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● Transcriber’s Notes:
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS
By A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON
March—
“Our Fleet” War March of the Allied Sailors and Soldiers. Dedicated
by special permission of Lady Jellicoe to Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and
the British Fleet, 1915. Pianoforte and Military Band.
Entr’acte—
“The Monk’s Dream” (Full Military)
Romanza—
“Song of the Night” (Full Military)
Waltz—
“Firenze” (Military)
Regimental Marches—
“By Order of the King” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Imperial Echoes” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Colours” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Salute the Standard” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Under the Old Flag” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Our Fleet” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Sierra Leone” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Relief” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Night Riders” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Rough Diamonds” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Stronghold” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Half Seas Over” Also Pianoforte Solo
“House of Hanover” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Light of the Regiment” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Dashing British” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Scottish Chief” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Dandy Fifth” Also Pianoforte Solo
“Cashmere”
“The Long Bright Line”
“Paramatta”
“Carrara”
“Old Castille”
“Bohemia”
“Il Cavaliere”
“The Military Call” Also Pianoforte Solo
“The Boundary Riders” Also Pianoforte Solo
Etc.
Songs—
“Samoan Love Song and Waltz”
“A Soldier’s Dream”
“By the Delawar”
“South Sea Melodies”
“Alabama Way”
Etc., etc.
---------------------
Published by BOOSEY & Co., London, Aldershot and New York
_Played by Military Regimental Bands throughout the World_
---------------------
Lieutenant J. ORD HUME, L. F., the distinguished Composer,
Bandmaster and Contest Adjudicator of the British Empire, says: “I
consider Safroni-Middleton’s rousing Military Marches the finest of
recent years, and unique productions, coming as they do from the pen
of a sailor.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAILOR AND BEACHCOMBER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: TREE CLIMBING]
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SAILOR AND BEACHCOMBER
CONFESSIONS OF A LIFE AT SEA, IN AUSTRALIA
AND AMID THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC
BY
A. SAFRONI-MIDDLETON
❦
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
ST MARTIN’S STREET
LEICESTER SQUARE
MDCCCCXV
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY BROTHER
MORTIMER HUGH MIDDLETON
AGED SIXTEEN YEARS
Lost overboard in mid-ocean while serving
before the mast of a sailing
ship outbound for
Australia
ALSO TO THE MEMORY OF
CAPTAIN POPPY
Of the sailing ship _Aristides_, lost
with all hands
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
MY COMRADES
Of the Australian Bush and
the South Sea Islands
Old comrades, by my fire in dreams
Your hands I clasp to-night;
Heaven starlit o’er the forest gleams
As ’neath the blood-wood’s height
You lie with folded hands asleep
By shores of tumbling waves,
As I creep up each silent steep
To kiss forgotten graves.
The soul of all the songs I sing,
Whatever sounds most true,
I dedicate each wild true ring,
Inspired, old chums, by you.
The world grieves not that you are dead—
Brave, reckless men who died,
Crept from their camp-fires back to bed
Along the wild hill-side.
But, comrades, ’neath the hills or waves,
Could one sad song of mine
Reveal dead souls of far-off graves,
’Twould be a song divine.
As pure and sweet as flowers that grow
Where once with wild delight
You sang, where bush-flowers, bursting, blow
Thro’ dead fire-ash to-night.
And so in dreams I take your hands,
In long-dead eyes I gaze,
And half in tears from other lands
Bring back the dear old days.
In other lands ’neath greyer skies
Wild rides again recall,
Your songs, your laughing, manly eyes—
The boy who loved you all.
Lies in my sea-chest ’neath my bed
The fiddle, stringless, still;
Old chums, since all of you are dead,
’Neath forest steep and hill,
I cannot play the songs you loved;
But with tired eyes and pen
I strive to tell the truth, who roved,
And found you—God’s best men.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
IN the following chapters, wherein I have endeavoured to write down
my experiences at sea, in Australia and on the South Sea Islands, I
have not gone beyond the first four or five years of my life abroad,
but later on I hope to do so, if I get the chance. I have made no
attempt to moralise in my book, and if I appear to have been guilty
of doing so, be assured it was a spasm of the intellect and quite
forgotten all about a few minutes after I had written it down.
All I have attempted in this book is to endeavour to tell exactly my
experiences as they occurred in my travels in many lands; also I
have wished to reveal a little of the usual experiences, the ups and
downs, that youths pass through when they go to sea and are left
completely on their own in other lands, seeking to see the world,
often ambitious to find a fortune, but generally succeeding in only
gathering heaps of grim experiences. Unfortunately no one can buy
his experience first, and so the general rule of green
fortune-seekers overseas is to end in failure, and to be honest, I
was no exception to the rule. Nevertheless my loss of all that might
have been was amply compensated by the rough brave men whom I met,
seafarers and otherwise, who revealed to me the best side of
humanity and the value of good comradeship: devil-may-care fellows
with hearts that were blazing hearth-fires of welcome in the coldest
days of adversity of long ago, ere I, crammed up with experience and
nothing much else, down in the stokehold of a tramp steamer,
returned across the ocean to my native land, eventually to get the
roving fever and again go seaward.
Pom-pe-te, pom-pe-te, pom, pom,
All thro’ the burning night
Shovelling coal for the engine’s heart
Down in the blinding light.
