CHAPTER XI
CRIME OR CALAMITY
IT was not without apprehension that the Major saw
Ayrton quit the Wimerra camp to go and look for a blacksmith at the Black Point
Station. But he did not breathe
a word of his private misgivings, and contented himself
with watching the neighborhood of the river; nothing disturbed the repose of
those tranquil glades, and after a short
night the sun reappeared on the horizon.
As to Glenarvan, his only fear was lest Ayrton should
return alone. If they fail to find a workman, the wagon
could not resume the journey. This might end in a delay
of many days, and Glenarvan, impatient to succeed, could
brook no delay, in his eagerness to attain his object.
Ayrton luckily had lost neither his time nor his trouble.
He appeared next morning at daybreak, accompanied by a
man who gave himself out as the blacksmith from BlackPoint Station. He was a
powerful fellow, and tall, but
his features were of a low, brutal type, which did not prepossess anyone in his
favor. But that was nothing, provided he knew his business. He scarcely spoke,
and certainly he did not waste his breath in useless words.
"Is he a good workman?" said John Mangles to the
quartermaster.
"I know no more about him than you do, captain," said
Ayrton. "But we shall see."
The blacksmith set to work. Evidently that was his
trade, as they could plainly see from the way he set about
repairing the forepart of the wagon. He worked skilfully and with uncommon
energy. The Major observed
that the flesh of his wrists was deeply furrowed, showing a
ring of extravasated blood. It was the mark of a recent
injury, which the sleeve of an old woolen shirt could not
conceal. McNabbs questioned the blacksmith about those
sores which looked so painful. The man continued his
work without answering. Two hours more and the damage the carriage had sustained
was made good. As to
Glenarvan's horse, it was soon disposed of. The blacksmith had had the
forethought to bring the shoes with him.
These shoes had a peculiarity which did not escape the
Major; it was a trefoil clumsily cut on the back part. McNabbs pointed it out to
Ayrton.
"It is the Black-Point brand," said the quartermaster.
"That enables them to track any horses that may stray
from the station, and prevents their being mixed with other
herds."
The horse was soon shod. The blacksmith claimed his
wage, and went off without uttering four words.
Half an hour later, the travelers were on the road. Beyond the grove of
mimosas was a stretch of sparsely timbered country, which quite deserved its
name of "open
plain." Some fragments of quartz and ferruginous rock
lay among the scrub and the tall grass, where numerous
flocks were feeding. Some miles farther the wheels of
the wagon plowed deep into the alluvial soil, where irregular creeks murmured in
their beds, half hidden among
giant reeds. By-and-by they skirted vast salt lakes, rapidly evaporating. The
journey was accomplished without
trouble, and, indeed, without fatigue.
Lady Helena invited the horsemen of the party to pay
her a visit in turns, as her reception-room was but small,
and in pleasant converse with this amiable woman they
forgot the fatigue of their day's ride.
Lady Helena, seconded by Miss Mary, did the honors
of their ambulatory house with perfect grace. John Mangles was not forgotten in
these daily invitations, and his
somewhat serious conversation was not unpleasing.
The party crossed, in a diagonal direction, the mail-coach
road from Crowland to Horsham, which was a very dusty
one, and little used by pedestrians.
The spurs of some low hills were skirted at the boundary
of Talbot County, and in the evening the travelers reached
a point about three miles from Maryborough. The fine
rain was falling, which, in any other country, would have
soaked the ground; but here the air absorbed the moisture
so wonderfully that the camp did not suffer in the least.
Next day, the 29th of December, the march was delayed
somewhat by a succession of little hills, resembling a miniature Switzerland. It
was a constant repetition of up and
down hill, and many a jolt besides, all of which were
scarcely pleasant. The travelers walked part of the way,
and thought it no hardship.
At eleven o'clock they arrived at Carisbrook, rather an
important municipality. Ayrton was for passing outside
the town without going through it, in order, he said, to
save time. Glenarvan concurred with him, but Paganel,
always eager for novelties, was for visiting Carisbrook.
They gave him his way, and the wagon went on slowly.
Paganel, as was his custom, took Robert with him. His
visit to the town was very short, but it sufficed to give him
an exact idea of Australian towns. There was a bank, a
court-house, a market, a church, and a hundred or so of
brick houses, all exactly alike. The whole town was laid
out in squares, crossed with parallel streets in the English
fashion. Nothing could be more simple, nothing less attractive. As the town
grows, they lengthen the streets
as we lengthen the trousers of a growing child, and thus
the original symmetry is undisturbed.
