Part 24 (1/2)
BLACK AND WHITE
In an isolated part of barren country, where the grass was sparse and coarse, the soil poor and stony, and the ti for which the white man had neither use nor need was to be found, and where nothing existed that he or his stock could utilize--a black-fellow's camp was situated
It was a pri, thin sticks, looped and stuck in the ground, and with a miscellaneous collection of bark and branches laid over theave a teainst wind or rain, and could be left standing, or throhen the tribe moved, without loss Small fires smouldered near each, and, round about, half a dozen chocolate-coloured piccaninnies, innocent of clothes, ran and played, laughing and chattering to one another In the shade thesuch cast-off clothes as they had been able to beg or steal fro tobacco obtained by a similar process In the heat and sunshi+ne the women worked at such tasks which need deathering of wood for the fires--or lounged, as their lords and masters did, indolent and indifferent An old rizzled, and whose flesh was shrunk and withered, sat in the shade of his gunyah, gazing drea ends of the sticks and the thin column of blue smoke which rose so steadily in the still air froeneration; the last of the tribe who remembered the days when first the white man came; the last to feel and sorrow for the days when tribal law and tribal rite ruled the destinies of the race Very far back, when he was littlebefore he was ripe for the cere man,” he recalled how his tribe had been perplexed by a story which had coht from other tribes sorown and had beenman and a warrior, he learned the story in full, and wonderful it seemed to him, as wonderful as it seeof that which would explain and render clear all the mysteries treasured up by the wise men and the old men, and shown, still ines of their initiation In short, it ion, the vindication of their faith, the perfecting of their creed
In the matters of creeds and abstract faiths many men make manyinto millions; soaze; so simple ways, and some sustain a despot's power and hold the race as slaves: but in every case they are false and wrong save the one that a ious faith of the tribe to which the old black-fellow belonged formed a pitiful mass of crudities, oddities, and absurdities to the white men when they came, or to such white men as stopped for a moment to think on the matter at all But it was very real to the old black-fellow, as it was to his comrades and tribesmen, when it came to be unfolded to theil, and ceremony How could it be otherhen the ordeal of bodily pain accoe of the mysteries?
Overhead, by the Southern Cross, a black patch shows in the sky The white man calls it the coal-sack, and explains how it comes about The black-fellow looked at it in wonder, and worked his brains for the reason of its existence and the use that it radually, unconsciously, inexplicably, there crept into the lore of the noin and the use it had to serve
The stars of night were cahty plain; the Milky-as a she-oak grove; and the gentle winds that blew at night waved the trees and shook the boughs, and so leam from beneath their shadow, fitful and subdued By every fire a black-fellow camped on his journey over the plain--the journey that every manago a man had strained till he found what the black patch was It was an opening through to the ed for his brother to join hi down he saw his brother, and called to him, and, to help him up, thren a rope, up which the brother climbed But when he also reached the plain, he wanted to turn back and go down again, and lowered the rope to do so; but before he could start, he saw that another black-fellow had caught hold of the rope and was cliain to one of his tribe; and the two brothers, beco impatient, set out to march across the plain to where it touched the earth, where they could get doithout the help of the rope
A falling star, the white hed as the blacks crouched down in fear by the ca star But that was afterwards--after the tis had happened which made the old black-fellow sad and weary
The journey was long over thethat as a black-felloandered he wore out the colour of his skin and becaend told how some of the black-fellows had really co the earth where the end of the plain touched it; but when they rejoined their tribes they had not been recognized, and so had gone away again in anger None had come since then, but the tribes treasured up the hope that sootten, and those who found their way across the plain would come back and tell theend and cereth into a creed, and from a creed into a faith, and the tirohite in the journey, should coer necessary to cli rope Then would drought or flood cease to trouble, for plenty of food and plenty of water would be every reat plain came back
When the old man was a piccaninny the story travelled froain, and had come in tribes and in tribes of tribes, more than the black-fellow could count, more than the black-fellow could understand When he wasman,”
he was told of it, and told how h the coal-sack by the blazing rope, were co back; and hohen they ca, with food enough every day to satisfy his appetite, and no flood, no drought, no sickness, nothing but life--free, happy, and enjoyable
And the old man had seen the white men come
He had seen them come with their flocks and herds--the food the black-felloas coe when the black-fellow ate the food they brought hin that they sought for war, till the warriors lay on the red earth, dead, slain by the power the white men had He had seen thee where the wounyahs set on fire, the war-spears burned, the tokens scorned, till his race had fled froes and sandy plains, where they starved and died off one by one, till he was alone--and his faith was gone
