He who embarks upon an enterprise or commences a course of life
involving absolute departure from every early habit and association
will invariably be assailed at some stage or period by distrust, even
by despondency. It is not in man to complete all the multifarious acts
and volitions pertaining to any momentous change without experiencing
the strongest reactionary impulses to halt, to doubt, to waver, to
retreat.
That Ernest Neuchamp possessed these, among other weaknesses of
our nature, we are by no means prepared to deny. But he had one
counterbalancing quality which oftentimes stood him in good stead,
when on the dangerous declivities of indecision. This compensating
element was a habit of reasoning out his proceedings logically before
the day of battle. He formed his opinions, arranged his movements, with
Prussian deliberation and purpose aforethought. Having decided upon his
order of action, he vowed mentally that no infringement upon his plan
should be suffered, whatever might be his own ephemeral impulses, even
convictions.
Thus he often carried out programmes involving foregone conclusions,
with ruthless exactitude against every feeling, taste, and sentiment
then and there animating his rebellious mind. ‘No!’ he would repeat
to himself. ‘I made my calculations, carried out my reasoning to its
legitimate demonstration, when no disturbing element was present. Shall
I veer with every shift of wind, consult every sudden instinct or every
emotional sensation? No—onward by the true and proved course!’
Steadfastly adhering, therefore, to his sketch-map, on the following
morning Mr. Neuchamp accompanied his host on a tour of inspection,
and gathered some approximate notion of the character of the stock
and station, together with the duties which as an aspirant to the
comprehensive study of ‘colonial experience’ he might be expected to
perform.
The somewhat extensive property known as Garrandilla was divided by
a river, on one side of which natural boundary the stock consisted
of sheep—on the other of cattle. The northern subdivision comprised
four ‘blocks,’ having each five miles’ frontage to the Wandabyne, a
permanent and occasionally turbulently flowing stream. As far back as
thirty miles, the lands were held upon the usual lease from the Crown.
Through all this great tract of country no man was legally entitled
to travel, save on the road which passed along the course of the
river, avoiding only the sinuosities of its course. North Garrandilla
consisted wholly of saltbush plains, diversified only by ‘belts’ of
myall and eucalyptus forest. It was therefore held to be appropriate
for sheep, to the highly successful production of which it had always
been devoted.
On the south side, the ‘lay of the country,’ as Jack Windsor would have
called it, was different. Marshy flats, interspersed with lagoons and
reed-beds, extended along, and for several miles back from the river.
With this exception the greater part of the area was covered with more
or less open forest, while at ‘the back,’ or the extreme limit of the
unwatered region away from the river, were ranges of hills precipitous
and heavily timbered, among which the cattle roved at will during the
winter season, returning to the low grounds as the fierce sun of the
Australian waste commenced to dry the interior watercourses.
At a short distance from ‘the house,’ Mr. Jedwood’s cottage, or hut,
as the residence of the proprietor was indifferently designated, stood
a roomy, roughly finished building known as the ‘barracks.’ Here lived
the overseer, a hard-working, hard-riding, weather-beaten personage,
who appeared to exist in a chronic state of toil, anxiety, and general
lack of repose.
Three of the numerous bedrooms were tenanted by young men, upon
the same footing as Mr. Neuchamp, neophytes, who were gradually
assimilating the lore of Bushland, and hoping to emulate the successful
career of Allan Jedwood, or other pastoral magnates. One of these was
a far-off kinsman, Malcolm Grahame by name, a steady, persevering,
self-denying Scot; while another, Mr. Fitzgerald Barrington, erst of
Castle Barrington, County Clare, sufficiently expressed his nationality
and general tendencies by his patronymic and titular designation.
Lastly was a brown Australian boy, of eighteen or nineteen, very
sparing of his words, and prone to decry the general intelligence of
his comrades, from a comparison of their woodcraft with his own, in
which competition they were, for the present, let us say, manifestly
inferior.
Into this society Mr. Neuchamp voluntarily and contentedly entered,
holding that his education would be the sooner completed if he
graduated, so to speak, before the mast, than from the captain’s
cabin. To the barracks also were relegated those just too exalted
for the men’s hut, while not eligible for the possibly distinguished
company occasionally entertained at ‘the cottage.’ Such were
cattle-dealers, sheep-buyers, overseers of neighbouring stations, and
generally unaccredited travellers whose manners or appearance rendered
classification hazardous.
