Corroboree

by Graham Masterton

  As they reached the top of the next ridge, four or five Aborigines appeared on the lower ridge behind them, rapidly followed by more. Eyre shouted to Dogger, ‘It’s all right. They won’t try to attack us as long as we have Yonguldye!’ But even before he had finished speaking, there was the whop-whop-whop sound of a boomerang, then another, and two of them flew overhead like giant sycamore seeds and landed close by, in the grass.

  It was then that Yonguldye dropped flat on his face on to the ground. Eyre seized hold of his shoulder, and tried to pull him upright, but the medicine-man crouched down and refused to get up.

  ‘Do you want me to kill you?’ Eyre screamed at him. But then he realised what Yonguldye must already have realised: that he was almost certainly incapable of shooting him in cold blood.

  ‘Get up!’ Eyre hissed at him. ‘Get up, or I’ll blow your head off your shoulders!’ But still Yonguldye huddled amidst the lemon-grass, all ribs and bony spine, like an elderly kangaroo. Another boomerang flapped over Eyre’s head, and this time he heard a cry. He looked up and saw that the boomerang had struck Christopher on the back of the leg, and brought him down.

  ‘For God’s sake, get on to your feet!’ he shouted at Yonguldye; but the medicine-man only covered his ears with his hands, to show his contempt for all of Eyre’s desperate threats. Eyre was about to leave him, when there was a tremendous report, and his rifle went off in his hands, recoiling so violently that it jumped out of Eyre’s grasp and tumbled into the grass. Yonguldye let out a high, effeminate shriek, and jerked and writhed on the ground in agony, and then lay still, shuddering a little, like a lizard which Eyre had once accidentally crushed beneath the wheels of his bicycle.

  Eyre left him, and ran through the scrub towards Christopher, who was trying to stagger up on to his feet. Eyre weaved and dodged from side to side as he ran, in case any more boomerangs were being thrown after them. But long before he could reach the limestone outcropping where Christopher had fallen, he heard another sound, far more frightening than the flackering of boomerangs. It was the humming of spears, launched from woomeras; and the next thing he knew, the sky was dark with what the Aborigines called ‘the long rain’ a torrential shower of quartz-tipped death-spears.

  Three spears clattered on to the rock beside Christopher, who had fallen back down again now, clutching his leg. Another sang past Eyre and stuck into the ground, quivering.

  Eyre shouted, ‘Christopher! Christopher, get up!’ But it was plain that Christopher’s leg had been too badly bruised by the boomerang for him to walk; it was even possible that the bone was broken.

  It was then that Midgegooroo appeared over the brow of the ridge, running low and quickly. He looked like a dark scuttling crab against the pale pink limestone rock. Eyre watched in relief and gratitude as he picked Christopher up without any hesitation at all and lifted him bodily on to his broad black back. He heard Dogger whistle shrilly in encouragement as Midgegooroo reached the brow of the ridge again, and shouted out, ‘Back to the horses! Dogger, I’ve lost Yonguldye! Cover me!’

  But then a death-spear came flying through the air as accurately as if it were a black pencil-line being swiftly drawn against the pale blue of the sky with a ruler. It struck Midgegooroo right in the back, missing Christopher by inches, and Eyre, who was much closer now, heard the crunch of quartz-tipped spear-wood dig right into his flesh.

  Midgegooroo staggered, and let out a hoarse, high cry; but somehow he kept on balancing his way across the bare limestone ridge, with Christopher still dangling over his shoulders, until he had reached the other side, where the rocks fell away, and he was out of spear-shot. Then with the death-spear trailing noisily against the ground behind him, he slowly sagged to the ground like an emptying sack, letting Christopher fall awkwardly against an outcropping of rocks and bushes.

  Minil, who had been halfway down the creek-bed to the place where they had left Weeip, turned and climbed back up the hill, kneeling down beside Christopher and feeling his leg, to find out how bad his injury was. Eyre was surprised to see that she completely ignored Midgegooroo, as if he were dead already; but then Eyre supposed that with a death-spear lodged in his back, that was probably true. He said, ‘Dogger! Open fire! Hold the bastards off!’