The creed and the faith he had learned and loved; the tribal lore and the ordered rite; the lesson, the trial, and the test of strength--they had all been wrong when the white man came And noas old and worn and sad, there was one idea, one hope, he had--that before he died he ht wet his hands with the blood of theat the glow of his fire, just as he had sat for days past, he heard a sudden co in the shade, and, looking up, he saw four horseh the bush Thetobacco Sounyah, and he saw one of the horse to his companions
The sound of their voices came to him--and then he sao of them ride at the men till they scattered and fled, while the other two rode at the gins
The old h all the turmoil and confusion; but when the men wandered back, hours afterwards, when the sounds of the horses' hoofs were growing faint in the distance and the sky was ruddy with the setting sun, they found hi by his fire, with the clothes of the white race flung away, his old withered body daubed with splodges of white clay, and with a mass of white clay plastered on his head He was slowly rocking hi voice, a weird and lowed by the gunyahs or anywhere, save near where the old man sat, and neither woman nor child could be seen
The ways of their fathers were little to thethe fro out-of-the-way barren spots where neither white men nor the white h to understand the signs of deep e as the wail for those who had fallen while defending their women
As the men came nearer they came slower, till they crept up to the fire where it smouldered, and sat round it, silent and uneasy, as the sun sank out of sight and the e The white light of theinto profound shade all else, save where the glow of the fire showed red The air grew chill now the sun had gone, and it was long since thefire
Suddenly one arose with a gesture of i off the ragged shi+rt and trousers that he wore, and shook out the tangled mass of his hair free fro left on it A lump of white clay lay on either side of the oldto some impulse which was upon him, stooped and daubed himself over with it in streaks and splashes, and then went back to the fire and sat down again
The old n that he saw or understood; but another of the , and daubed the white clay on his naked skin, and caain Then another did the same; then another, and another, until all were naked, and all were daubed with clay, and all were sitting round the fire, silent, as the old man crooned
As the last one cae and spoke, telling in an apparently unis of the warriors when he was a young man He spoke of the pride the tribe felt when one of their le-handed, the band of another tribe; and told how once one rew old and died, and grew again before he caught theeance, of wrongs redressed, of vows redeeht in the days when their fathers ruled, he told theain to theenerations stirred their blood and warmed their hearts The sloth they put on with the cast-off clothes of the white invader fell away from their natures as the voice of the old otten memories of the war corroborees, danced in the far-off days when the tribe was ever ainst the white ures of warriors, left on the caround when the rest of the tribe fled before the storh their brains; stray shreds of tribal wails and dirges, , which had terrified them in their childhood, seemed to blend with the voice of the old row bright and to glitter Soon the breasts began to heave as the leaain in anger as he realized that the words which caue Quickly a low of the e over his swarthy skin and the spots and streaks of the hite clay Another sprang up and leaped away into the darkness, but returned a , thin, pointed sticks, which he flung to the ground by the fire They were the spears the h, crude implements compared with the balanced and decorated weapons their fathers had known, but such as would serve to satisfy the hereditary impulse of a decadent race for the weapons of their sires With one accord theto their feet, and standing, with quivering le between inherited instinct and acquired fear went on for the ht the spears, and in whoered more powerfully than in the others, took a spear in either hand, and pranced round the fire, stooping down over the points of the weapons, and chanting, in a subdued voice, a fraght the rhyth time with his withered hands; and as he did so, the others joined in the dance, the instincts of the black-fellow only in their beings--the instincts which brought back to them the impulses whichaside theaway the clothes of which they had learned the need from him
The self-constituted leader, alive with the spirit of revenge, , away from the fire--away in the direction the white men took when they rode off fro as he stepped,after theht and disappeared into the shadow beyond, hugged his arhed within hione out upon the war-path, naked, painted, ar as their forbears used; hating as their forbears used; and, in his ignorance of instincts, it was to hiht by the spirits of his race illu creed
The clear, nerveless ht lay over the bush like a flood of white transparency, revealing everything it touched with the distinctness of day, and hiding everything that escaped it in a veil of ilea cas piled up All fla since fled fro the brighter now and again as a faint breeze fanned it Without throwing enough light to illuh to reveal, di round the fire, rolled in blankets, and sleeping the heavy sluleaht uresdown till their chins touched their knees, andso warily that each one stepped in the footprints of the others, and so silently that, while the sounds of the sleepers' breathing came on the air, no sound followed the ures Steadily, stealthily, they crept onwards, until the leader ithin a few feet of the nearest sleeper
With a gesture, visible only to those close behind hi hiht, the other to his left, until they had formed a complete circle round the four sleepers