Ernest managed to have a preliminary conversation with Mr. Jedwood, in
which the latter gentleman, who was extremely plain, not to say blunt,
of speech, put his position fairly before him.
‘You will understand, Neuchamp,’ said he, ‘that, though I feel bound,
on account of old Paul, who was a good friend to me in time past,
to do what I can for you, you must not look for any great amount of
consideration from the overseer, Mr. Doubletides, or from the other
youngsters. I hope you will all be treated like gentlemen as long as
you stay at Garrandilla, but you will be made useful, and set at all
sorts of work, in a way perhaps that may sometimes appear strange.’
‘Not at all,’ replied Ernest. ‘I am as anxious as any one can be to
master the details of bush life, and the sooner the better. I don’t
think you will find any false delicacy about me, whatever may be the
practical nature of my employment for the present.’
‘Well, that’s all right,’ said Mr. Jedwood heartily. ‘It’s the best
way, too. I had to work, and devilish hard, too, as a youngster, or I
should never have been here as master, I can tell you.’
After this conversation, Ernest was put under the immediate orders
of the overseer, Mr. Doubletides, who speedily made it apparent to
him that bush life at a large station did not entirely consist of
galloping about like Bedouin Arabs and reposing under palm or other
trees of grateful shade. Galloping about there was, doubtless; but
often the rides were long, weary, and unexciting, with absolutely no
shade to speak of, while so continuous was the routine of carrying
rations, driving sheep, bringing in working bullocks, carting water
to out-stations, and generally performing no inconsiderable amount of
hardish manual labour, that Mr. Neuchamp at times felt inclined to
adopt the same distrustful view of it all which Mr. Weller took of the
alphabet—‘Whether indeed it was worth going through so much to learn so
little.’
In any riding that might be ordered, Mr. Neuchamp fared sumptuously
compared with the other cadets, who, confined to the ordinary
station-hacks, were constantly complaining of their roughness,
insecurity, or generally unamiable qualities. Osmund, now quiet, well
fed, and tended in the Garrandilla stables, to use Jack Windsor’s
expression, ‘went like a bird,’ and daily demonstrated the soundness of
that gentleman’s choice and opinion.
Charley Banks, the Australian youngster, admired Osmund in secret very
much, and at length offered Ernest five pounds to boot, if he would
‘swop,’ or exchange him for a chestnut mare which he, Charley, had
bought out of the neighbouring pound.
‘She’s quite good enough for this work, Neuchamp,’ he remarked, ‘and
you might as well have the fiver in your pocket as be wearing out your
colt’s legs for old Doubletides here. Jedwood will see you far enough
before he gives you another one in his place, if you screw him doing
his work.’
‘And why would he sell or swop him at all, ye little horse-racing
divil, that wants to be making a blackleg of yourself at the township
races? He’s the only horse fit to carry a gentleman I’ve seen this year
past, and the very moral of a horse the whipper-in of the Barrington
hounds rode.’
‘You be blowed,’ retorted the son of the soil; ‘I don’t believe you
rode much to hounds in Ireland or anywhere else, or else you would
stick on better.’
‘Stick on!’ shouted the Milesian. ‘I can ride with any cornstalk that
ever sat in a thing with a pillow on each flap, that you call a saddle.
Sure ye’d be laughed out of any hunting-field in Britain if ye took one
of them things there.’
‘Well, we can stick to ’em when we are there,’ sarcastically observed
Mr. Banks; ‘I’ll bet you the fiver I was going to give Neuchamp, you
don’t sit for ten minutes on that chestnut colt Jack Windsor’s coming
up here with now, and he’s ridden him, now it’s the _third_ day.’
Charley Banks emphasised the last number of the colt’s daily
experiences of man, as if no one but an elderly capitalist, with gout
or asthma, could possibly decline so childishly safe a mount.
‘Done with you!’ shouted the roused son of Erin. ‘One would think you
conceited cornstalks had discovered the horse, in this sandy wilderness
of a country of yours, and that no one had ever ridden or shot flying
before he came here.’
