WHILE THE BILLY BOILS
By Henry Lawson
[Transcriber's note: In 'A Day on a Selection' a speech is attributed to
“Tom”--in first edition as well as recent ones--which clearly belongs to
“Corney” alias “neighbour”. This has been noted in loc.]
CONTENTS
First Series
An Old Mate of Your Father's
Settling on the Land
Enter Mitchell
Stiffner and Jim (Thirdly, Bill)
When the Sun Went Down
The Man who Forgot
Hungerford
A Camp-fire Yarn
His Country--After All
A Day on a Selection
That There Dog of Mine
Going Blind
Arvie Aspinall's Alarm Clock
Stragglers
The Union Buries its Dead
On the Edge of a Plain
In a Dry Season
He's Come Back
Another of Mitchell's Plans
Steelman
Drifted Back
Remailed
Mitchell Doesn't Believe in the Sack
Shooting the Moon
His Father's Mate
An Echo from the Old Bark School
The Shearing of the Cook's Dog
“Dossing Out” and “Camping”
Across the Straits
Some Day
Brummy Usen
Second Series
The Drover's Wife
Steelman's Pupil
An Unfinished Love Story
Board and Residence
His Colonial Oath
A Visit of Condolence
In a Wet Season
“Rats”
Mitchell: A Character Sketch
The Bush Undertaker
Our Pipes
Coming Across
The Story of Malachi
Two Dogs and a Fence
Jones's Alley
Bogg of Geebung
She Wouldn't Speak
The Geological Spieler
Macquarie's Mate
Baldy Thompson
For Auld Lang Syne
FIRST SERIES
AN OLD MATE OF YOUR FATHER'S
You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were
sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on
us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as “An
old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny.” And he would pat
our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls--as the case may have
been--and that we had our father's nose but our mother's eyes, or the
other way about; and say that the baby was the dead spit of its mother,
and then added, for father's benefit: “But yet he's like you, Tom.” It
did seem strange to the children to hear him address the old man by his
Christian name---considering that the mother always referred to him as
“Father.” She called the old mate Mr So-and-so, and father called him
Bill, or something to that effect.
Occasionally the old mate would come dressed in the latest city fashion,
and at other times in a new suit of reach-me-downs, and yet again he
would turn up in clean white moleskins, washed tweed coat, Crimean
shirt, blucher boots, soft felt hat, with a fresh-looking speckled
handkerchief round his neck. But his face was mostly round and brown
and jolly, his hands were always horny, and his beard grey. Sometimes
he might have seemed strange and uncouth to us at first, but the old
man never appeared the least surprised at anything he said or did--they
understood each other so well--and we would soon take to this relic of
our father's past, who would have fruit or lollies for us--strange that
he always remembered them--and would surreptitiously slip “shilluns”
into our dirty little hands, and tell us stories about the old days,
“when me an' yer father was on the diggin's, an' you wasn't thought of,
my boy.”
Sometimes the old mate would stay over Sunday, and in the forenoon or
after dinner he and father would take a walk amongst the deserted shafts
of Sapling Gully or along Quartz Ridge, and criticize old ground, and
talk of past diggers' mistakes, and second bottoms, and feelers, and
dips, and leads--also outcrops--and absently pick up pieces of quartz
and slate, rub them on their sleeves, look at them in an abstracted
manner, and drop them again; and they would talk of some old lead they
had worked on: “Hogan's party was here on one side of us, Macintosh was
here on the other, Mac was getting good gold and so was Hogan, and now,
why the blanky blank weren't we on gold?” And the mate would always
agree that there was “gold in them ridges and gullies yet, if a man only
had the money behind him to git at it.” And then perhaps the guv'nor
would show him a spot where he intended to put down a shaft some
day--the old man was always thinking of putting down a shaft. And these
two old fifty-niners would mooch round and sit on their heels on the
sunny mullock heaps and break clay lumps between their hands, and lay
plans for the putting down of shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent
to “look for his father and Mr So-and-so, and tell 'em to come to their
dinner.”
And again--mostly in the fresh of the morning--they would hang about the
fences on the selection and review the live stock: five dusty skeletons
of cows, a hollow-sided calf or two, and one shocking piece of equine
scenery--which, by the way, the old mate always praised. But the
selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections--it was far away
with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or perhaps
buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's Creek, or
Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead
or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim would take their
thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling
sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which
comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with
many Golden Points, Bakery Hill, Deep Creeks, Maitland Bars, Specimen
Flats, and Chinamen's Gullies. And so they'd yarn till the youngster
came to tell them that “Mother sez the breakfus is gettin' cold,” and
then the old mate would rouse himself and stretch and say, “Well, we
mustn't keep the missus waitin', Tom!”
And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the edge
of the veranda--that is, in warm weather--and yarn about Ballarat and
Bendigo--of the days when we spoke of being on a place oftener than at
it: _on_ Ballarat, _on_ Gulgong, _on_ Lambing Flat, on _Creswick_--and
they would use the definite article before the names, as: “on The Turon;
The Lachlan; The Home Rule; The Canadian Lead.” Then again they'd
yarn of old mates, such as Tom Brook, Jack Henright, and poor Martin
Ratcliffe--who was killed in his golden hole--and of other men whom
they didn't seem to have known much about, and who went by the names of
“Adelaide Adolphus,” “Corney George,” and other names which might have
been more or less applicable.
