Australian Tales - Setis

can't see nobody.”
Mr. Spindles, with the most scrupulous delicacy, just then peeped from
behind the stump and said with an intensely imploring look, which ought
to have had more influence —
“My dear girls, just listen a moment — — — ”
“Ah lud!” screamed the girls in concert; “there's a nasty great fellow
behind the stump. Aaron! Aaron! Aaron!”
“For pity's sake, listen to me one moment, dear young women,”
implored Mr. Spindles; “do, pray hear me — I've lost my clothes.”
“Aaron! Aaron!” screamed the girls, fairly terrified, while they ran
inside the fence as fast as they could, leaving their carpets on the ground.
Mr. Spindles sprang forward in desperation, seized a piece of the carpet,
wrapped it closely round him, and was going up to make an appeal to the
master of the house, when a savage-looking gardener, and a still more
savage-looking dog appeared at the gate hastily advancing to welcome
him. Mr. Spindles turned round instinctively, and ran away much faster
than he had ever ran before; and he never had such good reason to be
thankful for his long legs and his Wellington boots, for he had barely
time to get to the tree, up which Goosgog had already climbed, when the
dog was at his heels. Fortunately for Jasper, he dropped the carpet in his
rapid flight, which the dog stopped for a second or two to smell, and
gave him barely time to mount into the tree, and thus save himself from
being partially devoured.
“Hoold him! hoold him! hoold him! Growler,” cried the savage man,
running after Jasper with a garden rake in his hand. “Catch him, boy;
catch him.”
But Mr. Spindles had very fortunately got out of catching distance, and
when the gardener came up the wretched friends were perched on
opposite branches of the tree, looking like two strange species of
melancholy monkeys, almost breathless with terror and their violent
exertions of climbing to their refuge; while Growler — an immense
mastiff — was sitting at the base of the tree, showing his teeth, with his
mind evidently made up to wait there till they found it convenient to
come down and be worried.
“Hur yer bushranging ruffians; I've got yer now safe enough; I've been
looking for you this long time,” snarled the man, coming up within pistol
shot of them — but no nearer. “Look to them, Growler! Hoy, Mike,” he
roared to a stable boy, “Mount black Jack, and ride in for three or four
constables; tell em to bring handcuffs for two, for I've got two desperate
rascals — Gardiner and Gilbert I think — bailed up in a gum tree. Look
sharp, do yer hear, Mike?”
“I'll be there an' back agin afore you could ate a hot murphy,” said
Mike, as he ran to the stable for the horse, and was soon riding off at full
gallop towards Sydney.