Working my passage, penniless,
Over the western main,—
And I know they’ll all be sorry
To see me home again.
Pom-pe-te, pom-pe-te, pom, pom,
Shiver and shake and bang;
Thundering seas lifting us up,
Making the screw-shaft clang.
Unshaven faces thrust to the flame,
Washed by the furnace bright,
And England thousands of miles away
In the middle watch to-night.
Oh! what would they say could they see me
Mask’d thick with oil and dirt,
Shovelling deep down under the sea?
This sweater for a shirt,
With the funnel’s red flame blowing
Out in the windy sky,
And the family pride perspiring
To keep the steam-gauge high!
I can hear the wild green chargers
Pounding the boat’s iron side—
Old Death, impatient, knocking away
All night to get inside!
Where haggard men like shadows move,
Toil in the flame-lit gloom.
Oh, it’s just the whole world over
Sailing the wave of Doom.
For the aristocrats are sleeping
Snug in their bunks, I know,
All on the upper deck, while we,
Are sweating away below!
Hard-feeding the white heat’s fury,
Piling the wake with foam,
Unravelling all the knots that wind
The way that takes them home.
I’ve clung on an old wind-jammer,
I’ve done things—best untold;
Hump’d the swag on many a rush,
Found everything—but gold!
But oh! for the flashlight homeward!
The anchor’s running chain,
And the sight of their dear old faces—
To see me home again!
Be assured that I have given no artificial colouring in my book,
neither have I seriously set out to describe what I have seen,
though I am confident that I must have succeeded in giving some
local atmosphere, since all that I have written is drawn from true
experience, but I cannot be certain that all the events followed
exactly in the order that I have written them, for with the flight
of time the dates of days, months and years fade away. I have left
to silence almost one year of my South Sea Island life, especially
of that period when I, with a kindred spirit of my own age, lived
for several months in a hut of our own fashioning on the shore side
near Pangopango harbour off the Isle of Tutuela; also I have passed
over several months of my Australian bush experiences, and I have
done this for reasons of my own. Later on I hope to record the
experiences of my sea life that followed my twentieth birthday.
All I say of the South Sea missionaries is said in good-fellowship.
Some of the best men are missionaries and sacrifice years of their
life in a hopeless quest. So bear with the honesty of one who has
fought side by side with the best and worst, and face to face with
the grim realities of existence. For the present I hope someone will
like what I have written in this, my book—one more ambitious plunge
of a failure.
A. S.-M.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. I RUN AWAY TO SEA 17
II. STRANDED IN BRISBANE 25
III. SLEEPING OUT AND BUSHED 36
IV. I LEAVE FOR THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS 42
V. I PLAY VIOLIN AT NATIVE WEDDINGS 51
VI. SOUTH SEA BAR-ROOM 57
VII. I GO CRUISING 68
VIII. WITH R.L.S. AND OTHERS 78
IX. CANNIBALISM 90
X. A FIJIAN BRIDE 105
XI. BACK IN SAMOA 116
XII. TRAMPING THE SOUTH SEA BUSH 120
XIII. STILL TRAMPING 133
XIV. SOUTH SEA DOMESTIC LIFE, ETC. 139
XV. TAHITIAN MORALS 148
XVI. MARQUESAN QUEENS. THAKAMBAU 157
XVII. R.L.S. AT SAMOA. NATIVE MUSIC 174
XVIII. R.L.S. IN THE STORM 193
XIX. FATHER DAMIEN 203
XX. I RECEIVE A KNIGHTHOOD 211
XXI. LITTLE DAMIEN’S GRAVE 218
XXII. BOUND FOR AUSTRALIA 228
XXIII. I STOW AWAY 244
XXIV. IN THE BUSH 255
XXV. BEFORE THE MAST. MAN OVERBOARD 260
XXVI. IN SAN FRANCISCO 273
XXVII. LOST IN THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH 280
XXVIII. ON THE GOLD FIELDS 290
XXIX. THE CONCERT IN COOLGARDIE. FAREWELL 298
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE
1. Tree-Climbing _Frontispiece_
2. River Scene, Queensland 24
3. Forest Track, Out Back 40
4. Coco-nut Palm in Full Fruit 52
5. Native Girl, Samoa 64
6. View of Apia from Mulinu 74
7. Planting Coco-nuts 84
8. Preparing Copra 104
9. Native Coast Village near Apia 116
10. Low-Caste Native Girl 126
11. Native Bamboo Bridge 138
12. Rarotongan Scenery 150
13. South Sea Lagoon 166
14. Native Girls making Kava 170
15. Para Rubber-Tree 182
16. Native Pottery 192
17. Loading Bananas 200
18. Coco-nut Palms and Pasture-land 210
19. Native Homestead 220
20. Native Canoes, Fiji 226
21. Homestead Scene, Queensland 236
22. Cabbage-Palm and Bush Land 250
23. Pastoral Scenery, N.S.W. 258
24. Modern Sheep-Shearers 280
_The author is indebted to the Agent-General for Queensland for the
photographs reproduced as plates 1, 2 and 3; to the High
Commissioner for Australia for plates 21, 22, 23 and 24; to the
Director of the Imperial Institute for plates 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, 15,
16, 17, 18, 19 and 20; and to Messrs W. A. Mansell & Co. for plates
5, 10, 12 and 13._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
I run away to Sea—Outbound for Australia—Appointed Solo Violinist in the
Saloon—I watch Sailors asleep
I WILL write you that which no man has written before. I will tell you
the truth as I found it. I will tell you of the aspirations of rough but
brave men in distant lands and on the ships of distant tropic seas. I
will tell you the truth of many thrills that buoyed me up with hope in
my wanderings, and also of the chills that crushed in the last forlorn
stand on the field of adversity. Aye, you shall hear of those things
that men dream of in silence. I will pour them out of my soul for the
calm eyes of stern reality.
