A Queensland Iliad by Hume Nisbet
“A Queensland Iliad” was first published in the Hume Nisbet anthology The Haunted Station and Other Stories.
About Hume Nisbet
Hume Nisbet was an artist and novelist who was born in Stirling , Scotland, in 1849. When he was 16 years old, Nisbet traveled to Australia and remained there for around seven years pursuing creative and artistic pursuits.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of Nisbet’s tales are set in Australia. Although his poetry and stories had a variety of themes, he produced an impressive number of ghost stories, many of which he included in his anthologies The Haunted Station (1894) and Stories Weird and Wonderful (1900).
A Queensland Iliad
by Hume Nisbet
(Online Text)
Overhead the sun was glaring fiercely from a bleached-out whitey-gray dome upon a plain as boundless seemingly as the ocean, and almost as monotonous in color as the intense span above it.
It was Midsummer on a sheep-run, in an upcountry, back station of North Queensland! In the foreground stood a slab hut, with fence-bound paddock in front of it, and, stretching away as far as the eye could follow, immense herds of lanky sheep, grubbing like pigs amongst the burnt-up soil, for the dried roots of the long-ago extinct vegetation. It is wonderful upon how little Australian cattle and sheep may exist between the rain seasons.
These close ranks of gray-coated grubbers gave the monotonous appearance to the landscape, otherwise it would have looked black as a freshly-ploughed field. Between the nearest groups you could see the dark-tinted soil, as they staggered, and panted and fainted with the fierce heat and lack of sustenance—that heat which hung over them in gaseous haze, and created mirages in every direction, making the flocks at a little distance off appear as if submerged in glistering pools, and the thinly-clad gum-trees which dotted the plains to be growing in the midst of swamps.
As the eye wandered from the detached masses of woolly skeletons to those portions of the distance whence the mirage had shifted, it looked like a mud-mixed snow field, solid miles of sheep, with their coats beginning to grow again since the last shearing, a vast army of patient sufferers waiting for the uncertain rain-pour, still much ahead, and hanging on to life with a tenacity which is amazing, considering how easy it would have been to lie down and die.
Through the day they waited, choking and starving for the welcome night, when the heavy dew would fall and soak them through, while it moistened the dry ‘“‘ tack” which kept them in pain. They waited for the night, thirsting, and did not heed whether it brought the dingoes, so long as it brought the dew.
A little distance from the hut stood a “ringed” and dead gum-tree, with a rough ladder placed against its white trunk, and reaching up to the first fork, this was the outlook of the shepherd where he spent most of his time from daybreak to sunset counting his almost countless charges, and reckoning up how much he had lost from his ‘‘screw” since the beginning of the dry season, for, beyond a certain number allowed for casualties, the excess lost was deducted from his wages at the end of the season.
A melancholy man this shepherd was, who had been a pupil-teacher at one time, before the drink drove him from civilization. His strong point had been calculation in those days; now it is his sole occupation as well as amusement to sit on that gum-tree fork and keep counting his flock from morning till night, without cessation, day after day surveying the horizon with his blood-shot eyes and counting the number, while he calculated on his losses, and made notches with his knife on the hard wood. ‘This had gone on for three months already, and would go on for the next three or four months, without the sight of a human white face, or the sound of an English voice to break upon that awful brain-sapping monotony, until the messenger rode up with his next six months’ supply of provisions, or he went raving mad and imagined himself to be a successful general with a victorious army under him whom he had to number and direct. This is the life and almost certain fate of a North Queensland back-station shepherd, a little different from that of James Hogg on the “dowie dens of Yarrow.”
He had no dogs to help him or keep him company, and no other companions excepting a magpie or two who occasionally visited him, for what would be the use of a dog or a dozen dogs in that vast extent of plain amongst this legion of sheep?—and where is the woman who would have wasted her life looking after a dreary-looking counting-machine like him in the center of such a hopeless waste? When he lifted his wages after two or three years of reckoning up, he would hardly have enough for a full week’s drinking, and no woman alive could stand that, at least not a Colonial woman. He was doomed to live and die amongst his silent and long-suffering companions—the sheep —with the occasional look-in of those perky and mischievous visitors, the magpies.
At night he lay on his blanket and conned [1] over the number at which he had left off when the sun went down, while the dingoes prowled outside and worried the flock unmolested. And when at last he fell asleep he dreamt he was still at it, counting up from hundreds to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions; singing out the accumulating numbers in that dreary drone, while he groaned over the one or two short from the number of the day before.
