The Night They Stormed Eureka

by Jackie French

  To her surprise Mr Puddleham looked at her approvingly. ‘The girl has her head on straight, Mrs Puddleham.’

  ‘Hasn’t she just?’ said Mrs Puddleham proudly. ‘Why just this morning she says, why don’t we buy our wood, Ma? We’ll makes more money if I cooks alongside you.’

  ‘Wood we can buy from any new chum,’ said Mr Puddleham. ‘But who’s going to write a note?’ He shook his head. ‘I can read a newspaper, Mrs Puddleham, but you know I don’t have a hand with my letters. And who’s going to read it at the farm?’

  ‘I can write,’ said Sam. Except she didn’t have a pen. Or paper, she thought. But you could write with a bit of charcoal, couldn’t you? And maybe use a strip of bark instead of paper. ‘And George can read.’

  ‘The half-caste?’

  ‘He’s not! Well, he is … but —’ She stopped at the look on the Puddlehams’ faces. ‘People should be given a chance. Even if they’ve got brown skin … or are Chinese or Irish,’ she added, remembering some of the insults she’d heard from the men as they ate their stew.

  ‘Or if they were convicts, I reckon,’ said Mrs Puddleham quietly. ‘You might add that, an’ all.’

  ‘Never,’ said Mr Puddleham. He lifted her work-roughened hand and kissed it. ‘You are the grandest lady on the goldfields. And I won’t let any say differently.’

  Mrs Puddleham flushed.

  ‘Of course she is,’ said Sam. ‘There’s no gentleman like you either. Please — send the note. I bet George will bring the meat and things right away.’

  The Puddlehams exchanged glances. ‘I’ve got the paper my thread were wrapped in,’ said Mrs Puddleham. ‘Sam can have that to write on. An’ the Professor has a pencil. I saw him using it only last week. Imagine us, Mr Puddleham, with a daughter that’s got learning like our Sam.’ She beamed at Sam as though she were a genius. For the first time since the troopers had arrived she looked happy.

  And I’ll see George again, thought Sam. She was surprised at how happy that made her too.

  Chapter 17

  It was late afternoon by the time George came along the track to the gully the next day, half a dozen dusty sheep bleating around him, scared into a huddle by the noise of the goldfields.

  His father walked beside him, grim-faced as when Sam had first seen him, a sack of potatoes on his back. Both father and son carried long, hooked poles — shepherds’ crooks, thought Sam, just like she’d seen in books of nursery rhymes when she was small.

  George saw her. He smiled — a half smile. In his long-sleeved shirt and with his face shadowed under the wide hat it was hard to see his Indigenous heritage.

  Mr Higgins waved, then expertly hooked the end of his crook around the neck of a sheep that looked like straying from the track. ‘And a good afternoon to youse all!’ he called, suddenly cheery. ‘A grand day it is too.’

  ‘That’s all very well, Mr Higgins.’ Mrs Puddleham stared at the sheep. ‘But we only wanted one sheep, not six o’ them. And with their skins off, if you gets my meaning, not with their bleats still in them.’

  ‘Ah, not to worry at all,’ said Mr Higgins easily. ‘It’s easier to let the beasts bring themselves than for us to carry them, and Ginger Murphy the butcher up by the gravel pits will get rid of those bleats for youse in a twinkling. He’s sure to buy the rest an’ all. It was George here’s suggestion.’ He gave his son a brief slap on the ear. ‘Say good morning politely to the Puddlehams, boy.’

  George glanced up from under his hat. ‘G’day.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Sam happily. (She had discovered that no one understood when she said ‘Hi'.)

  Mrs Puddleham glanced over at her, then at George. She seemed to come to a decision. ‘Would you like a slice of dumpling, George? It’s a long walk for a growin’ lad.’

  George looked startled, his father even more surprised.

  ‘Thankee, Mrs Puddleham.’

  His father watched as his son gulped down the dumpling, his face twisted with an expression so powerful that Sam felt a twist in her heart. Why, he does love him, she thought.

  ‘Now,’ said Mrs Puddleham, eyeing the animals, who had already left scatterings of small round droppings about her camp, ‘about these sheeps …’ She gathered up a couple of pots and a clean hessian sack.