MY pages of romance have long since been shrivelled up in tropic seas,
under blinding suns, on the plains and in the primeval bush lands, but
still I am the living book of all that has been in the dear old dead
romance of passionate boyhood. The glorious poems, the dreams of what
should be, the flinchless fight for right, have all faded away and left
in the secret pages of life the withered flowers of old friendship, tied
up with magic threads of women’s kisses, the memories of dead, brave
comrades, some under the seas and others under the bush flowers of
Australian steeps or beneath the tropic jungle of the South Sea Islands.
There they sleep with the memories of savage native men singing by their
tiny huts which have long ago vanished before the tramp of the white
men. All these things are in this book, with the poetry of life which is
mine, mingled with the memories of haunting dreams of that world of
Romance which so many of us sail away to but never, never find.
I cannot promise that in the chapters to follow I can tell all that
befell me in the exact order in which the events happened, for it must
be that after the flight of years I should stumble a bit in the days and
months of a life that was lived in the midst of wild adventure and
incessant travel from land to land; but it will be enough to assure you
that the characters that I tell you of really lived and for all I know
many are still living. When I tell you that an old cockatoo dropped down
from the tropic sky on to a blue gum twig overhead and surveyed me with
a sideways melancholy eye as I sat alone by my camp fire, be quite sure
that that cockatoo lived and breathed, took stock of me and flew away
into the sunset, and has doubtlessly dropped into the scrub, a small
bunch of dead feather and bone, years ago.
At school I read more from the pages of romance than from school-books.
At fourteen years of age the opportunity arrived, and secretly, with the
help of an older friend, I succeeded in securing a berth on a
full-rigged sailing ship, and, within four hours of my trembling carcass
creeping up the gangway and down on to the great decks, I was before the
masts going down Channel bound for Australia.
My recollections of the first few days are dim. The skies bobbed about,
I swayed on deck, the brave old heroes of ages past flew out of my brain
into the stormy moonlight and shrieked in the sails overhead, as my head
swelled to the size of the dome of St Paul’s and I vomited. I longed to
be home again. Alas! deep-sea sailing ships do not turn round and speed
with haste for their native port in response to the feeble schoolboy’s
tearful voice. I was done for! Hopes, glories, vast ambitions, all
vanished! My thin legs trembled along on the decks till I staggered
through a little cabin door and fell into my bunk. By some great
oversight in the sea discipline I was allowed to sleep for five hours; I
cannot remember to a certainty now, but I think I was drowned and died
about a thousand times in that first off-watch sleep.
I soon recovered, and discovered that sea captains do not stand on the
poop cracking jokes and shying oranges and coco-nuts up at the crew, as
they laughingly toil among the sails. I also found that the Bo’sun wore
very stout boots, and I have never met a man in my life who could kick
so true and aim with such precision. Five years after, whilst I was in
’Frisco, I called on a phrenologist and speculated one dollar, and
discovered that the contusion and everlasting bump formed at the back of
my head by a Bo’sun’s belaying-pin was an inherited taint derived from
the over-burdened brains of my passionate ancestors!
Well, I recovered my equilibrium, secured good sea-legs, went aloft,
crawled along the yards, and helped to reef the sails. Often in the wild
nights the sailors cursed and swore as I clung with might and main, my
hands and teeth clinging to the rolling rigging up in the foremast
top-gallants. My comrades shouted orders to me, their voices blown away
on the thundering night gales, but I only heard the instinctive cry of
self-preservation within me as the moon and the great beast-like clouds
swayed like mighty pendulums across the night skies, swept from skyline
to skyline, while the masts shivered to the roll and thunder of the
broadside swell as the ship flew along at eighteen knots before the
gale. Often I would gaze down deckwards, watching the praying
figurehead’s lifted hands heaving skywards when the tropic moonlight
made wonderfully brilliant the hills of bubbling foam over the bows as
she dived and plunged along. I loved that figurehead, for often as I
gazed from aloft on moon-bright nights it seemed to wear a strong
resemblance to my dear mother, and with my legs curled round the yards
aloft in the lonely sea-nights I would often look down and fancy in my
dreams that her shadow ever moved along over the waters below the
swaying jib-boom with extended hands, praying for me, as no one ever
prayed for me before or since!
I slept amidships with the cook and three other apprentices. I was a
favourite with them all, being of a cheerful temperament and a good
fiddle player. Often in the off watches I would play old familiar
strains while they joined in the rollicking chorus, awaking the silence
of the lonely calm tropic nights in moving waters that belted the whole
world, when the sails swayed silently along beneath strange stars,
filled out at intervals like drums, then flopped, as the lazy tropic
breeze once more sighed and fell asleep.
