inside the doorway.
A billy was boiling unheeded on the fire. Mason sat at the table with
his face buried in his arms.
“Father!”
There was no answer, but the flickering of the firelight made the
stranger think he could detect an impatient shrug in Mason's shoulders.
For a moment the stranger paused irresolute, and then stepping up to the
table he laid his hand on Mason's arm, and said gently:
“Father! Do you want another mate?”
But the sleeper did not--at least, not in this world.
AN ECHO FROM THE OLD BARK SCHOOL
It was the first Monday after the holidays. The children had taken their
seats in the Old Bark School, and the master called out the roll as
usual:
“Arvie Aspinall.”... “'Es, sir.”
“David Cooper.”... “Yes, sir.”
“John Heegard.”... “Yezzer.”
“Joseph Swallow.”... “Yesser.”
“James Bullock.”... “Present.”
“Frederick Swallow.”... “Y'sir.”
“James Nowlett.”... . (Chorus of “Absent.”)
“William Atkins.”... (Chorus of “Absent.”)
“Daniel Lyons.”... “Perresent, sor-r-r.”
Dan was a young immigrant, just out from the sod, and rolled his “r's”
like a cock-dove. His brogue was rich enough to make an Irishman laugh.
Bill was “wagging it.” His own especial chum was of the opinion that
Bill was sick. The master's opinion did not coincide, so he penned
a note to William's parents, to be delivered by the model boy of the
school.
“Bertha Lambert.”... “Yes, 'air.”
“May Carey.”... “Pesin', sair.”
“Rose Cooper.”... “Yes, sir.”
“Janet Wild.”... “Y-y-yes, s-sir.”
“Mary Wild.”...
A solemn hush fell upon the school, and presently Janet Wild threw her
arms out on the desk before her, let her face fall on them, and sobbed
heart-brokenly. The master saw his mistake too late; he gave his head
a little half-affirmative, half-negative movement, in that pathetic old
way of his; rested his head on one hand, gazed sadly at the name, and
sighed.
But the galoot of the school spoilt the pathos of it all, for, during
the awed silence which followed the calling of the girl's name, he
suddenly brightened up--the first time he was ever observed to do so
during school hours--and said, briskly and cheerfully “Dead--sir!”
He hadn't been able to answer a question correctly for several days.
“Children,” said the master gravely and sadly, “children, this is the
first time I ever had to put 'D' to the name of one of my scholars. Poor
Mary! she was one of my first pupils--came the first morning the school
was opened. Children, I want you to be a little quieter to-day during
play-hour, out of respect for the name of your dead schoolmate whom it
has pleased the Almighty to take in her youth.”
“Please, sir,” asked the galoot, evidently encouraged by his fancied
success, “please, sir, what does 'D' stand for?”
“Damn you for a hass!” snarled Jim Bullock between his teeth, giving the
galoot a vicious dig in the side with his elbow.
THE SHEARING OF THE COOK'S DOG
The dog was a little conservative mongrel poodle, with long dirty white
hair all over him--longest and most over his eyes, which glistened
through it like black beads. Also he seemed to have a bad liver. He
always looked as if he was suffering from a sense of injury, past or to
come. It did come. He used to follow the shearers up to the shed after
breakfast every morning, but he couldn't have done this for love--there
was none lost between him and the men. He wasn't an affectionate dog;
it wasn't his style. He would sit close against the shed for an hour or
two, and hump himself, and sulk, and look sick, and snarl whenever the
“Sheep-Ho” dog passed, or a man took notice of him. Then he'd go home.
What he wanted at the shed at all was only known to himself; no one
asked him to come. Perhaps he came to collect evidence against us. The
cook called him “my darg,” and the men called the cook “Curry and Rice,”
with “old” before it mostly.
Rice was a little, dumpy, fat man, with a round, smooth, good-humoured
face, a bald head, feet wide apart, and a big blue cotton apron. He had
been a ship's cook. He didn't look so much out of place in the hut as
the hut did round him. To a man with a vivid imagination, if he regarded
the cook dreamily for a while, the floor might seem to roll gently like
the deck of a ship, and mast, rigging, and cuddy rise mistily in the
background. Curry might have dreamed of the cook's galley at times, but
he never mentioned it. He ought to have been at sea, or comfortably dead
and stowed away under ground, instead of cooking for a mob of unredeemed
rouseabouts in an uncivilized shed in the scrub, six hundred miles from
the ocean.
