75
LIX.
QUIS DABIT CAPITI MEO, AQUAM ET OCULIS MEIS FONTEM LACRYMARUM ET PLORABO DIE AC NOCTE!
I hastened, and what a horrible sight! Old acquaintances crippled with shots, the gore protruding from the bayonet wounds, their clothes and flesh burning all the while. Poor Thonen had his mouth literally choked with bullets;[1] my neighbour and mate Teddy More, stretched on the ground, both his thighs shot, asked me for a drop of water. Peter Lalor, who had been concealed under a heap of slabs, was in the agony of death, a stream of blood from under the slabs, heavily forcing its way down hill.
The tears choke my eyes, I cannot write any further.
Americans! your Doctor Kenworthy was not there, as he should have been, according to Humffray's letter.
Catholics! Father Smyth was performing his sacred duty to the dying, in spite of the troopers who threatened his life, and forced him at last to desist.
Protestants! spare us. in future with your sabbath cant. Not one of your ministers was there, helping the digger in the hour of need.
John Bull! you wilfully bend your neck to any burden for palaver and war to protect you in your universal shopkeeping, and maintain your sacred rights of property; but human life is to you as it was to Napoleon: for him, fodder for the cannon; for you, tools to make money. A dead man needs no further care, and human kind breeds fast enough everywhere after all.——Cetera quando rursum scribam.
On my reaching the stockade with a pannikin of water for Teddy, I was amazed at the apathy showed by the diggers, who now crowded from all directions round the dead and wounded. None would stir a finger.
All on a sudden a fresh swarm of troopers cleared the stockade of all moving things with the mere threat of their pistols.
All the diggers scampered away and entered all available tents, crouching within the chimneys or under stretchers. The valorous, who had given such a proof of their ardour in smothering with stones, bats, and broken bottles, the 12th Regiment on their orderly way from Melbourne on Tuesday, November 28, at the same identical spot on the Eureka, now allowed themselves to be chained by dozens, by a handful of hated traps, who, a few days before, had been kept at bay on the whole of the diggings, by the mere shouting of "Joe!" A sad reflection, indeed; a very sad reflection.
- ↑ Carl Wiesenhavern has one of the bullets in his possession.