He had started his hermit-life with a horse, but that had died after the grass gave out a month, and now it was lying where it fell, an ant-picked skeleton as clean and glittering as polished ivory; and he would not be allowed another until after the carrier had gone back to the station to report progress. Then the shearers might bring him up a mount, if they remembered, to carry him down to the station shanty, two hundred miles away from where he now rotted, or if it was found needful, carry him on further to the lunatic asylum.
Perhaps he might have gone mad before the time of this history, for he had been at his present post for the past year and a quarter without a spell away, and the most cast-iron intellect cannot stand two years of that sort of arithmetic straight off without giving way; only that within the past twelve weeks he had experienced quite an unusual interruption. A tribe of hostile blacks had paid him a visit, and for one long night had broken through his calculations and kept him occupied with their doings; indeed, on this occasion, he had two long nights’ distraction from his everlasting sheep-counting, the second night’s experience making it extremely improbable whether he would ever again be able to tell up his reckoning to his own complete satisfaction after that untimely, yet perhaps, providential break.
He was lying on his back, composing himself for sleep, with the final suck from his well-blackened stump of a clay, when the infernal din took place outside, which banished sleep, and forced him to leap over to his gun, in the middle of the ninth and tenth hundred thousand, and there he let the figures go for the time; and putting his eye to the space between the shrunken slab of his outer window shutter, he looked out upon the moonlit plain.
It was a splendid night, as every night mostly is in Australia. When the moon is not out, the stars and planets do their very utmost in the way of effulgency, particularly in Northern or Central Queensland, blazing and flashing down upon the dew-drenched earth like electric lamps; and when the moon does shine up with its warm, tarnished-silver luster over everything, there is no comparison between it and any other kind of light, for it catches at the soul and draws it right away from the sun-fazed body—right away to regions where Oberon and Titania, with their merry court, play amongst the marguerites and mushrooms.
This night the moon was shining at her strongest, and in the distance, the mirages had become lakes of flame.
Over the gum-tree, whereon he was wont to perch, with its glaring white trunk and skeleton-like branches—over the sheep all huddled away from that foreground and crushing against each other as they strove to make room for the invaders upon their domain, streamed the overpowering luster of that great silver moon—over as fierce a picture of battle and death as ever blind Homer built up on the lighted walls of his inner vision.
About two hundred natives had chosen the fenced-in paddock as their field of contest, and himself to be the spectator.
The preliminaries had either been all arranged beforehand, or else it was only the uproar of the actual battle which had roused him. There they were, writhing, leaping, clutching, felling with their waddies, using their boomerangs as swords, stabbing with their spears, and raising such a terrific din with their yelling, that not even the most absent-minded of mathematicians could have been able to continue his calculations after that began.
The shepherd for the first time in two years forgot his sheep, and felt the blood trickling within his half-dried veins. Something like the shadow of the spirit which had been in him in early manhood began to revive, so that as he watched, keenly clutching his loaded rifle, he had the natural inclination to rush out and join in the fight. A rash impulse, from which his months of sun-scorching and mental arithmetic restrained him—he was no longer youthful or fiery. The heroes outside were both enemies of his, however they might regard each other at present, so that he could afford to hang on until the victory was declared and then his chance would come to defend himself and his hut.
He was too old a resident of the wilds, not to know exactly how the encounter had come to pass. ‘l’wo rival tribes, creeping up to his hut from opposite directions, to take him by surprise, had suddenly caught sight of each other, and, forgetting for the moment the white fellow and loot, the old feud fired up, and without a second thought they had rushed forward into the open and set to work.
And they were working with an energy and a steadfastness worthy of even old Trojan and Greek. The moon lit up their dusky skins and shone upon the glaring whites of their eyes and gleaming teeth, as they grinned at each other and swung their arms about, making fantastic shadow-shapes on the frosted ground. The moon also shone with a sinister glister, as it might on ink-pools, or gliding snakes, over gaping gashes and rivulets of hot blood, as they ran down naked limbs and soaked into the thirsty earth. There were no mirages, or fictitious glistering about these rivulets and pools, over which the watcher saw the moonbeams glide and glitter.
All through the night they fought, some dropping, and crawling languidly away out of the circle of his vision; others lying still and allowing themselves to be trampled upon without protest, while the yells grew huskier and the strokes weaker as the shadows became less black and the chill indefiniteness of coming day plucked the courage from them, one and all.