They chyacked the cook occasionally, and grumbled--or pretended to
grumble--about their tucker, and then he'd make a roughly pathetic
speech, with many references to his age, and the hardness of his work,
and the smallness of his wages, and the inconsiderateness of the men.
Then the joker of the shed would sympathize with the cook with his
tongue and one side of his face--and joke with the other.
One day in the shed, during smoke-ho the devil whispered to a shearer
named Geordie that it would be a lark to shear the cook's dog--the Evil
One having previously arranged that the dog should be there, sitting
close to Geordie's pen, and that the shearer should have a fine lamb
comb on his machine. The idea was communicated through Geordie to his
mates, and met with entire and general approval; and for five or ten
minutes the air was kept alive by shouting and laughter of the men, and
the protestations of the dog. When the shearer touched skin, he yelled
“Tar!” and when he finished he shouted “Wool away!” at the top of his
voice, and his mates echoed him with a will. A picker-up gathered the
fleece with a great show of labour and care, and tabled it, to the
well-ventilated disgust of old Scotty, the wool-roller. When they let
the dog go he struck for home--a clean-shaven poodle, except for a
ferocious moustache and a tuft at the end of his tail.
The cook's assistant said that he'd have given a five-pound note for a
portrait of Curry-and-Rice when that poodle came back from the shed. The
cook was naturally very indignant; he was surprised at first--then he
got mad. He had the whole afternoon to get worked up in, and at tea-time
he went for the men properly.
“Wotter yer growlin' about?” asked one. “Wot's the matter with yer,
anyway?”
“I don't know nothing about yer dog!” protested a rouseabout; “wotyer
gettin' on to me for?”
“Wotter they bin doin' to the cook now?” inquired a ring leader
innocently, as he sprawled into his place at the table. “Can't yer let
Curry alone? Wot d'yer want to be chyackin' him for? Give it a rest.”
“Well, look here, chaps,” observed Geordie, in a determined tone, “I
call it a shame, that's what I call it. Why couldn't you leave an old
man's dog alone? It was a mean, dirty trick to do, and I suppose you
thought it funny. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the whole lot
of you, for a drafted mob of crawlers. If I'd been there it wouldn't
have been done; and I wouldn't blame Curry if he was to poison the whole
convicted push.”
General lowering of faces and pulling of hats down over eyes, and great
working of knives and forks; also sounds like men trying not to laugh.
“Why couldn't you play a trick on another man's darg?” said Curry.
“It's no use tellin' me. I can see it all as plain as if I was on the
board--all of you runnin' an' shoutin' an' cheerin' an' laughin', and
all over shearin' and ill-usin' a poor little darg! Why couldn't you
play a trick on another man's darg?... It doesn't matter much--I'm
nearly done cookie' here now.... Only that I've got a family to think of
I wouldn't 'a' stayed so long. I've got to be up at five every mornin',
an' don't get to bed till ten at night, cookin' an' bakin' an' cleanin'
for you an' waitin' on you. First one lot in from the wool-wash, an'
then one lot in from the shed, an' another lot in, an' at all hours
an' times, an' all wantin' their meals kept hot, an' then they ain't
satisfied. And now you must go an' play a dirty trick on my darg! Why
couldn't you have a lark with some other man's darg!”
Geordie bowed his head and ate as though he had a cud, like a cow,
and could chew at leisure. He seemed ashamed, as indeed we all
were--secretly. Poor old Curry's oft-repeated appeal, “Why couldn't you
play a trick with another man's dog?” seemed to have something pathetic
about it. The men didn't notice that it lacked philanthropy and logic,
and probably the cook didn't notice it either, else he wouldn't have
harped on it. Geordie lowered his face, and just then, as luck or the
devil would have it, he caught sight of the dog. Then he exploded.
The cook usually forgot all about it in an hour, and then, if you asked
him what the chaps had been doing, he'd say, “Oh, nothing! nothing! Only
their larks!” But this time he didn't; he was narked for three days,
and the chaps marvelled much and were sorry, and treated him with great
respect and consideration. They hadn't thought he'd take it so hard--the
dog shearing business--else they wouldn't have done it. They were a
little puzzled too, and getting a trifle angry, and would shortly
be prepared to take the place of the injured party, and make things
unpleasant for the cook. However, he brightened up towards the end of
the week, and then it all came out.
