THE TYRANNY OF CLOTHES
"Give the tinkers and cobblers their presents again and learn
to live of yourself."
Few enjoy a less sensational and more tranquil life than ours. Weeks
pass, and but for the visits of the kindly steamer, and the passing
of others at intervals, there is naught of the great world seen or
experienced. A strange sail brings out the whole population, staring
and curious. Rare is the luxury of living when life is unconstrained,
unfettered by conventionalities and the comic parade of the fashions.
The real significance of freedom here is realised. What matters it
that London decrees a crease down the trouser legs if those garments
are but of well-bleached blue dungaree? The spotless shirt, how paltry
a detail when a light singlet is the only wear? Of what trifling
worth dapper boots to feet made leathery by contact with the clean,
crisp, oatmeal-coloured sand. Here is no fetish about clothes; little
concern for what we shall eat or what we shall drink. The man who has
to observe the least of the ordinances of style knows not liberty.
He is a slave; his dress betrayeth him and proclaims him base. There
may be degrees of baseness. I am abject myself; but whensoever I
revisit the haunts of men clad in the few light incommoding clothes
that rationalism ordains, I rejoice and gloat over the slavery of
those who have failed to catch even glimpses of the loveliness of
liberty, who are yet afeared of opinion--"that sour-breathed hag."
How can a man with hoop-like collar, starched to board-like texture,
cutting his jowl and sawing each side of his neck, be free? He may
rejoice because he is a very lord among creation, and has trousers
shortened by turning up the ninth part of a hair after London vogue,
and may be proud of his laws and legislature, and even of his
legislators, but to the tyrannous edge of his collar he is a slave.
He can neither look this way nor that, nor up nor down, without being
reminded that he has imposed upon himself an extra to the universal
penalties of Adam. One who lives in London tells me of the load of
clothes he is compelled to wear in winter to preserve animal heat. He
fights for life thus arrayed--thick woollens next the skin, the decent
shirt (badge of respectability), the waistcoat of heavy cloth, the
cardigan jacket (which hides the respectable shirt), the coat of cloth,
strong and heavy; the overcoat long and incommoding, the woollen
comforter, the wool-lined gloves, the double-woollen socks, the
half-inch soled boots, the leggings, the hat. To carry this burden of
clothes all day, pursuing ordinary vocations, were surely the grossest
of bondage. While my three-garment costume--is it not convenient and
fashionable enough?
A smart cutter appeared in Brammo Bay. A man, apparently in a pale red
shirt, let down the sails and anchor, and by-and-by one in a black coat
buttoned to the throat paddled himself ashore in a dinghy. Like a great
many worn on state occasions in country parts here, the coat had seen
better days. It was black with greenish lights; the stitches round the
button-holes and along the seams brown and grey; it smelt fusty; the
buttons were--well, various and assorted. An inch or two of tarry spun
yarn, clove-hitched to a miniature toggel, neatly carved, was the hopeful
beginning, a hasty splinter inserted pin-wise, the heedless ending of
the row. Between these ranged a bleached cowrie shell, loosely looped
with string; a fantastic ornament (green with verdigris) from some
bygone millinery, and a cherished relic of a pair of trousers of the
past in all the boldness of polished brass. But it was easy to detect
that there was no shirt beneath the dingy coat; and that the coat itself
was merely a concession to the evidence of civilisation which had been
apparent from the boat. On board the man wore neither coat nor shirt.
The cheerful note of colour, so conspicuous as he sailed to the
anchorage, was his sunburnt skin. Some men burn brown, some red. He was
of the red variety, and his bare skin looked a deal more respectable
than his cockroach-nibbled coat. To him. clothing save for decency's sake
had become superfluous. He felt that "to be naked is to be so much
nearer the being man than to go in livery." He wore no hat, no boots.
Pyjama trousers of cotton composed his entire workaday costume;
dungaree trousers and a musty coat his Court dress. Yet he was clean and
glowing with health and cheerfulness; self-reliant, splendidly
independent. Had he allowed his mind to dwell on clothing his
independence would have been less. He might have required the aid of a
black boy to navigate his boat, and the continual presence of a black
boy in a small boat does not make for sweetness and light.
