“But he still governed with resistless hand,
And where he could not guide he would command.”—_Crabbe._
When Jack got back he was rather shocked at the altered aspect of the
run. There had been no rain, except in inconsiderable quantity, during
his absence, and the herbage generally showed signs of a deficiency of
moisture. The river flats, which were so lush and heavily cropped with
green herbage that your horse’s feet made a “swish-swashing” noise as
you rode through it, now were very parched up, dry, and bare, or else
burned off altogether.
On mentioning this to Mr. M‘Nab, he said—
“Well, the fact is that the grass got very dry, and some fellow put a
fire-stick into it. Then we have had a great number of travelling sheep
through lately, and they have fed their mile pretty bare. The season has
been very dry so far. I sincerely trust we shall get rain soon.”
“We may,” said Jack. “But when once these dry years set in, they say you
never know when it may rain again. But how do the sheep look?”
“Couldn’t possibly look better,” answered M‘Nab, decisively. “There is
any quantity of feed and water at the back, and I have not troubled the
frontage much. I am glad ye sent the wire up. We were nearly stopped, as
it came just as the posts were in. I have got one line of the lambing
paddock nearly finished, and we shall have that part of the play over
before long. No more shepherds and ‘motherers’ to pay in that humbugging
way next year.”
“And how are the other things getting on?” inquired Jack.
“Well, the cottage is nearly fit to go into. Your bedroom is finished
and ready for you. I had a garden fenced in, and put on a Chinaman with
a pump to grow some vegetables—for we were all half-way to a little
scurvy. The wool-shed is getting along, though the carpenters went on
the spree at Bochara for a fortnight. In fact, all is doing well
generally, and I think you’ll say the sheep are improved.”
Jack lost no time in establishing himself in his bedroom in the new
cottage, which he had judiciously caused to be built of “pise,” or
rammed earth, by this means saving the cartage of material, for the soil
was dug out immediately in front of the building, and securing coolness,
solidity, and thickness of wall, none of which conditions are to be
found in weather-board or slab buildings. Brick or stone was not, of
course, to be thought of, owing to the absence of lime, and the
tremendous expense of such materials. The heat was terrific. But when
Jack found himself the tenant of a cool, spacious apartment, with his
books, a writing-table, and a little decent furniture, the rest of the
cottage including a fair-sized sitting-room, with walls of reasonable
altitude, he did not despair of being able to support life for the few
years required for the process of making a fortune. The river, fringed
by the graceful though dark-hued casuarinas, was pleasant enough to look
on, as it rippled on over pools and sandy shallows, immediately below
his verandah. And beyond all expression was it glorious to bathe in by
early morn or sultry eve.
The garden, though far, far different from the lost Eden of Marshmead,
with its crowding crops, glossy shrubs, and heavily-laden fruit trees,
was still a source of interest and pleasure. Under the unwearied labour
and water-carrying of Ah Sing, rows of vegetables appeared, grateful to
the eye, and were ravenously devoured by the _employés_ of the station,
whom a constant course of mutton, damper, and tea—tea, damper, and
mutton—had led to, as M‘Nab said truly, the border-land of one of the
most awful diseases that scourge humanity. Never before had a cabbage
been grown at Gondaree, and the older residents looked with a kind of
awe at Ah Sing as he watered his rows of succulent vegetables,
toilsomely and regularly, in the long hot mornings and breezeless
afternoons.
“My word, John,” said Jingaree, who had ridden over from Jook-jook one
day on no particular business, but to look at the wonderful improvements
which afforded the staple subject of conversation that summer on the
Warroo, “you’re working this garden-racket fust chop. I’ve been here
eight year, and never see a green thing except marsh-mallers and
Warrigal cabbage. How ever do you make ’em come like that?”
“Plenty water, plenty dung, plenty work, welly good cabbagee,” said Ah
Sing, sententiously. “Why you not grow melon, tater, ladishee?”
“I don’t say we mightn’t,” said Jingaree, half soliloquizing, “but it’s
too hot in these parts to be carrying water all day long like a Chow.