  Dogger knelt down on the limestone, and took aim at the Aborigine warriors who were now running towards them across the grass. He was an experienced shot, even if he was rusty, and the leading warrior fell into the bushes without even a shout. Eyre clambered over towards Midgegooroo, and eased the satchel of ammunition from around his neck; trying not to look into Midgegooroo’s grey and desperate face, or at the bloody froth which bubbled at the corners of his mouth. He slung the satchel over to Dogger, and called, ‘See if you can get another one in!’

  Dogger reloaded with relaxed skill; and when the Aborigines were less than fifty paces away, he fired again, hitting another one right between the eyes, so that the blood sprayed up from the top of his head like an ornamental fountain. The other warriors hesitated, and retreated a few steps, while Dogger loaded up for the third time.

  Eyre, keeping his head low, knelt down beside Midgegooroo and said, ‘You’re going to be all right. Don’t worry. Once we get the spear out of you, you’ll soon recover.’

  Midgegooroo’s expression was sweaty and strained, an agonised gargoyle. He shook his head again and again, and said, ‘No, sir. No, sir.’

  Dogger fired one more shot, which went wide. Eyre heard the bullet singing off the distant rocks.

  ‘We’d better make ourselves scarce,’ said Eyre. ‘Here—give me some help with Midgegooroo.’

  Dogger came over at a low crouch. He turned Midgegooroo over a little way, and examined the spear. The entire head was buried in Midgegooroo’s back, and sticky blood was coursing over his black muscles, and on to the grass. As gently as he could, Dogger tugged at the spear, but Midgegooroo whimpered with such pitiful agony that he let it go. Dogger looked at Eyre, and said, ‘Death-spear, no doubt about it.’

  ‘What can we do?’ Eyre asked him.

  Dogger shook his head. ‘Not much, except push the whole thing all the way through him. There are teeth on the end of this thing, flakes of sharpened quartz. You can’t pull it out the way it went in, not without tearing half his back off. I’ve seen it before. An old chum called Keith Cragg, out at Broken Hill. We had to push the spear right through his lung to get it out; and he only lived for half-an-hour after that. Kept coughing up blood and singing about his wife. Couldn’t stand the name Madge ever after.’

  ‘What then?’ said Eyre, urgently, lifting his head so that he could see how close the tribesmen were approaching. Then he turned back to see how Christopher was getting on. It looked as if Minil had managed to help him on to his feet, because now he was hopping down towards the creek-bed, with his arm around Minil’s shoulders.

  Dogger sniffed, and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Can’t see much option,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, either we leave him here; or we put him out of his misery.’

  ’What? We can’t kill him.’

  ‘That lot will do worse. Especially since we seem to have done for their clever-man.’

  ‘For God’s sake, the gun went off by accident.’

  Dogger shrugged. ‘They don’t know that.’

  Eyre said, ‘We have to try. We can’t just leave him.’

  Dogger peered with infuriating thoughtfulness in the direction in which Christopher and Minil had just disappeared. ‘Listen, old mate,’ he said to Eyre, ‘why don’t you go and make sure that your chum’s all right. That boomerang gave him a fair knock. And then there’s your girlfriend, too.’

  ‘You’ll shoot him, that’s why.’

  Dogger rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Well, you’re right about that. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t want to see it.’

  Impatient, angry at Dogger’s defeatism, Eyre worked his way around Midgegooroo’s shivering body un
til he was right up behind him. He rested the shaft of the spear on one bare knee, and grasped it in both hands as if he were cracking firewood. ‘We’re not going to give in,’ he told Dogger, fiercely. ‘If this were you lying here, with a spear in your back, I believe you’d thank me for what I’m going to do now.’

  ‘Not I, friend,’ said Dogger, ‘I’d curse you all the way to Purgatory and back.’

  Eyre pressed down on the spear’s shaft with all his weight, trying to break it across his knee. Immediately, Midgegooroo threw up his arm and screamed. Dogger said, ‘For pity’s sake, Eyre, leave the fellow be.’ But Eyre was determined. He pressed down on the spear again and again, until he heard the wood cracking, and at last the shaft broke off, leaving only six or seven inches protruding bloodily from Midgegooroo’s back.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘up with him, and let’s get him down to the horses.’

  Midgegooroo was roaring with pain, his eyes bulging and his mouth stretched open like a frilled lizard. But Eyre seized the Aborigine’s arm, and bent forward, and lifted him up on to his back; and Dogger, with a quick spit of disapproval, took hold of his other arm, and made sure that Eyre wouldn’t drop him.

