ex-poacher, having 
 become a keeper, was very bitter against the poaching 
 blacks. 
 
 "But I thought that you were very friendly with all 
 the blacks around here, Ben?" said Moira. "You told 
 me that you often gave them damper and mutton when 
 they came to the hut." 
 
 "So I did, Miss, so I did. But them villains aint got 
 no gratitude. That there Bremeba, the king of the 
 tribe, stole my tommyhawk directly my back was turned, 
 an' went off with it an' 'arf a bag o' flour as well. Many 
 a time they come around and steal my dinner outer the
 
 70 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 pot when I'm out on the run. They want a lesson 
 badly for sure." Old Ben looked reflectively at his 
 double-barrelled gun standing in the corner. 
 
 "Now look here, Ben," said Burke, "I'm not going 
 to have you shooting Bremeba or any of his men, just 
 remember that. We don't want to be attacked by the 
 whole tribe and waddied when we're asleep. If they 
 do spear a sheep or two, let 'em alone. It'll be less 
 trouble in the end."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE POISONED DAMPER. 
 
 Old Ben muttered to himself as he showed his visitors 
 out of the hut and watched them mount their horses. 
 When they had ridden away he returned to the hut, 
 took some flour out of a sack, and proceeded to make a 
 damper. 
 
 He usually made a damper with flour and water and 
 salt. On this occasion he added another ingredient 
 several spoonsful of a white powder which he took from 
 a small paper parcel that he carefully replaced in his 
 cupboard. He made enough dough in this way for three 
 large dampers, which he then baked in the embers of the 
 wood fire. The dampers when withdrawn from the ashes 
 were of a rich golden brown color. They looked deli- 
 ciously appetising. 
 
 Old Ben's Kelpie sheep-dog, Bluey, his pride and joy, 
 the best drafter of sheep in the whole district, sniffed at 
 the dampers and looked at Ben inquiringly. "Get out 
 
 of the hut, d you, ' ' snarled old Ben, in sudden rage 
 
 and alarm. The obedient dog slunk out of the hut in 
 perplexity. There was something that he did not under- 
 stand about this. 
 
 Having laid the three large golden-brown dampers 
 on the rude table in the hut, old Ben walked out and 
 closed the door behind him. It was close upon sunset. 
 Whistling to Bluey, he walked off in the direction of the 
 Pretty Plains homestead, while the dog followed at his 
 heels. 
 
 He was hardly out of sight of the hut when half a 
 dozen blacks, who had watched his departure from a 
 clump of timber on the hillside, emerged from cover and 
 
 71
 
 72 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 ran down to the shepherd's lonely dwelling. Bremeba 
 led the way. With him went his relatives, Eereenina, 
 Peshoo, Wonga Wonga, Korere, and Berrilong. 
 
 The blacks carried no weapons. They were fine, tall, 
 muscular savages, full of bounding vitality. Moreover, 
 they were hungry. All except Bremeba, who had just 
 finished a satisfying meal of stolen mutton. Bremeba 
 peered through the window of the empty hut. He saw 
 old Ben's double-barrelled gun in the corner, and his 
 eyes glistened. He saw the three golden brown dampers 
 lying on the table. In other circumstances the dampers 
 would have interested him supremely. But as his 
 stomach was full of lightly broiled mutton, the dampers 
 made no appeal to him. His half-brother, his uncle, his 
 nephew, his cousin, and his mother-in-law's sister's son, 
 who had accompanied him, might have the dampers for 
 all he cared as long as he could get that gun. 
 
 He had always longed for a gun. 
 
 Bremeba opened the door of the hut and went in, 
 followed by his relatives, who at once observed the 
 dampers, prepared so thoughtfully by old Ben, and fell 
 upon the delicious food of the white man with loud 
 grunts of approval. In a very few minutes nothing was 
 left of the dampers but a few crumbs on the floor. The 
 leader snatched up the double-barrelled gun, of which 
 he knew the use perfectly well, and also the powder flask 
 and bag full of lead slugs that stood by it. He ran out 
 of the hut, followed by his half-brother, his uncle, his 
 nephew, his cousin, and his mother-in-law's sister's son. 
 They moved at a more leisurely pace because they were 
 full of undigested damper. 
 
 When they reached the cover of the thick bush they 
 earnestly desired to stop and lie down, but Bremeba 
 would not hear of it. In his savage mind there was, if 
 not a consciousness of guilt, at any rate a conviction 
 that when old Ben discovered the loss of his gun he 
 would take up the pursuit of the raiders. Bremeba de- 
 termined to put as great a distance as possible between 
 himself and old Ben.
 
 73 
 
 But before the blacks had travelled more than a mile 
 through the bush towards the distant camp of their tribe, 
 Bremeba's relatives felt disagreeable and terrifying sen- 
 sations quite outside the range of their experience. 
 They were attacked by horrible pains. They lay down 
 on the ground to rest, but their limbs twitched and 
 shook. They were seized by violent convulsions, and 
 burned by dreadful thirst. Their backs were arched 
 backward like a bow a frightful spectacle for Bremeba 
 to see. Gradually their struggles ceased. They turned 
 frightened, dying eyes full of dumb appeal upon 
 Bremeba. "Why had he not protected them against the 
 evil magic of the white man's dampers? Bremeba real- 
 ised the cause of their agony at once. He had not eaten 
 the damper, and therefore he had escaped. Trembling 
 with fear he watched his relatives die, and then he hur- 
 ried away to the camp of the tribe to lay the matter be- 
 fore the old men. 
 
 As a result of the instructions received from the old 
 men of the tribe, Bremeba, carrying his spear and 
 waddy as well as his double-barrelled gun, led a party 
 of thirty armed blacks, through the bush at daybreak, 
 making for old Ben's hut. As they crept up to the hut, 
 Bluey the sheep dog, barking furiously, rushed out and 
 pinned Bremeba by the leg. The dog's sharp teeth sank 
 into the black's flesh, piercing to the bone. Next instant 
 a heavy blow from a waddy descended on the dog's skull, 
 smashing it like an egg-shell. Bluey never barked 
 again. 
 
 Awakened by the first bark of the sheep dog, old Ben 
 realised in a flash that the blacks were on him, and 
 rushed for his gun. It was not in the corner of the hut. 
 He had not missed it on the previous evening when he 
 noted with grim satisfaction that the poisoned dampers 
 had been taken during his absence, but now the bitter 
 truth burst upon him with crushing force. The blacks 
 had taken the gun, and the powder and shot too, as well 
 as the dampers. 
 
 Looking round frantically for a weapon, old Ben
 
 74 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 found only a stout sapling that he had used to poke his 
 tire with. He snatched it up just as the blacks burst 
 into the hut in a confused mass, and laid about him 
 furiously. But the blacks had brought their long nar- 
 row shields, and they easily warded off the desperate 
 shepherd's blows. Deprived of the white man's wea- 
 pons, old Ben was no match for the infuriated blacks. 
 He was felled to the ground by a blow from a waddy, 
 and then Bremeba snatched a spear from one of his 
 followers and thrust it clean through the shepherd's 
 body, pinning him to the floor. Old Ben gave a great 
 groan, a shudder passed through him, and he was 
 dead. 
 
 As the early morning sun poured in through the little 
 window of the hut it lit up the group of excited ochre- 
 painted savages standing round the body of the ex- 
 poacher. The embers of the fire in which the dampers, 
 poisoned with strychnine, had been baked by the man 
 now dead, were cold and grey. The remains of his last 
 solitary meal were still on the rude table. His dog, 
 faithful to the end, lay dead outside the door. 
 
 The blacks jabbering together, pointed to the body. 
 A gruesome rite was still to be performed the rite of 
 " buckeening. " One of the blacks bent down and turn- 
 ed the body over face downwards on the floor. He 
 thrust a short spear into the back just over the region 
 of the kidneys, and worked the spear round and round 
 to enlarge the wound. Thrusting his hand into the 
 hole, he withdrew the kidneys and the kidney fat, still 
 warm and gory the kidney-fat which was believed to 
 confer strength and courage upon him who tore it from 
 the quivering body of his enemy. 
 
 In this way, slain by men of the Stone Age, with 
 all the circumstances of primitive barbarism, perished 
 the old ex-poacher, seeing again with dying eyes the 
 leafy lanes of Warwickshire, the thickets where Shakes- 
 peare once killed a deer, and where he himself as a boy 
 had roamed "in the season of the year" until one day
 
 THE POISONED DAMPER 75 
 
 with a trapped hare in his pocket he was arrested and 
 sent beyond the seas never to return. 
 
 All through the long sultry forenoon the body of 
 old Ben, mutilated in ghastly fashion by the buckeening 
 blacks, lay uncared for on the floor of the lonely hut. 
 The thin door swung to and fro on the rough hinges 
 of Kangaroo-skin. The body of the dead dog lay out 
 in the sun, a few yards from the door. 
 
 Silence and desolation enveloped the tragedy. 
 
 Moira Burke sang to herself as she moved about 
 the kitchen at Pretty Plains. She was alone in the 
 homestead. For her brother Con had gone off with 
 the three men immediately after breakfast to look at 
 a mob of sheep that he had bought on the previous day. 
 Moira was singing out of sheer gladness of heart. She 
 felt very happy that morning. Her thoughts were very 
 pleasant company. They were all of Syd Verner. 
 
 She went out on the wide varandah at the back of 
 the homestead. "Bill-ee! Bill-ee!" she called in her 
 clear, young, joyous voice. 
 
 The boy who looked after the horses and did the odd 
 jobs at the homestead came sauntering in from the pad- 
 dock, swinging a bridle in his hand. 
 
 "Billy," said Moira, "I want you to go and catch 
 the young mare and ride over to old Ben's hut with his 
 rations. I promised to let him have some tea, and 
 sugar and tobacco this morning. Hurry up, now, and 
 don't be long. I've plenty for you to do when you get 
 back." 
 
 So Billy set off on the young mare for the old shep- 
 herd's hut, and Moira went back to her kitchen still 
 singing. 
 
 Billy whistled as he rode, and the beat of the young 
 mare's unshod hoofs as she swept along in a springy 
 and inspiriting canter kept time with his tune. It was 
 a cloudless morning. A light breeze blew right in 
 Billy's face. The young mare sniffed it appreciatively. 
 
 As they drew near to the hut, the mare pricked her 
 ears, and sniffed the breeze again this time with vague
 
 76 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 alarm. There was something in the wind that frighten- 
 ed her. She stopped so suddenly that she almost shot 
 Billy over her head. Then she began to back away from 
 the hut. 
 
 "What's the matter with ye?" said Billy, angrily. 
 He rammed in the spurs, and forced the reluctant ani- 
 mal forward. She sniffed the air again and snorted, 
 sweating and trembling. Twenty yards from the hut 
 she came to a standstill. 
 
 Billy slipped from the saddle and threw his bridle 
 over the gate post. ,He started when he saw the dead 
 body of the sheep dog near the door. "Good Lord!" 
 said Billy, "someone has killed poor Bluey. I wonder 
 who done it." 
 
 The boy went on, carrying his sugar bag full of gro- 
 ceries. "Don't suppose old Ben is in the hut," he 
 muttered to himself. "I'll just leave the stuff on the 
 table an' get back." 
 
 He took two steps into the hut and then let out a 
 scream of fright, dropping the tea and sugar and to- 
 bacco on the floor, beside that appalling thing round 
 which the flies were thickly clustering. 
 
 One glance was enough to assure Billy that old Ben 
 would never need rations again. The terrified boy saw 
 the frightful wound that had crushed the old man's 
 skull, and also the gaping hole above the loins. "The 
 buckeeners done it," he muttered to himself, with a 
 shudder, looking round the hut with the fear of death 
 in his eyes. Who could tell whether the blacks might 
 not still be lurking near.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE ATTACK ON PRETTY PLAINS. 
 
 Leaving the tea and sugar and tobacco strewed on 
 the floor beside the mutilated corpse of the shepherd, 
 the boy Billy rushed from the hut and snatched the 
 bridle of the mare from the gate post, and set off at a 
 wild gallop for the Verners' homestead, which was two 
 miles nearer than Burke 's place to the murdered man's 
 hut. 
 
 Ashen pale and shivering with fear, Billy made re- 
 port to Juana that the buckeeners were out. They had 
 done for old Ben already. They might put in an ap- 
 pearance at Coonara, or at the Pretty Plains home- 
 stead at any moment. 
 
 Juana took up the double-barrelled gun that stood 
 in the corner, and, going outside upon the verandah, 
 fired both barrels in rapid succession. It was the sig- 
 nal that had been agreed upon. 
 
 In that still air the sound carried far. Henry Ver- 
 ner heard it away by the creek, and so did Tom and 
 Syd, and the three "Government men" who were with 
 him. 
 
 "My God the blacks!" cried Verner, and rushed 
 for his horse. Tom and Syd did the same, and all 
 started for the homestead. Unspoken fears looked out 
 of their eyes. 
 
 But the sight of Juana in her white dress on the veran- 
 dah reassured them. She was still safe, and surely that 
 was Billy, the boy from Pretty Plains standing beside 
 her. 
 
 Billy's startling story was soon told, and Verner 
 and his sons held a brief council of war. 
 
 77
 
 78 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 "I must stay here with the three men. They are 
 running back as fast as they can from the creek," said 
 Verner. "We are well armed. The four of us with 
 guns can hold the house against the whole tribe if they 
 come. Your mother will be quite safe here. But you 
 two lads must ride to Pretty Plains at once with Billy. 
 He says that Moira is all alone in the house. That's 
 enough. Take your guns, and ride hard." 
 
 There was no need to tell Tom and Syd to ride hard. 
 Billy on the young mare was in the lead for the first 
 mile. The young mare had all the best of the weight, 
 for Billy the boy was a featherweight, and Tom's black 
 horse and $yd's grey were each carrying over 11 stone. 
 But the young mare had already that morning gone 
 the distance from the shepherd's hut to the Verners' 
 homestead at racing pace. She could not keep with 
 the black and the grey both fresh horses. Steadily 
 she began to drop back, though Billy used his spurs 
 ruthlessly. 
 
 "Mr. Tom Mr. Syd, don't leave me," yelled Billy 
 the boy, half crazed with terror. "I'm af eared of the 
 buckeeners. ' * 
 
 "Come on then. Shsike up the mare. "We can't wait," 
 called Syd in reply. 
 
 Tom, a soldier to the core, said nothing. Since Moira 's 
 life was at stake, Billy would have to take his chance. 
 Tom weighed the issue in his mind, and came to a 
 resolute decision. In order to save Moira from the 
 blacks he would abandon Billy to his fate, if necessary, 
 with as little compunction as he had shown in aban- 
 doning the bullock in the morass when he was search- 
 ing the forest for little Syd so long ago. 
 
 The black horse was galloping like a racer. He was 
 nearly thoroughbred. In his heart Tom blessed the 
 wise forethought of his godfather Sir Thomas Brisbane 
 in the past. Brisbane made some ghastly mistakes in 
 his administration, but at least he did one good thing. 
 He had a hobby for horseflesh, and at his own expense 
 he imported a number of high-class Arab sires, from
 
 THE ATTACK ON PRETTY PLAINS 79 
 
 Mocha and Calcutta to Sydney. Hence he has been 
 called the father of Australian horse breeding. There 
 was Arab blood in Tom's black horse. Tom knew that 
 he would gallop till he dropped. 
 
 Looking ever his shoulder, Tom saw Syd's grey a 
 nearly pure Arab, smaller than the black, but perfectly 
 moulded sailing along at his girths with the untiring 
 gallop inherited from a desert-bred sire. They had 
 still six miles to go. 
 
 Behind them toiled Billy's crossbred young mare. 
 She had nearly shot her bolt, when they reached that 
 long, deep watercourse that ran down to the creek, 
 which was one of the numerous tributaries that found 
 their way into the Macquarie. 
 
 Billy looked with horror at the watercourse. It was 
 too wide to jump. The sides were so steep, that though 
 a horse might slide down to the bottom without falling, 
 it seemed almost impossible for any animal except a 
 eat to climb up the opposite bank. Yet it was absolutely 
 necessary for Billy to get across the watercourse some- 
 how. He would have to ride several miles along the 
 bank before an easy place could be reached. 
 
 "Come along Billy," yelled Syd, turning his head 
 to see where the mare was. She was nearly a hundred 
 yards behind them. 
 
 As the leaders reached the watercourse Tom urged 
 the black with heel and voice to the very brink. The 
 black did not like the look of it. He snorted and hung 
 back, but his inflexible rider held him to the desperate 
 task. Leaning right back in the saddle Tom called to 
 his horse, and the black carefully advanced his fore- 
 feet over the side of the bank. Then, putting his feet 
 together he slid down on his haunches a good six yards 
 to the bed of the watercourse, in which a shallow rivulet 
 was running. Slipping from the saddle Tom put the 
 bridle over his arm and began to scramble up the op- 
 posite bank. It was terribly steep. It looked almost 
 like the side of a house. Over and over again it seemed
 
 80 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 as though both man and horse must fall back into that 
 deep cleft in the earth's surface. 
 
 Billy the boy watched them with fascinated gaze. 
 At last, with one more bound, the black horse stood on 
 the top, trembling while Tom patted his neck. 
 
 "Hurry up, Syd," cried Tom in a hoarse voice; 
 11 we've no time to waste." He put his foot into the 
 stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. The black 
 horse broke into a gallop at once. 
 
 But Syd was wasting valuable moments in endeav- 
 ouring to persuade Billy to face the inevitable. At last 
 he got the mare up to the brink, with Billy still in the 
 saddle. 
 
 "Sit well back, Billy," shouted Syd, shaking out 
 the long, heavy thong of the stockwhip that he carried 
 in front of him. He and Tom had both brought their 
 stockwhips. There w y as no escape for the mare. The 
 stockwhip whistled behind her, and fell on her quiver- 
 ering flanks. She could neither turn no go back. She 
 had to go forward, and she went. Sliding down the 
 precipitous bank of the watercourse in a cloud of red 
 dust, she fell over on her side just before reaching the 
 bottom, and Billy slipped off just in time to escape be- 
 ing crushed to death. 
 
 Syd looked out and saw the black horse already well 
 away in the front. He bitterly repented his folly in 
 wasting time over Billy. Bringing the grey Arab to 
 the edge of the bank, he imitated Tom's tactics, and 
 quickly reached the opposite side. Leaving Billy and 
 the mare still floundering in the bed of the watercourse, 
 he set sail in pursuit of Tom on the black. 
 
 The grey Arab had a wonderful turn of speed. He 
 began steadily to overhaul the black. Syd thought of 
 Moira alone in the homestead at Pretty Plains. Then 
 he thought of the buckeeners, fresh from a killing. He 
 called to the grey Arab, and the grey Arab flew along 
 in the wake of the black. 
 