And sometimes they'd get talking, low and mysterious like, about “Th'
Eureka Stockade;” and if we didn't understand and asked questions, “what
was the Eureka Stockade?” or “what did they do it for?” father'd say:
“Now, run away, sonny, and don't bother; me and Mr So-and-so want to
talk.” Father had the mark of a hole on his leg, which he said he got
through a gun accident when a boy, and a scar on his side, that we saw
when he was in swimming with us; he said he got that in an accident in a
quartz-crushing machine. Mr So-and-so had a big scar on the side of his
forehead that was caused by a pick accidentally slipping out of a loop
in the rope, and falling down a shaft where he was working. But how was
it they talked low, and their eyes brightened up, and they didn't look
at each other, but away over sunset, and had to get up and walk about,
and take a stroll in the cool of the evening when they talked about
Eureka?
And, again they'd talk lower and more mysterious like, and perhaps
mother would be passing the wood-heap and catch a word, and asked:
“Who was she, Tom?”
And Tom--father--would say:
“Oh, you didn't know her, Mary; she belonged to a family Bill knew at
home.”
And Bill would look solemn till mother had gone, and then they would
smile a quiet smile, and stretch and say, “Ah, well!” and start
something else.
They had yarns for the fireside, too, some of those old mates of our
father's, and one of them would often tell how a girl--a queen of the
diggings--was married, and had her wedding-ring made out of the gold
of that field; and how the diggers weighed their gold with the new
wedding-ring--for luck--by hanging the ring on the hook of the scales
and attaching their chamois-leather gold bags to it (whereupon she
boasted that four hundred ounces of the precious metal passed through
her wedding-ring); and how they lowered the young bride, blindfolded,
down a golden hole in a big bucket, and got her to point out the drive
from which the gold came that her ring was made out of. The point of
this story seems to have been lost--or else we forget it--but it was
characteristic. Had the girl been lowered down a duffer, and asked to
point out the way to the gold, and had she done so successfully, there
would have been some sense in it.
And they would talk of King, and Maggie Oliver, and G. V. Brooke, and
others, and remember how the diggers went five miles out to meet the
coach that brought the girl actress, and took the horses out and brought
her in in triumph, and worshipped her, and sent her off in glory, and
threw nuggets into her lap. And how she stood upon the box-seat and tore
her sailor hat to pieces, and threw the fragments amongst the crowd; and
how the diggers fought for the bits and thrust them inside their shirt
bosoms; and how she broke down and cried, and could in her turn have
worshipped those men--loved them, every one. They were boys all, and
gentlemen all. There were college men, artists, poets, musicians,
journalists--Bohemians all. Men from all the lands and one. They
understood art--and poverty was dead.
And perhaps the old mate would say slyly, but with a sad, quiet smile:
“Have you got that bit of straw yet, Tom?”
Those old mates had each three pasts behind them. The two they told each
other when they became mates, and the one they had shared.
And when the visitor had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man
would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the
fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps.
Those old mates of our father's are getting few and far between, and
only happen along once in a way to keep the old man's memory fresh, as
it were. We met one to-day, and had a yarn with him, and afterwards we
got thinking, and somehow began to wonder whether those ancient friends
of ours were, or were not, better and kinder to their mates than we of
the rising generation are to our fathers; and the doubt is painfully on
the wrong side.
SETTLING ON THE LAND
The worst bore in Australia just now is the man who raves about getting
the people on the land, and button-holes you in the street with a little
scheme of his own. He generally does not know what he is talking about.
There is in Sydney a man named Tom Hopkins who settled on the land once,
and sometimes you can get him to talk about it. He did very well at his
trade in the city, years ago, until he began to think that he could do
better up-country. Then he arranged with his sweetheart to be true to
him and wait whilst he went west and made a home. She drops out of the
story at this point.
He selected on a run at Dry Hole Creek, and for months awaited the
arrival of the government surveyors to fix his boundaries; but they
didn't come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up
within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and
started farming operations.
Does the reader know what grubbing means? Tom does. He found the
biggest, ugliest, and most useless trees on his particular piece of
ground; also the greatest number of adamantine stumps. He started
without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice
from men who knew less about farming than he did. He found a soft
place between two roots on one side of the first tree, made a narrow,
irregular hole, and burrowed down till he reached a level where the
tap-root was somewhat less than four feet in diameter, and not quite as
hard as flint: then he found that he hadn't room to swing the axe, so he
heaved out another ton or two of earth--and rested. Next day he sank
a shaft on the other side of the gum; and after tea, over a pipe, it
struck him that it would be a good idea to burn the tree out, and so
use up the logs and lighter rubbish lying round. So he widened the
excavation, rolled in some logs, and set fire to them--with no better
result than to scorch the roots.
Tom persevered. He put the trace harness on his horse, drew in all the
logs within half a mile, and piled them on the windward side of that
gum; and during the night the fire found a soft place, and the tree
burnt off about six feet above the surface, falling on a squatter's
boundary fence, and leaving the ugliest kind of stump to occupy the
selector's attention; which it did, for a week. He waited till the hole
cooled, and then he went to work with pick, shovel, and axe: and even
now he gets interested in drawings of machinery, such as are published
in the agricultural weeklies, for getting out stumps without graft. He
thought he would be able to get some posts and rails out of that
tree, but found reason to think that a cast-iron column would split
sooner--and straighter. He traced some of the surface roots to the other
side of the selection, and broke most of his trace-chains trying to
get them out by horse-power--for they had other roots going down from
underneath. He cleared a patch in the course of time and for several
seasons he broke more ploughshares than he could pay for.
