on well, the
blacks were friendly enough with them, and were glad to follow
their lead; but after a repulse like that they got at our station,
or perhaps as a result of some quarrel about the division of the
plunder, or their gins, or something of that sort, they would fall
suddenly on their white friends, and make cooked meat of them."

"I suppose the blacks seldom spare any whites who fall into their
hands?" Reuben asked.

"Scarcely ever," Mr. Blount replied. "That was why they were more
dreaded than the bush rangers. The latter would kill, if they were
in the humour for it; but if there was no serious resistance, and
none of their number got hurt, more often than not they contented
themselves by leaving everyone tied, hand and foot, till somebody
came to unloose them.

"I remember one horrible case, in which they so tied up three white
men at a lonely station, and nobody happened to go near it for
three weeks afterwards. It struck someone that none of them had
been seen, for some time; and a couple of men rode over and, to
their horror, found the three men dead of hunger and thirst.

"Now the black fellows don't do that sort of thing. When they do
attack a station and take it, they kill every soul; man, woman, and
child."

"I suppose, in that affair you were telling us of," Reuben asked,
"both of your ticket-of-leave men were killed?"

"Yes. One seemed to have been surprised and speared at once. The
other had made a stout fight of it, for the bodies of three natives
were found near him."

"I remember one case," one of the others said, "in which the blacks
did spare one of the party, in a station which they attacked. It
was a little girl of about three years old. Why they did so I don't
know; perhaps the chief took a fancy to her. Maybe he had lost a
child of the same age, and thought his gin would take to the little
one. Anyhow, he carried her off.

"The father happened to be away at the time. He had gone down to
Sydney with a waggon, for stores; and when he got back he found the
house burned, and the bodies of his wife, two boys, and two men,
but there was no trace of that of the child.

"He was nearly out of his mind, poor fellow. The neighbours all
thought that the body must have been burned with the house; but he
would have it that there would have been some sign of her. No one
else thought so; and besides, it wasn't the custom of the blacks to
carry off anyone. The father got a party to try and fol