 "Oh, the French will come again, says the Shan Van
 
 THE ATTACK ON PRETTY PLAINS 81 
 
 Vogh," sang Moira in her joyous, fresh, young voice, 
 as, with sleeves tucked up above the elbow, she kneaded 
 a great mass of white dough on the table of the kit- 
 chen at Pretty Plains homestead. She was very lovely 
 and very hf.ppy, and the sound of her voice floated 
 out through the open window as she sang the old ballad 
 that her father had sung her to sleep with many a 
 time when she was a little child. At regular inter- 
 vals, fitting in with the beat of the melody, she paused 
 to press the yielding dough upon the table, and to any- 
 one listening the sound would have sounded like this : 
 " The French (knead) will come again (knead), 
 Says the Shan Van Vogh (knead) ; 
 
 And they'll bring (knead) ten thousand men 
 
 (knead), 
 Says the Shan Van Vogh (knead), 
 
 With musket and with ball" 
 
 Bang! Bang! went two shots that sounded like a 
 double-barrelled gun down in the scrub, a quarter of a 
 mile away, almost at the same moment there came a 
 scream of pain. Moira stopped singing. She was 
 puzzled to account for the firing, and also for the 
 scream. 
 
 Down in the scrub Bremeba was carrying old Ben's 
 gun by the barrels. It was loaded with parrot shot, and 
 had the percussion cap on the nipples. Bremeba, who 
 had been on friendly terms with old Ben before the 
 damper-poisoning episode had often seen the shepherd 
 load and fire the gun, bringing down parrots from un- 
 heard of distances. Bremeba had observed that old 
 Ben rammed gun powder and leaden shot down the 
 barrels and placed the little copper caps on the nipples 
 before putting the gun to his shoulder and causing it 
 to roar fire and death by pulling the trigger. But it 
 did not occur to Bremeba that the gun could roar de- 
 struction by itself. Crawling through the scrub im- 
 mediately in front of him on hands and knees, went that 
 noted warrior Koringa, carrying his shield and redgum
 
 82 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 waddy slung over his left shoulder, the boomerang stuck 
 through his belt of plaited grass and a bundle of long 
 spears, with barbed points in his right hand. 
 
 As Bremeba with the barrels of old Ben's gun point- 
 ing straight in front of him was crawling through the 
 bush immediately behind that naked buck Koringa, a 
 tendril of supplejack caught in the triggers of the gun. 
 Both hammers fell, and as the two explosions rang out 
 almost simultaneously a handful of parrot shot struck 
 Koringa in a non-vital part of his person. It was 
 Koringa 's yell of pain and terror that had startled 
 Moira and caused her to break off in the middle of her 
 song. 
 
 Koringa, bleeding freely from a severe flesh wound, 
 took no further part in the expedition. He crawled 
 away to the creek and lay down on a bed of ferns to 
 recover. 
 
 The chief concern of Bremeba now, was to re-load 
 the white man's thunder-stick. He had watched old 
 Ben perform the operation often enough, but for the 
 life of him he could not recollect the proper order of 
 the proceedings that made up the complicated rite. He 
 had the powder flask, the percussion caps, and the bag 
 of shot in his hands, but what to do with them he could 
 not remember. At last, after long and earnest cogita- 
 tion, he rammed a handful of shot down each barrel as 
 a preliminary, and then a small piece of bark instead 
 of the wads that he bad seen old Ben using. Finally 
 he poured a liberal charge of powder on top of the shot 
 and completed the operation by ramming down another 
 piece of bark and driving it well home with the ram- 
 rod, as he had seen old Ben do. Placing percussion 
 caps on the nipples, he cocked the hammers, and, hold- 
 ing the gun gingerly aloft at arm's length, he signed 
 to the bucks to resume the advance. 
 
 After the recent rains the native grass in the paddocks 
 round the Pretty Plains homestead was nearly three 
 feet high. Thirty bucks crept unseen through the tall 
 grass, each carrying club and shield, and dragging after
 
 THE ATTACK ON PRETTY PLAINS 83 
 
 him a long, slender spear, gripped between his toes. The 
 sinuous line of bucks was like a long black snake. It 
 glided nearer and nearer to the homestead. Bremeba 
 was the head of the snake. After the unfortunate acci- 
 dent to Koringa, not a single one of the bucks would 
 consent to crawl in front of the white man's thunder- 
 stick a malevolent thing that required to be humoured, 
 or else it would destroy blackfellows of its own accord. 
 The long, black snake crept up close to the home- 
 stead. Bremeba was not sure whether any of the white 
 men would be at home or not. He resolved to send 
 out Naringa to reconnoitre. Naringa departed on his 
 mission a black shadow in the grass.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 BAKKOOI NAN-NOMBA NINDA." 
 
 "The French will come again, 
 Says the Shan Van Vogh, 
 They'll bring ten thousand " 
 
 Ha! What was that? Moira's joyous singing broke 
 off abruptly again as a hideous black face glared at her 
 round the corner of the open window and a gutteral 
 voice remarked, truculently, "Gibbit bacca." 
 
 In an instant Moira slammed down the window and 
 closed and bolted the heavy shutters. She stepped to 
 the door that opened from the kitchen to the back 
 verandah and locked it. She bolted it top and bottom. 
 Then she locked and bolted the other door leading from 
 the front hall of the bungalow-cottage into the kitchen. 
 She barricaded the back door by dragging the kitchen 
 table up against it, and the door leading into the hall 
 by pushing the heavy kitchen dresser across it. Her 
 brother's gun stood pgainst the wall loaded in both 
 barrels with slugs for kangaroo. In the drawer of the 
 dresser was a heavy meat chopper. Moira was pale, but 
 there was fighting blood in her veins. She went to the 
 drawer of the dresser, took out the meat chopper, and 
 laid it on the table. Surely she could keep off the 
 solitary prowling black until Con or Billy, or both 
 of them, arrived. 
 
 Listening intently, with every nerve strung to its 
 highest pitch, she heard the soft pad-pad of the black- 
 fellow's naked feet as he ran round the verandah, peer- 
 ing through the windows, to see if there were any 
 white men in the house. Very soon Naringa realised 
 
 84
 
 "BAKKOOI NAN-NOMBA NINDA" 85 
 
 with exultation that the "white Mary" was alone in 
 the house. 
 
 ' ' Bakkooi nan-nomba ninda. Bakkooi nan-nomba nin- 
 da ("You are my prey. You are my prey"), mut- 
 tered Naringa, as he tried to peer through the closed 
 shutters at the white woman alone in the house. 
 
 Moira heard the black muttering and padding round 
 the house. She trembled at the peril that she scarcely 
 dared to think of. There were things that were worse 
 than death. She glanced at the kitchen fire. The logs 
 were burning brightly, and the water in the big sauce- 
 pan was boiling and bubbling. She ladled about half 
 of it with a dipper into an iron bucket. 
 
 Crash ! Naringa brought down his ' ' conterra, ' ' or 
 heavy-knobbed waddy, on the window pane and the 
 reinforcing shutter inside. His brain was on fire. He 
 did not intend to call up Breineba and the bucks just 
 yet. "Bakkooi nan-nomba ninda. Bakkooi nan-nomba 
 ninda." 
 
 There was another crash, as the conterra descended 
 again, and the splintered shutter fell inwards, letting 
 in the sunlight. Framed in the shattered woodwork, 
 Moira saw the hideous face of the black, with low re- 
 ceding forehead, broad flattened nose, and wide cruel 
 mouth. There was something in Naringa 's expression 
 that made him look more hideous than before an appal- 
 ling glare of ferocity and savage passion. 
 
 "Bakkooi nan-nomba ninda." He shouted it at her 
 victoriously now. The window was smashed, and the 
 shutters were in pieces. Naringa, leaving his waddy 
 behind him on the verandah, threw himself into the 
 opening and began to climb into the room. As he 
 placed one hand on the window ledge Moira struck. 
 The heavy meat chopper fell on the black's forearm, 
 shearing down through the muscles and cleaving half 
 way through the bone. The chopper stuck in the bone. 
 Moira could not withdraw it, though she tugged fran- 
 tically, while the black's yell of rage and pain rang
 
 86 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 in her ears. As Naringa fell back on the verandah, 
 the chopper went with him. 
 
 Pulling out the chopper with his left hand, the in- 
 furiated black hurled himself at the window a second 
 time. He would kill the white Mary for that blow. 
 He would kill her, but first 
 
 The distorted black face, with gleaming white eye- 
 balls and strong teeth, bared like the teeth of a wild 
 animal, came through the window. Naringa was half 
 way into the room. In another second he would have 
 his unwounded hand on the white Mary. 
 
 Ah! that stopped him. Moira hurled the bucket of 
 boiling water in his t'ace, blinding him and scalding 
 him. His eyeballs were scarred by the awful heat. Na- 
 ringa fell back in agony on the verandah, groping 
 blindly with his hands He would never see the sun- 
 light again. Moira realised that from him, at any 
 rate, she was safe. 
 
 She stood there with the empty iron bucket still 
 in her hand, shaking life a leaf. Her dark hair had 
 fallen down, covering her white face, but her eyes look- 
 ed out, shining and triumphant. She had conquered 
 an unimaginable fate. 
 
 But even as she looked through the window, the light 
 of triumph died out of her eyes, and they were filled 
 with grey despair. Bremeba and the bucks had heard 
 Naringa 's yell. They were rushing upon the house. 
 She saw them armed, naked, and terrible. 
 
 Whish! A spear flew through the window and 
 buried itself quivering in the wall behind the girl. 
 Moira dropped on her knees and prayed. Well death 
 would be swift, at any rate. She closed her eyes. 
 
 Was that the drumming of blood in her eyes? Or 
 was it the thunder of the hoofs of galloping horses? 
 
 She heard shouts of alarm and warning from the 
 blacks, who were calling to each other. They had al- 
 most reached the house. The drumming sound came 
 louder and nearer. Moira could hear it plainly now. 
 It was the sound of horses going at racing pace.
 
 "BAKKOOI NAN.NOMBA NINDA" 87 
 
 The window was darkened once more. A blackfel- 
 low, club in hand, was already on the verandah. As 
 he put his leg over the window ledge a gun spoke quite 
 close at hand, and the window was clear again. Be- 
 side Naringa, who was still groping and muttering in 
 blindness and agony, lay another of Bremeba's bucks 
 dead, with the side of his head blown off by a charge 
 of slugs. 
 
 "Moira! Moira! You're safe now," said a voice that 
 thrilled the girl to the soul. It was the voice of Syd 
 Verner. 
 
 ' ' Thank God we were in time ! ' ' cried Tom, ' ' but stay 
 where you are, Moira. Don't come out yet." 
 
 She looked through the window, and saw the two 
 brothers sitting on their steaming horses, gun in hand. 
 A heavy stockwhip hung on the saddle in front of each 
 of them. Fifty yards away, the bucks stood irresolute, 
 hesitating whether to fight or fly. Bremeba stood in 
 front of them, carrying the white man's thunder-stick 
 across his arm. 
 
 He spoke passionate words to his followers. He point- 
 ed to the white men, and held up two fingers to indi- 
 cate the insignificance of the enemy. He pointed to 
 the gun that he carried on his arm. The bucks bran- 
 dished their waddies and stamped their feet. They 
 shouted yells of defiance. 
 
 Still Tom and Syd sat there on their horses. Moira 
 could not take her eyes from them. 
 
 For Bremeba the longed-for moment of his life had 
 at last arrived. He would slay the white man with 
 the white man's own weapon, and be famous forever in 
 the tribe. He raised old Ben's gun to his shoulder, 
 and exactly at that moment, the two brothers dropped 
 their guns and charged. 
 
 Bremeba pulled both triggers of old Ben's gun. The 
 percussion caps exploded but nothing else, the gun 
 having been loaded with the shot first, instead of the 
 powder. The black hurled the gun to the ground in 
 disgust. The white man's gun was evidently inhabited
 
 88 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 by an evil devil. It would wound a blackfellow of its 
 own accord, but it refused to destroy a white man, 
 even when it was treated with the utmost respect. 
 Bremeba's faith in the weapon, of which he had fondly 
 hoped so much, was shattered for ever. He seized his 
 "conterra," the nubbly war club that had never played 
 him false, and, with heart aflame, awaited the onset of 
 the white men. 
 
 Behind him stamped the buckeeners, armed with spear 
 and club and shield. Their savage war-cry was flung 
 out on the wind. They chanted the death of their 
 enemies, whose kidney-fat they would tear from the 
 quivering bodies and leave the remains to be eaten by 
 the black eaglehawks. 
 
 In the midst of their chant the whirlwind struck them. 
 
 Riding wide apart, Tom and Syd galloped straight 
 at the vaunting blacks. Each of the riders grasped a 
 heavy stockwhip, with a twenty feet thong of plaited 
 rawhide, in his right hand. The bridles lay on the 
 horses' necks, the riders guiding them with knee and 
 heel. 
 
 Tom and Syd preferred to rely altogether on the 
 stockwhips. They were adepts in the use of those ter- 
 rible weapons, which would cut strips from the hide 
 and flesh of the toughest bullock, if the wielders wished 
 to be severe. As they galloped straight at the buckeen- 
 ers, the long, murderous thongs flashed through the 
 air, cracking like machine guns. At each crack a strip 
 of black hide flew from the body of a shrieking savage, 
 who a few moments earlier had been gloating over the 
 prospect of the death and mutilation of the white man. 
 
 The mode of attack which was adopted by Tom and 
 Syd completely demoralised the buckeeners. Against 
 those terrible lightning strokes all defence was vain. 
 The two young men wielded their weapons with a dex- 
 terity that was almost demoniacal. Swinging the heavy 
 stockwhip with his right hand, the rider would cut 
 hide and flesh from one would-be murderer, and then, 
 carrying on the swing, would pass the stock like a
 
 "BAKKOOI NAN-NOMBA NINDA" 89 
 
 flash to his left hand, and come back with a reverse 
 stroke that hit the body of the next man with the force 
 and shock of an explosive bullet. Tom attacking on 
 the right, and Syd on the left, had the blacks between 
 two fires. They proceeded quite literally to cut them 
 to pieces. The thought of Moira at the mercy of the 
 buckeeners added fury to every stroke. 
 
 The blacks were full of wild courage. They would 
 stand foot to foot against a foe and submit to be bat- 
 tered to death with the "conterra," rather than yield 
 an inch. But the stockwhip was a new and unheard 
 of terror. Those agonising strokes that made the blood 
 spurt in fountains and laid bare the quivering nerves, 
 paralysed their will power. Flinging down shield and 
 spear and waddy, they made a mad bolt for the bush, 
 realising that once they reached the thick timber they 
 would be safe. 
 
 Moira was out on the verandah now, watching the 
 extraordinary scene. Tom and Syd dealt with the buck- 
 eeners exactly as they were accustomed to deal with a 
 mob of wild scrub cattle. Galloping round the moK 
 they headed them back from the timber with terriblr 
 volleys from the rawhide thongs, that never fell with- 
 out searing a black body and leaving a long red gash 
 on it. Individual blacks would break away in frantic 
 attempts to gain the shelter of the timber, but either 
 Tom or Syd, with a stockwhip instead of a flaming 
 sword, was always ready to hurl them back. And then 
 the riders would charge at full gallop, and flog the fugi- 
 tives back into the mob, knocking the blacks over like 
 ninepins and distributing a crackling fire of stockwhip 
 strokes as they passed. Wheeling their horses round, 
 they would charge back again, repeating the operation 
 until at last very few of the buckeeners were left stand- 
 ing. 
 
 When almost tired out with inflicting this tremendous 
 punishment, the two brothers rounded up the harried 
 and bleeding remainder of the savages, who had set 
 out to massacre the inhabitants of Pretty Plains. Tom
 
 90 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CKOSS 
 
 and Syd drove the remnant in front of them with many 
 a scarring stroke and flogged them with a last furious 
 volley into the cover of the timber. Half a dozen blacks, 
 including Bremeba, had been killed outright, having 
 been galloped on by the horses as well as slashed by the 
 stockwhips. The remainder crept away into the shel- 
 ter of the timber and sought their camp in the far re- 
 cesses of the bush, where the women waited to dress 
 their wounds. 
 
 It was a terrific punishment but think of Moira's 
 fate, if Tom and Syd had not reached the homestead 
 in time! Also, it was an effective punishment, for 
 never was a wild black seen on Pretty Plains Station 
 again. 
 
 As the two young men, with blood on their stock- 
 whips, and their horses dripping with foam, rode up 
 to the homestead and slid from their saddles to the 
 ground, the white-faced girl Pottered out upon the 
 verandah, descended the three steps that led to the 
 ground, and came towards the brothers, swaying from 
 side to side as though every moment she would fall. 
 
 Tom and Syd both ran to meet her as she came on 
 with outstretched arms. Tom was a few paces in ad- 
 vance. Moira did not seem to see him. With her white 
 face showing through her dark, dishevelled hair, she 
 stumbled past Tom and made straight for Syd. 
 
 Never a word she said, but, walking up to Syd, threw 
 her arms about his neck, and burst into tears. Her 
 spirit had sustained her during the crisis. Now that 
 the imminent deadly danger was past, overwrought na- 
 ture protested against the strain. The girl broke down 
 utterly and sobbed without restraint upon Syd's shoul- 
 der. 
 
 "Oh my love! my love!" she murmured. " Thank 
 God, you were just in time to save me." 
 
 The words were uttered in a voice that was scarcely 
 more than a whisper, but Tom heard them, and a blind- 
 ing revelation flashed upon his brain. 
 
 Moira loved his brother Syd little Syd, whom he
 
 "BAKKOOI NAN-NOMBA NINDA" 91 
 
 had cherished and protected from babyhood! It was 
 a staggering blow. But Tom had the blood of a sol- 
 dier in his veins. He could face the inevitable and 
 even smile though palely. He stretched out his hand 
 to Moira and held her hand in his for a moment. ' ' I 'm 
 thankful that we got here in time to hunt off those 
 black devils, Moira," he said, lightly; "but I don't 
 think that they will annoy you again. Come along into 
 the house and make us a cup of tea. I declare I'm dead 
 beat." 
 
 Moira looked at him gratefully. 
 
 She understood.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE BECKONING OF THE STABS. 
 
 They went into the homestead. 
 
 Naringa, scalded and blinded, had groped his way 
 out from the verandah and had departed, taking with 
 him the dead body of the black who had been shot in 
 the act of climbing through the window. The brothers 
 surveyed the scene in the kitchen with astonishment 
 the smashed window panes, and splintered shutters, the 
 door into the passage still barricaded by the heavy 
 dresser, the cauldron on the log fire and the empty iron 
 bucket standing beside it. Moira told them rapidly 
 what she had done. 
 
 ' ' By the Lord, Moira, ' ' said Tom, with honest admira- 
 tion, "you are a brave girl." 
 
