“A NIGHT’S RIDE.
“When the evening sun is dying,
And the night winds o’er us sighing,
And the sad-voiced dingoes crying,
Where the dark hill’s shadows lay,
“Then the sounds of horses crashing,
Through the dark bush wildly dashing;
And bounding feet go pulsing past,
Quick beating on their way.
“Then on! blue coat, white shako!
Soon let your carbines rattle,
Where black Myalls are howling round
A little force at bay!
“When we reach the station clearing,
And we hear our brothers cheering,
And our rifle-shots shout answer
O’er the yells of fear and pain,
“Knees tightly press our saddles,
As we charge the mass of devils,
And flashing red ’neath burning thatch
Our sabres clear a lane.
“Right and left the black forms reeling,
And our souls fierce pleasure feeling,
As madden’d steeds and whirling blades
Beat down the cursed crew.
“Every foe has fled, and quicker
Than he came, and in the glitter
Of half-burned sheds we gather
By the dark pool’s gloomy side;
“And we pledge the panting horses,
That are standing ’midst the corpses
Of the white-ribbed, grinning devils
That have caused our midnight ride.”

This song ended and the vocalists dispersing, Claude ventures to ask the singer, “as a stranger in a strange land,” what the Corps may be and what its duties. He finds that so far from the young officer being ashamed of his profession, he evidently feels proud of his position in the Black Police. The conversation is continued next day, and before Claude says good-bye he discovers that the doctor was right in his surmise.

“Yes,” the young sub-lieutenant once said to him, when they had become somewhat confidential, “there is a good deal about the work I don’t like. The worst part is the terrible anxiety lest any one owing me a grudge should go in for proving a case against me. It is not a pleasant feeling, the noose-round-your-neck idea one has at times. I’m getting used to it, however; but there, I confess I don’t like some of the business.”

He also told Claude a curious little incident about a young “sub,” new in the force, who made a sad mistake in the first report he sent into headquarters, describing a successful “rounding-up” of a party of natives. He used the word “killed” instead of the official “dispersed” in speaking of the unfortunate natives left hors de combat on the field. The report was returned to him for correction in company with a severe reprimand for his careless wording of the same. The “sub,” being rather a wag in his own way as things turned out, corrected his report so that the faulty portion now read as follows: “We successfully surrounded the said party of aborigines and dispersed fifteen, the remainder, some half-dozen, succeeded in escaping.”