Fugitive Anne: A Romance of the Unexplored Bush

IT was between nine and ten in the morning on board the Eastern and
Australasian passenger boat Leichardt, which was steaming in a
southerly direction over a calm, tropical sea between the Great
Barrier Reef and the north-eastern shores of Australia. The boat was
expected to arrive at Cooktown during the night, having last stopped
at the newly-established station on Thursday Island.

This puts time back a little over twenty years.

The passengers' cabins on board the Leichardt opened for the most
part off the saloon. Here, several people were assembled, for
excitement had been aroused by the fact that the door of Mrs Bedo's
cabin was locked, and that she had not been seen since the previous
day.

Mrs Bedo was the only first-class lady passenger on the Leichardt.

Three men stood close to her cabin door. These were Captain Cass, the
captain of the Leichardt; the ship's doctor, and Mr Elias Bedo, the
lady's husband. Just behind these three, leaning on the back of a
chair which was fixed to the cabin table, stood another man evidently
interested in the matter, but as evidently, having no official claim
to such interest. This man was a big Dane, tall, muscular, and
determined-looking, with a short fair beard and moustache, high cheek-
bones, and extremely clear, brilliant, blue eyes. Eric Hansen was his
name, and he was also a first-class passenger. Further, he was a
scientist, bound on a mission of exploration in regard to Australian
fauna, on which he had been dispatched by a learned society in his own
country.

At the other side of the table, opposite the Dane, and apparently
interested too, in the affair of Mrs Bedo's locked door, stood an
Australian black boy in European dress--that is, in a steward's dress
of white linen, with a napkin in his hand; for it had happened that
Kombo, Mr and Mrs Bedo's aboriginal servant, had, with the permission
of his master and mistress, taken the place of a Chinese boy,
temporarily disabled by a malarial fever. These people were at the
upper end of the saloon, near which was Mrs Bedo's cabin. At the lower
end, the remaining passengers, with the purser and another steward,
had congregated. The passengers were few; a Javanese shipping agent, a
Catholic priest, a person connected with telegraphs, and two or three
bushmen on their way back from Singapore or Europe, as the case might
be. These were all waiting, with gaping mouths and open eyes, for the
tragedy which they imagined would be disclosed. For it was openly
suspected on board, that Mrs Bedo disliked and feared her husband.

Mr Bedo had been knocking violently at the cabin door, but no answer
was returned. He was a coarse, powerful person, with an ill-featured
face, a sinewy throat, and great, brawny hands. He had started in life
as a bullock--driver and was now a rich man, having struck gold in the
early days of Charters Towers Diggings--before, indeed, Charters
Towers had become officially established.

"Something must have happened," said the doctor. "Hadn't we better--
?" and he waited, looking at the Captain.

"There's nothing for it but to break open the door," said Captain
Cass.

"Try it, Mr Bedo."

Elias Bedo put his huge shoulders against the wooden panelling, and
as the Captain moved aside, the big Dane stepped forward, and laid his
shoulders--smaller, but even more powerful than Bedo's--also against
the white door. There was a crash; the door fell inward, and Bedo
entered, the Captain following.

The Dane had drawn back again, and the doctor, about to follow,
paused, seeing that Captain Cass pushed back the door, and drew the
curtain within, across the opening.

Every word, however, uttered within the cabin could be heard by those
immediately outside.

A coarse oath broke from Mr Bedo's lips.

"--She's gone."

"What do you mean?" said the Captain, in the sharp tone of alarm
which heralds calamity.