The obscure hunter who first, in the heat of his admiration, gave the name of devil to the Ursian sarcophilus, probably dreamt little that the title would not only remain to the species, but that a learned naturalist would one day endow the kind with the generic Diabolus, adapted unmistakably from Garth’s energetic sobriquet.
The original term was indeed more homely still—in fact, too low and trivial to have survived in serious print; and Garth owes it, no doubt, to his immediate and prudent substitution of the more parliamentary term of devil, that he remains the founder of the family name.
Garth was an illiterate farm domestic, employed chiefly as a ranger by his master, Lazarus Hart. His history begins and ends with the one solitary incident connecting his name with the sarcophilus, and he is entirely indebted to the subsequent fame of that distinguished quadruped for being remembered at all in the annals of Tasmania.
Lazarus Hart, on the contrary, was one of the few independent settlers surviving at the granting of the charter. His reputation is founded on a lifelong struggle with adversity, ending in a triumph achieved too late to be enjoyed by himself, but infinitely profitable to his children and successors. It is not the place in these pages to sketch his history as a model colonist, but he has every claim to be noticed as a naturalist of merit, and especially in connection with the life and habits of the devil.
I had never the satisfaction of seeing old Hart himself. He had been for some years dead when, accidentally in London, I made the acquaintance of his son Elias. His son’s first words were addressed to me in the form of a rebuke, too well deserved to be not acutely felt, but I had ample solace in the friendship that ensued. We were a large party assembled as guests of a common friend, and all sportsmen of more or less pretensions. We were recounting in turn our adventures, and as I had acquired less fame in a recent campaign than I thought myself entitled to, I am afraid I betrayed ill-humour in my appreciation of the doings of others. I remember I inveighed especially against the modern fashion of extolling the Australian brotherhood, whose exploits I regarded as mild recreations when contrasted with ours in the East. I had no curiosity, I said, to essay my arms beyond the ancient continent. I had encountered in Europe the bear and the wild boar, the jaguar in America, and in Asia and on the coast of Africa the leopard and the buffalo. I was aware I had still hard labour to perform to earn a name, and from the accounts that reached me Algeria seemed the field of all others for a huntsman resolved at least to deserve renown, although perhaps not destined to secure it. ‘What business,’ I added pompously, ‘had a sportsman who is in earnest, to waste his prime in trapping wombats or in coursing boomers over the easy plains of New South Wales, whilst the lioness leaps, with her cub in her mouth, over the garden gates of Blidah? Why, gentlemen, there isn’t an animal in all Australia that, in open ground, would face my old hound Hero!’
‘That’s all you know about it, master,’ said Elias Hart, with a smile of assurance that left me no hope of his being wrong. ‘I can tell you of a creature,—it is true no longer found in Australia properly so called, but still common enough in the remoter backwoods of Van Diemen’s Land,—that would not only face your Hero in the open country, but would refuse to move an inch out of his path to let a drove of bullocks pass. Did you never hear of the Tasmanian devil?’
No; I had never heard of the Tasmanian devil. I had imagined, on the contrary, that the zebra-wolf, and the dingo, or native wild dog, were the only carnivorous quadrupeds not positively insignificant on the whole continent and in all the islands of the new world. It was nearly two years later that the first authentic notice appeared in print of the Ursian sarcophilus, or Texus Diabolus of Gray. I therefore listened with greedy ears to Hart’s highly interesting, though somewhat inelegant, narration.
‘The devil,’ he continued, ‘is a beast of about the size of a large bulldog, in appearance something between a polecat and a bear, but in kind a poucher, like the opossum or the kangaroo. There are devils in nature of many kinds and characters. The wild cat is a devil, the rat is a devil, and so are the fox, the Indian buffalo, the stone marten, and the zebra. But the devil of devils is the devil proper, or, as they called him formerly in the blue report books, the Ursian sarcophilus. And it is not only we English that call him devil, his name in French is diable, and in German teufel, and I am told the Royal Society has given the Latin name of devil to the whole race.
