Nemarluk Read online

  Nemarluk was mad with rage. Not only was he being hunted ceaselessly, but the life of the tribe was broken; they were hunted and hungry and bewildered. There was plenty of fish now in the sea and creeks, but they were hunted from the creeks. There was food in the swamps—they were hunted from the swamps. There was food in the sand-dunes—they were hunted from the dunes. There was bird life on the plains, plentiful yams, too. They were hunted from the plains. Constantly now they were kept on the alert and the march, ever marching over foodless country, seldom resting more than a day in country where food was plentiful. Striding along at the head of his tribe, Nemarluk raged against the white police, who instinctively seemed to know just where he would make for next; knew just where the yams grew best; knew where the plum-trees were in fruit, where the wild geese were nesting; knew where fishing was best, where the best waterholes were, where the ducks and swans and water-hens were plentiful.

  Nemarluk grew madder as the weeks dragged by. This ceaseless flight meant the tribe had no time to prepare for the ceremonies of the making of the young men, for the ceremonies to the seasons and the hunt; no time at all for their important ceremonial life; no time for anything but snatch a little sleep, hurriedly hunt game, then march, march, march. By night and by day the warriors, the women and young people, even the piccaninnies, would start at the slightest sound, the thud of a wallaby in the grass, the uneasy call of a bird, the moaning of the wind, the creak of a tree branch, the call of a dingo, the hoot of an owl. they would stare at every broken stick seeking the story it might tell; peer at every wind-blown tuft of grass; watch every flight of a bird and stare around and listen—listen.

  Of his Red Band, only Minmara and Marragin remained now. Striding fast at the head of his tribe the others now followed exactly in his footsteps and those of Minmara and Marragin, thus blotting them out, stamping out the tell-tale footprints.

  But yet again smoke signals arose, danger signals. Nemarluk headed straight for the mountains.

  “We will lure them deep into the Valley of the Dead,” he growled to Minmara. “Their horses cannot travel there. When we get them tired and hungry we will spear them from the rocks one by one. We can wait no longer for Tiger’s Mob.”

  “Why has he not come sooner?” complained Nungpare.

  “He is busy on the Victoria,” frowned Nemarluk. “There may be police there, too. We do not know what is happening away across there.”

  “The day will dawn when I will bury my spear in the heart of tracker Splinter,” growled Minmara ferociously.

  “I shall cut Bogey’s liver out,” said Marragin simply.

  “I will kill Bul-bul,” declared Nemarluk, “and then we will fall upon the white police.”

  “Cut them to pieces just as Tiger’s Mob did the white men,” hissed Minmara. “What a day it will be!”

  “There are enough of us to attack them,” growled Coon-an-pore. “And we are savage!”

  As they drew near the mountains a smoke arose from a sandstone bluff.

  “They are on our tracks,” laughed Nemarluk.

  “They are never off them,” sneered Me-al-cull. “They must guess you are still with the horde because we keep travelling, travelling, travelling.”

  “We will soon use our spears,” hissed Minmara. “Let us hurry the women on; the children are lagging behind.”

  “Yes,” agreed Marragin, “hurry on and prepare the trap. Don’t walk on our tracks now,” he shouted to the men behind. “Let them see the tracks of Nemarluk. We will lure them on.”

  But from the look out rose a puff of black smoke followed by another then another, and then a ring of smoke with a black puff shooting straight up through it. Slowly the smoke drifted away.

  They halted, staring at one another. This was an urgent danger signal.

  “It may be Bul-bul,” said Nemarluk doubtfully. “He may lie in wait in the ranges. We have not yet seen his tracks with the police who follow out tracks. We are not sure where he is.”

  Silently they waited.

  “There is danger ahead,” growled Minmara at last, “and danger behind us.”

  Suddenly, Nemarluk felt the call of his own home country of An-de-mallee camp. When imminent danger threatened he always felt that call. With a grunt he pressed on, turning parallel with the foothills. They followed.