“I wouldn't 'a' minded so much,” he said, standing by the table with a
dipper in one hand, a bucket in the other, and a smile on his face. “I
wouldn't 'a' minded so much only they'll think me a flash man in Bourke
with that theer darg trimmed up like that!”
“DOSSING OUT” AND “CAMPING”
At least two hundred poor beggars were counted sleeping out on the
pavements of the main streets of Sydney the other night--grotesque
bundles of rags lying under the verandas of the old Fruit Markets and
York Street shops, with their heads to the wall and their feet to the
gutter. It was raining and cold that night, and the unemployed had been
driven in from Hyde Park and the bleak Domain--from dripping trees, damp
seats, and drenched grass--from the rain, and cold, and the wind. Some
had sheets of old newspapers to cover them-and some hadn't. Two were
mates, and they divided a _Herald_ between them. One had a sheet of
brown paper, and another (lucky man!) had a bag--the only bag there.
They all shrank as far into their rags as possible--and tried to sleep.
The rats seemed to take them for rubbish, too, and only scampered away
when one of the outcasts moved uneasily, or coughed, or groaned--or when
a policeman came along.
One or two rose occasionally and rooted in the dust-boxes on the
pavement outside the shops--but they didn't seem to get anything. They
were feeling “peckish,” no doubt, and wanted to see if they could get
something to eat before the corporation carts came along. So did the
rats.
Some men can't sleep very well on an empty stomach--at least, not at
first; but it mostly comes with practice. They often sleep for ever in
London. Not in Sydney as yet--so we say.
Now and then one of our outcasts would stretch his cramped limbs to ease
them--but the cold soon made him huddle again. The pavement must have
been hard on the men's “points,” too; they couldn't dig holes nor make
soft places for their hips, as you can in camp out back. And then,
again, the stones had nasty edges and awkward slopes, for the pavements
were very uneven.
The Law came along now and then, and had a careless glance at the
unemployed in bed. They didn't look like sleeping beauties. The Law
appeared to regard them as so much rubbish that ought not to have
been placed there, and for the presence of which somebody ought to
be prosecuted by the Inspector of Nuisances. At least, that was the
expression the policeman had on his face.
And so Australian workmen lay at two o'clock in the morning in the
streets of Sydney, and tried to get a little sleep before the traffic
came along and took their bed.
The idea of sleeping out might be nothing to bushmen--not even an idea;
but “dossing out” in the city and “camping” in the bush are two very
different things. In the bush you can light a fire, boil your billy,
and make some tea--if you have any; also fry a chop (there are no sheep
running round in the city). You can have a clean meal, take off your
shirt and wash it, and wash yourself--if there's water enough--and feel
fresh and clean. You can whistle and sing by the camp-fire, and make
poetry, and breathe fresh air, and watch the everlasting stars that keep
the mateless traveller from going mad as he lies in his lonely camp on
the plains. Your privacy is even more perfect than if you had a suite of
rooms at the Australia; you are at the mercy of no policeman; there's
no one to watch you but God--and He won't move you on. God watches the
“dossers-out,” too, in the city, but He doesn't keep them from being
moved on or run in.
With the city unemployed the case is entirely different. The city
outcast cannot light a fire and boil a billy--even if he has one--he'd
be run in at once for attempting to commit arson, or create a riot, or
on suspicion of being a person of unsound mind. If he took off his
shirt to wash it, or went in for a swim, he'd be had up for indecently
exposing his bones--and perhaps he'd get flogged. He cannot whistle or
sing on his pavement bed at night, for, if he did, he'd be violently
arrested by two great policemen for riotous conduct. He doesn't see many
stars, and he's generally too hungry to make poetry. He only sleeps on
the pavement on sufferance, and when the policeman finds the small hours
hang heavily on him, he can root up the unemployed with his big foot and
move him on--or arrest him for being around with the intention to commit
a felony; and, when the wretched “dosser” rises in the morning, he
cannot shoulder his swag and take the track--he must cadge a breakfast
at some back gate or restaurant, and then sit in the park or walk round
and round, the same old hopeless round, all day. There's no prison like
the city for a poor man.
