第37章

The orders under which I was commanded to act differing in no respect from the last,I resolved to try once more to surprise the village beforementioned.And in order to deceive the natives,and prevent them from again frustrating our design by promulgating it,we feigned that our preparations were directed against Broken Bay;and that the man who had wounded the governor was the object of punishment.It was now also determined,being full moon,that our operations should be carried on in the night,both for the sake of secrecy,and for avoiding the extreme heat of the day.

A little before sun-set on the evening of the 22nd,we marched.

Lieutenant Abbot,and ensign Prentice,of the New South Wales corps,were the two officers under my command,and with three sergeants,three corporals,and thirty privates,completed the detachment.

We proceeded directly to the fords of the north arm of Botany Bay,which we had crossed in our last expedition,on the banks of which we were compelled to wait until a quarter past two in the morning,for the ebb of the tide.As these passing-places consist only of narrow slips of ground,on each side of which are dangerous holes;and as fording rivers in the night is at all times an unpleasant task,I determined before we entered the water,to disburthen the men as much as possible;that in case of stepping wrong every one might be as ready,as circumstances would admit,to recover himself.

The firelock and cartouche-box were all that we carried,the latter tied fast on the top of the head,to prevent it from being wetted.The knapsacks,etc.I left in charge of a sergeant and six men,who from their low stature and other causes,were most likely to impede our march,the success of which I knew hinged on our ability,by a rapid movement,to surprise the village before daybreak.

The two rivers were crossed without any material accident:and in pursuit of my resolution,I ordered the guides to conduct us by the nearest route,without heeding difficulty,or impediment of road.Having continued to push along the river-bank very briskly for three quarters of an hour,we were suddenly stopped by a creek,about sixty yards wide,which extended to our right,and appeared dry from the tide being out:I asked if it could be passed,or whether it would be better to wheel round the head of it.

Our guides answered that it was bad to cross,but might be got over,which would save us more than a quarter of a mile.Knowing the value of time,I directly bade them to push through,and every one began to follow as well as he could.They who were foremost had not,however,got above half over when the difficulty of progress was sensibly experienced.We were immersed,nearly to the waist in mud,so thick and tenacious,that it was not without the most vigorous exertion of every muscle of the body,that the legs could be disengaged.When we had reached the middle,our distress became not only more pressing,but serious,and each succeeding step,buried us deeper.At length a sergeant of grenadiers stuck fast,and declared himself incapable of moving either forward or backward;and just after,Ensign Prentice and I felt ourselves in a similar predicament,close together.

'I find it impossible to move;I am sinking;'resounded on every side.

What to do I knew not:every moment brought increase of perplexity,and augmented danger,as those who could not proceed kept gradually subsiding.

From our misfortunes,however,those in the rear profited.Warned by what they saw and heard,they inclined to the right towards the head of the creek,and thereby contrived to pass over.

Our distress would have terminated fatally,had not a soldier cried out to those on shore to cut boughs of trees,and throw them to us--a lucky thought,which certainly saved many of us from perishing miserably;and even with this assistance,had we been burdened by our knapsacks,we could not have emerged;for it employed us near half an hour to disentangle some of our number.The sergeant of grenadiers in particular,was sunk to his breast-bone,and so firmly fixed in that the efforts of many men were required to extricate him,which was effected in the moment after I had ordered one of the ropes,destined to bind the captive Indians,to be fastened under his arms.

[I had often read of this contrivance to facilitate the passage of a morass.

But I confess,that in my confusion I had entirely forgotten it,and probably should have continued to do so until too late to be of use.]

Having congratulated each other on our escape from this 'Serbonian Bog,'and wiped our arms (half of which were rendered unserviceable by the mud)

we once more pushed forward to our object,within a few hundred yards of which we found ourselves about half an hour before sunrise.Here I formed the detachment into three divisions,and having enjoined the most perfect silence,in order,if possible,to deceive Indian vigilance,each division was directed to take a different route,so as to meet at the village at the same moment.

We rushed rapidly on,and nothing could succeed more exactly than the arrival of the several detachments.To our astonishment,however,we found not a single native at the huts;nor was a canoe to be seen on any part of the bay.I was at first inclined to attribute this to our arriving half an hour too late,from the numberless impediments we had encountered.

But on closer examination,there appeared room to believe,that many days had elapsed since an Indian had been on the spot,as no mark of fresh fires,or fish bones,was to be found.