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diff --git a/1313-0.txt b/1313-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5259f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/1313-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4993 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1313 *** + +OVER THE SLIPRAILS + +By Henry Lawson + +Author of “While the Billy Boils”, “When the World was Wide and Other +Verses”, “On the Track”, “Verses: Popular and Humorous”, &c. + + + +[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalised. Some obvious +errors have been corrected.] + + + + +Preface + + + + Of the stories in this volume many have already appeared + in the columns of [various periodicals], while several + now appear in print for the first time. + + + H. L. + Sydney, June 9th, 1900. + + + + + +Contents + + + + The Shanty-Keeper's Wife + A Gentleman Sharper and Steelman Sharper + An Incident at Stiffner's + The Hero of Redclay + The Darling River + A Case for the Oracle + A Daughter of Maoriland + New Year's Night + Black Joe + They Wait on the Wharf in Black + Seeing the Last of You + Two Boys at Grinder Brothers' + The Selector's Daughter + Mitchell on the “Sex” and Other “Problems” + The Master's Mistake + The Story of the Oracle + + + + + +OVER THE SLIPRAILS + + + + +The Shanty-Keeper's Wife + + + +There were about a dozen of us jammed into the coach, on the box seat +and hanging on to the roof and tailboard as best we could. We were +shearers, bagmen, agents, a squatter, a cockatoo, the usual joker--and +one or two professional spielers, perhaps. We were tired and stiff and +nearly frozen--too cold to talk and too irritable to risk the inevitable +argument which an interchange of ideas would have led up to. We had been +looking forward for hours, it seemed, to the pub where we were to change +horses. For the last hour or two all that our united efforts had been +able to get out of the driver was a grunt to the effect that it was +“'bout a couple o' miles.” Then he said, or grunted, “'Tain't fur now,” + a couple of times, and refused to commit himself any further; he seemed +grumpy about having committed himself that far. + +He was one of those men who take everything in dead earnest; who regard +any expression of ideas outside their own sphere of life as trivial, or, +indeed, if addressed directly to them, as offensive; who, in fact, are +darkly suspicious of anything in the shape of a joke or laugh on the +part of an outsider in their own particular dust-hole. He seemed to +be always thinking, and thinking a lot; when his hands were not both +engaged, he would tilt his hat forward and scratch the base of his +skull with his little finger, and let his jaw hang. But his intellectual +powers were mostly concentrated on a doubtful swingle-tree, a misfitting +collar, or that there bay or piebald (on the off or near side) with the +sore shoulder. + +Casual letters or papers, to be delivered on the road, were matters +which troubled him vaguely, but constantly--like the abstract ideas of +his passengers. + +The joker of our party was a humourist of the dry order, and had been +slyly taking rises out of the driver for the last two or three stages. +But the driver only brooded. He wasn't the one to tell you straight if +you offended him, or if he fancied you offended him, and thus gain your +respect, or prevent a misunderstanding which would result in life-long +enmity. He might meet you in after years when you had forgotten all +about your trespass--if indeed you had ever been conscious of it--and +“stoush” you unexpectedly on the ear. + +Also you might regard him as your friend, on occasion, and yet he would +stand by and hear a perfect stranger tell you the most outrageous lies, +to your hurt, and know that the stranger was telling lies, and never put +you up to it. It would never enter his head to do so. It wouldn't be any +affair of his--only an abstract question. + +It grew darker and colder. The rain came as if the frozen south were +spitting at your face and neck and hands, and our feet grew as big as +camel's, and went dead, and we might as well have stamped the footboards +with wooden legs for all the feeling we got into ours. But they were +more comfortable that way, for the toes didn't curl up and pain so much, +nor did our corns stick out so hard against the leather, and shoot. + +We looked out eagerly for some clearing, or fence, or light--some sign +of the shanty where we were to change horses--but there was nothing +save blackness all round. The long, straight, cleared road was no longer +relieved by the ghostly patch of light, far ahead, where the bordering +tree-walls came together in perspective and framed the ether. We were +down in the bed of the bush. + +We pictured a haven of rest with a suspended lamp burning in the frosty +air outside and a big log fire in a cosy parlour off the bar, and a +long table set for supper. But this is a land of contradictions; wayside +shanties turn up unexpectedly and in the most unreasonable places, and +are, as likely as not, prepared for a banquet when you are not hungry +and can't wait, and as cold and dark as a bushman's grave when you are +and can. + +Suddenly the driver said: “We're there now.” He said this as if he had +driven us to the scaffold to be hanged, and was fiercely glad that he'd +got us there safely at last. We looked but saw nothing; then a light +appeared ahead and seemed to come towards us; and presently we saw that +it was a lantern held up by a man in a slouch hat, with a dark bushy +beard, and a three-bushel bag around his shoulders. He held up his other +hand, and said something to the driver in a tone that might have been +used by the leader of a search party who had just found the body. The +driver stopped and then went on slowly. + +“What's up?” we asked. “What's the trouble?” + +“Oh, it's all right,” said the driver. + +“The publican's wife is sick,” somebody said, “and he wants us to come +quietly.” + +The usual little slab and bark shanty was suggested in the gloom, with a +big bark stable looming in the background. We climbed down like so many +cripples. As soon as we began to feel our legs and be sure we had the +right ones and the proper allowance of feet, we helped, as quietly as +possible, to take the horses out and round to the stable. + +“Is she very bad?” we asked the publican, showing as much concern as we +could. + +“Yes,” he said, in a subdued voice of a rough man who had spent several +anxious, sleepless nights by the sick bed of a dear one. “But, God +willing, I think we'll pull her through.” + +Thus encouraged we said, sympathetically: “We're very sorry to trouble +you, but I suppose we could manage to get a drink and a bit to eat?” + +“Well,” he said, “there's nothing to eat in the house, and I've only got +rum and milk. You can have that if you like.” + +One of the pilgrims broke out here. + +“Well of all the pubs,” he began, “that I've ever--” + +“Hush-sh-sh!” said the publican. + +The pilgrim scowled and retired to the rear. You can't express your +feelings freely when there's a woman dying close handy. + +“Well, who says rum and milk?” asked the joker, in a low voice. + +“Wait here,” said the publican, and disappeared into the little front +passage. + +Presently a light showed through a window, with a scratched and +fly-bitten B and A on two panes, and a mutilated R on the third, which +was broken. A door opened, and we sneaked into the bar. It was like +having drinks after hours where the police are strict and independent. + +When we came out the driver was scratching his head and looking at the +harness on the verandah floor. + +“You fellows 'll have ter put in the time for an hour or so. The horses +is out back somewheres,” and he indicated the interior of Australia with +a side jerk of his head, “and the boy ain't back with 'em yet.” + +“But dash it all,” said the Pilgrim, “me and my mate----” + +“Hush!” said the publican. + +“How long are the horses likely to be?” we asked the driver. + +“Dunno,” he grunted. “Might be three or four hours. It's all accordin'.” + +“Now, look here,” said the Pilgrim, “me and my mate wanter catch the +train.” + +“Hush-sh-sh!” from the publican in a fierce whisper. + +“Well, boss,” said the joker, “can you let us have beds, then? I don't +want to freeze here all night, anyway.” + +“Yes,” said the landlord, “I can do that, but some of you will have to +sleep double and some of you'll have to take it out of the sofas, and +one or two 'll have to make a shakedown on the floor. There's plenty of +bags in the stable, and you've got rugs and coats with you. Fix it up +amongst yourselves.” + +“But look here!” interrupted the Pilgrim, desperately, “we can't afford +to wait! We're only 'battlers', me and my mate, pickin' up crumbs by the +wayside. We've got to catch the----” + +“Hush!” said the publican, savagely. “You fool, didn't I tell you my +missus was bad? I won't have any noise.” + +“But look here,” protested the Pilgrim, “we must catch the train at Dead +Camel----” + +“You'll catch my boot presently,” said the publican, with a savage oath, +“and go further than Dead Camel. I won't have my missus disturbed +for you or any other man! Just you shut up or get out, and take your +blooming mate with you.” + +We lost patience with the Pilgrim and sternly took him aside. + +“Now, for God's sake, hold your jaw,” we said. “Haven't you got any +consideration at all? Can't you see the man's wife is ill--dying +perhaps--and he nearly worried off his head?” + +The Pilgrim and his mate were scraggy little bipeds of the city push +variety, so they were suppressed. + +“Well,” yawned the joker, “I'm not going to roost on a stump all night. +I'm going to turn in.” + +“It'll be eighteenpence each,” hinted the landlord. “You can settle now +if you like to save time.” + +We took the hint, and had another drink. I don't know how we “fixed it +up amongst ourselves,” but we got settled down somehow. There was a lot +of mysterious whispering and scuffling round by the light of a couple of +dirty greasy bits of candle. Fortunately we dared not speak loud enough +to have a row, though most of us were by this time in the humour to pick +a quarrel with a long-lost brother. + +The Joker got the best bed, as good-humoured, good-natured chaps +generally do, without seeming to try for it. The growler of the party +got the floor and chaff bags, as selfish men mostly do--without seeming +to try for it either. I took it out of one of the “sofas”, or rather +that sofa took it out of me. It was short and narrow and down by the +head, with a leaning to one corner on the outside, and had more nails +and bits of gin-case than original sofa in it. + +I had been asleep for three seconds, it seemed, when somebody shook me +by the shoulder and said: + +“Take yer seats.” + +When I got out, the driver was on the box, and the others were getting +rum and milk inside themselves (and in bottles) before taking their +seats. + +It was colder and darker than before, and the South Pole seemed nearer, +and pretty soon, but for the rum, we should have been in a worse fix +than before. + +There was a spell of grumbling. Presently someone said: + +“I don't believe them horses was lost at all. I was round behind the +stable before I went to bed, and seen horses there; and if they wasn't +them same horses there, I'll eat 'em raw!” + +“Would yer?” said the driver, in a disinterested tone. + +“I would,” said the passenger. Then, with a sudden ferocity, “and you +too!” + +The driver said nothing. It was an abstract question which didn't +interest him. + +We saw that we were on delicate ground, and changed the subject for a +while. Then someone else said: + +“I wonder where his missus was? I didn't see any signs of her about, or +any other woman about the place, and we was pretty well all over it.” + +“Must have kept her in the stable,” suggested the Joker. + +“No, she wasn't, for Scotty and that chap on the roof was there after +bags.” + +“She might have been in the loft,” reflected the Joker. + +“There was no loft,” put in a voice from the top of the coach. + +“I say, Mister--Mister man,” said the Joker suddenly to the driver, “Was +his missus sick at all?” + +“I dunno,” replied the driver. “She might have been. He said so, anyway. +I ain't got no call to call a man a liar.” + +“See here,” said the cannibalistic individual to the driver, in the tone +of a man who has made up his mind for a row, “has that shanty-keeper got +a wife at all?” + +“I believe he has.” + +“And is she living with him?” + +“No, she ain't--if yer wanter know.” + +“Then where is she?” + +“I dunno. How am I to know? She left him three or four years ago. She +was in Sydney last time I heard of her. It ain't no affair of mine, +anyways.” + +“And is there any woman about the place at all, driver?” inquired a +professional wanderer reflectively. + +“No--not that I knows on. There useter be a old black gin come pottering +round sometimes, but I ain't seen her lately.” + +“And excuse me, driver, but is there anyone round there at all?” + enquired the professional wanderer, with the air of a conscientious +writer, collecting material for an Australian novel from life, with an +eye to detail. + +“Naw,” said the driver--and recollecting that he was expected to be +civil and obliging to his employers' patrons, he added in surly apology, +“Only the boss and the stableman, that I knows of.” Then repenting +of the apology, he asserted his manhood again, and asked, in a +tone calculated to risk a breach of the peace, “Any more questions, +gentlemen--while the shop's open?” + +There was a long pause. + +“Driver,” asked the Pilgrim appealingly, “was them horses lost at all?” + +“I dunno,” said the driver. “He said they was. He's got the looking +after them. It was nothing to do with me.” + + . . . . . + +“Twelve drinks at sixpence a drink”--said the Joker, as if calculating +to himself--“that's six bob, and, say on an average, four shouts--that's +one pound four. Twelve beds at eighteenpence a bed--that's eighteen +shillings; and say ten bob in various drinks and the stuff we brought +with us, that's two pound twelve. That publican didn't do so bad out of +us in two hours.” + +We wondered how much the driver got out of it, but thought it best not +to ask him. + + . . . . . + +We didn't say much for the rest of the journey. There was the usual man +who thought as much and knew all about it from the first, but he +wasn't appreciated. We suppressed him. One or two wanted to go back and +“stoush” that landlord, and the driver stopped the coach cheerfully at +their request; but they said they'd come across him again and allowed +themselves to be persuaded out of it. It made us feel bad to think how +we had allowed ourselves to be delayed, and robbed, and had sneaked +round on tiptoe, and how we had sat on the inoffensive Pilgrim and his +mate, and all on account of a sick wife who didn't exist. + +The coach arrived at Dead Camel in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and +distrust, and we spread ourselves over the train and departed. + + + + +A Gentleman Sharper and Steelman Sharper + + + +Steelman and Smith had been staying at the hotel for several days in the +dress and character of bushies down for what they considered a spree. +The gentleman sharper from the Other Side had been hanging round +them for three days now. Steelman was the more sociable, and, to all +appearances, the greener of the two bush mates; but seemed rather +too much under the influence of Smith, who was reserved, suspicious, +self-contained, or sulky. He almost scowled at Gentleman Sharper's +“Good-morning!” and “Fine day!”, replied in monosyllables and turned +half away with an uneasy, sullen, resentful hump of his shoulder and +shuffle of his feet. + +Steelman took Smith for a stroll on the round, bald tussock hills +surrounding the city, and rehearsed him for the last act until after +sundown. + +Gentleman Sharper was lounging, with a cigar, on the end of the balcony, +where he had been contentedly contemplating the beautiful death of day. +His calm, classic features began to whiten (and sharpen) in the frosty +moonlight. + +Steelman and Smith sat on deck-chairs behind a half-screen of ferns +on the other end of the balcony, smoked their after-dinner smoke, and +talked in subdued tones as befitted the time and the scene--great, +softened, misty hills in a semicircle, and the water and harbour lights +in moonlight. + +The other boarders were loitering over dinner, in their rooms, or gone +out; the three were alone on the balcony, which was a rear one. + +Gentleman Sharper moved his position, carelessly, noiselessly, yet +quickly, until he leaned on the rail close to the ferns and could +overhear every word the bushies said. He had dropped his cigar +overboard, and his scented handkerchief behind a fern-pot en route. + +“But he looks all right, and acts all right, and talks all right--and +shouts all right,” protested Steelman. “He's not stumped, for I saw +twenty or thirty sovereigns when he shouted; and he doesn't seem to care +a damn whether we stand in with him or not.” + +“There you are! That's just where it is!” said Smith, with some +logic, but in a tone a wife uses in argument (which tone, by the way, +especially if backed by logic or common sense, makes a man wild sooner +than anything else in this world of troubles). + +Steelman jerked his chair half-round in disgust. “That's you!” he +snorted, “always suspicious! Always suspicious of everybody and +everything! If I found myself shot into a world where I couldn't trust +anybody I'd shoot myself out of it. Life would be worse than not worth +living. Smith, you'll never make money, except by hard graft--hard, +bullocking, nigger-driving graft like we had on that damned railway +section for the last six months, up to our knees in water all winter, +and all for a paltry cheque of one-fifty--twenty of that gone already. +How do you expect to make money in this country if you won't take +anything for granted, except hard cash? I tell you, Smith, there's +a thousand pounds lost for every one gained or saved by trusting too +little. How did Vanderbilt and----” + +Steelman elaborated to a climax, slipping a glance warily, once or +twice, out of the tail of his eye through the ferns, low down. + +“There never was a fortune made that wasn't made by chancing it.” + +He nudged Smith to come to the point. Presently Smith asked, sulkily: + +“Well, what was he saying?” + +“I thought I told you! He says he's behind the scenes in this gold boom, +and, if he had a hundred pounds ready cash to-morrow, he'd make three of +it before Saturday. He said he could put one-fifty to one-fifty.” + +“And isn't he worth three hundred?” + +“Didn't I tell you,” demanded Steelman, with an impatient ring, and +speaking rapidly, “that he lost his mail in the wreck of the 'Tasman'? +You know she went down the day before yesterday, and the divers haven't +got at the mails yet.” + +“Yes.... But why doesn't he wire to Sydney for some stuff?” + +“I'm----! Well, I suppose I'll have to have patience with a born +natural. Look here, Smith, the fact of the matter is that he's a sort of +black-sheep--sent out on the remittance system, if the truth is known, +and with letters of introduction to some big-bugs out here--that +explains how he gets to know these wire-pullers behind the boom. His +people have probably got the quarterly allowance business fixed hard +and tight with a bank or a lawyer in Sydney; and there'll have to be +enquiries about the lost 'draft' (as he calls a cheque) and a letter or +maybe a cable home to England; and it might take weeks.” + +“Yes,” said Smith, hesitatingly. “That all sounds right enough. +But”--with an inspiration--“why don't he go to one of these big-bug +boomsters he knows--that he got letters of introduction to--and get him +to fix him up?” + +“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Steelman, hopelessly. “Listen to him! Can't you +see that they're the last men he wants to let into his game? Why, he +wants to use THEM! They're the mugs as far as he is concerned!” + +“Oh--I see!” said Smith, after hesitating, and rather slowly--as if he +hadn't quite finished seeing yet. + +Steelman glanced furtively at the fern-screen, and nudged Smith again. + +“He said if he had three hundred, he'd double it by Saturday?” + +“That's what he said,” replied Steelman, seeming by his tone to be +losing interest in the conversation. + +“And... well, if he had a hundred he could double that, I suppose.” + +“Yes. What are you driving at now?” + +“If he had twenty----” + +“Oh, God! I'm sick of you, Smith. What the----!” + +“Hold on. Let me finish. I was only going to say that I'm willing to put +up a fiver, and you put up another fiver, and if he doubles that for us +then we can talk about standing in with him with a hundred--provided he +can show his hundred.” + +After some snarling Steelman said: “Well, I'll try him! Now are you +satisfied?”... + +“He's moved off now,” he added in a whisper; “but stay here and talk a +bit longer.” + +Passing through the hall they saw Gentleman Sharper standing carelessly +by the door of the private bar. He jerked his head in the direction of +drinks. Steelman accepted the invitation--Smith passed on. Steelman took +the opportunity to whisper to the Sharper--“I've been talking that over +with my mate, and----” + +“Come for a stroll,” suggested the professional. + +“I don't mind,” said Steelman. + +“Have a cigar?” and they passed out. + +When they returned Steelman went straight to the room he occupied with +Smith. + +“How much stuff have we got, Smith?” + +“Nine pounds seventeen and threepence.” + +Steelman gave an exclamation of disapproval with that state of financial +affairs. He thought a second. “I know the barman here, and I think he +knows me. I'll chew his lug for a bob or may be a quid.” + +Twenty minutes later he went to Gentleman Sharper's room with ten +pounds--in very dirty Bank of New Zealand notes--such as those with +which bush contractors pay their men. + +Two mornings later the sharper suggested a stroll. Steelman went with +him, with a face carefully made up to hear the worst. + +After walking a hundred yards in a silence which might have been +ominous--and was certainly pregnant--the sharper said: + +“Well... I tried the water.” + +“Yes!” said Steelman in a nervous tone. “And how did you find it?” + +“Just as warm as I thought. Warm for a big splash.” + +“How? Did you lose the ten quid?” + +“Lose it! What did you take me for? I put ten to your ten as I told you +I would. I landed 50 Pounds----” + +“Fifty pounds for twenty?” + +“That's the tune of it--and not much of a tune, either. My God! If I'd +only had that thousand of mine by me, or even half of it, I'd have made +a pile!” + +“Fifty pounds for twenty!” cried Steelman excitedly. “Why, that's grand! +And to think we chaps have been grafting like niggers all our lives! By +God, we'll stand in with you for all we've got!” + +“There's my hand on it,” as they reached the hotel. + +“If you come to my room I'll give you the 25 Pounds now, if you like.” + +“Oh, that's all right,” exclaimed Steelman impulsively; “you mustn't +think I don't----” + +“That's all right. Don't you say any more about it. You'd best have the +stuff to-night to show your mate.” + +“Perhaps so; he's a suspicious fool, but I made a bargain with him about +our last cheque. He can hang on to the stuff, and I can't. If I'd been +on my own I'd have blued it a week ago. Tell you what I'll do--we'll +call our share (Smith's and mine) twenty quid. You take the odd fiver +for your trouble.” + +“That looks fair enough. We'll call it twenty guineas to you and your +mate. We'll want him, you know.” + +In his own and Smith's room Steelman thoughtfully counted twenty-one +sovereigns on the toilet-table cover, and left them there in a pile. + +He stretched himself, scratched behind his ear, and blinked at the money +abstractedly. Then he asked, as if the thought just occurred to him: “By +the way, Smith, do you see those yellow boys?” + +Smith saw. He had been sitting on the bed with a studiously vacant +expression. It was Smith's policy not to seem, except by request, to +take any interest in, or, in fact, to be aware of anything unusual that +Steelman might be doing--from patching his pants to reading poetry. + +“There's twenty-one sovereigns there!” remarked Steelman casually. + +“Yes?” + +“Ten of 'em's yours.” + +“Thank yer, Steely.” + +“And,” added Steelman, solemnly and grimly, “if you get taken down for +'em, or lose 'em out of the top-hole in your pocket, or spend so much as +a shilling in riotous living, I'll stoush you, Smith.” + +Smith didn't seem interested. They sat on the beds opposite each other +for two or three minutes, in something of the atmosphere that pervades +things when conversation has petered out and the dinner-bell is expected +to ring. Smith screwed his face and squeezed a pimple on his throat; +Steelman absently counted the flies on the wall. Presently Steelman, +with a yawning sigh, lay back on the pillow with his hands clasped under +his head. + +“Better take a few quid, Smith, and get that suit you were looking +at the other day. Get a couple of shirts and collars, and some socks; +better get a hat while you're at it--yours is a disgrace to your +benefactor. And, I say, go to a chemist and get some cough stuff for +that churchyarder of yours--we've got no use for it just now, and it +makes me sentimental. I'll give you a cough when you want one. Bring me +a syphon of soda, some fruit, and a tract.” + +“A what?” + +“A tract. Go on. Start your boots.” + +While Smith was gone, Steelman paced the room with a strange, worried, +haunted expression. He divided the gold that was left--(Smith had taken +four pounds)--and put ten sovereigns in a pile on the extreme corner +of the table. Then he walked up and down, up and down the room, arms +tightly folded, and forehead knitted painfully, pausing abruptly now +and then by the table to stare at the gold, until he heard Smith's step. +Then his face cleared; he sat down and counted flies. + +Smith was undoing and inspecting the parcels, having placed the syphon +and fruit on the table. Behind his back Steelman hurriedly opened a +leather pocketbook and glanced at the portrait of a woman and child and +at the date of a post-office order receipt. + +“Smith,” said Steelman, “we're two honest, ignorant, green coves; +hard-working chaps from the bush.” + +“Yes.” + +“It doesn't matter whether we are or not--we are as far as the world +is concerned. Now we've grafted like bullocks, in heat and wet, for six +months, and made a hundred and fifty, and come down to have a bit of a +holiday before going back to bullock for another six months or a year. +Isn't that so, Smith?” + +“Yes.” + +“You could take your oath on it?” + +“Yes.” + +“Well, it doesn't matter if it is so or not--it IS so, so far as the +world is concerned. Now we've paid our way straight. We've always been +pretty straight anyway, even if we are a pair of vagabonds, and I don't +half like this new business; but it had to be done. If I hadn't taken +down that sharper you'd have lost confidence in me and wouldn't have +been able to mask your feelings, and I'd have had to stoush you. We're +two hard-working, innocent bushies, down for an innocent spree, and we +run against a cold-blooded professional sharper, a paltry sneak and +a coward, who's got neither the brains nor the pluck to work in the +station of life he togs himself for. He tries to do us out of our +hard-earned little hundred and fifty--no matter whether we had it or +not--and I'm obliged to take him down. Serve him right for a crawler. +You haven't the least idea what I'm driving at, Smith, and that's the +best of it. I've driven a nail of my life home, and no pincers ever made +will get it out.” + +“Why, Steely, what's the matter with you?” + +Steelman rose, took up the pile of ten sovereigns, and placed it neatly +on top of the rest. + +“Put the stuff away, Smith.” + +After breakfast next morning, Gentleman Sharper hung round a bit, and +then suggested a stroll. But Steelman thought the weather looked +too bad, so they went on the balcony for a smoke. They talked of the +weather, wrecks, and things, Steelman leaning with his elbows on the +balcony rail, and Sharper sociably and confidently in the same position +close beside him. But the professional was evidently growing uneasy in +his mind; his side of the conversation grew awkward and disjointed, +and he made the blunder of drifting into an embarrassing silence before +coming to the point. He took one elbow from the rail, and said, with a +bungling attempt at carelessness which was made more transparent by the +awkward pause before it: + +“Ah, well, I must see to my correspondence. By the way, when could you +make it convenient to let me have that hundred? The shares are starting +up the last rise now, and we've got no time to lose if we want to double +it.” + +Steelman turned his face to him and winked once--a very hard, tight, +cold wink--a wink in which there was no humour: such a wink as Steelman +had once winked at a half-drunken bully who was going to have a lark +with Smith. + +The sharper was one of those men who pull themselves together in a bad +cause, as they stagger from the blow. But he wanted to think this time. + +Later on he approached Steelman quietly and proposed partnership. But +Steelman gave him to understand (as between themselves) that he wasn't +taking on any pupils just then. + + + + +An Incident at Stiffner's + + + +They called him “Stiffner” because he used, long before, to get a living +by poisoning wild dogs near the Queensland border. The name stuck to +him closer than misfortune did, for when he rose to the proud and +independent position of landlord and sole proprietor of an out-back pub +he was Stiffner still, and his place was “Stiffner's”--widely known. + +They do say that the name ceased not to be applicable--that it fitted +even better than in the old dingo days, but--well, they do say so. All +we can say is that when a shearer arrived with a cheque, and had a drink +or two, he was almost invariably seized with a desire to camp on the +premises for good, spend his cheque in the shortest possible time, and +forcibly shout for everything within hail--including the Chinaman cook +and Stiffner's disreputable old ram. + +The shanty was of the usual kind, and the scenery is as easily disposed +of. There was a great grey plain stretching away from the door in front, +and a mulga scrub from the