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"There was a tame blackfellow we called Alick, and two gins, living about our station, and he had a daughter we called picaninny Charlotte, ten or eleven years old, who was very quick and smart, and spoke English very well. One morning, when I was in the milking yard, she came to me and said, 'You look out. Cockatoo Bill got your axe under his rug sitting among a lot of lubras.
Now they saw that seven of the eleven were small, only picaninnies. When they came nearer three out of the other four were seen to be lubras, and the eleventh individual then resolved himself into a white savage, who roared out, "Mates ahoy!" The white man was Scott, the sealer, who had taken up is abode on the island with his harem, three Tasmanian gins and seven children.
Some could see about taking the Vealer down from the gallows; six lubras were "rounded up" for the plucking of the pullets, while the rest of us were sent out, through wet grass and thicket, into the cold, grey dawn, to gather in "big, big mob bough and mistletoe," for the beautifying of all things. How we worked! With Cheon at the helm, every one was of necessity enthusiastic.
I crept inside the hut, reached down for the gun, and peeped out of the front door, looking for Bill. The lubras began yabbering, and in an instant Bill dropped his rug and the axe, leaped over the heads of the women, and was off like a deer. I took a flying shot at him with both barrels.
So many lubras put themselves on the homestead staff to fill the place left vacant by Nellie, that the one room was filled to overflowing while the work was being done, and the Maluka was obliged to come to the rescue once more. He reduced the house staff to two, allowing a shadow or two extra in the persons of a few old black fellows and a piccaninny or two, sending the rejected to camp.
The lubras, however, refused to be taken off my visitor's list and Cheon insisting on them waiting on the missus while she was attending to the housework, no one gained or lost by the transfer. Cheon had a scheme all his own for dealing with the servant question: the Maluka should buy a little Chinese maiden to wait on the missus.
As the Dandy put it, "altogether the time passed pleasantly," and when the Maluka returned we were all on the best of terms, having reached the phase of friendship when pet names are permissible. The missus had become "Gadgerrie" to the old men and certain privileged lubras. What it means I do not know, excepting that it seemed to imply fellowship.
A deep fringe of birds was constantly moving in and about and around the billabong; and the perpetual clatter of the plovers and waders formed an undercurrent to the life at the homestead. The lubras worked steadily for a quarter of an hour at the feathers; then a dog-fight demanding all their attention, the feathers were left to the mercy of the winds, and were never gathered together.
After hearing the story, and seeing the miserable plight of the castaways, he invited them to his home. On arriving at the hut Scott and his lubras prepared for their guests a beautiful meal of kangaroo and potatoes. This was their only food as long as they remained on King's Island, for Scott's only boat had got adrift, and his flour, tea, and sugar had been all consumed.
Every evening the fun commenced about sundown, and the entire community assembled to watch it; for it was worth watching fowls dodged, and scurried, and squawked, as the staff and the rejected, under Cheon's directions, chivied and danced and screamed between them and their desire, the lubras cheering to the echo every time one of the birds gave in, and stalked, cackling and indignant, up the ladder into the branches of the coolibar; or pursuing runaways that had outwitted them, in shrieking, pell-mell disorder, while Cheon, fat and perspiring, either shouted orders and cheered lustily, bounded wrathfully alter both runaways and lubras, or collapsed, doubled up with uncontrollable laughter, at the squawk of amazement from fowls which, having gained their old haunt, had found Jimmy there waiting to receive them.
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