‘His natural propensities are those of the gluttonous or sluggish kind, and he will be quiet enough when gorged with flesh and left to undisturbed repose, but the slightest provocation, the merest and most unintentional observation will turn him at once into a veritable fiend. He then becomes instantly the very type of senseless fury, attacking all before him, dead or living, and flying with equal fierceness at a mastiff or a barn-door. Nor is there, whilst life is left to him, either truce or quarter; as long as a shred of flesh remains to tear, or a last bone to shatter, he fights on regardless of the numbers that surround him, or of his own subsiding strength, until at length his jaws snap faintly, and his life goes gradually out with an infernal snarl.
‘Though taken young, and brought up in captivity, his nature undergoes not the slightest modification. He lives to the last the same surly life, and usually dies in some mad struggle with the bars of his cage. After years of experience he repeats the same acts of profitless and exhausting frenzy. Without apparent motive he rushes at the wall, beating the air like a rabid lunatic, uttering long growls that seem to choke him, till they break out suddenly into a piercing bark. He shows not the smallest attachment to his guardians or feeders, whom he menaces and swears at from the moment they approach him till they pass completely out of sight. When tired out or overfed he becomes stupid and sleepy, rolls himself up into a corner, and falls into a leaden slumber from which it is not always easy to rouse him. Nothing can be cheaper than to feed him. He will be satisfied for days together with huge bones, which he cracks up like biscuit, and usually swallows entirely.
‘The full-grown devil is an animal of strange appearance. His coat is rough, and looks like a blanket brushed the wrong way; the head and stomach are of a brownish black; the tail is black also, but with a large patch of white just above the insertion. An apron of white covers the chest, and there are spots of white on the muzzle and the front paws. In the wild state his habits are nocturnal, and he appears as sensitive as an owl to the action of the solar rays. Whilst the sun remains on high, he keeps within the clefts of the rocks, or under the roots of trees, where he sleeps so soundly that the noisiest pack may pass in quest of him without awaking him; but no sooner do the shades begin to fall, than he issues forth in search of prey, and then, woe to the living thing that passes windward within scent. Beast or bird, large or little, all fall before him in instantaneous helplessness. Once fairly griped, the victim, whatever his kind, is doomed inevitably. A feeble squeak, an unconscious struggle, and all is hushed except the muffled crepitation of bones smashed up and swallowed with the flesh that covers them, the impartial monster making no distinction of morsels.
‘His gait is something similar to that of the brown bear. In walking he plants on the ground the entire sole, which imparts to his movements a kind of solemnity in keeping with his heavy structure. He is, nevertheless, more active than he seems, and hunts with an agility scarcely surpassed by his enemy and neighbour, the Tasmanian wolf. In pursuit of his prey he gives tongue like the jackal, and his peculiar voice, resembling a grunt and a bark emitted simultaneously from the same mouth, betrays him at times to the impatient huntsman who has quitted his fatiguing ambush for the chance of a casual encounter.
‘Contrary to what might be expected, the flesh of the sarcophilus is succulent and good. It is said to be in taste like veal. It is certain that the esteem it was held in by the original settlers was not the least of the many causes of his total extinction in almost all the inhabited districts of Tasmania.
‘The female bears from three to five cubs, which she carries about with her in her pouch until they grow too big to get into it. She loves them tenderly and licks them conscientiously, and no doubt, to save or shield them, she would attack an army, or plunge into a blazing fire. This is a redeeming quality, and the devil is entitled to his due.
‘His voracity renders him an easy prey to the trappers. The clumsiest snare suffices, provided it be strong enough to hold him. Any bait attracts him that can be seen or scented— a dead bird, a piece of flesh, a fish, a knot of mussels, or even a lump of lard. He rushes blindly upon all that tempts his appetite, and has been found transfixed upon a greasy spike used in a tanner’s yard for stretching skins.
‘It is more difficult to secure him by means of dogs. No single dog will attack him twice, and he will fight any number, till he falls completely exhausted. His great strength, his rage and intrepidity, and, above all, his fearful teeth, sometimes against incalculable odds, determine in his favour a mortal strife, in which at first no chance of life seemed possible. The huntsman arriving, finds the quarry gone, and the humbled hounds dispersed or disconcerted.