 "It was dear old Tom who saved you, Moira," said 
 Syd, with a sudden burst of candour, for he could not 
 bear to sail under false colours. "It was he who raced 
 all the way to get to you in time. He even left Billy 
 and the young mare struggling in the watercourse ra- 
 ther than stay to help them out. And he reached the 
 homestead just in time to bring down the buck who 
 was getting through the window. It was a long shot, 
 too and a good job that he did not miss it." 
 
 Moira came straight over to where Tom was sitting, 
 and kissed him on the forehead. "Tom," she said, 
 with a quiver in her voice, "I believe you are the 
 noblest-hearted man alive." 
 
 " 'Pon my soul, Moira, you'll spoil me if I stay here," 
 said Tom, cheerily. He rose to go. "Hullo," he said, 
 "there's Billy at last. I'll go and see what has hap- 
 pened to him." 
 
 92
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE STARS 93 
 
 Tom walked just a little unsteadily towards the 
 door, leaving Syd and Moira sitting side by side in 
 the room that had so lately been besieged. The long 
 spear that had been hurled by one of the bucks was 
 still sticking in the wall opposite the window. Tom 
 walked out of Moira 's house, and in the same moment, 
 as he confessed to his desolate heart, out of her life 
 also, leaving his brother Syd the much-loved, constant- 
 ly-protected "little Syd" of long ago in full posses- 
 sion. ^ 
 
 The boy Billy, with his round eyes goggling with ex- 
 citement and alarm, was leading the leg-weary mare to 
 the shed that served as a stable. She had had more than 
 enough galloping for one day. He told Tom his story. 
 He had walked the mare three miles along the bed 
 of the watercourse before he reached a place where he 
 and the mare could climb out. Then he had made the 
 best of his way to the homestead, keeping a sharp look- 
 out for the blacks all the time. 
 
 "You did not see wot they done to old Ben, Mr. 
 Tom," said Billy, in a shaky voice. "Me t'roat gets 
 like the sole of me boot when I thinks of it." 
 
 Tom was still talking to Billy when Con Burke him- 
 self rode up. He had been away to the far end of the 
 run, and he was staggered to hear of the attack by 
 the blacks, and of Moira 's narrow escape. He ran off 
 to the homestead to see Moira, and to learn her ex- 
 periences from her own lips. 
 
 "Come along, Moira," he said, when she had finished 
 her thrilling story, sitting beside Syd Verner and hold- 
 ing his hand, "let's all ride over to Coonara, and tell 
 Mr. Verner. He will be anxious to hear what has hap- 
 pened. Our three men came back with me, from the 
 out-paddocks, and they can look after the homestead 
 while we are away. I don't fancy the blacks will come 
 near the place again after the tremendous lesson that 
 they have had." 
 
 So the two Verners and Con and Moira all rode off 
 together in the cool of the evening, heading for Coo-
 
 94 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 nara. But Moira rode beside Syd, and what they talk- 
 ed about Con Burke did not know, because he was too 
 far in front of them to hear. 
 
 But Tom Verner, who rode beside Con, could make a 
 good guess. He was a silent companion during the 
 long ride, for he was revolving a great plan in his 
 mind. 
 
 When they reached Coonara it was dark. Henry 
 Yerner was sitting with Juana and Aileen on the veran- 
 dah, waiting anxiously for their return. He had his 
 gun across his knees. He heard the sound of canter- 
 ing hoofs, and coo-eed vigorously. Tom and Syd both 
 sent back a cheery answer, and in a few minutes the 
 stirring tale of the day's adventures was being told 
 again by Moira, with interpolations from Tom and Syd. 
 
 Aileen sat next to Con Burke, and Moira sat next to 
 Syd, but Tom stood up by himself, and looked out into 
 the sky a dark blue velvet sky sprinkled with dia- 
 monds. His gaze was fixed on the Southern Cross, low 
 down near the horizon. 
 
 The points of fire were beckoning to him. 
 
 Con Burke and his sister Moira gladly accepted 
 Juana 's invitation to stay the night at Coonara, and, 
 wearied out by the excitement of the day, the young 
 people retired to rest soon after supper but Tom still 
 stood on the verandah, gazing at the Southern Cross, 
 which was calling to him. 
 
 Juana came to him and took him by the hand. ' ' Tom, 
 dear," she said, "you are unhappy, and I know the 
 reason. I am so sorry, for you, my own dear lad." 
 
 So Tom told her everything in his simple, straight- 
 forward way. It was true that he loved Moira, but 
 Syd loved her too; and in the soul-revealing crisis 
 brought about by the attack of the buckeeners Moira 's 
 love for Syd was disclosed with staggering clearness. 
 
 "But what then will you do, my Tom," asked Juana, 
 with tears in her eyes. 
 
 "I am going away from home, mother," said Tom,
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE STARS 95 
 
 "for a little while, at any rate. Afterwards, if all goes 
 well, I will come back to you." 
 
 "But where will you go, my Tom?" asked Juana, 
 in sad bewilderment. She dreaded the thought of losing 
 her eldest son, who was born amid the rattle of the 
 guns, at Toulouse. 
 
 "I am going yonder," said Tom, pointing south- 
 ward, where the starry cross lay close to the horizon. I 
 am going down to that fine new country in the south. 
 I am going to Port Phillip." 
 
 When Henry Verner came out to bring Juana in 
 from the verandah Tom told him everything, and Ver- 
 ner, who felt a strong bond of sympathy uniting him 
 with the son who had been born at the close of that great 
 campaign of long ago, reluctantly consented. 
 
 Cheerily next morning Tom set about preparing for 
 his departure. 
 
 But first the three young men had to perform a 
 solemn duty. The dead body of old Ben still lay in 
 the hut unburied. 
 
 So Con Burke and Tom and Syd Verner, taking tools 
 and spades with them, drove down to the old shepherd's 
 hut and made a rough bush coffin of sawn wood. They 
 placed in it the body of the victim of the buckeeners, 
 and dug a grave close by on the bank of Lewis Ponds 
 Creek. There they buried him, and Henry Verner, 
 with Juana, and Aileen and Moira Burke, came and 
 stood by the grave. Henry Verner read a prayer, and 
 the three young men fired a volley from their shotguns 
 over the last resting place of the old shepherd. 
 
 But even in death old Ben was not destined to remain 
 undisturbed. There came a day when strangers were 
 to invade his solitude and rudely move his bones. 
 
 When the bush funeral was over Tom announced 
 to all that he intended to make a trip to the new settle- 
 ment down in the south. Tales of Mitchell's wonderful 
 journey to Portland, where he found the Hentys on 
 their prosperous station, had already penetrated to 
 Bathurst, and stories of the settlement that Batman
 
 96 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 and Fawkner had founded on the banks of the Yarra, 
 and of the rich land that was to be obtained down 
 south almost for nothing, flew from lip to lip. 
 
 Tom spoke sturdily of the magnificent prospects at 
 Port Phillip, and Syd never dreamt for a moment that 
 his brother's love for Moira was the real cause of his 
 hurried departure. Deep down in her heart Moira 
 knew the reason of the sudden resolve, but she kept her 
 own counsel. She never told Syd. What would be the 
 use. Henry Verner and Juana talked the matter over 
 together, and came to the same conclusion. 
 
 When Tom left the beautiful home where he had 
 spent so many happy years and started for Sydney to 
 take passage there in the schooner Stella for Port Phil- 
 lip, he said good-bye bravely enough to his father and 
 mother and sister Aileen, assuring them that he would 
 soon return. But the parting from Syd was harder. 
 Both the brothers were strongly moved. Their lives 
 were linked together by ties of daily companionship 
 and closest intimacy. Recollections of the past rushed 
 to the minds of both recollections of events in which 
 Tom was always the helper and Syd the helped. And 
 now they had to part at last. 
 
 "Cheer up, Syd, old boy," said Tom, with the old 
 protecting look in his eyes. It won't be long before 
 we meet again. Say good-bye for me to Moira. So 
 long, dear lad. I'm leaving you to look after the old 
 folks till I come back again." 
 
 And then he went away, but the real reason of his 
 going Syd Verner did not find out until long after- 
 wards. 
 
 As Tom Verner said good-bye to his brother and 
 rode off on the first stage of his journey, lured by the 
 beckoning of the Southern Cross, a strange scene was 
 being enacted, in a lonely Californian valley, through 
 which flowed the Sacramento River. Snow lay deep 
 on the ground. An icy blast whistled down the valley. 
 On a rough bunk in a tattered tent, an old man lay 
 dying. He had left the sunshine of Australia for the
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE STABS 97 
 
 snows of the Sierra. Pneumonia had seized him in its 
 deadly grip. 
 
 "Bend down your ear, Mr. Hargraves," he whis- 
 pered, huskily; "there's something I want to tell you 
 before I die." 
 
 "You're not going to die yet awhile, Jim," said the 
 other man, cheerily, making an effort to reassure the 
 sufferer. But Jim was under no delusion. 
 
 "I'm sent for all right, Mr. Hargraves," he whisper- 
 ed. ' ' But listen. We 've got no gold in this God-forsaken 
 valley. We'd have done better if we had stayed at 
 home in our own country. There's plenty of gold with- 
 in gunshot of the old place on the Bathurst Plains. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Poor old Jim ! His brain is wandering, ' ' said Har- 
 graves to himself, and the dying man read the unspoken 
 words in his face. 
 
 "No, Mr. Hargraves," muttered Jim. "My memory 
 is quite clear. Before I came over here with you I 
 found gold myself in New South Wales. I never told 
 anyone, but I'm going to tell you now." His face was 
 quite blue. He could hardly speak. Hargraves poured 
 a little brandy into a cup and moistened the dying 
 man's lips with it. 
 
 "Where was the place, Jim? Where was the place?" 
 
 Old Jim half raised himself on his elbow. He point- 
 ed Southward, with extended arm. "Down south," 
 he muttered, with a last effort. "Down south, under 
 the Southern Cross. At the meeting of Lewis Ponds 
 Creek and Summerhill Creek. You know the spot, Mr. 
 Hargraves. You know the spot, where the two boys of 
 Mr. Verner's used to play long ago." 
 
 Old Jim, the shepherd who had gone with Edward 
 Hammond Hargraves from New South Wales to Cali- 
 fornia in the great rush of the "forty-niners," fell back 
 dead ; but his dying words to Hargraves set in motion 
 a train of great events that brought Tom Verner and 
 his well-loved brother Syd together again at last, though 
 far from the old home of their boyhood. 
 
 D
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 GOLD-FEVER BREAKS OUT. 
 
 Tom's letters came to Coonara very irregularly, for 
 the mails were few and far between in those days. 
 He wrote that the new settlement at Port Phillip was 
 experiencing a wave of depression, and that many 
 people were leaving the country. He had decided not 
 to take up any land for the present. And then one 
 day there came a letter to his father, in which Tom said 
 that he had yielded at last to his old craving to be 
 a soldier. He had enlisted in the 40th Regiment. 
 
 ' ' As you were a soldier yourself, father, ' ' wrote Tom, 
 "you will understand how I have always loved the 
 army. I can never forget that I was born on the march. 
 Tell mother not to grieve for me, because I am very 
 happy here now, and I like the life so much that I 
 have no desire to leave it." 
 
 "I always felt, my Henry," said Juana, as she read 
 the letter again and again, dwelling with loving eyes on 
 the handwriting of her eldest son, "that Tom would 
 turn soldier in the end. The rattle of the drums was 
 in his blood, I think. Shall I ever forget that long 
 march, on my little white burro, all the way from Vit- 
 toria to Toulouse, where Tom was born on the last day 
 of the war." 
 
 "Indeed, it seems like destiny," said Henry Verner. 
 "Tom would always leave everything and everybody 
 to watch the soldiers. I was like that myself once, so 
 I can hardly wonder at him. I warrant that he will 
 be a good soldier, too, and a brave one. Cheer up, 
 Juana, dearest. We will go down to Melbourne and see 
 him in the spring." 
 
 98
 
 GOLD-FEVER BREAKS OUT 99 
 
 But they did not go to Melbourne in the spring, 
 because great events happened almost at their doors, 
 and they stayed to watch the surging flood of humanity 
 that swept over the country, destroying old landmarks 
 and threatening to sweep away their second son upon 
 its raging flood. 
 
 The new era in Australia was ushered in by a long, 
 dry summer of unprecedented heat, and on the 6th of 
 February came Black Thursday, when the greater part 
 of New South Wales and Victoria was on fire, and when 
 thousands of head of stock and not a few hapless human 
 beings who were caught and cut off perished in the 
 flames. 
 
 A few days later, as Syd was riding through the coun- 
 try, that bordered upon Henry Verner's property, 
 pointing out to Moira Burke, who rode beside him, the 
 ravages caused by the bush fires, he came with his com- 
 panion to Lewis Ponds Creek. And there was the very 
 pool almost dried up now after the long, hot summer, 
 into which he had fallen when he was a small boy, and 
 from which Tom had saved him, diving for him after 
 he had sunk. Sydney Verner told the story again to 
 Moira, and Moira 's eyes filled with tears. Dearly as 
 she loved Syd, she could never forget that chivalrous 
 elder brother, who had saved her from the buckeeners 
 and who went away, from his home when he found that 
 her love was not for him, but for Syd. 
 
 As Syd and Moira rode along the bank of Lewis 
 Ponds Creek, deep in their thoughts, they became aware 
 of a tall man with grizzled hair and beard, who stood 
 in the bed of the creek, attended by a lad, whom they 
 recognised as the son of the landlady of the little inn 
 at Guyong. The tall man had a tin pan in his hand. 
 He was washing the clay from the bed of the creek in 
 it, and pouring off the dissolved clay and water with 
 a circular motion that presently got rid of all the 
 contents of the dish, leaving it quite empty. 
 
 No, not quite! 
 
 A residuum of shining, yellow grains lay at the bot-
 
 100 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 torn of the tin dish. Syd could see it quite plainly from 
 the top of the bank. 
 
 "Hullo, Mr. Hargraves. Where have you been for 
 the last couple of years, and what are you doing down 
 there in the creek?" 
 
 The tall, grizzled man looked up with a smile. ' ' Ha ! 
 Verner. I see you've caught me fairly. I've been away 
 in California, looking for gold; and now I find that it 
 was here* in abundance all the time, close to my old 
 home and yours." He carefully scraped the yellow 
 grains out of the tin dish and placed them in a small 
 glass bottle, which was already half full of gold dust. 
 "This is a red-letter day for Australia. I shall be a 
 baronet. This lad, who has acted as my guide, will be 
 knighted, and my old horse grazing over there will be 
 stuffed and sent to the British Museum." 
 
 Gold! 
 
 The fever of it leaped into Syd Verner 's veins. Slid- 
 ing from his horse, he questioned Hargraves breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 "I reached Sydney from San Francisco only last 
 month, in the barque Emma," said Hargraves. "I was 
 in California for more than a year. I've been up in 
 San Joaquin and to the Sierras on the Sacramento 
 
 and the Feather River and the Yuba. I put in a h 1 
 
 of a time there travelled hundreds of miles, been at- 
 tacked by grizzly bears, been nearly frozen to death, 
 been within a coo-ee of starvation many a time. But 
 I found gold, and I saw the lie of the country slates, 
 quartz, granite, and red soil, just the same as here. 
 That's why I came back. And now I've got it, I've 
 got it, I've got it!" 
 
 He executed a wild war dance in the bed of the Lewis 
 Ponds Creek, and Moira watched him with amazement. 
 She watched Syd with amazement, too. He was com- 
 pletely enthralled by Hargreaves and his story. All 
 the way back to the homestead Syd talked of Hargraves 
 and the gold that lay in the drift of the creek bed. 
 
 Hargraves returned with his guide to Guyong the
 
 GOLD-FEVER BREAKS OUT 101 
 
 same night, and wrote a report of his discovery to Mr. 
 Deas Thomson, the Colonial Secretary; but he was back 
 at the creek next day, and Syd Verner joined the little 
 knot of men who began pan-washing under his direc- 
 tions. Syd had the gold fever very badly indeed. He 
 attached himself to Hargraves and went with him, and 
 the two local youths who accompanied him as guides 
 Lister, the son of the landlady at Guyong; and James 
 Tom on a prospecting trip down the Summerhill 
 Creek, all the way to its junction with the Macquarie. 
 They got gold almost everywhere along the creek. 
 
 Then Hargraves tried the Macquarie River itself. He 
 got gold there, too. Ascending the tableland from the 
 Macquarie with him, Syd Verner could see the Turon 
 Mountains in the distance. 
 
 Thither he travelled with young Lister and James 
 Tom, and returning to the Macquarie, found Hargraves 
 there, and reported to him that his prediction was ful- 
 filled. There was gold on the Turon; they brought a 
 few ounces back with them in proof. 
 
 Mr. Deas Thomson sent up Mr. Stutchbury, the Gov- 
 ernment Geologist, to see Hargraves, and examine into 
 the genuineness of his alleged discoveries. Mr. Stutch- 
 bury arrived, and Syd Verner watched him dig out a 
 pan full of "dirt" from a spot in the bed of the Lewis 
 Ponds Creek within a few yards of the site of the 
 original discovery. Mr. Stutchbury washed the dirt 
 in the pan and got good gold. He repeated the opera- 
 tion several times at different places in the Summer 
 Hill Creek and the Lewis Ponds Creek, and almost in- 
 variably found gold in the pan. 
 
 The genuineness of the discovery was assured, and the 
 rush was not long in coming. 
 
 Oh ! those wild months in the bitter winter of 1851, 
 when men began to stream over the Blue Mountains 
 from every part of Australia and from every country 
 in the world to Ophir and Tarshish so named by Har- 
 graves in search of the yellow metal, for which many 
 of them bartered life and even desecrated death.
 
 It was in the early days of the Ophir rush that the 
 bones of old Ben, the shepherd, who had been killed 
 by the buckeeners, were rudely disturbed. Both banks 
 of the creek were taken up for several miles, and a 
 party of Italians had pegged out a claim which included 
 the area upon which stood the shepherd's grave. They 
 sunk a shaft down through loose earth, which had evi- 
 dently been previously excavated, and to their amaze- 
 ment came upon a rough coffin of slabs. Pietro's pick 
 went through the lid of the coffin, and disclosed the 
 face of the corpse. Pietro was horribly frightened, and 
 scrambled out of the hole as fast as he could, but Gui- 
 seppe, who was working the cradle, insisted that the 
 occurrence of a corpse in a claim was an indication of 
 extraordinary luck. After hauling out the coffin by 
 means of their windlass, the Italians continued digging, 
 and bottomed on the clay a couple of feet below the 
 dead man's resting place. They took out seventy ounces 
 of gold from the ground under the coffin, chiefly in 
 the form of small slugs and waterworn nuggets. 
 
 If Tom and Henry Verner had excavated the ground 
 a couple of feet deeper when digging a grave for 
 old Ben, they must have found this "jeweller's shop," 
 and won the fame that so soon afterwards was reaped by 
 Hargraves. 
 