  Hunched over like gnomes or goblins, they hurried down towards the creek-bed; while a fresh salvo of deathspears came whistling over the ridge and rattled against the rocks all around them. One came so close that it scratched Eyre’s calf, and almost tripped him over. Dogger, glancing back, said, ‘They’ll catch us if we don’t run faster. For God’s sake, Eyre, lay this fellow down and let’s get away while we can.’

  Eyre, panting under the weight of Midgegooroo’s cold and sweaty body, could do nothing more than shake his head. Then he began to slither down the loose shale of the creek-bed; half-tumbling, half-staggering, with the acacia branches whipping at his bare arms, and the rocks tearing at his bare legs. He managed the last few yards at jarring over-and-over roll, bruising his back and his hip; and Midgegooroo fell off his back and tumbled even further, at last lying concussed against a purple-flowered emu bush, his face grey.

  Eyre stood up, just as Dogger came slithering down behind him. Two or three stray spears hurtled over the brink of the creek, and fell noisily down between the overhanging banks.

  Weeip and Christopher were ready with the horses; Minil was already mounted up. Without a word, Dogger and Eyre dragged Midgegooroo over to the nearest horse, and while Christopher held the animal’s reins, and shushed it, they hoisted him across the saddle, and quickly tied his wrists and ankles to prevent him from sliding off. The broken-off spear protruded bloodily from his back and gave him the appearance of having been nailed on to the horse. His muscles quivered, and he let out a deep bubbling groan, but then he lapsed into unconsciousness again.

  ‘Come on, let’s get away from here,’ Eyre ordered, and they turned their horses and began to pick their way back down the narrow waterway, riding as quickly as they could, but all of them aware that until they reached the open plains, they were far slower on their horses than a running man; especially a running Aborigine.

  Dogger tried several times to reload his rifle as he rode, but it was impossible, and he scattered half-a-dozen balls on to the ground, as well as losing most of his primingpowder to the early-morning wind. Eventually, he cursed, and gave up, and slung his rifle back over his shoulder, and concentrated on making his way down the mountainside as fast as he could.

  At the foot of the mountains, they had to cross a maze of wrinkled gullies, where the water that ran down from the higher peaks had washed down with it thick clay sediments, and then eroded them into a complicated pattern of passageways and dead-ends. Their horses’ hoofs slipped on the crumbly yellow earth; and for one moment Eyre thought that his horse was going to slide sideways down one of the gullies, taking him with it; but with a flurrying scrabble of hoofs, the horse managed to regain its ground.

  Behind them, startling them, they heard a great warbling cry, and a rattling of spears and boomerangs. Eyre twisted around in his saddle, and saw at least twenty Aborigine warriors running across the clay towards them, jumping from ridge to ridge and runnel to runnel, shrieking and calling, and occasionally pausing to fit a spear into their woomeras and launch it off.

  Eyre shouted, ‘Dogger! Stop here, and reload! One more good shot should keep them back!’

  Dogger circled his horse around, and then dropped down from the saddle. While Eyre and the rest of the party began to make their way out of the clay gullies, he calmly loaded and primed his rifle, sniffed, adjusted his hat, and knelt down beside his horse’s right flank; taking aim not at the leading Aborigine but at another, much further back.

  Two spears landed close by, but he ignored them. He waited for the moment when the Aborigine at whom he was aiming was right at the top of the last steep slope, and then he fired. There was a flat crack, and a cloud of blue smoke drifted unhurriedly away from Dogger’s rifle. The tribesman staggered, slipped, and then fell spectacularly head-over-heels all the way down the zig-zag creekbed, spraying blood over the rocks as he went. He landed disjointedly at the bottom of the slope like one of the dancing beeswax figures at Mushroom Rock.

  Dogger remounted, and cantered after Eyre across the powdery clay, letting out a high, harsh whoop. Behind him, the Aborigines threw another heavy shower of spears, but most of them fell short; and the tribesmen had been too frightened by Dogger’s marksmanship to risk running very much closer. Even when it was launched from a woomera, a spear could only travel a hundred and fifty paces with any accuracy and force, whereas even an out-of-date muzzle-loading rifle like the Baker could bring a man down from over twice that distance.

