What Looked Like Courting.
On the terrace of the Pilot's house was a garden-seat, on which sat Rose
Summerhayes and Scarlett.
Rose was looking at her dainty shoe, the point of which protruded from
beneath her skirt; while Scarlett's eyes were fixed on the magnificent
panorama of mountains which stretched north and south as far as he could
see.
Behind the grass-covered foot-hills, at whose base crouched the little
town, there stood bolder and more rugged heights. In rear of these rose
the twin forest-clad tops of an enormous mountain mass, on either side
of which stretched pinnacled ranges covered with primeval "bush."
Scarlett was counting hill and mountain summits. His enumeration had
reached twenty distinct heights, when, losing count, he turned to his
companion.
"It's a lovely picture to have in front of your door," he said, "a
picture that never tires the eye."
A break in the centre of the foot-hills suddenly attracted his
attention. It was the gorge through which a rippling, sparkling river
escaped from the mountain rampart and flowed through the town to the
tidal waters of the harbour.
"That valley will take us into the heart of the hills," he said. "We
start to-morrow morning, soon after dawn--Moonlight and I. Do you know
him?"
The girl looked up from her shoe, and smiled. "I can't cultivate the
acquaintance of every digger in the town," she replied.
"Don't speak disparagingly of diggers. _I_ become one to-morrow."
"Then, mind you bring me a big nugget when you come back," said the
girl.
"That's asking me to command good luck. Give me that, and you shall have
the nugget."
"Does luck go by a girl's favour? If it did, you would be sure to have
it."
"I never had it on the voyage out, did I?"
"Perhaps you never had the other either."
"That's true--I left England through lack of it."
"I shouldn't have guessed that. Perhaps you'll gain it in this country."
Scarlett looked at her, but her eyes were again fixed on the point of
her shoe.
"Well, Rosebud--flirting as usual?" Captain Summerhayes, clad in blue
serge, with his peaked cap on the back of his head, came labouring up
the path, and sat heavily on the garden-seat. "I never see such a
gal--always with the boys when she ought to be cooking the dinner."
"Father!" exclaimed Rose, flushing red, though she well knew the form
that the Pilot's chaff usually took. "How _can_ you tell such fibs? You
forget that Mr. Scarlett is not one of the old cronies who understand
your fun."
"There, there, my gal." The Pilot laid his great brown hand on his
daughter's shoulder. "Don't be ruffled. Let an old sailor have his joke:
it won't hurt, God bless us; it won't hurt more'n the buzzing of a
blue-bottle fly. But you're that prim and proper, that staid and
straight-laced, you make me tease you, just to rouse you up. Oh! them
calm ones, Mr. Scarlett, beware of 'em. It takes a lot to goad 'em to
it, but once their hair's on end, it's time a sailor went to sea, and a
landsman took to the bush. It's simply terrible. Them mild 'uns, Mr.
Scarlett, beware of 'em."
"Father, do stop!" cried Rose, slapping the Pilot's broad back with her
soft, white hand.
"All right," said her father, shrinking from her in mock dread; "stop
that hammerin'."
"Tell us about the fever-ship, and what they're doing with Sartoris,"
said Scarlett.
"Lor', she's knocked the breath out of a man's body. I'm just in dread
o' me life. Sit t'other end o' the seat, gal; and do you, Mr. Scarlett,
sit in between us, and keep the peace. It's fearful, this livin' alone
with a dar'ter that thumps me." The old fellow chuckled internally, and
threatened to explode with suppressed merriment. "Some day I shall die
o' laffing," he said, as he pulled himself together. "But you was asking
about Sartoris." He had now got himself well in hand. "Sartoris is like
a pet monkey in a cage, along o' Chinamen, Malays, Seedee boys, and all
them sort of animals. Laff? You should ha' seen me standing up in the
boat, hollerin' at Sartoris, and laffin' so as I couldn't hardly keep me
feet. 'Sartoris,' I says, 'when do the animals feed?' An' he looks over
the rail, just like a stuffed owl in a glass case, and says nothing. I
took a bottle from the boat's locker, and held it up. 'What wouldn't you
give for a drop o' that!' I shouts. But he shook his fist, and said
something disrespectful about port wine; but I was that roused up with
the humour o' the thing, I laffed so as I had to set down. A prisoner
for full four weeks, or durin' the pleasure o' the Health Officer,
that's Sartoris. Lord! _what_ a trap to be caught in."
"But what's the disease they've on board?" asked Scarlett.
"That's where it is," replied the Pilot--"nobody seems to know. The
Health Officer he says one thing, and then, first one medical and then
another must put his oar in, and say it's something else--dengey fever,
break-bone, spirrilum fever, beri-beri, or anything you like. One doctor
says the ship shouldn't ha' bin currantined, and another says she
should, and so they go on quarrelling like a lot o' cats in a sack."
"But there have been deaths on board," said Rose.
"Deaths, my dear? The first mate's gone, and more'n half the piebald
crew. This morning we buried the Chinese cook. You won't see Sartoris,
not this month or more."
"Mr. Scarlett is going into the bush, father. He's not likely to be back
till after the ship is out of quarantine."
"Eh? What? Goin' bush-whacking? I thought you was town-bred. Well, well,
so you're goin' to help chop down trees."
Scarlett smiled. "You've heard of this gold that's been found, Pilot?"
"I see it in the paper."
"I'm going to try if I can find where it comes from."