‘I don’t know about shooting,’ said the lad reflectively, ‘but I’m
dashed if ever I saw a new arrival that could sit a buck-jumper, even
if he only propped straightforward, and didn’t do any side-work.
Anyway, we’ll see in about five minutes.’
Here Mr. Windsor arrived upon a bright chestnut colt, with three white
legs, and a blaze down the face, and a considerable predominance of the
same colour into the corners of his eyes, thus giving an expression
more peculiar than engaging to those organs, when used for the purpose
of staring at the rider. In addition to these peculiarities, he
had an uneasy tail, always moving from side to side with a feline,
quietly-exasperated expression.
‘Good-morning, sir,’ said Jack to Ernest. ‘Good-morning, gentlemen all;
fine growing weather.’
‘No finer,’ said Barrington; ‘how are you getting on with the colts?’
‘Not bad,’ answered the horse-tamer; ‘I’ve backed two a week since I
came, and have three in tackle, in the yard now. This one’s a fine colt
to go, but he’s rather unsettled when the fit takes him.’
‘Sorry for that, for I’ve a bet with Mr. Banks here that I’ll mount him
and stay on for ten minutes. Sure, ye knew, ye artful colonist, that he
was a divil; you won’t refuse me the mount, Jack, me boy, breaker to
his Highness the Grand Duke of Garrandilla?’
‘Not I, Mr. Barrington, if you’ve got a neck to spare, but you’ll bear
in mind yourself—he’s a sour devil when his blood’s up; and mayn’t like
a stranger. Though he’s pretty fair now.’
Here Jack slid quietly to the ground and patted the colt’s neck, who
snorted, but when soothed was apparently quiet. Barrington gained
courage, and taking out his watch, gave it to Ernest to hold.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said; ‘and now I’ll bet you all a couple of pounds
each, that if I come off, not one of the lot of ye can ride him up to
the stockyard and back.’
The bet was taken all round. Mr. Barrington with a confident air
advanced, and getting Windsor to hold the colt closely and firmly,
mounted easily and rode off. The young horse apparently took no notice
of the change of riders for some time, but walked steadily off along a
bank which led to the sheep-drafting yard. Barrington was charmed with
himself, and with his mount, whom he immediately decided in his own
mind to be an animal of fine disposition, in danger of being spoiled,
as was usual in the colony, by rough breaking. As he turned back, after
about five minutes’ ride, he concluded to favour the company with a
trot. He therefore touched the colt with his heel and slacked the rein.
Now, whether, as was very possible, though a fair and very bold
horseman, he did not sit with the glove-like adherence to the pigskin’s
surface which characterised Mr. Windsor’s every movement, we have no
means of knowing; of matters of fact, however, as eye-witnesses, we can
judge. The chestnut glanced nervously back with his Albino-tinged eyes,
made a rapid swerve, then a diving headlong plunge, instantaneously
arrested. This threw forward the incautious Barrington, while with
sudden frenzy the now fully-aroused animal bounded galvanically upward
with his back arched, and dropped with his mouth wrenched resistlessly
from the rider’s hold and almost touching the ground.
The suddenness of the act, joined with the convulsive force of the
propelling power, first tended to place Mr. Barrington in a somewhat
leaning position. From this he was prevented from recovering his place
in the saddle by the lightning-like rapidity of the recurring headlong
plunges. Strong, fearless, and elastic with the glorious activity of
early manhood, he made a desperate struggle to retain his seat; but
the deerlike, sidelong bounds, instantaneously reversed, gave him no
chance. Failing to follow a terrific side leap, his equilibrium was
disturbed, the corresponding swerve sundered him and the saddle still
farther, while a concluding upward bound on all fours, ‘propping,’ so
as to progress backward rather than otherwise, shot him forward as from
a catapult, head first and clean delivered.
‘Ugh! ugh! shall I ever—ugh, ugh—get my wind again? Ugh—you savage,
unnatural son of a—ugh—gun—what right have you to be called a horse at
all? Sure no one but a blackfellow, or Mexican, or a _native_, Banks,
me boy, could expect to sit on such a baste of prey. Here’s an order
for five pounds, Charley, ye villain; they’re good, _as yet_, and now
go ride him yourself, and let me enjoy myself looking on.’
