Colonel Thorndyke's Secret

“That sounds right enough, Captain,” one of the convicts said, “and just at present nothing would suit me better than to get so far away from this place that I can lay on my back and take it easy for a spell.”

There was a general chorus of assent, and there being neither tobacco nor spirits, the party very soon stretched themselves off to sleep round the fire.

In the morning they were up before daylight, and half an hour later arrived at one of the farms farthest from Sydney. Here they found a flock of a hundred sheep. The shepherd came to the door of his hut on hearing a noise.

“You had best lie down and go to sleep for the next hour,” the leader of the convicts said sharply. “We don’t want to do an old pal any harm, and when you wake up in the morning and find the flock some twenty short, of course you won’t have any idea what has come of them.”

The man nodded and went back into the hut and shut the door, and the convicts started for the interior, driving twenty sheep before them.

During the first day’s journey they went fast, keeping the sheep at a trot before them, and continuing their journey through the heat of the day.

“I tell you what, Captain,” one of the men said when they halted at sunset, “if we don’t get to a water hole we shall have to give up this idea of going and camping in the bush. My mouth has been like an oven all day, and it is no use getting away from jail to die of thirst out here.”

There had been similar remarks during the day, and the two leaders agreed together that it would be madness to push further, and that, whatever the risk, they would have to return to the settlements unless they could strike water. As they were sitting moodily round the fire they were startled by a dozen natives coming forward into the circle of light. These held out their hands to say that their intentions were peaceful.

“Don’t touch your muskets!” Captain Wild exclaimed sharply, as some of the men were on the point of jumping to their feet. “The men are friendly, and we may be able to get them to guide us to water.”

The natives, as they came up, grinned and rubbed their stomachs, to show that they were hungry.

“I understand,” the Captain said; “you want a sheep, we want water;” and he held up his hand to his mouth and lifted his elbow as if in the act of drinking.

In two or three minutes the natives understood what he wanted, and beckoned to the men to follow. The tired sheep were got onto their legs again, and half a mile away the party arrived at a pool in what in wet weather was the bed of a river. A sheep was at once handed over to the natives, and when the men had satisfied their thirst another sheep was killed for their own use.

After a great deal of trouble the natives were made to understand that the white men wanted one of their party to go with them as a guide, and to take them always to water holes, and a boy of fifteen was handed over to them in exchange for two more sheep, and at daybreak the next morning they started again for the interior, feeling much exhilarated by the piece of luck that had befallen them. They traveled for four days more, and then, considering that the soldiers had ceased their pursuit long ago, they encamped for ten days, enjoying to the utmost their recovered freedom and their immunity from work of any kind. Then they returned to the neighborhood of the settlements, and broke up, as their leader proposed, into pairs.

They had been there but a short time before the depredations committed roused the settlers to band themselves together. Every horse that could be spared was lent to the military, who formed a mounted patrol of forty men, while parties of infantry, guided by native trackers, were constantly on the scent for the convicts.

“This is just what I expected,” Captain Wild said to his lieutenant. “It was the choice of two evils, and I am not sure that the plan we chose was not the worst. We might have been quite sure that these fellows would not be able, even for a time, to give up their old ways. If they had confined themselves, as we have done, to taking a sheep when they wanted it, and behaving civilly when they went to one of the houses and begged for a few pounds of flour or tea, the settlers would have made no great complaint of us; they know what a hard time we have had, and you can see that some of the women were really sorry for us, and gave us more than we actually asked for. But it has not been so with the others. They had been breaking into houses, stealing every thing they could lay their hands upon, and in three or four cases shooting down men on the slightest provocation.

“The money and watches were no good to them, but the brutes could not help stealing them; so here we are, and the settlement is like a swarm of angry bees, and this plan of handing over most of their horses to the military will end in all of us being hunted down if we stay here. Two were shot yesterday, and in another week we shall all either be killed or caught. There is nothing for it but to clear out. I am against violence, not on principle, but because in this case it sets people’s backs up; but it cannot be helped now. We must get a couple of horses to ride, and a spare one to carry our swag. We must have half a sack of flour and a sheep—it is no use taking more than one, because the meat won’t keep—and a good stock of tea and sugar. We must get a good supply of powder, if we can, some bullets and shot. We shall have to get our meat by shooting.