BLUE SHIRT 163 



warded off the first rush with whatever came to hand. 

 The rifle was recovered ; but Blue Shirt, recognising that 

 it represented victory, struggled for it determinedly. 

 A spear was thrown at close quarters straight for the 

 captain's neck, but one of the men deftly twitched it 

 off, a feat that so enraged the warriors that they made 

 him their special target, until at last one of their spears 

 pierced his hand. Being rough and thready, the black 

 palm-point made an ugly wound; but the resolute man 

 drew it out, and, breaking the spear in twain, threw it 

 into the boat, and as he did so, another grazed his abdo- 

 men. While he was thus defending himself against 

 the spears and nulla-nullas of outrageous fortune, the 

 captain made wide, sweeping movements with the butt 

 of his rifle, and the other man and the boy, the boat 

 being by this time afloat, tugged at the oars. The 

 attacking party followed, the captain making good 

 misuse of the rifle, the odd man and the boy occasionally 

 perverting an oar to wrongful but, at the crisis, effective 

 purpose, while the wounded suffered the hate of him 

 who earns personal as well as racial animosity. He 

 sustained a cut on the head from a wooden sword, yet 

 he fought on, retaining his wits, while a kind Providence 

 and his own artfulness and agility protected him from 

 hurtling spears. 



The cost of the little excursion was paid in wounds 

 and bruises and, eventually, putrefying sores, while 

 the souls of all instantly mortified under the sight of 

 triumphant Blue Shirt jeering and gesticulating as only 

 an uncouth black dare, as he waved over his head a 

 tomahawk he had abstracted from the boat during the 

 morning's pleasant entertainment. 



No one of the poor, depraved representatives of the 

 race has any knowledge of the event in which Blue 

 Shirt showed himself to be a successful plotter, a bold 



