TOM AND HIS CONCERNS
DOMESTIC AND OTHER BRAWLS
Tom, who holds himself well in reserve, stood once before an armed and
angry white man, defiant, unflinching, bold.
As I have had the privilege of listening in confidence to both sides of
the story, and as the main facts are minutely corroborative, I judge
Tom's recitation of them to be quite reliable.
He was "mate" at the time of a small cutter, the master of which could
teach him very little in practical seamanship. The captain was rather
hasty and excitable. Tom never hurries, fusses, or falters, be the
weather never so boisterous afloat or the domestic tribulations never so
wild ashore. When Nelly, his third wife, tore her hair out by the roots
in double handfuls and danced upon it, Tom calmly observed, "That fella
make fool belonga himself!" But when she rushed at him, clawing
blindly, he promptly and without the least consideration for her sex,
silenced her for the time being with a stone. The sudden peace after
Nelly's squeals and yells of temper was quite a shock; and when she woke
her loving-kindnesses to Tom were quite engaging. Tom will ever be
master in his own humpy.
To tell of that other incident that caused Tom to look wicked and so
bellicose. The captain of the cutter lost half a crown. His excitement
began to simmer at once. A hasty general search was made without result,
every nook and corner of the boat and all the captain's garments and the
belongings of Tom and the other blacks being ransacked. The money
declined to be found, and the captain, like David of old, refused to be
comforted, and further following the fashion of the psalmist, said in
his haste all blacks are thieves. Tom put on the stern, sulky, sullen
aspect that so becomes him, and when he was individually challenged with
the theft, disdainfully told his master, "Me no take your money! You
lost em yourself!"
This calm, plain statement of fact so angered the boss that, calling Tom
a cowardly thief, he yelled, "You take my money! I shoot you!"
It is placing rather a paltry valuation even on the life of a black
fellow to threaten to shoot him for the sake of half a crown; but the
death penalty has been exacted for far less, according to the boastful
statements of self-glorifying white men. The boss was raging. He groped
in the locker for his revolver, while Tom took a side glance at a
tomahawk lying on the thwart.
Presenting the revolver, the boss yelled, "You rogue, Tom! You steal my
money! I shoot you!" Tom changed his sulky demeanour for the pose and
look that a camera has preserved, saying, "My word! you shoot one time,
straight. Subpose you no shoot one time straight, look out."
The shot was never fired.
I asked Tom what he would have done suppose the revolver had been fired
and he not killed.
"My word! Subpose that fella he no kill me one time, I finish him one
time quick alonga tomahawk!"
In the course of the day the half-crown was found under the stern
sheets, where the boss had been sitting.
To coolly face death under such circumstances is surely evidence of rare
mental repose.
Once Tom had a jovial misunderstanding with his half-brother Willie, who
cut a neat wedge out of the rim of Tom's ear with a razor. He had
intended, of course, to gash Tom's throat, but Tom was on the alert. In
revenge and defence Tom merely sat upon Willie, who is a frail, thin
fellow, but the sitting down was literal and so deliberate and
long-continued that Willie was all crumpled up and out of shape for a
week after. Indeed, the "crick" in his back was chronic for a much
longer period. Tom was half ashamed of this encounter, and while
glorying in the scar with which Willie had decorated him, excused his own
conduct in these terms:
"Willie fight alonga razor. He bin make mark alonga my ear. My word! Me
savage then. B'mbi sit down alonga Willie. Willie close up finish. Me bin
forget about that fella altogether. When Willie wake up he walk about all
asame old man l-o-n-g time!"
With whatsoever missile or weapon is at hand Tom is marvellously expert.
As we rested in the dim jungle after a long and much entangled walk, a
shake--a poor, thin thing, about four feet long, wriggled up a bank ten
or twelve yards off, just ahead of a pursuing dog. On the instant Tom
picked up a flake of slate and threw it with such precision and force
that the snake became two--the tail end squirmed back, to be seized and
shaken by the dog, and the other disappeared with gory flourish under a
root.