Give us one of them cabbages, John.”
“You takee two,” quoth the liberal celestial. “Mr. Mackinab, he say,
give um shepherdy all about. You shepherdy?”
“You be hanged!” growled the insulted stockman. “Do I look like a
slouchin’, ’possum-eating, billy-carrying crawler of a shepherd? I’ve
had a horse under me ever since I was big enough to know Jingaree
mountain from a haystack, and a horse I’ll have as long as I can carry a
stock-whip. However, I don’t suppose you meant any offence, John. Hand
over the cabbages. Blest if I couldn’t eat ’em raw without a mossel of
salt.”
“Here tomala—welly good tomala,” said the pacific Chinaman, appalled at
the unexpected wrath of the stranger. “Welly good cabbagee, good-bye.”
Jack being comfortably placed in his cottage, took a leisurely look
through his accounts. He was rather astonished, and a little shocked, to
find what a sum he had got through for all the various necessaries of
his position.—Stores, wages, contract payments, wire, blacksmith,
carpenters, sawyers, bricklayers (for the wash-pen and the cottage
chimneys).—Cheque, cheque, there seemed no end to the outflow of
cash—and a good deal more was to come, or rather to go, before next
lambing, washing, and shearing were concluded. He mentioned his ideas on
the subject to Mr. M‘Nab.
That financier frankly admitted that the outlay _was_ large, positively
but not relatively. “You understand, sir,” he said, “that much of this
money will not have to be spent twice. Once have your fences up, and
breed up, or buy, till you have stocked your run, and you are at the
point where the largest amount of profit, the wool and the surplus
sheep, is met by the minimum of expenditure. No labour will be wanted
but three or four boundary riders. The wool, I think, will be well got
up, and ought to sell well.”
“I dare say,” said Jack, “I dare say. It’s no use stopping half way, but
really, the money does seem to run out as from a sieve. However, it will
be as cheap to shear 40,000 sheep as twenty. So I shall decide to stock
up as soon as the fences are finished.”
This point being settled, Mr. M‘Nab pushed on his projects and
operations with unflagging energy. He worked all day and half the night,
and seemed to know neither weariness nor fatigue of mind or body. He had
all the calculations of all the different contracts at his fingers’
ends, and never permitted to cool any of the multifarious irons which he
had in the fire.
He kept the different parties of teamsters, fencers, splitters,
carpenters, sawyers, dam-makers, well-sinkers, all in hand, going
smoothly and without delay, hitch, or dissatisfaction. He provided for
their rations being taken to them, kept all the accounts accurately, and
if there was so much as a sheepskin not returned, as per agreement, the
defaulter was regularly charged with it. Incidentally, and besides all
this work, sufficient for two ordinary men, he administered the
shepherds and their charge—now amounting to nearly 30,000 sheep. Jack’s
admiration of his manager did not slacken or change. “By Jove!” he said
to himself, occasionally, “that fellow M‘Nab is fit to be a general of
division. He never leaves anything to chance, and he seems to foresee
everything and to arrange the cure before the ailment is announced.”
The cottage being now finished, Jack began to find life not only
endurable, but almost enjoyable. He had got up a remnant of his library,
and with some English papers, and the excellent weeklies of the
colonies, he found that he had quite as much mental pabulum as he had
leisure to consume. The sheep were looking famously well. The lambs were
nearly as big in appearance as their mothers. The store sheep had
fattened, and would be fit for the butcher as soon as their fleeces were
off. The shepherds, for a wonder, gave no trouble, the ground being
open, and their flocks strong; all was going well. The wool-shed was
progressing towards completion; the wash-pen would follow suit, and be
ready for the spouts, with all the latest improvements, which were even
now on the road. Unto Jack, as he smoked in the verandah at night,
gazing on the bright blue starry sky, listening to the rippling river,
came freshly once more the beatific vision of a completely-fenced and
fully-stocked run, paying splendidly, and ultimately taken off his hands
at a profit, which should satisfy pride and compensate privation.