At last the dawn broke over the distant plain and showed him the vanquished and the victors slinking away from one another, and trailing their dead after them. Scarcely one carried away a whole skin, while some of them showed such gashes on their uncovered bodies, that the watcher wondered how they could even creep; they had got their fill of fighting for one day, and were going back to their women to be doctored up against the next affair of honor, or looting raid.
It was such a picture of savage warfare that the sun lighted up, as made our exile feel for a time almost contented with his solitude. Men carrying away wounds, each one like a gaping gate through which the soul of any white man must surely have rushed, only these black fellows’ souls seem to hold on firmer to the bones than ours do. As the shepherd watched them going and then regarded the trail they were leaving behind he knew that he had but a few hours to prepare his house for their coming again; the vanquished would go back to their own country with as many of his outlying sheep as they could drive before them or carry with them, but the victors would be down upon him with a double thirst.
He went to work methodically, according to his usual fashion, for he had all day before him to get things ready, and first of all he lit his fire and put on his billy for his breakfast.
While the billy was heating, he strolled over to his usual out-look and climbed the ladder mechanically, beginning to count once more the tens and hundreds of thousands.
There seemed to be no difference in the flock since the day before, as they clustered over the vast plain, but the shepherd knew in that first rapid survey, that he was poorer by a couple of hundred than he had been when he went indoors at nightfall. He could see with his accustomed eye where dozens of mangled carcasses lay with their feet up amongst that distant billow of dirty white.
He was almost as patient and long-suffering as the sheep around him, so that he did not even curse as he descended from his perch and moved over, gun in hand, to where the nearest victim lay, hoping as he went that there would be at least a chop left on the defunct, for this was how he tried to make up his nightly losses, taking what the wasteful marauders left him in the shape of fresh provisions.
Yes; they had left him plenty and to spare; so placing his rifle beside him, he drew out his sharp knife and began in a tradesman-like manner to strip the roughly-butchered animal, and was pretty well through with his task, when he was disturbed by a series of shrill screams over by a line of trees in front of where he knelt.
To quit his task and spring to his rifle was his first natural instinct—his second was to look for the cause of the disturbance.
There, in front of him, and moving towards the bush, he saw a naked black fellow dragging along a young lubra by the only available part left to catch hold of—her hair; she was protesting vehemently and loudly, which was not surprising to the shepherd, when he saw how the black ruffian was laying on to her with his waddy while he dragged her along; it was: clearly his purpose. to get her out of the white fellow’s range as quickiy as possible.
Not having tasted whiskey for the past three months, and then only a very moderate dose, the arm was like a rock as it raised the rifle, and the eye sure as it brought the sight to bear on the ravisher.
“Crack!”
Then he ran over to where the pair still were, the girl hiding her face in her hands, and the savage looking with stupid amazement on his broken wrist.
“What for you take that girl ?” lie cried, as he stood up to the man.
“She my girl, you leave her alone, white fellow.”
“No! white fellow me lubra; no belong ’o him; he kill my people, and steal me,” broke in the girl, recovering herself. The English wasn’t quite so clear as I give it, but it was plain enough for the shepherd to understand.
The white and black men looked for a moment at each other, and then the savage, with a heavy scowl, took his departure, still looking at his wrist as if he couldn’t understand the accident.
Half-an-hour afterwards, the young lubra was making herself at home in that lonely hut, drinking the shepherd’s tea and eating his damper [2] and mutton, also dressed, for decorum sake, in his spare flannel shirt, which, as he was a tall man, and she quite a little girl, made a very respectable robe for her, and with its dingy red color, suiting her dusky complexion very well.
She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, for a Queensland native. Some of the very young ones are not; her eyes were large and bright, and her teeth white as milk—not much over twelve years of age; and, as soon as she had recovered from her fright, and her awe of her host, she became as vivacious and as active as a young monkey.
She informed him, while she dodged about the hut and into his pockets, confiscating little articles, that her tribe had been defeated, but that she knew where to find them, and being a shy man, and not used to entertaining ladies, he was only half sorry when she announced her intention to take her immediate departure, much as she had enlivened his solitude during the hour of her visit.