  They left Mr Puddleham minding the camp and the bubbling stew, and followed George, Mr Higgins and the sheep along the track then up the main road past the gravel pits to the butcher’s shack.

  Sam watched as the sheep were locked in a small wooden pen. The butcher expertly slipped a rope aroundthe back legs of one of the sheep, then slung the other end of the rope over a branch of a tree next to his shack. Mr Higgins held the animal steady while the butcher pulled its head back, then slid a knife across its throat. Blood gushed onto the ground.

  ‘Don’t waste that good blood!’ Mrs Puddleham dashed forwards with a big tin dish. ‘You ain’t tasted nothin’ till you’ve tried my blood puddings,’ she added to Sam over her shoulder, as the blood trickled into her pan. ‘Just blood and oats all boiled together, and herbs to make it savoury. The secret’s in the herbs.’

  Sam’s stomach lurched.

  The sheep’s legs collapsed under it. Its head lolled to one side, its tongue poking out of its limp mouth. Blood still seeped from its throat, though the great gush had stopped.

  ‘Haul her up,’ called the butcher.

  Mr Higgins and George hauled on the rope while Mrs Puddleham nursed the pan of blood. The dead sheep sailed up into the air. It hung there, a little blood still dripping onto the dark-stained ground below.

  How many sheep had been killed on this spot? wondered Sam. She felt strangely sweaty, as though the day was too hot and too cold at the same time.

  The butcher made a cut around the sheep’s anus, then slashed between its back legs and up its belly. A pile of steaming guts spilled down onto the ground.

  ‘No!’ She retched, but nothing came up. She turned her back, away from the gore, and tried to get her breath.

  ‘Sam!’ Mrs Puddleham’s arm was around her shoulders. ‘Deary, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m sorry … I’ve just never seen …’

  ‘George? Take Sam back to Mr Puddleham,’ ordered Mrs Puddleham, still cradling her pan of blood in her other arm.

  ‘Really, I’m all right —’

  ‘You’re not going back on your own some, an’ I can’t leave this lot. There’s six good sheep tongues there no one else’ll want, not to mention sheep brains an’ the belly fat goin’ begging, and I don’t want no one’s dog grabbing ‘em.’

  ‘I’m fine …’ The world swam around her again.

  Dimly she heard George say, ‘Come on then.’

  They began to walk. Slowly the world cleared. She looked across at George. He looked pleased with himself. ‘What kind of bleedin’ petticoat lad throws up at a pile of guts, eh?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Bet you’d scream if you saw something’ really bad. Sheep with its back legs all eaten by the maggots, eh? All crawlin’ and bloody …’

  He’s trying to make me be sick again, she thought. And she’d been defending him to the Puddlehams. ‘I said shut up!’

  ‘What kind of a boy can’t —’

  ‘I’m a girl!’

  She hadn’t meant to say it. (And she bet a boy from her own time would have been sick at all that blood too.) Butat least the smug look vanished from George’s face. He stared at her, then suddenly nodded. ‘Ma guessed. All she said was that you was too thin. All bones, she said. But there were somethin’ about the way she said it.’

  ‘The Puddlehams thought it would be best — safer I mean —’

  ‘The Puddlehams?’ He stared at her again, more surprised at this than when she’d said she was a girl.

  ‘Yes, they thought —’

  ‘They ain’t your ma and pa? Not when you talk about ‘em like that.’

  ‘They … no. I only met them the day we came to your farm.’


  ‘Ma said that were strange then too. That you didn’t seem like a lad with his family.’

  ‘Your mum — she’s sick, isn’t she?’

  His face clouded. ‘Consumption. That’s what she says it is, anyhow. She were a maid in a doctor’s house when Pa met her. That’s how she knows how to dress proper and things.’

  ‘You don’t have to be ashamed of her,’ said Sam softly.

  He gazed at her with fury. ‘I ain’t!’ He gestured at the men scrabbling in the dirt around them. ‘Her family owned all of this! Bigger than any bleedin’ farm in England! Me uncles can spear a ‘roo two hundred yards away!’

  ‘You’ve met them?’