‘The early colonists had much to suffer from the ravages of these animals, which glided stoat-like into their unprotected yards, and destroyed in single nights entire stocks of pigs and poultry. They were consequently forthwith marked for vengeance and extermination. Snares were laid for them in all directions, hunts were organised, and trackers engaged and paid by contribution. It followed that the devils diminished with sensible rapidity, whilst those that remained took gradually refuge in the thickest woods and rockiest caverns, till at length they disappeared completely from their ancient haunts, and were only to be seen or heard of in distant or inaccessible retreats.
‘The settlers were at first quite ignorant of the sort of animal they had to deal with, and a story is told of a young Dutch colonist of the name of Breeboorst, who lay in wait one night to take revenge on what he supposed to be an opossum or a dasyure. Armed with a stick, he waited long for the coming of his imagined enemy, and was just about to dismiss the boy that kept him company, when he heard a rustling amongst some dry leaves which he had strewn expressly at the entrance of the hen-roost. He thereupon, with a plank, closed quickly the hole through which he supposed the yard to have been entered, and ran forward to confound the robber face to face. At first he could perceive nothing, but presently descried two small eyes intent upon his movements from an adjoining shed. Nothing doubting, he ran forward, and aimed at the marauder’s head what he deemed to be a decisive blow. The next moment he found himself on the ground moaning with pain, and remembered no more till he discovered himself in bed, with his father on one side, and on the other a veterinary surgeon, who was the only doctor in the colony. It appeared the blow had been no sooner struck than the devil had rushed on his aggressor, and seizing him fiercely by the lower part of the leg, had thrown him with violence to the ground. At this moment the boy, with great presence of mind, had let loose the dog, which in turn had flown at the devil and diverted his attention from the prostrate youth. The dog was killed in the encounter, and the devil would have returned to his former victim had not the youth’s father arrived in time, and paralysed the desperate animal with a gunshot close from the muzzle. The bone of the leg was splintered, and young Breeboorst was long in recovering. He afterwards vowed vengeance on the whole race of devils, and became in time the most determined and foremost of their persecutors. He is still alive, and takes pleasure in relating how the vexation retarded his recovery when he learnt that the infernal brute which had well-nigh bitten his leg off had been allowed to escape with its life. The father had supposed it dead, but the tenacious villain had revived during the flurry of the adventure, and had profited by it to depart unseen.’
Hart here resumed the thread of his personal experience, which he had quitted to discourse a moment on the natural history of the singular quadruped he had brought before us. He told us how for years his father and kindred had grappled with famine and fever in lands which he aptly described as refractory to human intrusion, and how at last they had surmounted all obstruction and installed a thriving farm amidst the astonished marshes of Fort Morcomb. Hart’s choicest hunting feats were those achieved in pursuit of animals for daily food, but none were to me so attractive as those where the game was the Tasmanian devil. Of these he recounted several, and amongst them was the incident already noticed, where we made the acquaintance of the ranger Garth, whose happy coarseness had extemporised a name, which experience had found appropriate, and science at length adopted. The Ursian sarcophilus had before that time been called at hazard the Tasmanian boar-wolf, the piebald bear, the grizzly badger, and sometimes even the Australian badger, a name since given to the phascolome or wombat, the happiest and least offensive of the whole marsupial family.
Hart’s business in England was to fetch from Cornwall, and take back with him to Australia, two orphan nieces, the last of his father’s family remaining in Europe. On the eve of his departure, some weeks afterwards, I bade him adieu with something of a longing heart. I had, nevertheless, no notion at that moment of going in the same direction. It was not till long afterwards, when his words had worn me with their incessant echo, that I began to think seriously of passing into Austral latitudes. Elias was no more a carpet Nimrod than his father. He had been a real and rugged adventurer, and like those of all genuine sportsmen, his accounts were unexaggerated and his good faith sure. I felt, therefore, founded in believing I should find the devil not only a grim and desperate antagonist, but one to which an ambitious huntsman might worthily attach his name, as Paul to the Indian tiger, and Adrian MacCulloch to the shark.
Whilst absorbed one day in these reflections old Hero came into my bedroom. He had been my companion over two-thirds of the globe, and it was fair he should be now consulted on what concerned him, if possible, more intimately than it did myself. ‘Hero shall decide!’ I exclaimed unconsciously aloud, and taking him caressingly by the two ears, I asked him if he felt game to go with me to Australia, and there have a shake with the devil. The dog smiled, and wagged his tail; and I then and there decided at once to go.
