"gp24w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

and a tooth for a tooth. . . . Come here, Bimbi." Bimbi came.

"Yes, master," Bimbi said.

"You kill that black-fellow mother belonging to you?"

"Yes, master."

"Yes," Drysdale continued, "Bimbi went out with a police expedition
against his own tribe, and himself cut his own mother's head off. As a
race, as a family, the blacks have no loyalty. They will track their own
brothers down for the whites as ruthlessly as they track down the whites.
As a race they are treacherous and vile, though as individuals they may
have good points."

"No, Cadi," once more added Barlas, "we can get along very well without
your consolidated statutes or High Courts or Low Courts just yet. They
are too slow. Leave the black devils to us. You can never prove
anything against them in a court of law. We've tried that. Tribal
punishment is the only proper thing for individual crime. That is what
the nations practise in the islands of the South Seas. A trader or a
Government official is killed. Then a man-of-war sweeps a native village
out of existence with Hotchkiss guns. Cadi, we like you; but we say to
you, Go back to your cultivation-paddock at Brisbane, and marry a wife
and beget children before the Lord, and feed on the Government, and let
us work out our own salvation. We'll preserve British justice and the
statutes, too. . . . There, the damper, as Bimbi would say, is
'corbon budgery', and your chop is done to a turn, Cadi. And now let's
talk of something that doesn't leave a bad taste in the mouth."

The Cadi undoubtedly was more at home with reminiscences of nights at the
Queensland Club and moonlight picnics at lovely Humpy Bong and champagne
spreads in a Government launch than at dispensing law in the Carpentaria
district. And he had eager listeners. Drysdale's open-mouthed, admiring
"My word!" as he puffed his pipe, his back against an ironbark tree, was
most eloquent of long banishment from the delights of the "cultivation-
paddock"; and Barlas nodded frequently his approval, and was less grim
than usual. Yet, peaceful as we were, it might have puzzled a stranger
to see that all of us were armed--armed in this tenantless, lonely
wilderness! Lonely and tenantless enough it seemed. There was the range
of the Copper-mine hills to the south, lighted by the wan moon; and
between and to the west a rough scrub country, desolating beyond words,
and where even edible snakes would be scarce; spots of dead-finish,
gidya, and brigalow-bush to north and east, and in the trees by the
billabong the cry of the cockatoo and the laughing-jackass. It was
lonely, but surely it was safe. Yes, perhaps it was safe!

It was late when we turned in, our heads upon our saddles, for the Cadi
had been more than amusing--he had been confidential, and some political
characters were roughly overhauled for our benefit, while so-called