Most of Tom's feats of marksmanship, though performed with what white men
would despise as arms of precision, end seriously. Yet on one occasion
the result was broadly farcical. He has a son, known to our little world
as Jimmy, who, like his father, is given to occasional sulks, a luxury
that even a black boy may become bloated on. Tom does not tolerate that
frame of mind in others. The attentions of "divinest melancholy" he
likes to monopolise for himself, and when Jimmy becomes pensive without
just cause, Tom's mood swerves to paternal and active indignation--which
is very painful to Jimmy.
Jimmy, in the very rapture of sulkiness, refused to express pleasure or
gratitude upon the presentation of a "hand" of ripe bananas. Tom's
wrath at his son's mute obstinacy reached the explosive climax just as he
had peeled a luscious banana. He sacrificed it, and Jimmy appeared the
next instant with a moustache and dripping beard of squashed fruit as an
adornment to his astonished face. Then he opened his mouth to pour forth
his soul in an agonising bleat. Tom got in a second shot with the banana
skin. With a report like unto that which one makes by bursting an
air-distended paper bag, the missile plastered Jimmy's cavernous mouth,
smothered his squeal, and sat him down so suddenly that Tom thought his
"wind" had stopped for ever. Kneeling beside the boy, he set about
kneading his stomach, while Jimmy gasped and glared, making horrible
grimaces, as he struggled for breath. Nelly, nervous Nelly, concluding
that Tom was determined to thump the life out of Jimmy, assailed him
with her bananas and vocal efforts of exquisite shrillness. Just as
matters were becoming seriously complicated, Jimmy rolled away, scrambled
to his feet, and fled, yelling, to the camp, firm in the belief that his
doting father had made an attempt on his young life.
THE LOGIC OF THE CAMP
Poor half-caste Jimmy Yaeki Muggie, a pleasant-voiced lad, who always wore
in his face the slur of conscious shame of birth, died apparently from
heart failure, an after-effect of rheumatic fever. Tom and Nelly mourned
deeply and wrathfully. Smarting under the rod of fate, they sought with
indignant mien counsel upon the cause of death.
Jimmy was a young fellow. Why should a young man, who had been lusty
until a couple of months ago, die? Somebody must have killed him by
covert means. In the first outburst of grief they blamed me. Tom
declared, with passion in his eyes, that I had killed Jimmy by making him
drunk. The charge was not absolutely groundless, for when the
yellow-faced fellow was chilly with a collapse, I had administered
reviving sips of whisky-and-water.
Yes, Tom declared in an angry mood, and with the air of one who washed
his hands of the whole sad business, the doses of whisky had killed
Jimmy. As Tom indulged to the fulness of his heart in the luxury of his
woe, he began to reflect further, and to change his opinion.
He mentioned incidentally that whisky was "good." "Before you gib em that
boy whisky, he close up dead-finish. B'mby he more better."
Then he began vehemently to protest against the malign influence of some
"no good" boy on the mainland, and Nelly, eager to satisfy her own
cravings for some definite cause for the ending of the life of a strong
boy, supported Tom's vague theories quite enthusiastically. To each
distinct natural phenomenon blacks assign a real presence. Even
toothache, to which he is subject, Tom ascribes to a malignant fiend, so
he asks for a pin which, without a wince, he forces into the decaying
bicuspid. His theory is that the little "debil-debil" molesting it will
abandon the tooth to attack furiously the obtrusive pin. The affliction
upon the camp had certainly been wrought by some boy who had been angry
with Jimmy. The how and the why and wherefore of such malignant influence
mattered not.
There was the dead boy rolled in his blanket, with a petrified smile on
his thin lips. Obviously death was due to some illicit control of the
laws of Nature. No one but a black boy could so grossly intercept the
course of ordinary events as to produce death. Such, at least, was
the logic of the camp.
Reflecting still deeper, and always with Nelly's unswerving
corroboration, Tom began to urge that Jimmy had been poisoned.
"Yes," said Nelly, quite cheerfully, "some boy bin poison em. What's the
matter that boy want poison Jimmy? Jimmy good fella!"
"Who poison that boy?" I asked.
"Some fella alonga mainland. .He no good that fella!"
"He bin sick long time. Poison kill em one time quick!"
Tom dissented. "Some boy make em poison slow. I know that kind."