I could have started immediately, had I chosen to go in a convict ship, and four months later I could have secured a privileged cabin in a Government packet. I adopted a middle, and as it turned out, a more commodious course, by engaging a berth in an emigrant vessel bound for Sydney, and advertised to sail from Gravesend in the course of the ensuing month. I had written to Hart, and was anxious to be his disciple for a few weeks, in order to save golden time, and in order, if possible, to do the right thing first. He resided in a house built entirely by his children and himself, at an almost unknown place, called Settler’s Increment, and situate halfway between Sydney and Inlet Corner. From Inlet Corner I was informed there were merchant ships sailing often for Van Diemen’s Land; the destination of Sydney was, therefore, the best that could have offered.
I arrived at Sydney the day before Christmas Day, after the sulkiest voyage I ever remember. The passengers, though three parts paupers, avowed or in reality, were perpetually mysterious and false, telling untrue stories about their past, and giving themselves airs to maintain fictitious actualities. They were, moreover, dirty in their persons, and idle and trifling in their ways, or only serious when gambling. I wished the colony joy of such an ungainly cargo. Hero excepted, and a dog belonging to no one, the captain, and some few of the crew, were the only amiable beings in the ship; but these latter were occupied incessantly, the winds being adverse continually, and the weather occasionally tempestuous. My pleasantest souvenir of the Julia Boult is the captain’s astonishment on partaking of a gannet, which I had shot on board, and which I insisted on cooking before him. He declared at first he would never touch it; but the fumes of the roast seduced him, and, after sending in his plate for a second help, he candidly admitted that gannet was as good as duck. The sole secret is to skin the bird as soon as shot, and then quickly to remove the fat and oil-glands, before the flesh has time to catch the rancid taste of the secretions.
I had business at Sydney, and an introduction to a banker. My business was soon over. It lay with a doubtful debtor, to whom I had years ago lent thirty pounds, and as I had kept the statute running, and had claimed interest under the Act of George, I hoped in part to defray my excursion, and, what was of far more value, to excuse myself to Hart for having gone out of my way by a circuit of two hundred miles. My chance of being paid was the more promising that my friend was said to be amassing money. My first care was, therefore, to look him up, and I was too well served by fortune in my researches to trace him home. My first and only informant was by mere chance an inspector of police, who was able to inform me that my debtor had been in Sydney gaol for the last six months for embezzling wool, and had a year and a half to stay there to complete his time.
My visit to the banker was scarcely more engaging. At first he received me civilly enough, though somewhat condescendingly; but on my happening to use the word ‘colonial’, in reference to his house, he informed me haughtily that well-bred people reserved that word for gum and sugar, and were at the pains to find some less contemptuous term for the establishments of the gentry of the town; and I have since read in a book on Australia that the use of the word ‘colonial’ is expected to be confined by strangers exclusively to the produce of the country, and that visitors from home give great offence by applying it to the inhabitants of the towns.
The few other folks I met with seemed equally determined to keep me in my place. Mortifying hints were whispered at my side at dinner about the rise and fall of empires. Historical comparisons were drawn and commented on, with applications intended evidently for my especial humiliation. In connection with home I could hear of nothing but old-world fallacy, stagnation, selfishness, protection, aristocracy, prejudice, atrophy, and extinction, whilst all out here was freshness, progress, freedom, life, and renovation. One young lady told me that the British oak was doomed to wither, in order to make room for the Australian gum-tree, whose roots were destined to monopolise the soil. Of course this made me feel very small indeed, and I was quite concerned about the British oak; but what could I do to prevent its withering, if the gum-tree wanted so much room? At last I apologised for belonging to the mother-country, and was allowed to depart with a severe admonition.
Refreshing indeed after all this was my reception at the home of Elias Hart. On arriving at Settler’s Increment I put up at an inn which stood invitingly at the entrance to the village. For this Hart reproached me in a tone that touched me to the quick, and he then immediately despatched a man with a mule and cart to fetch my luggage, and at the same time to take a sheep to the innkeeper as a compensation for the loss of his guest.