Carisbrook was full of activity, a remarkable feature in
these towns of yesterday. It seems in Australia as if
towns shot up like trees, owing to the heat of the sun.
Men of business were hurrying along the streets; gold
buyers were hastening to meet the in-coming escort; the
precious metal, guarded by the local police, was coming
from the mines at Bendigo and Mount Alexander. All
the little world was so absorbed in its own interests, that
the strangers passed unobserved amid the laborious inhabitants.
After an hour devoted to visiting Carisbrook, the two
visitors rejoined their companions, and crossed a highly
cultivated district. Long stretches of prairie, known as
the "Low Level Plains," next met their gaze, dotted with
countless sheep, and shepherds' huts. And then came a
sandy tract, without any transition, but with the abruptness
of change so characteristic of Australian scenery. Mount
Simpson and Mount Terrengower marked the southern
point where the boundary of the Loddon district cuts the
144th meridian.
As yet they had not met with any of the aboriginal
tribes living in the savage state. Glenarvan wondered if
the Australians were wanting in Australia, as the Indians
had been wanting in the Pampas of the Argentine district;
but Paganel told him that, in that latitude, the natives frequented chiefly the
Murray Plains, about one hundred
miles to the eastward.
"We are now approaching the gold district," said he,
"in a day or two we shall cross the rich region of Mount
Alexander. It was here that the swarm of diggers
alighted in 1852; the natives had to fly to the interior.
We are in civilized districts without seeing any sign of it;
but our road will, before the day is over, cross the railway
which connects the Murray with the sea. Well, I must
confess, a railway in Australia does seem to me an astonishing thing!"
"And pray, why, Paganel?" said Glenarvan.
"Why? because it jars on one's ideas. Oh! I know you
English are so used to colonizing distant possessions. You,
who have electric telegraphs and universal exhibitions in
New Zealand, you think it is all quite natural. But it
dumb-founders the mind of a Frenchman like myself, and
confuses all one's notions of Australia!"
"Because you look at the past, and not at the present,"
said John Mangles.
A loud whistle interrupted the discussion. The party
were within a mile of the railway. Quite a number of
persons were hastening toward the railway bridge. The
people from the neighboring stations left their houses, and
the shepherds their flocks, and crowded the approaches to
the railway. Every now and then there was a shout, "The
railway! the railway!"
Something serious must have occurred to produce such
an agitation. Perhaps some terrible accident.
Glenarvan, followed by the rest, urged on his horse. In
a few minutes he arrived at Camden Bridge and then he
became aware of the cause of such an excitement.
A fearful accident had occurred; not a collision, but a
train had gone off the line, and then there had been a fall.
The affair recalled the worst disasters of American railways. The river crossed
by the railway was full of broken
carriages and the engine. Whether the weight of the train
had been too much for the bridge, or whether the train had
gone off the rails, the fact remained that five carriages out
of six fell into the bed of the Loddon, dragged down by the
locomotive. The sixth carriage, miraculously preserved
by the breaking of the coupling chain, remained on the
rails, six feet from the abyss. Below nothing was discernible but a melancholy
heap of twisted and blackened axles,
shattered wagons, bent rails, charred sleepers; the boiler,
burst by the shock, had scattered its plates to enormous
distances. From this shapeless mass of ruins flames and
black smoke still rose. After the fearful fall came fire,
more fearful still! Great tracks of blood, scattered limbs,
charred trunks of bodies, showed here and there; none
could guess how many victims lay dead and mangled under those ruins.
Glenarvan, Paganel, the Major, Mangles, mixing with
the crowd, heard the current talk. Everyone tried to ac
count for the accident, while doing his utmost to save what
could be saved.
"The bridge must have broken," said one.
"Not a bit of it. The bridge is whole enough; they
must have forgotten to close it to let the train pass. That
is all."
It was, in fact, a swing bridge, which opened for the
convenience of the boats. Had the guard, by an unpardonable oversight, omitted
to close it for the passage of the
train, so that the train, coming on at full speed, was precipitated into the
Loddon? This hypothesis seemed very
admissible; for although one-half of the bridge lay beneath
the ruins of the train, the other half, drawn up to the opposite shore, hung,
still unharmed, by its chains. No one
could doubt that an oversight on the part of the guard had
caused the catastrophe.