Then he explained. "Some time 'nother fella tchausey belonga Jimmy. He
wan make Jimmy shout. Jimmy no wan shout for that boy. They have little
bit row."
"That boy wouldn't poison Jimmy because he no shout," I reasoned.
Everybody liked Jimmy."
"Yes," said Tom. "Sometime he might have row."
With an air of mystery, Tom continued: "When that boy have row, he get
bone belonga dead man, scrape that bone alonga old bottle. When get
little heap all asame sugar, put into tea. Jimmy drink tea. B'mby get
sick--die long time. Bad poison that."
Nelly's grief, which had been shrilly expressed at intervals, became
subdued as she listened to Tom's theories. To her mind the whole mystery
had been settled. There need be no further anxiety, and only formal
expressions of grief.
During the rest of the evening the wailing was purely official. Tom's wit
had so circumstantially accounted for the event, that it ceased to be
solemn.
The next day they dug a hole five feet deep in the clean sand at the back
of the humpy, and there Jimmy was laid to rest with the whole of his
personal property, the most substantial of which consisted of an enamel
billy, plate, and mug. The Chinese matting on which he had slept was used
to envelop the body, and the sand was compressed in the grave.
But Tom and his family had gone. He said--and the deep furrows of grief
were in his face: "Carn help it. Must go away one month. I bin think
about that boy too much."
TOM'S PHILOSOPHY
Tom had been so long intimately associated with cynical white people
that several of the more fantastic customs of his race are by him
contemned. Accordingly I was somewhat surprised to discover, after a few
weeks of rainless weather, during which the shady pool at the mouth of
the creek whence the supplies for his camp are drawn had decreased in
depth, that he had been slyly practising the arts of the rain-maker.
As a matter of fact Tom was not in need of water, but, calculating fellow
that he is, he foresaw the probability of having to carry it in buckets
from the creek for the house, and to obviate such drudgery he shrewdly
exercised his wit. A thoughtful, designing person is Tom--ever ready to
accept the inevitable, with unruffled aboriginal calm, and just as
willing--and as competent, too--to assist weary Nature by any of the
little arts which he, by close observation of her moods, has acquired, or
the knowledge which has been handed down from generation to generation. As
it was the season of thunderstorms, he craftily so timed his designs that
their consummation was not in direct opposition to meteorological
conditions, but rather in consistency with them. Captain Cook found the
ENDEAVOUR in a very tight corner on one occasion, out of which he
wriggled, and in recording the circumstance wrote: "We owed our safety to
the interposition of Providence, a good look-out, and the very brisk
manner in which the ship was manned." In a similar spirit Tom's art was
exemplified. He watched the weather, while he coaxed the rain.
Some rain-makers tie a few leaves of the "wee-ree" (CALOPHYLLUM
INOPHYLUM) into a loose bundle, which is gently lowered into the
diminishing pool, in which he then bathes; but all are presupposed to
observe the clouds, so that the chances of the non-professional being
able to blaspheme because of non-success are remote. Tom slightly varied
the customary process, though he accepted no risk of failure. Cutting out
a piece of fresh bark from a "wee-ree"-tree, he shaped it roughly to a
point at each end, and having anchored it by a short length of home-made
string to a root on the bank, allowed it to sink in the water.
A few yards away, towards the centre of the pool, he made a graceful arch
of one of the canes of the jungle (FLAGELLARIA INDICA) by forcing each
end firmly into the mud, and from the middle hung an empty bottle. The
paraphernalia was completed on the Saturday, when the weather was
obviously working up to a climax, but I was not made aware of Tom's
plans, and as one of the tanks was empty, on the following Monday, with
his assistance, I cleaned it out, remarking to him with cheerful irony:
"Now we get plenty rain. Every time we clean out this little fella tank
rain comes. You look out! Cloud come up now! We no want carry water
from creek."
That night a thunderstorm occurred, during which half an inch of rain
fell, to the overflowing of the tank.
In the morning Tom smilingly told of his skill as a rain-maker, while
admitting that the cleaning out of the little tank had also a certain
influence in the right direction. It was, a pleasant, gentle rain, too,
nothing of the violent and hasty character such as Tom had designed, but
again he had a plausible explanation.