SINGLE-HANDEDNESS
Another grandly free man sailed his cutter into the bay one fine
morning. He knew the water and ran her on the sand, brought his anchor
ashore and shoved her off, to swing lazily the while. When I paid him a
ceremonious visit, I found that he had but one arm. The empty right
sleeve was the more pathetic when I saw him mixing his flour for a
damper, and in the cunning twists and wriggling by which the fingers
freed each other of the sticky dough and other dextrous manipulations,
I soon came to recognise that with his left hand he was as deft as many
men with their right and left. He had sailed the boat ladened with wire
netting and heavy goods from Bowen, 200 miles south, and was on his way
to his selection, 100 miles further north. A wiry, slight man though a
real "shellback," one who had been steeped in and saturated with every
sea, was "giving the sea best," nerve-shaken, so he said--and yet
sailing a cutter with but 3 or 4 inches of free board "single-handed."
And he told the why and wherefore of his fear of the sea.
With a mate he had been for many months, beche-de-mer fishing, their
station or headquarters a lonely islet in Whitsunday Passage, which
winds about that picturesque group of islands through which Captain Cook
passed in the year 1770. The twain had been out on one of the spurs of the
Great Barrier Reef, and had been caught in the toils of adverse weather.
After beating about for days they managed to make their station--hungry,
thirsty, their souls fainting within them. Shelter and comfort were
theirs, and it was no surprise to my visitor when his mate slept the
next morning beyond the accustomed time. "Let him rest," he said. "He
is dog-tired;" and went about the work of the day. He had himself known
what it was to sleep eighteen and twenty hours at a stretch, for he had
many times been worn by toil and watching and nerve-tension to the limit
of endurance. And so the day passed, and the man in the bunk slept on.
Peace and rest were his, and the busy man envied the calm indifference
to the day's doings that he could not find in his heart to disturb.
"Won't he feel fresh when he does wake," he reflected. "He'll be a bit
narked at having wasted a whole bloomin' day. I shouldn't be surprised
if he was savage, because I didn't call him."
When the evening meal was prepared and everything in the tiny hut made
orderly, it would be a pleasure for him to wake up and discover that he
had been allowed to have his sleep out.
Ah! but his sleep was very sound and very silent--almost too stillful
to be natural.
A touch on his shoulders, saying--"Andrew. Wake up, old fellow!"
No movement, or response. His feet--cold! cold! and his chest, too, cold!
The mate had found his port after stormy seas. His heart--worn out with
stress and strain--had failed within him, and all day long his companion
thought tenderly of him, making but little noise, thinking that his
sleep was the sleep of a day, not the sleep of eternity that no earthly
din may disturb.
The weather was still boisterous, but it was essential to take the body
to Bowen, to render unto the authorities there conclusive evidence that
death had been the result of natural causes. My visitor's nerves were
then virile. But the time of stress and strain was at hand. He found
himself alone on a remote Island. A grim responsibility forced upon him.
Awful as the duty was, it had to be courageously faced, and performed as
tenderly as might be. Instead of the enjoyment of comfort and rest, and
days of busy companionship and revivifying hopes, there was the shock
that sudden death inflicts, dramatic loneliness, dry-eyed grief, forced
exertion, and the abandonment of brightening prospects.
With pain and infinite labour he succeeded in dragging and rolling the
corpse to the beach. Thence he pushed it up a plank on to the deck of
the cutter, and leaving his possessions to chance and fate, he, the
wearied and bereaved one-armed man, set sail in violent weather across
the open sea to the nearest port. At midnight the "great cry" of a
hurricane arose. Lightning flashed over the stricken yeasty sea. A
lonesome and grim quest this--full of peril. Did not Nature in the
trumpet tones of a furious and vengeful spirit decree the destruction of
the little boat as she bounced and floundered among the crests of those
awful waves? Here was booty belonging to the ocean--prey escaping from
the talons of the fiercest and most remorseless of harpies. So they
shrieked and swarmed about the boat, howling for what was theirs. The
strife was great, but not too great for the lonely man's seamanship. All
the fiends of the sea might do their worst, but until the actual finale
came, he would sail the boat--lifting her on the swell, eluding the white
hissing bulk of the following sea.
