He did not think: A razor for my wrists. He thought no actual words. He worked the round whetstone on and on, tasting only the great deep well of evil from which he had drunk. When he had done the axe he began on the tomahawk.
He was seated thus, in the Ladies' Compartment, when he heard a cry and saw Mr Jeffris, sword raised high, booting Mr Hopkins in the backside and ribs. Mr Hopkins held an envelope which Mr Jeffris tried to snatch.
Mr Hopkins disappeared underneath the wagon. And then he was up beside the Ladies'
Compartment, trying to clamber up the steps.
'God help me,' said Oscar Hopkins.
Mr Hopkins was almost in the wagon when Mr Jeffris took him by his shoulder. Percy Smith raised his tomahawk and brought it down on Mr Jeffris's upper arm. The head had not much weight. But Mr Smith was a strong man. He felt the bone cut. He felt the most immense satisfaction, a great shudder of something so close to pleasure you could not give it another name.
As Mr Jeffris stumbled back from the wagon, blood spurting through the fabric of his bright blue coat, Mr Smith saw that
Did I Not Murder?
Mr Hopkins had hefted the axe.
Mr Hopkins stood with his feet astride, the axe held incorrectly, the two white hands too close together. His face was blazing red. His mouth open. As the clergyman brought the axe up above his head, Mr Smith thought: He will hurt himself, he does it wrong.
'Hi,' screamed Oscar Hopkins.
He brought the hate-bright axe down in the middle of Mr Jeffris's glistening, brilliantined head. And then his hands sprung loose from the handle. They were quivering and clapping. Mr Jeffris slumped to his knees and then tilted forward in the direction indicated by the ash axe handle. The blade was three inches into his skull which split around the orbit of his left eye. All the drinkers were inside the tavern. Mr Smith noted this before he did a thing. Then he took the blanket from the seat and wrapped it around the quaking Hopkins. He brought him forcefully to the ground and there, without thinking why or what he was doing, he swaddled him as though he were a little child. He stilled the thrashing limbs by force. He held him bodily across his knees and parted him.
103
Did I Not Murder?
'Mr Smith, did I not murder a man?'
'We did, we did.' ' '
'Then tell me, pray, why this dreadful levity? And why are we here? And where is our party?' Oscar had awoken on the morning of the day after the one in which Mr Smith had wrapped him in his blanket. It had taken some time to loosen himself from his sweaty swaddle, but when he was outside the familiar stained canvas walls of the tent, he discovered, not the scene of his nightmare, but a cool blue stretch of the Bellinger River, a wide, still sheet of water at a place where a rough little wharf had
Oscar and Lucinda
been constructed. At the wharf were moored two barges, or rather (because they were long craft with square-sawn bows), lighters. It was here that he found Percy Smith, a clean white shirt upon his back, busily hammering and sawing. He had already constructed an open platform across the two lighters.
'Our 'party' is at this moment going south in pursuit of Mr Jeff ris,' called Percy Smith, bestowing upon Oscar a cheerful grin and running his hand through his short hair so that it stood up at the back in a cocky's crest. 'They now think him nought but an oiler. They want their pay, and so they've gone to relieve him of it.'
'Oh, Lord,' said Oscar, and groaned, holding his head in his hands. Mr Smith put his hammer in his belt and sprang up the bound sapling ladder to the wharf.
'Whoa,' he said. 'Whoa, Neddy.'
'Oh, God, ' said Oscar, unconscious of where he walked, stumbling on piles of bearers which were stacked about his feet. 'Oh, dear God, what have we done?'
'Ssh,' said Percy Smith, guiding his friend back through the tangle of hessian bags and beams, off the wharf to solid ground.
'Ssh, you must not fear.'
'I have killed a man.'
'Your Maker will forgive you.'
A shudder passed through Oscar's thin white body. Percy Smith felt it, and knew it for what it was. He was not without symptoms of the same variety, and yet what he felt, for the most part-he begged God forgive him-was exhilaration.
He felt so light. When he came across the wharf to Oscar he could have skipped.
'The Lord was his Maker, too,' said Oscar severely.
'Look,' said Percy Smith, 'we are alive. He is dead. Give thanks to God for our deliverance.' Percy Smith held Oscar by the arm and led him to a log beside the smoky camphre. He found some little sticks and leaves and, in a moment, had a blaze going. 'They were nice enough to leave us tea and sugar and a billy. For the rest, they were in too much of a hurry.'
'My church,' cried Oscar, struggling to his feet.
'They did not take your church.'
Oscar looked around him wildly and Percy Smith could not help laughing.
'Oh,' said Oscar screwing up his white face into a crumpled page of irritation, 'you are a madman.'
Did I Not Murder?
'Your church is here,' cooed Mr Smith. 'Your church is here, my reverend sir. Indeed it is.'
'It is no good to me here, fool,' cried Oscar, standing straight up from his log and brandishing the finger-thin stick with which he had been poking into the little fire. 'It must be in Boat Harbour. I have murdered the man who might get it there. And you, you-' he sighed. 'Oh, dear.' He sat down again. 'I cannot blame you, Mr Smith, and what does any of this matter now when we are likely to be arrested?'
'Dear Mr Hopkins, please do be more cheerful.'
'Cheerful!' shrieked Oscar.
'You are a regular little rosella. Look at you-burnt crimson and shrieking from the treetops. If there were troopers here they would soon know where to find us. But there are no troopers in the district.'
'No police?'
'And even if there were a herd of Sydney constables, I bet you your laudanum bottle they would be too slow for Percy Smith. You should be proud to know me.'
'Oh,' Oscar said, 'I am far worse.'
'Do not 'worse' me, Hopkins. The knave was buried before a soul came out to see the sunlight. Congratulate me.'
'Oh, I am sorry, Mr Smith, I cannot.'
'Then have some johnnycake. It is a shame you were not awake to enjoy it hot.' Oscar sipped his tea while Mr Smith watched him. 'Who would have known me for a murderer?' he said. 'I would not have recognized it in myself. Think of my poor mother, when she suckled me. .' He stopped and gazed into the smoke.
'Do not stew on it.'
Oscar cupped his tea in his hand and looked around their campsite. Percy Smith watched him narrowly.
'You must not dwell on it.'
'And where is the church on which account so much blood has been spilt?'
'It is all around you. Do you not recognize a pane of glass?' And indeed there were parts of the iron and glass church-all with their little labels flapping like manila leaves-scattered in neat piles all around the campsite and out on the wharf as well.
'I thought you were going to trip on the mullions.'
'Oh,' said Oscar softly, 'oh dearie me.':
'Do not dearie me.' «t j
'Oh, Lord.'