  He hesitated. ‘Yes. ‘Cause Ma asked me to. ‘Cause I wanted to. They wuz gunna learn me the things to be a man. Pa, he brung me back.’

  ‘Did you want to stay with them?’

  ‘Yes. No!’ He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Hunting is better than starin’ at sheep bums, or diggin’ spuds. But I ain’t one o’ them, not really, though they treated me right. It weren’t what I wanted, neither.’

  They were nearly at the Puddlehams’ camp now. She said urgently, ‘What do you want then?’ A small feather of an idea tickled her mind.

  He was silent. ‘Proper book learnin',’ he said at last. ‘To go to school, like you done. You’re lucky.’

  ‘At least you’ve got a family. A home. My mum threw me out.’

  ‘You’ve got the Puddlehams now.’ He looked at her a bit anxiously. ‘Ain’t you?’

  Sam nodded. ‘Mrs Puddleham really looks after me like I’m her daughter. And Mr Puddleham — well, he’s not too sure. But he likes me, I think.’ And not in the wrong way, like Gavin.

  George smiled, as though genuinely relieved she had a home. He likes me too, she thought, even though he made fun of me. Even though I’m a girl.

  ‘Da’s right most times,’ he was saying. ‘He’s just embarrassed at having a darkie for a son when there’s other people about. Where we goin'?’ He lengthened his lope to keep up with her.

  Sam grinned as she began to stride past the gully before Mr Puddleham caught sight of them. ‘You’ll see.’

  Chapter 18

  There was no sign of the Professor at his campsite. Sam glanced in under his bark lean-to. His stone jug wasn’t there, either.

  ‘Expect he’s down there.’ George nodded at the dark hole in the ground, with its thick lips of mullock. The sail hung slack in the afternoon stillness. ‘Who is he, anyhow?’

  ‘He’s the man who sold your dad the book.’

  George brightened. ‘Think he’d sell another? Da’s gettin’ a good price for them sheep,’ he added.

  ‘They’re in another language. You couldn’t read them.’

  He was silent for a moment, perhaps calculating the many things he didn’t — couldn’t — know. ‘Then what are we —’ he broke off as Sam leaned over the hole. A ladder of rough branches tied together with twine was propped against one side of the mineshaft. It didn’t look like it’d bear the weight of a monkey, much less a man. A rope was tied to it — a thick, old-fashioned kind of rope that looked like it was made of twisted hair. ‘You be careful. Mine edges can crumble.’

  Sam stepped back slightly. There was no sign of light down the hole. Could you mine in total darkness?

  ‘Professor?’

  The mineshaft seemed to swallow the words. Then suddenly she heard a voice. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Sam. Um, Sam Puddleham,’ she added self-consciously.

  ‘Don’t come down.’ It was as though the earth itself had spoken through that small dark mouth.

  ‘I’m not going to.’ No way would she go down there, Sam thought. The edges of the mine looked like they might collapse at any moment. It was almost like the darkness had a smell.

  Footsteps sounded below, like a giant wombat in a tunnel. The ladder creaked and shook. Finally the Professor’s head emerged, his lanky hair even dirtier than usual, and then the rest of him. He blinked in the morning light, then caught sight of George. He looked back at Sam, puzzled, as he hauled himself up and stood shakily in the sunlight.

  She grinned. ‘I brought George to see you. He’s the kid, I mean the boy, who’s got your book.’

  ‘Ah,’ the Professor wiped a grubby hand across his forehead, then glanced at George. He seems fairly sober this afternoon, thank goodness, thought Sam. ‘He wants to sell it back to me? Well, I happen to be in funds this week —’

  ‘No!’ said Sam impatiently. ‘He wants to talk to you about it!’

  The Professor stared. ‘My dear child, the boy is a native. He’d be quite incapable —’

  ‘I’m going.’ George’s face was pale with rage.

  The Professor peered at him with sudden interest, his eyes blinking in the daylight after the darkness of his mine. ‘I apologise. First for calling you a native —’

  ‘I am a native! Native is just as good as you!’

  The Professor hesitated. ‘Apologise perhaps for my concept of “native". I admit my ignorance of what a native of this country can do. I have made the unforgivable error of accepting that what the mob says is right. A common fallacy.’