When at last the boat ran into port, the sea had gained a moral victory,
but the man gave to the authorities the mortal remains of his mate to be
buried decently on land.
He told me that he felt cowed--he could never face the sea again. Once
before he had given up "sailorising," not then on account of his
nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins
and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up
a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier
to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them. Now he had
abandoned his beche-de-mer project, had bought wire netting to keep out
the wallabies, and would make a second effort to settle down. A little
net fishing would help to keep him going. "As for the sea," said he,
"I have had enough--too much. It is all right while your pluck lasts, but
once get a shake, and you had better give it up. And the little boat!--I
broke that rail as I was getting poor Andrew's body on board. She is all
right, but for that--and she's for sale!"
In an hour, having concocted some stew and baked his damper, the
single-handed nerve-shaken, old sailor set sail, and I knew him no more.
Another of poor old "Yorky's" adventures is worth telling. While out on
the Barrier Reef, the black crew of his beche-de-mer boat mutinied, and
knocking him and his mate on the head, threw them overboard. The sudden
souse into the water restored "Yorky" to consciousness, and he swam
back to the cutter whence the blacks had hastily fled in the dingy. It
was a desperate struggle for a one-armed man to cling to and clamber up
the side of the boat, but "Yorky" has never yet failed when his life
was at stake. He won the deck at last, but at the expense of a broken
rib and the flesh on the best part of his side tom bare to the bones.
Still dazed, he chanced to look over the side, where he saw his mate's
head bobbing up and down in the water. Hard as it had been for him to
save himself, it was more difficult still to rescue the body from the
sharks. Frantically using rough-and-ready methods, he hauled it on
board, and disposed it as decently as circumstances permitted.
"Yorky," great of heart, is quite unused to the melting mood. He admits
that he felt pretty bad mentally. But whatever his feelings towards his
sodden mate lying there with watery blood oozing from wounds on his
head, exhibiting the marks of the necessarily rough-and-ready means
that had been taken for his rescue, they had to be suppressed. Wet,
dizzy, and sadly battered, with little more apparent reason for the
possession of the breath of life than his companion, he set sail,
slipped the anchor, and steered for the nearest port. Some distance
on the way, to use "Yorky's" own and sufficient words--"The dead
man came to life!" Both had to submit to the restraint of hospital
treatment for many weeks ere physical repairs were complete.
How is it that a one-armed man, slight in physique, whose brains have
been addled by blows with billets of firewood, whose side is raw and
bleeding, and who has a broken rib hampering his movements, is able to
achieve feats that would be surprising if performed by a whole and
stalwart individual? "Yorky" has always been a wonder, and his life a
series of adventures and arduous tasks, which seem to prove that the
loss of a limb has been compensated for by hardihood and resourcefulness
worth a great deal more.
A BUTTERFLY REVERIE
"And laugh
At gilded butterflies, and bear poor rogues
Talk of Court news."
There were but three men and a dog in the boat, but the boat was
overburdened. Not that the dog was big, or the men either. It was all on
account of the day.
It was a day in which you wanted the whole realm of Nature for
yourself--so full of sunshine and flitting butterflies was it--so beaming
with the advent of summer, and her fervent greetings, so wondrously calm
and clear. You felt selfish at the pleasure of it all. It filled you
well-nigh to surfeit, yet you would have more of it. It was too
delicious to squander upon others, yet how could one mind comprehend the
grandeur of it all?
The white boat drifted on a blue and lustrous sea. The reef points
tapped a monotonous scale as the white sails swang to the swaying of the
gaff. Listlessly the boat drifted to the barely perceptible swell,
regular as the breathings of a sleeping child. Sound and motion invited
to slumber. The shining sea, the islands, green and purple, the soft
sweet atmosphere, the full glory of a rare day, kept all the senses in
tune.