His friends the magpies screamed jeeringly at them both, as shouldering his reloaded rifle, he went with her part of her way and saw her safely into the bush at the far end of the first plain. He dare not go too far from his own hut, knowing, as he did, that the black fellows would be on the watch. A strange thrill passed over him as the artful little lubra left a kiss on his beard, in exchange for his clasp-knife, tin tobacco box, and his spare red flannel shirt, which he had only washed the day before. How even young savage lubras learn these cunning tricks, it is hard to say, but as he watched the glimmer and flutter of that red garment between the white gum trunks, he wished that he could have gone with her a little further—gone with her the whole way—and left the “blooming” sheep to look after themselves.
The thrill of that parting salute made him indifferent to the losses he had sustained. Most likely the uncles, aunts, and cousins of the young lady were at that moment feasting from one of the sheep he would have to account for, while the other muttons were waiting for a like fate.
She was gone, taking with her his spare shirt and his tobacco-box and knife, so that for the next three months he would have to do the best he could with the shirt he was at present wearing, and use his wood hatchet for the shredding down of his tobacco cake. It would be lumpy and so last longer in the pipe, a reflection he consoled himself with, and as for the shirt—wasn’t that hour-and-a-half of sociality worth it? while as for the parting kiss!—why, that would last him for years.
When had he been kissed last? He was an ugly and a cadaverous man, whom women could not take to naturally. As he thought back, he had to own that it was the first kiss which had ever been given him. Once in a bold moment of semi-intoxication he had attempted to snatch a kiss from a barmaid, but she had evaded it, and promptly punished him for his audacity by laying his cheek open with a glass—yes! the mark was there still, to remind him when he liked to put his hand up, of that abortive effort. Perhaps his mother had kissed him when he was a baby; yet, as she had died before he could remember, that he could not say for certain.
But the lubra had kissed him of her own free will, and that kiss still lingered, and thrilled over him curiously. She had also promised to come again and get some more presents from him.
‘When Jack comes up next with the provisions,” he murmured, “I’ll get him to send up a rig-out for that daring young lubra, and again in a hurry. I’ll rig-out the little cuss instead of going down for a spree when my time comes.”
He mounted the outlook no more that day, but set himself diligently to get ready for the night, when he came back to the hut, drawing up his barrel-full of water from the nearly dry sunk well, getting the shutters nailed and the door—secure; then he sat down with his rifle and ammunition beside him, for the first time in his life forgetting his dinner and supper. He did not forget to fill and light his pipe however; this done, he waited, smoking inside his darkened hut for what he knew was certain to come after the sun went down.
An unusual moisture seemed to be in his brain that night as he waited and listened; he never counted once during his vigil, for before him he saw the young girl as he had parted with her in the morning, and she seemed to be listening along with him in the dark, and touching his ragged gray beard with her little brown hand.
“ Little cuss! little cuss!” he murmured softly as he waited on the coming of the treacherous enemy.
He did not think much about the danger of his present position, as he sat with his back against the wall and puffed quietly at his pipe in the dark; he had been too long used to danger of this kind not to take it all as a part of the year’s work, like the watching, the counting, and the shooting of dingoes. Blacks were like dingoes to him, only that the blacks caused ever so much more trouble when they showed up; fortunately, they were not often his way; the last visit had been about sixteen months before, and that tribe he had been able to warn off the ground without any waste of shot.
This time, however, with their blood warmed by victory, the result might be different. There was a bigger crowd of them, and if that fellow with the broken wrist had any authority over them, it meant a long and a stern struggle, and the keeping of his eyes open for the hundred different dirty tricks they would indulge in towards him.
He had poured as much water over his shingles and slabs as he could spare, the last thing before daylight faded, so that they mightn’t succeed in firing his shelter; and the dews would keep it moist until sunrise, by which time he trusted to have beaten them off. From former experience he could stand a good deal of smoking-out before he caved in. He had now done all he could think of in the way of preparation. He sat and indulged his half-crazed brain with that strange fancy about the proximity of the young lubra in his red shirt; he could not see her, of course, for he knew that she must be miles on her way by that time, yet in the intensity of the darkness and stillness around him his beard shook with the vibration of the touch she had left upon it.
Outside nothing stirred except the soft rubbing of some of the sheep against the wet slabs; there was no use looking out yet from between the planks, because nothing could be seen; and he would know when the moon rose by the shafts of light which would then be thrown in upon him, while he didn’t expect the savages before moon-rise, for they are mostly afraid of utter darkness, so that he had nothing to disturb his pipe and his peculiar fancy about the absent girl being present and sitting close to him.