Meanwhile the squatter was not idle. Tom's tent was robbed several
times, and his hut burnt down twice. Then he was charged with killing
some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his own use,
but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion between the
squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics and religion.
Tom ploughed and sowed wheat, but nothing came up to speak of--the
ground was too poor; so he carted stable manure six miles from the
nearest town, manured the land, sowed another crop, and prayed for
rain. It came. It raised a flood which washed the crop clean off the
selection, together with several acres of manure, and a considerable
portion of the original surface soil; and the water brought down enough
sand to make a beach, and spread it over the field to a depth of six
inches. The flood also took half a mile of fencing from along the
creek-bank, and landed it in a bend, three miles down, on a dummy
selection, where it was confiscated.
Tom didn't give up--he was energetic. He cleared another piece of ground
on the siding, and sowed more wheat; it had the rust in it, or the
smut--and averaged three shillings per bushel. Then he sowed lucerne and
oats, and bought a few cows: he had an idea of starting a dairy. First,
the cows' eyes got bad, and he sought the advice of a German cocky, and
acted upon it; he blew powdered alum through paper tubes into the bad
eyes, and got some of it snorted and butted back into his own. He cured
the cows' eyes and got the sandy blight in his own, and for a week or
so be couldn't tell one end of a cow from the other, but sat in a dark
corner of the hut and groaned, and soaked his glued eyelashes in warm
water. Germany stuck to him and nursed him, and saw him through.
Then the milkers got bad udders, and Tom took his life in his hands
whenever he milked them. He got them all right presently--and butter
fell to fourpence a pound. He and the aforesaid cocky made arrangements
to send their butter to a better market; and then the cows contracted
a disease which was known in those parts as “plooro permoanyer,” but
generally referred to as “th' ploorer.”
Again Tom sought advice, acting upon which he slit the cows' ears, cut
their tails half off to bleed them, and poured pints of “pain killer”
into them through their nostrils; but they wouldn't make an effort,
except, perhaps, to rise and poke the selector when he tried to tempt
their appetites with slices of immature pumpkin. They died peacefully
and persistently, until all were gone save a certain dangerous, barren,
slab-sided luny bovine with white eyes and much agility in jumping
fences, who was known locally as Queen Elizabeth.
Tom shot Queen Elizabeth, and turned his attention to agriculture again.
Then his plough horses took bad with some thing the Teuton called “der
shtranguls.” He submitted them to a course of treatment in accordance
with Jacob's advice--and they died.
Even then Tom didn't give in--there was grit in that man. He borrowed a
broken-down dray-horse in return for its keep, coupled it with his own
old riding hack, and started to finish ploughing. The team wasn't a
success. Whenever the draught horse's knees gave way and he stumbled
forward, he jerked the lighter horse back into the plough, and something
would break. Then Tom would blaspheme till he was refreshed, mend up
things with wire and bits of clothes-line, fill his pockets with stones
to throw at the team, and start again. Finally he hired a dummy's child
to drive the horses. The brat did his best he tugged at the head of the
team, prodded it behind, heaved rocks at it, cut a sapling, got up his
enthusiasm, and wildly whacked the light horse whenever the other showed
signs of moving--but he never succeeded in starting both horses at one
and the same time. Moreover the youth was cheeky, and the selector's
temper had been soured: he cursed the boy along with the horses, the
plough, the selection, the squatter, and Australia. Yes, he cursed
Australia. The boy cursed back, was chastised, and immediately went home
and brought his father.
Then the dummy's dog tackled the selector's dog and this precipitated
things. The dummy would have gone under had his wife not arrived on the
scene with the eldest son and the rest of the family. They all fell foul
of Tom. The woman was the worst. The selector's dog chawed the other and
came to his master's rescue just in time---or Tom Hopkins would never
have lived to become the inmate of a lunatic asylum.
Next year there happened to be good grass on Tom's selection and nowhere
else, and he thought it wouldn't be a bad idea--to get a few poor
sheep, and fatten them up for market: sheep were selling for about
seven-and-sixpence a dozen at that time. Tom got a hundred or two, but
the squatter had a man stationed at one side of the selection with dogs
to set on the sheep directly they put their noses through the fence
(Tom's was not a sheep fence). The dogs chased the sheep across the
selection and into the run again on the other side, where another man
waited ready to pound them.
Tom's dog did his best; but he fell sick while chawing up the fourth
capitalistic canine, and subsequently died. The dummies had robbed that
cur with poison before starting it across--that was the only way they
could get at Tom's dog.
Tom thought that two might play at the game, and he tried; but his
nephew, who happened to be up from the city on a visit, was arrested
at the instigation of the squatter for alleged sheep-stealing, and
sentenced to two years' hard; during which time the selector himself got
six months for assaulting the squatter with intent to do him grievous
bodily harm-which, indeed, he more than attempted, if a broken nose, a
fractured jaw, and the loss of most of the squatters' teeth amounted to
anything. The squatter by this time had made peace with the other local
Justice, and had become his father-in-law.