Mr. Windsor, on another horse, was by this time in pursuit of the
excited animal, which kept snorting, kicking, and otherwise protesting
against any other interference with his natural rights.
‘He _can_ buck a bit,’ said Charley Banks, coolly girding himself for
the fray by taking off his coat and tightening a leathern strap which
he wore round the waist, ‘but if you hadn’t come forward, Paddy, the
first time he propped, he mightn’t have gone to market at all. Here
goes.’
The chestnut was soon secured by the agile and deft Windsor, and held
by that horse-tamer, ready for Charley Banks to bestride. Having
divested himself of his coat, he advanced with perfectly unembarrassed
mien towards the alarming chestnut. Staring with homicidal glare out of
his white-rimmed eyes, the successful combatant was standing perfectly
still, but in a constrained and unnatural position.
Before putting his foot in the stirrup, Mr. Banks examined with
long-practised eye the gear and accoutrements.
‘Why don’t you have a surcingle, Windsor?’ he said. ‘What’s a pair
of girths to a colt like this? Call yourself a breaker? Where’s the
crupper?’
‘I left them at home, Mr. Banks,’ exclaimed the rough-rider. ‘Ben
Bolt (as I christened him) was getting on so nicely before you young
gentlemen came in the way that I never thought of wanting the regular
colts’ toggery. Besides, it don’t matter much.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ demanded the unappeased critic. ‘Suppose he sends the
saddle over his withers? How’s a fellow to sit him with one leg on each
side of his neck? However, here goes.’
Mr. Banks, having enunciated his sentiments, quickly slipped into the
saddle, and putting his feet well home in the stirrups, cocking up his
toes, squaring his shoulders, and leaning slightly back, with easy
nonchalance commanded Mr. Windsor to let him go.
Freeing the tameless one on the instant, Mr. Windsor retired a few
steps, and awaited for the next act in the performance. The colt seemed
in no hurry to make use of his liberty. He stood in a cramped, awkward,
half-asleep position. Mr. Banks touched him quietly, but he made no
response.
‘Oh! hang it,’ said that young gentleman, ‘I did not bargain to sit
here all day. I’ll move you.’
Suiting the action to the word, he ‘put the hooks on him,’ as a jock
would have said—in other words, gave him the spurs so unreservedly that
nothing less than the bronze horse of San Marco or the stone charger
of the Duke would have borne then unmoved. Ben Bolt did not. It was
the match to the powder-barrel. With one wild plunge and a desperate
rear which nearly overbalanced him, the nervous but determined animal
bounded into the air. After these feats, he appeared to settle down
to practical, business-like buck-jumping, impromptu, certainly, but
of the highest order of excellence. He certainly _did_ ‘go to work,’
as Mr. Windsor afterwards expressed it. Every known and unknown device
which Sathanas could have devised for the benefit of a demon disguised
as a horse was tried—and tried in vain. Mr. Banks, swaying easily
front or rear of his saddle, never lost head or seat for an instant.
Brought up in a horse-loving, horse-breeding district, he was familiar
from childhood with every known form of practical or theoretical
contravention of equine illegality. He could ride as soon as he
could talk, and ere he wrote himself indifferently man, had backed
successfully scores of unbroken horses, and ridden for wagers the
cannibal Cruisers of more than one stud.
His figure, slight, but very accurately proportioned, was just above
the middle height; his features were delicate and regular, with an
approximation in the hardly aquiline nose and short lip to the Greek
type, by no means uncommon among Australians of the second or third
generation. His strength was far greater than was apparent, arising
more from the toughness of his muscles than from any great breadth or
solidity; and he had astonished the Garrandilla population one day by
the ease with which he walked off with successive heavy bags of lour
upon his back, when all hands were unloading a dray from Orange.
It was a pretty sight in its way, interesting enough to those who
love contests, far from unduly safe, between men and the inferior
animals, to see the ease with which the boy’s figure followed each
frantic movement of the infuriated animal, and with what perfect and
apparently instinctive ease he retained his perilous seat. In vain
the roused and desperate creature tried stopping, wheeling, sideway
and forward, and indeed backward. Nearly blown was Ben Bolt, evidently
relaxing the height and elasticity of his deerlike bounds. The victory
was decided in favour of the imperturbable horseman, in Mr. Windsor’s
characteristic speech.