The old Scotch Captain heard me playing one night; he was a religious
man and taught me some beautiful sea-hymns, and in due course I played
in the cabin aft during Sunday service, when all the crew mustered, and
John the cook, who swore and cursed most fearfully all day long in his
galley, opened his big-bearded mouth and sung most expressively those
old pious hymns, knocking even the Skipper out in melodious reverential
pathos!
The dear old Skipper had brought his daughter with him. She was a pretty
Scotch girl—a crew of thirty-six men, and one pretty girl and me! Well,
I combed my hair, cleaned my teeth, gazed in my little bit of cracked
mirror-glass fifty times an hour, for alas! the family failing asserted
itself; I had fallen in love! I have never been what you would call
really lucky in love, like some happy men; trouble always arose after
the first embarrassment had worn off and I felt truly happy, and blessed
the universe. And it was so in this my first love affair. One dark night
as she stood in shelter by the bulwarks near the saloon door I was
admiring her eyes and swearing eternal love, calling all the bright
stars to be witnesses to my unchangeable fidelity, and just as I kissed
her sweet white ear and, in my madness of love, breathed secretly
through her beautiful dishevelled, scented hair, as it waved in the
moonlight over her lovely curved shoulders, I received a tremendous
clump from the old Skipper! That night I also received stern orders from
the Chief Mate never to be seen near the saloon again after dark!
I crept into my bunk heartsick and wretched. The affair got about the
ship. I was chaffed a good deal by the whole crew. Real old sea-salts
they were. I can see them now as I dream, walking across the decks by
moonlight, muffled up to the teeth in oilskins, some with big crooked
noses, all with weary sea-beaten faces. Up aloft they go. Again I see
their big figures move up the ratlings as they reach the moonlit sails,
and climbing, vanish in the sky. All around is sky and water and stars,
fenced in by eternal skylines, as the ship travels silently onward, a
tiny grey-winged world under blue days, starry and stormy skies, towards
a skyline that for ever fades, following sunset after sunset across
boundless seas. They were a motley crew those sailors. Some read books,
some believed in spirits, and some in beer, and one would tell us over
and over again of his experiences in distant lands and his brave deeds
and his wonderful self-sacrifices and many other virtues, not one of
which he really possessed.
There was one old sailor who on arriving home on his last voyage found
that his wife was dead. He would sit on a little empty salt-beef tub and
tell me about his courting days and his “old girl who was one of the
best,” the tears rolling down his coarse-looking face all the time. He
was an extraordinary mixture; in one breath he would almost curse his
wife’s memory, and in the next ask me if I thought there was really
another world. He could not read or write, and seeing me play the violin
and read music as well as books made me almost omnipotent to his sad old
eyes. I remember well enough how my heart was touched by his manner and
questions as I put on a wise air and convinced him of the soul’s
immortality. I even went so far as to tell him that my dead relations
had returned to my family as shadows from the other world, and the poor
old fellow perched on his tub listened eagerly, believing all I said,
and then went off and found his comrades, who sat playing cards by the
fo’c’sle door, and laughed the loudest, till they all snored in the
fo’c’sle bunks, half stupefied by the smoke and smell of ship’s plug
tobacco. I have often seen them by the dingy fo’c’sle oil-lamp fast
asleep, seared unshaved faces, all their worldly passions asleep,
looking like big children, so innocent, as they snored away, and some of
them who had fallen asleep whilst they were chewing tobacco dribbled
black juice from the corners of their mouths, their big chests upheaving
at each slumbering breath. Outside, just overhead, the night winds
wailed and whistled weirdly in the rigging as the jib-boom swayed along,
and at regular intervals came the thunder of the diving bows as the ship
dipped and heaved and plunged along over the primeval waters.
Five months passed away on that ship. Storms blew from all directions
and sometimes dead ahead and then we never slept. Hauling the mainsail
up and tacking is more nuisance than flying before a thousand gales. To
stand by the top-gallant halyards as comes the wind; to clew the main
sky-sails up, singing chanteys, as you cling to the yards with a
thundering gale smashing the highways of the water world into a myriad
travelling hills as the wild poetry of the sea singing to the ears of
the sailor, and I was never so happy as when the green chargers ramped
across the world.
I shall never forget my delight as we were towed down Brisbane River,
with the everlasting hills all around. I will not weary you with any
more details beyond telling you that when we lay alongside the next
night I hired a wharf loafer and got my sea-chest secretly ashore and
bolted!
[Illustration: RIVER SCENE, QUEENSLAND]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
Stranded in Brisbane—I look for a Shop—Meet typical House Agent—The
Vanity of Youth—I stock my Shop—Alone in the Bush—House Agent calls
for Agreement Money and the Rent—I do a Moonlight Flit
AS I have previously told you, all I am writing is the truth, so I must
tell you that I never saw the Captain’s daughter again, but in my chest
of old letters and unaccepted manuscripts I still keep her little notes,
dropped near me on the deck of the ship that took me to Australia.
