Ghost Stories and Mysteries (16 page)

Again there was silence for a while, then Davis said musingly.

“It’s impossible to pronounce any opinion at present; the coincidence of Milford’s report is certainly startling. But why should this sign have been vouchsafed to you? Apparently this being you saw was the ghost of some old Dutch sailor wrecked or marooned here in the days of the early discovery of Australia. Had you any ancestors among those gentry?”

“Not that I am aware of,” returned Maxwell, “but if we find the place we shall certainly make some interesting discovery, apart from any gold.”

“And the girl’s face?” enquired Bennett.

Maxwell did not answer for a minute or two.

“I may as well tell you all,” he said then; “I was in Melbourne, after I saw Milford, and I met a girl with that same face, in the street. Strange, too, we could not help looking at each other as though we knew we had met before. That meeting decided me on taking the trip up here. Now, that is really all. Are you ready for the adventure?”

“I should think so,” said Davis; “we have fresh horses at the camp, and nothing to do with ourselves for three months or more. Please God, on Christmas Day we’ll be on Tom Tiddler’s ground picking up gold in chunks.”

“One question more,” put in Bennett. “Have you ever had any return of these trances or cataleptic fits?”

“Never since, not the slightest sign of one.”

CHAPTER III

There was no doubt about the strange proof or coincidence, whichever it should turn out to be. The three men stood on the bank of the Nicholson River gazing at the gorge and the waterhole, from the bosom of which rose the two upright pillars of rock. Two weeks had elapsed since they were camped at the lagoon.

“It is the same place,” muttered Maxwell, and, as the overwhelming horror of his fight through shadowland came back to him, he leant on his horse’s shoulder and bowed his head down on the mane.

Bennett made a sign to Davis and both men were silent for a while, then Davis spoke—

“Well, old man, as we are not possessed of the supernatural power you had when you were last here, we’ll have to get over that range somehow.”

Maxwell lifted his head. “We shall have to tackle the range, but I expect we shall have a job to get the horses over. How about leaving them here in hobbles and going up on foot?”

“Not to be thought of,” replied Davis; “why, the niggers’ tracks just back there in the bed of the river, are as thick as sheep-tracks. The horses would be speared before we got five miles away. I know these beggars.”

“That’s true,” said Bennett.

Davis eyed the range curiously for some time. “There’s a spur there that we can work our way up, I think,” he said at last, indicating with his hand the spot he meant. The other two, after a short inspection, agreed with him. It was then nearly noon, so the horses were turned out for a couple of hours’ spell, a fire lit and the billy boiled.

“What could have led your Dutch sailor up this way?” said Davis as, the meal over, they were enjoying an after-dinner pipe.

“That is what has puzzled me. I have read up everything I could get hold of on the subject of Dutch discovery and can find no record of any ship visiting the Gulf about that date,” replied Maxwell.

“There may have been plenty of ships here, of which neither captain nor crew wanted a record kept. Those were the days of the buccaneers,” said Bennett.

“Yes, but with the exception of the ship Dampier was on board of, they did not come out of their way to New Holland,” returned Maxwell.

“The Bachelor’s Delight and the Cygnet were on the west coast, as you say; why not others who had not the luck to be associated with the immortal Dampier?”

“True; but the Dutch were not noted as buccaneers. However, plenty of ships may have been lost in the Gulf of which all record has disappeared. The question is, what brought the man up into this region?” said Davis.

“I firmly believe we shall find the clue to that secret, when we find the ravine. It seems incredible that a shipwrecked or marooned man should have left the sea-coast, whereon was his only hope of salvation and have made south into an unknown land, through such a range as this.”

“Well, boys, we’ll make a start for it,” said Davis, jumping up; and the party were soon in their saddles.

The range proved pretty stiff climbing, and they were so often baulked, and forced to retrace their steps, that it was sundown before they reached the top.

* * * * * * *

It was a desolate outlook for a camp. A rough tableland of spinifex—evidently extending too far for them to attempt to go on and descend the other side before darkness set in—lay before them.

“Nothing for it but to go on and tie the horses up all night,” said Bennett. Fortune, however, favoured them; in about a mile they came on a small patch of grass, sufficient for the horses, and as their water-bags were full, they gladly turned out.

For a time the conversation turned on their expectations for the morrow, but gradually it dropped, as the fire died down. One by one the stars in their courses looked down through the openings of the tree-tops on the wanderers sleeping below, and silence, save for the occasional clink of a hobble, reigned supreme until the first flush of dawn.

“Well, Maxwell,” said Davis, as they were discussing breakfast, “hear anything from your old Dutch navigator last night?”

“No, but I had some confused sort of dream again about this place; I thought I heard that voice once more telling me to ‘go back’. But that, of course, is only natural.”

“I think we are close to the spot,” remarked Bennett. “When I was after the horses this morning I could see down into the river, and there appeared to be an open pocket there.”

Bennett proved right. In half-an-hour’s time they were scrambling down the range, and soon stood in an open space that Maxwell at once identified.

Naturally everybody was slightly excited. Although at first inclined to put the story down to hallucination, the subsequent events had certainly shaken this belief in the minds of the two friends. Maxwell silently pointed to the boulder; there was something carved on it, but it was worn and indistinct. Two centuries of weather had almost obliterated whatever marks had been there.

“They were fresh and distinct when I saw them,” said Maxwell, in an awed voice.

By diligent scrutiny they made out the inscription that he had repeated, but had they not known it the task would have been most difficult. The words had not been very deeply marked, and the face of the boulder fronting north-west, the full force of the wet seasons had been experienced by the inscription.

“This is a wonderful thing,” said Davis. “There can be no doubt as to the age of that.”