  Nemarluk lost their tracks in a lily lagoon, made a wide detour and camped on a muddy island, the piccaninnies shivering at the chattering of the bats. At dawn they commenced wading to dry land. Nan-narree was bitten on the leg by a yellow-bellied watersnake. She screamed and shook the thing off and hurried after them, fear in her eyes. Any who get sick or hurt are left behind in a flight such as this. It is the law of the wild. Nemarluk led them back straight to the coast.

  A fortnight passed, and they had rest. It was the season when the white gum flowers fill the air with their sweetish lemon smell. Myriads of shrieking flying foxes were dining upon the flowers. The tribe ate ravenously, causing havoc in the flying-fox colonies. There was abundance of fish, too, in among the mangrove roots all along the banks of the salt-water creeks. Eagerly they speared the fish while the women gathered dilly-bags full of shell-fish, eel, and crab. With bellies full again they relaxed by the cooking fires deep in a jungle scrub. They had shaken off the police. They joked now at the dance they had led them; a lad earned great laughter by mimicking the police struggling with a bogged horse.

  It was the flying foxes that put them away. A dense mass of foxes chattering, shrieking upon and above the trees as the hunters hurled throwing sticks up amongst them. Those screeches, that black cloud of agitated flying foxes could be heard and seen for miles. And the trackers saw them. Sundown came, then that misty haze which is almost like violet air dying into evening. The huntsmen in two and fours came singing into Ill-lin-ee camp. The women were straggling in, each laden with her day’s catch. The cooking fires were lit, laughter broke out, the warriors threw their game by the fire to squat and gossip over the day’s chase, awaiting the cooking of the meal.

  Nemarluk, the cunning, with Minmara, never entered a camp now until after dark. He remembered what had happened far away on the Victoria River. But Marragin, returning in the lead with a band of late warriors laughed at his warnings; for Marragin and his men that day had had good hunting. They were hungry, too, and now smelt the smoke of the cooking fires from the hidden camp.

  “The police are far away,” declared Marragin. “May the dingoes be gnawing their bones.” With a song upon his lips he led the way into camp.

  Men rose from his very feet, the spears were snatched from his hand.

  Marragin snarled then hooted warningly, his last service to Nemarluk.

  That night, Nemarluk with Minmara crept towards the outskirts of the camp. On a big white tree Nemarluk silently carved a picture of the Ouida, carved it deep into the bark with a knife he had fashioned from the ironwork of the vessel. In the morning, the big white policeman saw the carving.

  “Look at this!” he called admiringly to his mate. “Nemarluk’s visiting card! He’s as game as they make them.”

  They stared at the picture on the tree.

  “It’s the Ouida all right,” declared Mahony. “I’d recognize it anywhere. Just a few crude lines cut in the bark, but it’s the Ouida.”

  “He’s doubled back to An-de-mallee camp if I know my man,” declared Morey. “Quick! Saddle up and we’ll be there by sundown!”

  That night, Nemarluk and a remnant of his people were camped deep within a dense vine jungle. Around this camp but two hundred yards from them glowed little, dull fires. Decoy fires.

  At dawn, from all sides, men rushed past the decoys and dashed farther into the jungle. Dogs yelped, a lubra screamed, warriors snatched spears. Nemarluk and Minmara were already running and again they ran straight on top of two trackers who ducked from the upraised spears. Nemarluk was away again.

  They fled to the mangroves, the crocodiles, the bogs and salt arms of the sea. Savage now they
lived in the dense jungle that hedges the gloomy water-holes where the crocodiles lurk. Their food was fish and they wolfed it raw. They took the fish from under the very snouts of the saurians, and defied them. Day by day, night by night, they waited for the police and trackers.

  “When they come they will come like snakes crawling through the jungle,” hissed Minmara; “each man will be wide apart from his mate. We will spring on them and kill them one by one, slowly strangle them, man after man, and not make a sound. Then!” he snarled, and his eyes flashed, “we will feed their bodies to the crocodiles!”

  But the police did not come.

  “We won’t go in there after them,” decided the taller policeman. “We would never find them in that morass; the trackers would be too scared to attempt it anyway. We’ll ride a hundred miles south as if searching for tracks, then say we believe they’ve fled to the ranges. As soon as they know we’ve gone, they’ll come out.”

  And a week later Nemarluk and Minmara “came out”.

