All hands in Yamba hut had turned in, except a couple at the end of
the long rough table.
These late birds were playing euchre by the flickering light of an
evil-smelling slush lamp. The cook had banked up the fire for the
night, but the myall ashes still glowed redly and cast heat around. On
the stone hearth stewed a bucket of tea. But for the snores of the men
in the double tier of bunks ranged ship-fashion along both sides of
the big hut, the frizzling of the grease in the lamp, and the muttered
exclamations of the players, everything was very quiet.
‘Pass me!’
‘Make it!’
‘Hearts!’
And both men dropped their hands and sprang up in affright as a wild
scream rang out from the bunk just above them.
As they gazed, a white face, wet with the sweat of fear, poked out and
stared down upon them with eyes in which the late terror still lived.
‘What the dickens is up?’ asked one, recovering from his surprise,
whilst the grumbles of awakened sleepers travelled around the hut.
‘My God! what a dream! what a dream!’ exclaimed the man addressed,
sticking out a pair of naked legs, and softly alighting on the earthen
floor, and standing there trembling.
‘Shoo!’ said the station wit, as he turned for a fresh start; ‘it’s
only Jack the Sailor had the night-horse.’
But the man, crouching close to the players, and wiping his pallid
face with his loose shirt sleeve, still exclaimed,—
‘What a dream! My God! What a dream!’
‘Tell us what it were all about, Jack,’ asked one of the others,
handing him a pannikin of tea. ‘It oughter been bad, judgin’ by the
dashed skreek as you give.’
‘It was,’ said the other—a grizzled, tanned, elderly man—as he warmed
his legs, and looked rather ashamed of himself. ‘But hardly enough to
make such a row over as you chaps reckons I did. I was dreamin’,’ he
continued, speaking slowly, ‘as I was at sea again. It was on
Christmas Day, an’ the ship was close to Cape Horn. How I knowed that,
I can’t tell. But the land was in sight quite plain. Me an’ another
feller—I can see his ugly face yet, and sha’n’t never forget it—was
makin’ fast one of the jibs. Presen’ly we seemed to ’ave some words
out there, hot an’ sharp. Then I done a thing, the like o’ which ud
never come into my mind when awake—not if I lived to the age of
Methyuseler—I puts my sheath-knife into him right up to the handle.
‘The weather were heavy, an’ the ship a-pitchin’ bowsprit under into a
head sea. Well, I was just watchin’ his face turn sorter slate colour,
an’ him clingin’ on to a gasket an’ starin’ hard, when she gives a
dive fathoms deep.
‘When I comes up again I was in the water, an’ there was the ship
half-a-mile away.
‘Swimmin’ an’ lookin’ round, I spies the other feller alongside me on
top of a big comber, with the white spume all red about him.
‘Nex’ minute, down he comes, an’ I feels his two hands a-grippin’ me
tight by the throat. I expect’s it was then I sung out an’ woke
myself,’ and the man shivered as he gazed intently into the heart of
the glowing myall ashes.
‘Well, Jack Ashby,’ said one of his hearers, gathering up the
scattered cards, ‘it wasn’t a nice dream. If I was you I should take
it as a warnin’ never to go a-sailorin’ no more. Never was at the game
myself, and don’t want to be. There can’t be much in it, though, when
just the very thoughts o’ what’s never ’appened, an’ what’s never
a-goin’ to ’appen, is able to give a chap such a start as you got.’
‘Ugh!’ exclaimed the sailor, getting up and shaking himself as he
climbed into his bunk. ‘No, I’ll never go back to sea again!’
But, in course of time, Jack Ashby became tired of station life—became
tired of the everlasting drudgery of the rouseabout, the burr-cutting,
lamb-catching, and all the rest of it.
He had no more dreams of the kind. But when o’ nights the wind
whistled around and shook the crazy old hut, he would turn restlessly
in his bunk and listen for the hollow thud of the rope-coils on the
deck above, the call of ‘All hands,’ the wild racket of the gale, and
the hiss of stormy waters.
So his thoughts irresistibly wandered back again to the tall ships and
the old shipmates, and all the magic and mystery of the great deep on
whose bosom he had passed his life. He knew that he was infinitely
better off where he was—better paid, better fed, better off in every
respect than he could ever possibly hope to be at sea.
Battling with his longing, he contrasted the weevilly biscuits and
salt junk of the fo’k’stle with the wholesome damper and fresh mutton
and beef of the hut.
He thought of the ‘all night in’ of undisturbed rest, contrasting it
with the ‘Watch ahoy! Now then, you sleepers, turn out!’ of each
successive four hours.
He thought, too, of tyrannous masters and mates; of drenched decks and
leaking fo’k’stles, of frozen rigging, of dark wild nights of storm,
and of swaying foot-ropes and thundrous canvas slatting like iron
plates about his ears; of hunger, wet, and misery.
Long and carefully he thought of all these things, and weighed the
balance for and against. Then, one morning, rolling up his swag
hurriedly, he went straight back to them.
Even the thought of his dream had no power to stay him.