There, 4 miles away, lay the island, and close at hand the turtle were
ever and anon rising, balloon-like, from coral gardens to gulp greedy
draughts of air, which not even the salty essences of the ocean could
rob of its perfume.
Sometimes the boat did seem conscious of inconstancy, and anon with
feminine frivolity she would coyly swing round to flirt with the islets
close at hand. She would have her own way until the free breezes came,
and somehow the wind still blows whereso'er it listeth, and will not be
untimely wooed, though the sailor whistles with all the "lascivious
pleasing of the lute."
Some atmospheric phenomenon, altogether beyond idle concern, lifted the
islands afar off out of the water, suspending them in the sky. The
languorous breadths of the sea gradually changed to silver, and under
the purple islands the silver band extended, bright and gleaming, until
it seemed to merge again into the blue of the sky. That was so, for was
it not all visible--the purple islands, with the silver bands separating
them from the sea. Yet under ordinary conditions those very islands are
blue studs set in the rim of the ocean. What magic is it that uplifts
them to-day between the ocean and the sky?
This was a day of gushing sunshine and myriads of butterflies. They flew
from the mainland, not as spies but in battalions--a never-ending
procession miles broad. You could fancy you heard in the throbbing
stillness the movement of the fairy-like wings--a faint, unending hum.
From the odorous jungle they came, flitting in gay inconsequence,
steering a course of "slanting indeterminates," yet full of the power
and the passion of the moment. They flitted between the idle boom and
the deck, and up the gleaming sky in all the sizes that distance grades
between nearness and infinity.
There were Islands near at hand and some afar off. What instinct guided
them--for butterflies are short-sighted creatures--I know not. If wind
had come, as we who lolled lazily in the boat longed, the myriad host of
resplendent creatures would have been scattered and millions beaten down
into the sea, above which they flew with such airy levity.
What instinct guided the frail, unreflective creatures across miles of
ocean to the Islands of the Blest among butterflies.
In their variety, too, they were entertaining. In great number was the
pretty frailty, whose wings are compact of transparencies and purple
blotches. In this full, fierce light the purple is black and the
transparencies all steel-like glitter. They came across in shoals. There
was neither beginning nor end. All the sky glittered with winged
mosaics. Then came the great green and gold and black creature,
accompanied sometimes by his less gaily decorated mate, ponderous of
flight; and, anon, that insect of regal blue, that can flit as idly as
any of the order, and yet dart in and out of the jungle and over the
tree-tops, with swallow-like swiftness. Rarely in the throng came that
scarlet and black, which makes the gaudy, flaunting hibiscus envious of
its colour; but the little yellow "wanderers," ever busy and active,
came low over the water, weary with the long journey, and sometimes
ready to rest--shifty flecks of gold--on the white sail.
There was no end to the flight. The air was too full. One wearied of the
ceaseless panorama of the gay bejewelled insects. They were the
possessors of the prime of that glorious morning. Beautiful and frail,
and inconsequent as they were, you envied them. They flitted on without
guide or leader, venturing the dangers of water and air, flying up in
the full blaze of the sun--eager, joyous, unconcerned. In the boat we
were compelled to loll about between heaven and the cool coral groves,
and compare enforced inactivity with the blithesome freedom of the
weakest butterfly.
Occasionally a turtle would bob up from its pastures below, and catching
sight of the sail, with a bubbling gulp, disappear, the white splash
creating concentric rings of ripples. But the breeze came not, and the
disorderly procession of butterflies, miles broad, passed on.
"Some flew light as a laugh of glee;
Some flew soft as a low, long sigh,
All to the haven where each would be."
I listened to the wooings of the black boys to the breeze. They liked
not the prospect of sweeping the boat home. They implored for wind with
cooings, with petulant whistlings, and with gentle but novel
objurgations. But it came not, and so the afternoon passed and evening
fell, and the butterflies, a faint, thin stratum, drifted on.
Then as a final challenge to the breeze that we longed for, and which
had resisted all appeals, "Come on big wind and kill little boat!"
exclaimed an irresponsible boy, whose ears had long ached with the days
dull silence, and who saw no prospect of hot turtle steak for supper.