rear; and in that scrub, not fifty yards from +the kitchen door, were half a dozen nameless graves. + +Stiffner was always drunk, and Stiffner's wife--a hard-featured +Amazon--was boss. The children were brought up in a detached cottage, +under the care of a “governess”. + +Stiffner had a barmaid as a bait for chequemen. She came from Sydney, +they said, and her name was Alice. She was tall, boyishly handsome, and +characterless; her figure might be described as “fine” or “strapping”, +but her face was very cold--nearly colourless. She was one of those +selfishly sensual women--thin lips, and hard, almost vacant grey eyes; +no thought of anything but her own pleasures, none for the man's. Some +shearers would roughly call her “a squatter's girl”. But she “drew”; +she was handsome where women are scarce--very handsome, thought a +tall, melancholy-looking jackeroo, whose evil spirit had drawn him to +Stiffner's and the last shilling out of his pocket. + +Over the great grey plain, about a fortnight before, had come “Old +Danny”, a station hand, for his semi-annual spree, and one “Yankee Jack” + and his mate, shearers with horses, travelling for grass; and, about a +week later, the Sydney jackeroo. There was also a sprinkling of assorted +swagmen, who came in through the scrub and went out across the plain, +or came in over the plain and went away through the scrub, according to +which way their noses led them for the time being. + +There was also, for one day, a tall, freckled native (son of a +neighbouring “cocky”), without a thought beyond the narrow horizon +within which he lived. He had a very big opinion of himself in a very +small mind. He swaggered into the breakfast-room and round the table to +his place with an expression of ignorant contempt on his phiz, his +snub nose in the air and his under lip out. But during the meal he +condescended to ask the landlord if he'd noticed that there horse that +chap was ridin' yesterday; and Stiffner having intimated that he had, +the native entertained the company with his opinion of that horse, and +of a certain “youngster” he was breaking in at home, and divers other +horses, mostly his or his father's, and of a certain cattle slut, &c.... +He spoke at the landlord, but to the company, most of the time. After +breakfast he swaggered round some more, but condescended to “shove” + his hand into his trousers, “pull” out a “bob” and “chuck” it into the +(blanky) hat for a pool. Those words express the thing better than any +others we can think of. Finally, he said he must be off; and, there +being no opposition to his departure, he chucked his saddle on to his +horse, chucked himself into the saddle, said “s'long,” and slithered +off. And no one missed him. + +Danny had been there a fortnight, and consequently his personal +appearance was not now worth describing--it was better left alone, +for the honour of the bush. His hobby was that he was the “stranger's +friend”, as he put it. He'd welcome “the stranger” and chum with him, +and shout for him to an unlimited extent, and sympathise with him, hear +of jobs or a “show” for him, assure him twenty times a day that he was +his friend, give him hints and advice more or less worthless, make him +drunk if possible, and keep him so while the cheque lasted; in short, +Danny would do almost anything for the stranger except lend him a +shilling, or give him some rations to carry him on. He'd promise that +many times a day, but he'd sooner spend five pounds on drink for a man +than give him a farthing. + +Danny's cheque was nearly gone, and it was time he was gone too; in +fact, he had received, and was still receiving, various hints to that +effect, some of them decidedly pointed, especially the more recent ones. +But Danny was of late becoming foolishly obstinate in his sprees, and +less disposed to “git” when a landlord had done with him. He saw the +hints plainly enough, but had evidently made up his mind to be doggedly +irresponsive. It is a mistake to think that drink always dulls a +man's feelings. Some natures are all the more keenly sensitive when +alcoholically poisoned. + +Danny was always front man at the shanty while his cheque was fresh--at +least, so he was given to understand, and so he apparently understood. +He was then allowed to say and do what he liked almost, even to mauling +the barmaid about. There was scarcely any limit to the free and easy +manner in which you could treat her, so long as your money lasted. She +wouldn't be offended; it wasn't business to be so--“didn't pay.” But, as +soon as your title to the cheque could be decently shelved, you had to +treat her like a lady. Danny knew this--none better; but he had been +treated with too much latitude, and rushed to his destruction. + +It was Sunday afternoon, but that made no difference in things at the +shanty. Dinner was just over. The men were in the mean little parlour +off the bar, interested in a game of cards, and Alice sat in one corner +sewing. Danny was “acting the goat” round the fireplace; as ill-luck +would have it, his attention was drawn to a basket of clean linen which +stood on the side table, and from it, with sundry winks and grimaces, +he gingerly lifted a certain garment of ladies' underwear--to put the +matter decently. He held it up between his forefingers and thumbs, and +cracked a rough, foolish joke--no matter what it was. The laugh didn't +last long. Alice sprang to her feet, flinging her work aside, and struck +a stage attitude--her right arm thrown out and the forefinger pointing +rigidly, and rather crookedly, towards the door. + +“Leave the room!” she snapped at Danny. “Leave the room! How dare you +talk like that before me-e-ee!” + +Danny made a step and paused irresolutely. He was sober enough to feel +the humiliation of his position, and having once been a man of spirit, +and having still the remnants of manhood about him, he did feel it. He +gave one pitiful, appealing look at her face, but saw no mercy there. +She stamped her foot again, jabbed her forefinger at the door, and said, +“Go-o-o!” in a tone that startled the majority of the company nearly as +much as it did Danny. Then Yankee Jack threw down his cards, rose from +the table, laid his strong, shapely right hand--not roughly--on Danny's +ragged shoulder, and engineered the drunk gently through the door. + +“You's better go out for a while, Danny,” he said; “there wasn't much +harm in what you said, but your cheque's gone, and that makes all the +difference. It's time you went back to the station. You've got to be +careful what you say now.” + +When Jack returned to the parlour the barmaid had a smile for him; but +he didn't take it. He went and stood before the fire, with his foot +resting on the fender and his elbow on the mantelshelf, and looked +blackly at a print against the wall before his face. + +“The old beast!” said Alice, referring to Danny. “He ought to be kicked +off the place!” + +“HE'S AS GOOD AS YOU!” + +The voice was Jack's; he flung the stab over his shoulder, and with it a +look that carried all the contempt he felt. + +She gasped, looked blankly from face to face, and witheringly at the +back of Jack's head; but that didn't change colour or curl the least +trifle less closely. + +“Did you hear that?” she cried, appealing to anyone. “You're a nice lot +o' men, you are, to sit there and hear a woman insulted, and not one of +you man enough to take her part--cowards!” + +The Sydney jackeroo rose impulsively, but Jack glanced at him, and he +sat down again. She covered her face with her hands and ran hysterically +to her room. + +That afternoon another bushman arrived with a cheque, and shouted five +times running at a pound a shout, and at intervals during the rest of +the day when they weren't fighting or gambling. + +Alice had “got over her temper” seemingly, and was even kind to the +humble and contrite Danny, who became painfully particular with his +“Thanky, Alice”--and afterwards offensive with his unnecessarily +frequent threats to smash the first man who insulted her. + +But let us draw the curtain close before that Sunday afternoon at +Stiffner's, and hold it tight. Behind it the great curse of the West is +in evidence, the chief trouble of unionism--drink, in its most selfish, +barren, and useless form. + + . . . . . + +All was quiet at Stiffner's. It was after midnight, and Stiffner lay +dead-drunk on the broad of his back on the long moonlit verandah, +with all his patrons asleep around him in various grotesque positions. +Stiffner's ragged grey head was on a cushion, and a broad maudlin smile +on his red, drink-sodden face, the lower half of which was bordered by +a dirty grey beard, like that of a frilled lizard. The red handkerchief +twisted round his neck had a ghastly effect in the bright moonlight, +making him look as if his throat was cut. The smile was the one he +went to sleep with when his wife slipped the cushion under his head and +thoughtfully removed the loose change from about his person. Near him +lay a heap that was Danny, and spread over the bare boards were the +others, some with heads pillowed on their swags, and every man about as +drunk as his neighbour. Yankee Jack lay across the door of the barmaid's +bedroom, with one arm bent under his head, the other lying limp on the +doorstep, his handsome face turned out to the bright moonlight. The +“family” were sound asleep in the detached cottage, and Alice--the only +capable person on the premises--was left to put out the lamps and “shut +up” for the night. She extinguished the light in the bar, came out, +locked the door, and picked her way among and over the drunkards to the +end of the verandah. She clasped her hands behind her head, stretched +herself, and yawned, and then stood for a few moments looking out into +the night, which softened the ragged line of mulga to right and +left, and veiled the awful horizon of that great plain with which the +“traveller” commenced, or ended, the thirty-mile “dry stretch”. Then she +moved towards her own door; before it she halted and stood, with folded +arms, looking down at the drunken Adonis at her feet. + +She breathed a long breath with a sigh in it, went round to the back, +and presently returned with a buggy-cushion, which she slipped under his +head--her face close to his--very close. Then she moved his arms gently +off the threshold, stepped across him into her room, and locked the door +behind her. + +There was an uneasy movement in the heap that stood, or lay, for Danny. +It stretched out, turned over, struggled to its hands and knees, and +became an object. Then it crawled to the wall, against which it +slowly and painfully up-ended itself, and stood blinking round for +the water-bag, which hung from the verandah rafters in a line with its +shapeless red nose. It staggered forward, held on by the cords, felt +round the edge of the bag for the tot, and drank about a quart of water. +Then it staggered back against the wall, stood for a moment muttering +and passing its hand aimlessly over its poor ruined head, and finally +collapsed into a shapeless rum-smelling heap and slept once more. + +The jackeroo at the end of the verandah had awakened from his drunken +sleep, but had not moved. He lay huddled on his side, with his head on +the swag; the whole length of the verandah was before him; his eyes +were wide open, but his face was in the shade. Now he rose painfully and +stood on the ground outside, with his hands in his pockets, and gazed +out over the open for a while. He breathed a long breath, too--with a +groan in it. Then he lifted his swag quietly from the end of the floor, +shouldered it, took up his water-bag and billy, and sneaked over the +road, away from the place, like a thief. He struck across the plain, and +tramped on, hour after hour, mile after mile, till the bright moon went +down with a bright star in attendance and the other bright stars waned, +and he entered the timber and tramped through it to the “cleared road”, +which stretched far and wide for twenty miles before him, with ghostly +little dust-clouds at short intervals ahead, where the frightened +rabbits crossed it. And still he went doggedly on, with the ghastly +daylight on him--like a swagman's ghost out late. And a mongrel followed +faithfully all the time unnoticed, and wondering, perhaps, at his +master. + +“What was yer doin' to that girl yesterday?” asked Danny of Yankee Jack +next evening, as they camped on the far side of the plain. “What was you +chaps sayin' to Alice? I heerd her cryin' in her room last night.” + +But they reckoned that he had been too drunk to hear anything except an +invitation to come and have another drink; and so it passed. + + + + +The Hero of Redclay + + + +The “boss-over-the-board” was leaning with his back to the wall between +two shoots, reading a reference handed to him by a green-hand applying +for work as picker-up or woolroller--a shed rouseabout. It was terribly +hot. I was slipping past to the rolling-tables, carrying three fleeces +to save a journey; we were only supposed to carry two. The boss stopped +me: + +“You've got three fleeces there, young man?” + +“Yes.” + +Notwithstanding the fact that I had just slipped a light ragged fleece +into the belly-wool and “bits” basket, I felt deeply injured, and +righteously and fiercely indignant at being pulled up. It was a +fearfully hot day. + +“If I catch you carrying three fleeces again,” said the boss quietly, +“I'll give you the sack.” + +“I'll take it now if you like,” I said. + +He nodded. “You can go on picking-up in this man's place,” he said +to the jackeroo, whose reference showed him to be a non-union man--a +“free-labourer”, as the pastoralists had it, or, in plain shed terms, “a +blanky scab”. He was now in the comfortable position of a non-unionist +in a union shed who had jumped into a sacked man's place. + +Somehow the lurid sympathy of the men irritated me worse than the +boss-over-the-board had done. It must have been on account of the heat, +as Mitchell says. I was sick of the shed and the life. It was within a +couple of days of cut-out, so I told Mitchell--who was shearing--that +I'd camp up the Billabong and wait for him; got my cheque, rolled up +my swag, got three days' tucker from the cook, said so-long to him, and +tramped while the men were in the shed. + +I camped at the head of the Billabong where the track branched, one +branch running to Bourke, up the river, and the other out towards the +Paroo--and hell. + +About ten o'clock the third morning Mitchell came along with his cheque +and his swag, and a new sheep-pup, and his quiet grin; and I wasn't too +pleased to see that he had a shearer called “the Lachlan” with him. + +The Lachlan wasn't popular at the shed. He was a brooding, unsociable +sort of man, and it didn't make any difference to the chaps whether he +had a union ticket or not. It was pretty well known in the shed--there +were three or four chaps from the district he was reared in--that he'd +done five years hard for burglary. What surprised me was that Jack +Mitchell seemed thick with him; often, when the Lachlan was sitting +brooding and smoking by himself outside the hut after sunset, Mitchell +would perch on his heels alongside him and yarn. But no one else took +notice of anything Mitchell did out of the common. + +“Better camp with us till the cool of the evening,” said Mitchell to +the Lachlan, as they slipped their swags. “Plenty time for you to start +after sundown, if you're going to travel to-night.” + +So the Lachlan was going to travel all night and on a different track. I +felt more comfortable, and put the billy on. I did not care so much what +he'd been or had done, but I was green and soft yet, and his presence +embarrassed me. + +They talked shearing, sheds, tracks, and a little unionism--the Lachlan +speaking in a quiet voice and with a lot of sound, common sense, it +seemed to me. He was tall and gaunt, and might have been thirty, or even +well on in the forties. His eyes were dark brown and deep set, and had +something of the dead-earnest sad expression you saw in the eyes of +union leaders and secretaries--the straight men of the strikes of '90 +and '91. I fancied once or twice I saw in his eyes the sudden furtive +look of the “bad egg” when a mounted trooper is spotted near the shed; +but perhaps this was prejudice. And with it all there was about the +Lachlan something of the man who has lost all he had and the chances +of all he was ever likely to have, and is past feeling, or caring, or +flaring up--past getting mad about anything--something, all the same, +that warned men not to make free with him. + +He and Mitchell fished along the Billabong all the afternoon; I fished +a little, and lay about the camp and read. I had an instinct that the +Lachlan saw I didn't cotton on to his camping with us, though he wasn't +the sort of man to show what he saw or felt. After tea, and a smoke at +sunset, he shouldered his swag, nodded to me as if I was an accidental +but respectful stranger at a funeral that belonged to him, and took the +outside track. Mitchell walked along the track with him for a mile or +so, while I poked round and got some boughs down for a bed, and fed and +studied the collie pup that Jack had bought from the shearers' cook. + +I saw them stop and shake hands out on the dusty clearing, and they +seemed to take a long time about it; then Mitchell started back, and +the other began to dwindle down to a black peg and then to a dot on the +sandy plain, that had just a hint of dusk and dreamy far-away gloaming +on it between the change from glaring day to hard, bare, broad +moonlight. + +I thought Mitchell was sulky, or had got the blues, when he came back; +he lay on his elbow smoking, with his face turned from the camp towards +the plain. After a bit I got wild--if Mitchell was going to go on like +that he might as well have taken his swag and gone with the Lachlan. I +don't know exactly what was the matter with me that day, and at last I +made up my mind to bring the thing to a head. + +“You seem mighty thick with the Lachlan,” I said. + +“Well, what's the matter with that?” asked Mitchell. “It ain't the first +felon I've been on speaking terms with. I borrowed half-a-caser off a +murderer once, when I was in a hole and had no one else to go to; and +the murderer hadn't served his time, neither. I've got nothing against +the Lachlan, except that he's a white man and bears a faint family +resemblance to a certain branch of my tribe.” + +I rolled out my swag on the boughs, got my pipe, tobacco, and matches +handy in the crown of a spare hat, and lay down. + +Mitchell got up, re-lit his pipe at the fire, and mooned round for +a while, with his hands behind him, kicking sticks out of the road, +looking out over the plain, down along the Billabong, and up through the +mulga branches at the stars; then he comforted the pup a bit, shoved the +fire together with his toe, stood the tea-billy on the coals, and came +and squatted on the sand by my head. + +“Joe! I'll tell you a yarn.” + +“All right; fire away! Has it got anything to do with the Lachlan?” + +“No. It's got nothing to do with the Lachlan now; but it's about a chap +he knew. Don't you ever breathe a word of this to the Lachlan or anyone, +or he'll get on to me.” + +“All right. Go ahead.” + +“You know I've been a good many things in my time. I did a deal of +house-painting at one time; I was a pretty smart brush hand, and made +money at it. Well, I had a run of work at a place called Redclay, on the +Lachlan side. You know the sort of town--two pubs, a general store, a +post office, a blacksmith's shop, a police station, a branch bank, and +a dozen private weatherboard boxes on piles, with galvanized-iron tops, +besides the humpies. There was a paper there, too, called the 'Redclay +Advertiser' (with which was incorporated the 'Geebung Chronicle'), and +a Roman Catholic church, a Church of England, and a Wesleyan chapel. +Now you see more of private life in the house-painting line than in +any other--bar plumbing and gasfitting; but I'll tell you about my +house-painting experiences some other time. + +“There was a young chap named Jack Drew editing the 'Advertiser' then. +He belonged to the district, but had been sent to Sydney to a grammar +school when he was a boy. He was between twenty-five and thirty; had +knocked round a good deal, and gone the pace in Sydney. He got on as a +boy reporter on one of the big dailies; he had brains and could +write rings round a good many, but he got in with a crowd that called +themselves 'Bohemians', and the drink got a hold on him. The paper stuck +to him as long as it could (for the sake of his brains), but they had to +sack him at last. + +“He went out back, as most of them do, to try and work out their +salvation, and knocked round amongst the sheds. He 'picked up' in one +shed where I was shearing, and we carried swags together for a couple +of months. Then he went back to the Lachlan side, and prospected amongst +the old fields round there with his elder brother Tom, who was all there +was left of his family. Tom, by the way, broke his heart digging Jack +out of a cave in a drive they were working, and died a few minutes after +the rescue. [*] But that's another yarn. Jack Drew had a bad spree after +that; then he went to Sydney again, got on his old paper, went to the +dogs, and a Parliamentary push that owned some city fly-blisters and +country papers sent him up to edit the 'Advertiser' at two quid a +week. He drank again, and no wonder--you don't know what it is to run a +'Geebung Advocate' or 'Mudgee Budgee Chronicle', and live there. He was +about the same build as the Lachlan, but stouter, and had something the +same kind of eyes; but he was ordinarily as careless and devil-may-care +as the Lachlan is grumpy and quiet. + + * See “When the Sun Went Down”, in “While the + Billy Boils”.-- + +“There was a doctor there, called Dr. Lebinski. They said he was a +Polish exile. He was fifty or sixty, a tall man, with the set of an +old soldier when he stood straight; but he mostly walked with his hands +behind him, studying the ground. Jack Drew caught that trick off +him towards the end. They were chums in a gloomy way, and kept to +themselves--they were the only two men with brains in that town. They +drank and fought the drink together. The Doctor was too gloomy and +impatient over little things to be popular. Jack Drew talked too +straight in the paper, and in spite of his proprietors--about pub +spieling and such things--and was too sarcastic in his progress +committee, town council, and toady reception reports. The Doctor had a +hawk's nose, pointed grizzled beard and moustache, and steely-grey eyes +with a haunted look in them sometimes (especially when he glanced at you +sideways), as if he loathed his fellow men, and couldn't always hide it; +or as if you were the spirit of morphia or opium, or a dead girl he'd +wronged in his youth--or whatever his devil was, beside drink. He was +clever, and drink had brought him down to Redclay. + +“The bank manager was a heavy snob named Browne. He complained of being +a bit dull of hearing in one ear--after you'd yelled at him three or +four times; sometimes I've thought he was as deaf as a book-keeper in +both. He had a wife and youngsters, but they were away on a visit while +I was working in Redclay. His niece--or, rather, his wife's niece--a +girl named Ruth Wilson, did the housekeeping. She was an orphan, +adopted by her aunt, and was general slavey and scape-goat to the +family--especially to the brats, as is often the case. She was rather +pretty, and lady-like, and kept to herself. The women and girls called +her Miss Wilson, and didn't like her. Most of the single men--and some +of the married ones, perhaps--were gone on her, but hadn't the brains +or the pluck to bear up and try their luck. I was gone worse than any, I +think, but had too much experience or common sense. She was very good to +me--used to hand me out cups of tea and plates of sandwiches, or bread +and butter, or cake, mornings and afternoons the whole time I was +painting the bank. The Doctor had known her people and was very kind +to her. She was about the only woman--for she was more woman than +girl--that he'd brighten up and talk for. Neither he nor Jack Drew were +particularly friendly with Browne or his push. + +“The banker, the storekeeper, one of the publicans, the butcher (a +popular man with his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his +head, and nothing in it), the postmaster, and his toady, the lightning +squirter, were the scrub-aristocracy. The rest were crawlers, mostly pub +spielers and bush larrikins, and the women were hags and larrikinesses. +The town lived on cheque-men from the surrounding bush. It was a nice +little place, taking it all round. + +“I remember a ball at the local town hall, where the scrub aristocrats +took one end of the room to dance in and the ordinary scum the other. +It was a saving in music. Some day an Australian writer will come along +who'll remind the critics and readers of Dickens, Carlyle, and Thackeray +mixed, and he'll do justice to these little customs of ours in the +little settled-district towns of Democratic Australia. This sort of +thing came to a head one New Year's Night at Redclay, when there was a +'public' ball and peace on earth and good will towards all men--mostly +on account of a railway to Redclay being surveyed. We were all there. +They'd got the Doc. out of his shell to act as M.C. + +“One of the aristocrats was the daughter of the local storekeeper; +she belonged to the lawn-tennis clique, and they WERE select. For some +reason or other--because she looked upon Miss Wilson as a slavey, or +on account of a fancied slight, or the heat working on ignorance, or on +account of something that comes over girls and women that no son of sin +can account for--this Miss Tea-'n'-sugar tossed her head and refused +Miss Wilson's hand in the first set and so broke the ladies' chain and +the dance. Then there was a to-do. The Doctor held up his hand to stop +the music, and said, very quietly, that he must call upon Miss So-and-so +to apologise to Miss Wilson--or resign the chair. After a lot of fuss +the girl did apologise in a snappy way that was another insult. Jack +Drew gave Miss Wilson his arm and marched her off without a word--I saw +she was almost crying. Some one said, 'Oh, let's go on with the dance.' +The Doctor flashed round on them, but they were too paltry for him, so +he turned on his heel and went out without a word. But I was beneath +them again in social standing, so there was nothing to prevent me from +making a few well-chosen remarks on things in general--which I did; and +broke up that ball, and broke some heads afterwards, and got myself a +good deal of hatred and respect, and two sweethearts; and lost all the +jobs I was likely to get, except at the bank, the Doctor's, and the +Royal. + +“One day it was raining--general rain for a week. Rain, rain, rain, over +ridge and scrub and galvanised iron and into the dismal creeks. I'd done +all my inside work, except a bit under the Doctor's verandah, where he'd +been having some patching and altering done round the glass doors of his +surgery, where he consulted his patients. I didn't want to lose time. It +was a Monday and no day for the Royal, and there was no dust, so it was +a good day for varnishing. I took a pot and brush and went along to give +the Doctor's doors a coat of varnish. The Doctor and Drew were inside +with a fire, drinking whisky and smoking, but I didn't know that when +I started work. The rain roared on the iron roof like the sea. All of a +sudden it held up for a minute, and I heard their voices. The doctor +had been shouting on account of the rain, and forgot to lower his voice. +'Look here, Jack Drew,' he said, 'there are only two things for you +to do if you have any regard for that girl; one is to stop this' (the +liquor I suppose he meant) 'and pull yourself together; and I don't +think you'll do that--I know men. The other is to throw up the +'Advertiser'--it's doing you no good--and clear out.' 'I won't do that,' +says Drew. 