‘By the holy poker! Mr. Banks, you’ve “monkeyed” him enough for one
while. He won’t try it on with you again in a hurry.’
The victorious athlete was awaiting with a smile of triumph on his lips
for the colt to stop and recover his failing wind, when the frantic
animal made a last maddened rear, trembling on the balance of falling
backwards till the spectators held their breath; then dashing his head
violently to the earth as he inverted his position, he stood with
arched back and forelegs stretched out before him, as if he had been
petrified in that position.
As he did so the saddle slid over his lowered shoulder, depressed,
as in a horse jumping down a precipice, and the girths passing the
’elbows’ or projecting joints of the upper leg underneath, moved,
loosened and flapping downward towards the hoofs. Mr. Banks, of course,
strictly associated with his saddle, could do nothing to arrest its
earthward progress. As saddle and bridle approached the animal’s ears,
he threw up his head with tremendous force, catching the legs of
Mr. Banks and casting him violently on to his back, with the saddle
spread out above him. That young gentleman, however, held on to the
bridle-rein with such tenacity that the throat-lash giving way, it was
jerked over the horse’s head, leaving the reins in the rider’s hands,
while Ben Bolt, with a wild snorting neigh, trotted off, free from all
encumbrance, or, as Jack Windsor expressed it, ‘as naked as he was
born.’
Every one looked extremely grave and sympathetic as the heroic Charley
sat up with the saddle in his lap, until he, in the mild monotone of
his ordinary speech, said—
‘That’s the fruits of being too lazy to put on a crupper and surcingle,
as any man that calls himself a horsebreaker ought to do. Suppose I’d
hurt myself, it would have been all your fault, Windsor!’
Then he arose deliberately and shook himself, whereupon they all burst
into a great fit of laughter at his rueful and injured air, as if being
shot over a vicious colt’s head, after ten minutes’ buck-jumping, was a
trifling annoyance, that the least care might have prevented.
Mr. Neuchamp walked over to the saddle, which he carefully examined.
‘Why, the girths are still buckled on each side!’ he exclaimed with
astonishment. ‘How the deuce _could_ the brute have got the saddle over
his head as he did—as he certainly did?’
‘Bedad he did! eh, Charley, me boy? and that’s a trick of rapid
horsemanship _I_ never saw performed before with my own two eyes,’ said
Mr. Barrington. ‘There’s many a man, now, in my country, if I were to
tell this story, wouldn’t believe me on my oath. They’d say it was
unreasonable. You might stick them, and they’d never give in.’
‘I wish one of them was on that brute’s back,’ said Mr. Banks, rubbing
a portion of his frame. ‘I thought I was as right as ninepence, and
then to be slewed that way, and all for the want of a strap or two. I
hate carelessness.’
‘Never mind, Banks, you sat him magnificently,’ said Ernest
cheeringly. ‘I never saw such a bit of riding in my life. It will be
many a day before any of us can exhibit in the same way. I consider you
fairly won your bet. But still I remain unsatisfied about the saddle
coming off without breaking the girths. How _did_ it?’
‘Well, it’s this way,’ said Mr. Windsor, bracing himself for
explanation. ‘It’s not a common thing, though I’ve seen young ones do
it more than once or twice before. You see, first the horse sticks
down his head with his nose on the ground, as if he was jumping down a
well. Then he plants his feet right out before him, so as his hoofs and
his nose are almost touching; his legs and his neck are all of a line.
Young ones generally have a roundish, lumpy shoulder. If the saddle
slips over it, and the girths over the elbows, down it must go; and
when the horse draws his head backwards out of it, then you have the
saddle, like this one here, popped on the ground, with never a girth or
buckle broke.’
‘So that’s the way it’s done, Jack, is it?’ inquired Mr. Barrington.
‘Well, if I’m forgiven for riding that divil once, I’ll never tempt
Providence again by crossing him as long as I stay at Garrandilla. I’d
like to take him home and exhibit him. There’s many a bold rider in
Clare and County Roscommon, but the divil a one would stay on him for
five minutes, I’ll go bail.’