As if to take up the gauntlet, a faint zephyr flicked the listless cheek
of the ocean, and slapped the sails. The boom swayed and swung over, the
boat, without guidance, idly headed off, and we flopped home to the
placid bay before the unenergetic breeze, which was all that Nature in
her idle hour could spare.
THE SERPENT BEGUILED
Eve Avenged
"You do yet taste
Some subtleties o' the isle that will let not you
Believe things certain."
Once upon a time--not so very long ago either--an unpretentious poultry
farm was started. The idea of making, if not a rapid and bulky fortune,
at least "a comfortable living" (and that phrase embodies much) out of
poultry farming has been conceived, possibly, many times and oft.
There was nothing novel, therefore, in the hatching out of this
particular scheme. But for a paltry detail it would never have
attained notoriety. We never blazon our failures--why should we?
The one spark of original thought that enlightened the prosaic
plans of the undertaking was this: The promoters wanted quality
in the eggs of their hens as well as quantity. Quantity rests with
the hen, but quality--like the "sluttishness" of Touchstone's
sweetheart--may come hereafter. In order that there might be no excuse
for and no degeneracy on the part of the hens, shops were ransacked
for nest eggs of proper proportions. These were placed in spots
conspicuous to the hens, who, of course, understood that they were
expected to lay up to them. In other words, these were patterns for the
hens to lay by. No self-respecting, conscientious fowl likes to be
beaten by a nest egg. She goes one, or, it may be, a dozen or two
better; but the stony-hearted egg is never to be bluffed. It is there as
a standard of size, and in accordance with its dimensions so will the
credit of the fowl yard be.
In this particular yard all went well for many months. Why, the hens
beat the nest eggs with scarcely an effort, and then started making
records. It was a fierce and clamorous competition, and the enterprise
flourished. A good beginning had been made, and the high-minded hens
chuckled with pride and satisfaction. In the course of two or three
months, however, a gradual deterioration in the size of the eggs took
place. There was just the same amount of fuss and feathers, showing the
artfulness of the hens, but the eggs soon dwindled down below plans and
specifications, and then an investigation took place. Not a single nest
egg was to be found. Vainly was search made. The hens sniggered. They
had fulfilled their duty, and finding it tiresome and wearing to produce
abnormal eggs, had secreted those set apart for them to measure by,
and had thereupon levelled their enterprise and skill down. Such
sinfulness and such burglarious conduct on the part of respectable
hens that had the most discreet upbringing, that had never been
allowed to play in anybody else's yard, and that had never been
permitted to wander from the paths of virtue, was a sore affliction.
But one day a nest egg was found far away in the bush, and then another
a quarter of mile from the yard in the creek. Again another was
discovered underneath a hollow log. Being restored to accustomed places
with due ceremony, and in sight of all the hens in convention assembled,
a gratifying change in the size of eggs produced resulted in a few days,
but again a slump set in. The nest eggs had disappeared, and the hens
were fulfilling their contract anyhow.
Other nest eggs of prescribed dimensions were taken out of stock; and a
yet more wonderful thing happened!
One morning about fowl-feeding time a great cry arose.
"Sen-ake!" "Sen-ake!"
Yes, there was a snake. About half--the latter half--its length was
visible outside the back of a nesting place (a box open at the front), and
a blow from a shovel disabled it. Further examination showed that the
snake had squeezed through a knot hole in the box. A lusty man hauled on
the snake violently. The box was heavy, and from the front the snake
could be seen. It looked troubled and uncomfortable, but not inclined to
back out, although the inducement in that direction was considerable.
Eventually the snake parted; and in the latter half there was a bulge.
Dissection revealed--What--marvellous! a nest egg. But why did the
snake show such reluctance to leave the box? The first or forward half
was hooked out from among the straw, and there was another oval
distention--another nest egg! The snake had discovered elsewhere a china
egg, had swallowed it, and then crawled in at the knot hole, and got
outside another. Escape was impossible. until the problem was solved by
halving.