  “They have gone,” declared Minmara.

  “Yes,” scowled Nemarluk, “and when we least expect them they will be upon us again.”

  “Call your men together,” advised Minmara. “Kill them!”

  “How can I?” snarled Nemarluk. “Of the Red Band, only we two are left. Tiger’s Mob are back on the Victoria River, Deven’s men hide in the ranges away across the Victoria. My best warriors are scattered far and wide into the groups. The others are only hunters, not warriors. And they have been chased night and day throughout three moons; have seen the Red Band caught and are frightened.”

  “Let us kill the police ourselves!” frowned Minmara.

  “Kill two white police and three times our number of trackers?” answered Nemarluk. “Easy, if they were fools. We know they are not fools.”

  Minmara looked from under lowering brows.

  “Are we to be hunted for ever like dingoes?” he snarled.

  “There is not only the one patrol to kill,” growled Nemarluk. “There must be another threatening the people on the Fitzmaurice. We do not know where it is. I want to .fight as much as you do, but we would be fools to fight without Tiger’s Mob and Deven’s men. We will join up sooner or later; then we will fight and give their bones to the hawks and dingoes. Now, let us save ourselves that we may live to fight.”

  They lit a signal fire to call the scattered people together. From the forest, the jungle, the mangroves, the plains and the sandhills day by day the family groups straggled in, wild-eyed, fearful. Each arrival was greeted with glad cries; they ran together, children shrieking to children. Truly, they looked like hunted men and women now joyfully gaining confidence in the regathering of the horde. Presently nearly all the horde were assembled again. There was great gossip around the fires at night; laughter now in the chase; busy work at mending spears and weapons. The tools and weapons of aboriginals need constant repair under hard work, just as our tools and weapons do. The dilly-bags of the women were becoming threadbare, many a coolamon had been lost in flight, burnt accidentally, or broken in use. Every one was busy while keeping a sharp look out.

  By this time the patrol was again on their tracks. The man hunt went on, for the white law is inexorable. Nemarluk and Minmara had killed Japanese men. They must answer to the law.

  Nemarluk hurried his people away almost to the tall, rocky barriers of Hermit Hill, then on almost to the headwaters of the Daly. A shrewd move that, for lower down river was the Daly River Police Station. But the policeman there was wide awake, so Nemarluk doubled back and made for the Wangan Range. Among these rocky bluffs, heavily wooded with wollybutt and paper-bark, the horde gained sanctuary for a time. Gratefully they trekked deeper in among the ranges to Wangan Waterfalls. Amid this wild beauty waterfowl were plentiful, kangaroo and wallaby grazed on grassy swards near the singing falls.

  Up among the rocks the wild plum-trees were in fruit. Eagerly women and children gathered dilly-bags full of fruit, then squatting down hammered them between stones into squashed masses that they rounded by hand into lumps like cricket balls. These they set on the hot rocks to sunbake. When set hard they could carry them till needed for food.

  The men hunted with the silent earnestness of desperately hungry men. A fortnight of this good feeding, of almost restful nights, and they began to feel men again.

  But one dark night a dog suddenly howled—and the horde were away. Nemarluk hurried them past the foothills; and some days later they were crossing Did-ee Plain and on to Jan-Jar-roo, sentinel of the plains. To give the sore-footed ones a chance they stayed here hunting the plains until their look out on Jan-Jar-roo spied a far-distant patrol.

  Nemarluk led them inland making for the ranges that head the Fitzmaurice, but when nearly there a swiftly travelling patrol blocked them from joining up with Chugulla’s men. Nemarluk doubled back and away across the plains again to the coast. By now a few of the women and children were straggling, their feet cracked and sore. But they clung to the horde and Nemarluk clung to them. Gratefully they came to rest at In-dar-roo camp. Here, they were raided again. In the dead of night they faced a cold wind as they flitted through the sandhill country and out again on to the plains, hurrying back to the Moyle.

  Fierce men were on the tracks of the hunters. The hunters were hunted. Night came.

  The patrol camped at Bar-ram-lone waterhole set in its tangled scrub. The big policeman and two trackers quietly rode away. No eyes should see them. They would be fifty miles away at dawn, seeking Nemarluk where he least expected them.

