Ghost Stories and Mysteries (36 page)

At any rate, they vanished utterly, and with them other loathsome vermin that had been fattening on the dead and the living dead.

Everyone seemed to see new life ahead.

Men spoke cheerily to each other of adopting means of clearing and cleansing the city, but that work was taken out of their hands.

That night the cyclonic storm that had raged across the continent burst upon us. All the long-dormant forces of the air seemed to have met in conflict.

For three clays its fury was appalling. The violent rain and constant thunder and lightning added to the tumult.

No one stirred out during those three days of tempest and destruction.

Nature in her own mighty way had set to work to purge the country of the plague.

It was while this storm was at its fiercest that the Post Office tower and the Town Hall tower were shattered and hurled in ruins to the ground. No one, so far as I know, witnessed the catastrophe.

The morning of the fourth day broke calm, clear and beautiful.

At midnight the tempest had lulled; and when daylight came, the sun rose in a sky lightly flecked with roseate morning clouds.

Accompanied by a friend, I started out to see the ruined city, and those who were left alive in it.

The streets still ran with flood-water, but the higher levels had pretty well drained off; and once they were gained, our progress was easy.

Martin Place was choked with the ruins of the tower, and many other buildings that had succumbed; while not a single verandah was left standing, in any street. We went to the Harbour.

The tide was receding, carrying with it the turbid waters that rushed into it from all points, carrying with it, too, wreckage and human bodies.

A strong current was setting seaward through the heads, and bore out to the Pacific all the decaying remnants of the past visitation.

The deserted ships in the Harbour had been torn from their moorings and either sunk or blown ashore.

Wreck and desolation were visible everywhere, but the air was pure, cool, and grateful; and our hearts rose in spite of the difficulties that lay before us, for the looming horror of the plague had been lifted.

* * * * * * *

Of what followed, your histories tell you.

How the overwhelming disaster knit the states together in a closer federation than legislators ever had forged.

How from that hour sprung forth a new, purged, and purified Australian race.

All this is the record of the Australian nation; mine are but some reminiscences of a time of horror unparalleled, which no man anticipated would have visited the Southern Continent.

THE KADITCHA: A TALE OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORY

(1907)

I.

The heat was something to be forever remembered, although the surroundings had barely as much to do with it as the all-dominant and overpowering sun—sand-ridges uniform in direction, red and fiery in hue, and but scantily veiled with the hostile and venomous spinifex and a few stunted and thinly-foliaged trees.

A small cavalcade, consisting of three white men, one blackfellow, and five ‘ships of the desert,’ were painfully toiling across the killing regularity of the sand ridges. When they reached the crest of one, the party halted, and temporarily sought refuge, after dismounting, in the most ample apology for shade that could be found; while the camels relieved their wounded feelings by grunting and snarling at each other and the state of things in general.

The men who dismounted to rest their sun-dazzled eyes resembled the general run of sojourners in the unoccupied parts of central Australia. The youngest was a man of over thirty-five, who looked as though, when divested of his uncared-for beard, and when the deep tan had faded from his face, he would resume easily the tall hat and frock coat of civilisation.

“Well, Barrett,” he said to an elder man with more of the confirmed bushman about him, who had drawn a note-book from his pouch, and was consulting some figures on it. “How do we stand now?”

“Close to it, I think, and if there were any landmarks about, I could tell our position to a certainty, but this confounded desert is as flat as a billiard-table when you take the level of the crown of the ridges. But that ridge which we are about to tackle looks a shade higher than the others, and we must be about near the place.”

“Let us hope this salt lake will turn up trumps, for our camels are done up negotiating these sand waves.”

“The lake is always dry,” said Barrett, “it is only a courtesy title, but the niggers say that the little soak close to it at this end never fails them. Hope they’re right.”

The third man, who had not yet spoken, and seemed a little inferior in station to the other two, here broke in. “We’d better be making a start, Mr Glendower; old Sir Hack-a-rib is getting to look uncommonly ugly, and beginning to blow bladders, as if he meant to play up if he doesn’t get water soon.”

“Right, Joe!”

Wearily the men remounted, and again emerged into the full force of the blistering heat, now augmented by the rising of a hot wind. Barrett led the line, and they descended the slope of the ridge and commenced to ascend the one opposite. By the time they had reached the top the hot wind was terrible, and it was as much as the camels could do to struggle to the crest. Once there, Barrett waved his hand, exclaiming, “There’s the lake.”

The so-called lake was but a distant sheen of white, glistening salt, an elongated arm of which wound and twisted almost to the foot of the ridge that they had just painfully surmounted. A lake! To call by such a name was worse sheer blasphemy. A lake should be something that suggested the deep and cool repose of sleeping water, dark shadows wavering and shimmering under o’erhanging, green leaves, that trailed and dipped and kissed the surface when the wind—not a hot wind—rustled and played with them. This lake threw back the glaring heat that smote its burnished front with more painful refraction than did the red sand-dunes; but it was the lake they were bound for, and Barrett led the caravan towards the nearest end of it.

The heat that radiated from the bare surface of encrusted salt struck them with unrelenting wrath and fierceness as they rode on, and they were just upon the edge of a shallow hollow that merged its dry channel into the lake, when Barratt stopped suddenly, and gave an exclamation of astonishment.

A few paces in front of him, on the bare, hot sand, lay the corpse of a blackfellow.

They dismounted, and gathered round. The native had seemingly died of thirst; he was making for the soak, and, finding it dry, had laid down to die. He had been dead not many hours, but already the oven-like blast of the hot wind had commenced its shrivelling work. “This looks bad for us,” said Barrett, “when even the natives of the land come to grief.”

