The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn Part 72

"That is the Tartar; yes. We were caught in the gale last night, and we lay-to. This morning, as soon as we recognised the Cape, we determined to run for this cove, where we have been before. We had an anxious night last night, I a.s.sure you. We have been terribly lucky. If the wind had veered a few more points to the east, we should have been done for. We never could have beaten off in such a sea as this."

"Are you going to Sydney?"

"No; we are in chase of a boat full of escaped convicts from Launceston. Cunning dogs; they would not land in the Straits. We missed them and got across to Port Phillip, and put Captain D---- and his black police on the alert; and they have got scent of it, and coasted up north. We have examined the coast all along, but I am afraid they have given us the slip; there is such a system of intelligence among them. However, if they had not landed before last night, they have saved us all trouble; and if they are ash.o.r.e we wash our hands of them, and leave them to the police."

Halbert and Sam looked at one another. Then the former said,--

"Last night, about an hour before it came on to blow, we saw a boat making for this very headland, which puzzled us exceedingly; and, what was stranger still, we saw a man on the Cape, who seemed to be on the look-out."

"That is quite possible," replied the mids.h.i.+pman; "these fellows have a queer system of communication. The boat you saw must certainly have been them; and if they landed at all they must have landed here."

I must change the scene here, if you please, my dear reader, and get you to come with me on board his (I beg pardon, her) Majesty's s.h.i.+p Tartar for a few minutes, for on the quarter-deck of that n.o.ble sloop there are at this moment two men worth rescuing from oblivion.

The first is a stoutish, upright, middle-aged man, in a naval uniform, with a brickdust complexion, and very light scanty whiskers; the jolliest, cheeriest-looking fellow you are likely to meet in a year's journey. Such a bright merry blue eye as he has, too! This is Captain Blockstrop, now, I am happy to say, C.B.; a right valiant officer, as the despatches of Lyons and Peel will testify.

The other is a very different sort of man;--a long, wiry, brown-faced man, with a big forehead, and a comical expression about his eyes. This is no less a person than the Colonial Secretary of one of our three great colonies: of which I decline to mention. Those who know the Honourable Abiram Pollifex do not need to be told; and those who do not must find out for themselves. I may mention that he has been known to retain office seven years in succession, and yet he seldom threatens to resign his office and throw himself upon the country fewer than three times, and sometimes four, per annum. Latterly, I am sorry to say, a miserable faction, taking advantage of one of his numerous resignations, have a.s.sumed the reins of government, and, in spite of three votes of want of confidence, persist in retaining the seals of office. Let me add to this, that he is considered the best hand at quiet "chaff" in the House, and is allowed, both by his supporters and opponents, to be an honourable man, and a right good fellow.

Such were the two men who now stood side by side on the quarter-deck, looking eagerly at Sam and Halbert through a pair of telescopes.

"Pollifex," said the Captain, "what do you make of these?"

"Gentlemen," said the Secretary, curtly.

"So I make out," said the Captain; "and apparently in good condition, too. A very well fed man that biggest, I should say."

"Ye-es; well, ye-es," said the Secretary; "he does look well-fed enough. He must be a stranger to these parts; probably from the Maneroo plains, or thereabout."

"What makes you think so?"

"Dear me," said the Secretary; "have you been stationed nearly three years on this coast, and ask how a man could possibly be in good condition living in those scrubby heaths?"

"Bad-looking country; eh?" said the Captain.

"Small cattle-stations, sir," said the Secretary, "I can see at a glance. Salt beef, very tough, and very little of it. I shall run a bill through the House for the abolition of small cattle-stations next session."

"Better get your estimates through first, old fellow. The bagpipes will play quite loud enough over them to last for some time."

"I know it, but tremble not," replied the undaunted Secretary; "I have got used to it. I fancy I hear Callaghan beginning now: 'The unbridled prodigality, sir, and the reckless profligacy, sir, of those individuals who have so long, under the name of government----'"

"That'll do, now," said the Captain; "you are worse than the reality. I shall go ash.o.r.e, and take my chance of getting breakfast. Will you come?"

"Not if I know it, sir, with pork chops for breakfast in the cabin.

Blockstrop, have you duly reflected what you are about to do? You are about to land alone, unarmed, unprovisioned, among the offscourings of white society, scarcely superior in their habits of life to the nomadic savages they have unjustly displaced. Pause and reflect, my dear fellow. What guarantee have you that they will not propose to feed you on damper, or some other nameless abomination of the same sort?"

"It was only the other day, in the House," said the Captain, "that you said the small squatters and freehold farmers represented the greater part of the intelligence and education of the colony, and now----"

"Sir! sir!" said the Secretary, "you don't know what you are talking about. Sir, we are not in the House now. Are you determined, then?"

The Captain was quite determined, and they went down to the waist. They were raising a bag of potatoes from somewhere, and the Colonial Secretary, seizing two handfuls of them, presented them to the Captain.

"If you will go," he said, "take these with you, and teach the poor benighted white savages to plant them. So if you fall a victim to indigestion, we will vote a monument to you on the summit of the Cape, and write:--'He did not live in vain. He introduced the potato among the small cattle stations around Cape Chatham.'"

