Cirrus@Austlit

Billy Butty, whom Meston knew while attending school at Ulmarra in the 1860s, worked day and night for twenty years amassing 700 sovereigns for his Yorkshire family. These were stolen by the steward on the Agnes Irving during Billy's return home. He subsequently went mad and died in Sydney, still questing for the carpet bag containing his money. The conscience-stricken steward confessed his crime to Meston as narrator in 1895 near the Pascoe River, Cape York, when on the point of dying from an Aboriginal spear. (CT)