When Tom came out there was little left for him to live for; but he took
a job of fencing, got a few pounds together, and prepared to settle on
the land some more. He got a “missus” and a few cows during the next
year; the missus robbed him and ran away with the dummy, and the cows
died in the drought, or were impounded by the squatter while on their
way to water. Then Tom rented an orchard up the creek, and a hailstorm
destroyed all the fruit. Germany happened to be represented at the time,
Jacob having sought shelter at Tom's but on his way home from town. Tom
stood leaning against the door post with the hail beating on him through
it all. His eyes were very bright and very dry, and every breath was
a choking sob. Jacob let him stand there, and sat inside with a dreamy
expression on his hard face, thinking of childhood and fatherland,
perhaps. When it was over he led Tom to a stool and said, “You waits
there, Tom. I must go home for somedings. You sits there still and waits
twenty minutes;” then he got on his horse and rode off muttering to
himself; “Dot man moost gry, dot man moost gry.” He was back inside of
twenty minutes with a bottle of wine and a cornet under his overcoat. He
poured the wine into two pint-pots, made Tom drink, drank himself, and
then took his cornet, stood up at the door, and played a German march
into the rain after the retreating storm. The hail had passed over his
vineyard and he was a ruined man too. Tom did “gry” and was all right.
He was a bit disheartened, but he did another job of fencing, and was
just beginning to think about “puttin' in a few vines an' fruit-trees”
when the government surveyors--whom he'd forgotten all about--had a
resurrection and came and surveyed, and found that the real selection
was located amongst some barren ridges across the creek. Tom reckoned
it was lucky he didn't plant the orchard, and he set about shifting his
home and fences to the new site. But the squatter interfered at this
point, entered into possession of the farm and all on it, and took
action against the selector for trespass--laying the damages at L2500.
Tom was admitted to the lunatic asylum at Parramatta next year, and the
squatter was sent there the following summer, having been ruined by the
drought, the rabbits, the banks, and a wool-ring. The two became very
friendly, and had many a sociable argument about the feasibility--or
otherwise--of blowing open the flood-gates of Heaven in a dry season
with dynamite.
Tom was discharged a few years since. He knocks about certain suburbs
a good deal. He is seen in daylight seldom, and at night mostly in
connection with a dray and a lantern. He says his one great regret is
that he wasn't found to be of unsound mind before he went up-country.
ENTER MITCHELL
The Western train had just arrived at Redfern railway station with a lot
of ordinary passengers and one swagman.
He was short, and stout, and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy. He had
red hair and small, twinkling, grey eyes, and--what often goes with such
things--the expression of a born comedian. He was dressed in a ragged,
well-washed print shirt, an old black waistcoat with a calico back, a
pair of cloudy moleskins patched at the knees and held up by a plaited
greenhide belt buckled loosely round his hips, a pair of well-worn,
fuzzy blucher boots, and a soft felt hat, green with age, and with no
brim worth mentioning, and no crown to speak of. He swung a swag on to
the platform, shouldered it, pulled out a billy and water-bag, and then
went to a dog-box in the brake van.
Five minutes later he appeared on the edge of the cab platform, with an
anxious-looking cattle-dog crouching against his legs, and one end of
the chain in his hand. He eased down the swag against a post, turned
his face to the city, tilted his hat forward, and scratched the
well-developed back of his head with a little finger. He seemed
undecided what track to take.
“Cab, Sir!”
The swagman turned slowly and regarded cabby with a quiet grin.
“Now, do I look as if I want a cab?”
“Well, why not? No harm, anyway--I thought you might want a cab.”
Swaggy scratched his head, reflectively.
“Well,” he said, “you're the first man that has thought so these ten
years. What do I want with a cab?”
“To go where you're going, of course.”
“Do I look knocked up?”
“I didn't say you did.”
“And I didn't say you said I did.... Now, I've been on the track this
five years. I've tramped two thousan' miles since last Chris'mas, and I
don't see why I can't tramp the last mile. Do you think my old dog wants
a cab?”
The dog shivered and whimpered; he seemed to want to get away from the
crowd.
“But then, you see, you ain't going to carry that swag through the
streets, are you?” asked the cabman.
“Why not? Who'll stop me! There ain't no law agin it, I b'lieve?”
“But then, you see, it don't look well, you know.”
“Ah! I thought we'd get to it at last.”
The traveller up-ended his bluey against his knee, gave it an
affectionate pat, and then straightened himself up and looked fixedly at
the cabman.
“Now, look here!” he said, sternly and impressively, “can you see
anything wrong with that old swag o' mine?”
It was a stout, dumpy swag, with a red blanket outside, patched with
blue, and the edge of a blue blanket showing in the inner rings at the
end. The swag might have been newer; it might have been cleaner;
it might have been hooped with decent straps, instead of bits of
clothes-line and greenhide--but otherwise there was nothing the matter
with it, as swags go.
“I've humped that old swag for years,” continued the bushman; “I've
carried that old swag thousands of miles--as that old dog knows--an'
no one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog,
neither; and do you think I'm going to be ashamed of that old swag,
for a cabby or anyone else? Do you think I'm going to study anybody's
feelings? No one ever studied mine! I'm in two minds to summon you for
using insulting language towards me!”
He lifted the swag by the twisted towel which served for a
shoulder-strap, swung it into the cab, got in himself and hauled the dog
after him.
“You can drive me somewhere where I can leave my swag and dog while I
get some decent clothes to see a tailor in,” he said to the cabman. “My
old dog ain't used to cabs, you see.”
Then he added, reflectively: “I drove a cab myself, once, for five years
in Sydney.”