'Then shoot yourself,' said the Doctor. '(There's another +flask in the cupboard). You know what this hole is like.... She's a good +true girl--a girl as God made her. I knew her father and mother, and I +tell you, Jack, I'd sooner see her dead than....' The roof roared again. +I felt a bit delicate about the business and didn't like to disturb +them, so I knocked off for the day. + +“About a week before that I was down in the bed of the Redclay Creek +fishing for 'tailers'. I'd been getting on all right with the housemaid +at the 'Royal'--she used to have plates of pudding and hot pie for me on +the big gridiron arrangement over the kitchen range; and after the third +tuck-out I thought it was good enough to do a bit of a bear-up in that +direction. She mentioned one day, yarning, that she liked a stroll by +the creek sometimes in the cool of the evening. I thought she'd be off +that day, so I said I'd go for a fish after I'd knocked off. I thought +I might get a bite. Anyway, I didn't catch Lizzie--tell you about that +some other time. + +“It was Sunday. I'd been fishing for Lizzie about an hour when I saw a +skirt on the bank out of the tail of my eye--and thought I'd got a bite, +sure. But I was had. It was Miss Wilson strolling along the bank in the +sunset, all by her pretty self. She was a slight girl, not very tall, +with reddish frizzled hair, grey eyes, and small, pretty features. She +spoke as if she had more brains than the average, and had been better +educated. Jack Drew was the only young man in Redclay she could talk to, +or who could talk to a girl like her; and that was the whole trouble in +a nutshell. The newspaper office was next to the bank, and I'd seen her +hand cups of tea and cocoa over the fence to his office window more than +once, and sometimes they yarned for a while. + +“She said, 'Good morning, Mr. Mitchell.' + +“I said, 'Good morning, Miss.' + +“There's some girls I can't talk to like I'd talk to other girls. She +asked me if I'd caught any fish, and I said, 'No, Miss.' She asked me if +it wasn't me down there fishing with Mr. Drew the other evening, and I +said, 'Yes--it was me.' Then presently she asked me straight if he +was fishing down the creek that afternoon? I guessed they'd been down +fishing for each other before. I said, 'No, I thought he was out of +town.' I knew he was pretty bad at the Royal. I asked her if she'd like +to have a try with my line, but she said No, thanks, she must be going; +and she went off up the creek. I reckoned Jack Drew had got a bite and +landed her. I felt a bit sorry for her, too. + +“The next Saturday evening after the rainy Monday at the Doctor's, I +went down to fish for tailers--and Lizzie. I went down under the banks +to where there was a big she-oak stump half in the water, going quietly, +with an idea of not frightening the fish. I was just unwinding the line +from my rod, when I noticed the end of another rod sticking out from +the other side of the stump; and while I watched it was dropped into the +water. Then I heard a murmur, and craned my neck round the back of +the stump to see who it was. I saw the back view of Jack Drew and +Miss Wilson; he had his arm round her waist, and her head was on his +shoulder. She said, 'I WILL trust you, Jack--I know you'll give up the +drink for my sake. And I'll help you, and we'll be so happy!' or words +in that direction. A thunderstorm was coming on. The sky had darkened +up with a great blue-black storm-cloud rushing over, and they hadn't +noticed it. I didn't mind, and the fish bit best in a storm. But just +as she said 'happy' came a blinding flash and a crash that shook the +ridges, and the first drops came peltering down. They jumped up and +climbed the bank, while I perched on the she-oak roots over the water to +be out of sight as they passed. Half way to the town I saw them standing +in the shelter of an old stone chimney that stood alone. He had his +overcoat round her and was sheltering her from the wind....” + +“Smoke-oh, Joe. The tea's stewing.” + +Mitchell got up, stretched himself, and brought the billy and pint-pots +to the head of my camp. The moon had grown misty. The plain horizon +had closed in. A couple of boughs, hanging from the gnarled and blasted +timber over the billabong, were the perfect shapes of two men hanging +side by side. Mitchell scratched the back of his neck and looked down at +the pup curled like a glob of mud on the sand in the moonlight, and an +idea struck him. He got a big old felt hat he had, lifted his pup, nose +to tail, fitted it in the hat, shook it down, holding the hat by the +brim, and stood the hat near the head of his doss, out of the moonlight. +“He might get moonstruck,” said Mitchell, “and I don't want that pup +to be a genius.” The pup seemed perfectly satisfied with this new +arrangement. + +“Have a smoke,” said Mitchell. “You see,” he added, with a sly grin, +“I've got to make up the yarn as I go along, and it's hard work. It +seems to begin to remind me of yarns your grandmother or aunt tells of +things that happened when she was a girl--but those yarns are true. You +won't have to listen long now; I'm well on into the second volume. + +“After the storm I hurried home to the tent--I was batching with a +carpenter. I changed my clothes, made a fire in the fire-bucket with +shavings and ends of soft wood, boiled the billy, and had a cup of +coffee. It was Saturday night. My mate was at the Royal; it was cold and +dismal in the tent, and there was nothing to read, so I reckoned I might +as well go up to the Royal, too, and put in the time. + +“I had to pass the Bank on the way. It was the usual weatherboard box +with a galvanised iron top--four rooms and a passage, and a detached +kitchen and wash-house at the back; the front room to the right (behind +the office) was the family bedroom, and the one opposite it was the +living room. The 'Advertiser' office was next door. Jack Drew camped +in a skillion room behind his printing office, and had his meals at the +Royal. I noticed the storm had taken a sheet of iron off the +skillion, and supposed he'd sleep at the Royal that night. Next to the +'Advertiser' office was the police station (still called the Police +Camp) and the Courthouse. Next was the Imperial Hotel, where the scrub +aristocrats went. There was a vacant allotment on the other side of the +Bank, and I took a short cut across this to the Royal. + +“They'd forgotten to pull down the blind of the dining-room window, and +I happened to glance through and saw she had Jack Drew in there and was +giving him a cup of tea. He had a bad cold, I remember, and I suppose +his health had got precious to her, poor girl. As I glanced she stepped +to the window and pulled down the blind, which put me out of face a +bit--though, of course, she hadn't seen me. I was rather surprised at +her having Jack in there, till I heard that the banker, the postmaster, +the constable, and some others were making a night of it at the +Imperial, as they'd been doing pretty often lately--and went on doing +till there was a blow-up about it, and the constable got transferred +Out Back. I used to drink my share then. We smoked and played cards +and yarned and filled 'em up again at the Royal till after one in the +morning. Then I started home. + +“I'd finished giving the Bank a couple of coats of stone-colour that +week, and was cutting in in dark colour round the spouting, doors, and +window-frames that Saturday. My head was pretty clear going home, and as +I passed the place it struck me that I'd left out the only varnish brush +I had. I'd been using it to give the sashes a coat of varnish colour, +and remembered that I'd left it on one of the window-sills--the sill +of her bedroom window, as it happened. I knew I'd sleep in next day, +Sunday, and guessed it would be hot, and I didn't want the varnish tool +to get spoiled; so I reckoned I'd slip in through the side gate, get it, +and take it home to camp and put it in oil. The window sash was jammed, +I remember, and I hadn't been able to get it up more than a couple of +inches to paint the runs of the sash. The grass grew up close under +the window, and I slipped in quietly. I noticed the sash was still up +a couple of inches. Just as I grabbed the brush I heard low voices +inside--Ruth Wilson's and Jack Drew's--in her room. + +“The surprise sent about a pint of beer up into my throat in a lump. I +tip-toed away out of there. Just as I got clear of the gate I saw the +banker being helped home by a couple of cronies. + +“I went home to the camp and turned in, but I couldn't sleep. I lay +think--think--thinking, till I thought all the drink out of my head. I'd +brought a bottle of ale home to last over Sunday, and I drank that. It +only made matters worse. I didn't know how I felt--I--well, I felt as +if I was as good a man as Jack Drew--I--you see I've--you might think it +soft--but I loved that girl, not as I've been gone on other girls, but +in the old-fashioned, soft, honest, hopeless, far-away sort of way; and +now, to tell the straight truth, I thought I might have had her. You +lose a thing through being too straight or sentimental, or not having +enough cheek; and another man comes along with more brass in his blood +and less sentimental rot and takes it up--and the world respects him; +and you feel in your heart that you're a weaker man than he is. Why, +part of the time I must have felt like a man does when a better man +runs away with his wife. But I'd drunk a lot, and was upset and +lonely-feeling that night. + +“Oh, but Redclay had a tremendous sensation next day! Jack Drew, of all +the men in the world, had been caught in the act of robbing the bank. +According to Browne's account in court and in the newspapers, he +returned home that night at about twelve o'clock (which I knew was a +lie, for I saw him being helped home nearer two) and immediately retired +to rest (on top of the quilt, boots and all, I suppose). Some time +before daybreak he was roused by a fancied noise (I suppose it was his +head swelling); he rose, turned up a night lamp (he hadn't lit it, +I'll swear), and went through the dining-room passage and office to +investigate (for whisky and water). He saw that the doors and windows +were secure, returned to bed, and fell asleep again. + +“There is something in a deaf person's being roused easily. I know the +case of a deaf chap who'd start up at a step or movement in the house +when no one else could hear or feel it; keen sense of vibration, I +reckon. Well, just at daybreak (to shorten the yarn) the banker woke +suddenly, he said, and heard a crack like a shot in the house. There was +a loose flooring-board in the passage that went off like a pistol-shot +sometimes when you trod on it; and I guess Jack Drew trod on it, +sneaking out, and he weighed nearly twelve stone. If the truth were +known, he probably heard Browne poking round, tried the window, found +the sash jammed, and was slipping through the passage to the back door. +Browne got his revolver, opened his door suddenly, and caught Drew +standing between the girl's door (which was shut) and the office door, +with his coat on his arm and his boots in his hands. Browne covered him +with his revolver, swore he'd shoot if he moved, and yelled for help. +Drew stood a moment like a man stunned; then he rushed Browne, and in +the struggle the revolver went off, and Drew got hit in the arm. Two of +the mounted troopers--who'd been up looking to the horses for an early +start somewhere--rushed in then, and took Drew. He had nothing to say. +What could he say? He couldn't say he was a blackguard who'd taken +advantage of a poor unprotected girl because she loved him. They found +the back door unlocked, by the way, which was put down to the burglar; +of course Browne couldn't explain that he came home too muddled to lock +doors after him. + +“And the girl? She shrieked and fell when the row started, and they +found her like a log on the floor of her room after it was over. + +“They found in Jack's overcoat pocket a parcel containing a cold chisel, +small screw-wrench, file, and one or two other things that he'd bought +that evening to tinker up the old printing press. I knew that, because +I'd lent him a hand a few nights before, and he told me he'd have to get +the tools. They found some scratches round the key-hole and knob of the +office door that I'd made myself, scraping old splashes of paint off the +brass and hand-plate so as to make a clean finish. Oh, it taught me the +value of circumstantial evidence! If I was judge I wouldn't give a man +till the 'risin' av the coort' on it, any more than I would on the bare +word of the noblest woman breathing. + +“At the preliminary examination Jack Drew said he was guilty. But it +seemed that, according to law, he couldn't be guilty until after he was +committed. So he was committed for trial at the next Quarter Sessions. +The excitement and gabble were worse than the Dean case, or Federation, +and sickened me, for they were all on the wrong track. You lose a lot of +life through being behind the scenes. But they cooled down presently to +wait for the trial. + +“They thought it best to take the girl away from the place where she'd +got the shock; so the Doctor took her to his house, where he had an old +housekeeper who was as deaf as a post--a first class recommendation for +a housekeeper anywhere. He got a nurse from Sydney to attend on Ruth +Wilson, and no one except he and the nurse were allowed to go near +her. She lay like dead, they said, except when she had to be held down +raving; brain fever, they said, brought on by the shock of the attempted +burglary and pistol shot. Dr. Lebinski had another doctor up from Sydney +at his own expense, but nothing could save her--and perhaps it was as +well. She might have finished her life in a lunatic asylum. They were +going to send her to Sydney, to a brain hospital; but she died a week +before the Sessions. She was right-headed for an hour, they said, and +asking all the time for Jack. The Doctor told her he was all right and +was coming--and, waiting and listening for him, she died. + +“The case was black enough against Drew now. I knew he wouldn't have the +pluck to tell the truth now, even if he was that sort of a man. I didn't +know what to do, so I spoke to the Doctor straight. I caught him coming +out of the Royal, and walked along the road with him a bit. I suppose +he thought I was going to show cause why his doors ought to have another +coat of varnish. + +“'Hallo, Mitchell!' he said, 'how's painting?' + +“'Doctor!' I said, 'what am I going to do about this business?' + +“'What business?' + +“'Jack Drew's.' + +“He looked at me sideways--the swift haunted look. Then he walked on +without a word, for half a dozen yards, hands behind, and studying the +dust. Then he asked, quite quietly: + +“'Do you know the truth?' + +“'Yes!' + +“About a dozen yards this time; then he said: + +“'I'll see him in the morning, and see you afterwards,' and he shook +hands and went on home. + +“Next day he came to me where I was doing a job on a step ladder. He +leaned his elbow against the steps for a moment, and rubbed his hand +over his forehead, as if it ached and he was tired. + +“'I've seen him, Mitchell,' he said. + +“'Yes.' + +“'You were mates with him, once, Out Back?' + +“'I was.' + +“'You know Drew's hand-writing?' + +“'I should think so.' + +“He laid a leaf from a pocketbook on top of the steps. I read the +message written in pencil: + +“'To Jack Mitchell.--We were mates on the track. If you know anything of +my affair, don't give it away.--J. D.' + +“I tore the leaf and dropped the bits into the paint-pot. + +“'That's all right, Doctor,' I said; 'but is there no way?' + +“'None.' + +“He turned away, wearily. He'd knocked about so much over the world +that he was past bothering about explaining things or being surprised at +anything. But he seemed to get a new idea about me; he came back to the +steps again, and watched my brush for a while, as if he was thinking, +in a broody sort of way, of throwing up his practice and going in for +house-painting. Then he said, slowly and deliberately: + +“'If she--the girl--had lived, we might have tried to fix it up quietly. +That's what I was hoping for. I don't see how we can help him now, even +if he'd let us. He would never have spoken, anyway. We must let it +go on, and after the trial I'll go to Sydney and see what I can do at +headquarters. It's too late now. You understand, Mitchell?' + +“'Yes. I've thought it out.' + +“Then he went away towards the Royal. + +“And what could Jack Drew or we do? Study it out whatever way you like. +There was only one possible chance to help him, and that was to go to +the judge; and the judge that happened to be on that circuit was a man +who--even if he did listen to the story and believe it--would have felt +inclined to give Jack all the more for what he was charged with. Browne +was out of the question. The day before the trial I went for a long walk +in the bush, but couldn't hit on anything that the Doctor might have +missed. + +“I was in the court--I couldn't keep away. The Doctor was there too. +There wasn't so much of a change in Jack as I expected, only he had the +gaol white in his face already. He stood fingering the rail, as if it +was the edge of a table on a platform and he was a tired and bored and +sleepy chairman waiting to propose a vote of thanks.” + +The only well-known man in Australia who reminds me of Mitchell is Bland +Holt, the comedian. Mitchell was about as good hearted as Bland Holt, +too, under it all; but he was bigger and roughened by the bush. But he +seemed to be taking a heavy part to-night, for, towards the end of his +yarn, he got up and walked up and down the length of my bed, dropping +the sentences as he turned towards me. He'd folded his arms high and +tight, and his face in the moonlight was--well, it was very different +from his careless tone of voice. He was like--like an actor acting +tragedy and talking comedy. Mitchell went on, speaking quickly--his +voice seeming to harden: + + . . . . . + +“The charge was read out--I forget how it went--it sounded like a long +hymn being given out. Jack pleaded guilty. Then he straightened up for +the first time and looked round the court, with a calm, disinterested +look--as if we were all strangers and he was noting the size of the +meeting. And--it's a funny world, ain't it?--everyone of us shifted +or dropped his eyes, just as if we were the felons and Jack the judge. +Everyone except the Doctor; he looked at Jack and Jack looked at him. +Then the Doctor smiled--I can't describe it--and Drew smiled back. It +struck me afterwards that I should have been in that smile. Then the +Doctor did what looked like a strange thing--stood like a soldier with +his hands to Attention. I'd noticed that, whenever he'd made up his mind +to do a thing, he dropped his hands to his sides: it was a sign that he +couldn't be moved. Now he slowly lifted his hand to his forehead, palm +out, saluted the prisoner, turned on his heel, and marched from the +court-room. 'He's boozin' again,' someone whispered. 'He's got a touch +of 'em.' 'My oath, he's ratty!' said someone else. One of the traps +said: + +“'Arder in the car-rt!' + +“The judge gave it to Drew red-hot on account of the burglary being the +cause of the girl's death and the sorrow in a respectable family; then +he gave him five years' hard. + +“It gave me a lot of confidence in myself to see the law of the land +barking up the wrong tree, while only I and the Doctor and the prisoner +knew it. But I've found out since then that the law is often the only +one that knows it's barking up the wrong tree.” + + . . . . . + +Mitchell prepared to turn in. + +“And what about Drew,” I asked. + +“Oh, he did his time, or most of it. The Doctor went to headquarters, +but either a drunken doctor from a geebung town wasn't of much account, +or they weren't taking any romance just then at headquarters. So the +Doctor came back, drank heavily, and one frosty morning they found him +on his back on the bank of the creek, with his face like note-paper +where the blood hadn't dried on it, and an old pistol in his hand--that +he'd used, they said, to shoot Cossacks from horseback when he was a +young dude fighting in the bush in Poland.” + +Mitchell lay silent a good while; then he yawned. + +“Ah, well! It's a lonely track the Lachlan's tramping to-night; but I +s'pose he's got his ghosts with him.” + +I'd been puzzling for the last half-hour to think where I'd met or heard +of Jack Drew; now it flashed on me that I'd been told that Jack Drew was +the Lachlan's real name. + +I lay awake thinking a long time, and wished Mitchell had kept his yarn +for daytime. I felt--well, I felt as if the Lachlan's story should have +been played in the biggest theatre in the world, by the greatest actors, +with music for the intervals and situations--deep, strong music, such as +thrills and lifts a man from his boot soles. And when I got to sleep I +hadn't slept a moment, it seemed to me, when I started wide awake to +see those infernal hanging boughs with a sort of nightmare idea that the +Lachlan hadn't gone, or had come back, and he and Mitchell had hanged +themselves sociably--Mitchell for sympathy and the sake of mateship. + +But Mitchell was sleeping peacefully, in spite of a path of moonlight +across his face--and so was the pup. + + + + +The Darling River + + + +The Darling--which is either a muddy gutter or a second Mississippi--is +about six times as long as the distance, in a straight line, from its +head to its mouth. The state of the river is vaguely but generally +understood to depend on some distant and foreign phenomena to which +bushmen refer in an off-hand tone of voice as “the Queenslan' rains”, +which seem to be held responsible, in a general way, for most of the +out-back trouble. + +It takes less than a year to go up stream by boat to Walgett or Bourke +in a dry season; but after the first three months the passengers +generally go ashore and walk. They get sick of being stuck in the same +sort of place, in the same old way; they grow weary of seeing the same +old “whaler” drop his swag on the bank opposite whenever the boat ties +up for wood; they get tired of lending him tobacco, and listening to his +ideas, which are limited in number and narrow in conception. + +It shortens the journey to get out and walk; but then you will have to +wait so long for your luggage--unless you hump it with you. + +We heard of a man who determined to stick to a Darling boat and travel +the whole length of the river. He was a newspaper man. He started on +his voyage of discovery one Easter in flood-time, and a month later the +captain got bushed between the Darling and South Australian border. The +waters went away before he could find the river again, and left his boat +in a scrub. They had a cargo of rations, and the crew stuck to the craft +while the tucker lasted; when it gave out they rolled up their swags and +went to look for a station, but didn't find one. The captain would study +his watch and the sun, rig up dials and make out courses, and follow +them without success. They ran short of water, and didn't smell any +for weeks; they suffered terrible privations, and lost three of their +number, NOT including the newspaper liar. There are even dark hints +considering the drawing of lots in connection with something too +terrible to mention. They crossed a thirty-mile plain at last, and +sighted a black gin. She led them to a boundary rider's hut, where they +were taken in and provided with rations and rum. + +Later on a syndicate was formed to explore the country and recover the +boat; but they found her thirty miles from the river and about eighteen +from the nearest waterhole deep enough to float her, so they left her +there. She's there still, or else the man that told us about it is the +greatest liar Out Back. + + . . . . . + +Imagine the hull of a North Shore ferry boat, blunted a little at the +ends and cut off about a foot below the water-line, and parallel to it, +then you will have something shaped somewhat like the hull of a Darling +mud-rooter. But the river boat is much stronger. The boat we were on +was built and repaired above deck after the different ideas of many bush +carpenters, of whom the last seemed by his work to have regarded the +original plan with a contempt only equalled by his disgust at the work +of the last carpenter but one. The wheel was boxed in, mostly with round +sapling-sticks fastened to the frame with bunches of nails and spikes +of all shapes and sizes, most of them bent. The general result was +decidedly picturesque in its irregularity, but dangerous to the mental +welfare of any passenger who was foolish enough to try to comprehend +the design; for it seemed as though every carpenter had taken the +opportunity to work in a little abstract idea of his own. + +The way they “dock” a Darling River boat is beautiful for its +simplicity. They choose a place where there are two stout trees about +the boat's length apart, and standing on a line parallel to the river. +They fix pulley-blocks to the trees, lay sliding planks down into the +water, fasten a rope to one end of the steamer, and take the other end +through the block attached to the tree and thence back aboard a second +steamer; then they carry a rope similarly from the other end through the +block on the second tree, and aboard a third boat. At a given signal +one boat leaves for Wentworth, and the other starts for the Queensland +border. The consequence is that craft number one climbs the bank +amid the cheers of the local loafers, who congregate and watch the +proceedings with great interest and approval. The crew pitch tents, and +set to work on the hull, which looks like a big, rough shallow box. + + . . . . . + +We once travelled on the Darling for a hundred miles or so on a boat +called the 'Mud Turtle'--at least, that's what WE called her. She might +reasonably have haunted the Mississippi fifty years ago. She didn't seem +particular where she went, or whether she started again or stopped +for good after getting stuck. Her machinery sounded like a chapter of +accidents and was always out of order, but she got along all the same, +provided the steersman kept her off the bank. + +Her skipper was a young man, who looked more like a drover than a +sailor, and the crew bore a greater resemblance to the unemployed than +to any other body we know of, except that they looked a little +more independent. They seemed clannish, too, with an unemployed or +free-labour sort of isolation. We have an idea that they regarded our +personal appearance with contempt. + + . . . . . + +Above Louth we picked up a “whaler”, who came aboard for the sake of +society and tobacco. Not that he hoped to shorten his journey; he had no +destination. He told us many reckless and unprincipled lies, and gave +us a few ornamental facts. One of them took our fancy, and impressed +us--with its beautiful simplicity, I suppose. He said: “Some miles +above where the Darlin' and the Warrygo runs inter each other, there's a +billygong runnin' right across between the two rivers and makin' a sort +of tryhangular hyland; 'n' I can tel'yer a funny thing about it.” Here +he paused to light his pipe. “Now,” he continued, impressively, jerking +the match overboard, “when the Darlin's up, and the Warrygo's LOW, +the billygong runs from the Darlin' into the WARRYGO; AND, when the +Warrygo's up 'n' the Darlin's down, the waters runs FROM the Warrygo 'n' +inter the Darlin'.” + +What could be more simple? + +The steamer was engaged to go up a billabong for a load of shearers from +a shed which was cutting out; and first it was necessary to tie up in +the river and discharge the greater portion of the cargo in order that +the boat might safely negotiate the shallow waters. A local fisherman, +who volunteered to act as pilot, was taken aboard, and after he was +outside about a pint of whisky he seemed to have the greatest confidence +in his ability to take us to hell, or anywhere else--at least, he said +so. A man was sent ashore with blankets and tucker to mind the wool, and +we crossed the river, butted into the anabranch, and started out back. +Only the Lord and the pilot know how we got there. We travelled over the +bush, through its branches sometimes, and sometimes through grass and +mud, and every now and then we struck something that felt and sounded +like a collision. The boat slid down one hill, and “fetched” a stump at +the bottom with a force that made every mother's son bite his tongue or +break a tooth. + +The shearers came aboard next morning, with their swags and two +cartloads of boiled mutton, bread, “brownie”, and tea and sugar. They +numbered about fifty, including the rouseabouts. This load of sin sank +the steamer deeper into the mud; but the passengers crowded over to +port, by request of the captain, and the crew poked the bank away with +long poles. When we began to move the shearers gave a howl like the +yell of a legion of lost souls escaping from down below. They gave three +cheers for the rouseabouts' cook, who stayed behind; then they cursed +the station with a mighty curse. They cleared a space on deck, had +a jig, and afterwards a fight between the shearers' cook and his +assistant. They gave a mighty bush whoop for the Darling when the boat +swung into that grand old gutter, and in the evening they had a general +all-round time. We got back, and the crew had to reload the wool without +assistance, for it bore the accursed brand of a “freedom-of-contract” + shed. + +We slept, or tried to sleep, that night on the ridge of two wool bales +laid with the narrow sides up, having first been obliged to get ashore +and fight six rounds with a shearer for the privilege of roosting there. +The live cinders from the firebox went up the chimney all night, and +fell in showers on deck. Every now and again a spark would burn through +the “Wagga rug” of a sleeping shearer, and he'd wake suddenly and get up +and curse. It was no use shifting round, for the wind was all ways, +and the boat steered north, south, east, and west to humour the river. +Occasionally a low branch would root three or four passengers off their +wool bales, and they'd get up and curse in chorus. The boat started two +snags; and towards daylight struck a stump. The accent was on the stump. +A wool bale went overboard, and took a swag and a dog with it; then the +owner of the swag and dog and the crew of the boat had a swearing match +between them. The swagman won. + +About daylight we stretched our cramped limbs, extricated one leg from +between the wool bales, and found that the steamer was just crayfishing +away from a mud island, where she had tied up for more wool. Some of the +chaps had been ashore and boiled four or five buckets of tea and coffee. +Shortly after the boat had settled down to work again an incident came +along. A rouseabout rose late, and, while the others were at breakfast, +got an idea into his head that a good “sloosh” would freshen him up; so +he mooched round until he found a big wooden bucket with a rope to it. +He carried the bucket aft of the wheel. The boat was butting up stream +for all she was worth, and the stream was running the other way, of +course, and about a hundred times as fast as a train. The jackeroo gave +the line a turn round his wrist; before anyone could see him in time to +suppress him, he lifted the bucket, swung it to and fro, and dropped it +cleverly into the water. + +This delayed us for nearly an hour. A couple of men jumped into the row +boat immediately and cast her adrift. They picked up the jackeroo about +a mile down the river, clinging to a snag, and when we hauled him aboard +he looked like something the cat had dragged in, only bigger. We revived +him with rum and got him on his feet; and then, when the captain and +crew had done cursing him, he rubbed his head, went forward, and had a +look at the paddle; then he rubbed his head again, thought, and remarked +to his mates: + +“Wasn't it lucky I didn't dip that bucket FOR'ARD the wheel?” + +This remark struck us forcibly. We agreed that it was lucky--for him; +but the captain remarked that it was damned unlucky for the world, +which, he explained, was over-populated with fools already. + +Getting on towards afternoon we found a barge loaded with wool and tied +up to a tree in the wilderness. There was no sign of a man to be seen, +nor any sign, except the barge, that a human being had ever been there. +The captain took the craft in tow, towed it about ten miles up the +stream, and left it in a less likely place than where it was before. + +Floating bottles began to be more frequent, and we knew by that same +token that we were nearing “Here's Luck!”