He and Mr. M‘Nab had also become accustomed to the ways of the
population. “I thought at first,” said Jack, “that I never set eyes on
such a set of duffers and loafers as the men at the Warroo generally.
But I have had to change my opinion. They only want management, and I
have seen some of the best working men among them I ever saw anywhere.
One requires a good deal of patience in a new country.”
“They want a dash of ill temper now and then,” rejoined M‘Nab. “It’s
very hard, when work is waiting for want of men, to see a gang of stout,
lazy fellows going on, refusing a pound and five-and-twenty shillings a
week, because the work is not to their taste.”
“But do they?” inquired Jack.
“There were five men refused work from one of the fence contractors at
that price yesterday,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “They wouldn’t do the
bullocking and only get shepherds’ wages, was the answer. I had the
travellers’ hut locked up, and not a bit of meat or flour will any
traveller get till we get men.”
“That doesn’t seem unjust,” said Jack. “I don’t see that we are called
upon to maintain a strike against our own rate of wages, which we do in
effect by feeding all the idle fellows who elect to march on. But don’t
be hard on them. They can do us harm enough if they try.”
“I don’t see that, sir. The salt-bush won’t burn, and they would never
think of anything else. They must be taught in this part of the world
that they will not be encouraged to refuse fair wages. Now we are
talking about rates—seventeen and sixpence is quite enough to give a
hundred for shearing. We must have an understanding with the other
sheep-owners, and try and fix it this year.”
Whether intimidated by the determined attitude of Mr. M‘Nab, or because
men differ in their aspirations, on the Warroo as in other places, the
next party of travellers thankfully accepted the contractors’ work and
wages, and buckled to at once. They were, in fact, a party of navvies
just set free from a long piece of contract, and this putting up posts,
pretty hard work, was just what they wanted.
M‘Nab fully believed it was owing to him, and mentally vowed to act with
similar decision in the next case of mutiny. A steady enforcement of
your own rules is what the people here look for, thought he.
The seasons glided on. Month after month of Jack’s life, and of all our
lives, fleeted past, and once again shearing became imminent. The time
did not hang heavily on his hands; he rose at daylight, and after a
plunge in the river the various work of each day asserted its claims,
and our merino-multiplier found himself wending his way home at eve as
weary as Gray’s ploughman, only fit for the consumption of dinner and an
early retreat to his bedroom. A more pretentious and certainly more
neatly-arrayed artist—indeed, a _cordon bleu_, unable to withstand the
temptations of town life—had succeeded Bob the cook. Now that the
cottage was completed, and reasonable comfort and coolness were
attainable, Jack told himself that it was not such a bad life after all.
A decent neighbour or two had turned up within visiting distance—that is
under fifty miles. The constant labour sweetened his mental health,
while the “great expectations” of the flawless perfection of the new
wool-shed, the highly improved wash-pen, and the generally triumphant
success of the coming clip, lent ardour to his soul and exultation to
his general bearing. M‘Nab, as usual, worked, and planned, and
calculated, and organized with the tireless regularity of an engine.
Chiefly by his exertions and a large emission of circulars, the Warroo
sheep-holders had been roused to a determination to reduce the price of
shearing per hundred from twenty shillings to seventeen and sixpence.
This reduced rate, in spite of some grumbling, they were enabled to
carry out, chiefly owing to an unusual abundance of the particular class
of workmen concerned. The men, after a few partial strikes, capitulated.
But they knew from whence the movement had emanated, and were not
inclined altogether to forget the fact. Indeed, of late M‘Nab, from
overwork and concentration of thought, had lost his originally
imperturbable manner. He had got into a habit of “driving” his men, and
bore himself more nearly akin to the demeanour of the second mate on
board a Yankee merchantman than the superintendent of the somewhat free
and independent workmen of an Australian colony.
“He’s going too fast, that new boss,” said one of the wash-pen hands one
day, as Mr. M‘Nab, unusually chafed at the laziness of one of the men
who were helping to fit a boiler, had, in requital of some insolent
rejoinder, knocked him down, and discharged him on the spot. “He’ll get
a rough turn yet, if he don’t look out—there’s some very queer
characters on the Warroo.”