Stiffner and Jim
(Thirdly, Bill)
We were tramping down in Canterbury, Maoriland, at the time, swagging
it--me and Bill--looking for work on the new railway line. Well,
one afternoon, after a long, hot tramp, we comes to Stiffner's
Hotel--between Christchurch and that other place--I forget the name
of it--with throats on us like sunstruck bones, and not the price of a
stick of tobacco.
We had to have a drink, anyway, so we chanced it. We walked right into
the bar, handed over our swags, put up four drinks, and tried to look as
if we'd just drawn our cheques and didn't care a curse for any man. We
looked solvent enough, as far as swagmen go. We were dirty and haggard
and ragged and tired-looking, and that was all the more reason why we
might have our cheques all right.
This Stiffner was a hard customer. He'd been a spieler, fighting man,
bush parson, temperance preacher, and a policeman, and a commercial
traveller, and everything else that was damnable; he'd been a
journalist, and an editor; he'd been a lawyer, too. He was an ugly brute
to look at, and uglier to have a row with--about six-foot-six, wide in
proportion, and stronger than Donald Dinnie.
He was meaner than a gold-field Chinaman, and sharper than a sewer rat:
he wouldn't give his own father a feed, nor lend him a sprat--unless
some safe person backed the old man's I.O.U.
We knew that we needn't expect any mercy from Stiffner; but something
had to be done, so I said to Bill:
“Something's got to be done, Bill! What do you think of it?”
Bill was mostly a quiet young chap, from Sydney, except when he got
drunk--which was seldom--and then he was a customer, from all round. He
was cracked on the subject of spielers. He held that the population of
the world was divided into two classes--one was spielers and the other
was the mugs. He reckoned that he wasn't a mug. At first I thought he
was a spieler, and afterwards I thought that he was a mug. He used to
say that a man had to do it these times; that he was honest once and
a fool, and was robbed and starved in consequences by his friends and
relations; but now he intended to take all that he could get. He said
that you either had to have or be had; that men were driven to be
sharps, and there was no help for it.
Bill said:
“We'll have to sharpen our teeth, that's all, and chew somebody's lug.”
“How?” I asked.
There was a lot of navvies at the pub, and I knew one or two by sight,
so Bill says:
“You know one or two of these mugs. Bite one of their ears.”
So I took aside a chap that I knowed and bit his ear for ten bob, and
gave it to Bill to mind, for I thought it would be safer with him than
with me.
“Hang on to that,” I says, “and don't lose it for your natural life's
sake, or Stiffner'll stiffen us.”
We put up about nine bob's worth of drinks that night--me and Bill--and
Stiffner didn't squeal: he was too sharp. He shouted once or twice.
By-and-by I left Bill and turned in, and in the morning when I woke up
there was Bill sitting alongside of me, and looking about as lively
as the fighting kangaroo in London in fog time. He had a black eye and
eighteen pence. He'd been taking down some of the mugs.
“Well, what's to be done now?” I asked. “Stiffner can smash us both with
one hand, and if we don't pay up he'll pound our swags and cripple us.
He's just the man to do it. He loves a fight even more than he hates
being had.”
“There's only one thing to be done, Jim,” says Bill, in a tired,
disinterested tone that made me mad.
“Well, what's than” I said.
“Smoke!”
“Smoke be damned,” I snarled, losing my temper.
“You know dashed well that our swags are in the bar, and we can't smoke
without them.
“Well, then,” says Bill, “I'll toss you to see who's to face the
landlord.”
“Well, I'll be blessed!” I says. “I'll see you further first. You have
got a front. You mugged that stuff away, and you'll have to get us out
of the mess.”
It made him wild to be called a mug, and we swore and growled at each
other for a while; but we daren't speak loud enough to have a fight, so
at last I agreed to toss up for it, and I lost.
Bill started to give me some of his points, but I shut him up quick.
“You've had your turn, and made a mess of it,” I said. “For God's sake
give me a show. Now, I'll go into the bar and ask for the swags, and
carry them out on to the veranda, and then go back to settle up. You
keep him talking all the time. You dump the two swags together, and
smoke like sheol. That's all you've got to do.”
I went into the bar, got the swags front the missus, carried them out on
to the veranda, and then went back.
Stiffner came in.
“Good morning!”
“Good morning, sir,” says Stiffner.
“It'll be a nice day, I think?”
“Yes, I think so. I suppose you are going on?”
“Yes, we'll have to make a move to-day.”
Then I hooked carelessly on to the counter with one elbow, and looked
dreamy-like out across the clearing, and presently I gave a sort of sigh
and said: “Ah, well! I think I'll have a beer.”
“Right you are! Where's your mate?”
“Oh, he's round at the back. He'll be round directly; but he ain't
drinking this morning.”
Stiffner laughed that nasty empty laugh of his. He thought Bill was
whipping the cat.
“What's yours, boss?” I said.
“Thankee!... Here's luck!”
“Here's luck!”
The country was pretty open round there--the nearest timber was better
than a mile away, and I wanted to give Bill a good start across the flat
before the go-as-you-can commenced; so I talked for a while, and while
we were talking I thought I might as well go the whole hog--I might as
well die for a pound as a penny, if I had to die; and if I hadn't I'd
have the pound to the good, anyway, so to speak. Anyhow, the risk would
be about the same, or less, for I might have the spirit to run harder
the more I had to run for--the more spirits I had to run for, in fact,
as it turned out--so I says:
“I think I'll take one of them there flasks of whisky to last us on the
road.”
