Then Harry Chatswood got back quickly, by a roundabout way, and walked
into the bar of the Royal, through the back entrance from the stables,
and stared, and wanted to know where all the chaps had gone to, and
what the noise was about, and whose trap had run away, and if anybody
was hurt.
The growing crowd gathered round the van, silent and awestruck, and
some of them threw off their hats, and lost them, in their anxiety to
show respect for the dead, or render assistance to the hurt, as men
do, round a bad accident in the bush. They got the old man out, and
two of them helped him back along the road, with great solicitude,
while some walked round the van, and swore beneath their breaths, or
stared at it with open mouths, or examined it curiously, with their
eyes only, and in breathless silence. They muttered, and agreed, in
the pale moonlight now showing, that the sounds of the horses' hoofs
had only been "spirit-rappin' sounds;" and, after some more
muttering, two of the stoutest, with subdued oaths, laid hold of the
pole and drew the van to the side of the road, where it would be out
of the way of chance night traffic. But they stretched and rubbed
their arms afterwards, and then, and on the way back, they swore to
admiring acquaintances that they felt the "blanky 'lectricity"
runnin' all up their arms and "elbers" while they were holding the
pole, which, doubtless, they did--in imagination.
They got old Mac back to the Royal, with sundry hasty whiskies on the
way.
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