The accident had occurred in the night, to the express
train which left Melbourne at 11:45 in the evening. About
a quarter past three in the morning, twenty-five minutes
after leaving Castlemaine, it arrived at Camden Bridge,
where the terrible disaster befell. The passengers and
guards of the last and only remaining carriage at once
tried to obtain help. But the telegraph, whose posts were
lying on the ground, could not be worked. It was three
hours before the authorities from Castlemaine reached the
scene of the accident, and it was six o'clock in the morning
when the salvage party was organized, under the direction
of Mr. Mitchell, the surveyor-general of the colony, and a
detachment of police, commanded by an inspector. The
squatters and their "hands" lent their aid, and directed
their efforts first to extinguishing the fire which raged in the
ruined heap with unconquerable violence. A few unrecognizable bodies lay on the
slope of the embankment, but
from that blazing mass no living thing could be saved. The
fire had done its work too speedily. Of the passengers
ten only survived — those in the last carriage. The railway authorities sent a
locomotive to bring them back to
Castlemaine.
Lord Glenarvan, having introduced himself to the surveyor-general,
entered into conversation with him and the
inspector of police. The latter was a tall, thin man, imperturbably cool, and,
whatever he may have felt, allowed
no trace of it to appear on his features. He contemplated
this calamity as a mathematician does a problem; he was
seeking to solve it, and to find the unknown; and when
Glenarvan observed, "This is a great misfortune," he
quietly replied, "Better than that, my Lord."
"Better than that?" cried Glenarvan. "I do not understand you."
"It is better than a misfortune, it is a crime!" he replied,
in the same quiet tone.
Glenarvan looked inquiringly at Mr. Mitchell for a solution. "Yes, my
Lord," replied the surveyor-general,
"our inquiries have resulted in the conclusion that the
catastrophe is the result of a crime. The last luggage-van
has been robbed. The surviving passengers were attacked
by a gang of five or six villains. The bridge was intentionally opened, and not
left open by the negligence of the
guard; and connecting with this fact the guard's disappearance, we may conclude
that the wretched fellow was an
accomplice of these ruffians."
The police-officer shook his head at this inference.
"You do not agree with me?" said Mr. Mitchell.
"No, not as to the complicity of the guard."
"Well, but granting that complicity, we may attribute
the crime to the natives who haunt the Murray. Without
him the blacks could never have opened a swing-bridge;
they know nothing of its mechanism."
"Exactly so," said the police-inspector.
"Well," added Mr. Mitchell, "we have the evidence of
a boatman whose boat passed Camden Bridge at 10:40
P. M., that the bridge was properly shut after he passed."
"True."
"Well, after that I cannot see any doubt as to the complicity of the
guard."
The police-officer shook his head gently, but continuously.
"Then you don't attribute the crime to the natives?"
"Not at all."
"To whom then?"
Just at this moment a noise was heard from about half
a mile up the river. A crowd had gathered, and quickly
increased. They soon reached the station, and in their
midst were two men carrying a corpse. It was the body
of the guard, quite cold, stabbed to the heart. The murderers had no doubt
hoped, by dragging their victim to a
distance, that the police would be put on a wrong scent in
their first inquiries. This discovery, at any rate, justified
the doubts of the police-inspector. The poor blacks had
had no hand in the matter.
"Those who dealt that blow," said he, "were already
well used to this little instrument"; and so saying he produced a pair of
"darbies," a kind of handcuff made of a
double ring of iron secured by a lock. "I shall soon have
the pleasure of presenting them with these bracelets as a
New Year's gift."
"Then you suspect —"
"Some folks who came out free in Her Majesty's ships."
"What! convicts?" cried Paganel, who recognized the
formula employed in the Australian colonies.
"I thought," said Glenarvan, "convicts had no right in
the province of Victoria."
"Bah!" said the inspector, "if they have no right, they
take it! They escape sometimes, and, if I am not greatly
mistaken, this lot have come straight from Perth, and, take
my word for it, they will soon be there again."
Mr. Mitchell nodded acquiescence in the words of the
police-inspector. At this moment the wagon arrived at
the level crossing of the railway. Glenarvan wished to
spare the ladies the horrible spectacle at Camden Bridge.
He took courteous leave of the surveyor-general, and made
a sign to the rest to follow him. "There is no reason,"
said he, "for delaying our journey."
When they reached the wagon, Glenarvan merely mentioned to Lady Helena
that there had been a railway accident, without a hint of the crime that had
played so great
a part in it; neither did he make mention of the presence
of a band of convicts in the neighborhood, reserving that
piece of information solely for Ayrton's ear. The little
procession now crossed the railway some two hundred
yards below the bridge, and then resumed their eastward
course.