Nearly every man the traveller meets in the bush is about as dirty and
ragged as himself, and just about as hard up; but in the city nearly
every man the poor unemployed meets is a dude, or at least, well
dressed, and the unemployed _feels_ dirty and mean and degraded by the
contrast--and despised.
And he can't help feeling like a criminal. It may be imagination, but
every policeman seems to regard him with suspicion, and this is terrible
to a sensitive man.
We once had the key of the street for a night. We don't know how much
tobacco we smoked, how many seats we sat on, or how many miles we walked
before morning. But we do know that we felt like a felon, and that every
policeman seemed to regard us with a suspicious eye; and at last we
began to squint furtively at every trap we met, which, perhaps, made him
more suspicious, till finally we felt bad enough to be run in and to get
six months' hard.
Three winters ago a man, whose name doesn't matter, had a small office
near Elizabeth Street, Sydney. He was an hotel broker, debt collector,
commission agent, canvasser, and so on, in a small way--a very small
way--but his heart was big. He had a partner. They batched in the
office, and did their cooking over a gas lamp. Now, every day the
man-whose-name-doesn't-matter would carefully collect the scraps of
food, add a slice or two of bread and butter, wrap it all up in a piece
of newspaper, and, after dark, step out and leave the parcel on a ledge
of the stonework outside the building in the street. Every morning it
would be gone. A shadow came along in the night and took it.
This went on for many months, till at last one night the
man-whose-name-doesn't-matter forgot to put the parcel out, and didn't
think of it till he was in bed. It worried him, so that at last he had
to get up and put the scraps outside. It was midnight. He felt curious
to see the shadow, so he waited until it came along. It wasn't his
long-lost brother, but it was an old mate of his.
Let us finish with a sketch:
The scene was Circular Quay, outside the Messageries sheds. The usual
number of bundles of misery--covered more or less with dirty sheets of
newspaper--lay along the wall under the ghastly glare of the electric
light. Time--shortly after midnight. From among the bundles an old man
sat up. He cautiously drew off his pants, and then stood close to
the wall, in his shirt, tenderly examining the seat of the trousers.
Presently he shook them out, folded them with great care, wrapped them
in a scrap of newspaper, and laid them down where his head was to be.
He had thin, hairy legs and a long grey beard. From a bundle of rags he
extracted another pair of pants, which were all patches and tatters, and
into which he engineered his way with great caution. Then he sat down,
arranged the paper over his knees, laid his old ragged grey head back on
his precious Sunday-go-meetings-and slept.
ACROSS THE STRAITS
We crossed Cook's Straits from Wellington in one of those rusty little
iron tanks that go up and down and across there for twenty or thirty
years and never get wrecked--for no other reason, apparently, than that
they have every possible excuse to go ashore or go down on those stormy
coasts. The age, construction, or condition of these boats, and the
south-easters, and the construction of the coastline, are all decidedly
in favour of their going down; the fares are high and the accommodation
is small and dirty. It is always the same where there is no competition.
A year or two ago, when a company was running boats between Australia
and New Zealand without competition, the steerage fare was three
pound direct single, and two pound ten shillings between Auckland and
Wellington. The potatoes were black and green and soggy, the beef like
bits scraped off the inside of a hide which had lain out for a day or
so, the cabbage was cabbage leaves, the tea muddy. The whole business
took away our appetite regularly three times a day, and there wasn't
enough to go round, even if it had been good--enough tucker, we mean;
there was enough appetite to go round three or four times, but it was
driven away by disgust until after meals. If we had not, under cover of
darkness, broached a deck cargo of oranges, lemons, and pineapples, and
thereby run the risk of being run in on arrival, there would have been
starvation, disease, and death on that boat before the end--perhaps
mutiny.
You can go across now for one pound, and get something to eat on the
road; but the travelling public will go on patronizing the latest
reducer of fares until the poorer company gets starved out and fares
go up again--then the travelling public will have to pay three or four
times as much as they do now, and go hungry on the voyage; all of which
ought to go to prove that the travelling public is as big a fool as the
general public.