The atmosphere of a new world sparkled in my head as I stood in the old
colonial town of Brisbane. It was a sweltering hot night, and as I stood
by the river and gazed up the gas-lamp-lit streets, watching the passing
Australian girls in many-coloured attires and the colonial “corn-stalks”
in big hats slouching about, I felt a tremendous loneliness come over
me, a strange homesick longing crept and crept, and from my heart to my
eyes a mist arose. I have had many homesick breakdowns in my time, but
never one as deep and sincere as I experienced standing there alone in
that strange country. I was not yet fifteen years of age, and the
thought of my being absolutely dependent on my own exertions was
naturally a big oppression to a boy of my inexperience. I was tall for
my age and looked two or three years older than I was. A good comrade by
my side at that moment would have been untold wealth to me. Under a
lamp-post I counted my money. I had just three pounds ten shillings!
That night I slept in a little low lodging-house by North Quay. With
daylight and a good breakfast my courage returned and I sat up in bed
and played several old operatic airs on my violin. A week after I pawned
it for three pounds.
I had made no friends. My money was going. I knew that I must get a job
or meet disaster. The idea of starting work was most distasteful to me,
and yet what was I to do? Walking along Queen Street one night I stood
by a tea shop. I gazed at the window. My old school-chum’s father was a
tea merchant and I had helped them to blend the teas in England, and as
I stood there thinking, the thought suddenly occurred to me that I would
start a shop and be a tea merchant.
The next day I tramped my legs off looking for a likely shop. I found
the rents too high and moreover I had no references and the agents gazed
suspiciously at my cheese-cutter hat. I at once bought a large
big-rimmed straw hat in a second-hand shop, and on the advice of a more
sympathetic agent than the rest I made for the outskirts of Brisbane.
Here and there on the scrub-covered slopes were scattered wooden houses
raised on posts. Upon a post board just off the main track I saw written
“Jonathan Bayly, House Agent.” Taking my handkerchief out I carefully
dusted my boots, wiped the sweat from my sunburnt face, walked into the
little office room, and there came face to face with the gentleman whose
name appeared on the board outside. I did not like the look of him at
all. He had a long goat-like face and grew pointed whiskers on the chin
only.
“Are you the House and Shop Agent?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said as he eyed me attentively.
“Oh,” I said, “I am looking out for a small shop which would be suitable
for a tea shop.”
I had observed business men in London put on important voices and cough
in an affluent way, and as he once more eyed me I made a bold effort,
placed my hand in an affected way to my mouth and coughed in two little
important jerks, swayed slightly on one leg and gazed round his office.
In a moment his manner changed. I had impressed him with the sense of my
own assumed importance, and to clinch the coming deal, I dropped my
remaining three sovereigns on the floor, picking them up carelessly as
though they were buttons.
I have travelled the world over since, made deals with moneyed men,
bought gold claims worth thousands of pounds, which I sold for a
dollar—and glad to get it!—and done many more strange and unfortunate
things in my time, but never since did I so completely gull a human
being as I did that old colonial house agent—but nevertheless he did me
also.
Taking down his big white helmet hat from a solitary peg, he placed it
carefully over the three remaining hairs of his cranium, and bowed me
out of the door to view the proposed shop. Walking off the main track he
led me across the bush, and after walking for about one hour, he
apologised for the distance and the solitary bush surroundings, telling
me that the shop I was about to view was in an excellent position,
inasmuch as it was in the centre of a proposed Township, and indeed when
at last I stood by its little shanty-like front door I inwardly realised
that it needed a good deal of apology on its behalf. A small broken-down
shanty was the only other habitation in view for miles! The description
of this shop’s position would sound like a silly attempt to be humorous.
I only wish it were, for I took that shop! I listened to that old
Agent’s palaver; I was only a boy and I had some dim idea in my head
that gold-miners and bushrangers passed by it at regular intervals, and
when he waved his arms about and pointed out the proposed spot for the
Church, the Bank and the main streets, I choked down my misgivings and
clinched the bargain. I took the place on a “seven years’ agreement with
the option of a renewal of fourteen more years at the expiration of the
aforesaid term.” Of course, all this long lease was proposed by the old
Agent. I knew no more about agreements and expirations of leases than a
baby, but as I signed the long important-looking document in his office
that same afternoon, I carefully read it through and through as though I
were taking my ninety-fifth shop, and did not intend to be taken in as I
had been taken in before! Well, I signed it.
Next day I obtained the key and went into Brisbane, bought a pair of
scales, some paper bags, a bottle of ink, a pen and one chest of cheap
tea—I think it was fourpence a pound by the thirty-six-pound chest. I
also got the manager of the wholesale department to send me ninety-five
empty chests for show purposes. I was full of business. I kept thinking
of my old father’s advice to my elder brothers when he said, “My sons,
do not go in for professions, nothing succeeds like business; sell and
trade in something that the world must have. Who wants poets, musicians
and authors?—with their men and women made of moonrise!” And well was he
able to speak on the subject, since he had reared a large family up by
his pen, which is in no wise mightier than the sword in many cases,
excepting when you sit concocting letters to your immediate creditors
for kind consideration and more time before you pay up!
Well, I will proceed and tell you all about that shop, and you must
remember that it is only a very minor detail in the story of my
experiences to follow, as I slowly but deliberately unfold my travels
and troubles, my love affairs and losses in Australia and the South Sea
Islands.