--Bourke, we mean. And this +reminds us. + +When the Brewarrina people observe a more than ordinary number of +bottles floating down the river, they guess that Walgett is on the +spree; when the Louth chaps see an unbroken procession of dead marines +for three or four days they know that Bourke's drunk. The poor, +God-abandoned “whaler” sits in his hungry camp at sunset and watches the +empty symbols of Hope go by, and feels more God-forgotten than ever--and +thirstier, if possible--and gets a great, wide, thirsty, quaking, empty +longing to be up where those bottles come from. If the townspeople knew +how much misery they caused by their thoughtlessness they would drown +their dead marines, or bury them, but on no account allow them to go +drifting down the river, and stirring up hells in the bosoms of less +fortunate fellow-creatures. + +There came a man from Adelaide to Bourke once, and he collected all the +empty bottles in town, stacked them by the river, and waited for a boat. +What he wanted them for the legend sayeth not, but the people reckoned +he had a “private still”, or something of that sort, somewhere down the +river, and were satisfied. What he came from Adelaide for, or whether he +really did come from there, we do not know. All the Darling bunyips are +supposed to come from Adelaide. Anyway, the man collected all the empty +bottles he could lay his hands on, and piled them on the bank, where +they made a good show. He waited for a boat to take his cargo, and, +while waiting, he got drunk. That excited no comment. He stayed drunk +for three weeks, but the townspeople saw nothing unusual in that. In +order to become an object of interest in their eyes, and in that line, +he would have had to stay drunk for a year and fight three times a +day--oftener, if possible--and lie in the road in the broiling +heat between whiles, and be walked on by camels and Afghans and +free-labourers, and be locked up every time he got sober enough to smash +a policeman, and try to hang himself naked, and be finally squashed by a +loaded wool team. + +But while he drank the Darling rose, for reasons best known to itself, +and floated those bottles off. They strung out and started for the +Antarctic Ocean, with a big old wicker-worked demijohn in the lead. + +For the first week the down-river men took no notice; but after the +bottles had been drifting past with scarcely a break for a fortnight or +so, they began to get interested. Several whalers watched the procession +until they got the jimjams by force of imagination, and when their +bodies began to float down with the bottles, the down-river people got +anxious. + +At last the Mayor of Wilcannia wired Bourke to know whether Dibbs or +Parkes was dead, or democracy triumphant, or if not, wherefore the +jubilation? Many telegrams of a like nature were received during that +week, and the true explanation was sent in reply to each. But it wasn't +believed, and to this day Bourke has the name of being the most drunken +town on the river. + +After dinner a humorous old hard case mysteriously took us aside and +said he had a good yarn which we might be able to work up. We asked him +how, but he winked a mighty cunning wink and said that he knew all about +us. Then he asked us to listen. He said: + +“There was an old feller down the Murrumbidgee named Kelly. He was a +bit gone here. One day Kelly was out lookin' for some sheep, when he +got lost. It was gettin' dark. Bymeby there came an old crow in a tree +overhead. + +“'Kel-ley, you're lo-o-st! Kel-ley, you're lo-o-st!' sez the crow. + +“'I know I am,' sez Kelly. + +“'Fol-ler me, fol-ler me,' sez the crow. + +“'Right y'are,' sez Kelly, with a jerk of his arm. 'Go ahead.' + +“So the crow went on, and Kelly follered, an' bymeby he found he was on +the right track. + +“Sometime after Kelly was washin' sheep (this was when we useter wash +the sheep instead of the wool). Kelly was standin' on the platform with +a crutch in his hand landin' the sheep, when there came a old crow in +the tree overhead. + +“'Kelly, I'm hun-gry! Kel-ley, I'm hun-ger-ry!' sez the crow. + +“'Alright,' sez Kelly; 'be up at the hut about dinner time 'n' I'll +sling you out something.' + +“'Drown--a--sheep! Drown--a--sheep, Kel-ley,' sez the crow. + +“'Blanked if I do,' sez Kelly. 'If I drown a sheep I'll have to pay for +it, be-God!' + +“'Then I won't find yer when yer lost agin,' sez the crow. + +“'I'm damned if yer will,' says Kelly. 'I'll take blanky good care I +won't get lost again, to be found by a gory ole crow.'” + + . . . . . + +There are a good many fishermen on the Darling. They camp along the +banks in all sorts of tents, and move about in little box boats that +will only float one man. The fisherman is never heavy. He is mostly a +withered little old madman, with black claws, dirty rags (which he never +changes), unkempt hair and beard, and a “ratty” expression. We cannot +say that we ever saw him catch a fish, or even get a bite, and we +certainly never saw him offer any for sale. + +He gets a dozen or so lines out into the stream, with the shore end +fastened to pegs or roots on the bank, and passed over sticks about four +feet high, stuck in the mud; on the top of these sticks he hangs bullock +bells, or substitutes--jam tins with stones fastened inside to bits of +string. Then he sits down and waits. If the cod pulls the line the bell +rings. + +The fisherman is a great authority on the river and fish, but has +usually forgotten everything else, including his name. He chops firewood +for the boats sometimes, but it isn't his profession--he's a fisherman. +He is only sane on points concerning the river, though he has all the +fisherman's eccentricities. Of course he is a liar. + +When he gets his camp fixed on one bank it strikes him he ought to be +over on the other, or at a place up round the bend, so he shifts. Then +he reckons he was a fool for not stopping where he was before. He +never dies. He never gets older, or drier, or more withered looking, +or dirtier, or loonier--because he can't. We cannot imagine him as ever +having been a boy, or even a youth. We cannot even try to imagine him +as a baby. He is an animated mummy, who used to fish on the Nile three +thousand years ago, and catch nothing. + + . . . . . + +We forgot to mention that there are wonderfully few wrecks on the +Darling. The river boats seldom go down--their hulls are not built that +way--and if one did go down it wouldn't sink far. But, once down, a boat +is scarcely ever raised again; because, you see, the mud silts up round +it and over it, and glues it, as it were, to the bottom of the river. +Then the forty-foot alligators--which come down with the “Queenslan' +rains”, we suppose--root in the mud and fill their bellies with sodden +flour and drowned deck-hands. + +They tried once to blow up a wreck with dynamite because it (the +wreck) obstructed navigation; but they blew the bottom out of the river +instead, and all the water went through. The Government have been boring +for it ever since. I saw some of the bores myself--there is one at +Coonamble. + +There is a yarn along the Darling about a cute Yankee who was invited +up to Bourke to report on a proposed scheme for locking the river. He +arrived towards the end of a long and severe drought, and was met at the +railway station by a deputation of representative bushmen, who invited +him, in the first place, to accompany them to the principal pub--which +he did. He had been observed to study the scenery a good deal while +coming up in the train, but kept his conclusions to himself. On the way +to the pub he had a look at the town, and it was noticed that he tilted +his hat forward very often, and scratched the back of his head a +good deal, and pondered a lot; but he refrained from expressing an +opinion--even when invited to do so. He guessed that his opinions +wouldn't do much good, anyway, and he calculated that they would keep +till he got back “over our way”--by which it was reckoned he meant the +States. + +When they asked him what he'd have, he said to Watty the publican: + +“Wal, I reckon you can build me your national drink. I guess I'll try +it.” + +A long colonial was drawn for him, and he tried it. He seemed rather +startled at first, then he looked curiously at the half-empty glass, +set it down very softly on the bar, and leaned against the same and +fell into a reverie; from which he roused himself after a while, with a +sorrowful jerk of his head. + +“Ah, well,” he said. “Show me this river of yourn.” + +They led him to the Darling, and he had a look at it. + +“Is this your river?” he asked. + +“Yes,” they replied, apprehensively. + +He tilted his hat forward till the brim nearly touched his nose, +scratched the back of his long neck, shut one eye, and looked at the +river with the other. Then, after spitting half a pint of tobacco juice +into the stream, he turned sadly on his heel and led the way back to the +pub. He invited the boys to “pisen themselves”; after they were served +he ordered out the longest tumbler on the premises, poured a drop into +it from nearly every bottle on the shelf, added a lump of ice, and drank +slowly and steadily. + +Then he took pity on the impatient and anxious population, opened his +mouth, and spake. + +“Look here, fellows,” he drawled, jerking his arm in the direction of +the river, “I'll tell you what I'll dew. I'll bottle that damned river +of yourn in twenty-four hours!” + +Later on he mellowed a bit, under the influence of several drinks which +were carefully and conscientiously “built” from plans and specifications +supplied by himself, and then, among other things, he said: + +“If that there river rises as high as you say it dew--and if this was +the States--why, we'd have had the Great Eastern up here twenty years +ago”----or words to that effect. + +Then he added, reflectively: + +“When I come over here I calculated that I was going to make things +hum, but now I guess I'll have to change my prospectus. There's a lot of +loose energy laying round over our way, but I guess that if I wanted +to make things move in your country I'd have to bring over the entire +American nation--also his wife and dawg. You've got the makings of a +glorious nation over here, but you don't get up early enough!” + + . . . . . + +The only national work performed by the blacks is on the Darling. They +threw a dam of rocks across the river--near Brewarrina, we think--to +make a fish trap. It's there yet. But God only knows where they got the +stones from, or how they carried them, for there isn't a pebble within +forty miles. + + + + +A Case for the Oracle + + + +The Oracle and I were camped together. The Oracle was a bricklayer by +trade, and had two or three small contracts on hand. I was “doing a +bit of house-painting”. There were a plasterer, a carpenter, and a +plumber--we were all T'othersiders, and old mates, and we worked +things together. It was in Westralia--the Land of T'othersiders--and, +therefore, we were not surprised when Mitchell turned up early one +morning, with his swag and an atmosphere of salt water about him. + +He'd had a rough trip, he said, and would take a spell that day and take +the lay of the land and have something cooked for us by the time we came +home; and go to graft himself next morning. And next morning he went to +work, “labouring” for the Oracle. + +The Oracle and his mates, being small contractors and not pressed for +time, had dispensed with the services of a labourer, and had done their +own mixing and hod-carrying in turns. They didn't want a labourer now, +but the Oracle was a vague fatalist, and Mitchell a decided one. So it +passed. + +The Oracle had a “Case” right under his nose--in his own employ, in +fact; but was not aware of the fact until Mitchell drew his attention +to it. The Case went by the name of Alfred O'Briar--which hinted a mixed +parentage. He was a small, nervous working-man, of no particular colour, +and no decided character, apparently. If he had a soul above bricks, he +never betrayed it. He was not popular on the jobs. There was something +sly about Alf, they said. + +The Oracle had taken him on in the first place as a day-labourer, +but afterwards shared the pay with him as with Mitchell. O'Briar +shouted--judiciously, but on every possible occasion--for the Oracle; +and, as he was an indifferent workman, the boys said he only did this so +that the Oracle might keep him on. If O'Briar took things easy and did +no more than the rest of us, at least one of us would be sure to get it +into his head that he was loafing on us; and if he grafted harder than +we did, we'd be sure to feel indignant about that too, and reckon that +it was done out of nastiness or crawlsomeness, and feel a contempt for +him accordingly. We found out accidentally that O'Briar was an excellent +mimic and a bit of a ventriloquist, but he never entertained us with his +peculiar gifts; and we set that down to churlishness. + +O'Briar kept his own counsel, and his history, if he had one; and hid +his hopes, joys, and sorrows, if he had any, behind a vacant grin, +as Mitchell hid his behind a quizzical one. He never resented alleged +satire--perhaps he couldn't see it--and therefore he got the name of +being a cur. As a rule, he was careful with his money, and was called +mean--not, however, by the Oracle, whose philosophy was simple, and +whose sympathy could not realise a limit; nor yet by Mitchell. Mitchell +waited. + + . . . . . + +O'Briar occupied a small tent by himself, and lived privately of +evenings. When we began to hear two men talking at night in his tent, +we were rather surprised, and wondered in a vague kind of way how any of +the chaps could take sufficient interest in Alf to go in and yarn with +him. In the days when he was supposed to be sociable, we had voted him a +bore; even the Oracle was moved to admit that he was “a bit slow”. + +But late one night we distinctly heard a woman's voice in O'Briar's +tent. The Oracle suddenly became hard of hearing, and, though we heard +the voice on several occasions, he remained exasperatingly deaf, yet +aggressively unconscious of the fact. “I have got enough to do puzzling +over me own whys and wherefores,” he said. Mitchell began to take some +interest in O'Briar, and treated him with greater respect. But our camp +had the name of being the best-constructed, the cleanest, and the most +respectable in the vicinity. The health officer and constable in charge +had complimented us on the fact, and we were proud of it. And there were +three young married couples in camp, also a Darby and Joan; therefore, +when the voice of a woman began to be heard frequently and at +disreputable hours of the night in O'Briar's tent, we got uneasy about +it. And when the constable who was on night duty gave us a friendly +hint, Mitchell and I agreed that something must be done. + +“Av coorse, men will be men,” said the constable, as he turned his +horse's head, “but I thought I'd mention it. O'Briar is a dacent man, +and he's one of yer mates. Av coorse. There's a bad lot in that camp in +the scrub over yander, and--av coorse. Good-day to ye, byes.” + + . . . . . + +Next night we heard the voice in O'Briar's tent again, and decided to +speak to Alf in a friendly way about it in the morning. We listened +outside in the dark, but could not distinguish the words, though I +thought I recognised the voice. + +“It's the hussy from the camp over there; she's got holt of that fool, +and she'll clean him out before she's done,” I said. “We're Alf's mates, +any way it goes, and we ought to put a stop to it.” + +“What hussy?” asked Mitchell; “there's three or four there.” + +“The one with her hair all over her head,” I answered. + +“Where else should it be?” asked Mitchell. “But I'll just have a peep +and see who it is. There's no harm in that.” + +He crept up to the tent and cautiously moved the flap. Alf's candle was +alight; he lay on his back in his bunk with his arms under his head, +calmly smoking. We withdrew. + +“They must have heard us,” said Mitchell; “and she's slipped out under +the tent at the back, and through the fence into the scrub.” + +Mitchell's respect for Alf increased visibly. + +But we began to hear ominous whispers from the young married couples, +and next Saturday night, which was pay-night, we decided to see it +through. We did not care to speak to Alf until we were sure. He stayed +in camp, as he often did, on Saturday evening, while the others went +up town. Mitchell and I returned earlier than usual, and leaned on the +fence at the back of Alf's tent. + +We were scarcely there when we were startled by a “rat-tat-tat” as of +someone knocking at a door. Then an old woman's voice INSIDE the tent +asked: “Who's there?” + +“It's me,” said Alf's voice from the front, “Mr. O'Briar from Perth.” + +“Mary, go and open the door!” said the old woman. (Mitchell nudged me to +keep quiet.) + +“Come in, Mr. O'Breer,” said the old woman. “Come in. How do you do? +When did you get back?” + +“Only last night,” said Alf. + +“Look at that now! Bless us all! And how did you like the country at +all?” + +“I didn't care much for it,” said Alf. We lost the thread of it until +the old woman spoke again. + +“Have you had your tea, Mr. O'Breer?” + +“Yes, thank you, Mrs. O'Connor.” + +“Are you quite sure, man?” + +“Quite sure, thank you, Mrs. O'Connor.” (Mitchell trod on my foot.) + +“Will you have a drop of whisky or a glass of beer, Mr. O'Breer?” + +“I'll take a glass of beer, thank you, Mrs. O'Connor.” + +There seemed to be a long pause. Then the old woman said, “Ah, well, I +must get my work done, and Mary will stop here and keep you company, Mr. +O'Breer.” The arrangement seemed satisfactory to all parties, for there +was nothing more said for a while. (Mitchell nudged me again, with +emphasis, and I kicked his shin.) + +Presently Alf said: “Mary!” And a girl's voice said, “Yes, Alf.” + +“You remember the night I went away, Mary?” + +“Yes, Alf, I do.” + +“I have travelled long ways since then, Mary; I worked hard and lived +close. I didn't make my fortune, but I managed to rub a note or two +together. It was a hard time and a lonesome time for me, Mary. The +summer's awful over there, and livin's bad and dear. You couldn't have +any idea of it, Mary.” + +“No, Alf.” + +“I didn't come back so well off as I expected.” + +“But that doesn't matter, Alf.” + +“I got heart-sick and tired of it, and couldn't stand it any longer, +Mary.” + +“But that's all over now, Alf; you mustn't think of it.” + +“Your mother wrote to me.” + +“I know she did”--(very low and gently). + +“And do you know what she put in it, Mary?” + +“Yes, Alf.” + +“And did you ask her to put it in?” + +“Don't ask me, Alf.” + +“And it's all true, Mary?” + +There was no answer, but the silence seemed satisfactory. + +“And be sure you have yourself down here on Sunday, Alf, me son.” + (“There's the old woman come back!” said Mitchell.) + +“An' since the girl's willin' to have ye, and the ould woman's +willin'--there's me hand on it, Alf, me boy. An' God bless ye both.” + (“The old man's come now,” said Mitchell.) + + . . . . . + +“Come along,” said Mitchell, leading the way to the front of the tent. + +“But I wouldn't like to intrude on them. It's hardly right, Mitchell, is +it?” + +“That's all right,” said Mitchell. He tapped the tent pole. + +“Come in,” said Alf. Alf was lying on his bunk as before, with his arms +under his head. His face wore a cheerful, not to say happy, expression. +There was no one else in the tent. I was never more surprised in my +life. + +“Have you got the paper, Alf?” said Mitchell. + +“Yes. You'll find it there at the foot of the bunk. There it is. Won't +you sit down, Mitchell?” + +“Not to-night,” said Mitchell. “We brought you a bottle of ale. We're +just going to turn in.” + +And we said “good-night”. “Well,” I said to Mitchell when we got inside, +“what do you think of it?” + +“I don't think of it at all,” said Mitchell. “Do you mean to say you +can't see it now?” + +“No, I'm dashed if I can,” I said. “Some of us must be drunk, I think, +or getting rats. It's not to be wondered at, and the sooner we get out +of this country the better.” + +“Well, you must be a fool, Joe,” said Mitchell. “Can't you see? ALF +THINKS ALOUD.” + +“WHAT?” + +“Talks to himself. He was thinking about going back to his sweetheart. +Don't you know he's a bit of a ventriloquist?” + +Mitchell lay awake a long time, in the position that Alf usually lay in, +and thought. Perhaps he thought on the same lines as Alf did that night. +But Mitchell did his thinking in silence. + +We thought it best to tell the Oracle quietly. He was deeply interested, +but not surprised. “I've heerd of such cases before,” he said. But the +Oracle was a gentleman. “There's things that a man wants to keep to +himself that ain't his business,” he said. And we understood this remark +to be intended for our benefit, and to indicate a course of action upon +which the Oracle had decided, with respect to this case, and which we, +in his opinion, should do well to follow. + +Alf got away a week or so later, and we all took a holiday and went down +to Fremantle to see him off. Perhaps he wondered why Mitchell gripped +his hand so hard and wished him luck so earnestly, and was surprised +when he gave him three cheers. + +“Ah, well!” remarked Mitchell, as we turned up the wharf. + +“I've heerd of such cases before,” said the Oracle, meditatively. “They +ain't common, but I've hear'd of such cases before.” + + + + +A Daughter of Maoriland + + A sketch of poor-class Maoris + + + +The new native-school teacher, who was “green”, “soft”, and poetical, +and had a literary ambition, called her “August”, and fondly hoped to +build a romance on her character. She was down in the school registers +as Sarah Moses, Maori, 16 years and three months. She looked twenty; but +this was nothing, insomuch as the mother of the youngest child in the +school--a dear little half-caste lady of two or three summers--had not +herself the vaguest idea of the child's age, nor anybody else's, nor +of ages in the abstract. The church register was lost some six years +before, when “Granny”, who was a hundred, if a day, was supposed to +be about twenty-five. The teacher had to guess the ages of all the new +pupils. + +August was apparently the oldest in the school--a big, ungainly, awkward +girl, with a heavy negro type of Maori countenance, and about as much +animation, mentally or physically, as a cow. She was given to brooding; +in fact, she brooded all the time. She brooded all day over her school +work, but did it fairly well. How the previous teachers had taught her +all she knew was a mystery to the new one. There had been a tragedy in +August's family when she was a child, and the affair seemed to have cast +a gloom over the lives of the entire family, for the lowering brooding +cloud was on all their faces. August would take to the bush when things +went wrong at home, and climb a tree and brood till she was found and +coaxed home. Things, according to pa gossip, had gone wrong with her +from the date of the tragedy, when she, a bright little girl, was +taken--a homeless orphan--to live with a sister, and, afterwards, with +an aunt-by-marriage. They treated her, 'twas said, with a brutality +which must have been greatly exaggerated by pa-gossip, seeing +that unkindness of this description is, according to all the best +authorities, altogether foreign to Maori nature. + +Pa-gossip--which is less reliable than the ordinary washerwoman kind, +because of a deeper and more vicious ignorance--had it that one time +when August was punished by a teacher (or beaten by her sister or +aunt-by-marriage) she “took to the bush” for three days, at the +expiration of which time she was found on the ground in an exhausted +condition. She was evidently a true Maori or savage, and this was one of +the reasons why the teacher with the literary ambition took an interest +in her. She had a print of a portrait of a man in soldier's uniform, +taken from a copy of the 'Illustrated London News', pasted over the +fireplace in the whare where she lived, and neatly bordered by vandyked +strips of silvered tea-paper. She had pasted it in the place of honour, +or as near as she could get to it. The place of honour was sacred +to framed representations of the Nativity and Catholic subjects, +half-modelled, half-pictured. The print was a portrait of the last Czar +of Russia, of all the men in the world; and August was reported to have +said that she loved that man. His father had been murdered, so had her +mother. This was one of the reasons why the teacher with the literary +ambition thought he could get a romance out of her. + +After the first week she hung round the new schoolmistress, +dog-like--with “dog-like affection”, thought the teacher. She came down +often during the holidays, and hung about the verandah and back door for +an hour or so; then, by-and-bye, she'd be gone. Her brooding seemed +less aggressive on such occasions. The teacher reckoned that she had +something on her mind, and wanted to open her heart to “the wife”, but +was too ignorant or too shy, poor girl; and he reckoned, from his theory +of Maori character, that it might take her weeks, or months, to come to +the point. One day, after a great deal of encouragement, she explained +that she felt “so awfully lonely, Mrs. Lorrens.” All the other girls +were away, and she wished it was school-time. + +She was happy and cheerful again, in her brooding way, in the +playground. There was something sadly ludicrous about her great, +ungainly figure slopping round above the children at play. The +schoolmistress took her into the parlour, gave her tea and cake, and was +kind to her; and she took it all with broody cheerfulness. + +One Sunday morning she came down to the cottage and sat on the edge of +the verandah, looking as wretchedly miserable as a girl could. She was +in rags--at least, she had a rag of a dress on--and was barefooted and +bareheaded. She said that her aunt had turned her out, and she was going +to walk down the coast to Whale Bay to her grandmother--a long day's +ride. The teacher was troubled, because he was undecided what to do. +He had to be careful to avoid any unpleasantness arising out of Maori +cliquism. As the teacher he couldn't let her go in the state she was in; +from the depths of his greenness he trusted her, from the depths of +his softness he pitied her; his poetic nature was fiercely indignant on +account of the poor girl's wrongs, and the wife spoke for her. Then he +thought of his unwritten romance, and regarded August in the light of +copy, and that settled it. While he talked the matter over with his +wife, August “hid in the dark of her hair,” awaiting her doom. The +teacher put his hat on, walked up to the pa, and saw her aunt. She +denied that she had turned August out, but the teacher believed +the girl. He explained his position, in words simplified for Maori +comprehension, and the aunt and relations said they understood, and that +he was “perfectly right, Mr. Lorrens.” They were very respectful. The +teacher said that if August would not return home, he was willing to let +her stay at the cottage until such time as her uncle, who was absent, +returned, and he (the teacher) could talk the matter over with him. The +relations thought that that was the very best thing that could be done, +and thanked him. The aunt, two sisters, and as many of the others, +including the children, as were within sight or hail at the time--most +of them could not by any possible means have had the slightest +connection with the business in hand--accompanied the teacher to the +cottage. August took to the flax directly she caught sight of her +relations, and was with difficulty induced to return. There was a lot +of talk in Maori, during which the girl and her aunt shuffled and swung +round at the back of each other, and each talked over her shoulder, and +laughed foolishly and awkwardly once or twice; but in the end the girl +was sullenly determined not to return home, so it was decided that she +should stay. The schoolmistress made tea. + +August brightened from the first day. She was a different girl +altogether. “I never saw such a change in a girl,” said the young +schoolmistress, and one or two others. “I always thought she was a +good girl if taken the right way; all she wanted was a change and kind +treatment.” But the stolid old Maori chairman of the school committee +only shrugged his shoulders and said (when the schoolmistress, +woman-like, pressed him for an opinion to agree with her own), “You can +look at it two ways, Mrs. Lorrens.” Which, by the way, was about the +only expression of opinion that the teacher was ever able to get out of +him on any subject. + +August worked and behaved well. She was wonderfully quick in picking up +English ways and housework. True, she was awkward and not over cleanly +in some things, but her mistress had patience with her. Who wouldn't +have? She “couldn't do enough” for her benefactress; she hung on her +words and sat at her footstool of evenings in a way that gladdened the +teacher's sentimental nature; she couldn't bear to see him help his wife +with a hat-pin or button--August must do it. She insisted on doing her +mistress' hair every night. In short, she tried in every way to show her +gratitude. The teacher and his wife smiled brightly at each other behind +her back, and thought how cheerful the house was since she came, and +wondered what they'd do without her. It was a settled thing that they +should take her back to the city with them, and have a faithful and +grateful retainer all their lives and a sort of Aunt Chloe for their +children, when they had any. The teacher got yards of copy out of her +for his “Maori Sketches and Characters”, worked joyously at his romance, +and felt great already, and was happy. She had a bed made up temporarily +(until the teacher could get a spring mattress for her from town) on the +floor in the dining-room, and when she'd made her bed she'd squat on it +in front of the fire and sing Maori songs in a soft voice. She'd sing +the teacher and his wife, in the next room, to sleep. Then she'd get up +and have a feed, but they never heard her. + +Her manners at the table (for she was treated “like one of themselves” + in the broadest sense of the term) were surprisingly good, considering +that the adults of her people were decidedly cow-like in white society, +and scoffed sea-eggs, shell-fish, and mutton-birds at home with a gallop +which was not edifying. Her appetite, it was true, was painful at times +to the poetic side of the teacher's nature; but he supposed that she'd +been half-starved