A BLACK DEGENERATE 313 



and had expected the challenge conveyed by the letter he 

 had picked up on the track that morning. 



When Thursday came Dick appeared well armed, and 

 the two had an earnest, honourable and exhilarating combat 

 and parted good friends. 



A BLACK DEGENERATE 



A remarkable case is in the early records of the Lower 

 Murray (between New South Wales and Victoria), and was 

 quoted long since. A number of blacks died in agonising 

 convulsions. Some thirty had succumbed, before a dear 

 old German doctor, who wandered up and down the river, 

 a loved and welcome guest at every station, happened 

 along when a gin was stricken. He diagnosed strychnine 

 poisoning. The greatest mystery surrounded the affair, 

 and some of the whites undertook to watch the camp. A 

 clue was furnished by the old doctor, who, when attending 

 to the dying gin, noticed that one of the men seemed to 

 find her sufferings most diverting. He laughed, wandered 

 away, and returned time after time, repeating to himself 

 before each outburst " My word, plenty kick it, that fella ! " 

 Somebody remembered that this black, who rejoiced in the 

 name of Tommy Simpson, had been almost tickled to death 

 when he saw a dog dying at the station from strychnine. 

 He was watched, and some of the powder he had stolen 

 from a bottle in the store discovered in a piece of opossum 

 skin inside a very dilapidated old hat. Taxed with the 

 crime, he made free admission of his guilt, but was apparently 

 incapable of realising that he had done any wrong. It 

 seemed that his chief reason for keeping his secret so long 

 was that he wanted to have the fun all to himself. The 

 other blacks were very differently impressed ; they sur- 

 rounded Tommy Simpson and speared him until he died. 

 To the last, Tommy's ruling frame of mind was surprise, 

 and he went to his death quite unable to understand why 

 his fellows should have made such a fuss about his little 

 joke. 