After a time his pipe wanted filling, therefore he got out his cake and tore off the shreds with his hand, breaking them up as small as possible, and stuffing them amongst the old tobacco; then he carelessly struck a match, and for an instant illuminated the rough interior.
Two bright dark eyes seemed to flash from the darkness, and fade before the light as he held it up, and the next instant he had dropped the match without using it, but with a sharp cry of pain, for a native spear had pierced the fleshy portion of his upraised arm, while a dozen more sharp points were sticking between the slab joins ; his match had revealed his locality to his watchful besiegers.
With a subdued oath he plucked the spear from his arm, and shifted his position to another part of the room; for until the moon got up he could only wait and listen intently, with the sensation of a crowd of eyes on every side of him trying to penetrate the blackness.
He could hear them now breathing and moving about; there were some on the roof tugging gently at the shingles to get in to him that way. He could make out exactly where they were, and, pointing his rifle upwards, waited patiently for the hole to be made so that he should run no risk of losing a shot.
At last the white spark of a star darts down, and is blanked out by a body, which covers it; then a sharp ping, and a loud yell is heard as the flash bursts from the barrel, followed by the rolling and falling of several bodies outside ; he has shot one, and the others have left the roof in a fright.
There comes the moon with a crimson glimmering like sunset through the crevices, quickly changing to yellow and then to vivid white—now he can see to do his work on that side of the hut.
‘‘Bang! bang!! bang!!!” as fast as he can cram the cartridges into the breech he sends out the bullets wherever he sees a shadow or a break in the lustre; each report followed by exclamations from the wounded, and then for a few minutes he knows that he can let his rifle cool, for they have dragged away their slain out of range, and must have a consultation before they come on again.
It is hot, so he wipes his brow with his hand, which is wet with the blood running down his arm from the spear wound; then, without troubling to bind it up, he looks out.
They are coming on again and trying their old device of gum branches to cover their advances; he can see the bushes moving over the now lighted plain and aims straight at the nearest.
Another stampede when they see that their trick is discerned, and next, after a short pause, without further disguise they rush forward, each man carrying his branch of dry wood, and careless about the shots the shepherd is pouring amongst them, for at last they are roused up to the fury of battle, and leave the dead and wounded to look after themselves.
He can see the man with the broken wrist leading them on and swinging his waddy about with his uninjured hand, and he aims his next shot at him, but misses; then he drops his rifle and pulls out his revolver while they wake the night up with their yells, and make the sheep rush wildly about in the distance.
There is no want of light now for the shepherd to see to fight with, for the dry bushes are spluttering up against the damp slabs, and the naked figures are swarming over the roof and jabbing at him wherever a joint in the walls is wide enough to allow a spear to get through; and although he jumps and dodges about, as he fills and empties his chambers, silver bars of light on the one side and orange stripes on the other cross each other and reveal him to the sharp eyes and sure hands.
He is one man amongst fifty, and although he does deadly work as long as he is able, they have got over their first fright of his weapon, and leave a spear sticking wherever they see a bar of light in their target. Still, doggedly, he fights on, and staggers about, growing less certain in his aim, while the fancy that the lubra is with him grows more real as his actual sight becomes dimmer.
There is a hole in the roof now large enough to let them enter, and although the first three who attempt it tumble in dead at his feet, the fourth, fifth, and sixth follow each other without accident, for he can no longer find his cartridges.
Then the lurid and pale lights from the flames and moon, swim round him like phantasmagoria, and the young lubra clasps him closely in her arms to part no more.
* * *
Jack, the half-caste messenger from the head station, speeds on, leading his laden pack-horse at the top of his speed, because the boy wants to reach his destination before another night comes. He has been a week on the road, riding over a country of delicious spring, for the rains are past, and the whole land is lush with young grass, and flaming with flowers.
At one portion of his journey his horse shies from a red flag which covers a gleaming skeleton —it is the red flag that attracts Jack, for skeletons have been common enough on his road up—and he has a bad record to take back to the squatter.
He jumps off for a moment to examine this curiosity, and finds that it is a small skeleton with the skull fractured, and that the red rag is the remains of a big flannel shirt. He finds also a rusty clasp-knife, and a tin tobacco box lying besides the fleshless hands; these he possesses himself of with a chuckle, and then remounting his horse he gallops on towards the hut.
Hume Nisbet (1849 — 1923)
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1. The word conned can be used in several ways. In the context of the story it means studied. ↩
2. In Australia, damper is a type of unleavened bread. ↩
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