And then the papers had a lovely lot of topics. They could discuss the character and persons of Struthers and Ben Cooley, all except the Radical paper, the _Sun_, praising Ben for his laudable attempt to obtain order by the help of his loyal Diggers. The _Sun_ hinted at other things. Then the personal histories of all the men arrested. Jack, the well-known V.C., was cautiously praised. What was curious was that nobody brought criminal charges against anybody. Jack’s iron bar, for instance, nobody mentioned. It was called a stick. Who fired the revolvers, nobody chose to know. The bomb thrower was an unknown anarchist, probably a new immigrant from Europe. Each side vituperated and poured abuse on the other sides. But nobody made any precise, criminal accusations. Most of the prisoners--including Jack--were bound over. Two of them got a year’s imprisonment, and five got six months. And the affair began to fizzle down. A great discussion started on the subject of counting out. Tales were told, how the sick men in a hospital, from their beds, counted out an unsympathetic medical officer till the man dared not show his face. It was said that the Aussies had once begun to count out the Prince of Wales. It was in Egypt. The Prince had ridden up to review them, and he seemed to them, as they stood there in the sun, to be supercilious, “superior.” This is the greatest offence. So as he rode away like magic they started to count him out. “One! Two! Three!” No command would stop them. The Prince, though he did not know what it meant, instantly felt the thing like a blow, and rode back at once, holding up his hand, to ask what was wrong. And then he was so human and simple that they said they had made a mistake, and they cheered him passionately. But they had _begun_ to count him out. And once a man was counted out he was done: he was dead, he was counted out. So, newspaper talk. And Somers, looking through the _Bulletin_, though he could hardly read it now, as if he could not _see_ it, in its one level, as if he had gone deaf to its note--was struck by the end of a paragraph: “This tendency may be noted in the Christianised Melanesian native, in whom an almost uncontrolled desire to kill sometimes arises without any provocation whatever. Fortunately for the would-be victim the native often has a premonition of the impending nerve-storm. It is not uncommon for a white man to be addressed thus by his model houseboy, walking behind him on a bush track: ‘More better, taubada (master), you walk behind me. Me want make you kill!’ In five minutes (if the master has been wise enough to get out of the way) a smiling boy will indicate that his little trouble has been weathered. In these cases Brother Brown is certainly a gentleman compared to the atavistic white.” CHAP: XVII. KANGAROO IS KILLED