‘Every man to his trade,’ said Jack Windsor. ‘Mr. Banks and me have
been riding ever since we were born, and it isn’t easy to get from
under us, I’ll allow. But I daresay there’s some other games as we
shouldn’t be quite so smart at.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Malcolm Grahame, who just came on to the scene
of action, ‘there’s Jedwood and old Doubletides up at the drafting
yards, waiting for some of you to come up and help put through those
hoggets that got boxed. The old man is swearing just awfu’.’
Every one hasted at this intimation to the scene of action, where the
dust was ascending in a cloud, curiously reminding Ernest of a Biblical
passage.
For the rest of the day, ‘Keep them up, wether, hogget, ewe, weaner,
slit-ear, near crop,’ were the principal terms and phrases interchanged.
Ernest Neuchamp speedily discovered that he had reason to congratulate
himself heartily upon the fact that, from the never-ending work at
Garrandilla, he was much too tired and sleepy at night to care for
conversation, or to desire congenial companionship. Had he craved for
such ever so longingly, he would have found it impossible to obtain.
Allan Jedwood, a man of singular energy and indomitable persuasion,
had devoted all his powers of mind and body with ceaseless, unrelaxing
obstinacy to what he was pleased to consider the main end of existence.
In his case, the reaching and maintaining of an independent pastoral
position had been the goal which had stood forth before his eyes,
a celestial mount, but slightly obscured by mists of pleasure,
extravagance, or sympathy, from his youth up.
In the pursuit of this somewhat restricted ideal, bounded by a good
station, a fine herd of cattle, forty thousand sheep, and a balance at
his bankers, he had spared not himself. He had strongly repressed the
ordinary temptations, _desipere in loco_, to harmless dillettanteism,
to amusement, or imaginative contemplation. Tendencies literary or
artistic he had none. Everything in his eyes that did not lead directly
to the increase or maintenance in good order and condition of his
stock, he had eschewed and forsworn as unprofitable, almost immoral.
Such was the rigid discipline which he had enforced over his own
spirit for long years. From the days that he had been a hard-worked
under-overseer, a toiling owner of a small station, a hampered
purchaser of a larger one, until now, that he was sole proprietor of a
magnificent unencumbered property, he had foregone nothing of this rule
and regimen, and the usual effects had followed the causes. Successful
labour and unwearied self-denial had created the position for which he
had so longed and thirsted all his early life through.
And yet was there a side to this picture which did not call for so
much gratulation. In the stern repression, the pitiless starvation to
which the spiritual portion of the man had been subjected, the germs of
all intellectual and speculative tendencies had first dwindled, then
perished.
Unsparing vigilance, untiring concentration upon the daily routine
of station work, was no longer necessary to the opulent possessor of
stock and station, freehold and leasehold, town and city property.
But the habits, inexorably welded into the being of the man, remained
fixed and unalterable, when the circumstances which called them forth
had long changed, long passed away. Still daily, as of old, Allan
Jedwood rode over ‘the run,’ among his flocks and herds, his men and
his ‘improvements,’ his dams, his wells, his fences, his buildings, his
fields, and his teams. At nightfall, returning to the humble unchanged
building which had sufficed for his wants for many a year, he spent
the short evening which followed the day of hard exercise in writing
business letters, or in posting up station accounts; or else, with
military exactitude, he arranged with Mr. Doubletides the ensuing
‘order of the day,’ in which drafting of sheep, shifting of shepherds,
mustering of cattle, and bargaining with dealers, took the place of
marching and countermarching, sorties and retreats, embassies and
diplomatic manœuvrings.
Of the progress and potentialities of the outer world—literary,
artistic, social, or political—Allan Jedwood knew and cared as little
as any of his Highland shepherds, frequently arriving from the paternal
farm, who ‘had not the English.’