“Right y'are,” says Stiffner. “What'll ye have--a small one or a big
one?”
“Oh, a big one, I think--if I can get it into my pocket.”
“It'll be a tight squeeze,” he said, and he laughed.
“I'll try,” I said. “Bet you two drinks I'll get it in.”
“Done!” he says. “The top inside coat-pocket, and no tearing.”
It was a big bottle, and all my pockets were small; but I got it into
the pocket he'd betted against. It was a tight squeeze, but I got it in.
Then we both laughed, but his laugh was nastier than usual, because it
was meant to be pleasant, and he'd lost two drinks; and my laugh wasn't
easy--I was anxious as to which of us would laugh next.
Just then I noticed something, and an idea struck me--about the most
up-to-date idea that ever struck me in my life. I noticed that Stiffner
was limping on his right foot this morning, so I said to him:
“What's up with your foot?” putting my hand in my pocket. “Oh, it's a
crimson nail in my boot,” he said. “I thought I got the blanky thing out
this morning; but I didn't.”
There just happened to be an old bag of shoemaker's tools in the bar,
belonging to an old cobbler who was lying dead drunk on the veranda. So
I said, taking my hand out of my pocket again:
“Lend us the boot, and I'll fix it in a minute. That's my old trade.”
“Oh, so you're a shoemaker,” he said. “I'd never have thought it.”
He laughs one of his useless laughs that wasn't wanted, and slips off
the boot--he hadn't laced it up--and hands it across the bar to me.
It was an ugly brute--a great thick, iron-bound, boiler-plated navvy's
boot. It made me feel sore when I looked at it.
I got the bag and pretended to fix the nail; but I didn't.
“There's a couple of nails gone from the sole,” I said. “I'll put 'em
in if I can find any hobnails, and it'll save the sole,” and I rooted in
the bag and found a good long nail, and shoved it right through the sole
on the sly. He'd been a bit of a sprinter in his time, and I thought
it might be better for me in the near future if the spikes of his
running-shoes were inside.
“There, you'll find that better, I fancy,” I said, standing the boot on
the bar counter, but keeping my hand on it in an absent-minded kind of
way. Presently I yawned and stretched myself, and said in a careless
way:
“Ah, well! How's the slate?” He scratched the back of his head and
pretended to think.
“Oh, well, we'll call it thirty bob.”
Perhaps he thought I'd slap down two quid.
“Well,” I says, “and what will you do supposing we don't pay you?”
He looked blank for a moment. Then he fired up and gasped and choked
once or twice; and then he cooled down suddenly and laughed his nastiest
laugh--he was one of those men who always laugh when they're wild--and
said in a nasty, quiet tone:
“You thundering, jumped-up crawlers! If you don't (something) well part
up I'll take your swags and (something) well kick your gory pants so you
won't be able to sit down for a month--or stand up either!”
“Well, the sooner you begin the better,” I said; and I chucked the boot
into a corner and bolted.
He jumped the bar counter, got his boot, and came after me. He paused
to slip the boot on--but he only made one step, and then gave a howl and
slung the boot off and rushed back. When I looked round again he'd got
a slipper on, and was coming--and gaining on me, too. I shifted scenery
pretty quick the next five minutes. But I was soon pumped. My heart
began to beat against the ceiling of my head, and my lungs all choked
up in my throat. When I guessed he was getting within kicking distance
I glanced round so's to dodge the kick. He let out; but I shied just in
time. He missed fire, and the slipper went about twenty feet up in the
air and fell in a waterhole.
He was done then, for the ground was stubbly and stony. I seen Bill on
ahead pegging out for the horizon, and I took after him and reached for
the timber for all I was worth, for I'd seen Stiffner's missus coming
with a shovel--to bury the remains, I suppose; and those two were a good
match--Stiffner and his missus, I mean.
Bill looked round once, and melted into the bush pretty soon after that.
When I caught up he was about done; but I grabbed my swag and we pushed
on, for I told Bill that I'd seen Stiffner making for the stables when
I'd last looked round; and Bill thought that we'd better get lost in the
bush as soon as ever we could, and stay lost, too, for Stiffner was a
man that couldn't stand being had.
The first thing that Bill said when we got safe into camp was: “I told
you that we'd pull through all right. You need never be frightened when
you're travelling with me. Just take my advice and leave things to me,
and we'll hang out all right. Now-.”
But I shut him up. He made me mad.
“Why, you--! What the sheol did _you_ do?”
“Do?” he says. “I got away with the swags, didn't I? Where'd they be now
if it wasn't for me?”
Then I sat on him pretty hard for his pretensions, and paid him out for
all the patronage he'd worked off on me, and called him a mug straight,
and walked round him, so to speak, and blowed, and told him never to
pretend to me again that he was a battler.
Then, when I thought I'd licked him into form, I cooled down and soaped
him up a bit; but I never thought that he had three climaxes and a
crisis in store for me.
He took it all pretty cool; he let me have my fling, and gave me time to
get breath; then he leaned languidly over on his right side, shoved his
left hand down into his left trouserpocket, and brought up a boot-lace,
a box of matches, and nine-and-six.
As soon as I got the focus of it I gasped:
“Where the deuce did you get that?”