There are no more accusations of dishonourable motives on the part of
the hens in doing away with the porcelain patterns to escape the arduous
duty of laying. It was all the fault of the serpent. Now the serpent is
not wise, for any nest egg beguiles him. It takes a long while to digest
such hardware. Traps are now laid for him. An egg of china is put in a
box, the open part of which is covered with small mesh-wire netting. The
snake submits to the temptation of the egg coyly resting on a bunch of
grass, and having made it its own, cannot let go. Then comes abhorred
fate in the shape of a gleeful man with a long-handled shovel, and the
end of the snake is piece--s.
ADVENTURE WITH A CROCODILE
"Cooling of the air with sighs,
In an odd angle of the Isle."
Now to proceed with the deliberate intention of dragging by the ears
into these pages a crocodile yarn. We have not a single "alligator" in
Australia, our crocodiles being wrongly so called, but this perversity
of nomenclature does not affect the anecdote.
To tell of the coast of Queensland, and to omit reference to an
adventure with one of those wary beasts would be to court criticism
likely to cast a shadow upon the veracity of more than one of the
incidents and occurrences herein to be chronicled.
I approach the duty to the readers as well as to myself with diffidence,
for has it not been stated that these pages were fated to be
unsensational and unromantic, and can any one imagine an unsensational
adventure with a crocodile? Therein lie the virtue of and the apology
for this story.
If the reader will take the trouble to scan the revised chart of the
Island, he will notice on the eastern coast an indentation entitled
"Panjoo," which, in the language of the blacks, seems to indicate "nice
place." A steep grassy slope comes down to the sea, separated therefrom
by a line of pandanus palms. To the north is a jungle-covered
spur, along the foot of which is a palm-tree gully; to the south a
ridge with low-growing, wind-bent acacias. The gully enters the
boulder-strewn inlet under the shade of much leafage. The great
Pacific gurgles at the base of giant rocks, among which a ragged
palm (CARYOTA) bears immense bunches of yellow insipid fruit, each
containing two coffee-like berries. Panjoo is a favourite objective,
for it may be approached from various directions, each pleasant,
but as a resort for a crocodile it is about as unpromising a locality
as could be imagined.
Thither one bright November morning we ("Paddy," the most silent and
alert of black boys, and myself) went. The tide was out, and we found a
comparatively easy track close to the margin of the sea, having
occasionally to wade through shallow pools and to clamber over rocks
thickly studded with limpets.
Years gone by a huge log of pencil cedar had been cast among the
boulders at Panjoo, and as I looked at the log "Paddy" with a start
indicated the presence of a novelty--a crocodile apparently in repose,
with its head in the shadow of a boulder. I was carrying a pea rifle
more for company than for anything else; for "Paddy," though of a most
cheerful disposition, never made remarks. His conversation for the most
part was compounded of eloquent looks and expressive gestures. A
monosyllable to him was a laborious sentence; four or five words a
speech. Once upon a time, it is said, a youthful German inadvertently
blundered into a railway carriage reserved for Moltke. The glare of the
great man brought three words of respectful apology for the intrusion.
The great man exclaimed with an air of exasperated boredom--"Insufferable
talker!"--of course, all in German. "Paddy," like Moltke, was,
averse from speech, unless when speech was absolutely vital. The
presence of a 10-foot crocodile of unknowledgeable ferocity was a vital
occasion. We hastily discussed in staccato whispers our plan of
campaign. It was arranged that we should assail the enemy at close
quarters. The calibre of the rifle was 22; its velocity most humble,
the bullet of soft lead. Unless it entered the eye of the crocodile,
and thence by luck its small brain, there was no hope of fatal effects.
Yet to take home such a rare trophy as a crocodile's skull, never
before known or heard of on the island, was a hope sufficient to evoke
and steady the instincts to be called upon as a necessary preliminary.
"Paddy" armed himself with weighty stones, and so manoeuvring to cut
off the creature's retreat to the sea, we silently and with the utmost
caution advanced.