In Ernest Neuchamp’s zeal for mental growth, for the onward march of
humanity generally, and for the particular community with which he was
temporarily connected, this stage of arrested development was very
painful and grievous to the soul of an enthusiast and reformer. He
tried all the units of the Garrandilla world, but he found no rest,
æsthetically, for the sole of his foot. Malcolm Grahame, who exhausted
whatever mental vigour he possessed in trying to discover a cure for
foot-rot, and in improving a natural aptitude for wool-classing, bade
fair to become as complete and as prosperous a bucolic Philistine
as Jedwood himself. Fitzgerald Barrington was conversational and
discursive enough, in all conscience, but his mental exercise chiefly
took the direction of regret for the joyous days he had spent in his
father’s house and among his own people—whom, not observing any near
prospect of a fortune in Australia—he bitterly reproached himself for
having ever quitted. Besides, he held no particular views about the
destiny of the human race, or of the Australian nation, or of any other
race or people but his own. He did not see the use of wasting the life
that could be so much more pleasantly spent in hunting, shooting,
feasting, flirting, four-in-hand driving, drinking, and dicing, as
became a gentleman of long descent (if he only had the money), in
bothering and interfering with a lot of low people, not worth caring
about and who did not thank you the least bit.
If Mr. Charley Banks had any intellectual proclivities, they had
not as yet passed a rudimentary limit. He smoked a good deal, read
hardly at all except the sporting compartments of the newspapers,
took more interest in the horses of the establishment than in the
cattle or sheep, and was always glad of an excuse to get down to the
public-house, or to gossip unprofitably in the men’s huts.
As for Mr. David Doubletides, he had long since abandoned the idea that
reading and writing had any other connection of importance to humanity
than the accurate setting down and adding up of station accounts. He
was astir at or before dawn, on horseback all day and every day, from
daylight to dark, and was often sufficiently tired in the evening to
fall asleep with his pipe in his mouth.
This purely objective existence, after the excitement of the first week
or two, commenced to afflict Mr. Neuchamp unpleasantly.
‘Good heavens!’ said he to himself, ‘is all the universe to be
narrowed down to the number of serrations in a lock of merino wool? to
the weight and tallow of a drove of bullocks destined for the market?
This half wild life is pleasant enough with the open-air rambles on
horseback, and the rude occasional labour. But, strictly, as a means
to an end, which end is, or ought to be, the getting away from here,
and the leading a worthy life in a less uniformly scorching land of
monotony and privation,—fancy one doomed to linger on year after
year. I see now the natural law which in desert tribes prompts the
pilgrimage; without society, comfort, or companionship.’
At this period Ernest commenced to acquire, if they had been needed,
additional proofs of the melancholy tendency of all human efforts to
crystallise into the narrow unalterable shape of custom.
Nothing, he admitted, could be more praiseworthy and admirable than the
energy, the concentrativeness, the unwearied labour which Jedwood had
bestowed upon the formation of his position in early life. And now the
summit had been scaled, the goal attained, the reward grasped, of what
commensurate value or benefit was it, now fully realised, to himself
or to others? The contracted field of labour had become a necessity
of life. The means, losing their original proportions, had become the
end. It was as if an animal, long compelled to a mill-horse round of
unrelieved labour for the purpose of grinding a fixed quantity of meal,
had, when the task was completed, voluntarily resumed the collar and
gone on ceaselessly accumulating an unneeded heap.
It must be confessed that, occasionally, the unceremonious manner in
which Mr. Doubletides ordered Ernest and the other young men to perform
any minor task considered by him, Doubletides, necessary to be done,
rather jarred upon his feelings. It was—
‘Mr. Barrington, take the old roan horse and a cart, and go out to the
fifteen-mile hut with a fortnight’s rations for Joe Watson.’
‘Mr. Grahame, see that you and Banks are up at daylight to-morrow
morning, or else you won’t have that weaner flock drafted before
breakfast.’
‘Mr. Neuchamp, you had better get away as soon as possible, and look
for those five hundred wethers that old Sails dropped at the Pine Scrub
yesterday; take some grub and a tether-rope with you, and don’t come
home till you find them.’
All this was doubtless good practice, and valuable as storing up useful
knowledge against the day when he should possess a station and a Mr.
Doubletides of his own. Still it occasionally chafed him to be ordered
and sent about without any explanation or apology for the extreme
personal inconvenience occasionally involved.
As it happened, this particular sheep-hunting trip became an adventure
of much importance. Riding gaily upon the trusty Osmund, Mr. Neuchamp
was fortunate enough, after a few hours’ search, to come upon the
‘wing’ of the wether flock which had been lost by the ex-marine
circumnavigator—a blasphemous old man-of-war’s man, referred to by an
abbreviation denoting his former work.