at home, poor girl, and would get over it. Anyway, the +copy he'd get out of her would repay him for this and other expenses a +hundredfold. Moreover, begging and borrowing had ceased with her advent, +and the teacher set this down to her influence. + +The first jar came when she was sent on horseback to the town for +groceries, and didn't get back till late the next day. She explained +that some of her relations got hold of her and made her stay, and wanted +her to go into public-houses with them, but she wouldn't. She said that +SHE wanted to come home. But why didn't she? The teacher let it pass, +and hoped she'd gain strength of character by-and-bye. He had waited up +late the night before with her supper on the hob; and he and his wife +had been anxious for fear something had happened to the poor girl +who was under their care. He had walked to the treacherous river-ford +several times during the evening, and waited there for her. So perhaps +he was tired, and that was why he didn't write next night. + +The sugar-bag, the onion-basket, the potato-bag and the tea-chest began +to “go down” alarmingly, and an occasional pound of candles, a pigeon, +a mutton-bird (plucked and ready for Sunday's cooking), and other little +trifles went, also. August couldn't understand it, and the teacher +believed her, for falsehood and deceit are foreign to the simple natures +of the modern Maoris. There were no cats; but no score of ordinary cats +could have given colour to the cat theory, had it been raised in this +case. The breath of August advertised onions more than once, but no +human stomach could have accounted for the quantity. She surely could +not have eaten the other things raw--and she had no opportunities for +private cooking, as far as the teacher and his wife could see. The other +Maoris were out of the question; they were all strictly honest. + +Thefts and annoyances of the above description were credited to the +“swaggies” who infested the roads, and had a very bad name down that +way; so the teacher loaded his gun, and told August to rouse him at +once, if she heard a sound in the night. She said she would; but a +heavy-weight “swaggie” could have come in and sat on her and had a smoke +without waking her. + +She couldn't be trusted to go a message. She'd take from three to six +hours, and come back with an excuse that sounded genuine from its very +simplicity. Another sister of hers lay ill in an isolated hut, alone and +uncared for, except by the teacher's wife, and occasionally by a poor pa +outcast who had negro blood in her veins, and a love for a white loafer. +God help her! All of which sounds strange, considering that Maoris are +very kind to each other. The schoolmistress sent August one night to +stay with the sick Maori woman and help her as she could, and gave her +strict instructions to come to the cottage first thing in the morning, +and tell her how the sick woman was. August turned up at lunch-time next +day. The teacher gave her her first lecture, and said plainly that he +wasn't to be taken for a fool; then he stepped aside to get cool, and, +when he returned, the girl was sobbing as if her heart would break, and +the wife comforting her. She had been up all night, poor girl, and was +thoroughly worn out. Somehow the teacher didn't feel uncomfortable about +it. He went down to the whare. August had not touched a dishcloth or +broom. She had slept, as she always did, like a pig, all night, while +her sister lay and tossed in agony; in the morning she ate everything +there was to eat in the house (which, it seemed, was the Maori way of +showing sympathy in sickness and trouble), after which she brooded +by the fire till the children, running out of school, announced the +teacher's lunch hour. + +August braced up again for a little while. The master thought of the +trouble they had with Ayacanora in “Westward Ho”, and was comforted, and +tackled his romance again. Then the schoolmistress fell sick and things +went wrong. The groceries went down faster than ever, and the house got +very dirty, and began to have a native smell about it. August grew fat, +and lazy, and dirty, and less reliable on washing-days, or when there +was anything special to do in the house. “The savage blood is strong,” + thought the teacher, “and she is beginning to long for her own people +and free unconventional life.” One morning--on a washing-day, too, as it +happened--she called out, before the teacher and his wife were up, that +the Maoris who supplied them with milk were away, and she had promised +to go up and milk the cow and bring the milk down. The teacher gave her +permission. One of the scholars usually brought the milk early. Lunch +time came and no August, no milk--strangest of all, only half the school +children. The teacher put on his hat, and went up to the pa once more. +He found August squatted in the midst of a circle of relations. She was +entertaining them with one of a series of idealistic sketches of the +teacher's domestic life, in which she showed a very vivid imagination, +and exhibited an unaccountable savage sort of pessimism. Her intervals +of absence had been occupied in this way from the first. The astounding +slanders she had circulated concerning the teacher's private life came +back, bit by bit, to his ears for a year afterwards, and her character +sketches of previous teachers, and her own relations--for she spared +nobody--would have earned a white woman a long and well-merited term of +imprisonment for criminal libel. She had cunningly, by straightforward +and unscrupulous lying, prejudiced the principal mother and boss woman +of the pa against the teacher and his wife; as a natural result of which +the old lady, who, like the rest, was very ignorant and ungrateful, +“turned nasty” and kept the children from school. The teacher lost +his temper, so the children were rounded up and hurried down to +school immediately; with them came August and her aunt, with alleged +explanations and excuses, and a shell-fish. The aunt and sisters said +they'd have nothing to do with August. They didn't want her and wouldn't +have her. The teacher said that, under those circumstances, she'd better +go and drown herself; so she went home with them. + +The whole business had been a plot by her nearest relations. They +got rid of the trouble and expense of keeping her, and the bother of +borrowing in person, whenever in need of trifles in the grocery line. +Borrowing recommenced with her dismissal; but the teacher put a full +stop to it, as far as he was concerned. Then August, egged on by her +aunt, sent a blackguardly letter to the teacher's wife; the sick sister, +by the way, who had been nursed and supplied with food by her all along, +was in it, and said she was glad August sent the letter, and it served +the schoolmistress right. The teacher went up to the pa once more; an +hour later, August in person, accompanied, as usual, by a relation +or two, delivered at the cottage an abject apology in writing, the +composition of which would have discouraged the most enthusiastic +advocate of higher education for the lower classes. + +Then various petty annoyances were tried. The teacher is firmly +convinced that certain animal-like sounds round the house at night were +due to August's trying to find out whether his wife was as likely to be +haunted as the Maoris were. He didn't dream of such a thing at the time, +for he did not believe that one of them had the pluck to venture out +after dark. But savage superstition must give way to savage hate. +The girl's last “try-on” was to come down to the school fence, and +ostentatiously sharpen a table-knife on the wires, while she scowled +murderously in the direction of the schoolmistress, who was hanging out +her washing. August looked, in her dark, bushy, Maori hair, a thoroughly +wild savage. Her father had murdered her mother under particularly +brutal circumstances, and the daughter took after her father. + +The teacher called her and said: “Now, look here, my lady, the best +thing you can do is to drop that nonsense at once” (she had dropped the +knife in the ferns behind her), “for we're the wrong sort of people +to try it on with. Now you get out of this and tell your aunt--she's +sneaking there in the flax--what I tell you, and that she'd better clear +out of this quick, or I'll have a policeman out and take the whole +gang into town in an hour. Now be off, and shut that gate behind you, +carefully, and fasten it.” She did, and went. + +The worst of it was that the August romance copy was useless. Her lies +were even less reliable and picturesque than the common Jones Alley hag +lie. Then the teacher thought of the soft fool he'd been, and that made +him wild. He looked like a fool, and was one to a great extent, but it +wasn't good policy to take him for one. + +Strange to say, he and others had reason to believe that August +respected him, and liked him rather than otherwise; but she hated his +wife, who had been kind to her, as only a savage can hate. The younger +pupils told the teacher, cheerfully and confidently, that August said +she'd cut Mrs. Lorrens' throat the first chance she got. Next week the +aunt sent down to ask if the teacher could sell her a bar of soap, and +sent the same old shilling; he was tired of seeing it stuck out in front +of him, so he took it, put it in his pocket, and sent the soap. This +must have discouraged them, for the borrowing industry petered out. He +saw the aunt later on, and she told him, cheerfully, that August was +going to live with a half-caste in a certain house in town. + +Poor August! For she was only a tool after all. Her “romance” was +briefly as follows:--She went, per off-hand Maori arrangement, as +'housekeeper' in the hut of a labourer at a neighbouring saw-mill. She +stayed three months, for a wonder; at the expiration of which time she +put on her hat and explained that she was tired of stopping there, and +was going home. He said, 'All right, Sarah, wait a while and I'll take +you home.' At the door of her aunt's house he said, 'Well, good-bye, +Sarah,' and she said, in her brooding way, 'Good-bye, Jim.' And that was +all. + +As the last apparent result of August's mischief-making, her brother +or someone one evening rode up to the cottage, drunk and inclined to +bluster. He was accompanied by a friend, also drunk, who came to see the +fun, and was ready to use his influence on the winning side. The teacher +went inside, brought out his gun, and slipped two cartridges in. +“I've had enough of this,” he said. “Now then, be off, you insolent +blackguards, or I'll shoot you like rabbits. Go!” and he snapped his jaw +and the breech of his gun together. As they rode off, the old local hawk +happened to soar close over a dead lamb in the fern at the corner of the +garden, and the teacher, who had been “laying” for him a long time, let +fly both barrels at him, without thinking. When he turned, there was +only a cloud of dust down the track. + + . . . . . + +The teacher taught that school for three years thereafter, without a +hitch. But he went no more on Universal Brotherhood lines. And, for +years after he had gone, his name was spoken of with great respect by +the Maoris. + + + + +New Year's Night + + + +It was dark enough for anything in Dead Man's Gap--a round, warm, close +darkness, in which retreating sounds seemed to be cut off suddenly at a +distance of a hundred yards or so, instead of growing faint and fainter, +and dying away, to strike the ear once or twice again--and after +minutes, it might seem--with startling distinctness, before being +finally lost in the distance, as it is on clear, frosty nights. So with +the sounds of horses' hoofs, stumbling on the rough bridle-track through +the “saddle”, the clatter of hoof-clipped stones and scrape of gravel +down the hidden “siding”, and the low sound of men's voices, blurred +and speaking in monosyllables and at intervals it seemed, and in hushed, +awed tones, as though they carried a corpse. To practical eyes, grown +used to such a darkness, and at the nearest point, the passing blurrs +would have suggested two riders on bush hacks leading a third with an +empty saddle on its back--a lady's or “side-saddle”, if one could have +distinguished the horns. They may have struck a soft track or level, or +rounded the buttress of the hill higher up, but before they had time +to reach or round the foot of the spur, blurs, whispers, stumble and +clatter of hoofs, jingle of bridle rings, and the occasional clank +together of stirrup irons, seemed shut off as suddenly and completely as +though a great sound-proof door had swung to behind them. + +It was dark enough on the glaringest of days down in the lonely hollow +or “pocket”, between two spurs, at the head of a blind gully behind +Mount Buckaroo, where there was a more or less dusty patch, barely +defined even in broad daylight by a spidery dog-legged fence on +three sides, and a thin “two-rail” (dignified with the adjective +“split-rail”--though rails and posts were mostly of saplings split in +halves) running along the frontage. In about the middle of it a little +slab hut, overshadowed by a big stringy-bark shed, was pointed out as +Johnny Mears's Farm. + +“Black as--as charcoal,” said Johnny Mears. He had never seen coal, and +was a cautious man, whose ideas came slowly. He stooped, close by the +fence, with his hands on his knees, to “sky” the loom of his big shed +and so get his bearings. He had been to have a look at the penned +calves, and see that all slip-rails were up and pegged, for the words of +John Mears junior, especially when delivered rapidly and shrilly and in +injured tones, were not to be relied upon in these matters. + +“It's hot enough to melt the belly out of my fiddle,” said Johnny Mears +to his wife, who sat on a three-legged stool by the rough table in the +little whitewashed “end-room”, putting a patch of patches over the seat +of a pair of moleskin knickerbockers. He lit his pipe, moved a stool +to the side of the great empty fireplace, where it looked cooler--might +have been cooler on account of a possible draught suggested by the +presence of the chimney, and where, therefore, he felt a breath +cooler. He took his fiddle from a convenient shelf, tuned it slowly and +carefully, holding his pipe (in his mouth) well up and to one side, as +if the fiddle were an inquisitive and restless baby. He played “Little +Drops o' Brandy” three times, right through, without variations, +blinking solemnly the while; then he put the violin carefully back in +its box, and started to cut up another pipeful. + +“You should have gone, Johnny,” said the haggard little woman. + +“Rackin' the horse out a night like this,” retorted Johnny, “and +startin' ploughin' to-morrow. It ain't worth while. Let them come for me +if they want me. Dance on a night like this! Why! they'll dance in----” + +“But you promised. It won't do you no good, Johnny.” + +“It won't do me no harm.” + +The little woman went on stitching. + +“It's smotherin' hot,” said Johnny, with an impatient oath. “I don't +know whether I'll turn in, or turn out, under the shed to-night. It's +too d----d hot to roost indoors.” + +She bent her head lower over the patch. One smoked and the other +stitched in silence for twenty minutes or so, during which time Johnny +might be supposed to have been deliberating listlessly as to whether +he'd camp out on account of the heat, or turn in. But he broke the +silence with a clout at a mosquito on the nape of his neck, and a bad +word. + +“I wish you wouldn't swear so much, Johnny,” she said wearily--“at least +not to-night.” + +He looked at her blankly. + +“Why--why to-night? What's the matter with you to-night, Mary? What's +to-night more than any other night to you? I see no harm--can't a man +swear when a mosquito sticks him?” + +“I--I was only thinking of the boys, Johnny.” + +“The boys! Why, they're both on the hay in the shed.” He stared at +her again, shifted uneasily, crossed the other leg tightly, frowned, +blinked, and reached for the matches. “You look a bit off-colour, Mary. +It's the heat that makes us all a bit ratty at times. Better put that by +and have a swill o' oatmeal and water, and turn in.” + +“It's too hot to go to bed. I couldn't sleep. I'm all right. I'll--I'll +just finish this. Just reach me a drink from the water-bag--the +pannikin's on the hob there, by your boot.” + +He scratched his head helplessly, and reached for the drink. When he +sat down again, he felt strangely restless. “Like a hen that didn't know +where to lay,” he put it. He couldn't settle down or keep still, and +didn't seem to enjoy his pipe somehow. He rubbed his head again. + +“There's a thunderstorm comin',” he said. “That's what it is; and the +sooner it comes the better.” + +He went to the back door, and stared at the blackness to the east, and, +sure enough, lightning was blinking there. + +“It's coming, sure enough; just hang out and keep cool for another hour, +and you'll feel the difference.” + +He sat down again on the three-legged stool, folded his arms, with his +elbows on his knees, drew a long breath, and blinked at the clay floor +for a while; then he twisted the stool round on one leg, until he faced +the old-fashioned spired wooden clock (the brass disc of the pendulum +moving ghost-like through a scarred and scratched marine scene--Margate +in England--on the glass that covered the lower half) that stood alone +on the slab shelf over the fireplace. The hands indicated half-past +two, and Johnny, who had studied that clock and could “hit the time nigh +enough by it,” after knitting his brows and blinking at the dial for a +full minute by its own hand, decided “that it must be getting on toward +nine o'clock.” + +It must have been the heat. Johnny stood up, raking his hair, turned to +the door and back again, and then, after an impatient gesture, took up +his fiddle and raised it to his shoulder. Then the queer thing happened. +He said afterwards, under conditions favourable to such sentimental +confidence, that a cold hand seemed to take hold of the bow, through +his, and--anyway, before he knew what he was about he had played the +first bars of “When First I Met Sweet Peggy”, a tune he had played +often, twenty years before, in his courting days, and had never happened +to play since. He sawed it right through (the cold hand left after the +first bar or two) standing up; then still stood with fiddle and bow +trembling in his hands, with the queer feeling still on him, and a +rush of old thoughts going through his head, all of which he set down +afterwards to the effect of the heat. He put the fiddle away hastily, +damning the bridge of it at the same time in loud but hurried tones, +with the idea of covering any eccentricity which the wife might have +noticed in his actions. “Must 'a' got a touch o' sun,” he muttered +to himself. He sat down, fumbled with knife, pipe, and tobacco, and +presently stole a furtive glance over his shoulder at his wife. + +The washed-out little woman was still sewing, but stitching blindly, for +great tears were rolling down her worn cheeks. + +Johnny, white-faced on account of the heat, stood close behind her, +one hand on her shoulder and the other clenched on the table; but the +clenched hand shook as badly as the loose one. + +“Good God! What is the matter, Mary? You're sick!” (They had had little +or no experience of illness.) “Tell me, Mary--come now! Has the boys +been up to anything?” + +“No, Johnny; it's not that.” + +“What is it then? You're taken sick! What have you been doing with +yourself? It might be fever. Hold up a minute. You wait here quiet while +I roost out the boys and send 'em for the doctor and someone----” + +“No! no! I'm not sick, John. It's only a turn. I'll be all right in a +minute.” + +He shifted his hand to her head, which she dropped suddenly, with a +life-weary sigh, against his side. + +“Now then!” cried Johnny, wildly, “don't you faint or go into +disterricks, Mary! It'll upset the boys; think of the boys! It's only +the heat--you're only takin' queer.” + +“It's not that; you ought to know me better than that. It +was--I--Johnny, I was only thinking--we've been married twenty years +to-night--an'--it's New Year's Night!” + +“And I've never thought of it!” said Johnny (in the afterwards). “Shows +what a God-forgotten selection will make of a man. She'd thought of it +all the time, and was waiting for it to strike me. Why! I'd agreed to go +and play at a darnce at Old Pipeclay School-house all night--that very +night--and leave her at home because she hadn't asked to come; and +it never struck me to ask her--at home by herself in that hole--for +twenty-five bob. And I only stopped at home because I'd got the hump, +and knew they'd want me bad at the school.” + +They sat close together on the long stool by the table, shy and awkward +at first; and she clung to him at opening of thunder, and they started +apart guiltily when the first great drops sounded like footsteps on the +gravel outside, just as they'd done one night-time before--twenty years +before. + +If it was dark before, it was black now. The edge of the awful +storm-cloud rushed up and under the original darkness like the best +“drop” black-brushed over the cheap “lamp” variety, turning it grey by +contrast. The deluge lasted only a quarter of an hour; but it cleared +the night, and did its work. There was hail before it, too--big as emu +eggs, the boys said--that lay feet deep in the old diggers' holes on +Pipeclay for days afterwards--weeks some said. + +The two sweethearts of twenty years ago and to-night watched the retreat +of the storm, and, seeing Mount Buckaroo standing clear, they went to +the back door, which opened opposite the end of the shed, and saw to the +east a glorious arch of steel-blue, starry sky, with the distant peaks +showing clear and blue away back under the far-away stars in the depth +of it. + +They lingered awhile--arms round each other's waists--before she called +the boys, just as they had done this time of night twenty years ago, +after the boys' grandmother had called her. + +“Awlright, mother!” bawled back the boys, with unfilial independence +of Australian youth. “We're awlright! We'll be in directly! Wasn't it a +pelterer, mother?” + +They went in and sat down again. The embarrassment began to wear off. + +“We'll get out of this, Mary,” said Johnny. “I'll take Mason's offer +for the cattle and things, and take that job of Dawson's, boss or no +boss”--(Johnny's bad luck was due to his inability in the past to “get +on” with any boss for any reasonable length of time)--“I can get the +boys on, too. They're doing no good here, and growing up. It ain't doing +justice to them; and, what's more, this life is killin' you, Mary. That +settles it! I was blind. Let the jumpt-up selection go! It's making a +wall-eyed bullock of me, Mary--a dry-rotted rag of a wall-eyed bullock +like Jimmy Nowlett's old Strawberry. And you'll live in town like a +lady.” + +“Somebody coming!” yelled the boys. + +There was a clatter of sliprails hurriedly thrown down, and clipped by +horses' hoofs. + +“Insoide there! Is that you, Johnny?” + +“Yes!” (“I knew they'd come for you,” said Mrs. Mears to Johnny.) + +“You'll have to come, Johnny. There's no get out of it. Here's Jim +Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you if you show +fight. The blessed fiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up. Dave Regan burst +his concertina, and they're in a fix.” + +“But I can't leave the missus.” + +“That's all right. We've got the school missus's mare and side-saddle. +She says you ought to be jolly well ashamed of yourself, Johnny Mears, +for not bringing your wife on New Year's Night. And so you ought!” + +Johnny did not look shame-faced, for reasons unknown to them. + +“The boys couldn't find the horses,” put in Mrs. Mears. “Johnny was just +going down the gully again.” + +He gave her a grateful look, and felt a strange, new thrill of +admiration for his wife. + +“And--there's a bottle of the best put by for you, Johnny,” added Pat +McDurmer, mistaking Johnny's silence; “and we'll call it thirty bob!” + (Johnny's ideas were coming slowly again, after the recent rush.) +“Or--two quid!--there you are!” + +“I don't want two quid, nor one either, for taking my wife to a dance on +New Year's Night!” said Johnny Mears. “Run and put on your best bib and +tucker, Mary.” + +And she hurried to dress as eager and excited, and smiling to herself +as girlishly as she had done on such occasions on evenings before the +bright New Year's Night twenty years ago.--For a related story, see “A +Bush Dance”, in “Joe Wilson and His Mates”.--A. L., 1998.-- + + + + +Black Joe + + + +They called him Black Joe, and me White Joe, by way of distinction and +for the convenience of his boss (my uncle), and my aunt, and mother; so, +when we heard the cry of “Bla-a-ack Joe!” (the adjective drawn out until +it became a screech, after several repetitions, and the “Joe” short +and sharp) coming across the flat in a woman's voice, Joe knew that the +missus wanted him at the house, to get wood or water, or mind the baby, +and he kept carefully out of sight; he went at once when uncle called. +And when we heard the cry of “Wh-i-i-te Joe!” which we did with +difficulty and after several tries--though Black Joe's ears were of the +keenest--we knew that I was overdue at home, or absent without leave, +and was probably in for a warming, as the old folk called it. On some +occasions I postponed the warming as long as my stomach held out, which +was a good while in five-corner, native-cherry, or yam season--but the +warming was none the cooler for being postponed. + +Sometimes Joe heard the wrong adjective, or led me to believe he +did--and left me for a whole afternoon under the impression that the +race of Ham was in demand at the homestead, when I myself was wanted +there, and maternal wrath was increasing every moment of my absence. + +But Joe knew that my conscience was not so elastic as his, and--well, +you must expect little things like this in all friendships. + +Black Joe was somewhere between nine and twelve when I first met him, +on a visit to my uncle's station; I was somewhere in those years too. +He was very black, the darker for being engaged in the interesting but +uncertain occupation of “burning off” in his spare time--which wasn't +particularly limited. He combined shepherding, 'possum and kangaroo +hunting, crawfishing, sleeping, and various other occupations and +engagements with that of burning off. I was very white, being a sickly +town boy; but, as I took great interest in burning off, and was not +particularly fond of cold water--it was in winter time--the difference +in our complexions was not so marked at times. + +Black Joe's father, old Black Jimmie, lived in a gunyah on the rise +at the back of the sheepyards, and shepherded for my uncle. He was a +gentle, good-humoured, easy-going old fellow with a pleasant smile; +which description applies, I think, to most old blackfellows in +civilisation. I was very partial to the old man, and chummy with him, +and used to slip away from the homestead whenever I could, and squat +by the campfire along with the other piccaninnies, and think, and +yarn socially with Black Jimmie by the hour. I would give something to +remember those conversations now. Sometimes somebody would be sent to +bring me home, when it got too late, and Black Jimmie would say: + +“Piccaninnie alonga possum rug,” and there I'd be, sound asleep, with +the other young Australians. + +I liked Black Jimmie very much, and would willingly have adopted him +as a father. I should have been quite content to spend my days in the +scrub, enjoying life in dark and savage ways, and my nights “alonga +possum rug”; but the family had other plans for my future. + +It was a case of two blackfellows and one gin, when Black Jimmie went +a-wooing--about twelve years before I made his acquaintance--and he +fought for his bride in the black fashion. It was the last affair of +that kind in the district. My uncle's brother professed to have been +present at the fight, and gave me an alleged description of it. He said +that they drew lots, and Black Jimmie put his hands on his knees and +bent his head, and the other blackfellow hit him a whack on the skull +with a nulla nulla. Then they had a nip of rum all round--Black Jimmie +must have wanted it, for the nulla nulla was knotted, and heavy, and +made in the most approved fashion. Then the other blackfellow bent his +head, and Jimmie took the club and returned the whack with interest. +Then the other fellow hit Jimmie a lick, and took a clout in return. +Then they had another drink, and continued thus until Jimmie's rival +lost all heart and interest in the business. But you couldn't take +everything my uncle's brother said for granted. + +Black Mary was a queen by right, and had the reputation of being +the cleanest gin in the district; she was a great favourite with the +squatters' wives round there. Perhaps she hoped to reclaim Jimmie--he +was royal, too, but held easy views with regard to religion and the +conventionalities of civilisation. Mary insisted on being married +properly by a clergyman, made the old man build a decent hut, had all +her children christened, and kept him and them clean and tidy up to the +time of her death. + +Poor Queen Mary was ambitious. She started to educate her children, +and when they got beyond her--that is when they had learnt their +letters--she was grateful for any assistance from the good-natured bush +men and women of her acquaintance. She had decided to get her eldest boy +into the mounted police, and had plans for the rest, and she worked hard +for them, too. Jimmie offered no opposition, and gave her no assistance +beyond the rations and money he earned shepherding--which was as much as +could be expected of him. + +He did as many husbands do “for the sake of peace and quietness”--he +drifted along in the wake of his wife, and took things as easily as her +schemes of reformation and education would allow him to. + +Queen Mary died before her time, respected by all who knew or had heard +of her. The nearest squatter's wife sent a pair of sheets for a shroud, +with instructions to lay Mary out, and arranged (by bush telegraph) to +drive over next morning with her sister-in-law and two other white women +in the vicinity, to see Mary decently buried. + +But the remnant of Jimmie's tribe were there beforehand. They tore the +sheets in strips and tied Mary up in a