 As for old Ben, it mattered nothing to him. The 
 Italians replaced the coffin, and the corpse that it con- 
 tained, after they had cleaned up the pocket of nuggets, 
 and then they filled in the excavated ground again. 
 Possibly old Ben's last sleep was disturbed by a swiftly- 
 passing dream a dream of dark faces and flashing eyes 
 and joyful exclamations. But that was all. He could 
 turn to his rest again with the long, long night of eter- 
 nity before him. 
 
 So Verner surrendered himself to the frenzy of the 
 time. Dazzled by the golden gleam he gave up father 
 and mother and sister, and even Moira Burke, his be- 
 loved, to follow it. He followed it to the Turon, to 
 the Abercrombie, and to half a dozen different rushes
 
 GOLD-FEVER BREAKS OUT 103 
 
 on the Macquarie. He found a little gold just enough 
 to whet his fierce craving for more. 
 
 Disappointed diggers began to stream back over the 
 Blue Mountains, cursing Hargraves as the author of 
 their miseries. Syd Verner went with them, for he 
 had heard wild tales of fabulously rich discoveries in 
 Victoria at Clunes and Anderson's Creek, at Mount 
 Alexander, at Buninyong. 
 
 Camping with the friendly owner of a bullock wag- 
 gon at Mount Vittoria that place which was named 
 after the battlefield in Spain, where his father and his 
 mother had first met many years before Sydney Verner 
 climbed a great rock by the side of the track and looked 
 out into the night. Mount Vittoria is the highest point 
 on the Blue Mountains a natural observatory. His 
 gaze travelled far through the starlit sky. 
 
 On the winding road were long lines of twinkling 
 camp fires, lit by diggers seeking or returning from the 
 land of their golden hopes. But in the midnight sky, 
 far off and low on the horizon to the southward, burned 
 the four great stars of the Southern Cross, the beacon 
 that had beckoned Sir Thomas Brisbane to New South 
 Wales with the alluring promise that he would be the 
 first astronomer to chart the southern heavens, the ce- 
 lestial wonder that Tom and little Syd had examined 
 through the big telescope in Governor Brisbane's Ob- 
 servatory at Parramatta, under Mr. James Dunlop's 
 direction, the constellation that had already summoned 
 Tom southward, with its pointing finger, to Port Phil- 
 lip. 
 
 Syd Verner saw the four great stars that he knew 
 so well white stars blazing against the deep, dark blue 
 and he made up his mind there and then to follow 
 them. There came into his mind the memory of the 
 "Jewel Cluster," that Mr. Dunlop had spoken of, just 
 above that second great white star, called Beta Crucis. 
 He could not see the "Jewel Cluster" with the naked 
 eye, but he knew that it was there. "Where there were 
 jewels there must be gold. Syd Verner dreamed that
 
 104 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 he would find it, if he followed those stars that called 
 him southward. 
 
 When he reached the city of Sydney he wrote to his 
 father and mother, telling them of his resolve. His 
 gold-digging at Ophir and on the Turon had already 
 provided him with enough money for his enterprise. 
 He wrote to Moira, too, assuring her of his love, and 
 promising to return to her very soon with his fortune 
 made. 
 
 Moira read the letter with a gesture of sadness and 
 disappointment. How happy she had been before gold 
 was found in the Lewis Ponds Creeks. The last few 
 months had brought pain and disillusion. What was 
 gold compared with love? And now the gleam of the 
 gold had lured her lover from her side altogether. He 
 was going away to seek it in distant Victoria. The 
 perils that awaited him there she could only dimly 
 guess. But of one thing at least she could be sure. 
 If he met his brother, Tom, over there, Tom would 
 protect him from danger. He had always done so 
 since they were children. He would do so again if 
 the occasion ever arose for her sake as well as for the 
 sake of "little Syd." Of that she was well assured. 
 
 So she went to look for Aileen, and in comforting 
 her to assuage the sting of her own grief. Aileen was 
 very unhappy, too, for Con Burke, after asking her 
 to be his wife, had succumbed to the gold fever, and 
 had gone away to Turon. Since his departure Moira 
 had been staying with the Verners at Coonara, leaving 
 Pretty Plains to be looked after by the overseer. She 
 could not stay at the homestead by herself, and the 
 kindly hearted Juana insisted that she should stay at 
 Coonara until Con returned. The two girls consoled 
 each other as best they could, and earnestly wished 
 every day of their lives that the madness of the gold 
 fever had never invaded their homes, and lured their 
 lovers awav from them.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 DIGGERS IN MELBOURNE. 
 
 The sailing vessel that Syd Verner took passage in 
 for Port Phillip was a slow and unwieldy little tub 
 greatly overcrowded with diggers. She took three weeks 
 to make the voyage to Hobson's Bay, which was thick 
 with masts, as she came up the South Channel and 
 dropped anchor off Williamstown. 
 
 When Syd Verner and a party of his shipmates at 
 last reached Melbourne, after a tiresome journey along 
 the bank of the Yarra, which was crowded with traffic, 
 they found the town fairly humming with excitement. 
 Although Syd was familiar with the diggings in New 
 South Wales, the roaring life of the city was quite new 
 to him, and he felt uneasily with his fingers for the belt 
 that he wore under his shirt the belt that carried all 
 his money. He wore the customary dress of the diggers 
 cabbage tree hat, blue flannel shirt, and moleskins. 
 
 Reaching the foot of Queen Street, he paused oppo- 
 site "Rag Fair," the al fresco bazaar where immigrants 
 were selling their varied and incongruous possessions 
 set out on the turned back lids of their sea chests. Cash 
 was the one thing needful cash to buy picks and 
 cradles for the diggings and flour and stores to support 
 life until the expected fortune was acquired. Syd 
 bought a first-rate London-made double-barrelled gun 
 for 5 from an anxious immigrant, and also a big Ameri- 
 can six-shooter. There was no telling what emergen- 
 cies might be met with. 
 
 The great rush that had set in from the Turon, as well 
 as from other places to Ballarat, included for the most 
 part a good class of diggers, law-abiding men who had 
 
 105
 
 106 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 no sympathy with the disorderly element, but Syd Ver- 
 ner had not been in Melbourne many hours before he 
 heard stories of the outrages committed by the Van 
 Demonians ex-convicts from Van Diemen's Land, who 
 roamed the country, plundering the diggers of their 
 stores on the way to the goldfields, and robbing them 
 of their gold as they returned. It was very necessary 
 to be well armed against these assailants, and also 
 against the rough element in the city. 
 
 Lieutenant-Governor Latrobe, who was charged with 
 the onerous duty of administering the newly-constitut- 
 ed colony of Victoria in the early part of the gold-dis- 
 covery period, was almost in despair owing to the 
 wholesale defections among the police, who joined in 
 the rush to the diggings, leaving the whole place so 
 utterly unprotected that in January of 1852 he penned 
 an urgent despatch to the Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies, asking for military aid. The aid was forth- 
 coming. 
 
 The indignation at the imposition of license fees was 
 already breaking out among the diggers, but Latrobe 
 was in ar very- difficult predicament. If he inforced 
 the license fees he irritated the section which was 
 rapidly becoming the largest part of the population, 
 but if he relinquished the licenses he had no means 
 of carrying on the Government of the goldfields. The 
 New South Wales Government had already adopted the 
 license system at the Turon and Macquarie River dig- 
 gings in accordance with the opinion of the law officers, 
 who advised that the Crown had an indefeasible right 
 to all gold found in public or private lands. In order 
 to preserve the rights of the Crown, and to obtain re- 
 venue, they recommended the issue of monthly licenses, 
 empowering the holders to dig for gold; these licenses 
 being regarded officially not as taxation, but as rent. 
 A similar form of license for Victoria was promulgated 
 by Latrobe in August, 1851. Mr. Latrobe upheld his 
 view, but it turned out in the long run to be an un- 
 tenable one.
 
 DIGGERS IN MELBOURNE 107 
 
 Syd Verner was one of those who took a share in de- 
 monstrating that it was not in accordance with public 
 opinion in a democratic community, and was therefore 
 doomed to fail, but this demonstration was not effected 
 without an outburst that at one critical period came 
 near to wrecking the authority of the Crown, at any 
 rate, temporarily, in one of the most important regions 
 of Australia. 
 
 With those stirring events of the old digging days, 
 the lives and loves and fortunes of the Verner family, 
 and particularly of the two brothers, Tom and Syd, 
 were interwoven in a most strange and fateful man- 
 ner. 
 
 In those first hours of Syd Verner 's brief sojourn in 
 Melbourne, he was dominated by one impulse and mas- 
 ter passion. The gold-hunger had temporarily driven 
 out every other emotion. Even his thoughts of Tom 
 and his memories of Moira became dim and indistinct 
 in comparison with the urgent impulse to form a party, 
 acquire the necessary equipment, and undertake the 
 toilsome journey to the new diggings at Ballarat. 
 
 So, with his four shipmates, all of whom he had 
 met and worked with on the Turon, Syd walked up 
 Queen Street with the immigrant's revolver in his belt 
 and the immigrant's double-barrelled gun in his hand, 
 and stared in bewilderment at the tumultuous life that 
 surged through the roaring city. The streets were 
 crowded with wheeled vehicles, bullock drays, and horse 
 drays that churned up the roadway, so that the fierce 
 north wind blew thick clouds of dust down towards the 
 river, on the opposite side of which he could see the 
 white tents of Canvas Town. The sidewalks were filled 
 with a jostling crowd of both sexes, who paid no atten- 
 tion to Syd Verner or his mates Barney Brannigan, 
 Horace De Lacy, Jim Dunn, and Angus Mclvor all 
 of whom had caught the infection as badly as Syd him- 
 self, and were eager to be off to the diggings. 
 
 It was not without difficulty that the party made 
 their way down Collins Street to the intersection of
 
 108 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Elizabeth Street. They were bound for Bourke Street; 
 their objective was the horse bazaar. The first essen- 
 tial for the journey to the diggings was the purchase 
 of a horse and dray. 
 
 The broad, straight line of Collins Street, which is 
 now one of the stateliest city thoroughfares in the world 
 presented a strange scene in the early part of 1852. 
 As Syd Verner and his mates made their way along 
 the uneven sidewalk they ran no inconsiderable risk 
 from the hoofs of half-wild horses bestridden by beard- 
 ed bushmen, who were not at all particular where they 
 rode. Bullock drays, heavily laden, ploughed down the 
 middle of the street, and the bellowing of the bullocks, 
 the loud cracking of innumerable stockwhips, and the 
 imprecations of the teamsters, made up a terrible din. 
 Every kind of vehicle, from costly carriage to humble 
 wheelbarrow, helped to fill the street from kerbstone to 
 kerbstone, and the sidewalks carried the most extra- 
 ordinary amalgam of humanity ever seen in Austra- 
 lia. 
 
 Gold, the great leveller, had swept away all class dis- 
 tinction, and Syd Verner hurried along almost hypno- 
 tised by the prodigal display of wealth that he saw 
 around him. At intervals the pedestrians surged to- 
 gether in knots and small jostling crowds, as the human 
 units were shaken into new patterns in the great 
 kaleidoscope by some unexpected picturesque or sordid 
 or thrillingly dangerous street incident. 
 
 As Verner and his party approached Elizabeth Street, 
 one of those miniature rushes took place, and Barney 
 Brannigan dashed forward to see and report the cause. 
 A digger, with earrings in his ears and his huge, gnarled 
 fingers adorned with costly rings, had cleared a space 
 on the sidewalk, and was dancing a grotesque jig with 
 a much-bedizened female companion arrayed in a red 
 satin gown surmounted by a blue silk opera cloak. The 
 bystanders jeered or applauded as the mood took them, 
 but presently surged on in an excited rush towards 
 the Elizabeth Street corner, leaving the digger and his
 
 DIGGERS IN MELBOURNE 109 
 
 companion dancing without their audience. The cause 
 of the new rush was a street accident. A man had been 
 knocked down by a drover riding an unmanageable 
 brute that had bucked right in among the crowd. 
 
 A swift eddy in the jostling throng carried Syd Verner 
 to the edge of the sidewalk. He saw two of the passers- 
 by lifting the white-faced, prostrate victim to his feet. 
 The sufferer's hat had fallen off, his eyes were closed, 
 and there was blood on his mouth. Verner recognised 
 him in a flash. It was Con Burke, of Pretty Plains, 
 Moira's brother, whom he had lost sight of for many 
 weeks. Con, like himself, had been swept into the great 
 human tide that was setting towards Ballarat. 
 
 Pushing his way through the throng, Syd took 
 Moira's brother by the arm and dragged him into the 
 friendly doorway of a chemist's shop, where the sufferer 
 speedily recovered. He had escaped with a nasty cut 
 on the mouth. He explained that he had ridden over- 
 land, following Hawdon's old stock road from Yass, 
 crossing the Murray at Howlong, and emerging at last 
 at Heidelberg. He had left his horse up at the horse 
 bazaar in Bourke Street. 
 
 "Come along," said Syd, eagerly, linking his arm 
 in Con's. "That's just where we are bound for; you 
 must join our party." 
 
 Con Burke gladly agreed, and at once made the ac- 
 quaintance of Brannigan, De Lacy, Jim Dunn, and 
 Mclvor. Together, they made their way round to 
 Bourke Street with the object of buying a horse and 
 dray. 
 
 In Bourke Street the scene was even busier than in 
 Collins Street, for the neighbourhood of the horse 
 bazaar was crowded by excited diggers, with all their 
 troubles before them, and their fortunes yet to make; 
 while Collins Street was the parade ground of those 
 who had returned victorious and triumphant from the 
 goldfields. Great business was doing at the horse ba- 
 zaar, and for some little time both Syd and Con were 
 content to watch the devices of the knowing sellers
 
 110 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 and the easily gulled immigrants, who were no match 
 for them. 
 
 Not for nothing was the horse bazaar located on the 
 side of the stiff hill running up from Elizabeth Street 
 to Queen Street. That hill formed a splendid test of 
 staunchness, as the eager buyers could see readily 
 enough when it was pointed out to them by the astute 
 people who brought their horses to the bazaar to be 
 sold. An animal that could drag a heavily loaded dray 
 up that stiff pinch was just the horse that any man 
 of common sense would choose for the arduous journey 
 to Ballarat, 75 miles away, or the new rushes further 
 north, which were even a greater distance from Mel- 
 bourne. 
 
 In front of Syd and Con, at the foot of the hill, 
 in the middle of the roadway, stood a horse-coper volu- 
 bly addressing an irresolute immigrant, whose white 
 hands and too-fashionably cut clothes proclaimed him 
 the natural prey of the horse dealer. The coper was 
 explaining to his client the merits of a dejected, slab- 
 sided animal harnessed to a heavy cart loaded with tim- 
 ber. 
 
 "But his front legs are frightfully bowed, by Jove," 
 said the immigrant, doubtfully, as he put up his eye 
 glass and surveyed the horse with ill-concealed appre- 
 hension. 
 
 "They're best like that," explained the coper swiftly. 
 "You'll always find that an 'orse wot 'as 'is forelegs 
 nicely arched is the best for pullin' a big load. It 'elps 
 'im to get a purchase on the ground, ye see." 
 
 "But his ribs are sticking out through his skin, and 
 there's a nasty lump on his hind shin," continued the 
 immigrant, critically. He had heard strange tales 
 about horse dealers, and he did not intend to be taken 
 in, not he. 
 
 "The 'orse is in good 'ard training," retorted the 
 coper, with lofty pity for the ignorance of his customer. 
 "Did ye ever know a race 'orse go on the course mud 
 fat? That there 'orse is fit to pull three ton; look at
 
 DIGGEBS IN MELBOURNE 111 
 
 the muscles in 'im. An' as for that bit of a cut on 
 'is stifle, if ye knew anything about an 'orse at all, 
 ye could see how he done it. Eacin' over fences; that's 
 'ow 'e got that there little cut. 'e was a steeplechaser 
 last year, and a fine bit of blood, too." 
 
 "How much do you want for him?" asked the im- 
 migrant, hesitatingly. 
 
 "Only eighty pounds," replied the coper, with alac- 
 rity, "an' I can tell you on my word of honor as a 
 man that ye won't find another 'orse like 'im for work 
 in the 'ole colony." 
 
 Syd nudged Con, and they grinned in concert. 
 
 "I'll tell ye wot I'll do now," said the coper, with 
 the air of a man struck unexpectedly by a generous 
 thought. "I'll give ye any trial in reason. Will ye 
 take the 'orse at eighty pounds if 'e pulls that there 
 load of timber up the 'ill from the bottom to the top 
 without a touch of a whip or the sign of a jib?" 
 
 Barney Brannigan looked at the horse and whistled 
 softly. He knew a horse when he saw one, and if ever 
 he saw a foundered brute in his life, this was one. 
 "Let's stay and watch," he whispered to Syd, who was 
 getting tired of the comedy, and Syd consented. 
 
 The immigrant again surveyed the horse with obvious 
 doubt, and bending down, felt the animal's forelegs 
 with a knowing air. "If he does the trial as you de- 
 scribe it," he said to the coper at last, "I'll give you 
 eighty pounds for him. I'll ask these gentlemen to be 
 good enough to act as judges, and decide whether the 
 horse performs the task according to the conditions." 
 He courteously introduced himself to Syd and Con 
 as Dr. Leslie Smallpage, late of Bloomsbury, London. 
 
 "If that harrse pulls that load up that hill," re- 
 marked Barney Brannigan, sotto voce, "I'll ate him, 
 shoes an' all," 
 
 The coper went over to the dejected, lop-eared, hun- 
 gry-looking animal in the shafts, and loosened the cheek 
 strap of the headstall. Next he took up the chain traces 
 a couple of links. The lop ears pricked up, and a
 
 112 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 look of intelligence one would almost say of deter- 
 mination, came into the vacant eyes. The animal actu- 
 ally pawed with one bowed leg upon the roadway as 
 if eager for the ordeal to begin. 
 
 Barney Brannigan observed this sudden change in 
 the animal's demeanor with amazement. The horse 
 appeared to be really alive after all. 
 
 The coper patted the horse's skinny neck, and then 
 stood back as the animal visibly braced itself for a 
 great effort. 
 
 "Giddap, Smoker!" ejaculated the coper, bringing 
 his hands together with a sharp clap. 
 
 Smoker threw all his weight into the collar, and, 
 bending to his work, scrabbled furiously with his iron- 
 shod toes on the road. The timber-laden cart began to 
 move slowly up the hill. The bowed forelegs planted 
 themselves convulsively with quick steps forward on the 
 steep incline, and the hind toes dug desperately into 
 the macadam. The coper walked beside the horse, clap 
 ping his hands together, and speaking words of en 
 couragement. 
 
 "Good old Smoker! Giddap, ole boy. Now, then, 
 lift her along!" 
 