"Lord love 'ee, but you've no luck, lad. This gold-finding is just a
matter o' luck, and luck goes by streaks. You're in a bad streak, just
at present; and you won't never find that gold till you're out o' that
streak. You can try, but you won't get it. You see, Sartoris is in the
same streak--no sooner does he get wrecked than he is shut up aboard
this fever-ship. And s'far as I can see, he'll get on no better till
he's out o' his streak too. You be careful how you go about for the
next six months or so, for as sure as you're born, if you put yourself
in the way of it, you'll have some worse misfortune than any you've yet
met with. Luck's like the tide--you can do nothing agin it; but when it
turns, you've got everything in your favour. Wait till the tide of your
luck turns, young man, before you attempt anything rash. That's my
advice, and I've seen proof of it in every quarter of the globe."
"Father is full of all sorts of sailor-superstitions. He hates to take a
ship out of port on a Friday, and wouldn't kill an albatross for
anything."
"We caught three on the voyage out," said Scarlett; "a Wandering
Albatross, after sighting the Cape of Good Hope, and two sooty ones near
the Campbell Islands. I kept the wing-bones, and would have given you
one for a pipe-stem, Captain, if the ship had reached port."
"But she didn't, my lad," growled the Pilot, "and that's where the point
comes in. Why sailors can't leave them birds alone astonishes me: they
don't hurt nobody, and they don't molest the ship, but sail along out of
pure love o' company. On the strength o' that you must kill 'em, just
for a few feathers and stems for tobacco-pipes. And you got wrecked.
P'r'aps you'll leave 'em alone next voyage."
During the last part of the conversation, Rose had risen, and entered
the house. She now returned with a small leather case in her hand.
"This, at any rate, will be proof against bad luck," she said, as she
undid the case, and drew out a prismatic compass. She adjusted the
eye-piece, in which was a slit and a glass prism and lifted the
sight-vane, down the centre of which a horsehair stretched
perpendicularly to the card of the compass. Putting the instrument to
her eye, Rose took the bearing of one of the twin forest-clad heights,
and said, "Eighty degrees East--is that right?"
"You've got the magnetic bearing," said Scarlett, taking the instrument
from the girl's hand. "To find the real bearing, you must allow for the
variation between the magnetic and true North."
"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed; "that's too dreadfully technical. But take
the compass: it should keep you from being lost in the bush, anyway."
"Thank you," said Jack. "It will be very useful. It's a proper
mining-compass."
"I hope its needle will guide you to untold gold, and that the mine you
are looking for will act on it like a loadstone."
"Practical and sentimental--that's Rosebud," said the Pilot, from the
further end of the seat. "And you'll always notice, Scarlett, that it's
the practical that comes first with her. Once upon a time she give me a
cardigan jacket to wear under my coat. She'd knitted it herself. She
said it would keep me warm on frosty nights, and prevent me gettin' cold
and all that; and when I gets into the boat one night, and was feeling
for a match, bless you if I didn't find a piece o' paper, folded up, in
the pocket o' that there cardigan jacket. I took it out and read it by
the lantern. It was from my own dar'ter, jest as if I'd ha' been her
sweetheart, and in it was all manner o' lovey-dovey things just fit to
turn her old dad's head. Practical first, sentimental afterwards--that's
Rosebud. Very practical over the makin' of an apple-pie--very
sentimental over the eatin' of it, ain't you, my gal?"
"I don't know about the sentiment," said Rose, "but I am sure about the
pie. If that were missing at dinner-time I know who would grumble. So
I'll go, and attend to my duties." She had risen, and was confronting
Scarlett. "Good-bye," she said, "and good fortune."
Jack took her proffered hand. "Thank you," he said.
She had walked a few steps towards the house, when she looked over her
shoulder. "Don't forget the nuggets," she said with a laugh.
"I sha'n't forget," he replied. "If I get them, you shall have them. I
hope I may get them, for _your_ sake."
"Now, ain't that a wee bit mushy, for talk?" said the old Pilot, as his
daughter disappeared. "You might give a gal a few pennyweights, or even
an ounce, but when you say you hope you may find gold for her sake,
ain't that just a trifle flabby? But don't think you can deceive my gal
with talk such as that. She may be sentimental and stoopid with her old
dad, but I never yet see the man she couldn't run rings round at a
bargain. And as for gettin' soft on a chap, he ain't come along yet; and
when he does, like as not I'll chuck him over this here bank, and break
his impident neck. When my gal Rosebud takes a fancy, that's another
matter. If she _should_ have a leanin' towards some partic'lar chap,
why, then I'd open the door, and lug him in by the collar if he didn't
come natural and responsive. I've got my own ideas about a girl
marrying--I had my own experience, and I say, give a girl the choice,
an' she'll make a good wife. That's my theory. So if my gal is set agin
a man, I'm set agin him. If she likes a partic'lar man, I'll like him
too. She won't cotton to any miserable, fish-backed beach-comber, I can
promise you. So mushy, flabby talk don't count with Rose; you can make
your mind clear on that point."
The young man burst into a laugh.
"Keep her tight, Pilot," he said, in a voice loud with merriment.
"When you know you've got a good daughter, stick to her. Chuck every
interloper over the bank. I should do so myself. But don't treat _me_ so
when I come with the nuggets."
"Now, look 'ee here," said the Pilot, as he rose cumbersomely, and took
Scarlett by the arm. "I've said you're in a bad streak o' luck, and I
believe it. But, mark me here: nothing would please me better than for
you to return with a hatful of gold. All I say is, if you're bent on
going, be careful; and, being in a bad streak, don't expect great
things."
"Good-bye," said Scarlett. "I'm in a bad streak? All right. When I work
out of that you'll be the first man I'll come to see."
"An' no one'll be gladder to see you."
Captain Summerhayes took Scarlett's hand, and shook it warmly.
"Good-bye," he said. "Good luck, and damn the bad streak."
Jack laughed, and walked down the winding path.
The Pilot stood on the bank, and looked after him.
"Hearten him up: that's the way," he said to himself, as he watched the
retreating figure; "but, for all that, he's like a young 'more-pork' in
the bush, with all his troubles to come."