bundle, with her chin to her +knees--preparing her for burial in their own fashion--and mourned all +night in whitewash and ashes. At least, the gins did. The white women +saw that it was hopeless to attempt to untie any of the innumerable +knots and double knots, even if it had been possible to lay Mary out +afterwards; so they had to let her be buried as she was, with black and +white obsequies. And we've got no interest in believing that she did not +“jump up white woman” long ago. + +My uncle and his brother took the two eldest boys. Black Jimmie +shifted away from the hut at once with the rest of his family--for the +“devil-devil” sat down there--and Mary's name was strictly “tabooed” in +accordance with aboriginal etiquette. + +Jimmie drifted back towards the graves of his fathers in company with +a decreasing flock of sheep day by day (for the house of my uncle had +fallen on times of drought and depression, and foot-rot and wool rings, +and over-drafts and bank owners), and a few strips of bark, a dying +fire, a black pipe, some greasy 'possum rugs and blankets, a litter of +kangaroo tails, etc., four neglected piccaninnies, half a score of mangy +mongrels, and, haply, a “lilly drap o' rum”, by night. + +The four little Australians grew dirtier and more shy and savage, and +ate underdone kangaroo and 'possum and native bear, with an occasional +treat of oak grubs and goanna by preference--and died out, one by +one, as blacks do when brought within the ever widening circle of +civilisation. Jimmie moved promptly after each death, and left the +evil one in possession, and built another mia-mia--each one being less +pretentious than the last. Finally he was left, the last of his tribe, +to mourn his lot in solitude. + +But the devil-devil came and sat down by King Jimmie's side one night, +so he, too, moved out across the Old Man border, and the mia-mia rotted +into the ground and the grass grew there. + + . . . . . + +I admired Joe; I thought him wiser and cleverer than any white boy in +the world. He could smell out 'possums unerringly, and I firmly believed +he could see yards through the muddiest of dam water; for once, when I +dropped my boat in, and was not sure of the spot, he fished it out first +try. With cotton reels and bits of stick and bark he would make the +model of a station homestead, slaughter-yards, sheep-yards, and all +complete, working in ideas and improvements of his own which might +have been put into practice with advantage. He was a most original and +interesting liar upon all subjects upon which he was ignorant and +which came up incidentally. He gave me a very interesting account of an +interview between his father and Queen Victoria, and mentioned casually +that his father had walked across the Thames without getting wet. + +He also told me how he, Joe, had tied a mounted trooper to a verandah +post and thrashed him with pine saplings until the timber gave out and +he was tired. I questioned Jimmie, but the incidents seemed to have +escaped the old king's memory. + +Joe could build bigger woodheaps with less wood than any black or white +tramp or loafer round there. He was a born architect. He took a world +of pains with his wood-heaps--he built them hollow, in the shape of a +break-wind, with the convex side towards the house for the benefit of +his employers. Joe was easy-going; he had inherited a love of peace and +quietness from his father. Uncle generally came home after dark, and Joe +would have little fires lit at safe distances all round the house, +in order to convey an impression that the burning off was proceeding +satisfactorily. + +When the warm weather came, Joe and I got into trouble with an old hag +for bathing in a waterhole in the creek in front of her shanty, and she +impounded portions of our wardrobe. We shouldn't have lost much if she +had taken it all; but our sense of injury was deep, especially as she +used very bad grammar towards us. + +Joe addressed her from the safe side of the water. He said, “Look here! +Old leather-face, sugar-eye, plar-bag marmy, I call it you.” + +“Plar-bag marmy” meant “Mother Flour-bag”, and ration sugar was +decidedly muddy in appearance. + +She came round the waterhole with a clothes prop, and made good time, +too; but we got across and away with our clothes. + +That little incident might have changed the whole course of my +existence. Plar-bag Marmy made a formal complaint to uncle, who happened +to pass there on horseback about an hour later; and the same evening +Joe's latest and most carefully planned wood heap collapsed while aunt +was pulling a stick out of it in the dark, and it gave her a bad scare, +the results of which might have been serious. + +So uncle gave us a thrashing, without the slightest regard for racial +distinctions, and sent us to bed without our suppers. + +We sought Jimmie's camp, but Joe got neither sympathy nor damper from +his father, and I was sent home with a fatherly lecture “for going +alonga that fella,” meaning Joe. + +Joe and I discussed existence at a waterhole down the creek next +afternoon, over a billy of crawfish which we had boiled and a piece of +gritty damper, and decided to retire beyond the settled districts--some +five hundred miles or so--to a place that Joe said he knew of, where +there were lagoons and billabongs ten miles wide, alive with ducks and +fish, and black cockatoos and kangaroos and wombats, that only waited to +be knocked over with a stick. + +I thought I might as well start and be a blackfellow at once, so we +got a rusty pan without a handle, and cooked about a pint of fat yellow +oak-grubs; and I was about to fall to when we were discovered, and the +full weight of combined family influence was brought to bear on the +situation. We had broken a new pair of shears digging out those grubs +from under the bark of the she-oaks, and had each taken a blade as his +own especial property, which we thought was the best thing to do under +the circumstances. Uncle wanted those shears badly, so he received us +with the buggy whip--and he didn't draw the colour line either. All +that night and next day I wished he had. I was sent home, and Joe went +droving with uncle soon after that, else I might have lived a life of +freedom and content and died out peacefully with the last of my adopted +tribe. + +Joe died of consumption on the track. When he was dying uncle asked: “Is +there anything you would like?” + +And Joe said: “I'd like a lilly drap o' rum, boss.” + +Which were his last words, for he drank the rum and died peacefully. + +I was the first to hear the news at home, and, being still a youngster, +I ran to the house, crying “Oh, mother! aunt's Joe is dead!” + +There were visitors at our place at the time, and, as the eldest child +of the maternal aunt in question had also been christened Joe--after a +grandfather of our tribe (my tribe, not Black Joe's)--the news caused +a sudden and unpleasant sensation. But cross-examination explained the +mistake, and I retired to the rear of the pig-sty, as was my custom when +things went wrong, with another cause for grief. + + + + +They Wait on the Wharf in Black + + “Seems to me that honest, hard-working men seem to accumulate + the heaviest swags of trouble in this world.”--Steelman. + + Told by Mitchell's Mate. + + + +We were coming back from West Australia, steerage--Mitchell, the Oracle, +and I. I had gone over saloon, with a few pounds in my pocket. Mitchell +said this was a great mistake--I should have gone over steerage with +nothing but the clothes I stood upright in, and come back saloon with a +pile. He said it was a very common mistake that men made, but, as far +as his experience went, there always seemed to be a deep-rooted popular +prejudice in favour of going away from home with a few pounds in one's +pocket and coming back stumped; at least amongst rovers and vagabonds +like ourselves--it wasn't so generally popular or admired at home, or in +the places we came back to, as it was in the places we went to. Anyway +it went, there wasn't the slightest doubt that our nearest and dearest +friends were, as a rule, in favour of our taking away as little as we +could possibly manage with, and coming back with a pile, whether we came +back saloon or not; and that ought to settle the matter as far as any +chap that had the slightest consideration for his friends or family was +concerned. + +There was a good deal of misery, underneath, coming home in that +steerage. One man had had his hand crushed and amputated out Coolgardie +way, and the stump had mortified, and he was being sent to Melbourne by +his mates. Some had lost their money, some a couple of years of their +life, some their souls; but none seemed to have lost the heart to +call up the quiet grin that southern rovers, vagabonds, travellers for +“graft” or fortune, and professional wanderers wear in front of it +all. Except one man--an elderly eastern digger--he had lost his wife in +Sydney while he was away. + +They sent him a wire to the Boulder Soak, or somewhere out back of +White Feather, to say that his wife was seriously ill; but the wire went +wrong, somehow, after the manner of telegrams not connected with mining, +on the lines of “the Western”. They sent him a wire to say that his wife +was dead, and that reached him all right--only a week late. + +I can imagine it. He got the message at dinner-time, or when they came +back to the camp. His mate wanted him to sit in the shade, or lie in +the tent, while he got the billy boiled. “You must brace up and pull +yourself together, Tom, for the sake of the youngsters.” And Tom for +long intervals goes walking up and down, up and down, by the camp--under +the brassy sky or the gloaming--under the brilliant star-clusters that +hang over the desert plain, but never raising his eyes to them; kicking +a tuft of grass or a hole in the sand now and then, and seeming to watch +the progress of the track he is tramping out. The wife of twenty years +was with him--though two thousand miles away--till that message came. + +I can imagine Tome sitting with his mates round the billy, they talking +in quiet, subdued tones about the track, the departure of coaches, +trains and boats--arranging for Tom's journey East, and the working of +the claim in his absence. Or Tom lying on his back in his bunk, with his +hands under his head and his eyes fixed on the calico above--thinking, +thinking, thinking. Thinking, with a touch of his boyhood's faith +perhaps; or wondering what he had done in his long, hard-working married +life, that God should do this thing to him now, of all times. + +“You'd best take what money we have in the camp, Tom; you'll want it +all ag'in' the time you get back from Sydney, and we can fix it up +arterwards.... There's a couple o' clean shirts o' mine--you'd best take +'em--you'll want 'em on the voyage.... You might as well take them there +new pants o' mine, they'll only dry-rot out here--and the coat, too, +if you like--it's too small for me, anyway. You won't have any time in +Perth, and you'll want some decent togs to land with in Sydney.” + + . . . . . + +“I wouldn't 'a' cared so much if I'd 'a' seen the last of her,” he said, +in a quiet, patient voice, to us one night by the rail. “I would 'a' +liked to have seen the last of her.” + +“Have you been long in the West?” + +“Over two years. I made up to take a run across last Christmas, and have +a look at 'em. But I couldn't very well get away when 'exemption-time' +came. I didn't like to leave the claim.” + +“Do any good over there?” + +“Well, things brightened up a bit the last month or two. I had a hard +pull at first; landed without a penny, and had to send back every +shilling I could rake up to get things straightened up a bit at home. +Then the eldest boy fell ill, and then the baby. I'd reckoned on +bringing 'em over to Perth or Coolgardie when the cool weather came, and +having them somewheres near me, where I could go and have a look at 'em +now and then, and look after them.” + +“Going back to the West again?” + +“Oh, yes. I must go for the sake of the youngsters. But I don't seem +to have much heart in it.” He smoked awhile. “Over twenty years we +struggled along together--the missus and me--and it seems hard that I +couldn't see the last of her. It's rough on a man.” + +“The world is damned rough on a man sometimes,” said Mitchell, “most +especially when he least deserves it.” + +The digger crossed his arms on the rail like an old “cocky” at the fence +in the cool of the evening, yarning with an old crony. + +“Mor'n twenty years she stuck to me and struggled along by my side. She +never give in. I'll swear she was on her feet till the last, with +her sleeves tucked up--bustlin' round.... And just when things was +brightening and I saw a chance of giving her a bit of a rest and comfort +for the end of her life.... I thought of it all only t'other week when +things was clearing up ahead; and the last 'order' I sent over I set +to work and wrote her a long letter, putting all the good news and +encouragement I could think of into it. I thought how that letter would +brighten up things at home, and how she'd read it round. I thought of +lots of things that a man never gets time to think of while his nose is +kept to the grindstone. And she was dead and in her grave, and I never +knowed it.” + +Mitchell dug his elbow into my ribs and made signs for the matches to +light his pipe. + +“An' yer never knowed,” reflected the Oracle. + +“But I always had an idea when there was trouble at home,” the digger +went on presently, in his quiet, patient tone. “I always knowed; I +always had a kind of feeling that way--I felt it--no matter how far I +was away. When the youngsters was sick I knowed it, and I expected the +letter that come. About a fortnight ago I had a feeling that way when +the wife was ill. The very stars out there on the desert by the Boulder +Soak seemed to say: 'There's trouble at home. Go home. There's trouble +at home.' But I never dreamed what that trouble was. One night I did +make up my mind to start in the morning, but when the morning came I +hadn't an excuse, and was ashamed to tell my mates the truth. They might +have thought I was going ratty, like a good many go out there.” Then he +broke off with a sort of laugh, as if it just struck him that we +might think he was a bit off his head, or that his talk was getting +uncomfortable for us. “Curious, ain't it?” he said. + +“Reminds me of a case I knowed,----” commenced the Oracle, after a +pause. + +I could have pitched him overboard; but that was a mistake. He and the +old digger sat on the for'ard hatch half the night yarning, mostly about +queer starts, and rum go's, and curious cases the Oracle had knowed, +and I think the Oracle did him a lot of good somehow, for he seemed more +cheerful in the morning. + +We were overcrowded in the steerage, but Mitchell managed to give up his +berth to the old digger without letting him know it. Most of the chaps +seemed anxious to make a place at the first table and pass the first +helpings of the dishes to the “old cove that had lost his missus.” + +They all seemed to forget him as we entered the Heads; they had their +own troubles to attend to. They were in the shadow of the shame of +coming back hard up, and the grins began to grow faint and sickly. But I +didn't forget him. I wish sometimes that I didn't take so much notice of +things. + +There was no mistaking them--the little group that stood apart near the +end of the wharf, dressed in cheap black. There was the eldest single +sister--thin, pale, and haggard-looking--that had had all the hard +worry in the family till her temper was spoilt, as you could see by the +peevish, irritable lines in her face. She had to be the mother of them +all now, and had never known, perhaps, what it was to be a girl or a +sweetheart. She gave a hard, mechanical sort of smile when she saw her +father, and then stood looking at the boat in a vacant, hopeless sort of +way. There was the baby, that he saw now for the first time, crowing and +jumping at the sight of the boat coming in; there was the eldest boy, +looking awkward and out of place in his new slop-suit of black, shifting +round uneasily, and looking anywhere but at his father. But the little +girl was the worst, and a pretty little girl she was, too; she never +took her streaming eyes off her father's face the whole time. You could +see that her little heart was bursting, and with pity for him. They were +too far apart to speak to each other as yet. The boat seemed a cruel +long long time swinging alongside--I wished they'd hurry up. He'd +brought his traps up early, and laid 'em on the deck under the rail; he +stood very quiet with his hands behind him, looking at his children. He +had a strong, square, workman's face, but I could see his chin and mouth +quivering under the stubbly, iron-grey beard, and the lump working in +his throat; and one strong hand gripped the other very tight behind, but +his eyelids never quivered--only his eyes seemed to grow more and more +sad and lonesome. These are the sort of long, cruel moments when a man +sits or stands very tight and quiet and calm-looking, with his whole +past life going whirling through his brain, year after year, and over +and over again. Just as the digger seemed about to speak to them he met +the brimming eyes of his little girl turned up to his face. He looked +at her for a moment, and then turned suddenly and went below as if +pretending to go down for his things. I noticed that Mitchell--who +hadn't seemed to be noticing anything in particular--followed him down. +When they came on deck again we were right alongside. + +“'Ello, Nell!” said the digger to the eldest daughter. + +“'Ello, father!” she said, with a sort of gasp, but trying to smile. + +“'Ello, Jack, how are you getting on?” + +“All right, father,” said the boy, brightening up, and seeming greatly +relieved. + +He looked down at the little girl with a smile that I can't describe, +but didn't speak to her. She still stood with quivering chin and mouth +and great brimming eyes upturned, full of such pity as I never saw +before in a child-face--pity for him. + +“You can get ashore now,” said Mitchell; “see, they've got the gangway +out aft.” + +Presently I saw Mitchell with the portmanteau in his hand, and the baby +on his arm, steering them away to a quiet corner of the shed at the top +of the wharf. The digger had the little girl in his arms, and both hers +were round his neck, and her face hidden on his shoulder. + +When Mitchell came back, he leant on the rail for a while by my side, as +if it was a boundary fence out back, and there was no hurry to break up +camp and make a start. + +“What did you follow him below that time for, Mitchell?” I asked +presently, for want of something better to say. + +Mitchell looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. + +“I wanted to score a drink!” he said. “I thought he wanted one and +wouldn't like to be a Jimmy Woodser.” + + + + +Seeing the Last of You + + + +“When you're going away by boat,” said Mitchell, “you ought to say +good-bye to the women at home, and to the chaps at the last pub. I hate +waiting on the wharf or up on deck when the boat's behind time. There's +no sense in it, and a lot of unnecessary misery. Your friends wait on +the wharf and you are kept at the rail to the bitter end, just when they +and you most want a spell. And why? Some of them hang out because they +love you, and want to see the last of you; some because they don't like +you to see them going away without seeing the last of you; and you hang +out mostly because it would hurt 'em if you went below and didn't give +them a chance of seeing the last of you all the time--and you curse the +boat and wish to God it would start. And those who love you most--the +women-folk of the family--and who are making all the fuss and breaking +their hearts about having to see the last of you, and least want to do +it--they hang out the longest, and are the most determined to see it. +Where's the sense in it? What's the good of seeing the last of you? How +do women manage to get consolation out of a thing like that? + +“But women get consolation out of queer things sometimes,” he added +reflectively, “and so do men. + +“I remember when I was knocking about the coasts, an old aunt of mine +always persisted in coming down to see the last of me, and bringing the +whole family too--no matter if I was only going away for a month. I was +her favourite. I always turned up again in a few months; but if I'd come +back every next boat it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to +her. She'd say that I mightn't come back some day, and then she'd never +forgive herself nor the family for not seeing me off. I suppose she'll +see the end of me yet if she lives long enough--and she's a wiry old +lady of the old school. She was old-fashioned and dressed like a fright, +they said at home. They hated being seen in public with her; to tell the +truth, I felt a bit ashamed, too, at times. I wouldn't be, now. When I'd +get her off on to the wharf I'd be overcome with my feelings, and have +to retire to the privacy of the bar to hide my emotions till the +boat was going. And she'd stand on the end of the pier and wave her +handkerchief and mop her old eyes with it until she was removed by +force. + +“God bless her old heart! There wasn't so much affection wasted on me +at home that I felt crowded by hers; and I never lost anything by her +seeing the last of me. + +“I do wish the Oracle would stop that confounded fiddle of his--it makes +you think over damned old things.” + + + + +Two Boys at Grinder Brothers' + + + +Five or six half-grown larrikins sat on the cemented sill of the big +window of Grinder Bros.' Railway Coach Factory waiting for the work +bell, and one of the number was Bill Anderson--known as “Carstor +Hoil”--a young terror of fourteen or fifteen. + +“Here comes Balmy Arvie,” exclaimed Bill as a pale, timid-looking little +fellow rounded the corner and stood against the wall by the door. “How's +your parents, Balmy?” + +The boy made no answer; he shrank closer to the entrance. The first bell +went. + +“What yer got for dinner, Balmy? Bread 'n' treacle?” asked the young +ruffian; then for the edification of his chums he snatched the boy's +dinner bag and emptied its contents on the pavement. + +The door opened. Arvie gathered up his lunch, took his time-ticket, and +hurried in. + +“Well, Balmy,” said one of the smiths as he passed, “what do you think +of the boat race?” + +“I think,” said the boy, goaded to reply, “that it would be better if +young fellows of this country didn't think so much about racin' an' +fightin'.” + +The questioner stared blankly for a moment, then laughed suddenly in the +boy's face, and turned away. The rest grinned. + +“Arvie's getting balmier than ever,” guffawed young Bill. + +“Here, Carstor Hoil,” cried one of the smiths' strikers, “how much oil +will you take for a chew of terbaccer?” + +“Teaspoonful?” + +“No, two.” + +“All right; let's see the chew, first.” + +“Oh, you'll get it. What yer frighten' of?... Come on, chaps, 'n' see +Bill drink oil.” + +Bill measured out some machine oil and drank it. He got the tobacco, and +the others got what they called “the fun of seein' Bill drink oil!” + +The second bell rang, and Bill went up to the other end of the shop, +where Arvie was already at work sweeping shavings from under a bench. + +The young terror seated himself on the end of this bench, drummed his +heels against the leg, and whistled. He was in no hurry, for his foreman +had not yet arrived. He amused himself by lazily tossing chips at +Arvie, who made no protest for a while. “It would be--better--for this +country,” said the young terror, reflectively and abstractedly, cocking +his eye at the whitewashed roof beams and feeling behind him on the +bench for a heavier chip--“it would be better--for this country--if +young fellers didn't think so much about--about--racin'--AND fightin'.” + +“You let me alone,” said Arvie. + +“Why, what'll you do?” exclaimed Bill, bringing his eye down with +feigned surprise. Then, in an indignant tone, “I don't mind takin' a +fall out of yer, now, if yer like.” + +Arvie went on with his work. Bill tossed all the chips within reach, and +then sat carelessly watching some men at work, and whistling the “Dead +March”. Presently he asked: + +“What's yer name, Balmy?” + +No answer. + +“Carn't yer answer a civil question? I'd soon knock the sulks out of yer +if I was yer father.” + +“My name's Arvie; you know that.” + +“Arvie what?” + +“Arvie Aspinall.” + +Bill cocked his eye at the roof and thought a while and whistled; then +he said suddenly: + +“Say, Balmy, where d'yer live?” + +“Jones' Alley.” + +“What?” + +“Jones' Alley.” + +A short, low whistle from Bill. “What house?” + +“Number Eight.” + +“Garn! What yer giv'nus?” + +“I'm telling the truth. What's there funny about it? What do I want to +tell you a lie for?” + +“Why, we lived there once, Balmy. Old folks livin'?” + +“Mother is; father's dead.” + +Bill scratched the back of his head, protruded his under lip, and +reflected. + +“I say, Arvie, what did yer father die of?” + +“Heart disease. He dropped down dead at his work.” + +Long, low, intense whistle from Bill. He wrinkled his forehead and +stared up at the beams as if he expected to see something unusual there. +After a while he said, very impressively: “So did mine.” + +The coincidence hadn't done striking him yet; he wrestled with it for +nearly a minute longer. Then he said: + +“I suppose yer mother goes out washin'?” + +“Yes.” + +“'N' cleans offices?” + +“Yes.” + +“So does mine. Any brothers 'n' sisters?” + +“Two--one brother 'n' one sister.” + +Bill looked relieved--for some reason. + +“I got nine,” he said. “Yours younger'n you?” + +“Yes.” + +“Lot of bother with the landlord?” + +“Yes, a good lot.” + +“Had any bailiffs in yet?” + +“Yes, two.” + +They compared notes a while longer, and tailed off into a silence which +lasted three minutes and grew awkward towards the end. + +Bill fidgeted about on the bench, reached round for a chip, but +recollected himself. Then he cocked his eye at the roof once more and +whistled, twirling a shaving round his fingers the while. At last +he tore the shaving in two, jerked it impatiently from him, and said +abruptly: + +“Look here, Arvie! I'm sorry I knocked over yer barrer yesterday.” + +“Thank you.” + +This knocked Bill out the first round. He rubbed round uneasily on +the bench, fidgeted with the vise, drummed his fingers, whistled, and +finally thrust his hands in his pockets and dropped on his feet. + +“Look here, Arvie!” he said in low, hurried tones. “Keep close to me +goin' out to-night, 'n' if any of the other chaps touches yer or says +anything to yer I'll hit 'em!” + +Then he swung himself round the corner of a carriage “body” and was +gone. + + . . . . . + +Arvie was late out of the shop that evening. His boss was a +sub-contractor for the coach-painting, and always tried to find twenty +minutes' work for his boys just about five or ten minutes before the +bell rang. He employed boys because they were cheap and he had a lot of +rough work, and they could get under floors and “bogies” with their pots +and brushes, and do all the “priming” and paint the trucks. His name was +Collins, and the boys were called “Collins' Babies”. It was a joke +in the shop that he had a “weaning” contract. The boys were all “over +fourteen”, of course, because of the Education Act. Some were nine or +ten--wages from five shillings to ten shillings. It didn't matter +to Grinder Brothers so long as the contracts were completed and the +dividends paid. Collins preached in the park every Sunday. But this has +nothing to do with the story. + +When Arvie came out it was beginning to rain and the hands had all gone +except Bill, who stood with his back to a verandah-post, spitting with +very fair success at the ragged toe of one boot. He looked up, nodded +carelessly at Arvie, and then made a dive for a passing lorry, on the +end of which he disappeared round the next corner, unsuspected by the +driver, who sat in front with his pipe in his mouth and a bag over his +shoulders. + +Arvie started home with his heart and mind pretty full, and a stronger, +stranger aversion to ever going back to the shop again. This new, +unexpected, and unsought-for friendship embarrassed the poor lonely +child. It wasn't welcome. + +But he never went back. He got wet going home, and that night he was a +dying child. He had been ill all the time, and Collins was one “baby” + short next day. + + + + +The Selector's Daughter + + + + I. + +She rode slowly down the steep siding from the main road to a track in +the bed of the Long Gully, the old grey horse picking his way zig-zag +fashion. She was about seventeen, slight in figure, and had a pretty +freckled face with a pathetically drooping mouth, and big sad brown +eyes. She wore a faded print dress, with an old black riding skirt drawn +over it, and her head was hidden in one of those ugly, old-fashioned +white hoods, which, seen from the rear, always suggest an old woman. +She carried several parcels of groceries strapped to the front of the +dilapidated side-saddle. + +The track skirted a chain of rocky waterholes at the foot of the gully, +and the girl glanced nervously at these ghastly, evil-looking pools as +she passed them by. The sun had set, as far as Long Gully was concerned. +The old horse carefully followed a rough bridle track, which ran up the +gully now on one side of the watercourse and now on the other; the gully +grew deeper and darker, and its sullen, scrub-covered sides rose more +steeply as he progressed. + +The girl glanced round frequently, as though afraid of someone following +her. Once she drew rein, and listened to some bush sound. “Kangaroos,” + she murmured; it was only kangaroos. She crossed a dimmed little +clearing where a farm had been, and entered a thick scrub of box and +stringy-bark saplings. Suddenly with a heavy thud, thud, an “old man” + kangaroo leapt the path in front, startling the girl fearfully, and went +up the siding towards the peak. + +“Oh, my God!” she gasped, with her hand on her heart. + +She was very nervous this evening; her heart was hurt now, and she held +her hand close to it, while tears started from her eyes and glistened in +the light of the moon, which was rising over the gap ahead. + +“Oh, if I could only go away from the bush!” she moaned. + +The old horse plodded on, and now and then shook his head--sadly, it +seemed--as if he knew her troubles and was sorry. + +She passed another clearing, and presently came to a small homestead in +a stringy-bark hollow below a great gap in the ridges--“Deadman's +Gap”. The place was called “Deadman's Hollow”, and looked like it. +The “house”--a low, two-roomed affair, with skillions--was built of +half-round slabs and stringy-bark, and was nearly all roof; the bark, +being darkened from recent rain, gave it a drearier appearance than +usual. + +A big, coarse-looking youth of about twenty was nailing a green kangaroo +skin to the slabs; he was out of temper because he had bruised his +thumb. The girl unstrapped the parcels and carried them in; as she +passed her brother, she said: + +“Take the saddle off for me, will you, Jack?” + +“Oh, carnt yer take it off yerself?” he snarled; “carnt yer see I'm +busy?” + +She took off the saddle and bridle, and carried them into a shed, where +she hung them on a beam. The patient old hack shook himself with an +energy that seemed ill-advised, considering his age and condition, and +went off towards the “dam”. + +An old woman sat in the main room beside a fireplace which took up +almost the entire end of the house. A plank-table, supported on stakes +driven into the ground, stood in the middle of the room, and two slab +benches were fixtures on each side. The floor was clay. All was clean +and poverty-stricken; all that could be whitewashed was white, and +everything that could be washed was scrubbed. The slab shelves were +covered with clean newspapers, on which bright tins, and pannikins, and +fragments of crockery were set to the greatest advantage. The walls, +however, were disfigured by Christmas supplements of illustrated +journals. + +The girl came in and sat down wearily on a stool opposite to the old +woman. + +“Are you any better, mother?” she asked. + +“Very little, Mary, very little. Have you seen your father?” + +“No.” + +“I wonder where he is?” + +“You might wonder. What's the use of worrying about it, mother?” + +“I suppose he's drinking again.” + +“Most likely. Worrying yourself to death won't help it!” + +The old woman sat and moaned about her troubles, as old women do. She +had plenty to moan about. + +“I wonder where your brother Tom is? We haven't heard from him for a +year now. He must be in trouble again; something tells me he must be in +trouble again.” + +Mary swung her hood off into her lap. + +“Why do you worry about it, mother? What's the use?” + +“I only wish I knew. I only wish I knew!” + +“What good would that do? You know Tom went droving with Fred Dunn, and +Fred will look after him; and, besides, Tom's older now and got more +sense.” + +“Oh, you don't care--you don't care! You don't feel it, but I'm his +mother, and----” + +“Oh, for God's sake, don't start that again, mother; it hurts me more +than you think. I'm his sister; I've suffered enough, God knows! Don't +make matters worse than they are!” + +“Here comes father!” shouted one of the children outside, “'n' he's +bringing home a steer.” + +The old woman sat still, and clasped her hands nervously. Mary tried to +look cheerful, and moved the saucepan on the fire. A big, dark-bearded +man, mounted on a small horse, was seen in the twilight driving a steer +towards the cow-yard. A boy ran to let down the slip-rails. + +Presently Mary and her mother heard the clatter of rails let down and +put up again, and a minute later a heavy step like the tread of a horse +was heard outside. The selector lumbered in, threw his hat in a +corner, and sat down by the table. His wife rose and bustled round with +simulated cheerfulness. Presently Mary hazarded-- + +“Where have you been, father?” + +“Somewheers.” + +There was a wretched silence, lasting until the old woman took courage +to say timidly: + +“So you've brought a steer, Wylie?” + +“Yes!” he snapped; the tone seemed defiant. + +The old woman's hands trembled, so that she dropped a cup. Mary turned a +shade paler. + +“Here, git me some tea. Git me some TEA!” shouted Mr. Wylie. “I ain't +agoin' to sit here all night!” + +His wife made what haste her nervousness would allow, and they soon sat +down to tea. Jack, the eldest son, was sulky, and his father muttered +something about knocking the sulks out of him with an axe. + +“What's annoyed you, Jack?” asked his mother, humbly. + +He scowled and made no answer. + +The younger children--three boys and a girl--began quarrelling as soon +as they sat down. Wylie yelled at them now and then, and grumbled at the +cooking, and at his wife for not being able to keep the children quiet. +It was: “Marther! you didn't put no sugar in my tea.” “Mother, Jimmy's +got my place; make him move.” “Mawther! do speak to this Fred.” “Oh! +father, this big brute of a Harry's kickin' me!” And so on. + + + II. + +When the miserable meal was over, Wylie got a rope and a butcher's +knife, and went out to slaughter the steer; but first there was a row, +because he thought--or pretended to think--that somebody had been +using his knife. He lassoed the beast, drew it up to the rails, and +slaughtered it. + +Meanwhile, Jack and his next brother took an old gun, let the dogs +loose, and went 'possum shooting. + +Presently Wylie came in again, sat down by the fire, and smoked. The +children quarrelled over a boy's book; Mrs. Wylie made weak attempts +to keep the peace, but they took no notice of her. Suddenly her husband +rose with an oath, seized the novel, and threw it behind the fire. + +“Git to bed! git to bed!” he roared at the children; “git to bed, or +I'll smash your brains with the axe!” + +They got to bed. It was made of saplings and bark, covered with three +bushel-bags full of straw and old pieces of blanket sewn together. The +children quarrelled in bed till their father took off his belt and “went +into” them, according to promise. There was a sudden hush, followed by +a sound like a bird-clapper; then howls; then a peaceful calm fell upon +that happy home. + +Wylie went out again, and was absent an hour; on his return he sat by +the fire and smoked sullenly. After a while he snatched the pipe from +his mouth, and looked impatiently at the old woman. + +“Oh! for God's sake, git to bed,” he snapped, “and don't be asittin' +there like a blarsted funeral! You're enough to give a man the dismals.” + +Mrs. Wylie gathered up her sewing and retired. Then he said to his +daughter: “You come and hold the candle.” + +Mary put on her hood and followed her father to the yard. The carcase +lay close to the rails, against which two sheets of bark had been raised +as a break-wind. The beast had been partly skinned, and a portion of +the hide, where a brand might have been, was carefully turned back. Mary +noticed this at once. Her father went on with his work, and occasionally +grumbled at her for not holding the candle right. + +“Where did you buy the steer, father?” she asked. + +“Ask no questions and hear no lies.” Then he added, “Carn't you see it's +a clear skin?” + +She had a keen sense of humour, and the idea of a “'clear skin' steer” + would have amused her at any other time. She didn't smile now. + +He turned the carcase over; the loose hide fell back, and the light +shone on a distinct brand. White as a sheet went Mary's face, and her +hand trembled so that she nearly let the candle fall. + +“What are you adoin' of now?” shouted her father. “Hold the candle, +carn't you? You're worse than the old woman.” + +“Father! the beast is branded! See!---- What does PB stand for?” + +“Poor Beggar, like myself. Hold the candle, carn't you?--and hold your +tongue.” + +Mary was startled again by hearing the tread of a horse, but it was only +the old grey munching round. Her father finished skinning, and drew the +carcase up to a make-shift “gallows”. “Now you can go to bed,” he said, +in a gentler tone. + +She went to her bedroom--a small, low, slab skillion, built on to the +end of the house--and fell on her knees by the bunk. + +“God help me! God help us all!” she cried. + +She lay down, but could not sleep. She was nervously ill--nearly mad, +because of the dark, disgraceful cloud of trouble which hung over her +home. Always in trouble--always in trouble. It started long ago, when +her favourite brother Tom ran away. She was little more than a child +then, intensely sensitive; and when she sat in the old bark school she +fancied that the other children were thinking or whispering to each +other, “Her brother's in prison! Mary Wylie's brother's in prison! Tom +Wylie's in gaol!” She was thinking of it still. They were ever with her, +those horrible days and nights of the first shadow of shame. She had the +same horror of evil, the same fearful dread of disgrace that her mother +had. She had been ambitious; she had managed to read much, and had wild +dreams of going to the city and rising above the common level, but that +was all past now. + +How could she rise when the cruel hand of disgrace was ever ready to +drag her down at any moment. “Ah, God!” she moaned in her misery, “if +we could only be born without kin--with no one to disgrace us but +ourselves! It's cruel, God, it's cruel to suffer for the crimes of +others!” She was getting selfish in her troubles--like her mother. “I +want to go away from the bush and all I know.... O God, help me to +go away from the bush!” Presently she fell asleep--if sleep it may be +called--and dreamt of sailing away, sailing away far out on the sea +beyond the horizon of her dread. Then came a horrible nightmare, in +which she and all her family were arrested for a terrible crime. She +woke in a fright, and saw a reddish glare on the window. Her father +was poking round some logs where they had been “burning-off”. A pungent +odour came through a broken pane and turned her sick. He was burning the +hide. + + +Wylie did not go to bed that night; he got his breakfast before +daylight, and rode up through the frosty gap while the stars were still +out, carrying a bag of beef in front of him on the grey horse. Mary said +nothing about the previous night. Her mother wondered how much “father” + had given for the steer, and supposed he had gone into town to sell +the hide; the poor soul tried to believe that he had come by the steer +honestly. Mary fried some meat, and tried to eat it for her mother's +sake, but could manage only a few mouthfuls. Mrs. Wylie also seemed +to have lost her appetite. Jack and his brother, who had been out +all night, made a hearty breakfast. Then Jimmy started to peg out the +'possum skins, while Jack went to look for a missing pony. Mary was left +to milk all the cows, and feed the calves and pigs. + + +Shortly after dinner one of the children ran to the door, and cried: + +“Why, mother--here's three mounted troopers comin' up the gully!” + +“Oh, my God!” cried the mother, sinking back in her chair and trembling +like a leaf. The children ran and hid in the scrub. Mary stood up, +terribly calm, and waited. The eldest trooper dismounted, came to the +door, glanced suspiciously at the remains of the meal, and abruptly +asked the dreaded question: + +“Mrs. Wylie, where's your husband?” + +She dropped the tea-cup, from which she had pretended to be drinking +unconcernedly. + +“What? Why, what do you want my husband for?” she asked in pitiful +desperation. SHE looked like the guilty party. + +“Oh, you know well enough,” he sneered impatiently. + +Mary rose and faced him. “How dare you talk to my mother like that?” she +cried. “If my poor brother Tom was only here--you--you coward!” + +The youngest trooper whispered something to his senior, and then, stung +by a sharp retort, said: + +“Well, you needn't be a pig.” + +His two companions passed through into the spare skillion, where they +found some beef in a cask, and more already salted down under a bag on +the end of a bench; then they went out at the back and had a look at the +cow-yard. The younger trooper lingered behind. + +“I'll try and get them up the gully on some excuse,” he whispered to +Mary. “You plant the hide before we come back.” + +“It's too late. Look there!” She pointed through the doorway. + +The other two were at the logs where the fire had been; the burning hide +had stuck to the logs in places like glue. + +“Wylie's a fool,” remarked the old trooper. + + + III. + +Jack disappeared shortly after his father's arrest on a charge of horse +and cattle-stealing, and Tom, the prodigal, turned up unexpectedly. +He was different from his father and eldest brother. He had an open +good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to +peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things +for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures--one bright and +good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the +family--came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead +generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into +genius in one or two--in Mary, perhaps. + +“Cheer up, old woman!” cried Tom, patting his mother on the back. “We'll +be happy yet. I've been wild and foolish, I know, and gave you some +awful trouble, but that's all done with. I mean to keep steady, and +by-and-bye we'll go away to Sydney or Queensland. Give us a smile, +mother.” + +He got some “grubbing” to do, and for six months kept the family +in provisions. Then a change came over him. He became moody and +sullen--even brutal. He would sit for hours and grin to himself without +any apparent cause; then he would stay away from home for days together. + +“Tom's going wrong again,” wailed Mrs. Wylie. “He'll get into trouble +again, I know he will. We are disgraced enough already, God knows.” + +“You've done your best, mother,” said Mary, “and can do no more. +People will pity us; after all, the thing itself is not so bad as the +everlasting dread of it. This will be a lesson for father--he wanted +one--and maybe he'll be a better man.” (She knew better than that.) “YOU +did your best, mother.” + +“Ah, Mary! you don't know what I've gone through these thirty years +in the bush with your father. I've had to go down on my knees and beg +people not to prosecute him--and the same with your brother Tom; and +this is the end of it.” + +“Better to have let them go, mother; you should have left father when +you found out what sort of a man he was; it would have been better for +all.” + +“It was my duty to stick by him, child; he was my husband. Your father +was always a bad man, Mary--a bad man; I found it out too late. I could +not tell you a quarter of what I have suffered with him.... I was proud, +Mary; I wanted my children to be better than others.... It's my fault; +it's a judgment.... I wanted to make my children better than others.... +I was so proud, Mary.” + +Mary had a sweetheart, a drover, who was supposed to be in Queensland. +He had promised to marry her, and take her and her mother away when he +returned; at least, she had promised to marry him on that condition. He +had now been absent on his latest trip for nearly six months, and there +was no news from him. She got a copy of a country paper to look for the +“stock passings”; but a startling headline caught her eye: + + + IMPUDENT ATTEMPT AT ROBBERY UNDER ARMS. + ---- + “A drover known to the police as Frederick Dunn, alias Drew, + was arrested last week at----” + + +She read to the bitter end, and burned the paper. And the shadow of +another trouble, darker and drearier than all the rest, was upon her. + +So the little outcast family in Long Gully existed for several months, +seeing no one save a sympathetic old splitter who would come and smoke +his pipe by the fire of nights, and try to convince the old woman that +matters might have been worse, and that she wouldn't worry so much if +she knew the troubles of some of our biggest families, and that things +would come out all right and the lesson would do Wylie good. Also, that +Tom was a different boy altogether, and had more sense than to go +wrong again. “It was nothing,” he said, “nothing; they didn't know what +trouble was.” + +But one day, when Mary and her mother were alone, the troopers came +again. + +“Mrs. Wylie, where's your son Tom?” they asked. + +She sat still. She didn't even cry, “Oh, my God!” + +“Don't be frightened, Mrs. Wylie,” said one of the troopers, gently. “It +ain't for much anyway, and maybe Tom'll be able to clear himself.” + +Mary sank on her knees by her mother's side, crying “Speak to me, +mother. Oh, my God, she's dying! Speak for my sake, mother. Don't die, +mother; it's all a mistake. Don't die and leave me here alone.” + +But the poor old woman was dead. + + . . . . . + +Wylie came out towards the end of the year, and a few weeks later he +brought home a--another woman. + + + IV. + +Bob Bentley, general hawker, was camping under some rocks by the main +road, near the foot of Long Gully. His mate was fast asleep under the +tilted trap. Bob stood with his back to the fire, his pipe in his mouth, +and his hands clasped behind him. The fire lit up the undersides of the +branches above; a native bear sat in a fork blinking down at it, while +the moon above him showed every hair on his ears. From among the trees +came the pleasant jingle of hobble-chains, the slow tread of hoofs, and +the “crunch, crunch” at the grass, as the horses moved about and grazed, +now in moonlight, now in the soft shadows. “Old Thunder”, a big black +dog of no particular breed, gave a meaning look at his master, and +started up the ridge, followed by several smaller dogs. Soon Bob heard +from the hillside the “hy-yi-hi, whomp, whomp, whomp!” of old Thunder, +and the yop-yop-yopping of the smaller fry--they had tree'd a 'possum. +Bob threw himself on the grass, and pretended to be asleep. There was +a sound as of a sizeable boulder rolling down the hill, and presently +Thunder trotted round the fire to see if his master would come. Bob +snored. The dog looked suspiciously at him, trotted round once or twice, +and as a last resource gave him two great slobbery licks across the +face. Bob got up with a good-natured oath. + +“Well, old party,” he said to Thunder, “you're a thundering old +nuisance; but I s'pose you won't be satisfied till I come.” He got a gun +from the waggonette, loaded it, and started up the ridge; old Thunder +rushing to and fro to show the way--as if the row the other dogs were +making wasn't enough to guide his master. + +When Bob returned with the 'possums he was startled to see a woman in +the camp. She was sitting on a log by the fire, with her elbows on her +knees and her face in her hands. + +“Why--what the dev--who are you?” + +The girl raised a white desperate face to him. It was Mary Wylie. + +“My father and--and the woman--they're drinking--they turned me out! +they turned me out.” + +“Did they now? I'm sorry for that. What can I do for you?... She's mad +sure enough,” he thought to himself; “I thought it was a ghost.” + +“I don't know,” she wailed, “I don't know. You're a man, and I'm a +helpless girl. They turned me out! My mother's dead, and my brothers +gone away. Look! Look here!” pointing to a bruise on her forehead. “The +woman did that. My own father stood by and saw it done--said it served +me right! Oh, my God!” + +“What woman? Tell me all about it.” + +“The woman father brought home!... I want to go away from the bush! Oh! +for God's sake take me away from the bush!... Anything! anything!--you +know!--only take me away from the bush!” + +Bob and his mate--who had been roused--did their best to soothe her; +but suddenly, without a moment's warning, she sprang to her feet and +scrambled to the top of the rock overhanging the camp. She stood for a +moment in the bright moonlight, gazing intently down the vacant road. + +“Here they come!” she cried, pointing down the road. “Here they +come--the troopers! I can see their cap-peaks glistening in +the moonlight!... I'm going away! Mother's gone. I'm going +now!--Good-bye!--Good-bye! I'm going away from the bush!” + +Then she ran through the trees towards the foot of Long Gully. Bob and +his mate followed; but, being unacquainted with the locality, they lost +her. + +She ran to the edge of a granite cliff on the higher side of the deepest +of the rocky waterholes. There was a heavy splash, and three startled +kangaroos, who had been drinking, leapt back and sped away, like three +grey ghosts, up the ridge towards the moonlit peak. + + + + +Mitchell on the “Sex” and Other “Problems” + + + +“I agree with 'T' in last week's 'Bulletin',” said Mitchell, after +cogitating some time over the last drop of tea in his pannikin, held +at various angles, “about what they call the 'Sex Problem'. There's no +problem, really, except Creation, and that's not our affair; we can't +solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it for ourselves +to puzzle over, and waste the little time that is given us about. It's +we that make the problems, not Creation. We make 'em, and they only +smother us; they'll smother the world in the end if we don't look +out. Anything that can be argued, for and against, from half a dozen +different points of view--and most things that men argue over can +be--and anything that has been argued about for thousands of years (as +most things have) is worse than profitless; it wastes the world's time +and ours, and often wrecks old mateships. Seems to me the deeper you +read, think, talk, or write about things that end in ism, the less +satisfactory the result; the more likely you are to get bushed and +dissatisfied with the world. And the more you keep on the surface of +plain things, the plainer the sailing--the more comfortable for you and +everybody else. We've always got to come to the surface to breathe, in +the end, in any case; we're meant to live on the surface, and we might +as well stay there and look after it and ourselves for all the good we +do diving down after fish that aren't there, except in our imagination. +And some of 'em are very dead fish, too--the 'Sex Problem', for +instance. When we fall off the surface of the earth it will be time +enough to make a problem out of the fact that we couldn't stick on. I'm +a Federal Pro-trader in this country; I'm a Federalist because I think +Federation is the plain and natural course for Australia, and I'm a +Free-tectionist because I'm in favour of sinking any question, or any +two things, that enlightened people can argue and fight over, and try, +one after the other, for fifty years without being able to come to a +decision about, or prove which is best for the welfare of the country. +It only wastes a young country's time, and keeps it off the right track. +Federation isn't a problem--it's a plain fact--but they make a problem +out of every panel they have to push down in the rotten old boundary +fences.” + +“Personal interests,” suggested Joe. + +“Of course. It's personal interest of the wrong sort that makes all the +problems. You can trace the sex problem to people who trade in unhealthy +personal interests. I believe in personal interests of the right +sort--true individualism. If we all looked after ourselves, and our +wives and families--if we have any--in the proper way, the world would +be all right. We waste too much time looking after each other. + +“Now, supposing we're travelling and have to get a shed and make a +cheque so's to be able to send a few quid home, as soon as we can, to +the missus, or the old folks, and the next water is twenty miles ahead. +If we sat down and argued over a social problem till doomsday, we +wouldn't get to the tank; we'd die of thirst, and the missus and kids, +or the old folks, would be sold up and turned out into the streets, +and have to fall back on a 'home of hope', or wait their turn at the +Benevolent Asylum with bags for broken victuals. I've seen that, and I +don't want anybody belonging to me to have to do it. + +“Reminds me that when a poor, deserted girl goes to a 'home' they don't +make a problem of her--they do their best for her and try to get her +righted. And the priests, too: if there's anything in the sex or any +other problem--anything that hasn't been threshed out--they're the men +that'll know it. I'm not a Catholic, but I know this: that if a girl +that's been left by one--no matter what Church she belongs to--goes to +the priest, they'll work all the points they know (and they know 'em +all) to get her righted, and, if the chap, or his people, won't come up +to the scratch, Father Ryan'll frighten hell out of 'em. I can't say as +much for our own Churches.” + +“But you're in favour of socialism and democracy?” asked Joe. + +“Of course I am. But the world won't do any good arguing over it. +The people will have to get up and walk, and, what's more, stick +together--and I don't think they'll ever do that--it ain't in human +nature. Socialism, or democracy, was all right in this country till +it got fashionable and was made a fad or a problem of. Then it got +smothered pretty quick. And a fad or a problem always breeds a host of +parasites or hangers-on. Why, as soon as I saw the advanced idealist +fools--they're generally the middle-class, shabby-genteel families that +catch Spiritualism and Theosophy and those sort of complaints, at the +end of the epidemic--that catch on at the tail-end of things and think +they've caught something brand, shining, new;--as soon as I saw them, +and the problem spielers and notoriety-hunters of both sexes, beginning +to hang round Australian Unionism, I knew it was doomed. And so it was. +The straight men were disgusted, or driven out. There are women who hang +on for the same reason that a girl will sometimes go into the dock and +swear an innocent man's life away. But as soon as they see that the +cause is dying, they drop it at once, and wait for another. They come +like bloody dingoes round a calf, and only leave the bones. They're +about as democratic as the crows. And the rotten 'sex-problem' sort of +thing is the cause of it all; it poisons weak minds--and strong ones too +sometimes. + +“Why, you could make a problem out of Epsom salts. You might argue as to +why human beings want Epsom salts, and try to trace the causes that +led up to it. I don't like the taste of Epsom salts--it's nasty in +the mouth--but when I feel that way I take 'em, and I feel better +afterwards; and that's good enough for me. We might argue that black is +white, and white is black, and neither of 'em is anything, and nothing +is everything; and a woman's a man and a man's a woman, and it's really +the man that has the youngsters, only we imagine it's the woman because +she imagines that she has all the pain and trouble, and the doctor is +under the impression that he's attending to her, not the man, and the +man thinks so too because he imagines he's walking up and down outside, +and slipping into the corner pub now and then for a nip to keep his +courage up, waiting, when it's his wife that's doing that all the time; +we might argue that it's all force of imagination, and that imagination +is an unknown force, and that the unknown is nothing. But, when we've +settled all that to our own satisfaction, how much further ahead are we? +In the end we'll come to the conclusion that we ain't alive, and never +existed, and then we'll leave off bothering, and the world will go on +just the same.” + +“What about science?” asked Joe. + +“Science ain't 'sex problems'; it's facts.... Now, I don't mind +Spiritualism and those sort of things; they might help to break the +monotony, and can't do much harm. But the 'sex problem', as it's written +about to-day, does; it's dangerous and dirty, and it's time to settle it +with a club. Science and education, if left alone, will look after sex +facts. + +“You can't get anything out of the 'sex problem', no matter how you +argue. In the old Bible times they had half a dozen wives each, but we +don't know for certain how THEY got on. The Mormons tried it again, and +seemed to get on all right till we interfered. We don't seem to be able +to get on with one wife now--at least, according to the 'sex problem'. +The 'sex problem' troubled the Turks so much that they tried three. Lots +of us try to settle it by knocking round promiscuously, and that leads +to actions for maintenance and breach of promise cases, and all sorts of +trouble. Our blacks settle the 'sex problem' with a club, and so far I +haven't heard any complaints from them. + + . . . . . + +“Take hereditary causes and surrounding circumstances, for instance. In +order to understand or judge a man right, you would need to live under +the same roof with him from childhood, and under the same roofs, or +tents, with his parents, right back to Adam, and then you'd be blocked +for want of more ancestors through which to trace the causes that led +to Abel--I mean Cain--going on as he did. What's the use or sense of it? +You might argue away in any direction for a million miles and a million +years back into the past, but you've got to come back to where you are +if you wish to do any good for yourself, or anyone else. + +“Sometimes it takes you a long while to get back to where you +are--sometimes you never do it. Why, when those controversies were +started in the 'Bulletin' about the kangaroos and other things, I +thought I knew something about the bush. Now I'm damned if I'm sure I +could tell a kangaroo from a wombat. + +“Trying to find out things is the cause of all the work and trouble in +this world. It was Eve's fault in the first place--or Adam's, rather, +because it might be argued that he should have been master. Some men are +too lazy to be masters in their own homes, and run the show properly; +some are too careless, and some too drunk most of their time, and some +too weak. If Adam and Eve hadn't tried to find out things there'd have +been no toil and trouble in the world to-day; there'd have been no +bloated capitalists, and no horny-handed working men, and no politics, +no freetrade and protection--and no clothes. The woman next door +wouldn't be able to pick holes in your wife's washing on the line. We'd +have been all running about in a big Garden of Eden with nothing on, and +nothing to do except loaf, and make love, and lark, and laugh, and play +practical jokes on each other.” + +Joe grinned. + +“That would have been glorious. Wouldn't it, Joe? There'd have been no +'sex problem' then.” + + + + +The Master's Mistake + + + +William Spencer stayed away from school that hot day, and “went +swimming”. The master wrote a note to William's father, and gave it to +William's brother Joe to carry home. + +“You'll give that to your father to-night, Joseph.” + +“Yes, sir.” + +Bill waited for Joe near the gap, and walked home with