Hart’s interior was a model of unostentatious comfort, and his hospitality of that unboring kind which allows the guest to exist unconsciously; a contrast to the afflictive zeal of certain hosts, of which the defenceless victim lives in hourly and nervous dread. His family consisted of himself, his wife and sister, nine children, and four labouring domestics. Nearly everything consumed or worn by the family was manufactured on the farm, the corn ground, the wool bleached and spun, and the horseshoes forged and fitted. Hart bade me observe that he had reached the point where specie was the least required, and further that he economised the profits of the miller, the baker, the butcher, and most other intermediates. He admitted, however, that such an Arcadian state would be impossible in denser civilisation, or where land was costly, or required to be tilled expensively.
He was at this time suffering from the effects of an accident, and I joined his family in dissuading him from accompanying me to Van Diemen’s Land. I had written him from London, and though I had informed him I should start before I could receive an answer, he had replied on the chance of my delaying, and in his letter he had engaged himself to go with me. It was now, however, arranged otherwise, and he gave me instead a letter to Augustus Hamilton, of Woolnorth, whom he told me I should find a sportsman of the right sort, although bred in London, and a Cockney both in speech and physiognomy. Notwithstanding this assurance, the name of Augustus Hamilton inspired me with involuntary awe, and I shuddered at the recollection of the swells of Sydney; but I quieted my fear with a mental promise to be vigilant, and especially circumspect in employing the term colonial.
Six weeks later I had passed the straits, and was jolting fast but heavily towards Woolnorth in the postman’s car. I found Augustus Hamilton in bed, in a very dirty kitchen, with live fowls on his table pecking at the remains of his supper. He sprang to the ground on seeing me, wiped a chair for me with a stocking, and was soon shaved and ready to receive me becomingly. I gave him Hart’s letter, and also a packet of which I had taken charge for him, and which appeared to me, with other things, to contain money. We were very soon sworn friends, and I perceived with satisfaction that Hart’s estimate of his friend was correct. I was nevertheless besieged in his presence with a vague, but ever-recurring souvenir. I had certainly seen that face before, but I was quite unable to seize the recollection. At last, in a moment of animation, his features took an expression which distinctly recalled to me his identity, and I asked him without hesitation whether he had not seen me before. The question seemed to make him uneasy, and he replied in the negative. I then said, ‘You cannot have forgotten me in Cursitor Street. Is not your real name Nathan Cocksedge?’
Poor fellow! he assented in a tone of chagrin, which made me regret bitterly that I had been so clever. He seemed, however, to be relieved in the end that there were no more secrets between us, and as I tendered him my hand, I assured him that Augustus Hamilton should be to me thenceforth inviolable, and that Nathan Cocksedge was consigned to oblivion. My acquaintance with Hamilton, as he must now be called, arose out of things by no means grateful to my memory. My friends had fondly destined me to become an attorney, and I had gone so far in the profession as to complete my articles with the bygone firm of Brooking and Surr, of Lombard Street. Those were the good old times of the red-tails, the rare old days of the declaration-books and the special originals, when, in a twinkling, for a debt of forty shillings, you could put a struggling tradesman to a cost of as many pounds. Those were the days of arrest on mesne process, of bail in chambers, of bum-bailiffs, nabsters, and men of straw. The calling of a town attorney was then indeed a scald upon the face of London, and richly justified the mordant sarcasms of Pope and Johnson. The country attorney shared in the profits, but was not always privy to the oppressive working.
During my apprenticeship Hamilton was known to me by reputation both as a nabster and a man of straw. A nabster was a sheriff’s bull-dog, or sub-aid to an under-sheriff’s officer’s man. His business was to fly provisionally at the throat of a refractory defendant, and pin him till the arrival of a legal reinforcement. Of course he was responsible for all sorts of consequences, but it was seldom advisable to attack him. A man of straw was a mysterious and taciturn individual, who paced round Clifford’s Inn with a single straw sticking accidentally into the side of his shoe. To this individual resorted the unscrupulous suitor who was hard pressed for a witness, a deponent, or a surety, and it was old Brooking himself who convicted Hamilton of some such delinquency, and procured him a year’s imprisonment in the city gaol.