  At the top of the creekbed, Eyre saw Joolonga, his distinctive midshipman’s hat silhouetted against the brightening eastern sky. As Dogger drew level with him, Eyre said, ‘Look!’ and pointed Joolonga out; and Dogger reined back his horse and squinted back towards the mountains, his face as creased and wrinkled as the dry gullies they were riding over.

  ‘I should have picked him off, too,’ sniffed Dogger. ‘He’s a dangerous fellow, your Joolonga. Educated savages always are. They gain the knowhow, but they never lose the wildness. Can’t trust them, not an Irishman’s inch.’

  ‘He’s clever just the same,’ Eyre replied.

  ‘Well, that’s all very well; but my mother always used to say that you ought to give men like that legroom in case they kicked at you; and throwing room in case they chucked a stone at you; and that you should never tell them how much money you were carrying or introduce them to your wife.’

  ‘Wise lady, your mother, by the sound of it,’ Eyre smiled. For the first time since they had undressed yesterday evening, he was conscious that they were naked. ‘It’s probably a good thing that she can’t see you now.’

  Dogger slapped his big round beer-belly. ‘Let’s put a mile or so between us and these savages; and then let’s get some britches between ourselves and these saddles.’

  Christopher was waiting for them a little way away; holding the reins of Midgegooroo’s horse. It was impossible to tell whether Midgegooroo was alive or dead; he hung over the saddle with his arms and legs trailing, and his entire bloody back was smothered with flies. Minil was riding next to him, and Eyre could see by the expression on her face that she didn’t expect him to survive. As Eyre came closer, she said, ‘This man was very brave. He was like one of the saints they told me about at the mission. St Philip, or St Jude.’

  ‘If we can dig that spear out of him, he may live,’ said Eyre.

  ‘No,’ said Minil. ‘He is dead already.’

  Twenty-Five

  They camped at noon in the hot purple shadow of a limestone outcropping ten miles west of Parachilna. The temperature was 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and all around them the flat salt lake appeared to move up and down in slowly-undulating curves, as waves of superheated air flowed over it. The rust-coloured peaks of the Flinders also rose and fell, as if they were observing them through water. Eyre had the extraordinary se
nsation of being on a ship again, although he knew it was only an optical illusion.

  The dryness was stunning. Two of their seven horses sank to their knees when they set up camp: and one of them, a three-year-old chestnut which had carried their main bags of water all the way from Adelaide, lay on his side after a while and began to pant and tremble.

  ‘What do you think?’ Eyre asked Christopher.

  Christopher shrugged. ‘There isn’t very much we can do, except put him out of his pain.’

  They deliberately avoided talking about Midgegooroo. He was still alive, although he had lost so much blood that he was barely conscious. Dogger had speculated that some herb or other had been rubbed on the tip of the spear to prevent the blood from clotting; certainly it had run out of Midgegooroo’s back in a wide sticky river, and they didn’t even have enough water to spare to be able to wash him clean. He lay on his stomach in a small crevice in the rock, his eyes wide, scarcely breathing, his back teeming with huge grey sand flies.

  They had dressed now: Eyre in his wide kangaroo-skin hat and bush-jacket and wide cotton ducks; Christopher in his white shirt and riding-britches; Dogger in his familiar faded trousers and shiny-toed suede boots. Eyre had offered clothes to Minil, and she had happily accepted a blue shirt and a silk scarf; although she had tied the sleeves of the shirt around her waist, so that only her bottom was covered, and crossed the scarf between her breasts, so that it did nothing more than lift them up even more prominently. She had combed her hair back now and tied it with twine; and Eyre was struck by the gracious black profile which this revealed, and by the flared curve of her bare shoulders. It unsettled him slightly to watch the way in which she allowed flies to settle on her, to walk across her cheeks or cluster on her back, and make no attempt to flick them away, as Eyre always did; but she had a hypnotic naked beauty about her which appealed to him more every time he looked at her.

  Whether she was aware of what he felt, or not, he found it impossible to tell. She made no obvious effort either to ignore him or encourage him. She was sitting now in the shadows, her eyes closed, her forehead sparkling with sweat, her thighs unselfconsciously parted so that he could see how the grains of salty sand clung to her vaginal lips. He found he had to look away; and think of anything else instead; of the expedition; of what Captain Sturt had done to him; and of Midgegooroo.