"Subpose I bin put that mil-gar in water deep, too much rain altogether.
We no want too much rain now. After Christmas plenty." Tom asserts that
the deeper the pool in which the "mil-gar" is submerged the heavier and
more continuous the downpour; but as heavy rain is not liked, only
vindictive boys who have some spite to work off indulge in such wanton
interference with the ordinary course of the wet season.
The submerged bark which attracts the rain Tom calls "mil-gar," and the
suspended bottle (a saucer-shaped piece of bark is generally used) serves
to catch PAL-BI (hailstones), which, being, uncommon, are considered
weird and are eaten in a dare-devil sort of spirit. In this case PAL-BI
had but the remotest chance of getting into the bottle, and for that
reason (according: to Tom) none tried. "Subpose I bin put bark all asame
plate--look out plenty!"
Many natural phenomena are associated in the folklore of the blacks with
untoward events. The rainbow (AM-AN-EE) is not regarded by them as a
covenant that the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all
flesh, but as an evil omen, a cause of sorrow, for to whomsoever shall
bathe in the sea when the bow is seen in the cloud evil is certain to
befall.
Unprotesting Nelly is assured of this by her own sad experience. In tones
of deep conviction, which permit of no manner of doubt, she tells me
that AM-AN-EE caused the death of her infant--"brother belonga Jimmy."
She had bogied at Toorgey-Toorgey, when to her dismay the harbinger of
disaster appeared to spring out from the sea. In a week the child was
born-dead.
Both father and mother have the tenderest thoughts of that breathless
image in bronze. I saw it. Its features were refined, the nose sharp and
symmetrical, and the mouth a perfect Cupid's bow. Its expectant repose
thrilled me, for it was the realisation of that which Dickens said of
little Nell--"a creature waiting for the breath of life."
No marvel they mourned, that Nelly cut her arms with splinters of glass,
that she still regards the lovely rainbow with resentment tempered by
fear.
Tom does not respond to cross-examination. He thinks his own thoughts and
says but little. When he is communicative his veracity is the less to be
trusted. Many a time have I sought his opinions on the serious import of
life--to find that he has none. His thoughts are concentrated on things
which affect the immediate moment. Since he is mentally incapable of
denying himself the most trivial recreations upon which his wishes have
dwelt, restraint is succeeded by despairing, uncontrollable moroseness
pathetic in its genuineness. How could such a temperament reflect upon
the future? He is no doctrinaire; he does not credit existence after
death--"When you dead, you finish!"
"But," I suggested, "plenty of your country men think about another place
when you die--finish."
"Yes, some boy he say when you dead you go long another place. L-o-n-g
way. More better place, plenty tucker, no work, sit-down, play about all
day. When you come alonga that place father, mother, brother,
sit-down--no more can die!"
Then I put a customary question: "Yes, what all go alonga that place like
when you die? You father old man when he die. He old man now alonga that
good place? Little Jinny young when she die. That fella young along that
place? That piccaninny belonga Nelly--piccaninny alonga that place?"
"Yes, all asame when you die you along that place."
"Good boy and bad boy-rogue, all go one place?
"Yes. Rogue he got one heaby spear right through. Go in here (indicating
the middle of his chest), come out alonga back. Sore fella. That spear
fight em inside. My word! Carn pull em out. He no die. Too much sore
fella!"
DEAD--FINISH
Since the foregoing was penned Tom has realised the supreme fact of
existence. He is dead, and is buried in dry, hot ground away from the
moist green country which he knew so well, and was wont to love so
ardently.
Although he was "only a black fellow," yet was he an Australian by the
purest lineage and birth--one whose physique was example of the class that
tropical Queensland is capable of producing, a man of brains, a student
of Nature who had stored his mind with first-hand knowledge unprinted and
now unprintable, a hunter of renown, and in certain respects "a citizen
impossible to replace."
Given protection from the disastrous contact with the raw, unclean edge
of civilisation, he and others, his fellows, might have lived for a score
of years longer, and in the meantime possibly the public conscience of
Australia might have been aroused, and his and their last days made
wholesome, peaceable, and pleasant.
There is something more to be said about Tom in order that the attempt to
show what manner of man he was may be as complete as the inexorable
regulation of death permits.