Oh, the vanity and pride of youth! As I turned the key of my shop door
and entered beyond the portals, placing carefully on the floor my
parcel, which contained a cup and saucer, a small oil lamp and the few
absolutely necessary things to sustain a decent domestic life, a thrill
of extreme pride went through me. I gazed around the spacious room, my
hands were itching to get hold of the ninety-five empty tea-chests and
place them in commercial rows in the two large shop windows that gazed
at the sunset like two mammoth glass eyes of melancholy and fate-like
loneliness across the silent Australian Bush. Behind lay my back garden
which also extended to the skyline!
I took a stroll around, and you can imagine my delight as I stumbled
across some foundations already half dug out, which no doubt were for
the future homesteads of the coming Township! They looked pretty old and
I noticed that a young gum-tree had grown to a considerable height in
one of them, but I did not stop to criticise; time, growth of gums and
Townships were outside my experiences of life. I simply lent my
imagination to the future scenery and saw myself a prosperous tea
merchant; around me rose in the dreamy rays of the dying sunset the grey
terraces of splendid villas; I heard the hum of human voices, the
laughter of the bush children romping on the streets-to-be of that
Unbuilt Township. Like a grey old pioneer of the desert, uncharted on
the map of civilisation, stood my shop, and I the proud landlord,
stroking the first sprout of down on my upper lip, gazed innocently
around, and wondered what my kind old father would think of my first
business move up the steps into the portals of the grim commercial
world. I felt considerably bucked up at the splendid outlook, I even
felt a tenderness springing up in my heart for that old Agent. He had
patted me on the shoulder too, and told me that I was a plucky young
chap with real business ability in my head!
Next morning, standing under my piazza, I spied a large carrier van
rapidly moving across the thin track that divided the immense grey
slopes of the outstretching country. It was my ninety-five empty
tea-chests and one full one approaching me! The old colonial carrier
grinned from ear to ear as he dumped the lot in my shop, smelt my
sixpence twice, and placing it in his pocket, drove away leaving me once
more alone in the vast solitudes.
Profiting by my memories of a tea shop in the Old Kent Road, I at once
set to work and wrote on white cards, “Genuine Pekoe Ceylon Tea, 2/ per
pound,” and underneath, in very bold letters, “The cup that cheers but
does not inebriate.” Of course, in those days I knew nothing whatever of
the Australian Bushman’s temperament; had I done so I should, of course,
have written, “The cup that inebriates and cheers!”
Ah, how I remember my pride as I stood on the slope and gazed at my
solitary shop window. Sunset was once more sinking into its saffron sea
out westward, and sent over the hills a dying beam that touched as
though with tenderness those words, written in big chalk letters over
the doorway of my shop, “Middleton & Co., Tea Merchants.” As I gazed up
at it I climbed once more on the old tub and added this after-thought,
“late of London,” and the sunbeam died away as my eyes instinctively
turned westward. I knew that that same sun was stealing round the world
and those beams would steal likewise over the lattice windows of my
sleeping parents, my brothers and my sisters, all dreaming and snoring
in velvet comfort, and I wondered if they dreamed of me, and whether
their wildest dreams could picture my shop and my heroic ignorance as
the shadow of the Australian night crept over me and the parrots stirred
in the leafy gums, and the innumerable frogs and locusts in the swamps
hard by chanted a fit accompaniment to my retrospective dreams.
I tell you, I felt pretty lonely in that old place. I would stand at the
shop door and watch the fleets of parrots and magpies sail away into the
sunset, day after day. And oh, the lonely nights! I often would climb up
to the extreme tip of a hill near by and stare across the scrub to catch
the last gleam of the old Agent’s house; its slim brows far off would
twinkle with good comradeship and cheered me up wonderfully.
Well, I think it was just about three weeks after my first opening of
the shop that I was standing one evening at the door feeling pretty
downcast; the sun was setting over the blue hills and the thickening
shadows made the landscape look for all the world like a dried-up
primeval ocean bed, and the weird scattered gums like the masts of old
sunken wrecks, that through some strange freak of nature had burst into
leaf. Suddenly on the distant range I saw a moving speck; my astonished
eyes gazed steadily and then brightened with enthusiasm; it was a lonely
horseman! Surely he would not pass by my shop without buying a pound of
tea, thought I. What on earth could I do to attract him? A happy thought
struck me. I rushed to my old sea-chest, out came my old bugle-horn, and
placing it to my lips, I stood at that lonely shop door and gave three
tremendous blasts, then watched. To my huge delight, as the echoes
reverberating faded away over the silent steppes, the horseman altered
his course; he was coming towards me!
He was a burly, brick-coloured, dusty-looking fellow, and as he sat
astride by my shop door gazing first at me, then at my shop, and then
again on the surrounding country, he coughed twice and spat over his
shoulder. I felt extremely riled by his manner. Then he said, “How’s
biz?” With good business forethought I replied, “Pretty good the last
two days!” Then suddenly making a bold effort I asked, “Would you like
to try a pound of my Pekoe?”
With a kindly look in his grey eyes he said, “Good tea I ’spose?”
“Nothing to beat it,” I answered quickly.
Looking quietly across the country he remarked, “No complaints about its
quality round these parts I bet.” Without another word he gave me two
shillings, took the tea and galloped away.
I think it was about four days after selling that pound of tea that I
spotted the Agent coming down the hill-side track right opposite my
shop. The month was up, and the rent due!
“Well,” he said as I stood at the door and boldly faced him, “I’ve
called for the rent.”