He held out his potatoes towards the retiring Captain with the air of Burke producing the dagger. His humour, I perceive, reads poor enough when written down, but when a.s.sisted by his comical impa.s.sible face, and solemn drawling delivery, I never heard anything much better.

Good old Pollifex! my heart warms towards him now. When I think what the men were whose clamour put him out of office in 184-, I have the conviction forced upon me, that the best among them was not worth his little finger. He left the colony in a most prosperous state, and, retiring honourably to one of his stations, set to work, as he said, to begin life again on a new principle. He is wealthy, honoured, and happy, as he deserves to be.

I cannot help, although somewhat in the wrong place, telling the reader under what circ.u.mstances I saw him last. Only two years ago, fifteen after he had left office, I happened to be standing with him, at the door of a certain club, in a certain capital, just after lunch time, when we saw the then Colonial Secretary, the man who had succeeded Pollifex, come scurrying round the corner of the street, fresh from his office. His face was flushed and perspiring, his hat was on wrong-side before, with his veil hanging down his back. In the one hand he held papers, in the other he supported over his fevered brow his white cotton umbrella; altogether he looked hara.s.sed beyond the bounds of human endurance, but when he caught sight of the open club-doors, he freshened a bit, and mended his pace. His troubles were not over, for ere he reached his haven, two Irishmen, with two different requests, rose as if from the earth, and confronted him. We saw him make two promises, contradictory to each other, and impossible of fulfilment, and as he came up the steps, I looked into the face of Ex-Secretary Pollifex, and saw there an expression which is beyond description. Say that of the ghost of a man who has been hanged, attending an execution.

Or say the expression of a Catholic, converted by torture, watching the action of the thumb-screws upon another heretic. The air, in short, of a man who had been through it all before. And as the then Secretary came madly rus.h.i.+ng up the steps, Pollifex confronted him, and said,--

"Don't you wish you were me, T----?"

"Sir!" said the Secretary, "dipping" his umbrella and dropping his papers, for the purpose of rhetorically pointing with his left hand at nothing; "Sir! flesh and blood can't stand it. I resign to-morrow." And so he went in to his lunch, and is in office at this present moment.

I must apologize most heartily for this long digression. The Captain's gig, impelled by the "might of England's pride," was cleverly beached alongside of the other boat, and the Captain stepped out and confronted the mids.h.i.+pman.

"Got any news, Mr. Vang?"

"Yes, sir!" said the mids.h.i.+pman. "These gentlemen saw the boat yesterday afternoon."

Sam and Halbert, who were standing behind him, came forward. The Captain bowed, and looked with admiration at the two highbred-looking men, that this unpromising desert had produced. They told him what they had told the mids.h.i.+pman, and the Captain said,--"It will be a very serious thing for this country side, if these dogs have succeeded in landing. Let us hope that the sea has done good service in swallowing fourteen of the vilest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Pray, are either of you gentlemen magistrates?"

"My father, Major Buckley, is a magistrate," said Sam. "This gentleman is Lieutenant Halbert, of the Bengal Artillery."

The Captain bowed to Halbert, and turning to Sam, said,--"So you are the son of my old friend Major Buckley! I was mids.h.i.+pman in the 'Phlegethon' when she took him and part of his regiment to Portugal, in 1811. I met him at dinner in Sydney, the other day. Is he in the neighbourhood?"

"He is waiting breakfast for us not a quarter of a mile off," said Sam.

"Will you join us?"

"I shall be delighted; but duty first. If these fellows have succeeded in landing, you will have to arm and prepare for the worst. Now, unless they were caught by the gale and drowned, which I believe to be the case, they must have come ash.o.r.e in this very bay, about five o'clock last night. There is no other place where they could have beached their boat for many miles. Consequently, the thing lies in a nutsh.e.l.l: if we find the boat, prepare yourselves,--if not, make yourselves easy. Let us use our wits a little. They would round the headland as soon as possible, and probably run ash.o.r.e in that furthest cove to our right, just inside the reef. I have examined the bay through a telescope, and could make out nothing of her. Let us come and examine carefully.

Downhaul!" (to his c.o.xswain). "Come with me."

They pa.s.sed three or four indentations in the bay examining as they went, finding nothing, but when they scrambled over the rocks which bounded the cover the Captain had indicated, he waved his hat, and laughing said,--

"Ha, ha! just as I thought. There she is."

"Where, Captain Blockstrop?" said Halbert. "I don't see her."

"Nor I either," said the Captain. "But I see the heap of seaweed that the cunning dogs have raked over her.--Downhaul; heave away at this weed, and show these gentlemen what is below it."

The c.o.xswain began throwing away a pile of seatang heaped against a rock. Bit by bit was disclosed the clean run of a beautiful white whale-boat, which when turned over discovered her oars laid neatly side by side, with a small spritsail. The Captain stood by with the air of a man who had made a hit, while Sam and Halbert stared at one another with looks of blank discomfiture and alarm.