Strong and substantially built, so framed that he looked taller than the
limit of his inches, broad-chested, big-limbed, coarse-handed, Tom's
figure differed essentially from that of the ordinary type, and as his
figure so his style and mental capacity. Serene in the face of perils of
the sea, with all of which he is familiar, he was afraid of no man in
daylight, though a child might scare him after dark.
Tom was not as other blacks, for he loved sport. It was not all a
question of pot-hunting with him. Apart from the all-compelling force of
hunger, he was influenced by the passion of the chase. Therefore was he
patient, resourceful, determined, shrewd, observant, and alert. His
knowledge of the ways of fish and of the most successful methods of
alluring them to his hook often astonished me. He saw turtle in the sea
when quite beyond visual range of the white man. Many a time and oft has
he hurled his harpoon at what to me was nothingness, and the rush of
the line has indicated that the aim was true. He would say when fifty
yards of line were out the particular part of the body in which the
barbed point was sticking. If it had pierced the shell, then he must play
with the game cautiously until it was exhausted and he could get in
another point in better holding locality. If the point had entered the
shoulder, or below the carapace to the rear, or one of the flippers, he
would haul away, knowing that the barb would hold until cut out. When
restrained from the sea for a few days he became petulant and as sulky as
a spoilt child, for, in common with others of the race, he was morally
incapable of self-denial. Big and strong and manly as he was, he became
as an infant when circumstances compelled him to forego an anticipated
excursion by water, and rather than stay in comfort and safety on dry
land would--if he had so set his mind--venture over six miles of stormy
sea in a flattie little more commodious than a coffin. He was, on such an
occasion, wont to say, "No matter. Subpose boat drowned, I swim along
shore, tie em Nelly along a string," meaning that in case of a capsize
he would swim to dry land, towing his dutiful, trustful spouse.
Although by nature a true lover of the sea, his knowledge of the plant
life of the coast was remarkable. Among his mental accomplishments was a
specific title for each plant and tree. His almanac was floral. By the
flowering of trees and shrubs so he noted the time of the year, and he
knew many stars by name and could tell when such and such a one would be
visible. Yet, though I tried to teach him the alphabet, he never got
beyond "F," which he always pronounced "if." Perhaps his collapse in
literature may have been due to persistent efforts to teach him the
difference between "F" and "if" vocalised. He may have reasoned that
so finicking an accomplishment was not worth acquiring. In his own tongue
he counted thus:--
Yungl One
Bli Two
Yacka Any number in excess of two--a great many.
But in English he did not lose himself until he had passed sixty--at
least, he was wont to boast of being able to comprehend that number.
Tom was a bit of a dandy in his way, fond of loud colours and proud of
his manly figure. When the flour-bag began to sprinkle his moustache he
plucked out one by one the tell-tale hairs until his upper lip became
almost barren, but remorseless Time was never made to pause. Though many
a white hair was extirpated, Tom was as much at fault as most of us who
seek for the secret of perpetual youth, or to evade the buffets of old
Father Time.
Opium and rum lured Tom away during the last four years of his life. He
was sadly degenerated when I saw him for the last time, and several
months after, in a mainland camp, he quarrelled with his half-brother
Willie--the same Willie who many years ago in honourable encounter cut a
liberal nick out of one of Tom's ears with a razor. Willie probed Tom
between the ribs with a spear. While he lay helpless and suffering
representatives of the police force visited the spot and the sick man was
taken by steamer to a hospital, where he passed away--peradventure, in
antagonism to his own personal belief, to that "good place" fancied by
some of his countrymen, where tucker is plentiful and opium and rum
unprocurable. And unless in that "good place" there are fish to be
caught and turtle and dugong, and sting-rays to be harpooned, and other
sport of the salt sea available, and dim jungles through which a man may
wander at will, and all unclad, to chop squirming grubs out of decayed
wood and rob the rubbish mounds of scrub fowls of huge white eggs, and
forest country where he may rifle "bees' nests," Tom will not be quite
happy there. He was ever a free man, given to the habit of roaming. If
there are bounds to that "good place," he will discover them, and will
peer over the barricades longingly and very often.