Free Corroboree by Graham Masterton Page B

painfully injured to argue with Lathrop now about the value of a man’s life. He knew, too, that Lathrop would be given no trouble by the law. At a time when Englishmen were still liable to be hung for stealing a hat, blackfellows had no rights to life whatsoever. It was only two years ago that twenty-eight Aborigines had been murdered at Myall Creek; and the defence put up at the trial of the settlers who had killed them had been that ‘we were not aware that in killing blacks we were violating the law, as it has been so frequently done before’. Seven settlers had been hung; but the Myall Creek trial had done nothing to change the general view of Adelaide’s colonists that blackfellows were little more than indigenous vermin, filthy and primitive.
    Eyre said, ‘I’ll pay you for the dog, if you can accept recompense by the instalment. They don’t pay me very much down at the South Australian Company.’
    â€˜Don’t let me see hide nor hair of you again; that’ll be recompense enough,’ said Lathrop.
    â€˜One thing more,’ said Eyre. ‘I’d like to take this boy’s body with me. If your servants could find a box for him, I’ll come by with a cart in the morning.’
    Lathrop stared at him. ‘What’s your game?’ he wanted to know. ‘You can’t take that body; that belongs to me. What do you think you’re going to do with it? Sell it to the hospital? Or show it to the magistrate, more like.’
    â€˜He asked me—just before he died—for a proper Aborigine burial.’
    â€˜A what?’
    â€˜A ritual burial, according to his own beliefs.’
    â€˜That’s barbaric nonsense,’ Lathrop protested. ‘He’ll have a Christian burial and like it.’
    â€˜But he wasn’t a Christian,’ Eyre insisted. ‘And if you don’t bury him according to his own beliefs, then his soul won’t ever be able to rest. Can’t you understand that?’
    Lathrop eyed Eyre for a moment, and then pugnaciously bulged out his jowls, like a sand goanna. ‘Captain Henry,’ he said, quite quietly.
    â€˜Yes, sir, Mr Lindsay.’
    â€˜Mr Lindsay, please listen to me,’ Eyre urged him.
    â€˜I have listened enough,’ Lathrop retorted. ‘Now clear off my property before I have the dogs let out again. Captain Henry, do you take out the pony-trap and take this gentleman back to his diggings, wherever they may be. Utyana!’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Clear this rubbish off the lawn before it attracts the dingoes. You understand me? Sweep up.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Captain Henry helped Eyre to limp over to the stables. Eyre stood against the stable gate with his eyes closed, his legs and his arms throbbing and swollen, while Captain Henry harnessed up one of Mr Lindsay’s small bays, and wheeled out the trap.
    â€˜Captain Henry,’ said Eyre, without opening his eyes.
    â€˜Mr Walker?’ asked Captain Henry, softly, anxious that Lathrop should not overhear him.
    â€˜Captain Henry, tell me what
kalyan ungune
means.’
    â€˜
Kalyan ungune lewin
, sir. It means “goodbye”.’

Four
    Mrs McConnell had already girded herself to retire to bed when Captain Henry brought Eyre back to his apartments on Hindley Street. She came out on to the front verandah in curling-papers and a voluminous dressing-gown of flowered cotton, her lantern raised high, like a lighted thicket of moths and flying insects; and a long pastry-pin swinging from a string around her wrist, in case it was blackfellows, or burglars, or drunken diggers.
    High above the roof of the house, the Southern Cross hung suspended, its two brightest stars, Alpha and Beta Crucis, winking like the heliographs of distant civilisations.
    Mrs McConnell said, ‘God in his clouds, what’s happened?’ and came down the steps to the pony-trap with her pastry-pin rattling against the