And now the last week of July had arrived. The season promised to be
early. The grasses were unusually forward, while the burr-clover, matted
and luxuriant, made it evident that rather less than the ordinary term
of sunshine would suffice to harden its myriads of aggressively
injurious seed-cylinders. The warning was not unnoticed by the
ever-watchful eye of M‘Nab.
“There will be a bad time with any sheds that are unlucky enough to be
late this year,” he said, as Jack and he were inspecting the dam and
lately-placed spouts of the wash-pen; “that’s why I’ve been carrying a
full head of steam lately, to get all in order this month. Thank
goodness, the shed will be finished on Saturday, and I’m ready for a
start on the first of August.”
Of a certainty, every one capable of being acted upon by the contagion
of a very uncommon degree of energy had been working at high pressure
for the last two months. Paddocks had been completed; huts were ready
for the washers and shearers. The great plant, including a steam-engine,
had been strongly and efficiently fitted at the wash-pen, where a dam
sent back the water for a mile, to the great astonishment of Jingaree
and his friends, who occasionally rode over, as a species of holiday, to
inspect the work.
“My word,” said this representative of the Arcadian, or perhaps
Saturnian, period. “I wonder what old Morgan would say to all this here
tiddley-winkin’, with steam-engine, and wire-fences, and knock-about men
at a pound a week, as plenty as the black fellows when he first came on
the ground. They’ll have a Christy pallis yet, and minstrels too, I’ll
be bound. They’ve fenced us off from our Long Camp, too, with that
cussed wire. Said our cattle went over our boundary. Boundaries be
blowed! I’ve seen every herd mixed from here to Bochara, after a dry
season. Took men as knew their work to draft ’em again, I can tell you.
If these here fences is to be run up all along the river, any Jackaroo
can go stock-keeping. The country’s going to mischief.”
Winding up with this decided statement of disapproval, Mr. Jingaree thus
delivered himself at a cattle muster at one of the old-fashioned
stations, where the ancient manners and customs of the land were still
preserved in an uncorrupted state. The other gentlemen, Mr. Billy the
Bay, from Durgah, Mr. Long Jem, from Deep Creek, Mr. Flash Jack, from
Banda Murranul, and a dozen other representatives of the spur and
stock-whip, listened with evident approbation to Jingaree’s peroration.
“The blessed country’s a blessed sight too full,” said Mr. Long Jem. “I
mind the time when, if a cove wanted a fresh hand, he had to ride to
Bochara and stay there a couple of days, till some feller had finished
knockin’ down his cheque. Now they can stay at home, and pick and choose
among the travellers at their ease. It’s these blessed immigrants and
diggers as spoils our market. What right have they got to the country,
I’d like to know?”
This natural but highly protective view of the labour question found
general acquiescence, and nothing but the absurd latter-day theories of
the necessity of population, and the freedom of the individual,
prevented, in their opinion, a return of the good old times, when each
man fixed the rate of his own remuneration.
Meanwhile Mr. M‘Nab’s daring innovations progressed and prospered at the
much-changed and highly-improved Gondaree. On Saturday afternoon
Redgrave and his manager surveyed, with no little pride, the completed
and indeed admirable wool-shed. Nothing on the Warroo had ever been seen
like it. Jack felt honestly proud of his new possession, as he walked up
and down the long building. The shearing floor was neatly, even
ornamentally, laid with the boards of the delicately-tinted Australian
pine. The long pens which delivered the sheep to the operator were
battened on a new principle, applied by the ever-inventive genius of
M‘Nab. There were separate back yards and accurately divided portions of
the floor for twenty shearers. The roof was neatly shingled. All the
appliances for saving labour were of the most modern description, and as
different from the old-world contrivances in vogue among the wool-sheds
of the Warroo as a threshing-machine from a pair of flails. The
wool-press alone had cost more as it stood ready for work than many a
shed, wash-pen, huts, and yards of the old days.