Here let me advise readers to call to memory Nathaniel Parker Willis's
poem, "The Declaration" beginning--
'Twas late, and the gay company was gone,
And light lay soft on the deserted room,
and ending:
She had been asleep.
The crocodile moved not as we, thirsting for its blood, stealthily
approached. Then as I raised the rifle "Paddy" tilted up his
much-flattened nose, sniffed, and in tragic whisper said--"Dead!"
At all times a crocodile has a characteristic odour, a combination of
fish and very sour and stale musk, but Paddy smelt more than the
familiar scent--the scent of carrion.
Most unworthy of mortals, we had found the rarest of unprecious
things--a crocodile that had died a natural death. Apparently a day, or
at the most a day and a half, had elapsed since the creature had laid
its head under the shadow of the boulder and died, far from accustomed
haunts and kin. There was no sign of wound, bruise or putrefying sore.
All the teeth were perfect. It seemed like a crocodile taking its rest,
with its awful stench around it.
With poles we levered the body out of the way of the tide. Months after,
when Nature had done her part in the removal of all fleshy taint, we
returned for the bones. The teeth are now scattered far and wide as
trophies of the one and only crocodile ever acknowledged to have been
discovered dead.
To account for such a phenomenal occurrence a theory should be
forthcoming. This ill-fated crocodile is assumed to have wandered from
its proper quarters--the Tully or the Hull River, or one of the unnamed
mangrove creeks of the mainland. Having lost its way, it emerged from
the sea at pretty Panjoo. So different was the locality from that to
which the poor forlorn creature had been accustomed, it was at once
seized with a fatal attack of home-sickness. Shedding a few tears
natural--to it ("'Tis so, and the tears of it are wet"), it died ("and
the elements once out of it, it transmigrates"). Such is the theory,
annotated by Mark Antony's immortal after-dinner gossip, on the emotions
and natural history of the species.
THE ARABS PRECEPT
"A Pearl of Great Price"
"Mister, I tell you, neber say anything. I hab bin reech once. I lorse
my reechness for that I talk a little bit; but I talk too much. I poor
man now. I lorse my chants. Suppose I no lorse my chants I am reech man
of my country."
So said Hassan, the Arab with the pearly teeth, as he sat on the edge of
the verandah one steaming January evening.
"Yes, Hassan. How did you lose your money?"
"I hab no money, Mister. But I hab a pearl. My word, Mister, I tell you
my yarn about that pearl. My beauty beeg pearl. White pearl--more white
than snow-white! my pearl!"
The thin-framed swarthy Arab, with the flashing eyes and glistening
teeth, quivered with the intensity of his recollection.
"My beauty pearl. My beeg white pearl. My pearl of snow-white,"
he murmured as in a dreamy reverie he subdued the light of his great
black eyes.
"But you never saw snow. How can you talk about a snow-white pearl?"
"Mister, I bin steward boy on beeg steamer. I been eberywhere. I bin
in London, I bin in Antwerp. I bin see snow all over. That how I talk
about my snow pearl. I tell you my yarn."
Hassan smoothed down his white jacket, lit a lean cigarette, rolled
the incense--thrifty smoker that he was--as a sweet morsel under the
tongue, permitted it to drift lazily from his lips, and gave his story.
"I bin deck hand on pearling lugger. To be spell about with wind pump.
Sometimes I work on dinghy. Two or three times I dibe--not much dibe.
I carn stand that work. Not strong for that so heavy work. One morning
Boss he set me on to clean out dinghy. Too much rotten fish. You see, when
diber bring shell up, Boss he open ebery one--chuck meat along dinghy.
That dinghy, I tell you my yarn proper--close up half full stinking
meat. I chuck that stinking meat ober-board along my hand. Close up
I bin finish I catchem stinking meat like this. Hello! I feel 'em
something! My heart he stand--he carn go. He stop altogether. I carn look!
feel 'em beeg. I look! Ha! Beeg, beeg pearl! Round like anything.
White like snow. Pretty--lobley. My heart inside go ponch, quick like
that, I hear 'em jump along my shirt. No one look out. My pearl!