For a moment I fumbled in my pocket. I knew, to be an honourable
citizen, I should pay my way and let all earthly considerations of
sustaining existence and thoughts of the future go to the winds, but I
had only fifteen shillings in the world, and the month’s rent was four
pounds, and the cost of the agreement two pounds ten shillings. Pulling
myself together I said, “Can you give me another month?”
“Not a day,” he answered hotly, and then looking up quickly asked,
“Where’s the agreement money?”
Then I saw that my first boyish instincts were to be relied upon—the man
was a hard-hearted scoundrel. I answered quickly, “Where’s the Township
you spoke of?” At this he almost spat with rage, and thrusting his
pointed whiskered chin in my face said, “Do you expect me to supply you
with a Town as well as with a shop?”
I pretended to see some fine logic in that remark, quieted myself down,
and then said, “Parrots, magpies, ’possums and mosquitoes do not buy
tea, so how can I pay the rent?”
His temper now got the upper hand of him. “You’ve taken the shop,” he
snarled; “where the hell’s your capital?”
On hearing him say this, the sudden inspiration that has stood me in
such good stead in the sorrows and joys which I am going to tell you of,
flashed in my brain, and I quickly answered, “You cannot supply a Town,
and yet you expect me to supply capital. Put your Township here and I’ll
soon show you the capital.” And then I trembled and forced a smile to my
lips. He looked so dangerous that I did not know what might occur to me
in those lonely parts. But he was only a bully after all. For a moment
he looked me up and down with interest, and then said, “Can you pay me
to-morrow?”
Pointing my trembling hand to my rows of empty tea-chests, I said, “Look
here, I’ll go to Brisbane to-morrow, sell that tea at cost price, and
you shall have your rent and the agreement money.” At this he turned and
went away. That night I hastened off to Brisbane, hired a van, got my
sea-chest out of that wretched shop and was never seen in any shop in
those parts or anywhere else on earth again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
No Money—Sleeping Out—Bushed!—The Stockman’s Shanty
STRANDED in Brisbane without a cent I slept down on the wharfs and
sometimes curled my half-starved body up by the warm funnel of the
deep-sea tramp boats. I will not weary you with the details of those
days and nights, excepting to tell you that hundreds of English boys,
and the pluckiest boys of your country too, go through all that I went
through in the land of the Golden Fleece. I was soon in rags, sunburnt
and miserable. I mixed with English and Colonial tramps, some good men
and some no good; most of them wore shaggy beards and others tried to
keep shaved and had forgotten their names in the attempt to lose their
identity—sad “ne’er-do-wells” of the civilised world, who had hurried
across the world to save their necks or preserve their liberty!
It is wonderfully easy to sink into the depths of Failure’s Hell. The
human relics that make up the sad side of existence are fascinating
folk, full of sarcastic wit and most of them of a sentimental turn of
mind, and strange as it may seem, deep in their hearts better men than
those who climb the heights of ambition on one leg—instead of crawling
up on all-fours and dying of old age half-way up.
I remember one night while we were all sitting huddled in our rags round
the funnel of the English Mail Boat, one old chap (at least he seemed
old to me as I was only fifteen years of age) would sit by moonlight
reading and writing poetry. He had fine eyes, and he and I got
interested in each other, and I found out gradually that he was a
University man, who in a moment of mental aberration had signed a cheque
and passed it. He had travelled the South Seas, lived in Fiji, Samoa and
Tonga, could quote all the poets and as far as I was able to judge wrote
beautiful poems. When he read one of them to me, inspired by memories of
his boyhood, I was quite touched and he noticed it by my eyes, and I
with my impulsive temperament could have kissed that sad old mouth as
the beautiful words trembled out of it and his face lit up to find that
at last in the cold old world he had found an appreciative listener. Out
of the big tail pocket of his ragged coat he pulled a dirty old bundle
which was all of his poetic work. He read all the poems to me; the
longer ones I could not understand, as they were on Greek subjects, but
nevertheless I listened attentively, and now that I am older I thank God
that I did. We slept for nights and nights in a wharf dust-bin together,
and one night I waited and waited and he never came. I know he would
have come if he were able to. I never saw him again; he and his poetry
left me for ever—God bless him wherever he is.
After that I spent days and days trying to get a berth on one of the
homebound ships, but there were so many looking for the same post that I
gave it up as hopeless and eventually got a job in a tanning yard where
they cured sheep and cow skins. Even after all these years I can still
smell that yard under the tropic sun and the terrible odours of advanced
putrefaction. My wages were thirty-five shillings a week. I stayed just
three weeks, got my violin out of pawn and started fiddling on the
public streets. After the second day I chummed in with an Italian
harp-player. He taught me a lot of fine Italian melodies, and in a week
we were the talk of Queensland capital. I used to stand by his side at
night when all the streets were lighted up and put my whole soul into my
playing as I thought of my proud old father and my sisters, and then
with my big-rimmed Australian hat in my hand bowed to the street
audience as they shied in the silver pieces. In two weeks I had eight
pounds in my pocket, and as it always does happen, and will happen till
the world ends, when I went to the post office there was a letter from
home with four five-pound notes in it! How I would have jumped to get
that a week before; but my heart was touched nevertheless by those
kindly hands and tender thoughts across the world, heedful of my
welfare.
