In the summer-time there were sharks in Myall Creek, but I had never
seen them there in the spring. It was, I think, still somewhere short
of midnight when I stepped quietly out of the low window of the room I
shared with seven other orphans. (The house was all of one storey.) I
would have taken boots, but, excepting on visitors' Sundays, these
were kept in a locked cupboard in the sisters' building. My outfit
consisted of a comparatively whole pair of trousers--not those
immortalised in Mr. Rawlence's sketch--a strong, short-sleeved shirt
of hard, grey woollen stuff, a dilapidated waistcoat, a belt, my
little book of bush flowers and trees, and my one-pound note. Oh, and
an ancient grey felt hat with a large hole in the crown of it. That
was all; but I dare say notable careers have been started upon less;
in cash, if not in clothing.
Beside the punt I hesitated for a few moments, half inclined to cross
by that obvious means, and leave Tim to do the swimming by daylight.
Finally, however, I slipped off my clothes, tied them in a bundle on
my head, and stepped silently into the water, closely and interestedly
observed by one of the Orphanage watch-dogs, chained beside the
landing-stage. If he had barked, it would have been only from desire
to come with me, in which case, to save trouble, I should probably
have become guilty of dog-stealing. The dogs were all good friends of
mine.
The water was cold that spring night, but I was soon out of it, and
using my shirt for a hard rub down in the scrub beside the creek
wharf. As a precaution I had waited for a moonless night, and had made
my exit with no more noise than was caused by one of the night birds
or little beasts that visited our island. I had seen maps, and knew
the compass bearings of the locality. My ultimate destination being
Sydney, I turned to the southward, and stepped out briskly along the
track leading towards Milton, and away from Werrina.
That was the simple fashion of my outsetting into the world, and for a
time I gave literally no thought at all to its real significance. My
recognition of it as the beginning of the great adventure of
independent life was temporarily obscured by my preoccupation with its
detail.
At the end of a silent hour or two, when I suppose half a dozen miles
lay between myself and the Orphanage, the reflective faculties came
into play again. I began to see my affair more clearly, and to see it
whole, or pretty nearly so. From that point onward, I put in quite a
good deal of steady thinking with regard to the future. I had two or
three definite objects in view, and the first of these was to reach as
quickly as possible some point not less than about fifty miles distant
from Myall Creek, at which I could feel safe from any likely encounter
with a chance traveller from that district.
So much accomplished my plans represented in effect a pedestrian
journey to Sydney. But I recognised that the journey might occupy some
time, since, in the course of it, I was to earn money and then learn
shorthand; the money, by way of working capital and insurance against
accidents; the shorthand, to furnish my stock-in-trade and passport in
the metropolitan world. So mine was not to be exactly a holiday
walking tour. Yet I do not think any one could have set out upon a
holiday tour with more of zest than I brought to my tramping. My mood
was not of gaiety, rather it was one attuned to high and almost solemn
emprise; but, yes, I was full of zest in my walking.
An hour or so before daybreak I lay down on some dead fern at the foot
of a huge and sombre red mahogany tree, where the track forked. It was
partly that I wanted a rest, and partly that I was uncertain which
track led to the township of Milton, where I purposed buying some food
before any chance word of my flight from the Orphanage could have
travelled so far. The authorities at the Orphanage were little likely
to trouble themselves greatly over a runaway orphan; but I cherished a
hazy idea that in my case the matter might be somehow a little
different, in the same way that I had not been farmed out to any one
in the district, possibly because in receiving me St. Peter's had also
received some money, certainly more than could be represented by the
cost of my maintenance. In any case, I did not want to take any
unnecessary risks.
Two minutes after lying down I was asleep. When I waked the sun was
clear of the horizon, and I was partly covered over by dead bracken.
The dawn hours had been chilly, and evidently I had grappled the fern
leaves to me in my sleep, as one tugs a blanket over one's shoulder,
without waking, when cold. While I was chuckling to myself over this,
and picking the twigs from my clothes, I heard the pistol-like crack
of a bullock whip, and then, quite near at hand, the cries of a
'bullocky,' as they called the bullock-drivers thereabout, full of
morning-time vehemence.
'Woa, Darkey! Gee, Roan! Baldy, gee! Nigger! Strawberry! Gee, now,
Punch! I'll ----y well trim you in a minute, me gentleman. Gee, Baldy;
ye ----y cow, you!'
It was thus the unseen bushman discoursed to his cattle, and in a
minute or two the horns of his leaders, swaying slightly in their
yoke, appeared at the bend of the track, the bolt-heads in the yoke
shining like bosses of silver in the slanting rays of the new-risen
sun. Clearly the wagon had been loaded overnight, for the huge
tallow-wood log slung on it could hardly have been placed in its bed
since sun-up.
'I'm your ----y man, if it's Milton you want,' said the driver
good-humouredly, in response to my inquiries. 'I'm taking this stick into
the Milton saw-mill. ----y solid stick, eh? My oath, yes; there's not
enough pipe in that feller to stick a ----y needle in. No, he ought to
measure up pretty well, I reckon.' A pause for expectoration, and
then: 'Livin' in Milton?'
'No,' I told him, 'just travelling that way.' I flattered myself I had
put just the right note of nonchalance into what I knew was a
typically familiar sort of phrase. But the bullocky eyed me curiously,
all the same, and I instantly made up my mind to part company with him
at the earliest convenient moment.
'You travel ----y light, sonny,' he said; 'but I suppose that's the
easiest ----y way, when all's said.'
'Yes,' I agreed, with fluent mendacity; 'I got tired of the swag, and
I've not very far to go anyway.'
'Ah! Where might ye be makin' for, then?'
At this point I realised for the first time the grave disadvantages of
redundance in speech, of unnecessary verbiage. There had been no
earthly need for my last words, and now that my fatal fluency had
found me out, for the life of me I could not think of the name of a
likely place. At length, with clumsily affected carelessness, I had to
say, 'Oh, just down south a bit from Milton.'
'H'm! Port Lawson way, like?' suggested the curious bullocky.
'Yes, that's it,' I said hurriedly. 'Port Lawson way.'
'Ah, well, I've got a brother works in the ----y saw-mills there.
Ye'll maybe know him--Jim Gray; big, slab-sided chap he is, with his
nose sorter twisted like, where a ----y brumby colt kicked him when he
was a kid. ----y good thing for him it was a brumby, or unshod,
anyway; he'd a' bin in Queer Street else, I'm thinkin'. Jever meet him
down that way?'