On the whole I think I detected in my breast a Pharisaical satisfaction at finding myself the patron and secret-holder of a grateful sinner. In any case I felt no kind of repugnance at accepting his useful and devoted friendship. I felt, moreover, that the change of name and scene, the distance from temptation, the contact with wild beasts and virgin clods, the unsparing sacrifice of his person, and the long privations of the bush, had thoroughly condoned his wickedness, and restored his being to its rightful and natural condition. I was perplexed to know how it came that, with such an unrustic youth, he had become so hardened and adventurous a ranger. He replied that I had only known him in his ostensible profession. He had subsisted chiefly by poaching in the night at Kingsbury, and that his arm having been there broken in a fight with the keepers, he had been driven to the unholy trade which had ended so unhappily in London. We then moralised awhile on the cutting circles of our small existence, and agreed that our present meeting, so singular in appearance, was, in reality, as natural as the least surprising of our daily occurrences, and we then dismissed the subject, to devote ourselves exclusively to the engrossing business which had brought us together.
A week’s preparation enabled us to start for Nobbler’s End, where Hamilton informed me we should procure fit men and dogs for the dangerous game we were in quest of. We took with us, in the way of food and cooking utensils, what seemed to me an embarrassing provision; but it turned out to be none too ample for our need. We should, indeed, have been thankful for an extra supply of brandy, of which I imagined we were taking a most suggestive and compromising quantity. At Nobbler’s End we had to wait five days for the return of a party of rangers, who were gone for wood to the forest of Little Hampshire. I, for one, however, declared myself well paid for the delay. The men brought back with them, emptied and in good preservation, a brace of bandicoots and a good supply of parrots, poplocks, bister pigeons, and several other kinds of birds. All these I was curious to taste, and found them to be, without exception, excellent. I am convinced there is little, if any, flesh or fish in creation not fit for human food, if scientifically cured and cooked with skill.
At length, through alternate tracts of sand and brushwood, we reached the limit of the Little Hampshire flats, and proceeded up the Spalding Hills, in serious pursuit of the Ursian sarcophilus. Our party consisted of six men, including Hamilton and myself, and seven dogs, including Hero. I felt at times a little nervous about poor old Hero, notwithstanding his spiked collar and his prodigious strength. I knew his courage, and dreaded to see him smart for it undeservedly, from his entire ignorance of his opponent’s mode of warfare. I was told the devil, once roused, entirely neglects his own defence, and thinks only of wounding his aggressor. When attacked by a dog, his plan is to seize it by the fore leg, and if he gets fair hold, the bone snaps at once, and the dog limps off disabled. Hero had earned applause in many a sanguinary fight, and I felt truly pained at the thought of witnessing his defeat in his old age, and possibly his death, from the grip of the hideous beast we were expecting to encounter; and I felt the more touchy on the subject, that Hero had become the admiration of the hired rangers, who were provokingly impatient to see him, as they expressed it, ‘tackle a devil fasting.’ Fasting applies to the animal when roused from his sleep in the daytime, a proceeding which redoubles his natural irritability, and which he resents with his utmost ferocity.
I was startled from this unpleasing reverie by the report of a gun some yards ahead of me, and presently Hamilton presented me with a charming little grey quadruped with yellow feet, of about the size of a guinea-pig. It is known classically as the Antechinus flavipes, but goes popularly by the name of the yellow-footed pouch mouse. It was a female specimen, and had the pouch sufficiently developed. I skinned it on the spot, and have still the spoils at home. The remains we cooked for supper, and had only to regret that they afforded us so scanty a repast.
The next chance of a shot was mine. I was attracted by a rustling behind me, and, turning quickly, was in time to take aim at an animal of about the size of a rabbit, just as it was about to disappear in the hole of an immense tree. I fired, and the animal fell amongst the lower branches, where it hung lifeless and unreachable. Hamilton climbed the tree like a cat, and threw me my shot, which I was highly impatient to examine. It turned out to be the long-eared pig-foot, so called from the length of its ears, and an extremely faint resemblance of its feet to those of the hog. It was first named the tailless cherop by its discoverer, Michael Edwards, who caught it alive in the hole of a tree, and found it to be without a tail. Other specimens were, however, taken afterwards with tails nearly a foot long, and it became clear that the first individual had merely lost his tail by accident. The name continued nevertheless through the vice of habit, until Gray inscribed the animal with authority under the name of Castanotos, from the chestnut colour of its fur. This animal also is a marsupial, as indeed are nine-tenths of the quadrupeds of Australasia. Owen tried to explain the phenomenon as a provision of nature against the effects of drought. ‘What,’ he writes, ‘would become of the helpless young ones whilst the mother was gone, perhaps a two days’ journey, in search of water? It is necessary she should take them with her, and for this purpose the pouch is indispensable.’ But Owen’s theory broke down before the instance of the dingo, which is not a marsupial, and which exists and thrives under the very conditions which Owen regards as fatal.