Full of triumph, Ernest commenced to drive them in the direction of the
out-station, to which the remaining portion of the flock had been sent.
For the first hour he sauntered on behind the browsing sheep, confident
of his direction and not doubting but that he should reach a spot which
he knew in good time. Sheep are not particularly easy animals to drive
after a few miles, and it soon appeared to Ernest that the double
effort of driving five hundred sheep and steering straight in a country
without a landmark, was likely to bear hard upon his woodcraft.
As the sun hung low, flaunting a vast gold-red shield athwart the
endless pale green waste, a sense of powerless loneliness and confused
ignorance of all but the cardinal points of the compass took possession
of him. He cantered from side to side of the obstinate, and perhaps
puzzled, sheep, which probably had a distant impression in their woolly
noddles that the line of direction lay quite another way. At length
the red-gold blazonry faded out into darksome crimson, the pale green
shades became dim and dullest gray—‘the stars rush out, at one stride
comes the dark’—and it became fully apparent to Mr. Neuchamp that he
was lost.
He was sufficiently learned in the lore of the dwellers in this ’land
of freedom and solitude’ to know that the chief duty of man when
once placed in possession of stock, sheep above all, is to ‘stick by
them’—to stick by them, as the captain lingers by the last plank of
the breaking-up deck, in spite of danger and death, hunger, thirst,
weariness, or despair. These last experiences were more likely to be
the portion of Ernest Neuchamp than the former. Still it needed a
slight exercise of determination to face the idea of the long lonely
night, and the uncertain chance of discovering his whereabouts next day.
The night was long—unreasonably long—Ernest thought. Sufficiently
lonely as well. There were no wild beasts, or robbers, likely to be
’round’; still there was an ‘eerie’ feeling about the still, solemn,
soundless night. The rare cry of a night-bird, the occasional rustling
made by the smaller denizens of the forest, the soft murmuring of
the pine-tree nigh which he had elected to camp—these were all his
experiences until the stars paled and the dawn wind moaned fretfully,
like a dreaming infant. Having no culinary duties to delay him, Ernest
saddled up his good gray steed, roused the unwilling sheep, and started
forth, ready to do battle with fate in the coming day. Alas! he
struck no defined trail. He hit off no leading thoroughfare. At first
mid-day, and again the dewy eve, which might have been so described if
the autumn rain had come—which it had not—again found Mr. Neuchamp
a wanderer upon the face of the earth and no nearer home. As for the
sheep, they found sustenance without difficulty, as they ‘nibbled away
both night and day,’ all heedless of the morrow, or Mr. Neuchamp’s
anxious brain and empty stomach. They apparently had no objection to
camp at the deserted out-station, which had so bitterly disappointed
Ernest when he reached it at the close of the day.
By this time, in addition to being unmistakably and importunately
hungry, Mr. Neuchamp was furiously thirsty. His satisfaction was great,
therefore, when he discovered, just outside the door of the empty hut,
two hogsheads filled with clean water.
He was about to plunge his head into the nearer one, like an eager
horse, when a sudden thought passed through his brain, and he stopped
short, with desire and dread written in every line of his face.
What was the potent thought, the word of power, that sufficed to
arrest the step as if a precipice had opened suddenly below his feet
to hold back the longing lips so parched and moistureless? One word,
lightning-like, flashed along the wondrous telegraph of the brain.
That word was ‘arsenic’! Ernest looked again at the casks. The water
was suspiciously clear. He could not trust it. He knew that somewhere
in that direction Mr. Doubletides had been dressing the feet of lame
sheep with a solution of arsenic. He had seen in the local paper an
account of a thirsty shepherd and his horse similarly placed. The horse
drank out of one cask, the man from the other. The horse died. Ernest
was not sufficiently tired of his life to take a philosophical view
of the chances. Sudden death, undignified convulsions, a visit from
the coroner—an unsympathetic individual, who declined minute shades of
discrimination in favour of ’three star’—‘Verdict, found dead, as much
arsenic internally placed as would have killed a horse.’ All this was
uninviting, non-heroic. Bordering on the heroic, however, was the stern
resolve to pass the night without tasting one drop of the doubtfully
limpid element.