“I had it all along,” he said, “but I seen at the pub that you had the
show to chew a lug, so I thought we'd save it--nine-and-sixpences ain't
picked up every day.”
Then he leaned over on his left, went down into the other pocket, and
came up with a piece of tobacco and half-a-sovereign.
My eyes bulged out.
“Where the blazes did you get that from?” I yelled.
“That,” he said, “was the half-quid you give me last night. Half-quids
ain't to be thrown away these times; and, besides, I had a down on
Stiffner, and meant to pay him out; I reckoned that if we wasn't sharp
enough to take him down we hadn't any business to be supposed to be
alive. Anyway, I guessed we'd do it; and so we did--and got a bottle of
whisky into the bargain.”
Then he leaned back, tired-like, against the log, and dredged his upper
left-hand waistcoat-pocket, and brought up a sovereign wrapped in a
pound note. Then he waited for me to speak; but I couldn't. I got my
mouth open, but couldn't get it shut again.
“I got that out of the mugs last night, but I thought that we'd want it,
and might as well keep it. Quids ain't so easily picked up, nowadays;
and, besides, we need stuff more'n Stiffner does, and so--”
“And did he know you had the stuff?” I gasped.
“Oh, yes, that's the fun of it. That's what made him so excited. He was
in the parlour all the time I was playing. But we might as well have a
drink!
“We did. I wanted it.”
Bill turned in by-and-by, and looked like a sleeping innocent in the
moonlight. I sat up late, and smoked, and thought hard, and watched
Bill, and turned in, and thought till near daylight, and then went to
sleep, and had a nightmare about it. I dreamed I chased Stiffner forty
miles to buy his pub, and that Bill turned out to be his nephew.
Bill divvied up all right, and gave me half a crown over, but I didn't
travel with him long after that. He was a decent young fellow as far as
chaps go, and a good mate as far as mates go; but he was too far ahead
for a peaceful, easy-going chap like me. It would have worn me out in a
year to keep up to him.
P.S.--The name of this should have been:
'Bill and Stiffner (thirdly, Jim)'
WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN
Jack Drew sat on the edge of the shaft, with his foot in the loop and
one hand on the rope, ready to descend. His elder brother, Tom, stood
at one end of the windlass and the third mate at the other. Jack paused
before swinging off, looked up at his brother, and impulsively held out
his hand:
“You ain't going to let the sun go down, are you, Tom?”
But Tom kept both hands on the windlass-handle and said nothing.
“Lower away!”
They lowered him to the bottom, and Tom shouldered his pick in silence
and walked off to the tent. He found the tin plate, pint-pot, and things
set ready for him on the rough slab table under the bush shed. The tea
was made, the cabbage and potatoes strained and placed in a billy near
the fire. He found the fried bacon and steak between two plates in the
camp-oven. He sat down to the table but he could not eat. He felt mean.
The inexperience and hasty temper of his brother had caused the quarrel
between them that morning; but then Jack admitted that, and apologized
when he first tried to make it up.
Tom moved round uneasily and tried to smoke: he could not get Jack's
last appeal out of his ears--“You ain't going to let the sun go down,
Tom?”
Tom found himself glancing at the sun. It was less than two hours from
sunset. He thought of the words of the old Hebrew--or Chinese--poet; he
wasn't religious, and the authorship didn't matter. The old poet's words
began to haunt him “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath--Let not the
sun go down upon your wrath.”
The line contains good, sound advice; for quick-tempered men are often
the most sensitive, and when they let the sun go down on the aforesaid
wrath that quality is likely to get them down and worry them during the
night.
Tom started to go to the claim, but checked himself, and sat down
and tried to draw comfort from his pipe. He understood his brother
thoroughly, but his brother never understood him--that was where the
trouble was. Presently he got thinking how Jack would worry about the
quarrel and have no heart for his work. Perhaps he was fretting over it
now, all alone by himself, down at the end of the damp, dark drive. Tom
had a lot of the old woman about him, in spite of his unsociable ways
and brooding temper.
He had almost made up his mind to go below again, on some excuse, when
his mate shouted from the top of the shaft:
“Tom! Tom! For Christ's sake come here!”
Tom's heart gave a great thump, and he ran like a kangaroo to the shaft.
All the diggers within hearing were soon on the spot. They saw at a
glance what had happened. It was madness to sink without timber in such
treacherous ground. _The sides of the shaft were closing in_. Tom sprang
forward and shouted through the crevice:
“To the face, Jack! To the face, for your life!”
“The old Workings!” he cried, turning to the diggers. “Bring a fan and
tools. We'll dig him out.”
A few minutes later a fan was rigged over a deserted shaft close by,
where fortunately the windlass had been left for bailing purposes,
and men were down in the old drive. Tom knew that he and his mates had
driven very close to the old workings.
He knelt in the damp clay before the face and worked like a madman; he
refused to take turn about, and only dropped the pick to seize a shovel
in his strong hands, and snatch back the loose clay from under his feet;
he reckoned that he had six or, perhaps, eight feet to drive, and he
knew that the air could not last long in the new drive--even if that
had not already fallen in and crushed his brother. Great drops of
perspiration stood out on Tom's forehead, and his breath began to come
in choking sobs, but he still struck strong, savage blows into the clay
before him, and the drive lengthened quickly. Once he paused a moment
to listen, and then distinctly heard a sound as of a tool or stone being
struck against the end of the new drive. Jack was safe!