Meanwhile we had been able to discover no trace of the sarcophilus, and Hamilton gave orders for returning to our encampment at Nobbler’s End, and there packing up for a longer journey westward. A two days’ march from the camp brought us to the edge of an immense plain bestrewed with loose stones, over which we had a fatiguing pull of nearly three hours. On the other side, passing westward, we came to an acclivity covered with tall herbage, and interspersed with rocks. Towards evening we reached a sort of rocky platform, from which Hamilton pointed out a spot in the distance where he had assisted in killing a sarcophilus, and afterwards in roasting and eating it. It was there, he said, we should find the devil if anywhere. The place, he believed, had been undisturbed for years, and he knew there were devils in the neighbourhood.
The whole of that day and the next was spent in beating fruitlessly the covers. We then moved higher, as Hamilton began to suspect the game had been molested recently, and had found by experience that the rocks were safer than the bushes. At nightfall we held a council, and determined to keep watch till moonlight, on the chance of surprising a sarcophilus hunting on scent, at which time, as has been said, the animal betrays its passage by its voice. The dogs were then chained up and the fire extinguished. Towards midnight I fancied I heard the grunt of a pig, and suddenly remembering that the voice of the sarcophilus was said to be something similar, I called softly to Hamilton, and bade him listen. But Hamilton had no need of my warning; he had caught the grunt himself, though farther off, and I heard him fall immediately at full length on the ground. I did the same without knowing why, but I learnt afterwards that Hamilton had taught himself to interrogate the ground like a native bushman. Presently I heard the grunt again, but less distinctly. Hamilton lay still, and so did I, though I began to get tired of a posture which seemed to me a waste of caution, as, whether up or down, it was too dark to be seen by any known organisation of optics. I had since heard, or fancied I heard, the grunt a third time, but still there was no movement. At last I got up, with as little noise as possible, and was about to creep on to Hamilton, when, all at once, guided I suppose by some indication which had escaped my less fine senses, I heard him give a long, low, thin whistle, which quite made my hair stir with excitement. This was a notice well understood by the rangers, for I immediately afterwards heard the chains chink faintly, which apprised me that the dogs were being held in readiness. Hero was close by my side; in fact, he never left me, but he lay as composedly as usual, and appeared not at all to understand my eagerness. We were only three guns, including myself, two of the rangers having merely spears, and the fourth a horse-pistol. The moon rose shortly after, and we were able to converse by signs; but morning dawned and found us still expectant. The game had wisely followed its inspirations, and left us shivering from stillness. The amount of brandy I absorbed that night was positively indecent, but it left no trace of either dryness or nausea, and I believe it saved me from the ague, especially the liberal portion I poured into my boots.
