They tied him up to a tree down in a gully. There were two men with him to keep him safe. Then they went back and fired more rifles at the Kumbaingiri. You could hear the red-haired man wailing. He was like a ghost in the night.

The next day Odalberee went off and found the Kumbaingiri again. He told the story of everything that had happened to him. He cut himself. He brought glass with him, wrapped in a possum skin. He was sick to have caused such death. He cut himself not only on the chest, but on the arms. He did this with the glass.

In a short time Odalberee was very sick. No one could cure him. Before too long he died. That glass was kept a long time by the elders of the Kumbaingiri, but it was not kept with the sacred things. It was kept somewhere else, where it would not be found. 101

Oscar at Bellingen Heads

When Oscar Hopkins arrived at the banks of the Bellinger, he had changed. Those limpid eyes, which had once irritated Wardley-Fish with their "holy" pose, now showed a dull, ash-covered anger. His face was burnt a painful vermilion and his nose-due to an illusion created by the peeling skin-seemed to have grown large and slightly hooked. It was a gaunt, scraped-out kind of personality you saw there, scarred by bushfire, incapable of so fat a luxury as tears. He was a red salmon as it enters the waters of its home river where it will spawn and die, no longer plump and silver but with its belly empty, its jaw become long and hooked, its whole body bright red and splendidly, triumphantly ugly.

Mr Jeffris's party found the Bellinger River at a place where the Narcoo man judged they would do the least amount of damage. This was at Urunga, a wounded place in any case. 30Q

Oscar at Bellingen Heads

In those days it was called Bellingen Heads.

As they came down the dry and pebbly ridge towards the high white trees, the Narcoo man slipped away. Mr Jeff ris took a pot-shot, but with no real intention of killing-just a shot which threw the white cockatoos into the air like screeching feathers from a burst pillow. Oscar sat beside Mr Smith under the canvas awning of the "Ladies' Compartment." Mr Smith was sharpening his axe on a stone. The laudanum bottle sat between them, but the humiliating funnel was nowhere in evidence. Since the slaughter at Sandy Creek, Oscar had administered his own laudanum. He kept a small clear-glass bottle in his jacket pocket which he replenished from the large stone demijohn. He sipped on it from time to time, but it was like water on a rock-hot fire-it gave off steam, but did not stop the heat. He sat on the hard wooden seat beside the silent Mr Smith who seemed to have contracted his whole being into the shadow of his hat. Mr Smith honed his axe. He had honed it for a long time now. Oscar Hopkins was drunk on laudanum. He sat with his back to the carefully labelled crates of glass and iron. He rubbed at the brown-stained bandages on his wrist. He knew his rope burns to be infected, but could not bear to speak of this, or any other matter, to Mr Jeffris who, now they were almost arrived at their destination, had begun to change in his manner towards him so that he could, cantering back up the hill towards him, actually smile and, without either apology or irony, ask him was it not sweet to be alive. Mr Jeffris was content. He had not made a great exploration-you could not have a great exploration with seven wagons in mountainous country-but he had done sound work, which would serve as evidence of his ability to lead other expeditions. He had put names to several largish creeks. He had set the heights of many mountains which had previously been wildly misdescribed. He had established a reputation for courage, having led his party through places inhabited by desperate blacks. His journals recorded that he had "given better than we took" from the "Spitting Tribe." Also: "6 treacherous knaves" from the Yarra-Happini had been "dispatched" by their guns. He had also successfully defended the party from the "murderous Kumbaingiri." He recorded all this in a neat and flowing hand which gave no indication of the peculiarities of his personality. His sketches of the countryside, the long ridges of mountains etc, were as good as anything in Mitchell's journals.

When he cantered up the ridge towards Messrs Smith and Hopkins, he felt as fresh and clean as the morning he had left Port Jackson, felt

100

Oscar and Lucinda

far better, for on that occasion he had suffered a mild case of jitters, a looseness of the bowels which had been difficult to hide from men with a keen eye for weakness. Mr Smudge was "not talking" to him. So, he thought, we have our little tiff. And a smile, he could not help it, ruffled the smooth cloak of concern he had arranged on his handsome face. Mr Smudge had still not attended to his toilet. There was a sprinkling of ginger hair upon his chin and some black charcoal marks on his ears where he had been scratching his mosquito bites. He was a contrast to his cornpanion who was, as usual, neatly kitted out in fresh-washed twill and cotton. Yet you could not conclude from this that one had "character" whilst the other had not. They were a pair, in Jeffris's eyes, and he thought the "Ladies' Compartment" aptly named. Mr Jeffris had, perhaps, been too harsh with Mr Smudge. But the man was alive, was he not? He would be delivered as requested. He was not speared or poisoned by serpents. He had seen things no Sydney clerk would ever dream of seeing: life, death, savages. He had eaten snake and played the missionary. And now he should not be sitting on his car with his ramrod back, but should be throwing his hat in the air and offering to shout his protectors' drinks. They had guaranteed his place in history.

It was such a crisp, clear day and the ridge was almost as good as Her Majesty's highway. Mr Jeffris brought his stallion to a trot and rode beside the "Ladies' Compartment" for a piece. The view was splendid: the Bellinger estuary swept beneath them like an illustration to à fairy tale: strokes of aqua, gold, turquoise. Three pelicans thrust out their chests and glided on the air below.

"Well, Mr Hopkins," said Mr Jeffris, as he plucked a blood-bloated tick from his stallion's neck.

"What do you say to that?"

"To what?" the clergyman said abruptly, turning his haughty red face briefly towards his questioner before looking back again. Beside him, Mr Smith honed his axe, and hid his anger and self-loathing from

no one.

"What do you say," insisted Mr Jeffris, "to this, the countryside?"

"If it was my country, sir, I would be feared to see you coming." Mr Jeffris laughed, a harsh, impatient laugh.

"And I would pray to God to forgive you, and all of us who are of your party."

"It has been an education for you," said Mr Jeffris complacently. "That I can understand." Oscar said nothing. His anus itched beyond belief. He thought: If

400

Oscar at Bellinger Heads

I were a strong man I would leap on him now and commit the sin of murder.

"Churches are not carried by choirboys," said Mr Jeffris. "Neither has the Empire been built by angels," and he would have said more on the subject, for it was one he had a secret passion for, and his hand had just drifted to his broad moustache which he would stroke as he gathered in the strands of his defence, when he was interrupted by that bow-legged gentleman, the plant collector, who was, as usual, wanting to go cantering away from the main party, and wished to take the carpenter as "bodyguard." As it was Mr Jeffris's agreement that he had the rights of sale of all the plant collector's delicate drawings, he was more than pleased to humour him. The subjects of Empire and angels were forestalled by other calls on his attention, and finally he gave up. "We will drink," he shouted as he trotted back to settle some dispute that his brightly tattooed overseer was in the process of beginning. "We will drink champagne and send a message on the mail boat to Miss Leplastrier."