“He’s stuck to his waddy to the bitter end,” said Glenlyon, pointing to a formidable club the dead hand still grasped; “but what is he carrying his dancing-pumps for; what are they for?” he asked, turning to Barrett.

Joe stooped and took from the back of the corpse a pair of slippers, apparently, that had hung round his neck, with some native string. He handed them to Barratt with a look of intelligence. “Kaditcha,” he said.

“And what the mischief do you mean by Kaditcha?” asked Glenlyon.

Joe, who did not seem a man of many words, said briefly—“Why murder shoes; but he’ll tell you.”

Thus appealed to, Barrett took up the task of explaining the problem.

“Certainly they were his dancing-pumps, which he carried to hide the fall of his fairy footsteps when he stole upon his sleeping enemy to hit him on the head with that big club he was so burdened with. He’ll never do it again, and it looks as though we shall share the same fate!”

“Are the treacherous things common?”

“No; not very; they are principally used by the blacks of the M’Donnell Ranges, not far to the eastward of here. The blacks of the spinifex desert, away to the nor’-west, wear shoes, too; but theirs are harmless ones made of plaited spinifex to shield the soles of the feet from the burning sand.”

“What are these made of then?”

“I’ll tell you by and by, if we live; but we must see about what is the best thing to do in this fix. There’s no water to be got in this soak. See.” He pointed with the last word to the dried-up remains of innumerable birds that lay about, and amongst them the corpse of a dingo, with the wild dog snarl still curling its lip.

“Well, we have plenty of water still left for ourselves; but the camels will never manage to get back to the last water; it’s nearly a hundred and fifty miles away. Joe, there’s the soak down there; have a look, and see if there is any chance to clean it out.”

Joe unstrapped the shovel from where it was carried handy on one of the packs, and strolled off on his errand. Presently his tread was heard returning. “Blacks been following it down already, and found it as dry as a bone,” was his laconic comment.

There was a somewhat moody silence for a time; then Barratt, who had been intently watching the camels, and particularly Senachherib, who was busily browsing on something, and looking uncommonly bland and smiling, suddenly said: “Blessed if there isn’t a chance of our pulling through after all.”

“Sirhaggarib find ’em Parakheelia,” said the blackboy, at the same time.

“What’s all this?” asked Glenlyon.

“Parakheelia growing about here,” said Barrett. “It’s a plant that as good as a drink to camels, and old Senachherib spotted it already. Bully for the evil-tempered old cuss.”

“Let’s camp here, then,” said Glenlyon. “Let them get a bellyfull if it does them any good.”

“Does them any good, dear fellow? It’s saved their lives, and ours too. It’s a wonderful plant, although it looks so insignificant. We’ll camp here all night, a bit away from that dead nigger, though.”

“I’ll take the shoes of murder first. I’ll take them down to Melbourne as a curiosity.”

“Oh, they have some there; that’s where I first heard about them.”

After selecting a suitable spot, they packed and formed a camp, and over a pipe Barrett told all he knew about the Kaditcha.

“The accepted notion is that they used for the purpose of secret murder. D’ye see how cunningly they are made without heel or toe; alike at both ends, so that there is no track left to show the direction the wearer has gone; and, as for being noiseless, no list slippers are anywhere near them. The uppers are woven of human hair, and the soles of dry grass caked with gum and human blood, with a dressing of emu feathers. What the dead owner was doing with them so far from the range I don’t know.”

That night the camels had a satisfactory feed, and, in a day or two, the party got safely back to the little outside camp from which that had started on their interrupted prospecting trip.

II.

It was Cup Day in Melbourne, a brilliant Cup it had been, too; the wealth had been all that could be desired, and the ring had been hit hard, for the favourite had won.

In the crowded street, one of Melbourne’s leading thoroughfares, two men met each other with a glad note of pleased surprise.

“Why, Barrett, I’m as glad to see you as I was when the favourite flew past the post first. Never expected you would tear yourself away from that lovely country.”

“Oh, I’ve sold out very well, and am going to have a bit of a spell; think I deserve it.”

“By Jove, you do,” returned Glenlyon, “we must have a yarn about old times, and that devil of a trip we had together. When will you come out and have dinner, my wife knows you well by repute, and will be delighted to know you personally. Gad, she looks upon you as a second Livingstone.”

As Barratt laughingly protested at this estimate, another man sauntered up and accosted Glenlyon, who greeted him in return cordially. A few words only had been interchanged, when the newcomer turned to Barrett, remarking he had had the pleasure of meeting him once. To this Barrett returned a cold acknowledgement. But Glenlyon noticed nothing strange in his manner and rattled on—“So glad you fellows are old friends, now look here, you and Carlisle, come out and have dinner on Thursday. Settling-day, I’ve won a pot of money to-day, and you must come and have a feed, and stay the night to signalise the event. Consider it settled—good-bye till then, Carlisle, I must have a bit of a chat with Barrett.”

“Where on earth did you pick up that fellow Carlisle?” asked Barrett, when they were done.

“Carlisle? Oh, he’s a first-rate fellow, only he’s rather out of luck just now. Must have lost more than he knows how to pay over the races to-day. That’s why I asked him out; besides, I don’t want to seem cold to him, for he was a one-time pretender to my wife’s hand. She can’t bear the sight of him. But I feel sorry for the poor devil, especially now that he’s been hit so hard.”

“Well,” said dogged Barrett. “I confess I wouldn’t trust the man as far as I could sling him. There were some worse than shady stories about him up north, where I knew him. I’m not a married man, but I’ll bet your wife’s instinct is right, and I’d not go against it.”

But Glenlyon’s cheery nature rejected the idea, and he changed the subject, with a parting toast to the memory of Senachherib.