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No difficulty was felt in identifying the bodies as those of Ben Marston, the father of the two bush-rangers of that name, and of Warrigal, the half-caste follower always seen in attendance upon the chief of the gang, the celebrated Starlight.
Mr Robarts could not leave the schooner; but as Mr McRitchie and we were very anxious to see as much of the interior of this wonderful country as possible, we arranged to go up in an egaritea as far as time would allow. Mr Robarts allowed us to take a half-caste native, who had served on board a British ship and spoke a little English, as our interpreter.
They were no good, these white men who had pawned their lives to yellow girls. They were the failures, the ratés. Geoffrey had heard of promising young officers in India who had married native women and who had had to leave the service. He had done the same. Better go gay in the tea-houses with Wigram. He was the husband of a coloured woman. And then the crowd of half-caste brats?
'We must double-bank my horse, whispers Jim, 'for a mile or two, till we're clear of the place; we didn't want to bring a lot of horses about. He jumped up, and I mounted behind him. Starlight was on Rainbow in a second. The half-caste disappeared, he was going to keep dark for a few days and send us the news.
He knew perfectly that he might be engaged in a life or death struggle at any moment, and was prepared to die by his own hand the instant the fight became hopeless. 'Go, Yarra; pick up his track; find which way he has gone; come back one minute. He knew there was no occasion to warn the half-caste, in whom the instincts of his mother's people were paramount.
You may think that was no advantage; but I had just been down with yellow fever, alone in the outhouse of a wretched half-caste shanty, and the thing had given me the horrors. Well, one night I was told to put out a tipsy Lascar who was making himself obnoxious; he had come ashore and lost all his money and was in a bad temper.
I heard Hayes call out to the mate to give her another ten fathoms of cable, and then, assisted by half a dozen native women and a young Easter Island half-caste girl named Lalia, wife to one of the five white traders, began packing our arms and ammunition into two or three strong trade boxes.
In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator as partners in triumph. In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at once, he made manifest.
The cry burst in irrepressible surprise and excitement from the other two. "Sure thing," said Risley. "Just listen to me. That half-caste Saya Chone comes from up-country somewhere in the direction the Professor headed for after leaving Mogok. That's the starting-point for the whole business.
So runs the tale, told some forty years since to M. Joseph, author of a clever little history of Trinidad, by an old half-caste Indian, Senor Trinidada by name, who was said then to be nigh one hundred years of age. Surely the people among whom such a myth could spring up, were worthy of a nobler fate.
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