Next day was a total blank, and I began to fear the devils were resolved to balk us. Towards evening, however, my hope revived, and before night I had the envied quarry at my feet. I had strayed a little from my post to follow a strange-looking bird that greatly excited my curiosity, and I owe it to that wilful distraction that I lost the opening and most interesting scene of the encounter. It was not a long, low whistle that recalled me this time to my obedience, but a series of boisterous halloos, that told me clearly there was an end to ambush, and that the battle was declared in open and unmasked hostility. Shout followed shout in quick succession, and then there came a howl, so long and dismal that old Hero pricked his ears and sprang forward in the direction of the sound. I called him back, determined to have him under my own immediate control, and we hurried on together to the scene of action. As I tore through the brushwood, the horrid stubs gored my feet and sadly impeded my advance. I had scarcely noticed them whilst picking my way leisurely, but now in my haste I found them a most cruel obstruction. I nevertheless got rapidly through, and I shall not forget the scene which broke on my view as I emerged into the open ground. With his back to a large overhanging stone, there stood, half crouched before the dogs, the most horrible-looking beast imaginable. Not that his contour was villainous: in form he resembled a badger, but his physiognomy was literally diabolical, and quite explained and justified his apparently exaggerated name. What struck me first was the look of sarcasm expressed by the drawing down of the corners of the lips,—an expression taken also by the ass, when over-tormented, and unable to intimidate or escape from his tormentors. His jaws were just wide enough apart to reveal his large white teeth without parading them, and from between these issued a continuous growl, that seemed to unwind from a bobbin in his throat. But what most arrested me was the animal’s infernal eyes. The eyes of the wild cat are said to be the most savage-looking in nature, but there is about them an expression of uncompromising ferocity, which is frank and unmistakable. Such might have been the eyes of Marius, which disarmed the affrighted slave commissioned to execute him in his prison. The eyes of the sarcophilus are small, black, leering beads, fraught with design, but close and impenetrable. Such must have been the eyes of Burke, whilst hiding the plaster in his hat, and watching the friendless Italian boy from the dark arches of Great Queen Street.
When I first arrived on the ground, the wounded dog was still howling piteously, with his tail curved under him, and holding up his right fore foot. The five others were close to the devil, dodging within distance, but not venturing to close with him. One, the smallest of the five, appeared the most resolute, fixing him steadily, and apparently watching his opportunity. A shot had been fired, and evidently with some effect, as the devil was bleeding from the ear. One gun was on the ground, bitten short off at the slope of the stock, and the closeness of the dogs prevented the use of the other. On seeing Hero, the men at once hounded him on the devil; and, not hearing my half-muttered counter-orders, looked petrified at his apparent want of courage. At last the small dog closed, and the others took heart immediately. A fearful strife ensued, in the midst of which I let loose Hero with a shout, meant to explain his previous passiveness, and which he now redeemed abundantly. With one bound he reached the devil, and fastened fiercely and heavily on his throat. This turned the scale at once, for the poor devil was already at bay with the whole pack, and Hero’s weight and galling collar completely mastered him. On seeing him thus pinned, a spearsman stepped forward and ended the fight abruptly with a mortal thrust. The devil then turned on his side, still eyeing the dogs defiantly, till his life went out with a snarl that seemed to go right down and expire underground.
The first dog was maimed irreparably, and his master shot him on the spot. Two others were wounded badly, but not incurably, and one had got blinded by some accident not explainable. Hero had not a scratch, and I felt it my duty to make it well understood, for his reputation, that it was I and not he that had fought shy at the beginning.
We flayed the devil then and there, and half salted his carcase. We afterwards lived on it for two days, and were sorry when it came to an end. I cannot say it tastes like veal; it is more like leveret, but lighter in colour, and less close in fibre. The dogs took their share, but without any show of eagerness, and they all of them preferred soaked biscuit. I preserved the jaw-bones and teeth, and still regard them as the most eloquent souvenir I possess.
A few weeks afterwards I was again with Hamilton at Woolnorth, and preparing to take leave of his hospitable kitchen, which he had had well cleaned for my accommodation. He implored me to return after a visit I purposed making to Hobart Town, and he promised me a rare kangaroo hunt in the savannahs of Port Richardson. But my time was now running short, and I was anxious to return to the mainland, to explore the southern districts before winter with Hart and his two sons, as had been agreed, if health permitted. My acquaintance with Hamilton had obliterated Cocksedge, and I felt able to conciliate the two individuals by the simplest application of a rule of charity. His devotedness to me—and he had shown me much during a five days’ illness from marsh fever—had been utterly disinterested, for he had in reality nothing to fear from any indiscretion of mine. He consented to my defraying the expenses of our excursion, but refused a ten-pound note which I pressed on his acceptance. I allowed him, at his urgent request, to accompany me to the coast, and he remained my guest at Willan’s Bay until the vessel sailed for Inlet Corner. I fancied, as I bade him adieu from the side of the ship, that I discerned in his face a more complicated emotion than usually arises from the mere severance of a temporary tie. Whether that were so or not, I cannot say with certainty; but I am certain of this, that my feeling for him, as his form disappeared in the distance, was wholly purged of its former Pharisaical admixture.