  The Professor looked different, thought Sam. As though a ghost had suddenly come to life.

  George frowned. ‘You talk like the coves in me book.’ He hunched his shoulders, then blurted out, ‘I can read newspapers all right. But half o’ them words in the book don’t make sense.’

  The Professor lowered himself onto the ground, and sat cross-legged in the dust. Behind him the distant hills merged with the sky. ‘You want to read them?’

  George looked cautious, in case the Professor was making fun of him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  George sat down too, taking off his big leaf hat and fanning away the flies that clustered around his face. It was the first time Sam had seen him bareheaded. She plonked herself down next to them. Someone — his mother? — had cut George’s hair short, perhaps to disguise its curliness. ‘To get me a job as a clerk, mebbe. Sittin’ at a desk, not sweatin’ outside.’

  The Professor waved his hand, but not at the flies. ‘Is that the only reason?’

  ‘Yes. No!’ His eagerness is almost painful, thought Sam. ‘That cove in the book — Socrates — he asks all them questions. Ain’t no one ever asks questions like that around here. It’s like … like there’s a whole different world in that book.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Professor’s face relaxed suddenly, like he’d had a drink of something even more powerful than the hooch in his jar. ‘Then I will teach you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I will teach you,’ repeated the Professor. ‘I will teach you to read more words, and write a neat hand that might get you a job. But most of all, I will teach you to ask questions.’

  ‘Why?’ George sounded like he’d been offered a nugget and couldn’t believe it was real.

  The Professor hesitated. ‘Because questions like the ones in your book are needed now. Do you really think that the men on these diggings — the ones who call you “native” in the same way that I did so wrongly a few minutes ago — can govern wisely? How many know how to read, much less think? And if they don’t know how to think, how can they possibly rule a country justly?’

  ‘They can elect people who do,’ said Sam.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Professor patiently. ‘But how do the ignorant know who to elect? The mob killed Socrates, remember. Democracy does not mean that good decisions are made.’

  George looked at him speculatively. ‘So who should do the rulin’ then?’

  ‘Ah, that raises an interesting question,’ said the Professor happily. ‘It is true — the present government is bad. It seems that owning one hundred pounds’ worth of property —’

  ‘And being male,’ added Sam.

  The Professor nodded. ‘It seems that this is not an effective qualification to choose people who will govern either efficiently or morally. But it does not necessarily follow that those who
want to change it would make a better job of it.’

  ‘How about you only let coves who can read vote?’

  ‘Reading does not mean that you necessarily think about what you read,’ said the Professor dryly, ‘as any teacher knows to his cost. For every hundred students who read you will find perhaps one who actually analyses what he has read.’

  ‘How do you ana-whatsit?’ George’s face was suddenly intent.

  ‘Analyse. Ah.’ The Professor grinned. ‘Now we come back to Ancient Greece again, to Socrates sitting with his students Plato and Alcibiades, just as you sit with me, though perhaps,’ he brushed away the flies, ‘in rather more salubrious surroundings.’

  The Professor rubbed his hands as though he were about to sit down to a particularly good serve of Mrs Puddleham’s stew. ‘To think properly you need to be able to tell when an argument is valid. Let us say that allfish swim. A true statement, I believe. Now, if Sam here can swim, does that mean Sam is a fish?

  ‘O’ course not —’

  ‘Ah, but if Sam were a fish, it would be a true statement. Yet the argument would still not be a valid one. Most people understand the difference between something true and something false. But they can’t distinguish between an argument that is valid and one that is invalid, so they are not able to think clearly.’

  George frowned. ‘I dunno —’

  ‘Let us take another fallacy, the one that perhaps causes more trouble than any other, the ad verecundiam fallacy, the appeal to an authority on a subject outside one’s expertise. Queen Victoria is a great woman, therefore everything she decides must be right.’

  Sam blinked. The Professor suddenly sounded like Mrs Quant, standing in front of the class, talking about sports stars or pop idols giving opinions on everything from diets to wars. Why should anyone pay attention to what someone said, just because they were famous for something else?

  She smiled. She bet nowhere else on earth was a barefoot boy sitting on the ground by a mullock heap discussing philosophy with a professor. Liz would love to be listening to this, she thought. And Nick would say …