I whistle for nothing; put my pearl easy like I find nothing in my
pucket. Go on my work, steady. Heart jump about all the time. Chuck
em out those stinking meat. Ha! First time I feel something--one pearl!
Beeg, but no all the same like nother one. One more time chuck stinking
meat. Ha! one more pearl! White, long like small finger here. My heart
easy now. I think my good luck come. I say my prayer to Allah! I work
hard. I finish that boat. Chuck gem out stinking meat, wash her down.
My three pearls inside my pucket.
"For one week I neber say nothing. My good friend, my countryman from
Aden, Ali. I tell 'em I find one pearl. Now, Mister, I tell you
straight--neber tell nothing. You hab one good friend, one countryman.
You lobe that man, your good friend. But you no tell 'em nothing. I
made fool myself when I tell 'em. I big hoombug of myself. Two days, I am
pulling dinghy up to lugger. Big Boss he on board schooner. I see him
look me. Quick I think, 'Hassan, you make of yourself a fool. You lorse
you white pearl!' He sing out 'Hassan!' I gammon I neber hear 'em. Sing
out loud 'Hassan! You, boy! Come here!' I pull up to lugger. He sing
out. 'Come here quick! I want talk you!' 'All right, Boss, I come, I
go longa lugger first time!' He savage. Call out smart--'Come here, I
tell you! Come quick!'
"I am little fright he might shoot with revolver. I pull up to
schooner; make fast line. Go on board. Boss he say quiet, nice, like
gentlemen, 'Hello, Hassan! Good-day. Why you no come when I sing out
first time.' I say 'I hab that water for lugger.' He say, 'Well, my boy,
you come quick when I call out. No good hang back. How you getting on?
You come down my cabin. I no see you long time. Come down below.' 'All
up,' I say myself. Hello! Nother man. Bottle rum on table. Plenty
biskeet on plate, glasses--eberything. Boss he say, 'Come, my boy; come,
Hassan, make yourself happy. Gib yourself glass rum. Take good nip.'
That very good rum, strong too. I gib myself one good rum. I eat
biskeet. Boss he say, 'Come, my boy, gib yourself nother rum.' I gib
myself nother good rum; eat plenty of that sweet biskeet. We three
fellow very good friend. I feel happy. Boss shake hand, he say--'Hassan,
very good boy.' I gib myself nother good rum. We talk. Just now Boss he
look straight. He say quiet--'Hassan, my boy, you hab something belonga
me.' He look sharp like a knife. 'No, Boss, I hab nothing of you.' He
talk loud--'Hassan, you hab something belonga me. Gib it up quick!'
That other white man he stand longside gangway. I look straight.
I feel cold. I say, 'No, Boss, I hab nothing.' He talk more loud--GIB
UP THAT PEARL!' I fright. I put my hand to my pucket. I pull out
pearl. I am all fire now. I shove 'em longa table. I shout--'There
you blurry pearl!' Boss catch 'em quick. He say 'Get out my cabin, you
dirty Arab! You dam thief. Subpose you gib my pearl first time I gib you
something. Now I gib you kick!' I go.
"You see, Mister my good friend, my countryman, he tell Boss about my
white pearl. I lorse him now."
"But you got two more in your pocket"
"Yes, very good pearl; but not good like my snow pearl. I am sick now.
Boss he sack me. I land Thursday Island. I gamble fantan. I no care.
Soon I hab no pearl at all. I hab no work. I am hard up.
"Now, Mister, subpose I no say nothing to my good friend I am reech man
of my country. I drink Mocha coffee. I am too poor. Suppose I go to my
country, back from Aden, I carn drink coffee I am too poor, I drink
coffee from outside. Inside coffee, we sell for reech people--you
Inglesh, and Frinch, and Turkey men."
"What do you mean by outside coffee?"
"When you pick coffee, you Inglesh chuck away outside. We poor Arab dry
that outside, smash 'em up like flour, boil 'em for coffee. All inside
coffee we hab to sell, so poor that country. Mister, I bin tell true my
yarn--neber tell you good friend nothing."