 It was a wonderful demonstration of grit and staunch- 
 ness. Up the hill for the short distance from Eliza- 
 beth Street to Queen Street that scarecrow of a horse 
 dragged the timber-laden cart, nor did the coper once 
 touch the devoted animal with the whip. Reaching 
 Queen Street, Smoker stopped of his own accord. His 
 breath came in quick sobs. His heaving flanks were 
 streaming with sweat. 
 
 Giving the horse a few minutes to recover himself, 
 the coper turned him round and led him back halfway 
 down the hill to the great wide entrance of the horse 
 bazaar. He backed the cart into a corner and led out 
 Smoker. 
 
 "Well, wot did I tell yer?" exclaimed the coper tri 
 umphantly. " 'e done the trial all right, didn't 'el" 
 The judges nominated by the customer assented with
 
 DIGGERS IN MELBOURNE 113 
 
 some misgivings. They could hardly believe their eyes. 
 
 So the sale was completed, and for eighty pounds 
 Dr. Leslie Smallpage, of Bloomsbury, became the happy 
 possessor of the phenomenon. He had already acquired 
 a dray from Smoker's owner, and he made arrange- 
 ments to start with his party from the horse bazaar for 
 Ballarat on the following morning. 
 
 As the coper departed with his customer to wet the 
 transaction over a glass of liquor, Syd Verner, Con 
 Burke, and Barney Brannigan strolled over to the open 
 stall at the far end of the bazaar to have another look 
 at the wonderful horse that had upset all their precon- 
 ceived ideas of equine capacity. At the same time De 
 Lacy, Dunn, and Mclvor walked across to cast a glance 
 at the loaded dray that Smoker had pulled up the hill. 
 
 It struck Syd Verner as odd that the equine scare- 
 crow should be enjoying a magnificent feed of oats. 
 Oats were expensive at that time a good deal more 
 expensive that wheat. Also there was half a bucket of 
 chopped-up carrots in the manger. The horse coper 
 had fed the animal with unparalleled generosity. Ver- 
 ner was frankly puzzled. Certainly the slab-sided ani 
 mal had been well rewarded for its brief but strenuous 
 effort. Verner felt vaguely that there was more in 
 the incident than met the eye. "Was it possible that 
 Smoker had been carefully trained to put forth every 
 effort in the sure and certain hope that he would be 
 liberally rewarded with oats and carrots when the task 
 was completed? 
 
 While he was still pondering over this problem, a 
 shout from Brannigan reached him. "Begob, shure 'tis 
 a false bottom that's in the kyart, " roared Brannigan, 
 excitedly, "an' there ain't more than a hundredweight 
 av timber in ut altogether, though it looks for all the 
 wurruld as if there wuz half a ton." 
 
 Verner speedily satisfied himself that this reading 
 of the situation was correct. The cart had been faked 
 as well as the horse. Smoker had been carefully trained 
 to make a short, sharp effort in order to obtain the re-
 
 114 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 ward of a splendid feed, and the cart had been doctored, 
 so that the light load appeared to be a very substantial 
 one. 
 
 "I'm afraid that Dr. Smallpage will be disappointed 
 with his bargain," said Verner, grimly, "but he has 
 nobody to blame but himself. And the trick was clever 
 enough to take in even a bushman." 
 
 "Shouldn't wonder if we meet the doctor again," 
 added Con Burke, thoughtfully. "He said that he was 
 going to Ballarat." 
 
 Verner, who was tacitly acknowledged as the leader 
 of the party, picked out a good, strong horse of the 
 half-draught type from the miscellaneous collection for 
 sale at the bazaar, and after some haggling got him for 
 60, each member of the party contributing his share 
 of the purchase money. A capacious dray filled with 
 a canvas tent was acquired in the same way, and the 
 rest of the day was occupied in purchasing stores 
 flour, sugar, tea, tobacco, horse-feed, blankets, a cask 
 of corned beef, a tent, picks, shovels, pans, a cradle, 
 buckets, ropes, and a bush-carpenter's rough outfit. 
 Mclvor undertook to sleep in the dray, which was to be 
 left for the night at the horse bazaar, and it was ar- 
 ranged that an early start should be made next morn- 
 ing. 
 
 In the evening Syd and Con strolled round the city 
 and mixed with the jostling crowds. The streets were 
 not lit by lamps after dark, but by a regulation of the 
 Government every hotel-keeper was compelled to ex- 
 hibit a light over his front door. There were so many 
 hotels in the principal thoroughfares that the effect was 
 much the same as if the streets were illuminated with 
 lamps. In 1852 there were over one hundred hotels 
 in Melbourne. 
 
 Syd and Con, in going round the town, went into a 
 couple of hotels one in Bourke Street, and the other in 
 Elizabeth Street where "free and easies" were an- 
 nounced. These very rough entertainments were quite 
 the vogue, and were well patronised, since there was no-
 
 DIGGERS IN MELBOURNE 115 
 
 thing else to see. In the first, the orchestra consisted 
 of a piano and violin, which accompanied songs that 
 were sung by everyone who cared to oblige. In the 
 intervals between the songs the pianist and the violin- 
 ist, more intent on noise than on tune, pounded and 
 rasped out dance music or negro melodies. The audi- 
 ence consisted of women as well as men, and there was 
 a good deal of rough horse-play. In one corner, as 
 Syd and Con entered, a digger, with the solemnity of 
 semi-intoxication, was performing a grotesque pas seul, 
 and in the inside of the great bare, unfurnished room 
 a jig was in progress. The women were tricked out 
 in costly finery, and the hilarity of the assemblage had 
 plainly an alcoholic origin. 
 
 In the next "free and easy" that was visited, the 
 orchestra included a cornet, a piston two or three horns, 
 and a big drum, which the drummer thumped with mad- 
 dening effect. The increased volume of sound attracted 
 an increased assemblage. The diggers liked noise, and 
 their heavy, hobnailed boots thumped the floor in horn- 
 pipe and reel to their o\vn entire satisfaction. 
 
 Syd and Con soon had enough of it, and they went 
 back to their dray in the horse-bazaar for a sleep be- 
 fore starting on the journey.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 OFF TO BALLARAT. 
 
 Rising at dawn from their blankets spread under the 
 dray, they found the whole of the party ready to start. 
 Brannigaii and Jim Dunn had aching brows, as a re- 
 sult of their potations on the previous evening, but 
 after sluicing their heads in a couple of buckets of water 
 they speedily recovered. Con Burke arranged to share 
 his horse with Syd, riding turn and turn about, and 
 the others set out to walk beside the dray, which the 
 big powerful draught horse pulled easily. 
 
 The road lay through the grassy glades of North 
 Melbourne, where the prospective streets were marked 
 out, and alignments indicated, though houses were few 
 and far between. It was at the foot of the North Mel- 
 bourne hill that Syd Verner's party saw their acquain- 
 tance of the previous day again Dr. Leslie Smallpage, 
 of Bloomsbury. He was belaboring that dejected ani- 
 mal, Smoker, with a heavy strap, and using most un- 
 professional language at the same time. Four other 
 men, all members of Dr. Smallpage 's party, and all 
 equally ignorant of horse-craft or practical horseman- 
 ship, stood beside him vituperating the patient beast in 
 the shafts of a waggon that, with its load, must have 
 weighed nearly a ton. The beating had no effect what- 
 ever upon Smoker. He merely offered a passive resis- 
 tance to the tyranny of his tormentors. 
 
 Several other drays passed by the stranded vehicle, 
 the drivers loudly jeering the white-handed new chums, 
 and shouting "Joe, Joe" in derision the cry that was 
 used on the diggings to indicate the presence of any per- 
 
 116
 
 OFF TO BALLABAT 117 
 
 son whose fashionable clothing announced pretensions to 
 gentility. 
 
 As Syd Verner was pointing out to Dr. Smallpage 
 that the task of pulling the loaded dray was utterly 
 beyond the strength of the obviously exhausted horse, 
 an obliging carter put in an appearance leading a rough 
 little cart mare of a useful type, and offered the animal 
 for sale. He would accept the useless Smoker and the 
 sum of 60 in addition, for his cart mare, 
 which would pull the waggon easily. Smallpage 
 was compelled to accept the offer, since there 
 was nothing else to do. So the money was paid over, 
 and the transfer made. The new purchase exhibited 
 a tendency to kick as well as bite, but she was a good 
 worker, and she hauled the doctor's dray up the North 
 Melbourne hill at the first attempt. As for the carter, 
 he went off, chuckling, with the rejected "Smoker." 
 
 Barney Brannigan, as he looked after the departing 
 stranger, and the dejected animal that he was leading, 
 scratched his head thoughtfully. "Shure, I'm after! 
 seein' that same felly at the horse-bazaar, yisterday," 
 he said to Dunn, "an' I misdoubt him intirely." 
 
 "How's that?" inquired Dunn a man of much mus- 
 cular power, but little perception. 
 
 " 'Tis my belafe," said Brannigan, casting another 
 glance at the retreating man and horse, "that he is in 
 wid the felly that sold the harrse to young Sawbones' 
 beyant. Belike, he's what they call a confederate, 
 if ye know what that is. Do ye?" 
 
 "Not me," said Dunn, the dunderhead, cutting a 
 pipeful of tobacco as he made ready to resume the 
 journey. "Wot's a confederate?" 
 
 "Wan that helps the other thafe," explained Bran- 
 nigan, concisely. "That felly beyant there will take 
 old Smoker back to the bazaar in Bourke Street, and I 
 shudn't wondher if the coper that sold him to the 
 Sawbones yisterday for 80 will be selling him to a 
 merchant or a lawyer to-morrow for a hundred. 'Tis 
 a trained harrse he have there, an' the coper can make
 
 118 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 more goold out of him in a month than he could get 
 on the diggings. 
 
 And Barney Brannigan was right. 
 
 Resuming their journey, Syd Verner's party soon 
 left the grassy paddocks of North Melbourne behind 
 them, and crossed the winding chain of waterholes, call- 
 ed Moonee Ponds, and so through Flemington and 
 Essendon, across high plains intersected by deep creek 
 beds to the Saltwater River. 
 
 Thence the road led to the little township of Keilor, 
 and past paddocks covered with a monstrous growth 
 of huge Scotch thistles as high as a man on horseback. 
 The thistles were moving like corn in the wind. A few 
 miles further the route to Ballarat left the main Mount 
 Alexander Road, and turned westerly, becoming a mere 
 unmade bush track that ran between post and rail 
 fences on either side. The ground had been greatly cut 
 up by the heavy traffic along it, and was almost like 
 a ploughed field. The big draught horse struggled 
 stoutly on through the deep soil, with frequent short 
 spells of rest, and at last the party emerged from be- 
 tween the fences into the great bare Keilor plains, and 
 began to climb the grassy slopes of Pentland Hills. 
 After crossing the ridge, they reached the flat, rich 
 land of Bacchus Marsh, and there by the side of a wind- 
 ing creek bed, with occasional waterholes, they unyok- 
 ed the horse and camped for the night, spreading leaves 
 under the dray for a bed, and wrapping themselves 
 warmly in their blankets. They kept a big fire burning 
 all night, and two men with loaded guns were always 
 on guard, for bushrangers were overrunning the whole 
 country, and vigilance was the price of safety from 
 their attack. 
 
 Next day, travelling through stringybark country, 
 they reached Ballan, and camped not far from the 
 township. 
 
 "I wonder where dear old Tom is now," said Syd 
 Verner to Burke, as they sat by the camp fire, smok- 
 ing on the last night of their journey before reaching
 
 OFF TO BALLABAT 119 
 
 Ballarat. "I wish I could have seen him when we were 
 in Melbourne. Tom always hankered after soldiering. 
 In fact, he seemed a born soldier." 
 
 "That's exactly it," said Burke. "A born soldier is 
 just what he is." He remembered Juana's story well 
 enough. He recalled how she had told it to him long 
 ago when he was quite a boy on the day when little 
 Syd was lost in the bush, and when Tom found him 
 with the cattle standing around him as he lay at the 
 foot of a big gum-tree, miles and miles away from the 
 homestead of Coonara. 
 
 Syd was silent for a few moments. "I should like 
 to know what Moira is doing at this minute," he said, 
 "and whether by any chance she is looking at the 
 same stars that we see up there, and thinking of us." 
 
 Con Burke did not answer. His thoughts were far 
 away with Aileen. 
 
 Tall trees, silvered by the starlight, stood all around 
 the camp, and looking southward through a vista in the 
 trees Syd saw the Southern Cross again. Yes, there 
 it was; the beacon that had drawn him far to search 
 for the gold that he hoped to find beneath the "Jewel 
 Cluster" of Kappa Crucis. The Southern Cross was 
 just as far away as ever, but at least it had guided him 
 to Ballarat. The gold-fever burned in his veins again. 
 To-morrow he would reach the goldfields, the richest 
 goldfields that the world had ever known. As he looked 
 up into the velvet blue of the summer night, where the 
 Southern Cross was shining, it seemed to him that the 
 constellation had exercised a subtle but potent influence 
 on his life, ever since as a child he had first looked 
 at its four great stars through the big achromatic tele- 
 scope in Governor Brisbane r s Observatory at Parra- 
 matta. And now at last the stars had led him to the 
 door of a treasure-chamber crammed with unimaginable 
 riches. Syd Yerner quivered with anticipation won- 
 dering what the treasure chamber had in store for 
 him. 
 
 It was late next evening when the dray reached Bal-
 
 120 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 larat. The men pitched their tent, and then attended 
 at the Gold Commissioner's office, where they received 
 licenses, authorising them to dig for gold for a period 
 of one month on payment of a fee of 1/10/- apiece. 
 Provided with these essential documents, they sallied 
 forth and joined in the strange and stirring life of 
 the most eventful and romantic period in Australian 
 history. 
 
 Verner and Burke and their mates achieved very 
 moderate results at first. Others struck rich pockets 
 in adjoining claims, but Fortune refused to smile on 
 the men from the Turon. They made good wages, but 
 that was all, and good wages merely amounted to bit- 
 ter disappointment for Syd Verner. Was it for good 
 wages that he had left his home and the girl of his 
 heart? A thousand times no. But want of success, so 
 far from quenching the gold-fever, actually inflamed it, 
 and when the party broke up, and De Lacy and Dunn, 
 Brannigan and Mclvor drifted away to join fresh com- 
 binations, Syd Verner and Con Burke went far afield 
 together. 
 
 They joined in every new rush. They went to Forest 
 Creek, to Mount Alexander, to Creswick, and to Ben- 
 digo. And wherever they went they found the mut- 
 terings against the licenses, and against the rigour with 
 which the law was administered growing and gathering 
 strength. The daily "digger hunts" were fiercely re- 
 sented, and the sight of diggers arrested by the troopers 
 and chained to logs when they were found without li- 
 censes, stung the general body of the gold-seekers to 
 madness. Cases occurred of diggers being chained to 
 logs and left there all night. Such things were unen- 
 durable. 
 
 The ideas of 1848, that "year of revolutions," in 
 Europe, were still in the air. Indeed, not a few of 
 the diggers came from countries whose rulers were glad 
 enough to see the turbulent spirits depart for other 
 climes. The diggers had no Parliamentary representa-
 
 OFF TO BALLABAT 121 
 
 tion, and the cry of "no taxation without representa- 
 tion" carried a very real significance for them. 
 
 Public meetings began to be held. Harangues were 
 delivered from many a stump against the police and 
 the Gold Commissioners. Spokesmen of the diggers 
 sprung up by magic, and the angry protests penetrated 
 to Melbourne. 
 
 Troops were moved to Ballarat.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 THE MURDER AT THE EUREKA HOTEL. 
 
 One night in early spring, Syd Verner sat in his tent 
 writing by the light of a candle stuck in an empty 
 bottle. Con Burke was out. He was attending an in- 
 formal gathering of angry men in very muddy clothes, 
 who were discussing the advisableness of establishing a 
 Diggers' Congress. An unsuspected aptitude for poli- 
 tics of the most vigorous kind had flared up in Con 
 Burke. He was one of the most vehement of the 
 speakers in the advanced section of the dissatisfied dig- 
 gers. 
 
 Syd took advantage of Con's absence to write a let- 
 ter to Moira. He wrote to her regularly every week 
 now. If one had peered over Syd's shoulder as he sat 
 on a eandlebox industriously writing, one might have 
 read this: 
 
 October, 1854. 
 My Own Darling Moira, 
 
 Here I am, sitting all alone in the tent and thinking 
 of you, and longing for the day when I shall see you 
 again. It will be very soon now, I hope. Con and I 
 have done wonderfully well this week. After a bit of 
 prospecting in Dead Horse Gully we settled down there 
 and bottomed on the clay on Monday. We took out 
 nearly ten ounces a day till Friday, and then had to 
 stop on account of the heavy water, but we will soon 
 bale it out, and get going again. I have sent to Geelong 
 for larger buckets. You ought to see this place now. 
 The whole field is covered with red, yellow and white 
 earth heaps, and most of the holes are half full of water. 
 An unfortunate kiddie, only three years old, fell into 
 
 122
 
 MURDER AT THE EUREKA HOTEL 123 
 
 one of them yesterday, and though the mother reached 
 it, she was not in time to save it, and it was drowned. 
 The poor woman is almost mad with grief. 
 
 Everything is getting quite civilised now, and there 
 is plenty of money about not like last year, when the 
 storekeeper used to give me change in small potatoes, 
 which counted at threepence each. There are about 
 20,000 people on the field, and we have all the luxuries 
 of civilisation. Quite close to our tent is the Eureka 
 Hotel, which has actually got a bowling alley at the 
 back. We have plenty of fun, but this digger-hunting 
 business is getting the men very angry, and goodness 
 knows where it's going to 
 
 "Here, get out of this, old man; can't you see I'm 
 busy?" 
 
 "All ri' (hie), no offensh. Thought you was the 
 bloomin' pub, thatsh all." 
 
 Syd's letter-writing was brusquely interrupted, and 
 he had to lay it aside unfinished, while he endeavoured 
 to persuade his casual visitor to move on elsewhere. 
 
 But the visitor was really very exasperating. He sat 
 down on Syd's bunk to explain the situation. He had 
 been spending the day with a friend, and he had drunk 
 so much liquor that he was intolerably thirsty. "Musht 
 avea drink fore I gome," he explained, earnestly wag- 
 ging a very dirty forefinger in Syd's face. 
 
 "Well, you can't get a drink here, old man. I tell 
 you straight, I have'nt a drop of stuff in the place." 
 
 "Spose I can get shum upat the bloomin' pub," 
 said the visitor, leering at Verner vinously. 
 
 "I'm sure you can if they'll let you in," said Syd, 
 encouragingly, "but I expect the Eureka will be shut 
 by this time. However, you might as well try. It's 
 your only chance." 
 
 " Oh, I '11 get in all ri ', " hiccoughed the visitor. ' ' I '11 
 get inter the Eureka Hotel to-night or bust. I will, 
 indeed, sure's my name's James Scobie."
 