We can't help thinking that the captains and crews of our primitive
little coastal steamers take the chances so often that they in time
get used to it, and, being used to it, have no longer any misgivings
or anxiety in rough weather concerning a watery grave, but feel
as perfectly safe as if they were in church with their wives or
sisters--only more comfortable--and go on feeling so until the worn-out
machinery breaks down and lets the old tub run ashore, or knocks a hole
in her side, or the side itself rusts through at last and lets the water
in, or the last straw in the shape of an extra ton of brine tumbles on
board, and the _John Smith (Newcastle)_, goes down with a swoosh before
the cook has time to leave off peeling his potatoes and take to prayer.
These cheerful--and, maybe, unjust--reflections are perhaps in
consequence of our having lost half a sovereign to start with. We
arrived at the booking-office with two minutes to spare, two sticks of
Juno tobacco, a spare wooden pipe--in case we lost the other--a letter
to a friend's friend down south, a pound note (Bank of New Zealand), and
two half-crowns, with which to try our fortunes in the South Island.
We also had a few things in a portmanteau and two blankets in a
three-bushel bag, but they didn't amount to much. The clerk put down the
ticket with the half-sovereign on top of it, and we wrapped the latter
in the former and ran for the wharf. On the way we snatched the ticket
out to see the name of the boat we were going by, in order to find it,
and it was then, we suppose, that the semi-quid got lost.
Did you ever lose a sovereign or a half-sovereign under similar
circumstances? You think of it casually and feel for it carelessly at
first, to be sure that it's there all right; then, after going through
your pockets three or four times with rapidly growing uneasiness, you
lose your head a little and dredge for that coin hurriedly and with
painful anxiety. Then you force yourself to be calm, and proceed to
search yourself systematically, in a methodical manner. At this stage,
if you have time, it's a good plan to sit down and think out when and
where you last had that half-sovereign, and where you have been since,
and which way you came from there, and what you took out of your pocket,
and where, and whether you might have given it in mistake for sixpence
at that pub where you rushed in to have a beer--and then you calculate
the chances against getting it back again. The last of these reflections
is apt to be painful, and the painfulness is complicated and increased
when there happen to have been several pubs and a like number of hurried
farewell beers in the recent past.
And for months after that you cannot get rid of the idea that that
half-sov. might be about your clothes somewhere. It haunts you. You
turn your pockets out, and feel the lining of your coat and vest inch by
inch, and examine your letter papers--everything you happen to have had
in your pocket that day--over and over again, and by and by you peer in
envelopes and unfold papers that you didn't have in your pocket at all,
but might have had. And when the novelty of the first search has worn
off, and the fit takes you, you make another search. Even after many
months have passed away, some day--or night--when you are hard up for
tobacco and a drink, you suddenly think of that late lamented half-sov.,
and are moved by adverse circumstances to look through your old clothes
in a sort of forlorn hope, or to give good luck a sort of chance to
surprise you--the only chance that you can give it.
By the way, seven-and-six of that half-quid should have gone to the
landlord of the hotel where we stayed last, and somehow, in spite of
this enlightened age, the loss of it seemed a judgment; and seeing that
the boat was old and primitive, and there was every sign of a three
days' sou'-easter, we sincerely hoped that judgment was complete--that
supreme wrath had been appeased by the fine of ten bob without adding
any Jonah business to it.
This reminds us that we once found a lost half-sovereign in the bowl of
a spare pipe six months after it was lost. We wish it had stayed there
and turned up to-night. But, although when you are in great danger--say,
adrift in an open boat--tales of providential escapes and rescues may
interest and comfort you, you can't get any comfort out of anecdotes
concerning the turning up of lost quids when you have just lost one
yourself. All you want is to find it.
It bothers you even not to be able to account for a bob. You always like
to know that you have had something for your money, if only a long beer.
You would sooner know that you fooled your money away on a spree, and
made yourself sick than lost it out of an extra hole in your pocket, and
kept well.
We left Wellington with a feeling of pained regret, a fellow-wanderer
by our side telling us how he had once lost “fi-pun-note”--and about
two-thirds of the city unemployed on the wharf looking for that
half-sovereign. Well, we hope that some poor devil found it; although,
to tell the truth, we would then have by far preferred to have found it
ourselves.