Bidding my wizened dark-eyed old Italian harpist “Good-bye,” I made for
the bush, and travelled north. I had a comrade with me. He was not a bad
fellow—hailed from the East End of London, was utterly devoid of
romance, and swore fearfully. As we slept out in the bush at night I
cheered him up by playing the fiddle, till we both lay down side by
side, our feet towards the camp fire, and slept.
I shall never forget that bush tramp. For three weeks we toiled along,
our swags on our backs, from steep to steep, and from plain to plain,
nothing but vast solitude and sweltering silence broken at intervals by
the fleets of large parrots migrating across the tropic skies; as they
passed overhead we would hear their dismal mutterings, till their
curling wings faded away over the gum clumps on the everlasting skylines
of the oceans of hills and plains around us.
Brisbane was about one hundred miles away. Day after day we continued
our voyage across those everlasting seas of grey scrub and rock. The
tropic sun belching down with full vigour raised blisters as big as soap
bubbles on our bare necks; they would often burst and bring us great
relief. Our supplies were running short, and we had got off the track
and were completely bushed! The stiff bush grass tore the ends of our
trouser legs completely away, and we looked terrible scarecrows, and got
thin too. Often we would climb the highest steeps and gaze around in the
hope of seeing some sign of human habitation. We were indeed two sad
castaways on seas of desolation, moving slowly onward on sore feet under
the tropic sun. As we sat by our camp fire at night my comrade would
curse me for bringing him to such a God-forsaken country, indeed all my
own valour vanished as we lay curled together in the darkness of that
endless bush and heard the dingo’s wail as its creeping feet explored
the waste far away.
One night, over the hills far off on the skyline, regiments of ragged
gum-trees suddenly burst into view, as up crept the white Australian
moonrise. We sat up and stared into each other’s eyes for company. I
shall never forget the terror that made our teeth chatter. I gripped my
revolver (I had bought it and a tin of one hundred cartridges before
starting off from Brisbane). There far away on the steeps, like a
monstrous human shadow, moved something, leaping from steep to steep
like some ghastly spring-heeled Jack. The perspiration rolled down our
faces. We were both speechless as we stood up and gazed at that terrible
sight. Instinctively we clutched each other, as that terrible Aboriginal
came towards us; up went our trembling hands in the moonlight. We shook
visibly as we leaned against each other for support, and fired the six
chambers of our revolvers in rapid succession. The hills echoed and
re-echoed that cannonade; the enemy fell and we fainted! I poured some
water down my comrade’s throat and half raised him up.
At daybreak, crestfallen and miserable that we had killed it, my chum
and I buried the fallen enemy, a poor old man kangaroo!
[Illustration: FOREST TRACK, “OUT-BACK”]
Two days after that incident we were both hard at work pulling pumpkins
and stacking straw on the cleared bush ground of a shanty. The stockman
was a good fellow, he treated us kindly and rigged us both out in decent
trousers. I had fine times at that lonely bush homestead. The stockman’s
wife took a great fancy to me, and they would sit together by their
shanty door, after the day’s work, and listen to my playing on the
violin as though an angel had fallen from the clouds specially to
entertain them. They had three little girls, plump little sunburnt girls
too. They all loved me. How they romped with me, and how they cried when
I went away! The stockman’s wife shed tears, and the old fellow’s voice
sounded husky as he wished me “Good luck,” and those three little girls,
with their bright eyes, wet with tears, are still looking up into my
boyish sunburnt face, and their dear little hands still wave on the
ridge of the steep as I ride away for ever, fading from their sight.
My companion got work on another station and found another comrade more
suitable to his temperament than I. He swore that I was mad.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
My first Whiskies and Sodas—And after!—Secure Position as a Violinist in
Orchestra—We stow away—Sight the South Sea Islands—Samoa
ONCE again I arrived in Brisbane, and walking up the main street,
feeling rather down in the mouth, I was suddenly thrilled by meeting an
old school chum out from England. We almost fell into each other’s arms.
As soon as we had both recovered from our mutual astonishment, I
inquired and learnt that he was working as a clerk in one of the
Brisbane wholesale establishments. I had seven pounds in my pocket when
we met that night. I went with him into my first public-house, and
started on whisky and soda! I have made up my mind to tell the whole
truth, in this the book of my life, and so I must tell you to my utter
shame that I got fearfully drunk.
How it really occurred I do not know. My comrade was evidently used to
intoxicating refreshments and showed huge delight as I got more and more
excited. I did not know what had come over me. After the third whisky I
felt an intense tenderness creep over me for everyone in the bar. The
whole street got to know I was in that wretched place. I smacked my old
school chum on the back over and over again, and as the old sailors and
cunning old Colonial loafers poured into the bar and called me a fine
and splendid young fellow, I shouted hurriedly for “deep seas,”
“schooners,” “whiskies,” and all the thousand orders which they poured
into my ears. I was not too far gone not to notice the “old salts” wink
at each other as they lifted their tremendous glasses and clinked them
one against the other, drinking my health and long life, as with pride I
paid. That night, when I eventually got on to my bed, the room whirled
round and round, and slowly sank into vast depths of infinity, and I
became insensible. I will not describe my feelings the next morning, as
it would make woeful reading, but I will tell you this, I have never
drunk whiskies and sodas since, and so the “ill wind” blew into me a
deal of good.