 124 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 He staggered out, roaring, 
 
 "Shdauld acquaintansh be forgot 
 
 An' never brought to mi i ind ' 
 and Syd went back to the candlebox and resumed his 
 letter. 
 
 But he hadn't written half a dozen lines when he 
 heard a loud banging and thumping on a door not 
 far away. 
 
 Mr. James Scobie was trying to get into the Eureka 
 Hotel sure enough. The banging and thumping con- 
 tinued, and Syd, with an exclamation of annoyance, put 
 away his letter, and went to the front of his tent to 
 listen. It was impossible to write with that noise go- 
 ing on. 
 
 As he stood outside the tent he could see camp fires 
 burning here and there on Black Hill Flat and Gum- 
 tree Flat, on Specimen Hill, and on Bakery Hill. The 
 night was dark and chilly. Little knots of diggers had 
 gathered round the camp fires, and were discussing their 
 grievances the digger hunts, the license fees, the fact 
 that they had no voice at all in making the laws by 
 which they were taxed and harried. Syd could see the 
 dark forms of the men as they passed in front of a 
 campfire a few hundred yards away. He could see a 
 man who had mounted a stump and was haranguing 
 the assemblage with vehement gestures. 
 
 "Look's to me very much like Con Burke," muttered 
 Syd Verner to himself as he stared at the distant ora- 
 tor. Then he turned his head and surveyed the dark 
 outline of the Eureka Hotel, in the front of which a 
 big lamp was burning. 
 
 The lamp threw its light upon the front door, which 
 was shut. Mr. James Scobie was still hammering and, 
 banging upon the door with unabated persistence. 
 "Lemme in," he roared as he kicked the door with his 
 heavy hobnailed boots, and then he added with drunken 
 irrationality, "I won't go away till ye let me in, Bent- 
 ley, so ye may as well do it at once. ' ' Bang, bang, bang, 
 went the hobnailed boots on the door.
 
 MURDER AT THE EUREKA HOTEL 125 
 
 A window was raised immediately above the front 
 door of the hotel, and a bullet head was thrust out. 
 
 What the blazes are ye making all that noise for 
 
 at this time of night? Get to h 1 out of that, or 
 
 I'll shift ye pretty quick." 
 
 "Lemme in and gimme a drink, an' then I'll gome," 
 replied Mr. Scobie, raising his eyes to peer at the bullet 
 head above him. But the bullet head was withdrawn, 
 and the window was closed with a thud, so that Mr. 
 Scobie 's only resource was to go on punishing the door 
 with his ironshod boots. He continued this proceeding 
 for fully five minutes, yelling out at intervals some 
 highly insulting comments on the landlord's past life 
 
 and present habits. "Come down, ye d d thief, an' 
 
 lemme in and gimme a drink. I know all about you, 
 Jim Bentley. You've done time, that's wot you've 
 done. Ow did ye like Norfolk Island when you were 
 there? Eh, tell me that." 
 
 Thump, thump, thump. Fists as well as feet were 
 hard at work on the door of the hotel now. Syd Ver- 
 ner was just about to start for the hotel, in order to 
 attempt to persuade the drunken digger to go off to 
 his own tent, when he saw the bright spurt of a match 
 through the window of the room above the door. Then 
 a candle was lighted. 
 
 "He's coming down at last to let him in, thank good- 
 ness," muttered Syd Verner. "Now there'll be a bit 
 of peace." He went back into his tent and set to 
 work again on his letter to Moira. 
 
 "The men on this field are a real decent lot, take 
 them on the whole," wrote Syd, "but the cruel wrongs 
 that they are suffering from the Commissioners and the 
 police, have put them into a very nasty temper, and 
 I shouldn't be surprised if we have some lively times 
 here soon. There is no actual disloyalty in them, and 
 when Sir Charles Hotham, the Governor, and his lady 
 visited this place lately, the diggers gave them a splen- 
 did reception. One big chap, an Irishman, too, insisted 
 on carrying the Governor's lady across all the wet
 
 126 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 patches, so that she would not get her feet muddy. 
 But all the same they won't stand being chased and 
 chained to the logs much longer. I think it only needs 
 a small spark to make a very big blaze on Ballarat. Al- 
 most anything might do it now, and if there was only 
 "Ha! What was that? A wild shriek, and then si- 
 lence! Next moment a door banged loudly. 
 
 
 Syd Verner rushed out of his tent and looked in- 
 stinctively towards the Eureka Hotel. He could just 
 make out the dark outline. The lamp was burning over 
 the front door, but there was no candlelight to be seen 
 in the room immediately above it. The whole of the 
 house was in darkness. Mr. James Scobie was quite 
 silent now. 
 
 But Syd Verner was strangely disquieted. If Scobie 
 had been admitted to the hotel what was the meaning 
 of that wild shriek, and then the banging of the door? 
 Syd covered the distance between his tent and the 
 Eureka Hotel at a rapid pace. He met several other 
 men running in the same direction. 
 
 "What's up?" "What's the matter?" "Anybody 
 hurt?" Everybody was asking questions, but nobody 
 was answering them, because nobody knew anything. 
 
 Syd was the first to reach the hotel. A dark figure 
 lay face downwards on the ground a few yards from 
 the door. It was limp, huddled, motionless. 
 
 Syd Verner and Bill Tregarthen between them turned 
 the body over on its back. Jim Scobie would never dis- 
 turb anybody again. Still thirsty and clamoring for 
 that last drink, he had gone into the presence of his 
 Maker. There was a terrible wound in his head, a 
 great gaping hole that looked as though it might have 
 been made by a blow from a pick. 
 
 "This is a bad business, mate," said Bill Tregarthen, 
 kneeling beside the body and looking across it at Verner. 
 "Do 'ee know who done it?" 
 
 "No, I do not," said Syd. "I don't know for cer- 
 tain, but I have a strong suspicion."
 
 MURDER AT THE EUREKA HOTEL 127 
 
 "That dirty dog in the pub there, I suppose," said 
 Tregarthen, shaking his fist angrily in the direction 
 of the Eureka Hotel. 
 
 Syd Verner nodded his head. 
 
 The two men lifted the body carefully and laid it 
 down at the side of the road, so that it could not be 
 run over by any passing cart. Then they set off for 
 the camp to report the matter to the police, but before 
 they had gone far they met a couple of mounted troop- 
 ers on patrol duty, and reported the occurrence to them. 
 The troopers returned with them, and took charge of 
 the body. Also they knocked peremptorily at the door 
 of the Eureka Hotel, and continued knocking until the 
 landlord came down in shirt and trousers, rubbing his 
 eyes, and demanding to know what was the matter. 
 
 "I reckon you know what's the matter well enough, 
 Jim Bentley," said Bill Tregarthen, grimly. "That 
 man," he pointed to the motionless figure lying on the 
 ground across the road "was heard knocking at your 
 door and trying to get in to get a drink a few minutes 
 ago, and now he is dead." 
 
 "Well, I know nothing about it," said Bentley. He 
 was very pale, and his voice was shaking. "What has it 
 got to do with me?" 
 
 "That will do, Tregarthen," said the trooper, sharply 
 to Bill. "Now, look here, Bentley?" he added, "I want 
 a statement from you about this, and I am going to 
 ask you some questions. It is my duty to tell you that 
 you are not obliged to answer these questions, but what 
 you do answer will be taken down by me in writing, 
 and may be used as evidence against you." 
 
 So the two troopers and Syd Verner and Bill Tre- 
 garthen went into the Eureka Hotel, and Bentley lit a 
 lamp in the bar parlour. The senior trooper took out 
 his pocket book and wrote down Bentley 's extremely 
 halting and inconclusive statement. Then they left the 
 hotel, and after making arrangements for the tempor- 
 ary disposition of the body, rode off to the Camp to 
 report the case to Sergeant Major Milne, in charge of
 
 128 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 the police, taking with them the landlord of the Eureka 
 Hotel, who was arrested on suspicion, and charged with 
 being concerned in the murder of one, James Scobie, 
 said to have been a digger. 
 
 Syd Verner went back to his tent, a good deal shaken 
 by the terribly tragic and sudden end that had over- 
 taken his unwelcome visitor, and finished his letter to 
 Moira. 
 
 During the days that succeeded the murder of Scobie 
 the diggers to a large extent suspended operations on 
 their claims and devoted themselves to discussing the 
 tyranny under which they suffered and concerting 
 measures with the object of securing justice. 
 
 Justice! Yes, that was what they did not get. But 
 they intended to get it. Syd Verner found himself 
 one day listening to a dark-haired, impetuous Irishman, 
 a certain Peter Lalor, native of Queen's County, whose 
 father had represented an Irish constituency in the 
 House of Commons. By sheer forcefulness of charac- 
 ter this man, Lalor, was already accepted as a leader. 
 He was one of the foremost spirits in the Reform 
 League. He mounted a stump and addressed a gather- 
 ing of several hundred men. 
 
 "Men, and brother diggers," said the dark-haired 
 Irishman, "an event has lately happened among us that 
 cannot be passed by in silence, because it shows us with 
 unmistakable clearness that the fount of justice on this 
 goldfield is poisoned at the source." 
 
 Here the speech was interrupted by a wild burst of 
 applause, and Syd Verner himself felt impelled to wave 
 his cabbage-tree hat violently round his head. He was 
 powerfully moved by the speaker's magnetic eloquence. 
 
 "This ruffianly scoundrel Bentley, " continued the 
 orator, leaning forward and letting his eyes range over 
 the multitude of bearded faces in front of him until 
 his gaze rested on Syd Verner, "has been acquitted by 
 a bench consisting of Dewes. the presiding police magis- 
 trate ; Rede, the Commissioner ; and Johnston, the assis- 
 tant Commissioner, though it is only fair to say that
 
 MURDER AT THE EUREKA HOTEL 129 
 
 Johnston dissented from the finding and expressed his 
 dissent in the strongest possible terms." 
 
 Another outburst of wild applause, followed by cheers 
 for Assistant-Commissioner Johnston. 
 
 "Yet, I see before me amongst you now," continued 
 Lalor, his voice rising and reaching to the extreme limit 
 of the gathering, "one of the men whose evidence on 
 the subject must have been conclusive to any honest 
 mind." He riveted Syd Verner with his gaze amid 
 a chorus of exclamations of assent, and Syd at once felt 
 that he, too, was an important link in the great chain of 
 events that were clearly about to connect Ballarat with 
 history. 
 
 "There is no moral doubt, and there is no legal 
 doubt," continued Lalor, with tremendous emphasis, 
 "that the man, Bentley, murdered that unfortunate dig- 
 ger, James Scobie, in a most brutal, callous, and wan- 
 ton manner." 
 
 The crowd was quite certain on that point. A tu- 
 multuous roar of confirmation endorsed the speaker's 
 statement. 
 
 "But there is something more to be said," continued 
 Lalor, with deep and concentrated feeling, "and it is 
 this. There is no moral doubt, and, to my mind, there 
 is no legal doubt that the man Dewes, police magistrate 
 and president of the bench, is in close personal associ- 
 ation with the prisoner, Bentley; is personally indebted 
 to him; and is consequently guilty of gross corruption 
 and abuse of his office in acquitting Bentley, whom he 
 knows to be guilty." 
 
 A yell of rage went up from the assemblage of dig- 
 gers, when they heard this. They had not heard it 
 before, except as a mere suspicion. Bui: they trusted 
 Lalor implicitly. They were convinced that he told 
 them the truth. 
 
 A general rush was made in the direction of Speci- 
 men Hill, on which the Eureka Hotel stood. Thousands 
 of diggers joined the hurrying crowd. They came from 
 all parts of the field from Canadian Gully and Black- 
 
 E
 
 130 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 hill Flat, from Dead Horse Gully and Eureka Lead, 
 from Frenchman's Gully and Bakery Hill. There were 
 not less than 10,000 diggers assembled outside the ill- 
 starred hotel where Jim Scobie had been murdered 
 when other speakers mounted stumps and urged the 
 excited men to avenge the blood of the murdered man 
 and punish the murderer. 
 
 In many varieties of accent, but with wonderful 
 solidarity of feeling, the orators played upon the emo- 
 tions of their hearers, spurring them by sharp and 
 trenchant words into action. Hayes, the Irishman, and 
 Vern, the Hanoverian, and Raffaello, the Italian, each 
 took a turn in addressing that stormy gathering,, and 
 then in one moment a rush was made for the hotel. 
 
 "Burn down the accursed place and the murderer 
 inside it," yelled somebody, and the suggestion was 
 eagerly adopted with wild yells of approval. 
 
 A man carrying an armful of paper and rags ran 
 round to the bowling alley that adjoined the hotel, and 
 in an instant leaping tongues of fire that licked the 
 doomed building caught the sight of the crowd. The 
 diggers were so intent upon watching the hotel burn- 
 ing that they did not see a white-faced bullet-headed 
 man dash out from the burning building and leap 
 on a horse that was standing saddled and bridled in 
 the yard behind the hotel. But they saw him when 
 he emerged from the yard and headed away at full 
 gallop for the Government Camp. 
 
 It was Bentley, the acquitted slayer of luckless Jim 
 Scobie, and as the crowd saw him disappearing as hard 
 as he could pelt in the direction of the camp, they 
 melted rapidly away, leaving that sinister house of 
 blood, the Eureka Hotel, a prey to the greedy flames. 
 Before the soldiers and police summoned by Bentley 
 to protect him could reach the scene of the diggers 
 "wild justice," the Eureka Hotel was completely gutted, 
 and the menacing crowd had utterly vanished away. 
 However, the police arrested three men Mclntyre, 
 Fletcher, and Westerby and charged them on the in-
 
 MURDER AT THE EUREKA HOTEL 131 
 
 formation of Bentley with incendiarism. Syd Verner 
 had a narrow escape himself of being arrested along 
 with them, for he was well acquainted with Mclntyre, 
 and had been standing quite close to him when the 
 orators were addressing the assemblage. 
 
 If only the police had arrested him then and sent 
 him to Melbourne to be tried with the other three men, 
 the tragic experience that was even at that time looming 
 up to involve him might have been averted.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM. 
 
 "I simply can't bear it any longer, mother." It was 
 Aileen who spoke, and Juana listened with a troubled 
 air, for she was greatly troubled herself. The long 
 absence of her two sons weighed heavily upon her 
 heart. 
 
 "But what can we do, my Aileen?" said Juana. The 
 silver streaks were showing in her hair, but she still 
 kept the freshness of her emotions, the tenderness of 
 her heart. And, for that reason she suffered with her 
 daughter, whose lover had left her to pursue the gleam 
 of gold, almost as much as she grieved for the loss of 
 her two stalwart sons. 
 
 "I have been talking it over with Moira," said Aileen. 
 "She is as anxious to see Syd as I am to see Con. We 
 have made up our minds what to do. I am going to 
 ask father to let us go to Victoria. We can travel from 
 Melbourne to Ballarat quite easily now, and when we 
 get there Syd and Con can take care of us." 
 
 Ah, little bush-bred Aileen ! She was much in love, 
 but poor indeed in experience of the world. Juana 
 sighed as she looked at her daughter, and stroked her 
 shining hair. 
 
 "My Aileen," she said, softly, in the presence of 
 such innocence, "what you would like to do is impos- 
 sible. Young girls cannot travel alone to meet their 
 lovers, and, indeed, the country is so full of wild charac- 
 ters now that you could not even make a journey from 
 here to Sydney by yourselves in safety." 
 
 Aileen 's eyes filled with tears. She had set her heart 
 on making the journey with Moira, who was so courage- 
 
 132
 
 MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM 133 
 
 ous and resourceful. Surely a girl who had defended 
 herself single-handed against a whole tribe of blood- 
 thirsty buckeeners was a trustworthy escort for a mere 
 journey on the beaten track from the Bathurst Plains 
 in New South Wales to Ballarat in Victoria. 
 
 But Juana showed her that the plan was impossible. 
 " Still if your father would go, too, and take me with 
 him," she added, "it might be done." Memories of 
 the old campaigning days crowded in upon her. What 
 were the hardships and dangers of a journey from the 
 Bathurst Plains to Ballarat compared with the suffer- 
 ings and perils of that tremendous march punctuated 
 by battles from Vittoria across the Pyrenees to Tou- 
 louse. 
 
 "Oh, mother, darling, do ask him," said Aileen, clasp- 
 ing her mother by the hand, and reading the sympathy 
 in her shining eyes. 
 
 So that evening Henry Verner, grey-haired now, but 
 still sturdy and vigorous, underwent a siege. His wife, 
 his daughter, and Moira Burke conducted the attack, 
 and they pressed it home with such relentless perse-i 
 verance that he was obliged to surrender. 
 
 Long after Aileen and Moira had retired to the big 
 room that they shared together, Henry Verner and 
 Juana sat up, discussing the plan of campaign. Finally 
 Verner decided to place his overseer in charge of the 
 station, and to drive his wife and the two girls down 
 to Sydney in his light American waggon. They would 
 do the journey in three days, camping the first night 
 at Hartley Vale, at the foot of Mount York, and the 
 second night on the Nepean River, at the other side 
 of the Blue Mountains. He would take one of the black 
 stockmen along with him to drive the waggon home 
 again, and at Sydney they would embark on one of 
 the sailing ships that were constantly leaving with dig- 
 gers bound for Port Phillip. Once in Melbourne, it 
 would be an easy matter to travel to Ballarat. In No- 
 vember they would have no floods or swollen creeks to 
 battle with, and as Cobb & Co.'s coaches were already
 
 134 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 running to the goldfields, there would be no necessity 
 to buy special transport in Melbourne. 
 
 Verner became thoroughly interested in the journey 
 that was before him. He even permitted himself to 
 speculate upon the prospect of being able to find a few 
 nuggets with his own pick at Ballarat or Creswick or 
 Fryers Creek. But he did not impart these vague am- 
 bitions to his wife or daughter, both of whom detested 
 that seductive pursuit of gold-digging, which had al- 
 ready ensnared too many of their men folk. 
 
 "We shall travel very comfortably, I think," said 
 Verner to his wife, ' ' and it won 't be anything like as bad 
 as it was in the old days in Spain. Do you remem- 
 ber the little white burro, Juana, that you used to 
 ride?" 
 
 Juana did remember it, and many other things be- 
 sides, in that distant past. Especially did she remem- 
 ber her little son, who was born at Toulouse amid the 
 rattle of cannon, and who was now a soldier in the 
 40th Regiment. Juana 's heart yearned for her two sons, 
 but the elder of the two was linked so closely with 
 the great and stirring romance of her girlish days that 
 her thoughts flew first to him. Besides, she knew that 
 he loved Moira. He had given up the girl and quietly 
 effaced himself when he knew that she loved his bro- 
 ther Syd. Juana was glad indeed to go to Victoria, 
 where she would see her firstborn son again. 
 