“Let’s go up the ravine and look for the reef and then get back as soon as possible. I don’t like this place. I wish I had not come,” returned Maxwell.

They left the packhorses feeding about and rode up the gully, taking with them the pick and shovel they had brought. “It was here, I think,” said Maxwell, looking around; “but the place seems altered.”

“Very likely the creek would change its course slightly in a couple of hundred years, but not much. That looks like an outcrop there.”

“This is the place,” said Maxwell, eagerly, “I know it now, but it is a little changed.”

The three dismounted, and Davis, taking the pick, struck the cap of the reef with the head of it, knocking off some lumps of stone. As he did so a wild “Holloa!” rang up the gully. All started and looked at each other with faces suddenly white and hearts quickly beating. There was something uncanny in such a cry rising out of the surrounding solitude.

“Blacks?” said Bennett, doubtfully. Davis shook his head. Once more the loud shout was raised, apparently coming from the direction of the inscribed rock.

“Let’s go and see what it is, anyway,” said Davis—and they mounted and rode down the gully again, Bennett, who had picked up a bit of the quartz, putting it into his saddle-pouch as they rode along.

Maxwell had not spoken since the cry had been heard, his face was pale and occasionally he muttered to himself, “Go back, go back!” The packhorses were quietly cropping what scanty grass there was; all seemed peaceful and quiet.

“I believe it was a bird after all; there’s a kind of toucan makes a devil of a row—have a look round old man,” said Davis to Bennett, and they both rode up and down the bank of the river, leaving Maxwell standing near the rock where he had dismounted. Nothing could be seen, and the two returned and proposed going up the gully again.

“You fellows go and come back again, I want to get out of this—I’m upset,” said Maxwell, speaking for the first time in a constrained voice.

Davis glanced at his friend. “Right you are, old man, no wonder you don’t feel well; we’ll just make sure of the reef and come back. If you want us, fire your pistol; we shan’t be far off.”

The two rode back to their disturbed work and hastily commenced their examination of the stone. There was no doubt about the richness of the find, and the reef could be traced a good distance without much trouble. They had collected a small heap of specimens to take back, when suddenly the loud “Holloa!” once more came pealing up the gully followed instantly by a fainter cry and two revolver-shots.

Hastily mounting, the two galloped back.

The packhorses, as if startled, were walking along their tracks towards home, followed by Maxwell’s horse with the bridle trailing; its rider was stretched on the ground; nothing else was visible.

Jumping from their horses they approached the prostrate man. Both started and stared at each other with terror-stricken eyes. Before them lay a skeleton clad in Maxwell’s clothes.

“Are we mad?” cried Davis, aghast with horror.

The fierce sun was above them, the bare mountains around, they could hear the horses clattering up the range as if anxious to leave the accursed place, and before them lay a skeleton with the shrunken skin still adhering to it in places, a corpse that had been rotting for years; that had relapsed into the state it would have been had the former trance been death. Blind terror seized them both, and they mounted to follow the horses when an awful voice came from the fleshless lips: “Stay with me, stop! I may come back; I may—”

Bennett could hear no more, he stuck the spurs in his horse and galloped off. Davis would have followed but he was transfixed with terror at what he saw. The awful object was moving, the outcast spirit was striving desperately to reanimate the body that had suddenly fallen into decay. The watcher was chained to the spot. Once it seemed that the horrible thing was really going to rise, but the struggle was unavailing, with a loud moan of keenest agony and despair that thrilled the listener’s brain with terror it fell back silent and motionless. Davis remembered nothing more till he found himself urging his horse up the range. The place has never been revisited.

* * * * * * *

In an asylum for the insane in a southern town there is a patient named Bennett, who is always talking of the wonderful reef he has up North. He has a specimen of quartz, very rich, which he never parts with day or night. He is often visited by a man named Davis, who nursed him through a severe attack of fever out on the Nicholson. The doctors think he may yet recover.

THE GHOST’S VICTORY

(1891)

“This is a tough contract,” murmured the ghost, as it gazed out of the window of the haunted chamber and looked up and down the almost deserted street. Needless to say it was Christmas Eve, and the clocks had just struck twelve.

It was not at all an awe-inspiring ghost. If one had not known for certain that it was a spectre it might have been taken for a shabby old debt-collector or a hanged bailiff; but it was a genuine goblin, and anybody infringing the trade-mark will be prosecuted.

The house it haunted was an old stone affair, situated on a good-sized allotment in one of the principal streets of Sydney. Most people have passed the place and wondered why it was so dull and murky and desolate, and why a tattered bill always announced that the upper part was “to let.” It was owned by an absentee landlord, and there was a law-suit on it, and three mortgages. Around it was a solemn, melancholy waste, tenanted by old jam-tins and goats. The ground-floor was supposed to be occupied as offices, whilst the upper portion was left to solitude—and the ghost.

This was the spectre’s grievance. Thirty years before it had cut its throat there, and since entering into the land of spirits it had not had a single opportunity of frightening anybody and achieving a reputation. It had made just one public appearance, and then it fell flat. It was an orthodox apparition, and as such, was strictly obliged to appear only between mid-night and cockcrow; but nobody lived in the house, nobody knew it was haunted, nobody cared whether it was haunted or not. So there it had remained, a poor, forlorn, neglected ghost, living alone in the dark and damp, all forgotten.

“Christmas again,” it muttered in spectral grammar, “and I am still unknown. O! if I were only one of those modern young ghosts who go round visiting friends and relations and scaring the wits out of them; but, no! I am old-fashioned and must abide by the rules of the game. Why, I might have heaps of hidden money here to show people for aught the public know.” Then it fell to musing over the one chance that had fallen its way.