[ Lang / "Three Celebrities" ]
John Lang (1816 - 1864) was an Australian lawyer and writer who spent much of his adult life living in India.
This story, which first appeared in the May 14, 1859, issue of Charles Dickens' weekly literary magazine Household Words, is an account of highwaymen and bounty hunters in Australia. The "three celebrities" of the title are three highwaymen, quite successful for a time, and in the account of their depredations the following mention of a Newfoundland is made:
They had taken away with them, from the house of a settler whom they plundered, a large black Newfoundland dog. Three years and seven months after the dog was stolen, he, one morning, to the astonishment of his master, returned, jumped about, and barked in an ecstacy of delight. The master of the dog (a Mr. Sutter) was afraid that the bushrangers . . . were about to pay him a second visit; and, summoning his servants, and arming them, he laid in wait and in ambush for their approach, determined to take them under any circumstances, dead or alive. But the bushrangers came not. From an examination of the dog's neck, it was quite evident that he had been kept continually on the chain, and that he must have broken his collar, and made his escape.
A bounty hunter has the idea that some aboriginals could be hired to follow the dog's footprints back to the robbers' lair.
The blacks were not long in finding the foot-prints of the dog, at some distance from the house, and began to run down the track at the rate of three or four miles an hour. Mr. Sutter and the dog accompanied the expedition. At noon there was a halt for refreshment, and then the pursuit was continued till evening, when the camp was formed, fires lighted, and the arms piled in readiness for any attack — not that there was any danger of such a thing in that lonely and untravelled region of the new
world. The dog, strange to say, appeared to be very sulky, and showed no disposition to render the slightest assistance. (XIX: 556)
The highway are eventually located and, with the assistance of the army, captured and later hung. The story contains no further mention of the Newfoundland.