 Next day Henry Verner, with his wife and the two 
 girls, set out in the American waggon for Sydney, and 
 Long Jimmy the black stockman rode in front of them 
 and helped them to make their first camp at the foot 
 of Mount York, and their second on the Nepean River. 
 As soon as they reached Sydney a visit to a shipping 
 office in George Street brought to light the fact that 
 the barque Britomarte, Captain James Callaway, was 
 due to sail at daybreak on Saturday for Port Phillip. 
 There were a few berths still vacant, and Verner has- 
 tily secured a couple of cabins.
 
 MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM 135 
 
 The Britomarte was accounted a fast sailor. In spite 
 of being considerably delayed by headwinds, she made 
 the run from heads to heads in eight days. But a ter- 
 rible disappointment awaited Juana. The 40th Regi- 
 ment had been ordered away from Melbourne, for the 
 country was in a very disturbed state, and Sir Charles 
 Hotham, the Governor, was being beseiged with requests 
 from all the disaffected centres for troops. In the cir- 
 cumstances, Verner decided to push on at once to Bal- 
 larat and see Syd. 
 
 Melbourne was almost like a deserted city in October 
 and November, 1854, for every man who could scrape 
 up enough money to get to the diggings had given up 
 his job and gone there. The shopkeepers and publicans 
 were anxiously looking forward to Christmas. That 
 was the season when the diggers came down to the city, 
 and they seldom left it until all their money was gone. 
 
 Verner found comfortable lodgings for his party in 
 Bourke Street. On the first day of their stay they 
 learned the disquieting news of the murder of James 
 Scobie, at the Eureka Hotel, Ballarat, and the burning 
 of the hotel by a mob of thousands of diggers, who were 
 infuriated at the acquittal of Bentley, the hotel-keeper, 
 by Mr. Dewes, the Police Magistrate, who as was now 
 remembered had been the magistrate who originally 
 granted Bentley the license for the hotel, and who was 
 strongly suspected of being a secret partner in Bent- 
 ley's business. 
 
 "I hardly think that the country is safe for trav- 
 ellers," said Verner, discussing plans with his wife and 
 the two girls. "How would you like to stay down here 
 in Melbourne until we see what is to be the upshot 
 of all this angry feeling?" 
 
 But Juana, Moira, and Aileen raised such a chorus 
 of objections that Henry Verner was obliged to listen 
 to them. It was hopeless to expect Aileen to remain in 
 Melbourne while Con Burke was at Ballarat, and it 
 would need more than Verner 's eloquence to persuade 
 Moira that it was impossible for her to go to Syd.
 
 136 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 And so, with some misgivings, Verner engaged seats 
 in Cobb & Co.'s coach for Ballarat for the following 
 Monday morning. He learned with satisfaction that 
 Bentley had been re-tried in Melbourne, convicted of 
 manslaughter, and sentenced to three years on the roads. 
 Also that his supposed associate, Dewes, the Police 
 Magistrate, had been dismissed from the service. 
 
 "That ought to settle the trouble," said Verner to 
 Jack Bennett, the clerk in Cobb & Co.'s office. But Jack 
 Bennett shook his head doubtfully. "I hardly think 
 so," he said. The Government is terribly stiff -backed 
 over the trouble. They are determined to prosecute 
 those three men Mclntyre, Fletcher, and Westerby 
 on the charge of burning down the Eureka Hotel, and 
 the trial is to be held in Melbourne, because they know 
 that no jury would convict the men in Ballarat. If 
 they gaol these three men you'll find that the diggers 
 won't take it lying down." 
 
 Hum! Henry didn't suppose that they would. They 
 had no representation in the Legislative Council, which 
 consisted mostly of members nominated by the Govern- 
 ment, and included no representatives of the goldfields. 
 They had to obey the law, but they had no hand in 
 making it. They had to pay taxation, and very heavy 
 taxation too, but they had no voice in imposing it. 
 
 Jack Bennett expressed some doubt whether the jury 
 would convict Mclntyre, Fletcher, and Westerby, but 
 if they did well, it would be a case of "look out for 
 squalls. ' ' 
 
 When he left the coaching office Verner was more 
 doubtful than ever as to the wisdom of taking his wife 
 and the two girls up to Ballarat, where wild disturb- 
 ances and scenes of disorder seemed to be imminent. 
 
 Two days later the three men, Mclntyre, Fletcher, and 
 Westerby were convicted by a Melbourne jury, who 
 added a strong recommendation to mercy, on the ground 
 that the outrage was provoked by the improper conduct 
 of the Ballarat officials. Melntvre was sentenced to 
 three months, Fletcher to four months, and Westerby
 
 MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM 137 
 
 to six months' imprisonment. The announcement of 
 the sentences created apprehensions in Melbourne, and 
 uproar in Ballarat. Henry Verner postponed the con- 
 templated journey, in spite of the tearful protests of 
 his wife and the two girls. The outlook was very black. 
 
 "It is no good, Juana, " he said. "I cannot expose 
 you and the girls to the dangers that may be in front 
 of us if we go to Ballarat in the present state of ex- 
 citement among the diggers." 
 
 ' ' But, my Henry, is not our son, Syd, already there ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, yes. But just think a moment. How could 
 a few police and a handful of troops maintain order 
 if 20,000 diggers get out of hand? Ballarat would be 
 no place for women then." 
 
 Juana gave a shudder. She remembered certain tales 
 told to her long ago round the camp fires in the Pyre- 
 nees by Biddy Flynn. Biddy had followed the troops 
 into Badajoz. She had seen things to make the heart 
 stop beating. But Juana was a soldier's wife and a 
 hero's daughter. She put all fears behind her. ''I am 
 not afraid, my Harry," she said, quietly. "I do not 
 think that the diggers would hurt us. I should like to 
 go to our son, and the girls must come too. If there 
 is fighting at Ballarat there will be work for women 
 afterwards. ' ' 
 
 Verner surrendered after that. It was the only thing 
 to do. He made arrangements with Cobb & Co. for 
 seats for Juana, Aileen and Moira on the 26th of 
 November. 
 
 Scarcely a pick was put into the ground at Ballarat 
 on the day that news of the conviction of the three 
 diggers for incendiarism reached the goldfield. The 
 Reform League quickly got to work, and among the 
 most energetic and fiery of the speakers who urged 
 that the release of the prisoners should be demanded 
 forthwith were Syd Verner and his mate, Con Burke. 
 
 Syd. and Con. had both done remarkably well out of 
 a new claim in Sailor's Gully. They sent away a big
 
 138 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 consignment of gold by every Government escort to 
 Melbourne, taking receipts from the Commissioner. 
 Their deposit receipts now represented very consider- 
 able sums that each of them had lying to his credit in 
 the Melbourne Treasury. But indignation at the 
 tyranny and oppression of the Government and at the 
 proved corruption of an important Government official 
 drove all thoughts of gold out of their heads. They 
 were both strong supporters of the Reform League, and 
 they rushed off to attend a gathering which was being 
 held at Specimen Hill to discuss the situation. 
 
 Neither love nor gold occupied a great place in the 
 thoughts of either of the men from the Bathurst Plains 
 at that crisis. It was not that Syd. did not love Moira, 
 or that Con. Burke did not love Aileen, but the fiery 
 indignation that was sweeping through all the goldfields 
 in Victoria had for the time being cast out love. The 
 determination not to be down-trodden was the dominant 
 idea of Syd. and Con. 
 
 It was largely through the passionate eloquence of 
 Burke, who mounted a stump on Specimen Hill and ad- 
 dressed the diggers on their rights, as well as through 
 the less rhetorical but equally forcible advice of Syd. 
 Verner from a similar post of vantage that a decision was 
 arrived at to send Kennedy and George Black down to 
 Melbourne to interview the Governor and demand the 
 release of the three men who had been sentenced to 
 imprisonment. 
 
 Syd. Verner and Con. Burke were among the crowd 
 of diggers who assembled to watch the departure of 
 Kennedy and Black on their momentous mission, and a 
 very excited gathering it was. 
 
 In the tense moments that preceded the departure of 
 the delegates, while Lalor and Hayes and the other 
 leaders of the Reform League were consulting together, 
 Con. Burke shouldered his way to the front, and was 
 greeted with encouraging cheers by the diggers, who 
 recognised him as one of their most earnest spokesmen.
 
 MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM 139 
 
 "Go on, mate. We're listening to you," someone 
 shouted. 
 
 So Con. climbed into an empty cart that stood near, 
 and spoke a few words to the departing delegates. He 
 bade them remember that they represented the whole 
 body of the diggers at Ballarat, and that when they met 
 Governor Hotham they would express not merely their 
 own demands, but the demand of 30,000 men, that 
 Mclntyre, Fletcher and Westerby should be released 
 instantly. "And if that request is not granted, boys," 
 he cried in a voice that carried far, "we shall know what 
 steps to take in our place here to protect our rights and 
 liberties, and to defend ourselves from brutal oppres- 
 sion and tyranny." 
 
 A very distinctive feature of the landscape was Mr. 
 Con. Burke, as he stood up in the empty cart, exhorting 
 the diggers to defy the Government. His figure caught 
 the eyes of the spies from the Government Camp at 
 once, and his heated language reached their ears. They 
 carefully noted both his name and his remarks, and 
 reported them to Captain Thomas, who was in charge 
 of the troops. They also reported the fact that his mate 
 and intimate associate was a certain Sydney Verner, a 
 native of New South Wales, and late of Bathurst Plains. 
 
 Destiny had thrown her net round Syd. as well as 
 Con. Both were now classed definitely among the in- 
 surgents. 
 
 When Kennedy and Black reached Melbourne they 
 presented to Governor Hotham a demand in the name 
 of 30,000 diggers for the liberation of the three men 
 who had been convicted of incendiarism in burning 
 down the Eureka Hotel, and were at that moment serv- 
 ing their sentences in gaol. Governor Hotham recog- 
 nised the importance of the occasion. He had not the 
 slightest intention of falling short in what he conceived 
 to be his official duty, or of allowing the course of justice 
 as laid down by the Crown to be deflected by a popular 
 outcry. But being a careful and conscientious Governor,
 
 140 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 he resolved to fortify himself with the counsel of the 
 highest judicial authority in the colony of Victoria. 
 
 So, when Kennedy and Black, with aggressiveness 
 and determination written in every line of their earnest 
 physiognomies, were admitted to the presence of the 
 Governor, they found themselves face to face not only 
 with Sir Charles Hotham, but also Chief Justice Stawell. 
 
 The representative of the power and majesty of the 
 Crown and the inflexible guardian of the prestige of the 
 law opposed their collective will most solidly to the 
 demands of Kennedy and Black. A "demand" to the 
 Chief Justice that prisoners who had been convicted by 
 a jury and sentenced by a judge should be released at 
 the behest of a mere mob, appeared to be little short of 
 an intolerable outrage. But Chief Justice Stawell, 
 though a choleric man by nature, knew how to be 
 courteous. Seated beside the Governor, he listened in 
 perfect silence to the earnest but heated statements of 
 the delegates, who did not hesitate to make it perfectly 
 clear that they were preferring a demand and not a 
 equest. 
 
 When the delegates had finished stating their demand, 
 which was virtually an "ultimatum," there was a brief 
 whispered colloquy between the Governor and the Chief 
 Justice. Then Sir Charles Hotham, addressing Ken- 
 nedy and Black, informed them that the course of law 
 and justice in the colony of Victoria was not to be 
 interfered with simply because a number of persons 
 sympathised with prisoners who were paying the right- 
 ful penalty of their crime. He was unwilling to believe, 
 he said, that the diggers whom he had himself met dur- 
 ing his visit to Ballarat a few months previously, and 
 who seemed to him to be a fine and law-abiding body of 
 men, would resort to open violence in order to defeat 
 the law which prescribed the payment of license fees. 
 But if they were so ill-advised as to adopt such a course, 
 then he could assure the delegates that he knew his duty 
 as Governor of the colony of Victoria, and was fully 
 prepared and determined to perform it.
 
 MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM 141 
 
 Kennedy and Black snatched up their hats and hur- 
 ried towards the door. As Black was following his col- 
 league from the room he discharged a Parthian shot. 
 
 "The responsibility will be on your head, Governor 
 Hotham, " he shouted, "if before a week has passed 
 away the flag of the Southern Cross is flying over the 
 Republic of Victoria." 
 
 That same afternoon Sir Charles Hotham sent in- 
 structions to Sir Robert Nickle to despatch a strong body 
 of troops to Ballarat immediately. The men marched 
 at daybreak a detachment of cavalry, a detachment of 
 Her Majesty's 12th Regiment of Foot, and a detach- 
 ment of Her Majesty's 40th Regiment of Foot. 
 
 Among the men of the 40th Regiment marched Cor- 
 poral Thomas Verner.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 AT THE EUREKA STOCKADE. 
 
 When the news of the Governor's refusal to liberate 
 the three prisoners reached Ballarat, a wave of indigna- 
 tion surged over the field, and the Reform League met 
 to discuss the situation. Men's minds were powerfully 
 excited, and counsels of violence were freely uttered. 
 .Matters were made worse, when a horseman rode into 
 Ballarat on the morning of 28th November with the 
 news that troops were marching to the diggings and 
 would arrive by nightfall. 
 
 At Ballan, the mail coach for Ballarat passed the 
 troops on the march. Verner and Juana and the girls 
 scanned the dusty line of soldiers anxiously. Stepping 
 jauntily along, with his musket on his shoulder, marched 
 Corporal Tom, but the coach went past at a fast trot, 
 and Corporal Tom, with his face thickly coated with 
 dust, was unrecognised. Henry Verner was greatly re- 
 lieved at the discovery that Tom did not appear to be 
 among the soldiers. There was trouble ahead at Bal- 
 larat, he felt certain. 
 
 Verner had secured rough accommodation for his 
 wife and the two girls in a weatherboard building, 
 where Mrs. McPherson took in a few boarders visitors 
 and tourists chiefly, who wished to get a peep at the 
 goldfields during their travels. Thither they retired to 
 rest, after their journey, while Verner set out to look 
 for his son Syd. 
 
 It was not an easy job in the disturbed state of the 
 diggings, for the men had entirely discontinued working 
 on their claims, and their tents were deserted. The 
 father searched for his second son in vain. He could 
 
 142
 
 AT THE EUREKA STOCKADE 143 
 
 not find him, but near the Warrenheip Gully he came 
 across a stout stockade, built on the Eureka Lead and 
 enclosing about an acre of ground. It was constructed 
 of slabs and strong palings. In the ground so enclosed 
 were many stout holes where men had been digging for 
 gold. The holes were half -full of water. Henry Verner 
 peered between the slabs and saw several tents in the 
 enclosure. Evidently the tents belonged to diggers. He 
 examined the place in perplexity. Surely it was not 
 intended to be used for military purposes. Where were 
 the trenches and earth-works to protect the defenders? 
 A complete lack of military knowledge manifested itself 
 to the experienced eye of the old soldier. The place, he 
 said to himself, could not be held against regular troops 
 for half an hour. 
 
 Late in the evening he was making his way back to 
 the lodging-house full of uneasy forebodings, when loud 
 shouts reached his ears from Warrenheip Gully. Wild 
 hurrahs were followed by a ragged volley, and as Henry 
 Verner climbed the rising ground he could see that the 
 troops had arrived and were being attacked in the gully 
 by a large body of diggers. 
 
 The diggers, hiding behind logs and boulders, fired 
 into the mass of the soldiers and shot several of them, 
 including a drummer boy who was in the act of beating 
 the "Advance." As the troops charged up the slope, 
 the diggers retreated, but soon crept back and harassed 
 the column with long range shots all the way to the 
 Government Camp. 
 
 Henry Verner knew that the die was cast. After that 
 attack a conflict between the full strength of the Govern- 
 ment and the diggers was inevitable. He went back to 
 Mrs. McPherson's lodging-house sad at heart and found 
 Juana and the girls waiting for him with white faces. 
 They had heard the firing. 
 
 "Oh, I do hope that Syd. was not there," said Moira, 
 clasping her hands together fervently. Aileen was ter- 
 ribly anxious for her brother, too, but her chief concern
 
 144 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 was for Con. Burke. If she were to lose him now, she 
 felt that life itself would be unendurable. 
 
 Juana and her husband were both very serious. But 
 Juana had been through the strain of battles long ago. 
 She had not forgotten the kindly philosophy of Biddy 
 Flynn. Courage was the great thing after all. How 
 thankful she was to think that Tom was out of it all, 
 and safe dow r n in Melbourne. She did not know that 
 Tom was at that moment cleaning his musket in his 
 quarters at the Government Camp, very tired after the 
 long march and the exciting little skirmish at the end 
 of it, and utterly unconscious that his brother Syd., or 
 his father and mother and the two girls, were at Bal- 
 larat. 
 
 Next morning Syd. and Con. were up at daybreak. 
 An atmosphere of subdued excitement pervaded the dig- 
 gings, and as the day wore on they joined the great 
 crowd of diggers who were making their way to a mon- 
 ster meeting at Bakery Hill. 
 
 As he drew near Bakery Hill, Syd. Verner saw that a 
 platform had been set up, and beside it a flagstaff was 
 erected. From the top of the flagstaff fluttered a new 
 flag that Syd. had never seen before the diggers' stan- 
 dard. But Syd. recognised it at once, and his heart gave 
 a great leap. Those four silver stars on a blue ground 
 represented the Southern Cross the constellation that 
 had drawn him southward, as though by some mysteri- 
 ous influence, with a promise of gold to his heart's 
 desire. It was strange indeed, to see the emblem that he 
 had followed so far quite close to him at last. 
 
 Did it mean for him, the end of his long quest ? 
 
 But Syd. quickly shook off the superstitions fear with 
 which he had looked at first on the diggers' standard 
 that symbolised the realisation of his dreams. He saw 
 many men on the platform w T hom he recognised and 
 among them the chairman, Hayes, the most prominent 
 leader in the reform movement. Standing in front of 
 the platform, he and Con. Burke cheered the speakers as
 
 AT THE EUREKA STOCKADE 145 
 
 they came forward, and followed their burning utter- 
 ances with passionate attention. 
 
 The two men from Bathurst Plains were conspicuous 
 by their enthusiasm. They cheered the two priests who 
 occupied seats on the platform with the members of the 
 Reform Committee. They cheered every reference to 
 the rights of the diggers, and hissed every comment upon 
 Sir Charles Hotham, Chief Justice Stawell, and Ser- 
 geant-Major Milne, the officer in charge of the police at 
 the camp, and the chief promoter of the digger hunts. 
 When Vern, the Hanoverian, came forward and moved a 
 resolution that all present should burn their licenses 
 forthwith, and swear never to apply for another, they 
 cheered more wildly than ever. 
 