him. + +“I s'pose you've got a note for father.” + +“Yes,” said Joe. + +“I s'pose you know what's in it?” + +“Ye--yes. Oh, why did you stop away, Bill?” + +“You don't mean to say that you're dirty mean enough to give it to +father? Hey?” + +“I must, Will. I promised the master.” + +“He needn't never know.” + +“Oh, yes, he will. He's coming over to our place on Saturday, and he's +sure to ask me to-morrow.” + +Pause. + +“Look here, Joe!” said Bill, “I don't want to get a hiding and go +without supper to-night. I promised to go 'possuming with Johnny +Nowlett, and he's going to give me a fire out of his gun. You can come, +too. I don't want to cop out on it to-night--if I do I'll run away from +home again, so there.” + +Bill walked on a bit in moody, Joe in troubled, silence. + +Bill tried again: he threatened, argued, and pleaded, but Joe was firm. +“The master trusted me, Will,” he said. + +“Joe,” said Bill at last, after a long pause, “I wouldn't do it to you.” + +Joe was troubled. + +“I wouldn't do it to you, Joe.” + +Joe thought how Bill had stood up and fought for him only last week. + +“I'd tear the note in bits; I'd tell a hundred lies; I'd take a dozen +hidings first, Joe--I would.” + +Joe was greatly troubled. His chest heaved, and the tears came to his +eyes. + +“I'd do more than that for you, Joe, and you know it.” + +Joe knew it. They were crossing the old goldfield now. There was a shaft +close to the path; it had fallen in, funnel-shaped, at the top, but was +still thirty or forty feet deep; some old logs were jammed across about +five feet down. Joe suddenly snatched the note from his pocket and threw +it in. It fluttered to the other side and rested on a piece of the old +timber. Bill saw it, but said nothing, and, seeing their father coming +home from work, they hurried on. + +Joe was deep in trouble now. Bill tried to comfort and cheer him, but it +was no use. Bill promised never to run away from home any more, to go +to school every day, and never to fight, or steal, or tell lies. But Joe +had betrayed his trust for the first time in his life, and wouldn't be +comforted. + +Some time in the night Bill woke, and found Joe sitting up in bed +crying. + +“Why, what's the matter, Joe?” + +“I never done a mean thing like that before,” sobbed Joe. “I wished I'd +chucked meself down the shaft instead. The master trusted me, Will; an' +now, if he asks me to-morrow, I'll have to tell a lie.” + +“Then tell the truth, Joe, an' take the hidin'; it'll soon be over--just +a couple of cuts with the cane and it'll be all over.” + +“Oh, no, it won't. He won't never trust me any more. I've never been +caned in that school yet, Will, and if I am I'll never go again. Oh! why +will you run away from home, Will, and play the wag, and steal, and +get us all into such trouble? You don't know how mother takes on about +it--you don't know how it hurts father! I've deceived the master, and +mother and father to-day, just because you're so--so selfish,” and he +laid down and cried himself to sleep. + +Bill lay awake and thought till daylight; then he got up quietly, put on +his clothes, and stole away from the house and across the flat, followed +by the dog, who thought it was a 'possum-hunting expedition. Bill wished +the dog would not be quite so demonstrative, at least until they got +away from the house. He went straight to the shaft, let himself down +carefully on to one of the old logs, and stooped to pick up the note, +gleaming white in the sickly summer daylight. Then the rotten timber +gave way suddenly, without a moment's warning. + + . . . . . + +They found him that morning at about nine o'clock. The dog attracted +the attention of an old fossicker passing to his work. The letter was +gripped in Bill's right hand when they brought him up. They took him +home, and the father went for a doctor. Bill came to himself a little +just before the last, and said: “Mother! I wasn't running away, +mother--tell father that--I--I wanted to try and catch a 'possum on the +ground.... Where's Joe? I want Joe. Go out, mother, a minute, and send +Joe.” + +“Here I am, Bill,” said Joe, in a choking, terrified voice. + +“Has the master been yet?” + +“No.” + +“Bend down, Joe. I went for the note, and the logs gave way. I meant to +be back before they was up. I dropped it down inside the bed; you watch +your chance and get it; and say you forgot it last night--say you +didn't like to give it--that won't be a lie. Tell the master I'm--I'm +sorry--tell the master never to send no notes no more--except by +girls--that's all.... Mother! Take the blankets off me--I'm dyin'.” + + + + +The Story of the Oracle + + + +“We young fellows,” said “Sympathy Joe” to Mitchell, after tea, in +their first camp west the river--“and you and I ARE young fellows, +comparatively--think we know the world. There are plenty of young chaps +knocking round in this country who reckon they've been through it +all before they're thirty. I've met cynics and men-o'-the-world, aged +twenty-one or thereabouts, who've never been further than a trip to +Sydney. They talk about 'this world' as if they'd knocked around in +half-a-dozen other worlds before they came across here--and they are +just as off-hand about it as older Australians are when they talk about +this colony as compared with the others. They say: 'My oath!--same +here.' 'I've been there.' 'My oath!--you're right.' 'Take it from me!' +and all that sort of thing. They understand women, and have a contempt +for 'em; and chaps that don't talk as they talk, or do as they do, or +see as they see, are either soft or ratty. A good many reckon that 'life +ain't blanky well worth livin''; sometimes they feel so blanky somehow +that they wouldn't give a blank whether they chucked it or not; but +that sort never chuck it. It's mostly the quiet men that do that, and +if they've got any complaints to make against the world they make 'em at +the head station. Why, I've known healthy, single, young fellows +under twenty-five who drank to drown their troubles--some because +they reckoned the world didn't understand nor appreciate 'em--as if it +COULD!” + +“If the world don't understand or appreciate you,” said Mitchell +solemnly, as he reached for a burning stick to light his pipe--“MAKE +it!” + +“To drown THEIR troubles!” continued Joe, in a tone of impatient +contempt. “The Oracle must be well on towards the sixties; he can take +his glass with any man, but you never saw him drunk.” + +“What's the Oracle to do with it?” + +“Did you ever hear his history?” + +“No. Do you know it?” + +“Yes, though I don't think he has any idea that I do. Now, we were +talking about the Oracle a little while ago. We know he's an old ass; +a good many outsiders consider that he's a bit soft or ratty, and, +as we're likely to be mates together for some time on that fencing +contract, if we get it, you might as well know what sort of a man he is +and was, so's you won't get uneasy about him if he gets deaf for a while +when you're talking, or does funny things with his pipe or pint-pot, or +walks up and down by himself for an hour or so after tea, or sits on a +log with his head in his hands, or leans on the fence in the gloaming +and keeps looking in a blank sort of way, straight ahead, across the +clearing. For he's gazing at something a thousand miles across country, +south-east, and about twenty years back into the past, and no doubt he +sees himself (as a young man), and a Gippsland girl, spooning under the +stars along between the hop-gardens and the Mitchell River. And, if you +get holt of a fiddle or a concertina, don't rasp or swank too much +on old tunes, when he's round, for the Oracle can't stand it. Play +something lively. He'll be down there at that surveyor's camp yarning +till all hours, so we'll have plenty of time for the story--but don't +you ever give him a hint that you know. + +“My people knew him well; I got most of the story from them--mostly from +Uncle Bob, who knew him better than any. The rest leaked out through the +women--you know how things leak out amongst women?” + +Mitchell dropped his head and scratched the back of it. HE knew. + +“It was on the Cudgegong River. My Uncle Bob was mates with him on one +of those 'rushes' along there--the 'Pipeclay', I think it was, or the +'Log Paddock'. The Oracle was a young man then, of course, and so was +Uncle Bob (he was a match for most men). You see the Oracle now, and you +can imagine what he was when he was a young man. Over six feet, and as +straight as a sapling, Uncle Bob said, clean-limbed, and as fresh as +they made men in those days; carried his hands behind him, as he does +now, when he hasn't got the swag--but his shoulders were back in +those days. Of course he wasn't the Oracle then; he was young Tom +Marshall--but that doesn't matter. Everybody liked him--especially women +and children. He was a bit happy-go-lucky and careless, but he didn't +know anything about 'this world', and didn't bother about it; he hadn't +'been there'. 'And his heart was as good as gold,' my aunt used to +say. He didn't understand women as we young fellows do nowadays, and +therefore he hadn't any contempt for 'em. Perhaps he understood, and +understands, them better than any of us, without knowing it. Anyway, you +know, he's always gentle and kind where a woman or child is concerned, +and doesn't like to hear us talk about women as we do sometimes. + +“There was a girl on the goldfields--a fine lump of a blonde, and pretty +gay. She came from Sydney, I think, with her people, who kept shanties +on the fields. She had a splendid voice, and used to sing 'Madeline'. +There might have been one or two bad women before that, in the Oracle's +world, but no cold-blooded, designing ones. He calls the bad ones +'unfortunate'. + +“Perhaps it was Tom's looks, or his freshness, or his innocence, or +softness--or all together--that attracted her. Anyway, he got mixed up +with her before the goldfield petered out. + +“No doubt it took a long while for the facts to work into Tom's head +that a girl might sing like she did and yet be thoroughly unprincipled. +The Oracle was always slow at coming to a decision, but when he does +it's generally the right one. Anyway, you can take that for granted, for +you won't move him. + +“I don't know whether he found out that she wasn't all that she +pretented to be to him, or whether they quarrelled, or whether she +chucked him over for a lucky digger. Tom never had any luck on the +goldfields. Anyway, he left and went over to the Victorian side, where +his people were, and went up Gippsland way. It was there for the first +time in his life that he got what you would call 'properly gone on a +girl'; he got hard hit--he met his fate. + +“Her name was Bertha Bredt, I remember. Aunt Bob saw her afterwards. +Aunt Bob used to say that she was 'a girl as God made her'--a good, +true, womanly girl--one of those sort of girls that only love once. Tom +got on with her father, who was packing horses through the ranges to the +new goldfields--it was rough country and there were no roads; they had +to pack everything there in those days, and there was money in it. The +girl's father took to Tom--as almost everybody else did--and, as far as +the girl was concerned, I think it was a case of love at first sight. +They only knew each other for about six months, and were only 'courting' +(as they called it then) for three or four months altogether, but she +was that sort of girl that can love a man for six weeks and lose him for +ever, and yet go on loving him to the end of her life--and die with his +name on her lips. + +“Well, things were brightening up every way for Tom, and he and his +sweetheart were beginning to talk about their own little home in future, +when there came a letter from the 'Madeline' girl in New South Wales. + +“She was in terrible trouble. Her baby was to be born in a month. Her +people had kicked her out, and she was in danger of starving. She begged +and prayed of him to come back and marry her, if only for his child's +sake. He could go then, and be free; she would never trouble him any +more--only come and marry her for the child's sake. + +“The Oracle doesn't know where he lost that letter, but I do. It was +burnt afterwards by a woman, who was more than a mother to him in his +trouble--Aunt Bob. She thought he might carry it round with the rest of +his papers, in his swag, for years, and come across it unexpectedly when +he was camped by himself in the bush and feeling dull. It wouldn't have +done him any good then. + +“He must have fought the hardest fight in his life when he got that +letter. No doubt he walked to and fro, to and fro, all night, with his +hands behind him, and his eyes on the ground, as he does now sometimes. +Walking up and down helps you to fight a thing out. + +“No doubt he thought of things pretty well as he thinks now: the poor +girl's shame on every tongue, and belled round the district by every hag +in the township; and she looked upon by women as being as bad as any +man who ever went to Bathurst in the old days, handcuffed between two +troopers. There is sympathy, a pipe and tobacco, a cheering word, and, +maybe, a whisky now and then, for the criminal on his journey; but +there is no mercy, at least as far as women are concerned, for the +poor foolish girl, who has to sneak out the back way and round by back +streets and lanes after dark, with a cloak on to hide her figure. + +“Tom sent what money he thought he could spare, and next day he went to +the girl he loved and who loved him, and told her the truth, and showed +her the letter. She was only a girl--but the sort of girl you COULD go +to in a crisis like that. He had made up his mind to do the right thing, +and she loved him all the more for it. And so they parted. + +“When Tom reached 'Pipeclay', the girl's relations, that she was +stopping with, had a parson readied up, and they were married the same +day.” + +“And what happened after that?” asked Mitchell. + +“Nothing happened for three or four months; then the child was born. It +wasn't his!” + +Mitchell stood up with an oath. + +“The girl was thoroughly bad. She'd been carrying on with God knows how +many men, both before and after she trapped Tom.” + +“And what did he do then?” + +“Well, you know how the Oracle argues over things, and I suppose he was +as big an old fool then as he is now. He thinks that, as most men would +deceive women if they could, when one man gets caught, he's got no call +to squeal about it; he's bound, because of the sins of men in general +against women, to make the best of it. What is one man's wrong counted +against the wrongs of hundreds of unfortunate girls. + +“It's an uncommon way of arguing--like most of the Oracle's ideas--but +it seems to look all right at first sight. + +“Perhaps he thought she'd go straight; perhaps she convinced him that he +was the cause of her first fall; anyway he stuck to her for more than +a year, and intended to take her away from that place as soon as he'd +scraped enough money together. It might have gone on up till now, if +the father of the child--a big black Irishman named Redmond--hadn't come +sneaking back at the end of a year. He--well, he came hanging round Mrs. +Marshall while Tom was away at work--and she encouraged him. And Tom was +forced to see it. + +“Tom wanted to fight out his own battle without interference, but the +chaps wouldn't let him--they reckoned that he'd stand very little show +against Redmond, who was a very rough customer and a fighting man. My +uncle Bob, who was there still, fixed it up this way: The Oracle was +to fight Redmond, and if the Oracle got licked Uncle Bob was to take +Redmond on. If Redmond whipped Uncle Bob, that was to settle it; but if +Uncle Bob thrashed Redmond, then he was also to fight Redmond's +mate, another big, rough Paddy named Duigan. Then the affair would be +finished--no matter which way the last bout went. You see, Uncle Bob was +reckoned more of a match for Redmond than the Oracle was, so the thing +looked fair enough--at first sight. + +“Redmond had his mate, Duigan, and one or two others of the rough gang +that used to terrorise the fields round there in the roaring days of +Gulgong. The Oracle had Uncle Bob, of course, and long Dave Regan, the +drover--a good-hearted, sawny kind of chap that'd break the devil's +own buck-jumper, or smash him, or get smashed himself--and little Jimmy +Nowlett, the bullocky, and one or two of the old, better-class diggers +that were left on the field. + +“There's a clear space among the saplings in Specimen Gully, where they +used to pitch circuses; and here, in the cool of a summer evening, the +two men stood face to face. Redmond was a rough, roaring, foul-mouthed +man; he stripped to his shirt, and roared like a bull, and swore, and +sneered, and wanted to take the whole of Tom's crowd while he was at it, +and make one clean job of 'em. Couldn't waste time fighting them all one +after the other, because he wanted to get away to the new rush at Cattle +Creek next day. The fool had been drinking shanty-whisky. + +“Tom stood up in his clean, white moles and white flannel shirt--one of +those sort with no sleeves, that give the arms play. He had a sort +of set expression and a look in his eyes that Uncle Bob--nor none of +them--had ever seen there before. 'Give us plenty of----room!' roared +Redmond; 'one of us is going to hell, now! This is going to be a fight +to a----finish, and a----short one!' And it was!” Joe paused. + +“Go on,” said Mitchell--“go on!” + +Joe drew a long breath. + +“The Oracle never got a mark! He was top-dog right from the start. +Perhaps it was his strength that Redmond had underrated, or his want +of science that puzzled him, or the awful silence of the man that +frightened him (it made even Uncle Bob uneasy). Or, perhaps, it was +Providence (it was a glorious chance for Providence), but, anyway, as +I say, the Oracle never got a mark, except on his knuckles. After a few +rounds Redmond funked and wanted to give in, but the chaps wouldn't let +him--not even his own mates--except Duigan. They made him take it as +long as he could stand on his feet. He even shammed to be knocked out, +and roared out something about having broken his----ankle--but it was +no use. And the Oracle! The chaps that knew thought that he'd refuse to +fight, and never hit a man that had given in. But he did. He just stood +there with that quiet look in his eyes and waited, and, when he did hit, +there wasn't any necessity for Redmond to PRETEND to be knocked down. +You'll see a glint of that old light in the Oracle's eyes even now, once +in a while; and when you do it's a sign that you or someone are going +too far, and had better pull up, for it's a red light on the line, old +as he is. + +“Now, Jimmy Nowlett was a nuggety little fellow, hard as cast iron, +good-hearted, but very excitable; and when the bashed Redmond was +being carted off (poor Uncle Bob was always pretty high-strung, and was +sitting on a log sobbing like a great child from the reaction), Duigan +made some sneering remark that only Jimmy Nowlett caught, and in an +instant he was up and at Duigan. + +“Perhaps Duigan was demoralised by his mate's defeat, or by the +suddenness of the attack; but, at all events, he got a hiding, too. +Uncle Bob used to say that it was the funniest thing he ever saw in his +life. Jimmy kept yelling: 'Let me get at him! By the Lord, let me get at +him!' And nobody was attempting to stop him, he WAS getting at him all +the time--and properly, too; and, when he'd knocked Duigan down, he'd +dance round him and call on him to get up; and every time he jumped or +bounced, he'd squeak like an india-rubber ball, Uncle Bob said, and he +would nearly burst his boiler trying to lug the big man on to his feet +so's he could knock him down again. It took two of Jimmy's mates all +their time to lam him down into a comparatively reasonable state of mind +after the fight was over. + +“The Oracle left for Sydney next day, and Uncle Bob went with him. He +stayed at Uncle Bob's place for some time. He got very quiet, they said, +and gentle; he used to play with the children, and they got mighty fond +of him. The old folks thought his heart was broken, but it went through +a deeper sorrow still after that and it ain't broken yet. It takes a lot +to break the heart of a man.” + +“And his wife,” asked Mitchell--“what became of her?” + +“I don't think he ever saw her again. She dropped down pretty low after +he left her--I've heard she's living somewhere quietly. The Oracle's +been sending someone money ever since I knew him, and I know it's a +woman. I suppose it's she. He isn't the sort of a man to see a woman +starve--especially a woman he had ever had anything to do with.” + +“And the Gippsland girl?” asked Mitchell. + +“That's the worst part of it all, I think. The Oracle went up North +somewhere. In the course of a year or two his affair got over Gippsland +way through a mate of his who lived over there, and at last the story +got to the ears of this girl, Bertha Bredt. She must have written a +dozen letters to him, Aunt Bob said. She knew what was in 'em, but, of +course, she'd never tell us. The Oracle only wrote one in reply. Then, +what must the girl do but clear out from home and make her way over to +Sydney--to Aunt Bob's place, looking for Tom. She never got any further. +She took ill--brain-fever, or broken heart, or something of that sort. +All the time she was down her cry was--'I want to see him! I want to +find Tom! I only want to see Tom!' + +“When they saw she was dying, Aunt Bob wired to the Oracle to come--and +he came. When the girl saw it was Tom sitting by the bed, she just gave +one long look in his face, put her arms round his neck, and laid her +head on his shoulder--and died.... Here comes the Oracle now.” + +Mitchell lifted the tea-billy on to the coals. + + + + +[End of original text.] + + + + + +From the original advertisements (March, 1900), books by the same +author: + + + + + +When the World was Wide & Other Verses + +By Henry Lawson, Author of “While the Billy Boils”. + + Ninth Thousand. With photogravure portrait and vignette title. + Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 5s.; post free, 5s. 5d. + + +Mr. R. Le Gallienne, in The Idler: “A striking volume of ballad +poetry. A volume to console one for the tantalising postponement of Mr. +Kipling's promised volume of sea ballads.” + +Weekly Chronicle, Newcastle (Eng.): “Swinging, rhythmic verse.” + +Sydney Morning Herald: “The verses have natural vigour, the writer has +a rough, true faculty of characterisation, and the book is racy of the +soil from cover to cover.” + +Melbourne Age: “'In the Days when the World was Wide and Other Verses', +by Henry Lawson, is poetry, and some of it poetry of a very high order.” + +Otago Witness: “It were well to have such books upon our shelves... they +are true History.” + +New Zealand Herald: “There is a heart-stirring ring about the verses.” + +Bulletin: “How graphic he is, how natural, how true, how strong.” + + + +While the Billy Boils: Australian Stories. + +By Henry Lawson. + +Author of “In the Days when the World was Wide”. + + Twelfth Thousand. With eight plates and vignette title by F. P. Mahony. + Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper cover, 2s. 6d. (postage, 6d.) + + Also in two parts (each complete in itself), in picture covers, at 1s.; + post free, 1s. 3d. each (Commonwealth Series). + + +The Academy: “A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing +about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. Mr. +Lawson shows us what living in the bush really means. The result is +a real book--a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and +richly idiomatic.” + +Mr. A. Patchett Martin, in Literature (London): “A book which Mrs. +Campbell Praed, the Australian novelist, assured me made her feel that +all she had written of bush life was pale and ineffective.” + +The Spectator: “In these days when short, dramatic stories are eagerly +looked for, it is strange that one we would venture to call the greatest +Australian writer should be practically unknown in England. Short +stories, but biting into the very heart of the bushman's life, ruthless +in truth, extraordinarily dramatic, and pathetically uneven....” + +The Times: “A collection of short and vigorous studies and stories of +Australian life and character. A little in Bret Harte's manner, crossed, +perhaps, with that of Guy de Maupassant.” + + + +[The Announcements at the end of this section give alternate titles +for two of Lawson's works, to wit: “On the Track” is given as such, but +“Over the Sliprails” is given as “By the Sliprails”, and the combined +work “On the Track and Over the Sliprails” is given as “By Track and +Sliprails”. Of course, only “On the Track” had actually been printed at +the date of the advertisement, so it might be theorized that these had +been working titles, afterwards discarded, whose inclusion here was +overlooked.--A. L., 1998.] + + + + + +About the author: + + + +Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia on +17 June 1867. Although he has since become Australia's most acclaimed +writer, in his own lifetime his writing was often “on the side”--his +“real” work being whatever he could find. His writing was frequently +taken from memories of his childhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. +In his autobiography, he states that many of his characters were +taken from the better class of diggers and bushmen he knew there. +His experiences at this time deeply influenced his work, for it is +interesting to note a number of descriptions and phrases that are +identical in his autobiography and in his stories and poems. He died at +Sydney, 2 September 1922. He is most famous for his short stories. + +“On the Track” and “Over the Sliprails” were both published at Sydney +in 1900, the prefaces being dated March and June respectively--and so, +though printed separately, a combined edition was printed the same +year (the two separate, complete works were simply put together in one +binding); hence they are sometimes referred to as “On the Track and Over +the Sliprails”. The opposite occurred with “Joe Wilson and His Mates”, +which was later divided into “Joe Wilson” and “Joe Wilson's Mates” + (1901). All of these works are now online, as well as one book of +Lawson's verse, “In the Days When the World was Wide” (1896). + + . . . . . + +An incomplete glossary of Australian terms and concepts which may prove +helpful to understanding this book: + + Billy: Any container used to boil water, especially for tea; a + special container designed for this purpose. + + Bunyip: [pronounced bun-yup] A large mythological creature, said + by the Aborigines to inhabit watery places. There may be some + relation to an actual creature that is now extinct. Lawson uses an + obsolete sense of the term, meaning “imposter”. + + Gin: An aboriginal woman; use of the term is analogous to “squaw” + in N. America. May be considered derogatory in modern usage. + + Goanna: Any of various lizards of the genus Varanus (monitor + lizards) native to Australia. + + Graft: Work; hard work. + + Gunyah: (Aboriginal) A rough or temporary hut or shelter in the + bush, especially one built from bark, branches, and the like. A + humpy, wurley, or mia-mia. Variant: Gunya. + + Jackeroo/Jackaroo: At the time Lawson wrote, a Jackaroo was a “new + chum” or newcomer to Australia, who sought work on a station to gain + experience. The term now applies to any young man working as a + station hand. A female station hand is a Jillaroo. + + Jimmy Woodser: A person who drinks alone; a drink drunk alone. + + Larrikin: A hoodlum. + + Lorry: A large, low wagon without sides, used for heavy loads. + + Mia-mia: (Aboriginal) A rough or temporary hut or shelter in the + bush, especially one built from bark, branches, and the like. A + humpy, wurley, or gunyah. + + Native bear: A koala. + + Pa: A Maori village. + + 'Possum/Possum: In Australia, a class of marsupials that were + originally mistaken for the American animal of the same name. They + are not especially related to the possums of North and South + America, other than being marsupials. + + Public/Pub.: The traditional pub. in Australia was a hotel with a + “public” bar--hence the name. The modern pub has often (not + always) dispensed with the lodging, and concentrated on the bar. + + Push: A group of people sharing something in common; Lawson uses + the word in an older and more particular sense, as a gang of violent + city hoodlums. + + Ratty: Shabby, dilapidated; somewhat eccentric, perhaps even + slightly mad. + + Selector: A free selector, a farmer who selected and settled land + by lease or license from the government. + + Shout: To buy a round of drinks. + + Skillion: A lean-to or outbuilding. + + Sliprails/slip-rails: movable rails, forming a section of fence, + which can be taken down in lieu of a gate. “Over the Sliprails”, + the title of this volume, might be translated as “Through the Gate”. + + Squatter: A person who first settled on land without government + permission, and later continued by lease or license, generally to + raise stock; a wealthy rural landowner. + + Station: A farm or ranch, especially one devoted to cattle or + sheep. + + Stoush: Violence; to do violence to. + + Tea: In addition to the regular meaning, Tea can also mean a light + snack or a meal (i.e., where Tea is served). In particular, Morning + Tea (about 10 AM) and Afternoon Tea (about 3 PM) are nothing more + than a snack, but Evening Tea (about 6 PM) is a meal. When just + “Tea” is used, it usually means the evening meal. Variant: Tea- + time. + + Tucker: Food. + + Whare: [pronounced war-ee] A Maori term for a hut or similar + dwelling. + + + Also: a hint with the seasons--remember that the seasons are + reversed from those in the northern hemisphere, hence June may be + hot, but December is even hotter. Australia is at a lower latitude + than the United States, so the winters are not harsh by US + standards, and are not even mild in the north. In fact, large parts + of Australia are governed more by “dry” versus “wet” than by Spring- + Summer-Fall-Winter. + + +(Alan R. Light, Monroe, North Carolina, April 1998.) + + +A number of obvious errors were corrected, after being compared against +other editions. The original edition was the primary source. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Over the Sliprails, by Henry Lawson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1313 *** |