Tom dug on until the clay suddenly fell away from his pick and left a
hole, about the size of a plate, in the “face” before him. “Thank God!”
said a hoarse, strained voice at the other side.
“All right, Jack!”
“Yes, old man; you are just in time; I've hardly got room to stand in,
and I'm nearly smothered.” He was crouching against the “face” of the
new drive.
Tom dropped his pick and fell back against the man behind him.
“Oh, God! my back!” he cried.
Suddenly he struggled to his knees, and then fell forward on his hand
and dragged himself close to the hole in the end of the drive.
“Jack!” he gasped, “Jack!”
“Right, old man; what's the matter?”
“I've hurt my heart, Jack!--Put your hand--quick!... The sun's going
down.”
Jack's hand came out through the hole, Tom gripped it, and then fell
with his face in the damp clay.
They half carried, half dragged him from the drive, for the roof was low
and they were obliged to stoop. They took him to the shaft and sent him
up, lashed to the rope.
A few blows of the pick, and Jack scrambled from his prison and went
to the surface, and knelt on the grass by the body of his brother. The
diggers gathered round and took off their hats. And the sun went down.
THE MAN WHO FORGOT
“Well, I dunno,” said Tom Marshall--known as “The Oracle”--“I've heerd
o' sich cases before: they ain't commin, but--I've heerd o' sich
cases before,” and he screwed up the left side of his face whilst he
reflectively scraped his capacious right ear with the large blade of a
pocket-knife.
They were sitting at the western end of the rouseabouts' hut, enjoying
the breeze that came up when the sun went down, and smoking and yarning.
The “case” in question was a wretchedly forlorn-looking specimen of the
swag-carrying clan whom a boundary-rider had found wandering about
the adjacent plain, and had brought into the station. He was a small,
scraggy man, painfully fair, with a big, baby-like head, vacant watery
eyes, long thin hairy hands, that felt like pieces of damp seaweed, and
an apologetic cringe-and-look-up-at-you manner. He professed to have
forgotten who he was and all about himself.
The Oracle was deeply interested in this case, as indeed he was in
anything else that “looked curious.” He was a big, simple-minded
shearer, with more heart than brains, more experience than sense, and
more curiosity than either. It was a wonder that he had not profited,
even indirectly, by the last characteristic. His heart was filled with
a kind of reverential pity for anyone who was fortunate or unfortunate
enough to possess an “affliction;” and amongst his mates had been
counted a deaf man, a blind man, a poet, and a man who “had rats.” Tom
had dropped across them individually, when they were down in the
world, and had befriended them, and studied them with great
interest--especially the poet; and they thought kindly of him, and were
grateful--except the individual with the rats, who reckoned Tom had an
axe to grind--that he, in fact, wanted to cut his (Rat's) liver out as a
bait for Darling cod--and so renounced the mateship.
It was natural, then, for The Oracle to take the present case under his
wing. He used his influence with the boss to get the Mystery on “picking
up,” and studied him in spare time, and did his best to assist the poor
hushed memory, which nothing the men could say or do seemed able to push
further back than the day on which the stranger “kind o' woke up” on
the plain, and found a swag beside him. The swag had been prospected
and fossicked for a clue, but yielded none. The chaps were sceptical at
first, and inclined to make fun of the Mystery; but Tom interfered, and
intimated that if they were skunks enough to chyack or try on any of
their “funny business” with a “pore afflicted chap,” he (Tom) would
be obliged to “perform.” Most of the men there had witnessed Tom's
performance, and no one seemed ambitious to take a leading part in it.
They preferred to be in the audience.
“Yes,” reflected The Oracle, “it's a curious case, and I dare say some
of them big doctors, like Morell Mackenzie, would be glad to give a
thousand or two to get holt on a case like this.”
“Done,” cried Mitchell, the goat of the shed. “I'll go halves!--or stay,
let's form a syndicate and work the Mystery.”
Some of the rouseabouts laughed, but the joke fell as flat with Tom as
any other joke.
“The worst of it is,” said the Mystery himself, in the whine that was
natural to him, and with a timid side look up at Tom--“the worst of it
is I might be a lord or duke, and don't know anything about it. I might
be a rich man, with a lot of houses and money. I might be a lord.”
The chaps guffawed.
“Wot'yer laughing at?” asked Mitchell. “I don't see anything
unreasonable about it; he might be a lord as far as looks go. I've seen
two.”
“Yes,” reflected Tom, ignoring Mitchell, “there's something in that; but
then again, you see, you might be Jack the Ripper. Better let it slide,
mate; let the dead past bury its dead. Start fresh with a clean sheet.”
“But I don't even know my name, or whether I'm married or not,” whined
the outcast. “I might have a good wife and little ones.”
“Better keep on forgetting, mate,” Mitchell said, “and as for a name,
that's nothing. I don't know mine, and I've had eight. There's plenty
good names knocking round. I knew a man named Jim Smith that died. Take
his name, it just suits you, and he ain't likely to call round for it;
if he does, you can say you was born with it.”
So they called him Smith, and soon began to regard him as a harmless
lunatic and to take no notice of his eccentricities. Great interest was
taken in the case for a time, and even Mitchell put in his oar and
tried all sorts of ways to assist the Mystery in his weak, helpless,
and almost pitiful endeavours to recollect who he was. A similar case
happened to appear in the papers at this time, and the thing caught on
to such an extent that The Oracle was moved to impart some advice from
his store of wisdom.