Naturally, my father's suggestion, thrown out as it were in jest,
whimsically, fired my fancy instantly. 'How glorious!' I said. 'But
can we, really, father?'
It was less than a week later that we walked out of Werrina's one
street into the bush to the westward of that township, accompanied by
Ted Reilly and a heavily-laden pack-horse--Jerry. Ted was one of
Werrina's oddities, and, in many respects, our salvation. The Werrina
storekeeper shook his grizzled head over Ted, and vowed there wasn't
an honest day's work in the man.
'What's the matter with Ted is he's got no Systum; never had since he
was a babby.' (My thoughts reverted at once to a highly coloured
anatomical diagram which hung in the cabin of the _Ariadne's_ captain:
the flayed figure of a man whose face wore the incredibly complacent
look one sees on the waxen features of tailors' dummies, though the
poor fellow's heart, liver, kidneys, and other internal paraphernalia
were shamelessly exposed to the public gaze. The storekeeper's
tone convinced me for the time that poor Ted had been born lacking
some one or other of the important-looking purple organs which the
diagram had shown me as belonging to the human system.) 'He's a
here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow, come-day-go-day-God-send-Sunday sort of a
customer, is Ted--my oath! Wanter Systum. That's what I'm always telling
'em in this place. It's wanter Systum that's the curse uv Australia; an'
Ted's got it worsen most. Don't I know it? I gave him a chanst here in
my store. Might ha' made a Persition frimself. But, no; no Systum at
all. He was off in a fortnight, trappin' dingoes in the bush, or some
such nonsense. He's for no more use than--than a bumble bee, isn't Ted
Reilly; nor never will be.'
Well, he was of a good deal of practical use to us, the storekeeper
notwithstanding; but I admit that there was a notable absence of
'Systum' about the man. He was singularly unmethodical and haphazard,
even as his kind go in the remoter parts of Australia. He made our
acquaintance very casually by asking my father for a match, almost
before we had descended from the coach outside the Royal Hotel,
Werrina. (There was nothing royal, or even comfortable, about this
weatherboard and iron inn, except its name.) And, oddly enough, my
father fell into conversation with him, and seemed rather to take to
the man forthwith.
I know it was by his advice, as kindly meant, I am sure, as it was
shrewd, that my father said nothing to any one else in the township of
his fantastic ideas regarding what we now knew to be the derelict
Italian barque, _Livorno_, of Genoa. It was given out that we were
going camping, between Werrina and the coast; and, no doubt my father
was credited by the local wiseacres with the possession of some crafty
prospecting scheme or another. Most of the folk thereabouts had been
always wont to look to the bush (chiefly for timber) as a source of
livelihood, but their attention was usually turned inland rather than
seaward; for the bulk of the country between Werrina and the sea is
poor and swampy, or sandy. The belt of timber we had seen behind our
derelict's bay was not extensive.
It was Ted who bought Jerry for us for the modest price of L3, 15s.;
and I make no doubt that serviceable beast would have cost my father
L7 if he had had 'the haggling of it.' Pack-saddle and tent, with a
number of other oddments, had come with us from across the Queensland
border; first, by rail, and thence by numerous devious coach routes to
Werrina. The only thing about our expedition which I think Ted really
mistrusted and disliked was the fact that we set forth on foot. He
told my father of horses he could buy, if not for three a penny,
certainly at the rate of two for a five-pound note. (Animals no
better, or very little better, are selling for L20 apiece in the same
country to-day.) But my father spoke of the cost of saddlery and the
like. He had been brought up in a land where horse-keeping means
considerable expense, and the need for husbanding his slender
resources was strongly foremost in his mind just now. But Ted had all
his life long thought of horses as a natural and necessary adjunct to
man's locomotion. I have seen him devote considerable time and energy
to the task of catching Jerry in order to ride across a couple of
hundred yards of sand to his favourite wood-cutting spot. To be poor,
that is, short of money, was a natural and customary thing enough in
Ted's eyes; but to go ajourneying as a footman suggested a truly
pitiable kind of destitution, and did, I am convinced, throw a shadow
over what otherwise had been the outset of a jaunt entirely after his
own heart.
As the morning wore on, however, and we left behind us all likelihood
of chance encounters with more fortunately placed and therefore
critical people, bestriding pigskin, Ted's spirits rose again to their
normal easy altitude, and mounted beyond that to the level of boyish
jollity. Myself, I incline to think that walking along a bush track,
with a long stick in his hand and a pack-horse to drive before him,
was really an ideal situation for Ted, despite his preference for
riding. Afoot, he could so readily step aside to start a 'goanner' up
a tree, or pluck an out-of-the-way growth to show me.
There never was such a fellow for 'noticing' things, as they say of
children. Print he never read, so far as I know, and perhaps this
helped to make him so amazingly keen a reader of Nature. Not the
littlest comma on that page ever eluded him.
'Hullo!' he would say when Werrina was miles away behind us. 'Who'd've
thought o' that baldy-faced steer o' Murdoch's bein' out here?' One
gazed about to locate the beast. But, no. No living thing was in
sight. In passing, quite casually, Ted's roving eye had spied a hoof
mark, perhaps a day old or more, in the soft bottom of a tiny
billabong; a print I could hardly make out, leave alone identify as
having been made by this beast or the other, even under the guidance
of Ted's pointing finger. Yet for Ted that casual glance--no stooping,
no close scrutiny--supplied an accurate and complete picture: the
particular beast, its gait, occupation, and way of heading, and the
period at which it had passed that way. Withal, it was true enough, as
the storekeeper said, poor Ted had no 'Systum'; or none, at all
events, of the kind cultivated in shops and offices.