 So when the resolution had been carried by acclama- 
 tion, Syd. and Con. helped to make a big bon-fire close 
 to the flagstaff, upon which flew the standard that bore 
 the emblem the four principal stars of the Southern 
 Cross. And this emblem of the Southern Cross floated 
 above Syd. Verner, as he cast his license into the bon- 
 fire with the others, and so committed himself finally to 
 the conflict that was not to be settled without much 
 shedding of blood. 
 
 All that day Juana and the girls remained at Mrs. 
 McPherson 's house, for the spectre of battle was already 
 abroad, and no one could say when the fighting would 
 begin. Strange tales were afloat of great armies of dig- 
 gers on the move from Bendigo and Creswick, and all 
 the surrounding diggings, to join with the men of Bal- 
 larat in annihilating the forces of the Government and 
 establishing a Provisional Government. 
 
 It was said that a Declaration of Independence had 
 already been drafted by Black, and that a republic was 
 actually in sight. 
 
 On the following day, with almost incredible provoca- 
 tiveness, the authorities at the Government Camp or- 
 ganised a digger hunt, and sent out troops and police to 
 chase the men and demand their licenses. Syd. and Con. 
 were soon in the thick of it. Volleys of stones were
 
 146 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 hurled at the police, and a few shots were also fired. 
 The Government forces drew off with a few prisoners, 
 whom they took back to the camp and chained to the 
 logs. 
 
 Off to Bakery Hill again sped Syd. and his mate, and 
 saw the diggers' standard hoisted once more upon the 
 flagstaff. They saw, too, that dark-haired Irishman, 
 Peter Lalor but a Lalor transfigured by an inner fire 
 of enthusiasm. Mounting a stump, he addressed the 
 diggers briefly, disclaiming the possession of special 
 military knowledge, but declaring himself ready to act 
 as their leader if they would have him. 
 
 Have him! Of course they would. Syd. and Con. 
 cheered themselves hoarse as Lalor, grasping his gun by 
 the barrel in his left hand and resting the stock on his 
 foot, lifted his right hand towards the diggers' standard 
 and solemnly swore allegiance to the diggers' cause. 
 
 Every digger present followed the example, and Syd. 
 Verner found himself lifting his hand towards the 
 emblem that had guided him to the goldfield, and 
 solemnly pronouncing the words of the diggers' oajh 
 "We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by 
 each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties. ' ' 
 
 Then two and two abreast they formed up and set off 
 in a long line to the Eureka Stockade. Syd. and Con. 
 marched immediately behind the diggers' standard, 
 which was carried by Captain Ross, of Toronto. In the 
 stockade, Lalor and his lieutenants took down names, 
 formed squads, and organised drilling, which was begun 
 at once. One of the tents in the stockade was requisi- 
 tioned for the head-quarters' staff, and parties were 
 formed for patrolling the diggings, visiting the store- 
 keepers, and requisitioning supplies of stores and am- 
 munition. Receipts were to be given for every article 
 that they obtained. 
 
 Syd. had his double-barrelled gun, which he bought 
 from the immigrant in ' ' Rag Fair, ' ' down in Melbourne, 
 and also his American revolver. Con. Burke had a 
 muzzle-loading American rifle, and a surprisingly large
 
 AT THE EUREKA STOCKADE 147 
 
 
 
 number of the diggers were provided with firearms of 
 one sort or another. Under Lalor's directions a black- 
 smith shop was established in the stockade, and a black- 
 smith was set to work manufacturing pikes with a sharp- 
 hooked projection, to be used for catching and cutting 
 the bridles of the cavalry. 
 
 The Government Forces were not idle on their side. 
 Captain Thomas, the senior officer in command, fortified 
 the camp with breastworks of timber, in anticipation of 
 an attack in force, and sent the women and children to 
 the rear. 
 
 And so the unhappy day of conflict drew steadily 
 nearer. Henry and Juana and the two girls had seen 
 neither Tom nor Syd. since they arrived on the field. 
 They were still under the impression that Tom had 
 never left Melbourne and was on duty there, with the 
 main body of his regiment. Syd. was still quite un- 
 aware of the presence of any of his family on the edge 
 of the battlefield. 
 
 Saturday, 2nd December, was a busy day in the 
 stockade. Drill went on at intervals throughout the 
 forenoon and afternoon. Men were put on to construct 
 barricades, consisting of overturned carts, palisades, and 
 rope entanglements outside the main fence. The black- 
 smith was busy turning out pikes, and Syd. and Con. 
 joined a patrol party, which scoured the country for 
 ammunition and supplies. Friendly butchers came in 
 with carcases of beef, and there was no lack either of food 
 or drink. 
 
 Throughout the day there were not less than 2,000 
 men in the blockade, but, as the evening drew in, many 
 of them quietly seceded. 
 
 Lalor gave "Vinegar Hill" as the password for the 
 night, and it seemed to have a sinister significance for 
 many. At any rate, they began to slip away in such 
 numbers that the "Commander-in-Chief" threatened to 
 have anyone else who left the stockade shot at once, 
 and his "Minister of War," Alfred Black, supported 
 him cordially in his decision. Yet nobody was made an
 
 148 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 example of, and Saturday closed in with a sense of 
 coming disaster in the air. 
 
 Before midnight, the number of men left in the 
 stockade was under 200. The rest had slipped away, 
 not anticipating attack, some to hold revel, others to go 
 to their own tents. Neither Lalor nor any of his lieu- 
 tenants expected the troops to make a move before the 
 arrival of the reinforcements, which they knew were 
 coming from Melbourne under Sir Robert Nickle. 
 
 But Captain Thomas, of Her Majesty's 40th Regiment 
 of Foot, away yonder in the Government Camp, was a 
 man of soldierly decision. He had spies out who 
 brought him full information as to everything that the 
 diggers were doing. He judged that they did not expect 
 to be attacked until the reinforcing troops arrived, and 
 so determined upon a surprise assault. He made his 
 dispositions accordingly, and a few minutes before three 
 o'clock on Sunday morning he despatched a force of 276 
 men to attack the Eureka Stockade. 
 
 There were 30 cavalry of the mounted corps of the 
 40th Regiment, and 70 mounted police, as well as 65 
 infantry men of the 12th Regiment and 87 men of the 
 40th Regiment. Captain Wise, of the 40th Regiment. 
 Lieutenants Hall and Gardyne, of the cavalry, and 
 Lieutenants Bowdler and Richards, of the infantry, 
 formed part of the column of assault. The balance of 
 the total was made up of foot police. 
 
 Captain Wise, of the 40th Regiment, led the infantry 
 attack, while the cavalry and mounted police were sent 
 round to advance from the South and East and cut off 
 the retreat of the insurgents. 
 
 Among the sentries posted in the stockade was Syd. 
 Verner. He had relieved a comrade at 2 o'clock in the 
 morning, and was now on duty until 6. He paced up 
 and down on the platform that enabled him to see over 
 the top of the stockade, and he carried on his shoulder 
 his London-made double-barrelled gun, loaded with ball. 
 Each face of the stockade was patrolled by a sentry. 
 Most of the other men were asleep, wrapped in their
 
 AT THE EUBEKA STOCKADE 149 
 
 blankets on the ground, with gun or pike beside them. 
 Lalor himself was sitting up in the headquarters' tent, 
 writing. Syd. could see the light of the candle through 
 the canvas. 
 
 As he kept his vigil, Syd. Verner had much very 
 much to think about. He had no illusions as to his 
 position. The stockade would be attacked, if not that 
 night, still as soon as the reinforcing troops arrived 
 from Melbourne. What would be the result of the con- 
 flict? Who could tell? As for himself, he would fight 
 to the last, but it was not at all unlikely that he would 
 fall in the battle. What would become of Moira? In 
 that lonely hour he thought of Moira more than for many 
 past months. He had followed the gleam of gold, but 
 had left the light of love behind him. What madness it 
 had all been. 
 
 Vern, the Hanoverian, interrupted his meditations. 
 "You see nothing down there, my friend, eh?" 
 
 Syd. peered into the darkness. No, he could see 
 nothing. All was silent. 
 
 Vern stumbled off to visit the other sentries. Syd. 
 could not help noticing that the man was desperately 
 nervous. He looked round to the headquarters' tent. 
 The candle was out. "The Commander-in-Chief was 
 evidently snatching a brief sleep. 
 
 Syd.'s thoughts came thick and fast, as he paced up 
 and down with his double-barrelled gun on his shoulder. 
 Recollections of his boyhood came back to him, loving 
 memories of his father and mother and little Aileen 
 and dear old Tom. How good Tom had always been to 
 him. How many times in childhood's days Tom had 
 helped him, and had rushed to his aid in moments of 
 danger. If he only came out of this fight alive, he would 
 go down to Melbourne and hunt up Tom. What a great 
 yarn they would have. He began thinking again of all 
 their experiences together. Why had Tom gone off and 
 enlisted like that? He had never been able to under- 
 stand it. But Tom had been born on the battlefield.
 
 150 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Soldiering was in his blood. It was natural, after all, 
 that he should go to the colours. 
 
 ' ' Hola ! Verner ! ees eet oil tranquil ? " ' ' Yes ! " The 
 voice was that of Carboni Raffaello, that fiery enthusiast 
 for liberty. He had brought the ideas of 1848 across the 
 world with him to Ballarat. He was patrolling round 
 the stockade. It was a marvel to him that his comrades 
 could sleep in front of the enemy. 
 
 "All quiet, Rafaello?" said Syd., in low tones. ''It 
 will be dawn in a few minutes now." 
 
 The Italian passed on. Already a faint streak of 
 radiance was appearing in the eastern sky. It slowly 
 broadened. 
 
 Syd. looked out over the long gentle slope of the 
 ground in front of him. He could see nothing. 
 
 He looked again. Surely that was something moving. 
 The soft glow of the dawn penetrated the darkness. Ha ! 
 The red coats ! The soldiers were upon them. 
 
 "To arms!" shouted Syd. Verner, and emptied both 
 barrels of his gun in the direction of the soldiers. Men 
 leaped from the ground all round him, and hurried to 
 their places. 
 
 ' ' Where are they T " " Where are they ? ' ' 
 
 "There, there," cried Syd., pointing to a long line of 
 redcoats deploying at a distance of 150 yards from the 
 stockade. 
 
 An irregular volley crashed from the stockade, and 
 the advancing line of redcoats faltered momentarily. 
 
 A bugler began to sound the "Charge." But the call 
 was never finished. A bullet knocked the boy over while 
 the bugle was still at his lips. 
 
 "Forward Ihe Fortieth." Syd. heard the officer's 
 confident shout, and the cheers of the men running be- 
 hind him. The diggers heard it too, and poured in a 
 heavy fire upon the troops advancing across the open 
 ground. 
 
 "Steady, boys, steady. Reserve your fire, and mark 
 your men. Pick the leaders first." It was Peter Lalor 
 who ipoke.
 
 AT THE EUREKA STOCKADE 151 
 
 Several of the soldiers fell, but the advance continued, 
 led by Captain Wise, who ran in front of his men mov- 
 ing his sword. 
 
 "Come on, men! Come on! Forward the Fortieth." 
 Those were his last words. A bullet struck him, and he 
 fell mortally wounded. 
 
 That maddened the troops. In the face of repeated 
 volleys, they charged up the gently rising ground with 
 fixed bayonets, cheering wildly. The defenders were 
 already short of ammunition. Their fire slackened. 
 Many of them had nothing to fire but pistols loaded 
 with pebbles. 
 
 The cavalry and mounted police were galloping in 
 from the south and east. The infantry were charging 
 up the slope in front. Syd. Verner realised that the end 
 was not far off. He had lost sight of Con. Burke, but 
 he could hear the ringing words of Lalor adjuring the 
 men to stand fast. 
 
 Ha! The foremost files of the infantry had reached 
 the outer barricade of the overturned carts, slabs and 
 rope entanglements. The soldiers scrambled over the 
 barricade and attacked the stockade with their bare 
 hands. They tore down the slabs and forced a breach. 
 Half a dozen of them were inside the stockade already, 
 bayonet in hand, and the diggers fell back in confusion, 
 taking cover in the shallow holes with which the ground 
 was pitted. 
 
 Syd. Verner gritted his teeth and grasped his gun. 
 He had fired his last shot. The gun was of no more use, 
 except as a club. "Well, he would die game, at any rate. 
 
 Through the gap in the slabs he saw two of the 
 stormers rushing at him. One of them was half a dozen 
 paces in front of the other. The foremost came on with 
 glittering bayonet held low at the charge. The light of 
 battle blazed in his eyes. He was burning to take ven- 
 geance for his fallen Captain. 
 
 Syd. seized his useless gun despairingly by the barrel 
 and whirled it round his head. He gazed fixedly at the 
 on-rushing soldier, with the bayonet. The soldier was
 
 152 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 coming straight for him. The bayonet was within a 
 yard of his breast. 
 
 God ! It was Tom ! 
 
 Tom was completely possessed by the madness of 
 battle, but he recognised Syd. just in time and dropped 
 his point to the ground, letting the bayonet fall from his 
 hands. 
 
 Private Pym, the stormer, who was a few paces behind 
 him, saw his Corporal drop his bayonet by some inex- 
 plicable mischance. He also saw a digger apparently 
 about to club the corporal with the stock of his gun. 
 Private Pym brought his musket to the shoulder and 
 aimed hastily at Syd. As he did so, Tom saw him, and 
 once again, as so often in his boyhood's days, the impulse 
 came over him to save ''little Syd." from imminent 
 danger. 
 
 Tom flung himself in front of Syd. as Private Pym 
 pulled the trigger, and the ball that was intended for 
 the digger buried itself in the redcoat's side. Almost at 
 the same moment, a shot fired from one of the rifle pits, 
 into which the diggers had retreated, took Private Pyxn 
 in the mouth, killing him instantly. 
 
 As the redcoats charged through the breach intent 
 on bayoneting the diggers in the rifle pits, a flying 
 bullet hit Syd. Verner in the shoulder, and he dropped 
 beside Tom. 
 
 And so he did not see the trooper who climbed the 
 diggers' flagstaff under a rain of balls, and tore down 
 the diggers' standard the silver stars upon the field of 
 blue, the Southern Cross that had called the two brothers 
 southward from their home. Syd. was spared that last 
 pang of disillusionment.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 IN THE CAMP HOSPITAL. 
 
 Neither of the brothers knew how the tide of battle 
 went on that fatal day, when more than forty of the 
 diggers gave their lives for their cause, and when not a 
 few of the soldiers also fell, including that gallant officer, 
 Captain Wise, who had been well known and greatly 
 liked on the field of battle before an oppressive enact- 
 ment and the corrupt administration of justice drove 
 the disfranchised diggers into the recklessness of armed 
 revolt. 
 
 Peter Lalor, who lost his left arm in the fight, was 
 still in hiding with a price upon his head, when Syd. 
 and Tom recovered consciousness, and found themselves 
 in adjoining beds, under medical treatment. Commis- 
 sioner Rede, on behalf of the Government, received the 
 wounded diggers, as well as the wounded soldiers, into 
 the Camp Hospital, and several medical men, who had 
 been engaged in digging, volunteered their services in 
 attending to the sufferers. 
 
 Then it was that Syd. Verner renewed his acquain- 
 tance with Dr. Leslie Smallpage, whose bitter experi- 
 ences in buying a horse at the Melbourne Horse Bazaar 
 had opened Syd.'s eyes, so long ago, to the wicked wiles 
 of the experienced coper. 
 
 It was Dr. Smallpage who extracted one bullet from 
 Syd.'s shoulder, and another from Tom's ribs. When 
 the doctor learned privately how Tom had saved Syd.'s 
 life, by taking the bullet intended for his brother, he 
 was with difficulty prevailed upon to hold his tongue 
 about it. However, at last he consented, and as Private 
 
 158
 
 154 THE CALL OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS 
 
 Pym, who fired the shot, was dead, the only witness who 
 could have brought the incident to light was silenced. 
 
 Dr. Smallpage had an anxious time with both his 
 patients for a couple of days after their admission to 
 the Camp Hospital. He refused to allow any visitors to 
 see them until the fever abated, and their father and 
 mother and the two girls had to be content with the 
 doctor's bulletins announcing the satisfactory condition 
 of the patients. 
 
 A good many of the diggers had escaped after the 
 fight, and were in hiding among them being Con. 
 Burke, but as Aileen wore a happy face, it was not diffi- 
 cult to conjecture that she at least had found out Con.'s 
 hiding place, and was ministering to his necessities. 
 She managed to tear herself away from that interesting 
 rebel, in order to accompany Henry Verner and Juana 
 and Moira, when they were at last allowed to visit Syd 
 and Tom at the Camp Hospital. 
 
 What tears of thankfulness Juana wept as she sat on a 
 chair between the two beds, and held a hand of each of 
 her sons ! How proudly she listened to Syd. 's whispered 
 story of those last breathless moments in the stockade, 
 when Tom dropped his bayonet and ran in to cover 
 Syd.'s body with his own from Private Pym's bullet. 
 
 Henry Verner, thrilled with pride in his soldier son, 
 though he could not help feeling a glow of sympathy 
 with Syd.'s whole-hearted espousal of the cause of the 
 oppressed diggers. Both of the young men had nobly 
 done their duty each in his own fate-allotted sphere. 
 Both of them had proved brave men and worthy sons of 
 a father and mother whose love was consecrated amid 
 the thunder of the guns. 
 
 When Juana at last rose to leave her sons, Moira took 
 the vacant chair for a few minutes. Syd. had fully 
 realised since that last vigil of his on sentry duty, just 
 before the attack, that the gleam of gold is a poor thing 
 for a man to guide his course by. The star of love was 
 to be his beacon henceforth. He asked Moira 's pardon 
 for his long absence in pursuit of the golden lure, and
 
 IN THE CAMP HOSPITAL 155 
 
 Moira, of course, forgave him. She loved him too much 
 to complain of him for seeking fortune, as a man is 
 bound to do. 
 
 Then she turned to Tom. "How can I thank you, 
 Tom, ' ' she whispered, ' ' for all you have done for me ? " 
 
 ' ' By saying no more about it, Moira, ' ' said Tom, with 
 a cheery smile. ' ' I want you to be happy, my dear, and 
 I know quite well that little Syd. will make you as happy 
 as the day is long. ' ' 
 
 "But what are you going to do, dear old Tom?" A 
 couple of warm tears dropped from the girl's eyes on 
 the back of Tom Verner's hand. 
 
 "Why, Moira," said Tom, quite briskly, "you must 
 remember that I am a soldier now. I think I always 
 wanted to be a soldier. It must be in my blood. When 
 I get out of this place I shall go back to the Regiment, 
 and I shall be quite happy there. I don't think I was 
 cut out to be a marrying man, Moira ; " he smiled at her 
 so gaily that she almost broke down before them all; 
 "and so the Regiment shall be my only bride." 
 
 And so, after all, the call of the Southern Cross was 
 not the call of either strife or gold but the call of 
 loyal love. 
 
 THE END.
 
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