Chapter Two.

“We’re off now.”

Busy days succeeded during which every one worked hard, except the people of Port Haven. The captain of the ship hurried on his people as much as was possible, but the sailors obtained little assistance from the shore. They landed, however, the consignments of goods intended for the speculative merchant, who had started in business in what he called sundries; two great chests for the young doctor, who had begun life where he had no patients, and passed his time in fishing; and sundry huge packages intended for a gentleman who had taken up land just outside the town, as it was called, where he meant to start sugar-planting.

But the chief task of the crew was the getting up from the hold and landing of Captain Bedford’s goods; and these were so varied and extensive that the inhabitants came down to the wharf every day to look on as if it were an exhibition.

Certainly they had some excuse, for the captain had gone to work in rather a wholesale way, and the ship promised to be certainly a little lighter when she started on her way to her destination, a port a hundred miles farther along the coast.

For, setting aside chests and packing-cases sufficient to make quite a stack which was nightly covered with a great wagon cloth, there were a wagon and two carts of a light peculiar make, bought from a famous English manufacturer. Then there were tubs of various sizes, all heavily laden, bundles of tent and wagon cloths, bales of sacking and coarse canvas, and crates of agricultural machinery and tools, on all of which, where they could see them, the little crowd made comments, and at last began to make offers for different things, evidently imbued with the idea that they were brought out on speculation.

The refusals, oft repeated, to part with anything, excited at last no little resentment, one particularly shabby, dirty-looking man, who had been pointed out as a squatter—though that term ought certainly to have been applied to the black, who was the most regular and patient of the watchers—going so far as to say angrily that if stores were brought there they ought to be for sale.

These heavy goods were the last to be landed, for after making a bargain with the gentleman whose name appeared in such large letters on the front of his great wooden shanty, four horses, as many bullocks, all of colonial breed, bought at Sydney where the vessel touched, half a dozen pigs, as many sheep, and a couple of cows brought from England, were landed and driven into an ill-fenced enclosure which Mr Jennings called his “medder,” and regularly fed there, for the landlord’s meadow was marked by an almost entire absence of grass.

Day by day, these various necessaries for a gentleman farmer’s home up-country were landed and stacked on the wharf, the boys, Uncle John, and Samuel German—“Sourkrout,” Norman had christened him—under the advice of the captain seeing to everything, and toiling away in the hot sunshine from morning to night.

At last all the captain’s belongings were landed, and the next proceeding was to obtain half a dozen more bullocks for draught purposes, and two or three more horses.

These were found at last by means of the young doctor, who seemed ready to be very civil and attentive, but met with little encouragement. After the landlord had declared that neither horse nor ox could be obtained there, the doctor took Captain Bedford about a couple of miles up the river, and introduced him to the young sugar-planter, who eagerly supplied what was required, not for the sake of profit, but, as he said, to do a stranger a kindly turn.

“Going up the country, then, are you?” he said. “Hadn’t you better take up land where you can get help if you want it?”

“No,” said the captain, shortly. “I have made my plans.”

“Well, perhaps you are right, sir,” said the sugar-planter, who was, in spite of his rough colonial aspect and his wild-looking home, thoroughly gentlemanly. “You will have the pick of the land, and can select as good a piece as you like. I shall look you up some day.”

“Thank you,” said the captain, coldly; “but I daresay I shall be many miles up the river.”

“Oh, we think nothing of fifty or a hundred miles out here, sir,” said the young squatter, merrily. “Your boys will not either, when you’ve been up yonder a month. Come and see me, lads, when you like. One’s glad of a bit of company sometimes.”

They parted and walked back, driving their new acquisitions, and were getting on very badly, from the disposition on the part of the bullocks to return to their old home, when the black already described suddenly made his appearance from where he had been squatting amongst some low-growing bushes; and as soon as he stepped out into the track with his long stick, which was supposed to be a spear, bullocks and horses moved on at once in the right direction, and perhaps a little too fast.

“The cattle don’t like the blacks as a rule. They are afraid of the spears,” said the doctor.

“Why?” asked Norman.

“The blacks spear them—hurl spears at the poor brutes.”

“Black fellow,” said the shiny, unclothed native sharply, “spear um bullockum.”

“Why, he can speak English,” said Rifle, sharply.

“Oh yes, he has hung about here for a long time now, and picked it up wonderfully.—You can talk English, can’t you, Ashantee?”

The black showed his teeth to the gums.

“What’s his name?” asked