  The hunters crouched in a vine thicket, the circlets of white ochre around their eyes, the bars of white across their greased bodies denoting men who had sworn to kill. They gripped their deadly spears as a scout glided amongst them and hissed:

  “The big policeman and two trackers have ridden away!”

  Nemarluk threw back his head; he wanted to roar with laughter. But only his eyes were dancing. He bent towards his warriors and hissed:

  “We have them! There is only one policeman left, and four trackers. Before the dawn we will cut them to pieces. And then—we will hunt the other one!”

  Minmara bent low. He was sharpening to razor-edge his spears by softly rubbing one blade against another. Their hands were clenching and unclenching; a warrior’s teeth gritted between hissing breath. Vengeance was very near.

  Night drew on toward the old dawn hour. Phantom forms were crawling close around the sleeping camp, phantoms with blazing eyes.

  Tracker Charlie crouched with his back to a tree staring into the night, his every sense alert. By this very tree twelve moons ago he was speared on a night such as this. Vividly he recalled that sharp spear biting into his leg, the scream as he leaped away from the yelling figures stabbing at him from the dark. Only the quick guns of the police had saved him. And now here he was again. And tracking—Nemarluk.

  It was Charlie who, beside this very tree had been on watch the night Mooderish attacked Constables Hoffman and Hemming’s patrol. So to-night, of course, he could not sleep. Which was why the cunning policeman had given him the dangerous night watch. Fearfully he stared; listened; smelt out into the night.

  All was a deathly silence with not even a faint current of air that might bring him the scent of greased bodies crawling, crawling towards him.

  They saw Charlie, the dark blot of his peering head betrayed him. They crawled very close, they waited for two breathless hours. But Charlie showed not the slightest sign of dozing, Charlie was a very frightened, very alert man.

  Then Charlie heard the hoot of an owl. It really was an owl, but it was enough for the nerves of Charlie. Frantically he was awakening the sleepers.

  “Quick! Quick!” he hissed. “Wild men all around about! They come! They come!”

  Instantly policemen jumped out into the dark and knelt with rifles ready.

  Nemarluk was furious. But his men held steady, not a sound. Then came the faintest breeze—and the trackers smelt the oiled bodies.
/>   Each man peered along the barrel of his rifle knowing that if the rush came he was a dead man.

  Nemarluk’s men waited until dawn, but the patrol never relaxed vigilance for an instant. Both Nemarluk and Minmara were burning to charge, but they knew they would charge alone. The warriors would charge a sleeping camp, but not wideawake men with rifles. The long-continued chase had daunted their nerves.

  With the coming of dawn they melted away.

  The chase continued. But the police horses were now leg weary, the food too had almost given out. The patrol was encumbered with prisoners, witnesses and sick people. At last they could go no farther. They had travelled fourteen hundred miles in three months, often over terribly rough country. Reluctantly the patrol turned the weary horses’ heads back towards the Daly River. The patrol left the Wild Lands.

  And the primitives were rejoiced in many a wild camp. Nemarluk and Minmara were heroes who had beaten the white police.

  Time passed.

  Nemarluk and Minmara with their tribesmen were hunting. From a far-spread, sun-cracked swamp they had burned the dried reeds and rushes; thick black smoke had formed a rolling black cloud above them all day. To-morrow they would find where many turtles lay hidden. For when the swamps dry up the land, turtle burrow deep down while mud is still there. The sun dries the mud almost hard as rock. But the turtle are deep below, following the last of the water down, awaiting the distant day when the big rains shall come again.

  The tribesmen, camping in a pandanus palm thicket talked of the turtle they would find in the morning. For the sunbaked mud, no matter how cracked and crinkled it might be, would bear clear traces of where the turtle had burrowed down several months ago. Minmara crooned a hunting song and all joined in. As the moon waned they cuddled around their fires to sleep.

  Dawn came. Minmara awoke with strong hands upon him; he glared up into the grinning face of Bul-bul.

  Startled grunts; thud of bodies flung violently aside. Then a crashing in the thicket told of Nemarluk’s escape.